This is a cross-post from my fiction blog which illustrates perfectly the close relationship that exists between factual and fictional science. Each is driven by the other as the progressions of the real world are hauled along by the imaginings of the fictional one. Last year, I wrote an SF story about a planet in the Gliese (gleesh) system, first identified in the early 2000s as an extra solar planetary system. Today, the first potentially inhabitable extra solar planet was identified – in the GLIESE system! OK, so my story, ‘Journey Home’, didn’t cut the mustard but heck, there’s got to be points for being on the astronomical button!  Here’s the factual at PopSci. ‘Asimov’s‘, you could have had the story first – I know what these people look like!