• Re: Densely packed star systems in SF?

    From The Horny Goat@3:633/10 to All on Tue Apr 21 10:41:31 2026
    On Sat, 28 Mar 2026 02:00:16 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro
    <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

    If, back when our Solar System was young, there were other stars
    around much closer than that -- perhaps born out of the same gas/dust
    cloud; could their gravitation perturbations on the (at that time
    shared) Oort Cloud have been the cause of the Late Heavy Bombardment?
    So that eased off after the various littermate stars drifted apart.

    It has been postulated that the planet Jupiter started that way long
    before there was life on Earth.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Bobbie Sellers@3:633/10 to All on Tue Apr 21 15:55:29 2026


    On 4/21/26 10:41, The Horny Goat wrote:
    On Sat, 28 Mar 2026 02:00:16 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

    If, back when our Solar System was young, there were other stars
    around much closer than that -- perhaps born out of the same gas/dust
    cloud; could their gravitation perturbations on the (at that time
    shared) Oort Cloud have been the cause of the Late Heavy Bombardment?
    So that eased off after the various littermate stars drifted apart.

    It has been postulated that the planet Jupiter started that way long
    before there was life on Earth.

    Lately I have read headlines that assume that Sol had 6,000 equivalent stars
    in a nursery across the Galaxy and from which it was ejected to move to the peripheral arm of the Galaxy. But on Earth we had a terrific impact
    before complex
    life evolved that tore the Moon out of the crust of the Earth. Life may
    have
    already existed in the Universe even before the Earth was conglomerated.
    We know that the early Sol system was heated by an isotope of Aluminium which could have only come from an exploding previous star. The core of the Earth could have come from one or more supernova. The Iron of the Core is
    one of the reasons we have atmosphere and that live is not scoured from
    the surface of the Earth by solar radiation.

    bliss


    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From William Hyde@3:633/10 to All on Wed Apr 22 16:05:37 2026
    Bobbie Sellers wrote:


    On 4/21/26 10:41, The Horny Goat wrote:
    On Sat, 28 Mar 2026 02:00:16 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro
    <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

    If, back when our Solar System was young, there were other stars
    around much closer than that -- perhaps born out of the same gas/dust
    cloud; could their gravitation perturbations on the (at that time
    shared) Oort Cloud have been the cause of the Late Heavy Bombardment?
    So that eased off after the various littermate stars drifted apart.

    It has been postulated that the planet Jupiter started that way long
    before there was life on Earth.

    ˙˙˙˙Lately I have read headlines that assume that Sol had 6,000
    equivalent stars
    in a nursery across the Galaxy and from which it was ejected to move to the peripheral arm of the Galaxy.˙ But on Earth we had a terrific impact
    before complex
    life evolved that tore the Moon out of the crust of the Earth.˙ Life may have
    already existed in the Universe even before the Earth was conglomerated.

    I think this is certain to be the case.


    ˙˙˙˙We know that the early Sol system was heated by an isotope of
    Aluminium

    British spelling, I like it!

    which could have only come from an exploding previous star.

    That would be aluminum-26, which has a half life of about 700,000 years,
    so cannot be primordial but is produced in supernovae.

    The idea that Al-26 was necessary to heat objects in the early solar
    system was apparently first deduced by Harold Urey, Asimov's bete-noir
    at Columbia (Urey thought that Asimov was just biding time until he
    could get into med school).

    I was told long ago that the Al-26 evidence dated the first solid
    objects in the solar system to about 25 million years after the
    supernova. But now other isotopes, Iron-60 among them are used, and I
    can't see if these confirm the earlier result.


    The core of the
    Earth could have come from one or more supernova. The Iron of the Core is
    one of the reasons we have atmosphere and that live is not scoured from
    the surface of the Earth by solar radiation.

    The most astonishing thing I have learned about the deep earth in recent
    years is that much of the lower mantle is transparent. Propagation of
    energy by light is actually an important factor in it's thermal
    structure. Never in a million years would I have guessed that.

    William Hyde

    ˙˙˙˙bliss



    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Lynn McGuire@3:633/10 to All on Wed Apr 22 15:20:21 2026
    On 4/22/2026 3:05 PM, William Hyde wrote:
    Bobbie Sellers wrote:


    On 4/21/26 10:41, The Horny Goat wrote:
    On Sat, 28 Mar 2026 02:00:16 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro
    <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

    If, back when our Solar System was young, there were other stars
    around much closer than that -- perhaps born out of the same gas/dust
    cloud; could their gravitation perturbations on the (at that time
    shared) Oort Cloud have been the cause of the Late Heavy Bombardment?
    So that eased off after the various littermate stars drifted apart.

    It has been postulated that the planet Jupiter started that way long
    before there was life on Earth.

    ˙˙˙˙˙Lately I have read headlines that assume that Sol had 6,000
    equivalent stars
    in a nursery across the Galaxy and from which it was ejected to move
    to the
    peripheral arm of the Galaxy.˙ But on Earth we had a terrific impact
    before complex
    life evolved that tore the Moon out of the crust of the Earth.˙ Life
    may have
    already existed in the Universe even before the Earth was conglomerated.

    I think this is certain to be the case.


    ˙˙˙˙˙We know that the early Sol system was heated by an isotope of
    Aluminium

    British spelling, I like it!
    ...

    I have been sorely tempted to add the aluminium spelling to my software.

    The CAD front end for my software was written by a team of postdoc Brits
    at the University of Swansea in C back in the 1980s. All of the words
    in the source code are British such as colour and favourite.

    Lynn


    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Robert Woodward@3:633/10 to All on Wed Apr 22 21:46:47 2026
    In article <10sb9mi$2h6d7$1@dont-email.me>,
    William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:

    Bobbie Sellers wrote:


    (SNIP!)

    The core of the
    Earth could have come from one or more supernova. The Iron of the Core is one of the reasons we have atmosphere and that live is not scoured from
    the surface of the Earth by solar radiation.

    The most astonishing thing I have learned about the deep earth in recent years is that much of the lower mantle is transparent. Propagation of energy by light is actually an important factor in it's thermal
    structure. Never in a million years would I have guessed that.


    This surprised me so much that I did some checking. AFAICT, the belief
    is that much of the lower mantle is somewhat transparent to Infra-red.
    Not much of a difference I suspect.

    --
    "We have advanced to new and surprising levels of bafflement."
    Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan describes progress in _Komarr_. ?-----------------------------------------------------
    Robert Woodward robertaw@drizzle.com

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)