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

[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.