What if all the stars except the sun died?

[teddytapley]

What if all the stars except the sun died?

Hi everybody,

This may seem like an odd, speculative request but I am a writer currently working on a story about all the stars dying.

The story won't be scientific or, pseudo-scientific I should say, but I wanted to at least have a few lines that would work not to explain exactly what happened to the stars but to kind of drop threads or ideas that would make it seem plausible.

Does that make sense?

For instance, I basically want people in the story to learn via an astronomer on the news that stars that we can't or barely can see are dying, or dead and gone. What would be the effects of that? Should the stars burn out mysteriously or blow up supernova-style? What would the sky look like at night in comparison? Would it affect anything else? Moon, tides?

Clearly, I am a no-nothing and I'm really not presenting these questions of my idea very well, am I?

I want to figure out at what rate they would go, how that would effect Hubble and mankind's other space equipment.

I think this would make a beautiful backdrop for a cool, funny, sweet, crazy little story.

If anyone can help me out I would return the favor somehow. And if you think this all sounds very stupid it may just be in this stage, and it may be in the end, but I'm going for it. Thanks a lot!

TT

puzzled.daily@gmail.com

 

[Christopher]

All stars are not created equal. They "die" in different ways depending on their mass.

Stars more than 9 times the mass of the Sun go supernova, with their remnant cores collapsing into neutron stars; stars more than about 30 times the mass of the Sun will have their cores collapse into black holes. These stars have life expectancies in the millions or tens of millions of years, or even hundreds of thousands for the very largest. Stars that large are very rare, but a supernova's radiation is powerful enough to jeopardize life on worlds for dozens, even hundreds of light-years around. The very largest stars, such as Eta Carinae, could cause devastation for thousands of light-years. If every massive star in the galaxy simultaneously went supernova, it would be devastating to life throughout the galaxy. However, it takes time for these stars to build up to that point, and there would be hundreds or thousands of years of warning as the stars' spectra reflected their changing internal conditions and as they sloughed off their outer atmospheres.

Stars from about 0.6 to 9 times the mass of the Sun die more gradually, swelling into red giants that gradually slough off their atmospheres into planetary nebulae, leaving white-dwarf cores behind. This process typically takes hundreds of millions of years, even a billion or more.

Stars below about 0.6 Solar masses, the red dwarfs, can live for tens or hundreds of billions of years, even trillions, since they burn their hydrogen so slowly. They might or might not have a red giant phase before contracting into white dwarfs.

The very smallest red dwarfs, below 0.1 Solar masses, can live for tens of trillions of years or more. They might as well be immortal.

Even if every star in the sky miraculously left the Main Sequence at once, it would take millions of years before they began to die off. Not to mention that they're at many different distances from us, so we wouldn't see the evidence arriving simultaneously; the more distant the star, the longer it would be before we found out. We'd see it happening to Alpha Centauri after 4.3 years, to Tau Ceti after 12 years, to Rigel after 800 years, to Deneb after 3000 or so years, to Eta Carinae after 7000 years, and so on.


Okay, I just reviewed your post and you specified "stars that we can't or barely can see." Up close, those would only be the very dimmest red dwarfs; we're still discovering a few of those within ten parsecs of Earth, so there are bound to be plenty more we don't know about yet. As stated, those stars have life expectancies far beyond the age of the universe so far, and would take a very, very long time to "die." Of course, the farther away you get, the brighter a star can be without us being able to see it; but we'd still be talking about main-sequence red and yellow dwarfs, stars with long life expectancies. We can see the really bright stars across vast distances, so long as interstellar dust and gas don't get in the way. That's how we can see the core of the galaxy and even see other galaxies like the Magellanic Clouds and Andromeda.


The death of distant stars would have no effect on satellites or other equipment in space, unless we're talking about a supernova close enough or intense enough for its radiation to be significant when it reaches the Sol System. That radiation could burn out electronics, but that would be the least of our concerns because if it were strong enough, it would convert much of the nitrogen and oxygen in our upper atmosphere into toxic smog that would destroy the ozone layer. Other than that, though, if the stars just plain stopped shining, there'd be no significant effect beyond the psychological.


Of course, you could always write this as a pure fantasy story, with the stars' extinction being an entirely supernatural phenomenon. But in that case, you'd be better off not trying to bring any science into it at all, since it would just call attention to the sheer impossibility of the premise.

 

[Michael_One]

A lot depends on what happens... let's suppose the stars just quit existing on January 1, 2010. The light from the stars is still in transit, it takes years for light to cross interstellar distances.

In this scenario, Proxima Centauri vanishes around March 2014. Hardly anyone notices since Proxima is a dim star you can't see without a telescope. Astronomers are no doubt puzzled, it is page ten news, the public thinks 'oh, it vanished, so what?'.

In mid May 2014 the two Alpha Centauri stars vanish a few hours apart. This will get more attention. Alpha Cent A is a G class star like the Sun so there will be concerns that what happened to it could happen to Sol as well. No doubt there will be a little commotion but likely no panic.

In late December, 2015, Barnard's Star vanishes. Astronomers have suspected the phenomenon is related to distance but up to now have probably thought whatever happened was limited to Alpha Centauri. They now understand the disappearance occurred Jan 1, 2010 and calculate the likely vanishing dates for other nearby stars.

Wolf 359 goes in mid October 2017. TrekBBS members post dozens of online memorials for the star and lament there is no longer a Wolf 359 to hold a big battle with the Borg at.

A couple more dim stars wink out, then Sirius vanishes in July 2018.

In the next fifty years, the night sky doesn't change all that much. Most of the bright stars in the sky are light- decades or farther away. Oh, we'd miss Altair and Vega and Procyon and Arcturus and a few others but most of the night sky will still be there.

I guess your story would span decades as the stars disappear one by one, or be set a couple hundred years after the Great Vanishing as the characters relate to what has happened.

The stars don't contribute much more than dim light and tidal effects are non existent. I suppose navigation gets a little harder when Polaris goes in the 2430's.

If you have every star in the galaxy besides Sol blow up, I suppose there would be a little more urgency in understanding what happened.

If you do it the other way around, where the stars dissapear in a contracting shell centered on Sol that starts thousands of light years away and moves in at lightspeed, then you would have all the stars vanishing at once. I can't imagine anyone other than God pulling off a stunt like that so a tale with that happening is going to have theological implications.

For more info on stellar distances, Google "nearest stars" and read away.

There is an SF novel, Quarantine by Greg Egan, that has unseen aliens putting an opaque shell around the Solar System, resulting in starless night skies. That's not quite your scenario but it's the closest I'm familiar with.

Hope that helps.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Sounds a bit like the ending of the "The Nine Billion Names of God" by Arthur C Clarke -- athough that was deliberately ambiguous.

 

[Ronald Held]

are you taking into account the light travel time? Is dying turning off of the Main sequence or quickly becoming a white dwarf, neutron star or black hole?

 

[bryce]

If ALL the stars (and their accompanying planets and stuff) simply vanished - *poof* - as opposed to die or collapse (where their mass would still be there...well, since Mach's Principle basically says that inertia is the result of the net gravitational pull of all the other bodies in the universe...

...would that - inertia - be effected somehow? (After the effects reached us in time.)

I mean, the Earth and the Sun and other planets would still be here...so how would inertia be altered, if at all...???

 

[skep155]

I think Stephen Baxter wrote a book that had a species called the Photino Birds in the story. They were dark matter beings that lived in the gravity wells of stars and artificially aged them.

 

[Crewman47]

Given that Stars are upto 1,000's of light years away and more and if they vanished right away we'd still see the farthest one for another thousand years or so. But what if some one or thing manufactured an event starting thousands of years ago that would cause all stars in the sky to suddenly blink out from our view at the same time?

I realise it would take a lot of planning but would that work?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

The problem is this: according to Special Relativity, events that appear simultaneous to one observer may not appear so to another observer. Al the stars in the Universe (including the Sun?) disappearing at exactly the same time would imply that the show has been specially laid on for us, and, for stars more than 4.5 billion light years away, before the Earth even existed.

 

[Mike Farley]

The problem is this: according to Special Relativity, events that appear simultaneous to one observer may not appear so to another observer. Al the stars in the Universe (including the Sun?) disappearing at exactly the same time would imply that the show has been specially laid on for us, and, for stars more than 4.5 billion light years away, before the Earth even existed.

Good point. To make all the stars simultaneously vanish from Earth's sky "They" would have had to start destroying stars billions of years before our sun even formed. Talk about long term planning. I don't even know what I'm having for lunch.

 

[Meredith]

Easier to move the whole solar system into a null or void space.....

 

[Christopher]

Easier still to surround the Solar System with a dust cloud that blocks starlight.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Easier still to surround the Solar System with a dust cloud that blocks starlight.

Or, to assume that the Earth or the Sol System has (always?) been surrounded by a massive holodeck-like construct. Maybe the stars wink out because the holodeck is running out of power and being forced to conserve energy. In one possible way of dealing with this scenario, you could even have the sun and moon wink out, since the effects they have on the Earth are really being provided by this holodeck-like equipment, anyway.

 

[Christopher]

^That story's been written before, more than once, probably.

 

[USS Triumphant]

^That story's been written before, more than once, probably.

What hasn't? It's always really about the characters and/or presentation.

 

[Gepard]

^That story's been written before, more than once, probably.

Is there a specific story you're thinking of?

 

[Mike Farley]

Isn't that basically The Truman Show on a grander scale?