Ron Miller's discussions

Energy is not destroyed at the moment of the Heat Death. Instead, entropy has reached its maximum. If there were a region with less energy, then energy could indeed flow toward it...but then that would mean that entropy has not yet reached its maximum and that the Heat Death of the universe has not in fact yet… Read more

No, not exactly. The universe itself really has no center in the way you may be thinking of it. Everything in the universe is expanding away from everything else. An analogy that is often used is to imagine spots drawn on the surface of a balloon. As you inflate the balloon, all the spots grow further apart but no one… Read more

The moon probably wouldn’t look any bigger if it had an atmosphere (and a magnetic field wouldn’t help much in keeping an atmosphere—-for instance, Mars has almost no magnetic field and it certainly has an atmosphere). Read more

It’s a catalog designation. For instance, Kepler 425b would be the second planet (b) found circling the star Kepler 425. Another example might be psr b1257+12 a, which would be planet “a” of the pulsar b1257+12. Different observatories have different catalogs, which is why there is such an apparently confusing number… Read more

As someone who depends a good deal on the income provided by royalties on the work I create, I have little sympathy for pirates. Read more

That depends on an awful lot of things. The assumption I used in creating the pictures was that the planets were orbiting the earth instead of the moon. This, of course, is totally impossible. But the earth (or at least an earth-sized moon) could conceivably orbit a planet the size of Jupiter or Saturn. Let’s say we… Read more

The 40 was a typo: Venus is about 4 times wider than the moon when seen from the same distance. Read more

I did err, but in a different respect. Venus would subtend an angle of about two degrees in the night sky (four times wider than a full moon). This would make it cover an area of sky 16 times larger than the moon. Venus already has an albedo of 0.75 (meaning that it reflects 75% of the sunlight reaching it. By… Read more

My experience is similar. Out of fifty books, most of my procuring editors and editors have been women, as have been most of my publicists and marketing people. One of the publishers I’ve worked with with is a top SF publishing house whose list includes a great many female writers...including some of their… Read more

Look up Octavia Butler. Read more

Read your National Geographics more carefully. The article has nothing to do with disproving either the Big Bang or cosmic expansion. It has only to do with the failure of one experiment to detect gravitational waves. I quote (in case you missed it), and the emphasis is mine: "To be blunt, therefore, the BICEP2… Read more

That's true, of course. Read more

I'm not too sure what your question means. If you are asking if the amount of light reflecting from a planet depends on its size and the nature of its surface, you are right. Venus, for instance, would be a very bright object, much brighter than a full moon, while Mercury, which is smaller and has a very dark surface,… Read more

Yes. I was at the con. Read more

"Red Sonja" Read more

This is probably your best advice: Do you have an editor? While not required for self-publishing, editors can help make your story flow better, strengthen plots and characters, spot inconsistencies, and generally make your book more interesting and approachable in both fiction and nonfiction. Even if you don't have a… Read more

It's the universe that's expanding, not our galaxy, and the heat death of the universe could occur whether it is expanding or not. Read more

Thanks! I like to think so! Read more

That's my wife, I'm very pleased to say, who was extremely flattered by your compliment! Read more

I could hardly agree more with you! Of all the cringe-worthy elements of "LoEG," the car really stood out. If for no other reason than that it simply didn't fit the period in which the story was set—even remotely. Plastering curly-cues on things to make them look "Victorian" was something I had fondly hoped had been…