Ribbonland

Analog Fact Article by Kevin Walsh

The first half of this article is about the habitability of world that are tide locked to their star. It turns out that based on some mathematical simulations, if you have enough ocean on the sun-side of such a planet, there is a "ribbon" of habitability just a bit sunward of the terminator. This part of the article is really neat and I would have liked to see it expanded upon more.

Sadly, the final half of the article is just a waste of space: a laundry list of inhospitable planets, and some information about where brown dwarfs might be and how solar flares affect life. These are interesting topics, but they deserve enough depth to get their own articles, and they certainly need to NOT BE SERVING AS SPACE-FILLER IN THIS ARTICLE ABOUT A MORE INTERESTING AND UNRELATED TOPIC. I'd have been happy to see more climate simulations on ribbonworlds or speculation about how life might work on such worlds, rambling about brown dwarfs and the fact that we used to think such and such a star was a binary system but it turns out it isn't, not so much. A great start, then a great disappointment.