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I think I commented this the last time it was posted, but I'm vain enough to post it again: > Rather than answering this question, the JWST observation adds to
by pavel_lishin 3y ago
I think I commented this the last time it was posted, but I'm vain enough to post it again:
> Rather than answering this question, the JWST observation adds to the mystery: The telescope’s infrared eye found that dozens of the worlds appear to be in pairs orbiting each other — a puzzling arrangement that, if confirmed, would defy expectations.
> “We’re missing something,” said Nienke van der Marel, a researcher who studies planet formation at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, “and we don’t know what it is.”
> These improbable duos cannot be easily explained by any known formation theories of either stars or free-floating planets. But within a week of the JWST announcement, researchers published a daring new idea describing how giant planets might be ejected from their home system in pairs — an event most researchers had thought all but impossible. Whether or not the proposal can fully account for the entire zoo of dim, starless worlds remains to be seen.
Here's my scifi take on things: these pairworlds are engineered.
The whole "the galaxy should be settled by now" question has an answer: the galaxy is settled, but the people living there don't care to live close to suns - they prefer to live in planetary binaries sailing through the interstellar void, using the gravitational energy of the orbit to keep the cores of the planets in flux, generating internal heat for energy.
My understanding from the article is that these are mostly gas-giant, Jupiter-like pairs - so maybe these creatures live in those types of planets' atmospheres, and have developed the technology to pair up gas giant worlds and go traveling.
Maybe that's how most sentient life does it! Maybe we're half a million years away from our local Gas Giant Natives packing up their shit (Jupiter & Saturn, Neptune & Uranus) and fucking off to join the greater galactic community, leaving us in the dust to be clobbered by asteroids and other orbital disasters.
- AtlasBarfed 3y agoOccams razor: the simpler explanation. A majority of star systems (iirc) are binary star systems. Why wouldn't failed stars / rogue planets similarly follow that pattern?
- ithkuil 3y agoBecause Occam's razor works but has to work with the actual mechanics of how stuff is formed and processes evolve and not necessarily just by observing the end result
- thegrim33 3y agoBut why? It's much easier and cheaper to just leech off a star for energy. Your theory also doesn't explain why "most intelligent life" would choose that approach rather than only a subset, with the rest staying around stars like normal.
- pavel_lishin 3y agoMy original comment was just off the top of my head, so I don't hvae any particularly good reasons, but I do have some hypothetical ones - again, off the top of my head: - Because they're aliens, with different modes of thought! (But that's not very satisfying.) - Maybe they're long-lived enough and live slowly enough to consider stars more of a hazard than a useful resource to live next to - those things go nova, put out lots of dangerous radiation and flares, many of them turn into gas giants and incinerate any nearby planets, and they attract others to the neighborhood. Maybe it's better to live a quiet, hard-to-detect life, slowly cruising through galactic space. - Maybe that's the environment they originally evolved in, and living near a star would be as alien and uncomfortable for them as living on a gas giant slowly floating through space would be for us.
- yetihehe 3y agoThose who got their gas giants on a ride are maybe escaping their sun exploding?
- m4rtink 3y agoSingle gas giant & moons would easier - see how it keeps Io and possibly other moons warm. :)
- WJW 3y agoI personally don't think this is very likely (main question: how do they actually manage to get those planets paired and ejected in the first place??? The energy requirements are quite literally astronomical) but it is a very cool idea. Would make a great novel.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]