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Dark_Believer t1_itpp3wc wrote

Issac Asimov wrote a short story about this very idea called Nightfall. It deals with a planet that has several suns due to stars being so clumped together near a galactic core. Once every long time period ( like 1000 years or so) the suns have a conjunction and allow nighttime to occur. The story deals mostly with how people on this planet deal psychologically with seeing stars only once an epoch. I strongly recommend reading this short story as it is quite thought provoking.

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seanbrockest t1_itq3lh9 wrote

Conversely there was a short story included as part of "Fallen Dragon" by Peter F. Hamilton that described a civilization whose solar system was inside a thick nebula of dust. Not being able to see anything but their own star, they never bothered to develop astronomy or space exploration, their civilization rising and falling all without ever having stepped off their home planet.

Silver lining, they never had to deal with astrologers.

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FDUK1 t1_itqf6co wrote

Or Kricet (?) In Douglas Adams Hitch Hikers Guide to the galaxy. Where the inhabitants don't know the universe exists until a space ship crashes on the planet. They then vow to destroy the universe as an abomination

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Alfred_The_Sartan t1_itqmlpx wrote

I was trying to think of who wrote that one. Tip of my tongue moment. Thank you.

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RandomStuffGenerator t1_itq0wkz wrote

I read that story as a teenager and has sticked with me for over two decades... I periodically remember it and it gets me theorizing about stuff (but I will not spoil it for those who didn't read it). That one really hit a nerve, and the one about a guy changing a letter in his name to improve his life.

However, it was probably Ray Bradbury who turned me into the nerd I am today.

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EmotionalHemophilia t1_itq36rx wrote

> it was probably Ray Bradbury who turned me into the nerd I am today

Something Wicked This Way Comes is the most beautifully written book I've ever read.

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red75prime t1_itu1mgw wrote

Smile on a bullet... Ugh. There's something revolting in this notion to me. Maybe the antagonists were too life-like to take them only as an allegory.

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Krail t1_ity4swy wrote

Is that how the planet was set up? It took it more to mean that the planet was in a four or five star solar system, rather than just that there were enough neighboring star systems to illuminate everything.

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Repulsive-Toe-8826 t1_itqmzt9 wrote

Would it be really that different from us experiencing a noon full solar eclipse once in a lifetime? It doesn't seem a oh-so-enticing concept for a story, nowadays.

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Krail t1_ity5a0r wrote

It's not like the story was written in the ancient past. The authors were well aware of solar eclipses.

The main idea was that it never gets dark on this planet. The darkest it ever gets is still significantly brighter than a full moon. Enough that before the eclipse event no one on this world had ever seen "the stars". Darkness is so alien to the people of the story that things like mining in dark caves are highly specialized and require a ton of psychological training.

Personally, I think the resulting madness when people see darkness and the stars is a little played up for drama, but I think it's not hard to imagine how terrifying darkness could be if you've never actually experienced it.

(The people in the story were also completely unaware that there was a universe beyond their solar system, and had no idea what to make of the stars)

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nasa t1_itr4hzv wrote

FYI, we checked with our exoplanet science team, and here’s what they had to say:

>Yes! It would be so bright, you’d be able to see your shadow on such a planet at night. There would be a lot of old, red dwarfs that are dim, but there would be bright K type stars, too! Your nighttime sky would be packed with stars.

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PlaidBastard t1_itpz0pq wrote

So, a little googling got me this: https://astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2006/01/how-close-can-stars-get-to-each-other-in-galaxy-cores

TLDR; stars only 860 AU (Earth-Sun distances) apart instead of 5 lightyears (360 times further) means probably no planets in the first place, but pretending there were, the night sky would ABSOLUTELY be brighter! The daytime sky would be bright! Unless someone can show the math otherwise, I think you can bluntly estimate 360^2 = ~130k times brighter, all other things being equal.

That's fun to think about. I don't think I've seen a good visualization of what that visual environment would look like in the visible spectrum in human dynamic range. Could be more watts per square exposed meter than anything organic can exist at...

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glurth t1_itqjd1c wrote

Lemme riff some math off this data:

Luminosity Of Star / distance from star squared = apparent brightness of star

Let's pick a star with Luminosity: L

apparent brightness at avg EARTH star distance = Eb = L / (30k AU^2)

apparent brightness at avg galactic center star distance = GCb = L / (850 AU^2)

solve both for L

L= Eb/(30k AU^2)

L=GCb / (850 AU^2)

two terms for L: set expressions to equal each other

Eb/(30k AU^2) = GCb / (850 AU^2)

Gcb/Eb = Ratio of apparent brightness between star seen from earth and from the galactic center

Gcb/Eb = 30k^2/850^2 = 722.5K

So that one star will be 722k brighter at avg galactic center star distances, than at earth avg star distance.

(For comparison- our sun is 1AU from earth, using the same formula, it is 900 million times brighter than an avg earth distance star (of the same luminosity), and .... 722.5K times brighter than an avg galactic center distance star (of the same luminosity): the same number we computed earlier - what an odd coincidence- somebody better check my math!)

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incarnuim t1_its895u wrote

I'm imagining aliens with very small eyes telling ghost stories:

"Don't mess with humans. They're invisible ninjas that evolved in total blackness. They move through the night killing and pillaging at will. If you don't eat your vegetables, we will send you to the land of Living Nightmares, Earth....

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incarnuim t1_itqkxt6 wrote

Why would stars 860 AU away preclude planets? For comparison, Jupiter is 4-6 AU from Earth and 1e-3M(•). Jupiter gives Earth a little bit of a wiggle, but obviously doesn't preclude stable orbits. A body with M=1 M(•) only needs to be ~32 times further out to have the same gravitational effect, so 130 AU or so. Red Dwarf stars with M=0.1 or even 0.05 M(•) could be closer, roughly at the orbit of Neptune, and have little gravitational effect on a planet 1 AU from a parent star (this would technically be a binary star system, but a Far Binary, as opposed to a Close Binary system which would be more like Tatooine....)

A star 860AU away would produce practically no wiggle on a planet 1 AU from a parent star.

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cbusalex t1_itr53i5 wrote

> Why would stars 860 AU away preclude planets?

If 860 AU is the average distance between stars, and the stars are moving relative to each other, then over a long enough timeline most stars will have much closer encounters than that.

Gliese 710 is projected to pass within 0.1663 light-years of the sun within the next couple million years, 30 times closer than the 5 light-year average distance between stars in this neighborhood. If that sort of thing is typical, then you'd expect stars with an average distance of 860 AU to have occasional passes at only a few dozen AU.

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incarnuim t1_itrh0jj wrote

Possibly, but I personally don't know enough to posit the effects of that on planetary systems. Have any other stars passed that close to us over the past several million years? If not, then Gliese 710 may be an atypical event...

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Allarius1 t1_itqmko1 wrote

Isn’t that just considering the impact after planets have formed and stable orbits have already occurred?

How would the presence of the extra stars affect the formation to begin with?

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incarnuim t1_itrhaxo wrote

That's a good question, to which I have no idea.

For that matter, we could talk about capture of rogue planets too. A dense network of stars might act like something of a net for rogue planets...

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[deleted] t1_itpmqtr wrote

[deleted]

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Live-Goose7887 t1_itpoim3 wrote

I'm pretty sure OP meant near the center, not directly at the center, in which case yes the night sky would be much brighter than on earth.

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