14 ms·
Wolf 359
- keyle 7y agoSometimes I need a bit of context to understand why it's on HN. I mean sure, it's a star, what makes it interesting?
- edu 7y agoMaybe due to Star Trek? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-0Jg6_zHu0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-0Jg6_zHu0
- ralfd 7y agohttps://pbs.twimg.com/media/DmW9SveWsAcTfsj.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DmW9SveWsAcTfsj.jpg
- Symmetry 7y agoI associate it with the short story "Who's Afraid of Wolf 359?" that was a Hugo finalist in 2007. Text: http://redstonesciencefiction.com/2011/01/wolf359/ http://redstonesciencefiction.com/2011/01/wolf359/
- biesnecker 7y agoThanks for that, it was a terrific read.
- Pigo 7y agosleep Data... sleep...
- TwoNineA 7y agoVery underrated comment.
- deepaksurti 7y ago[1] and [2] may help :) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_of_Both_Worlds_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)#Part_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_of_Both_Worlds_(Star_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_(Star_Trek) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_(Star_Trek)
- olyjohn 7y agoI feel like Best of Both Worlds is the episode that really got TNG into it's groove. There was a lot of awkwardness in season 1 and 2, some cheesy acting and scripts, season 3 was better... But I feel like once they hit this episode and started with season 4 is when the show really took off and got good.
- softwaredoug 7y agoAlso immortalized in the classic Brandon Bird painting “Death of Jennifer Sisko” http://www.brandonbird.com/jen_sisko.html http://www.brandonbird.com/jen_sisko.html
- furgooswft13 7y agolol epic. Sisko is pretty much Space Jesus after all.
- nsxwolf 7y agoWhen I first saw that episode as a child I didn't appreciate how close Wolf 359 is to the Solar System and therefore what a big dramatic element that added to an already dramatic battle.
- drivingmenuts 7y agoMaybe someone is grinding karma for unknowable reasons?
- koheripbal 7y agoLots of Reddit refugees are migrating to HNews. Reddit has been overrun by teenagers
- Pigo 7y agoThey have been successful at culling most every subreddit that was interesting or fun, and most anything that deviates from the hive-mind.
- PaulHoule 7y agoIt's an interesting bit of science. Stars like that are really common and very long lasting so in the long view those might be the places most likely to harbor life.
- isoprophlex 7y agoAs a chemist, the tantalising idea of the thing having non trivial chemistry on its surface, in an environment full of hard radiation, magnetic fields and a hard vacuum above it.
- Amorymeltzer 7y agoAlluded to elsewhere, but it's very close. After Alpha Centauri and Barnard's Star — and a couple of brown dwarfs, if you want to count those — it's next at around eight light years away. It's ended up in a lot of fiction[1], in particular Star Trek, but also a number of novels and video games (I know it from Escape Velocity: Nova). 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars_and_planetary_systems_in_fiction#Wolf_359_(CN_Leonis) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars_and_planetary_systems_in...
- kleiba 7y agoWhy?
- beardedwizard 7y agoMajor Borg battle took place here. Have we forgotten already? ;)
- skunkworker 7y agoIs this in relation to the arXiv article "Frequency of planets orbiting M dwarfs in the Solar neighbourhood" published in June of 2019? The quote from wikipedia. "In June 2019 two candidate planets were reported in orbit around Wolf 359. They were detected using the radial velocity method from observations with HARPS in Chile and HIRES in Hawaii"
- jcims 7y ago“In combination with a lower rate of hydrogen consumption due to its low mass, the convection will allow Wolf 359 to remain a main-sequence star for about eight trillion years.”
- avmich 7y agoAwesome, and pretty competitive with white dwarfs :) .
- TomMarius 7y agoWow, I never realized the site of the Battle of Wolf 359 is a real place.
- lopis 7y agoSame for the site of the podcast series Wolf 359!
- mwexler 7y agohttps://www.wolf359.fm/ https://www.wolf359.fm/ for those who haven't yet heard this podcast audio drama. Tone changes a bit from early episodes 1-8 or so as the story picks up, but all of it is pretty impressive.
- misnome 7y agoThere is a certain subset of star systems that I will always associate with and have a fondness for because of Freespace 2. And the phrase “Capella jump node”.
- Sharlin 7y agoFor me it's the same, except for I-War (marketed as Independence War in the US). And the phrase in my case is "Toliman jump point"[1] =) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Centauri_B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Centauri_B
- ganzuul 7y agoMan the graphics of I-war was really something else. Our 75MHz pentium with S3 graphics could make it look nice. Always wondered how they did that.
- detaro 7y agoseems interesting, hadn't heard of I-War before: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-War_%281997_video_game%29 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-War_%281997_video_game%29
- fnord77 7y agoused as a setting in many sci stories, not just st
- FiatLuxDave 7y agoTo me, the most interesting fact about Wolf 359 is its low surface temperature. Wikipedia shows its surface temperature as 2800 Kelvin. Tungsten melts at 3700 K, and graphite sublimates above 4000 K. What this means is that you could make solid objects which could be in direct contact with the star and remain intact despite the temperature. Because Wolf 359 has a surface gravity of about 320 g's, if you made a buoyant object (like a balloon), it would have a very strong restoring force. The photosphere has a very low density, so this would be basically a vacuum balloon. A vacuum balloon is much easier to make in a near vacuum than in a thick atmosphere like Earth's. If it were large enough and floated high enough, you would have the heat of the star on one side and the cold of space on the other - a perfect location for a heat engine. I started writing a sci-fi novel a few years ago, where the conversion of Wolf 359 into an energy source powering a future human civilization was a major plot point. I chose Wolf 359 as the red dwarf because it is relatively close to Earth and has a relatively low temperature. Unfortunately, I got stuck on the dialogue for the love story plot, so I've never finished it.
- cobbzilla 7y agoLove the idea, but it’s a flare star, so make sure you plan for the occasional flare. Maybe that means a backup heat engine in standby mode. Or if you can predict the flare, temporarily migrate out to a further orbit. And I’d love to read your story, try to get unstuck :)
- goalieca 7y agoSome of my favourite sci-fi novels don’t have a love story at all. Who needs one?
- kalium_xyz 7y agoSounds awesome. If you need people to read for feedback, hit me up.
- cdelsolar 7y ago320 g's? Wikipedia says 5.5 cgs which is 0.055 m/s^2 - much lower than Earth's.. I think.
- thangalin 7y agoI rendered the relative size of Wolf 359 a long time ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Star-sizes.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Star-sizes.jpg It's not much larger than Jupiter (in comparison to other stars).
- ag8 7y agoFascinating! That's actually the image from which I first learned about this star.