Insight into the Universe?

[moore850]

When we view a nebula, or a Planatary nebula, we are usually viewing the remnants of a violent occurance that probably destroyed multiple stars, or at least a star and possibly it's planetary system. I am sure that not all nebulas are products of this type of occurance, but some are.

Are we viewing the destruction of a race or multiple races of beings as it took place historically thousands of years in the past I was out viewing tonight and was marveling at the indifference of nature, the same could happen to us and astronomers on some distant planet in the future could view the remnants of our sun's demise and think, "how beautiful" without wondering about the possible chaos that the event caused those that endured the final outcome of the event.

I think I have had too much coffee tonight!!

[admin]

Switch to decaf. It is possible that we are witnessing the remains of the destruction of some life forms, but the possibility that we are watching the grave of some self-aware life is diminishingly small.

There was a science-fiction story in the 50s that suggested the Star of Bethlehem was a nova (it wasn't) that destroyed a race of nice people.

[skywalker]

'Course the radiation emmissions from a healthy supernova (or even nova) burst might extend outwards for several systems.

A really violent hypernova burst may "sanitize" a large section of the galaxy.

One current popular hypothesis is that the only reason we are here is the that our solar system got really lucky for the last several million years and never had a "sanitizing" event during our development.

Once again, dumb luck triumphs over intelligence.

[admin]

They do say that if Betelgeuse went SN, our collective gooses would be cooked.

[the.chosen.one]

I had read the same about Betelguese. Apparently it is a massively huge star to begin with and would create a huge outburst. One wouldn't think that a star that distant would create a problem for us, but I guess in space, distance is not exactly relative.