WARNING!

This website contains spoilers for Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary.
It is recommended you read the book before exploring this site.

text-facts 37 word-study 35 science 27 chapter-facts 25 character-facts 24 word-usage 18 astronomy 12 physics 11 chemistry 8 feature-launch 6 astrophage 6 verbs 6 particles 5 speech 5 show more... astrobiology 5 contractions 5 pop-culture 4 rocky 4 spectroscopy 3 ryland-grace 3 sections 3 exoplanets 3 trailer 3 petrova-line 2 eridian-numbers 2 star-trek 2 40-eridani 2 venus 2 eva-stratt 2 punctuation 2 atmosphere 2 nouns 2 tau-ceti 2 astronauts 2 quotes 2 biology 2 martin-dubois 2 jwst 1 gravity 1 determiners 1 marissa 1 unicode 1 grace-kids 1 adjectives 1 sandra-elias 1 dr-browne 1 prepositions 1 minister-voigt 1 ms-xi 1 dimitri-komorov 1 justice-spencer 1 ursula-k-le-guin 1 dr-lokken 1 music 1 bob-redell 1 chinese 1 russian 1 beatles 1 ryan-gosling 1 similes 1 easton 1 francois-leclerc 1 invented-words 1 dr-lamai 1 psychology 1 annie-shapiro 1 possessives 1 olesya-ilyukhina 1 yao-li-jie 1 antarctica 1 climate 1 geography 1 steve-hatch 1 pronouns 1

astronomy

#2

The Petrova line isn't real, but there are real astronomical instruments that can detect infrared light at 25.984 microns.

#8

Venus lacks an intrinsic magnetic field, and that’s weird.

#19

Amaterasu is not a real solar probe, but it is the name of an ultra-high-energy cosmic ray.

#25

Humans have sent space missions to Venus since the 1960s, though many early attempts ended in failure.

#32

The habitable zone, or Goldilocks zone, can vary in size and position for different types of stars.

#46

Stratt's desire to protect Earth from extraterrestrial contamination partially reflects our own modern planetary protection efforts.

#64

Amateur astronomers contribute valuable data both within Project Hail Mary and outside of it.

#69

Tau Ceti is a nearby solar analog star with a number of unconfirmed exoplanet candidates.

#75

WISE 0855–0714 is a super-spreader of Astrophage infection despite being a sub-brown dwarf object.

#91

Astronomy across the electromagnetic spectrum deepens our understanding of the cosmos.

#96

Panspermia is a controversial hypothesis that leads to fun storytelling possibilities.

#111

40 Eridani is a triple star system whose planets exist, for now, only in the imagination.