In the charming Red Dwarf series on the BBC, space travelers find confounding science fiction meets occasional science fact with hilarious results on a trip through time, space and philosophy.
If a super-evolved cat who resembles Little Richard, a manic-depressive onboard computer and a Vindaloo-eating slob who is an Odd Couple match for one Arnold Judas Rimmer, neat freak and space regulations encyclopedia doesn't sound like comedy, well, Red Dwarf is no ordinary comedy. But it's very funny, especially if you start with early episodes so you know what is going on...
...What this has to do with pool and billiards is that one Dave Lister, "the man with the galaxy-sized jockstrap" (!) aboard the Red Dwarf ship, of necessity, is once forced to play Snooker on a grand scale by shooting planets into and off one another. Now, scientists the same thing may have occured for certain.
Recently, Guillame Hébrard of Paris's Institute of Astrophysics and his team detected that Planet XO-3b has an orbit tilted by 70 degrees, strongly suggesting a carom billiard between planets sometime in the past.
And so, this tidbit finds its way into our pool humor section at About, as I find the underlying physics assumptions, extraordinarily assumptive. Write for more.
Planetary collisions. Bah!
Maybe you can build a spaceship and visit Planet XO-3b for more.
