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Table of Contents

• ↓ Imagining and Planning Interstellar Exploration
• ↓ Thoughts on Brown Dwarfs, Science Fiction and New Telescopes
• ↓ Musings on White Dwarfs and Planetary Survival
• ↓ Photosynthesis: A New Angle into Fermi’s Paradox?
• ↓ Sakurai’s Object: A Stellar Rebirth
• ↓ Disrupted Systems: Implications for Life
• ↓ Top Alternatives to centauri-dreams.org

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"Here’s an interesting notion, courtesy of science fiction writer Jack McDevitt. Jack’s story “Lighthouse” (available in Cryptic: The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt (Subterranean Press, 2009) posits an apparently normal brown dwarf that, upon closer study, turns out to be deeply anomalous, in ways that seem designed to call attention to it. There appears to be no intent to establish contact but rather to warn anyone traveling near the object that there is a solitary black hole, all but undetectable, in its immediate vicinity."

"And there is not just one brown dwarf, but several thousand that display similar anomalies in their spectra, as determined by a survey of these stars throughout the galaxy. Could these markers be a warning system for interstellar travelers? Written with Michael Shara, the story is a nice, compact bit of hard science fiction, working with realistic spectroscopic analysis and ingenious speculation. It’s also realistic about the kind of non-scientific pressures astronomers can face. Here the characters are wrangling over the unusual role deuterium plays in the spectra as they try to make sense of what they are seeing:"

"“I don’t buy it, Kristi,” Greg said. She had him on the vid relay, from his office. “There’s got to be a natural mechanism at work. Maybe high pressure chemistry. Maybe magnetic fields. Maybe radiative levitation. Geochemical processes can concentrate minerals by orders of magnitude on Earth, so why not deuterium on the surfaces of brown dwarfs under far more exotic conditions?”"

"He sounded really concerned. It was why she liked him so much. He was worried about what would happen to her career if she tried to go public with her notion. She imagined it was hard for him not to say, You’re skating at the edge of academic disaster. Blow your reputation now and you’ll always be at the fringe."

Key Topics & Focus Areas for centauri-dreams.org:

Imagining and Planning Interstellar Exploration

Thoughts on Brown Dwarfs, Science Fiction and New Telescopes

Musings on White Dwarfs and Planetary Survival

Photosynthesis: A New Angle into Fermi’s Paradox?

Sakurai’s Object: A Stellar Rebirth

Disrupted Systems: Implications for Life