4 ms·

Something Huge and Invisible Is Making Nearby Stars Vanish, Scientists Propose

22 points by curmudgeon22 6y ago

a3n 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Billion_Names_of_God https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Billion_Names_of_God > In a Tibetan lamasery, the monks seek to list all of the names of God. They believe the Universe was created for this purpose, and that once this naming is completed, God will bring the Universe to an end. ... > Under a clear night sky they estimate that it must be just about the time that the monks are pasting the final printed names into their holy books. Then they notice that "overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out."
- Something1234 6y ago
  That story is so good. I've seen this story referenced on hacker news a couple times lately. It's a very old story. I have it in an original vintage novel actually. It gives me the chills.
- a_e_k 6y ago
  I love that short story. But the story that this really made me think of was "A Wrinkle in Time": > The Darkness seemed to seethe and writhe. Was this meant to /comfort/ them? > Suddenly there was a great burst of light through the Darkness. The light spread out and where it touched the Darkness the Darkness disappeared. The light spread until the patch of Dark Thing had vanished, and there was only a gentle shining, and through the shining came the stars, clear and pure. Then, slowly, the shining dwindled until it, too, was gone, and there was nothing but stars and starlight. No shadows. No fear. Only the stars and the clear darkness of space, quite different from the fearful darkness of the Thing. ... > "It was a star," Mrs. Whatsit said sadly. "A star giving up its life in battle with the Thing. It won, oh, yes, my children, it won. But it lost its life in the winning."
klyrs 6y ago
> The missing stars aren’t being gobbled up, as they might be by a black hole, Jerabkova said. Rather "the orbits of the stars in the Galaxy are being affected/changed by the encounter" which may cause them to disappear from view because of the "disruption of the cluster and the tails," she added. Spooky. Kinda reminds me of the disaster scenarios entertained ahead of the LHC's completion -- namely false vacuum decay. Is the next LHC the Great Filter? Is this "dark matter monster" actually proof of intelligent life (or was it just two extremely energetic cosmic rays going bump in the night)? Well, I severely doubt it, but it's fun to ponder. If it's dark matter, as they propose, does dark matter convert normal matter as they seem to imply? Weird time to be born in this universe. It's expanding so fast that the skies that the skies will eventually go dark, but no worries, dark matter is only 90% done eating luminous matter and hasn't lost its appetite yet. I was taught that entropy guarantees heat death of the universe, but this is way more exciting than that.
- monkeydreams 6y ago
  > Spooky. Kinda reminds me of the disaster scenarios entertained ahead of the LHC's completion -- namely false vacuum decay. Is the next LHC the Great Filter? A vacuum decay will propagate at the speed of causality / light. We wouldn't see the stars going out before edge of the phase transition hit us.

22 points by curmudgeon22 6y ago

a3n 6y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Billion_Names_of_God https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Billion_Names_of_God > In a Tibetan lamasery, the monks seek to list all of the names of God. They believe the Universe was created for this purpose, and that once this naming is completed, God will bring the Universe to an end. ... > Under a clear night sky they estimate that it must be just about the time that the monks are pasting the final printed names into their holy books. Then they notice that "overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out."

Something1234 6y ago
That story is so good. I've seen this story referenced on hacker news a couple times lately. It's a very old story. I have it in an original vintage novel actually. It gives me the chills.
a_e_k 6y ago
I love that short story. But the story that this really made me think of was "A Wrinkle in Time": > The Darkness seemed to seethe and writhe. Was this meant to /comfort/ them? > Suddenly there was a great burst of light through the Darkness. The light spread out and where it touched the Darkness the Darkness disappeared. The light spread until the patch of Dark Thing had vanished, and there was only a gentle shining, and through the shining came the stars, clear and pure. Then, slowly, the shining dwindled until it, too, was gone, and there was nothing but stars and starlight. No shadows. No fear. Only the stars and the clear darkness of space, quite different from the fearful darkness of the Thing. ... > "It was a star," Mrs. Whatsit said sadly. "A star giving up its life in battle with the Thing. It won, oh, yes, my children, it won. But it lost its life in the winning."

klyrs 6y ago

> The missing stars aren’t being gobbled up, as they might be by a black hole, Jerabkova said. Rather "the orbits of the stars in the Galaxy are being affected/changed by the encounter" which may cause them to disappear from view because of the "disruption of the cluster and the tails," she added. Spooky. Kinda reminds me of the disaster scenarios entertained ahead of the LHC's completion -- namely false vacuum decay. Is the next LHC the Great Filter? Is this "dark matter monster" actually proof of intelligent life (or was it just two extremely energetic cosmic rays going bump in the night)? Well, I severely doubt it, but it's fun to ponder. If it's dark matter, as they propose, does dark matter convert normal matter as they seem to imply? Weird time to be born in this universe. It's expanding so fast that the skies that the skies will eventually go dark, but no worries, dark matter is only 90% done eating luminous matter and hasn't lost its appetite yet. I was taught that entropy guarantees heat death of the universe, but this is way more exciting than that.

monkeydreams 6y ago
> Spooky. Kinda reminds me of the disaster scenarios entertained ahead of the LHC's completion -- namely false vacuum decay. Is the next LHC the Great Filter? A vacuum decay will propagate at the speed of causality / light. We wouldn't see the stars going out before edge of the phase transition hit us.