james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2015-10-14 03:13 pm

the milky way probably has weirder stuff in it

As pointed out on FB:

This star is pretty weird. I am going to suggest 'look at enough stars and you will see unlikely, short lived events.' Not aliens.

[identity profile] nelc.livejournal.com 2015-10-14 07:19 pm (UTC)(link)
Although aliens could be an unlikely, short-lived event.

hrmph.

[identity profile] anzhalyumitethe.livejournal.com 2015-10-14 08:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Already covered on The Dragon's Gaze on October 7th.

Possibly comets. Might be a disintegrating exoplanet. After all, K2-22b just showed up today and that IS a disintegrating rocky exoplanet with a comet like head and tail.

(might be Krypton!)

Sky father has a frack load of fingers to be pulled as yet.

[identity profile] roseembolism.livejournal.com 2015-10-14 10:20 pm (UTC)(link)
My immediate question was, "What's the spectral class of the star?"

Looking at the Dragon's Gaze article, it seems to be an F3 star. Since F stars have a lifespan of at most 7 billion years, I think that's lowering the odds of it being astroengineering quite a bit. From "almost certainly not" to "Really almost completely certainly not."

[identity profile] ffutures.livejournal.com 2015-10-14 10:49 pm (UTC)(link)
I think I'm going with freak event too. That or someone's building a Dyson sphere and is having trouble assembling it...

[identity profile] austin-dern.livejournal.com 2015-10-15 11:53 pm (UTC)(link)
Say, wasn't there a sector of the sky that had an improbably large number of novas and supernovas in it? I remember Arthur C Clarke observing it and tossing out the idea that, what the heck, maybe we're seeing the result of a Doc Smithian interstellar war, or could at least use that for a story premise?