5 ms·

Nuclear blast sends star hurtling across galaxy

69 points by elorant 6y ago

Hongwei 6y ago
Imagine being on some planet far away, just living your life, and a literal star comes through and ends all life in the system.
- xwdv 6y ago
  If the star is a direct hit on your planet, it would look as if a second sun was getting brighter and larger, and the heat so unbearable you’ll be dead before there’s any impact.
  - bangonkeyboard 6y ago
    Finis, by Frank Pollack: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0605041.txt http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0605041.txt
    - tmoaad 6y ago
      What a fantastic short story. Thanks for sharing!
    - Koshkin 6y ago
      Books from fifty years ago are difficult to read now, mostly due to a blatant sexism. An example from the first page of this text: “Probably she had brains...” That’s right! Men are smart, women are beautiful and wear nice clothes.
      - cgriswald 6y ago
        Your post comes across as needlessly biased, pejoratively modernist, and ignorant. > Books from fifty years ago are difficult to read now, mostly due to a blatant sexism. Fifty years ago was 1970. I don't think anyone has a problem reading Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret, Johnathan Livingston Seagull, or Ringworld due to blatant sexism. "Finis" is a short story and was first published over 100 years ago. > An example from the first page of this text: “Probably she had brains...” "Probably she had brains..." is not evidence of sexism. It's not even evidence of a bias that people generally don't have brains, much less women. It's literally a character's (Eastwood's) conclusion based on observation of another character's (Mrs. Davis') behaviors and habits. Eastwood doesn't show surprise that a woman could be smart. He doesn't deny that she is smart in spite of the evidence. And even if he had done so, a character being sexist wouldn't ipso facto make the work as a whole sexist.
  - BurningFrog 6y ago
    It wouldn't just show up some day, ambush style. It would be slowly getting closer and closer over centuries. The warning doesn't really change how the story ends though...
    - foota 6y ago
      It could, if you're where we are now developmentally you could conceivably determine a safe place in the solar system to colonize in the thousands or more likely millions of years it would take to arrive, right? Or maybe more realistically leave or build large scale space habitats (since there might be no safe planet due to rotation of them).
      - saagarjha 6y ago
        Generally a star plowing through your solar system is going to throw most orbits into wack, so you may not want to be in the solar system at all.
        cgriswald 6y ago
        Assuming you lack the capacity to leave for good, you probably want to be in the system, but in a well-stocked tin can rather than a planet. You won’t be able to maneuver a planet but your tin can might be able to stick around. Afterwards you’ll need a star and whatever planets didn’t get eaten or flung out of the system. You definitely don’t want to be on a planet that gets flung out of both systems. Even if you somehow had millions of years of fuel, your civilization would probably never be close to any other body in space again.
        foota 6y ago
        Hah, amusingly I failed to consider that. I wonder how fast a sun would have to move through to have a negligible (or at least not catastrophic) effect on orbits?
        samus 6y ago
        The Oort cloud around the Solar system ranges halfway to the next star. That far out the Sun is probably not the only relevant influence anymore. Even though stars would have to get really close to be able to mess up orbits of the inner Solar system, a large comet can absolutely wreck the biosphere if it hits us.
  - menybuvico 6y ago
    Somewhat related, although it's not a central part of the plot: Polaris by Jack McDevitt.
Koshkin 6y ago
Question is, in what direction.
ivalm 6y ago
900000 km/h = 250 km/s. This is fast but comparable to 224 km/s that the sun moves. Our galaxy itself moves at ~600 km/s relative to local cluster center of mass.
- jojobas 6y ago
  The Sun is way slower in regards to neighboring stars. 250 km/s is an order of magnitude faster than Sun/Alpha Centauri relative speed.
  - Aperocky 6y ago
    Yep, there's no true reference frame in the universe - Einstein realized that more than 100 years ago and put it down as the theory of relativity.
    - ivalm 6y ago
      Microwave background provides a kind of reference frame for the universe. We are moving ~370km/s relative to it [0]. We are fairly certain CMB is homogenous so this reference frame is same everywhere. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background
  - ivalm 6y ago
    Edit: checked the actual paper, 250 is relative to galactic center, just like my sun number [0] [0] https://watermark.silverchair.com/staa1761.pdf?token=AQECAHi208BE49Ooan9kkhW_Ercy7Dm3ZL_9Cf3qfKAc485ysgAAApkwggKVBgkqhkiG9w0BBwagggKGMIICggIBADCCAnsGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAeBglghkgBZQMEAS4wEQQMQjn01zD6JL4iHVhBAgEQgIICTC5U1KkQ8V28pu0e5ywTUXk7yyPjV0xKga4ckJCYCESMESq4xQ2v4juLQfGL8U7pvZG9Qr8TTQh6lTLLYoW8hZeeG25CCDdedZq-ORuIjRmGY7OdjeVuTXcwYOE-BJt5adB9QRjLw9mOtzLB3hrQuqrqfQf_Ddi5w0YKboESJTM2q9z3K8Gws7vmov4La4FJ6pg8Y0qBMzG-khSXhyr1Qaili203WHJUZo1iaFa_LZqN0AqjMJAs6dPduY6CRAarUXrCvpVWIpPYecwOX_YkLXWXVPZ9htz7W_UBHhXtjIYduJ8svRn6YscdOZyKEQktZ7NG_ufbPTLtZY1T_wO5sQdSLPHIyJSlDZBCk_mhSlcuekAmKEViDrxzRxYb7oWuLy5JUVX7qiLZXWRovQB_MEusQc8uOjg-76-pkTM3ouibG2yzmic_HR4S9jQYpyLzMr5cy3VdE-ROdOOadS6z9wBHQ8ZK2phteGYEGVOgoJephcc5Zy-4jueg4TVXInenn74kySZJv1rwEY6bojhe3uqirPre6UwQhdm8yfSyU8-uk3HlZZkUOS439zZDZ-HhXS4CEwQKzHlT_6azPBBgGYF1-y0bax34nF5JbNT577DqFSGYAvlW21sX7ip8fSLHKGdhctBHfpvbllCf1-FGGeTQt9qSpZ1NeTq6naPGGFLv1D158MKTpkj0ZgrHcBC69hkhLP9GChdigiH5NUwnInQxM3ux4Z8t3ufaR9q2GqVttathEL13c40t0Ou_cu2Eg0SJgep6j5DYb8xdLQ https://watermark.silverchair.com/staa1761.pdf?token=AQECAHi... We are in a milky way, it is reasonable to look at the speed relative to the galactic nucleus, which is what I did. Kind of how we talk about speed of earth/comets/etc around the sun.
alexfromapex 6y ago
Is that picture real? Drives me crazy seeing articles with stock art that might as well be completely fabricated
- Tagbert 6y ago
  That looks like an illustration, not a photo
pupdogg 6y ago
Everyone’s views in this discussion are really enlightening for someone like myself who has been consumed with nothing but programming the last few months! Miss being a kid and dreaming about space travel.
steve76 6y ago
Something hot and bright far away emits photons. What are those? Heat transfer through the medium of time, right? A fast clock is bright and speeds up a slow clock that's dark. What's the difference between a tiny spot on the Hubble, or any material for that matter, turning colder and darker always when pointed into that direction? Voltage spikes up at that sensor and it sees a hot spot because it caves in on itself instead of being hit with a beam of energy in motion for billions of years. Weak force parity violation? Is that just some higher abstraction on top of pair production and spontaneous particle creation? Electromagnetism is the emission of photons and the absorption through the photovoltaic effect. Matter decay is mass decreasing and releasing energy without EM. Or EM plus negating the effect by messing with that EM counterbalance. Or gravity, the heat transfer through the medium of time, interaction so fine it looks like you are broadcasting to everything at once if something else tries to trace it. That's what I'm thinking. Eventually spontaneous particle creation is the basis of all interaction. Not EM or photons. I think humans get to it, that we do it already. Massive celestial objects pop into existence because highly accurate sensors here on Earth say they must. Particles here pop into existence and they give the data of everything out there for no other reason than they must. Instead of being loss in a vast sea of stuff, the universe is a very complex filter to a massive energy source. When they talk of causality violation, backwards time travel, I think of hitting the big bang itself, or original energy source. Throwing dynamite into the wave you're surfing on. Forget worrying about a star crashing through Earth. Earth is the source of all destructive acts in the universe for the most trivial of reasons, and we have soverign access to all that out there to make our lives the slightest bit better for any reason. Just some thoughts I get when I read these things. Thanks for that article.
henearkr 6y ago
Maybe an alien civilization just fired off this star for some gigantic war...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

69 points by elorant 6y ago

Imagine being on some planet far away, just living your life, and a literal star comes through and ends all life in the system.

xwdv 6y ago
If the star is a direct hit on your planet, it would look as if a second sun was getting brighter and larger, and the heat so unbearable you’ll be dead before there’s any impact.
- bangonkeyboard 6y ago
  Finis, by Frank Pollack: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0605041.txt http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0605041.txt
  - tmoaad 6y ago
    What a fantastic short story. Thanks for sharing!
  - Koshkin 6y ago
    Books from fifty years ago are difficult to read now, mostly due to a blatant sexism. An example from the first page of this text: “Probably she had brains...” That’s right! Men are smart, women are beautiful and wear nice clothes.
    - cgriswald 6y ago
      Your post comes across as needlessly biased, pejoratively modernist, and ignorant. > Books from fifty years ago are difficult to read now, mostly due to a blatant sexism. Fifty years ago was 1970. I don't think anyone has a problem reading Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret, Johnathan Livingston Seagull, or Ringworld due to blatant sexism. "Finis" is a short story and was first published over 100 years ago. > An example from the first page of this text: “Probably she had brains...” "Probably she had brains..." is not evidence of sexism. It's not even evidence of a bias that people generally don't have brains, much less women. It's literally a character's (Eastwood's) conclusion based on observation of another character's (Mrs. Davis') behaviors and habits. Eastwood doesn't show surprise that a woman could be smart. He doesn't deny that she is smart in spite of the evidence. And even if he had done so, a character being sexist wouldn't ipso facto make the work as a whole sexist.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  It wouldn't just show up some day, ambush style. It would be slowly getting closer and closer over centuries. The warning doesn't really change how the story ends though...
  - foota 6y ago
    It could, if you're where we are now developmentally you could conceivably determine a safe place in the solar system to colonize in the thousands or more likely millions of years it would take to arrive, right? Or maybe more realistically leave or build large scale space habitats (since there might be no safe planet due to rotation of them).
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      Generally a star plowing through your solar system is going to throw most orbits into wack, so you may not want to be in the solar system at all.
      - cgriswald 6y ago
        Assuming you lack the capacity to leave for good, you probably want to be in the system, but in a well-stocked tin can rather than a planet. You won’t be able to maneuver a planet but your tin can might be able to stick around. Afterwards you’ll need a star and whatever planets didn’t get eaten or flung out of the system. You definitely don’t want to be on a planet that gets flung out of both systems. Even if you somehow had millions of years of fuel, your civilization would probably never be close to any other body in space again.
      - foota 6y ago
        Hah, amusingly I failed to consider that. I wonder how fast a sun would have to move through to have a negligible (or at least not catastrophic) effect on orbits?
        samus 6y ago
        The Oort cloud around the Solar system ranges halfway to the next star. That far out the Sun is probably not the only relevant influence anymore. Even though stars would have to get really close to be able to mess up orbits of the inner Solar system, a large comet can absolutely wreck the biosphere if it hits us.
- menybuvico 6y ago
  Somewhat related, although it's not a central part of the plot: Polaris by Jack McDevitt.

Koshkin 6y ago

Question is, in what direction.

ivalm 6y ago

900000 km/h = 250 km/s. This is fast but comparable to 224 km/s that the sun moves. Our galaxy itself moves at ~600 km/s relative to local cluster center of mass.

jojobas 6y ago
The Sun is way slower in regards to neighboring stars. 250 km/s is an order of magnitude faster than Sun/Alpha Centauri relative speed.
- Aperocky 6y ago
  Yep, there's no true reference frame in the universe - Einstein realized that more than 100 years ago and put it down as the theory of relativity.
  - ivalm 6y ago
    Microwave background provides a kind of reference frame for the universe. We are moving ~370km/s relative to it [0]. We are fairly certain CMB is homogenous so this reference frame is same everywhere. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background
- ivalm 6y ago
  Edit: checked the actual paper, 250 is relative to galactic center, just like my sun number [0] [0] https://watermark.silverchair.com/staa1761.pdf?token=AQECAHi208BE49Ooan9kkhW_Ercy7Dm3ZL_9Cf3qfKAc485ysgAAApkwggKVBgkqhkiG9w0BBwagggKGMIICggIBADCCAnsGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAeBglghkgBZQMEAS4wEQQMQjn01zD6JL4iHVhBAgEQgIICTC5U1KkQ8V28pu0e5ywTUXk7yyPjV0xKga4ckJCYCESMESq4xQ2v4juLQfGL8U7pvZG9Qr8TTQh6lTLLYoW8hZeeG25CCDdedZq-ORuIjRmGY7OdjeVuTXcwYOE-BJt5adB9QRjLw9mOtzLB3hrQuqrqfQf_Ddi5w0YKboESJTM2q9z3K8Gws7vmov4La4FJ6pg8Y0qBMzG-khSXhyr1Qaili203WHJUZo1iaFa_LZqN0AqjMJAs6dPduY6CRAarUXrCvpVWIpPYecwOX_YkLXWXVPZ9htz7W_UBHhXtjIYduJ8svRn6YscdOZyKEQktZ7NG_ufbPTLtZY1T_wO5sQdSLPHIyJSlDZBCk_mhSlcuekAmKEViDrxzRxYb7oWuLy5JUVX7qiLZXWRovQB_MEusQc8uOjg-76-pkTM3ouibG2yzmic_HR4S9jQYpyLzMr5cy3VdE-ROdOOadS6z9wBHQ8ZK2phteGYEGVOgoJephcc5Zy-4jueg4TVXInenn74kySZJv1rwEY6bojhe3uqirPre6UwQhdm8yfSyU8-uk3HlZZkUOS439zZDZ-HhXS4CEwQKzHlT_6azPBBgGYF1-y0bax34nF5JbNT577DqFSGYAvlW21sX7ip8fSLHKGdhctBHfpvbllCf1-FGGeTQt9qSpZ1NeTq6naPGGFLv1D158MKTpkj0ZgrHcBC69hkhLP9GChdigiH5NUwnInQxM3ux4Z8t3ufaR9q2GqVttathEL13c40t0Ou_cu2Eg0SJgep6j5DYb8xdLQ https://watermark.silverchair.com/staa1761.pdf?token=AQECAHi... We are in a milky way, it is reasonable to look at the speed relative to the galactic nucleus, which is what I did. Kind of how we talk about speed of earth/comets/etc around the sun.

alexfromapex 6y ago

Is that picture real? Drives me crazy seeing articles with stock art that might as well be completely fabricated

Tagbert 6y ago
That looks like an illustration, not a photo

pupdogg 6y ago

Everyone’s views in this discussion are really enlightening for someone like myself who has been consumed with nothing but programming the last few months! Miss being a kid and dreaming about space travel.

steve76 6y ago

Something hot and bright far away emits photons. What are those? Heat transfer through the medium of time, right? A fast clock is bright and speeds up a slow clock that's dark. What's the difference between a tiny spot on the Hubble, or any material for that matter, turning colder and darker always when pointed into that direction? Voltage spikes up at that sensor and it sees a hot spot because it caves in on itself instead of being hit with a beam of energy in motion for billions of years. Weak force parity violation? Is that just some higher abstraction on top of pair production and spontaneous particle creation? Electromagnetism is the emission of photons and the absorption through the photovoltaic effect. Matter decay is mass decreasing and releasing energy without EM. Or EM plus negating the effect by messing with that EM counterbalance. Or gravity, the heat transfer through the medium of time, interaction so fine it looks like you are broadcasting to everything at once if something else tries to trace it. That's what I'm thinking. Eventually spontaneous particle creation is the basis of all interaction. Not EM or photons. I think humans get to it, that we do it already. Massive celestial objects pop into existence because highly accurate sensors here on Earth say they must. Particles here pop into existence and they give the data of everything out there for no other reason than they must. Instead of being loss in a vast sea of stuff, the universe is a very complex filter to a massive energy source. When they talk of causality violation, backwards time travel, I think of hitting the big bang itself, or original energy source. Throwing dynamite into the wave you're surfing on. Forget worrying about a star crashing through Earth. Earth is the source of all destructive acts in the universe for the most trivial of reasons, and we have soverign access to all that out there to make our lives the slightest bit better for any reason. Just some thoughts I get when I read these things. Thanks for that article.

henearkr 6y ago

Maybe an alien civilization just fired off this star for some gigantic war...

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]