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. :-)