Sean Williams

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.