5 ms·

In the scifi short story "a pail of air", the Earth is yanked away from the Sun by a dark star passing through the solar system. The Earth cools until all of th

In the scifi short story "a pail of air", the Earth is yanked away from the Sun by a dark star passing through the solar system. The Earth cools until all of the atmospheric gasses turn into solids and fall to the ground as layers of ultra-cold snow. It's one of the pieces of fiction that left a deep impression on me. Harsh winter days still remind me of it. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51461 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51461

garmaine 6y ago
I suggest basing your view of reality on facts, not fiction.
- Rebelgecko 6y ago
  The fact is that 250 light-years is not "near" the sun. Unless you're an astronomer, there's no practical difference between something that is 2 light years or 2,000,000 light years away. Both distances are equally unattainable. Saying that something is near "the sun" (as opposed to a more generic area like "the solar system") makes it sound like it's much closer than it actually is. Imagine if the article said that the stars were near "Dallas Texas". It would be equally true (±0.001%), but IMO the extra specificity is misleading
  - FalconSensei 6y ago
    Exactly. They are not specifically near 'our sun'. They are near our system. The title (because of the specificity), seems to say that they are in our solar system, or so close that you could consider it like that
    - waheoo 6y ago
      Yup, super weird sentence. It reads as if it is either between us and the sun, or close enough that you'd see it roughly up to the same distance we are from the sun.
- samatman 6y ago
  This is a recipe for missing out on a certain amount of anxiety at the expense of a great deal of joy.
  - garmaine 6y ago
    I read and enjoy science fiction. I don’t worry about the stuff in these stories unless I have independent reality-based evidence that I should.
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      Yesterdays science fiction more often than not is today's science. As long as you leave time travel, wormholes, fusion and aliens out of it has surprising applicability.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  If 2020 has shown us anything, it’s that some far fetched scenarios can actually happen.
  - lrem 6y ago
    What has happened in 2020 that was far fetched?
    - amanaplanacanal 6y ago
      That our collective response to the pandemic could be so terrible.
      - lrem 6y ago
        The response of various countries mostly follows pre-pandemic approach of the respective governments to science, public services and making hard decisions. Personally, the only major surprise here is the level of defending the stock market.
  - shadowprofile77 6y ago
    The other day I saw a CCTV video that had been turned into a bit of a social media sensation, in which an elderly fellow is walking his dog when out of nowhere, a random house cat falls from well above and lands on his head, knocking the man flat unconscious. The dog continues on about his exploring for a few seconds more before casually sniffing his owner to see what's up with the guy. It then just as casually moves its attention over to the cat, which is apparently totally fine despite its fall and rough landing (so typical of cats), and starts to play with it over in a corner of the video. The dog was wearing little red boots on its front paws by the way, just in case everything else about the video wasn't absurd enough already... My point? That even this was a much better candidate for a far-fetched event in 2020 than this pandemic ever could be. Scientists, academics, reporters, policy makers and even some more astute or honest politicians have been predicting it for literally years as something that was probably just around the corner.
- wcoenen 6y ago
  OK, I'll bite. What do the facts say would happen when a brown dwarf passes through the inner solar system? Is the ejection of planets implausible?
  - garmaine 6y ago
    The facts say that such an event has an extremely low probability of happening, as our solar system is still intact after 4.5 billion years and solar systems remain around nearly all stars we look at, so the probability of this happening is so low as to not worry about it.
    - wcoenen 6y ago
      I actually agree that the probability of such an event is very low on the scale of a human lifetime or even the lifetime of our species, and I'd never worry about it. I had interpreted your "why would it be scary" question as "what kind of bad things would happen if a brown dwarf did get close?", but I guess it was instead a rethorical question implying something about low probability. Hence the confusion. That said, there is a problematic selection bias in your statement about our solar system. Only stable systems can produce observers, so of course we find ourselves in a stable system. For now ;-)
      - garmaine 6y ago
        Yes, I meant "why are you scared?" It's a huge problem I've encountered where a very large percentage of the population get freaked out about things like black holes, rogue planets, gamma ray bursts, the sun eventually going nova, etc. As someone whose background is astrophysics and planetary science, I find it totally bizarre. Like, we just found out the universe is a way, way bigger place--full of planets between the stars. Maybe humans will visit these worlds someday as we planet-hop between the stars. What civilization could we make near these cold, but resource-rich worlds? What if they had tidally-heated moons with liquid oceans... what sort of life would evolve without the energy of a star? But no, people's first reaction is "OMG is this going to kill me?!" I've even had someone get angry at me for bringing up the topic (that the sun will go nova billions of years from now) and making them depressed. I just don't get it. > That said, there is a problematic selection bias in your statement about our solar system. Only stable systems can produce observers, so of course we find ourselves in a stable system. For now ;-) That's why I mentioned other exosolar systems. So far as we can see, basically every stellar object that we look at has stable planetary system. We mostly find planets by periodic transit events, which requires the plane of formation to be aligned with us. You can calculate the statistical chance that this is the case, and sure enough when we look we find roughly that percentage of stable planetary systems. If there were rogue planets or primordial black holes out there likely to encounter us, then those other systems would be just as vulnerable and we would expect to see fewer percentage of visible stable planetary systems than predicted. That is not the case. We would also expect consistent groups of long-period comets from the interactions of these passing objects with the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud, but there is no consistent grouping. We would expect a history of random heavy bombardment periods in the crater history of the moon, mars, mercury, and other datable planetary bodies in the solar system. Instead we see just one period, the late heavy bombardment which coincides with the synchronization of the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn in the late stages of solar system formation. Etc. etc. When I first saw the headline I thought "wait a minute, that cannot be right." And sure enough, it's not. There aren't 100's of rogue planets in our particular stellar neighborhood, but rather scattered around the nearby region.
- sbierwagen 6y ago
  A primordial black hole of 1000 Earth masses is only 17 meters wide. It's effectively impossible to see, with a event horizon temperature of 0.02 millikelvin. If it was extragalactic, it'd pass through our solar system at a pretty good clip. It could certainly do unfortunate things to Earth's orbit. A normal stellar mass black hole would be even worse. Very unlikely, of course. But not fictional.
WalterBright 6y ago
I remember that one, too. Frightening.
deodorel 6y ago
When I was little I read a Jules vernes story about a big asteroid touching briefly earth and yanking away some water and an island. Presumably this is only perceived by the islanders as a big earthquake and it takes some time for them to realise that they are not on the earth anymore. Next year three is a close pass near earth again and they manage to return to earth in a balloon :)

garmaine 6y ago

I suggest basing your view of reality on facts, not fiction.

Rebelgecko 6y ago
The fact is that 250 light-years is not "near" the sun. Unless you're an astronomer, there's no practical difference between something that is 2 light years or 2,000,000 light years away. Both distances are equally unattainable. Saying that something is near "the sun" (as opposed to a more generic area like "the solar system") makes it sound like it's much closer than it actually is. Imagine if the article said that the stars were near "Dallas Texas". It would be equally true (±0.001%), but IMO the extra specificity is misleading
- FalconSensei 6y ago
  Exactly. They are not specifically near 'our sun'. They are near our system. The title (because of the specificity), seems to say that they are in our solar system, or so close that you could consider it like that
  - waheoo 6y ago
    Yup, super weird sentence. It reads as if it is either between us and the sun, or close enough that you'd see it roughly up to the same distance we are from the sun.
samatman 6y ago
This is a recipe for missing out on a certain amount of anxiety at the expense of a great deal of joy.
- garmaine 6y ago
  I read and enjoy science fiction. I don’t worry about the stuff in these stories unless I have independent reality-based evidence that I should.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    Yesterdays science fiction more often than not is today's science. As long as you leave time travel, wormholes, fusion and aliens out of it has surprising applicability.
lostlogin 6y ago
If 2020 has shown us anything, it’s that some far fetched scenarios can actually happen.
- lrem 6y ago
  What has happened in 2020 that was far fetched?
  - amanaplanacanal 6y ago
    That our collective response to the pandemic could be so terrible.
    - lrem 6y ago
      The response of various countries mostly follows pre-pandemic approach of the respective governments to science, public services and making hard decisions. Personally, the only major surprise here is the level of defending the stock market.
- shadowprofile77 6y ago
  The other day I saw a CCTV video that had been turned into a bit of a social media sensation, in which an elderly fellow is walking his dog when out of nowhere, a random house cat falls from well above and lands on his head, knocking the man flat unconscious. The dog continues on about his exploring for a few seconds more before casually sniffing his owner to see what's up with the guy. It then just as casually moves its attention over to the cat, which is apparently totally fine despite its fall and rough landing (so typical of cats), and starts to play with it over in a corner of the video. The dog was wearing little red boots on its front paws by the way, just in case everything else about the video wasn't absurd enough already... My point? That even this was a much better candidate for a far-fetched event in 2020 than this pandemic ever could be. Scientists, academics, reporters, policy makers and even some more astute or honest politicians have been predicting it for literally years as something that was probably just around the corner.
wcoenen 6y ago
OK, I'll bite. What do the facts say would happen when a brown dwarf passes through the inner solar system? Is the ejection of planets implausible?
- garmaine 6y ago
  The facts say that such an event has an extremely low probability of happening, as our solar system is still intact after 4.5 billion years and solar systems remain around nearly all stars we look at, so the probability of this happening is so low as to not worry about it.
  - wcoenen 6y ago
    I actually agree that the probability of such an event is very low on the scale of a human lifetime or even the lifetime of our species, and I'd never worry about it. I had interpreted your "why would it be scary" question as "what kind of bad things would happen if a brown dwarf did get close?", but I guess it was instead a rethorical question implying something about low probability. Hence the confusion. That said, there is a problematic selection bias in your statement about our solar system. Only stable systems can produce observers, so of course we find ourselves in a stable system. For now ;-)
    - garmaine 6y ago
      Yes, I meant "why are you scared?" It's a huge problem I've encountered where a very large percentage of the population get freaked out about things like black holes, rogue planets, gamma ray bursts, the sun eventually going nova, etc. As someone whose background is astrophysics and planetary science, I find it totally bizarre. Like, we just found out the universe is a way, way bigger place--full of planets between the stars. Maybe humans will visit these worlds someday as we planet-hop between the stars. What civilization could we make near these cold, but resource-rich worlds? What if they had tidally-heated moons with liquid oceans... what sort of life would evolve without the energy of a star? But no, people's first reaction is "OMG is this going to kill me?!" I've even had someone get angry at me for bringing up the topic (that the sun will go nova billions of years from now) and making them depressed. I just don't get it. > That said, there is a problematic selection bias in your statement about our solar system. Only stable systems can produce observers, so of course we find ourselves in a stable system. For now ;-) That's why I mentioned other exosolar systems. So far as we can see, basically every stellar object that we look at has stable planetary system. We mostly find planets by periodic transit events, which requires the plane of formation to be aligned with us. You can calculate the statistical chance that this is the case, and sure enough when we look we find roughly that percentage of stable planetary systems. If there were rogue planets or primordial black holes out there likely to encounter us, then those other systems would be just as vulnerable and we would expect to see fewer percentage of visible stable planetary systems than predicted. That is not the case. We would also expect consistent groups of long-period comets from the interactions of these passing objects with the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud, but there is no consistent grouping. We would expect a history of random heavy bombardment periods in the crater history of the moon, mars, mercury, and other datable planetary bodies in the solar system. Instead we see just one period, the late heavy bombardment which coincides with the synchronization of the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn in the late stages of solar system formation. Etc. etc. When I first saw the headline I thought "wait a minute, that cannot be right." And sure enough, it's not. There aren't 100's of rogue planets in our particular stellar neighborhood, but rather scattered around the nearby region.
sbierwagen 6y ago
A primordial black hole of 1000 Earth masses is only 17 meters wide. It's effectively impossible to see, with a event horizon temperature of 0.02 millikelvin. If it was extragalactic, it'd pass through our solar system at a pretty good clip. It could certainly do unfortunate things to Earth's orbit. A normal stellar mass black hole would be even worse. Very unlikely, of course. But not fictional.

WalterBright 6y ago

I remember that one, too. Frightening.

deodorel 6y ago

When I was little I read a Jules vernes story about a big asteroid touching briefly earth and yanking away some water and an island. Presumably this is only perceived by the islanders as a big earthquake and it takes some time for them to realise that they are not on the earth anymore. Next year three is a close pass near earth again and they manage to return to earth in a balloon :)