Suppose, for a minute, you were on your way to go shopping when a guy, who turns out to be a tout, catches your attention. Here's their part of the conversation that follows....
Hey, bud... c'mere a minute. What are you doing? Shopping? Nah, you don't wanna do that. Not big enough for you. Hey, you wanna get in on buying a planet?
Now, you've probably never considered buying your own planet before, but sure, why not?
At this point, it would probably be a really good idea to know how much any planet you might consider buying might be worth, so you can know what a good deal might be and so you can avoid getting taken to the cleaners, don't you think?
Fortunately for you, our latest tool is here to help! Based on math developed by astrophysicist Greg Laughlin (HT: boingboing), our tool can give you a really good idea at what the economic value of any planet you might consider buying might be worth!
All you need to know is the planet's mass, its estimated temperature, and the age, type and apparent brightness of its star. Enter that relevant data into our tool and soon you'll know just how much that planet you're thinking about buying is really worth!
We've entered the default data for Earth and the Sun (mass, age) into the tool, but you're certainly welcome to substitute the world of your choice, whether in Earth's local neighborhood, or elsewhere!
Because really, the worst thing that can happen is that you're out your money and stuck owning a planet that isn't worth as much as you might have thought it would be!
But we'll close by cautioning our readers to avoid buying any planets whose existence so far is only hypothetical!
Update 6:33 AM: Coding glitch corrected - now up and running!
Also, for those of you who might be trying to use the tool from one of the sites that republish our RSS feed - that feed doesn't include the program code needed to make our tools work - just click here to access the original (and now functional) version!