Pluto was surely going to be interesting. It’s relatively large and in a unique position where methane can change state over the year, but even if it was a completely average Kuiper belt object, we still hadn’t seen any of them yet. But it certainly has proved to be more interesting still, with varied terrain and apparently some kind of activity.
I guess the question really should be how much is there that can be interesting from far away. From space most forests are uniform green, though we know one part is very different from another, with all sorts of unique things and spectacular places.
By the same token, right now exoplanets are just-detectable spheres that are only notable for position, size, temperature, if we are lucky bulk composition or spin. Like shaddack said, if a chemist or geologist could look through the billions of hectares each one has to offer, I can’t imagine there wouldn’t be something to remark on.
…and bright near-infrared, and that’s only the crude multispectral imaging. If we go to high-res hyperspectral, everything blooms with data-rich beauty.
Sounds like the Kolmogorov–Arnold–Moser theorem ( Kolmogorov–Arnold–Moser theorem - Wikipedia ) Roughly, you get chaotic motion near low-denominator multiples of the system’s resonances. I wouldn’t be surprised if this aids planet formation.
With your feet in the void
And your head in a rock
Get Gs when you spin it, yeah
If your rock collapse
There was just ice in it
And then you’ll ask yourself
Where is my mine?
Where is my mine?
Where is my mine?
How large of a telescope would be necessary? I seem to recall that this was the subject of an old analog essay in which the author proposed building an hectometer scale telescope (in space) to detect biospheres around nearby stars. But this was decades ago.
I have no idea.
A lot of the instrumentation and methods for search of exoplanets are amazing to me. The sensitivity and resolution are just fantastic.
