Month: July 2023

Enlarge / Issei Tomine (Tomohisa Yamashita) and Camille Leger (Fleur Geffrier) must compete to be the sole heir of a globally renowned wine critic in the limited series Drops of God on Apple TV+. It's based on the hugely popular manga series of the same name.

The heady world of fine wine is often justly skewered as being hopelessly elitist and pretentious, where rare bottles sell for tens of thousands of dollars, their flavors and aromas described in florid, over-the-top language that readily lends itself to satire. (The sommelier in last year's delightful The Menu described a pinot noir as having "notes of longing and regret.")

That's the pop culture caricature, at least. If you yearn for something that brings this rarefied world firmly down to earth and celebrates wine's role in forging human bonds and shaping culture at large, I highly recommend Drops of God, a limited miniseries that debuted on Apple TV+ in April. It is based on the popular and influential manga of the same name. This is a series that sticks with you, its most memorable moments lingering in one's mind the way a good wine lingers on the palate.

(Some spoilers below but no major reveals.)

Enlarge / An artist impression of exoplanet LTT9779b orbiting its host star. The planet is around the size of Neptune and reflects 80 percent of the light shone on it.

It has been about four decades since the first confirmed exoplanet was discovered. In the following 40 years, using a variety of telescopes and instruments on the ground and in space, astronomers have cataloged more than 5,000 planets around other stars.

As part of this process of scientific discovery, astronomers have confirmed that our Milky Way galaxy teems with billions of planets. They exist around many (if not most) stars, and they come in all sizes and flavors. There are very large and very small planets and very hot and very cold ones. There are more than a few that could harbor life as we know it on Earth.

After this initial wave of discovery, powered by such NASA survey missions as the Kepler Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, second-generation instruments like Europe's small Cheops satellite have sought to characterize the nature of these exoplanets. Launched less than three years ago on a Soyuz rocket, the Cheops instrument has delivered some valuable insights on planets orbiting other stars.