i learned a while ago that the whole "most of the stars we see in the sky are actually already dead because they're so far away that we're seeing them as they were thousands of years ago" thing is a myth because stars live so long that it's unlikely many, if any, of them have burned out yet, but i'm still glad that myth exists because there's just something about the thought of the sky as a graveyard of stars that gets to me
Itâs interesting because one day that will be true for some people in some planet out there, but we are so young, the universe is so young, that we live in a time when we get to see more stars born than we ever will see die. Thereâs poetry in looking up and seeing a star graveyard, but I think thereâs also poetry in looking up and seeing a star nursery.
Like, momento mori but also momento vivere
The universe is likely 13 billion years old, with the Stelliferous Era starting about 100 million years after the Big Bang and expected to last a total of at least 140 trillion years post-Bang. Our solar system is a toddler.
If anything, I feel sorry for the hypothetical post-Stelliferians. Their night skies will only get darker and darker as more stars burn out and expansion takes more survivors out beyond the threshold of their observable universe.
I think there could be a hauntingly beautiful sci-fi story in that setting, inspired by this section from the Wikipedia article about âthe Future of an expanding universeâ; the universe will become extremely dark after the last stars burn out. Even so, there can still be occasional light in the universe. One of the ways the universe can be illuminated is if two carbonâoxygen white dwarfs with a combined mass of more than the Chandrasekhar limit of about 1.4 solar masses happen to merge. The resulting object will then undergo runaway thermonuclear fusion, producing a Type Ia supernova and dispelling the darkness of the Degenerate Era for a few weeks. Neutron stars could also collide, forming even brighter supernovae and dispelling up to 6 solar masses of degenerate gas into the interstellar medium. The resulting matter from these supernovae could potentially create new stars.
Imagine some advanced race out there at the edge of time, with powers that put the gods to shame, putting in a last ditch effort to locate and cluster together enough dying stars to restart a stellar nursery. Probably not even for themselves, as their own star would probably also need to be added to reach the threshold. Some of those stars would probably be burned up just to be able to fuel the technology that wrangles the stars and lost planets. How can they be sure their efforts will bear fruit? Why wouldnât they try if they know the alternative is certain absolute darkness? All so that some species at the 1 quadrillion year mark can look up and be greeted by a sight not seen since the infancy of the universe; a sky full of stars.
