In the fifth or sixth book of the Foundation series they follow a map to Earth that mentions a planet with huge rings and a planet circled by a giant moon. Throughout the universe, this combination was so unique you could identify the home of humanity among trillions of planets.
It’s a weird book but I’m glad I read it.
Well, Foundation and Earth is the fifth book of the Foundation trilogy… of course it’s weird.
Similar to the five book Hitchhiker’s Guide trilogy.
Adams had one more short story in the Hitchhiker’s universe, but debatable whether it’s technically part of the trilogy.
Wasn’t there one more book written in the world by a separate author? Or is that this one?
Eoin Colfer’s And Another Thing
Yeah, but the Foundation trilogy has seven books.
The last two being prequels.(Also it’s connected to the Galactic Empire trilogy, which does have three books, but was published in reverse order, and the Robot series, a four book duology not to be confused with Asimov’s other robot books, though it’s set in the same universe, and also to The End of Eternity, which is set in a different timeline altogether but is sort of a prequel to the whole shebang.)
Yeah I think the impact that created the moon is the main reason why there’s life on this planet. That impact also mixed up the heavier metals and liberated enough phosphorus making the composition of earth’s crust unique. Also the two metal cores fused and made it oversized, prompting the difference between the rotation of the Earth and the core, making the magnetic field that protects our atmosphere possible…
So yeah, I’m definitely not optimistic about life on different planets…
But hey, if it happened once, maybe we’ll get to find some remains of another system to which this happened as well. Or maybe, someday, someone else will find ours. Or perhaps gravity is the only force keeping us from drifting off the surface of our rock, preventing us from falling into the darkest void for eternity, with the vain hope that your frozen corpse will someday land in someone else’s yard, like a cosmic frisbee.
