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The star in the image below is in the process of dying, casting off its outer layers to create this dramatic nebulosity (NGC 2440). The burned-out star has dropped out of the Main Sequence of star types and is now a white dwarf, the white dot in the center. This is the same fate that awaits the Sun in about five billion years.
Click the image to see the story.
Best,
Chris
Click the image to see the story.
Best,
Chris
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Once this all settles down and nearby stars add their own materials, perhaps this cast-off matter will feed future planet formation. I wonder what it would be like to grow up on a planet that never had a star, or which formed around a dying star?
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Okay, so this comment makes me wonder. Do you think intelligent life (meaning at least as intelligent as say my cat, who I really think is far more intelligent than me, or life at least able to cognitively comprehend and wonder at the world around it) can develop on such planets? I have don't any problem with differences, but it seems to me that having a star is such a critical factor for energy and other good stuff that supports life.
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However, there's no reason that a newly formed planet around a white dwarf couldn't develop life. It's just pretty darned unlikely that such a planet could form unless another nearby star provided more mass and, even more important, energy waves to encourage planet-formation. But then, heck! Dwarf stars live a long time, and if the planet formed close enough to the little star, viola! Life!
That is, if you believe life can form elsewhere in the universe. Some fundamentalist types believe life requires God's hand and all that.
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That is, if you believe life can form elsewhere in the universe. Some fundamentalist types believe life requires God's hand and all that.
You know, I'd like to believe that I'm special, but I recognize that in the greater scheme of things I'm not. I often think that much of religion is about keeping that feeling of being significant. As for fundementalist types, lordy, I just won't go there (my poor sister keeps praying for my soul and for me to find an Ephesians man). :-)
I find it inconceivable that there isn't life elsewhere in the universe. Just because we don't know about it doesn't mean it isn't there. There isn't anything out of the ordinary about our star or our planet (other than it's a pretty swell place to live). I don't think I'll live to see the day when we find out there's a lot more to our universe than we originally thought (i.e. that we're not alone), but then again, I'm not sure I'd want to! Sure it would be pretty cool, but talk about an identity crisis.
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Yeah, I understand the desire to be special, but I don't think it makes us any less special to discover that other life has evolved out there: It won't be us, after all, so we'd still be special. And I'm sure life is rare enough to be more special than, say, precies gems on Earth.
I agree that it's inconceivable to think no other life exists Out There. But where are they? Occum's Razor and all that. Perhaps sentience emerged relatively simultaneously, so we're all pre-interstellar right now.
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Oh, uh, sorry, that's from watching too much Star Trek.
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