our stellar cousins

[adelaidesean]

I started off the day reading this interesting article about the discovery of "carbon stars"--ancient white dwarfs with atmospheres almost entirely composed of carbon. They're rare, and they challenge our understanding of stellar evolution, and they're bound to end up in a space opera novel before long.

"The great mystery is why these carbon-atmosphere stars are found only between about 18,000 degrees and 23,000 degrees Kelvin. 'These stars are too hot to be explained by the standard convective dredge-up scenario, so there must be another explanation,' Dufour said."

The explanation, of course, is that they're alive.

Comments

[cheshirenoir.livejournal.com]

LOL.

Of course they are! Active "hot" carbon superstructures.

They're late model Matrioshka Brains (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrioshka_brain) running on hot cycle systems.

[ladnews.livejournal.com]

Yes! And they're laughing at us for not realising sooner. Making LOLhumans, perhaps. :-)

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Or they're built.

But why? What would need to operate at those temperatures? I guess it's time to start looking at what's orbiting them...

After all, they're too small and too hot to be Dyson spheres, even loose ones like Matrioshkas...

[ladnews.livejournal.com]

Alive, built...or dead and rotting? That's a deliciously gothic notion, now it occurs to me. Hmm.

Maybe the stars are stellar graveyards, where they've dumped all their organic crap.

What could a carbon star provide an advanced civilisation that an ordinary white dwarf couldn't?

Maybe they're furnaces for buckyballs and nanotubes by the gazillions.

[ericjamesstone.livejournal.com]

Obviously they're really just planets where carbon-dioxide-based global warming has really gotten out of control.

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

*Seriously* out of control, if it turns them into suns!

I love this idea. It almost makes global warming seem, well, cool.

[seanwilliams.livejournal.com]

PS. I love the way the eyes move on your icon, but never when I'm looking right at it. Spooky. :-)