We Lost 100 Stars

It’s probably not aliens, but – aliens? A typical astronomical news item announces the discovery of a new star, galaxy, or oddity. A team of researchers had the ingenuity to research the opposite: have any objects disappeared? We treated the stars are eternal; then we learned they are born, live, and die. We know some will vanish, but usually in great flashes or slow collapses that leave evidence of the change. Now, they’ve shown that over a hundred stars vanished without evidence. Currently, there are no known natural phenomena that could explain an evidence-less disappearance. One of the more popular artificial phenomena is the creation of a Dyson Sphere by a civilization that decides to harvest all of a star’s energy by wrapping it inside a structure. Even less likely are – well – read a bookshelf of sci-fi novels to learn about star-eaters, Death Stars, and advanced weaponry that robs a solar system of its energy source. Conventional wisdom will remain that it isn’t aliens – until it is. In the meantime, while this is a blog about optimism and pessimism, sometimes it is good to add magnificent mysteries to put perspective on how little we know about what can happen to things that seem almost eternal.

“A Hundred Stars Have Disappeared – And Researchers Aren’t Ruling Out Aliens” – Popular Science