Post ArNeBcAHWVw0af4EO8 by leon_p_smith@ioc.exchange
(DIR) More posts by leon_p_smith@ioc.exchange
(DIR) Post #ArNWH5R3KBTfBa0ge8 by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-02-22T13:44:04Z
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What would be some of the challenges for a civilization the developed on a planet orbiting a rouge star? A star that was moving very fast and generally orthogonally relative to nearby galaxies?
(DIR) Post #ArNWfS8sYJkYYm80bA by pikesley@mastodon.me.uk
2025-02-22T13:48:23Z
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@futurebird une géante rouge?
(DIR) Post #ArNWiyKnJqoTGrNbRA by sergiotarxz@social.owlcode.tech
2025-02-22T13:48:42Z
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@futurebird Meteors and space debris reaching very fast the atmosfere?
(DIR) Post #ArNWkH29HV1jYUHM7U by guitargabe@musicians.today
2025-02-22T13:49:18Z
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@futurebird technologically, I imagine you’d never get astral navigation, which would make exploration and especially sea travel *much* harder, and culturally you’d probably not develop a set of constellations that last for a meaningful amount of time.
(DIR) Post #ArNWmZVpY58xRfG46C by mattmcirvin@mathstodon.xyz
2025-02-22T13:49:42Z
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@futurebird I'm not sure that would really affect such a civilization very much. When they develop telescopic astronomy, it might lead them to deduce things about the stellar environment sooner or later, depending on specifics.
(DIR) Post #ArNXVQAj7fgTVXlynw by GregorDeBalzac@beige.party
2025-02-22T13:57:49Z
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@futurebird I don't necessarily think there would be many additional challenges, and there could even be benefits. If solar system were suddenly transported to an empty void in space, then the only real change would be the scenery. Large galaxy clusters are filled hot, x-ray emitted intracluster medium (ICM). But Sun-like stars have a strong enough magnetic field that it would provide a good shield. If the star was moving really fast, it could create a bow shock. I don't know how dangerous that would be though, and that assumes the star is in a cluster containing hot ICM.On the hand, being in a galaxy subjects us to supernovae, which produce jets. And a jet pointed towards us would fry the planet if it's close enough. Also, being in a galaxy, if another star comes close enough to the Sun, it could fling the planets out of the solar system and we'd freeze.Neither of those things are likely though, luckily...
(DIR) Post #ArNXXoaNKA8hnwuYKW by adef187@jorts.horse
2025-02-22T13:58:17Z
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@futurebird Most, if not all, of our initial forays into math and science were inspired by the stars. Without a repeating pattern to study early on, I wonder what would make a civilization take that leap. Probably be focused on agriculture and geology, perhaps
(DIR) Post #ArNa97NOcjB0hoku5Q by david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
2025-02-22T14:27:23Z
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@futurebird Unless the star moved really fast, probably not much. About the only thing in our development that comes to mind is that you may not have a stable equivalent of the North Star, so navigation would be harder (but you'd need a fairly large relative speed for that to really be the case). As long as you had an iron core, magnetic navigation would still work, you just might explore the world a bit more slowly (without an iron core, being cooked by radiation would be an issue).Newtonian mechanics came from things in the solar system, rather than beyond. Having a large gas giant that cleaned up the solar system (so there's just one other planet left) would be more of a problem than a rogue star.General relativity was first demonstrated with gravitational lensing during an eclipse, but that wouldn't be affected (though we are very lucky in our moon for this and various other reasons). But it was later demonstrated by GPS satellites, so even if you missed the eclipses then you'd get a later chance (fun fact: original GPS satellites had a backup mode in case Einstein was wrong). The question that bothers me is whether the opposite of this. In China, science effectively stalled for hundreds of years because they didn't invent glass, which was a prerequisite for most of chemistry. Perhaps there's something that's really obvious to people on a rogue star that's the equivalent of glass for us and is the thing that you need to unlock an entire field of science that we simply are not aware that we miss. For example, a simple way of synthesising bosons would enable trivial low-radiation nuclear power, but we have no idea how to do it. Maybe if you observe the galaxy from a different vantage point, it takes you down a path where you discover that it's easy.
(DIR) Post #ArNb1rpQ8GFUPZyCyO by WTL@mastodon.social
2025-02-22T14:37:17Z
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@futurebird Lots of interesting possibilities there; ejection from a galaxy seems to require close passage to super-massive black holes; not an ideal location for life, but if it happened early enough, life could (re)develop? Some of these rogue stars are moving at crazy speeds, hundreds of KMs/second, so time dilation effects would show. The civilization would be limited to their solar system too. 🤔
(DIR) Post #ArNbKnREg8TQIXgTGi by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-02-22T14:40:46Z
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@WTL They would be isolated from the rest of the universe in some ways, but they'd also be going on a kind of tour that is beyond anything we'd ever have access to...
(DIR) Post #ArNbgW0YAIUWbqYgBU by WTL@mastodon.social
2025-02-22T14:44:39Z
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@futurebird They’d have a great view of the galaxy their star had been ejected from.
(DIR) Post #ArNbrlO3KIR7UZun5M by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-02-22T14:46:44Z
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@WTL It could be a sign that some aliens with very advanced tech don't want you around anymore. Kind of shocking this hasn't happened to us. LOL.
(DIR) Post #ArNbyB1ouB8YksZegi by floatybirb@mastodon.social
2025-02-22T13:57:47Z
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@guitargabe @futurebird Would it be possible to get astral navigation, just using distant galaxies as the reference points instead of stars?Even if your star is moving relatively quickly in cosmic terms I would think changes would be seem pretty slow in human-like time frames. Unless its moving at relativistic speeds compared to those distant galaxies.
(DIR) Post #ArNbyC8amU9GCAkZsm by llewelly@sauropods.win
2025-02-22T14:47:25Z
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@floatybirb @guitargabe @futurebird on earth, vision evolved in the context of the starlight and moonlight available at night. If there were no nearby stars, there would still be many galaxies, and it's possible aliens evolving on such a world would have eyes adapted to see such galaxies as well as we see nearby stars. Alternatively, they might have evolved other senses for navigation; many migrating birds sense the earth's magnetic field for long distance navigation.
(DIR) Post #ArNc2dlQ0dbd2E1y52 by WTL@mastodon.social
2025-02-22T14:48:40Z
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@futurebird Also true. 🤣 I think we still fall into the “mostly harmless" category of interstellar threats.
(DIR) Post #ArNd51TiuTQb7MSCjA by llewelly@sauropods.win
2025-02-22T15:00:21Z
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@futurebird I'm looking at this table of how various elements formed, and wondering if said rogue star and its planets would have formed in a context similar to that of Earth, and presumably been ejected from their orgin galaxy later, or formed in some other context that might leave them with much lower abundances of some elements. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_nucleosynthesis#/media/File:Nucleosynthesis_periodic_table.svg
(DIR) Post #ArNd6V56KgOhDddq7c by kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com
2025-02-22T14:47:08Z
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@david_chisnall @futurebird You've read "The Road Not Taken", right?(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_(short_story) for anyone who hasn't.)
(DIR) Post #ArNd6WFlyUWmr1dsOW by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-02-22T15:00:23Z
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@kechpaja @david_chisnall I've never encountered this but may well check it out.
(DIR) Post #ArNdU92HwrDdnRbIGm by rlstone4dems@mastodon.social
2025-02-22T15:04:46Z
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@futurebird Lack of sustainable energy. Extreme temperatures. And of course, the risk of being completely isolated.
(DIR) Post #ArNeBcAHWVw0af4EO8 by leon_p_smith@ioc.exchange
2025-02-22T15:12:41Z
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@futurebird something I think about some is what challenges could a particular galaxy pose for life that the Milky Way does not?For example, if there's a tilted quasar blasting radiation directly into the galactic plane, that might have a very significant effect on the development of life (or not) in that galaxy. Also how does life and technology vary relative to the metallicity available?
(DIR) Post #ArNpTc4Bj6a4zg0BJw by MishaVanMollusq@sfba.social
2025-02-22T17:19:11Z
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@futurebird there’s an Ian M. Banks novel that kinda explores this, one of his few SF novelsNot set in or around The CULTURE.
(DIR) Post #ArNtjoQXwBAtmORKHg by catselbow@fosstodon.org
2025-02-22T18:06:55Z
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@futurebird Are you thinking of VERY fast, like relativistic speeds? As in "Why are all the stars in that direction blue and all the ones in that direction red?"
(DIR) Post #ArNu1OLxcPAK7og3Sy by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-02-22T18:10:10Z
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@catselbow How fast could a solar system be moving relative to large nearby galaxies? Are there upper limits in some way?
(DIR) Post #ArNvrALr1ORZiCsZdo by catselbow@fosstodon.org
2025-02-22T18:30:41Z
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@futurebird I guess it depends on how it gets accelerated. Can whatever process do it without ripping the solar system's planets out of their orbits? Could the system survive a gravity boost from a close SMBH flyby? Any life might be fried, but might re-establish itself after a few billion years of flight.Maybe a slow, steady intentional acceleration like the system in Benford & Niven's _Bowl of Heaven_.In any case, see Anderson's _Tau Zero_ for some of the hazards of relativistic flight.
(DIR) Post #ArNy5iOhR6kPGYH8fQ by JessTheUnstill@infosec.exchange
2025-02-22T18:55:43Z
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@futurebird TBH on anything near a human civilization lifetime before an extinction event happens, they wouldn't really notice anything. Even a very high speed rogue star would be unlikely to ever intersect another system for hundreds of millions of years. Space is BIG.About the only other difference is if they were the only planet that there wouldn't be anything else capturing the asteroids orbiting the star.
(DIR) Post #ArO21Rxb0ULwwfosUa by cstross@wandering.shop
2025-02-22T19:39:33Z
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@futurebird how fast is fast? At 3000km/s the interstellar medium is going to hit like alpha and beta radiation, never mind the neutral hydrogen. That's going to do a number on the planet's upper atmosphere ... At least, untill it hits intergalactic space and the density drops 2-3 orders of magnitude. After which astronomy is going to be stunted—maybe not happening at all until photography is invented. Only planets really visible, no stellar motion.
(DIR) Post #ArOAtpbU7IY9Xpv3cu by cptbutton@dice.camp
2025-02-22T21:19:11Z
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@futurebird @catselbow I think in "Ring" by Stephen Baxter there is a neutron star shot at relativistic velocity as a weapon against the Xeelee. Might be the one with degenerate matter life on the surface from another novel, not sure.
(DIR) Post #ArOL1YoxOhJbLuXrRA by cptbutton@dice.camp
2025-02-22T21:16:50Z
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@MishaVanMollusq @futurebird It is a good novel, but I don't buy the bit about how the system's societies became decadent and corrupt because they had no hope of interstellar travel.