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And I used to worry about asteroids.. Looking forward to the Hollywood movie in which heroes have to stop a STAR from hitting Earth.
by cetico 8y ago
And I used to worry about asteroids..
Looking forward to the Hollywood movie in which heroes have to stop a STAR from hitting Earth.
- saagarjha 8y agoShort of moving Earth out of the way, there's not a whole lot you can do in that case…
- archgoon 8y agoThe mere presence of another star anywhere near earth would have catastrophic effects on the solar system. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dJEhPYfJ5U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dJEhPYfJ5U
- saagarjha 8y agoMy comment was meant as a poor attempt at humor of the impossibility of the task. You think Hollywood cares about the effects of the star's gravity? The only thing that matters is when the star collides with Earth.
- maxxxxx 8y agoThere is nothing you could do with any conceivable technology. Even if a star would just traverse through the solar system it would probably throw the planets out of their orbits which would also be quite unpleasant.
- Simon_says 8y agoEvacuation involves conceivable technology.
- cfadvan 8y agoConceivable, but not remotely available at the moment, or on the horizon. Not to mention, evacuation to where? The whole solar system would be thrown into disarray, and we don’t know of any Earth-like planets in other systems. We’d be toast, end of story. Maybe in a few hundred years, and given a lot of warning we could save some small fraction of humanity.
- weberc2 8y agoShotgun approach: anywhere we think we might have even a remote hope of colonizing, prioritized and weighted (in terms of number of passengers) by likelihood of success. It's amusing to think on two such populations of this human diaspora surviving to eventually reunite one day, probably tens of thousands of years after the original colonization event faded from their collective cultural memories.
- noonespecial 8y agoReunite? Knowing humans they'd likely battle to mutual annihilation because their toenails were different colors. One would hope having one's solar system murdered by a rouge star might help a species grow up but right now I'm skeptical.
- mapmap 8y agoThis was a Star Trek plot that helped explain why most of the aliens were humanoid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chase_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chase_(Star_Trek:_The_Next...
- weberc2 8y ago> After studying the ambiguous number blocks for hours, the discovery is made that these fragments are compatible DNA strands which have been recovered from different worlds all over the galaxy. The crew eventually believe that they have discovered an embedded genetic pattern that is constant throughout many different species, and it is speculated that this was left by an early race that pre-dates all other known civilizations. This would ultimately explain why so many races are humanoid. Pretty sure if today's scientists had access to a dozen alien populations, DNA analysis would be one of the first things they set about. I'm not a trekky, but I would think that this should have happened chronologically much earlier in the canon.
- maxxxxx 8y agoWhere do you want to go if planets are thrown off orbit? You need to plan that years or most likely decades before. We also have no evidence that we are capable of surviving off Earth long term.
- dharmab 8y agoCixin Liu's The Dark Forest explores this idea, mostly to point out that there is no acceptable method to choose who gets evacuated and who stays behind. The author argues through his characters that any attempt at evacuation would create immediate and violent conflict between humans.
- blacksmith_tb 8y agoSee also Seveneves[1], where a similar evacuation does indeed have some downsides. It's also a theme in one of my favorite Ted Chiang stories, "Mono no Aware"[2]. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveneves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveneves 2: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/mono-no-aware/ http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/mono-no-aware/
- mcrider 8y agoSeveneves and the Dark Forest series are literally the last two (sets of) books I read and they are so wonderful. The last book in the Dark Forest series in particular has some of the most mind-blowing concepts I've encountered in SciFi.
- thaumasiotes 8y agoViolent conflict hasn't stopped things from happening in the past; it seems overwhelmingly unlikely to stop an evacuation either.
- lewis500 8y agoArmageddon 2: Starmageddon. Bruce Willis has to land on the surface of a star, drill down into it and release a hydrogen bomb. The fusion reaction will cause the star to blow up even though it’s already full of fusion. He’ll wear a suit made out of diamonds and have a spaceship made of diamonds, and an Aerosmith rendition of twinkle twinkle little star will play as the star explodes and diamonds rain from the sky. Now seeking story credit for this script.
- MisterTea 8y agoAlready stole the idea and have the rights secured. All the best, - Hollywood
- heavenlyblue 8y agoCodename: Brucy in the Sky of Diamonds.
- realPubkey 8y agoBut.. but diamonds are made of carbon and so can burn.
- sarkhan 8y agoYour script is missing how Bruce managed to escape exploding asteroid.
- StaticRedux 8y agoThe explosion propelled him through the Milky Way at 5 million miles an hour until he came back around to earth.
- AmericanChopper 8y agoI find the idea of a stat zooming through the Milky Way to be so hilarious, but I can’t really explain why. Stars just aren’t supposed to be going on high-speed solo adventures through the galaxy in my mind. Although perhaps a better movie would be about a black hole hurtling towards earth, as they’re also supposed to be traversing the galaxy.
- tux1968 8y agoAll stars are zooming through the Milky Way. :) The Sun does a full orbit in 225 to 250 million years. Although I have no idea why we can't calculate it more precisely than that.