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The Search For Starivores, Intelligent Life That Could Eat the Sun

sarahnaomi writes: There could be all manner of alien life forms in the universe, from witless bacteria to superintelligent robots. Still, the notion of a starivore — an organism that literally devours stars — may sound a bit crazy, even to a seasoned sci-fi fan. And yet, if such creatures do exist, they're probably lurking in our astronomical data right now.

That's why philosopher Dr. Clement Vidal, who's a researcher at the Free University of Brussels, along with Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology Stephen Dick, futurist John Smart, and nanotech entrepreneur Robert Freitas are soliciting scientific proposals to seek out star-eating life.

9 of 300 comments (clear)

  1. Do it in your free time by Karmashock · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Kindly do not suggest to the public that you're just screwing around on the public dime. What you do on your own time is your own business.

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  2. I think... by Guy+From+V · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Stellarvore" would be the correct Latinisation. N'est-ce pas?

  3. Even more useless than politicians by Nutria · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Philosopher, astrobiologist, futurist, nanotech entrepreneur.

    WTF do astrobiologists actually do besides suck at the government teat?

    And futurists... gah. Those idiots are Miss Cleo rejects.

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  4. BS by non-scientists by gweihir · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Really, does it get more stupid than this? Whenever somebody claims to be a "futurist", you already know they have no clue but a big ego. The others in this group are hardly better. Now the thing to do is to _not_ give these people any attention, because if they get any, they will come up with even more ludicrous claims.

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  5. Re:Starivore? by LQ · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Astrophage

    Or stellavore if you prefer Latin to Greek.. But "starivore" is an abomination. if you're going to make up new compound words, you should stick to the same language for each component. "Star-eater" would be ok.

  6. Re:Starivore? by Ihlosi · · Score: 4, Insightful
    But "starivore" is an abomination. if you're going to make up new compound words, you should stick to the same language for each component.

    Unless you're an engineer. Then words like 'automobile' and 'television' are perfectly fine.

  7. Too heavy by Zawash · · Score: 3, Insightful

    But then - wouldn't the organism necessarily be so large and massive that it would collapse under its own weight, and spontaneously self combust? Or "self fusion", as it were?

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  8. Re:Look for what you can see. by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    But if you saw one then would you recognise it? If they travel faster than light then you won't see them except when they're feeding. If they don't, then most of their life is likely to be in a dormant state as they spend a few thousand years between stars. Then there's the question of how they eat. If they eat the entire star at once, then you'll notice a star vanishing, but we don't have continuous observation on most stars, so there's a good chance that we'd see something odd in the data but not be able to tell what. If they eat in a more plausible way, then how would we tell it apart from, for example, a star near a superdense non-alive object that is drawing matter away from it?

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  9. Re:Look for what you can see. by rastos1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That is - you look not for things that are particularly likely to exist, but for things easy to detect.

    So for example rather then trying to find factorization of a 2048-bit RSA modulus (which exists but is hard to find), you try to find 2048-bit prime that is even and bigger than 2 (that does not exists but is ridiculously easy to detect). Totally makes sense. Huh.