An Earthmass planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B

Exoplanets down to the size of Earth have been found, but not in the habitable zone, i.e. the distance
to the parent starwhere water, if present, would be liquid. There are planets in the habitable zone of stars cooler than our Sun, but for obvious reasons, such as tidal locking, strong stellar activity, are unlikely to harbour water-carbon life as we know it. The detection of a habitable Earth-mass planet
orbiting a star similar to our Sun is extremely difficult because such a signal is completely overwhelmed by stellar perturbations. Here we report the detection of the smallest minimum mass planet detected so far around a solar-type star. This planet, orbiting our neighbour star Alpha Centauri B,is also the closest one to the solar system found to date. This result represents a major step towards the detection of Earthtwins in the immediate vicinity of the Sun.

[...]

In addition, statistical studies of exoplanets suggest that small-mass planets are preferentially formed in multi-planetary systems [...]. There is therefore a high probability that other planets orbit Alpha Centauri B, maybe in its habitable zone.

Ah, old rpg campaign quotations

"Frankly, Captain, I feel interstellar diplomacy is out of our
depth."

"Ah, hence the nuclear weapons."

Speaking of Hornblowery novels

Walter Jon Williams' series about one of the minor villainous groups in the struggles against the Beast of Corsica are being reissued as ebooks



Interestingly, WJW tells the events from the point of view of the objectively pro-global conquest by Imperial France black hats.

I still have a copy of this lesser known WJW work:

The Cosmic Computer will resume tonight

So here's a question about it: does it make any sense the Federation just abandoned a substantial supply of nuclear weapons without (as far as I can tell) doing anything to prevent their later misuse? I mean, the system is next door to a region that rebelled against the Federation.

(and the planet is now overrun with bandits but that probably was not the case when the Federation was running its war from there)

The Cosmic Computer: chapters 5 and 6

The full text of the book may be found here.

Chapters 5 & 6

Spoilers
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