Time Immortal

Or: a Toronto-based research team has taken what they think might be the first picture of a planet in orbit around a star other than our own.

After years of searching, astronomers may finally have recorded the first image of a planet orbiting a sunlike star beyond the solar system. The body, about eight times Jupiter’s mass, lies exceptionally far from its presumed parent star — roughly 11 times Neptune’s average distance from the sun.

“If this object is a planet at such a wide separation it would challenge our conceptions of planet and companion formation,” says theorist Adam Burrows of Princeton University.

In an article posted online September 10, codiscoverers David Lafrenière, Ray Jayawardhana and Marten H. van Kerkwijk of the University of Toronto caution there’s a small chance that the object, small enough to be classified as a planet, merely resides in the same part of the sky as the star but is not gravitationally bound to it.

But if the body does turn out to orbit the young sunlike star, which has the unwieldy name 1RXS J160929.1-210524, it could pose a problem for planet formation theories. A widely accepted model suggests that the planet-forming disks of gas, dust and ice that surround newborn stars concentrate most of their material close to their stars.

We ask the heavens, and the heavens teach us. I seem to recall reading a similar sentiment in Job 12, recently.

At any rate, this is a fascinating discovery. But then, I was always a sucker for astronomy. It is among my regrets that I will pass away without ever setting foot on the surface of another celestial body.

And we have the HRCs to thank for it.

…Bradley Watson, professor of American and Western political thought at Pennsylvania’s St. Vincent College, said he will present a petition calling for the American Political Science Association (APSA) to re-evaluate its selection of Toronto for its 2009 conference at this year’s annual meeting, taking place over the Labour Day weekend in Boston.

His protest has garnered support from dozens of professors across the United States, including prominent scholars such as Princeton University legal philosopher Robert P. George and Harvard University’s Harvey Mansfield.

…Mr. Watson said that professors signing the petition are concerned that recent human rights commission investigations into Maclean’s and Western Standard magazines over articles concerning Islam, and the conviction of pastor Stephen Boisson, who was ordered by Alberta’s human rights tribunal in May to cease publicizing criticisms of homosexuality, suggest that professors risk being chilled from discussing important academic subjects, or ending up in legal trouble. Mr. Watson said he plans to distribute hundreds of buttons to attendees at the Boston conference reading “Toronto 2009, Non!”

What a right mess, yet no more than Canada deserves for allowing the travesty of the HRCs to continue, unimpeded, within its borders.

It should be noted, too, that these professors are not exactly likely to be raving right-wing nutbags; most are very notable for their left-wing views. But that’s how absurd the situation here has really become: American liberals, even the very liberal sorts who teach in places like Harvard and Princeton, want nothing at all to do with Canada because of our lack of respect for the concept of freedom of expression.

God help us, eh?