2nd vol of Robert A. Heinlein biography released

The second volume William H. Patterson’s official biography of Robert A. Heinlein is now Robert A. Heinlein in Dialogue with His Century, Vol. 2: The Man Who Learned Better, 1948-1988.

Here are two reviews:

The author unfortunately died in April : William H. Patterson, Jr., Passes Away – The Heinlein Prize.

The  first volume of his biography came out in 2010: Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century, Vol. 1 – Learning Curve (1907-1948)

A plot to visualize the diversity of exoplanets found so far

Here’s an interesting display of the nearly 1800 confirmed exoplanets on a plot of the distance from the Sun versus how much light energy the planet gets from its star (a value of 1.0 would equal the sun’s flux reaching earth): 4D-Exoplanets: A summary of known exoplanets in four dimensions. – Planetary Habitability Laboratory @ UPR Arecibo

hec_distance_chart[1]Large Image

The size of a circle is proportional to the size of the planet. The blue planets are cold and the red are hot while the green ones orbit within the habitable zone of their stars.