Re: Headlights / Searchlights
Posted: Thu Dec 12, 2013 3:31 am
Why think so narrowly?
Why must every cluster of matter be a "system" as we know them?
There ARE binary stars. And TRI-nary stars. There are stars with black holes in close orbit, the black hole slowly devouring the upper layers of its host. There are stars that are NOT stars, but simply the dying husk of a star, such as a brown dwarf, a neutron star, or a black hole.
There are stars that are so massive and so bright that they outshine everything for thousands of light-years around, and are almost impossible to escape using conventional engines. So energetic and massive are these, that life is almost impossible in its orbit.
There are stars that haven't properly been born yet -- PROTO-stars, still congealing from a mass of gasses particulates, not yet old enough to have fully-formed planets or even a respectable belt of asteroids.
One little yellow star is BORING, there are loads of those. It's too simple! The Universe doesn't do simple. The Universe does chaos and endless variation and sometimes it's ugly and horrible and unusable and sometimes there's miraculous accidents like Earth.
Embrace the chaos! Give us a "system" that's nothing but the smoking ruins of blasted planets, strings of rock and dust spiraling 'round a pulsating neutron star. Or a system where the planets are scattered in erratic orbits between two binary partner stars -- one a blinding blue-white dwarf, the other a brooding red giant.
Give us a system where there IS no visible star -- just a black hole at the center of a system dominated by a massive, superjovian gas giant! The "system" being more a collection of moons orbiting the stoic superjovian, plus a healthy set of rings -- off in the distance, an invisible point-source of massive gravity marking the "real" center of the system.
You see the massive variation that can go into this?
Why must every cluster of matter be a "system" as we know them?
There ARE binary stars. And TRI-nary stars. There are stars with black holes in close orbit, the black hole slowly devouring the upper layers of its host. There are stars that are NOT stars, but simply the dying husk of a star, such as a brown dwarf, a neutron star, or a black hole.
There are stars that are so massive and so bright that they outshine everything for thousands of light-years around, and are almost impossible to escape using conventional engines. So energetic and massive are these, that life is almost impossible in its orbit.
There are stars that haven't properly been born yet -- PROTO-stars, still congealing from a mass of gasses particulates, not yet old enough to have fully-formed planets or even a respectable belt of asteroids.
One little yellow star is BORING, there are loads of those. It's too simple! The Universe doesn't do simple. The Universe does chaos and endless variation and sometimes it's ugly and horrible and unusable and sometimes there's miraculous accidents like Earth.
Embrace the chaos! Give us a "system" that's nothing but the smoking ruins of blasted planets, strings of rock and dust spiraling 'round a pulsating neutron star. Or a system where the planets are scattered in erratic orbits between two binary partner stars -- one a blinding blue-white dwarf, the other a brooding red giant.
Give us a system where there IS no visible star -- just a black hole at the center of a system dominated by a massive, superjovian gas giant! The "system" being more a collection of moons orbiting the stoic superjovian, plus a healthy set of rings -- off in the distance, an invisible point-source of massive gravity marking the "real" center of the system.
You see the massive variation that can go into this?