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

Posted by Soulskill on from the it's-life-jim-but-not-as-oh-god-it's-eating-the-sun dept.

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.

11 of 300 comments (clear)

  1. Starivore? by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Funny

    Is "Black Hole" not fancy enough anymore?

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    1. Re:Starivore? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Astrophage

    2. 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.

    3. Re:Starivore? by Hognoxious · · Score: 5, Funny

      if you're going to make up new compound words, you should stick to the same language for each component.

      I agree, a man on the television said so.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    4. 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.

    5. Re:Starivore? by JWSmythe · · Score: 4, Funny

      So I'm not the only one who read that as the basis for a bad made-for-SyFy movie.

      Plucky protagonist: Oh no, the Starivore is coming to eat our sun!

      Glasses wearing scientist: Yes Plucky, and there's nothing we can do about it!

      Ribbon laden general: We'll nuke it!

      Plucky protagonist: But the nuclear detonation would only make it stronger.

      Glasses wearing scientist: You have a point there Plucky, I'm glad you figured that out before we made a terrible mistake.

      Ribbon laden general: Too late, the missiles have already launched, there's nothing we can do.

      Glasses wearing scientist: There's only one thing we can do, stop it with a black hole!

      [all somewhat technical people viewing it]: shit, I should have known better than to watch more SyFy channel crap.

      Shit, I really shouldn't have said anything. Now they'll really make that movie. Right after Sharkgle.

      --
      Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
  2. Calling Star Trek by Black+Parrot · · Score: 4, Funny

    We found your stoned script writers.

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    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
  3. I think... by Guy+From+V · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

  4. Re:Do it in your free time by gl4ss · · Score: 4, Interesting

    yeah.. maybe, somehow, it happened in 1 galaxy out of billions.

    but really, such a creature would more likely be what's commonly called a "civilization".

    there's quite a few hurdles between starting as a single cell life and evolving into something that eats stars. - big, BIG jumps necessary - more likely such that they're much more likely to be done by groups of intelligent beings - or such a being would have to have been created on purpose.

    like, the creature would first need to eat up the place it evolved in - but before that think/find/somehow have a way to get the next star, no small feat on it's own.

    giving them public money would be a total waste. especially when if such existed, detecting it would come for free from the observing we're doing currently.

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    world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  5. Look for what you can see. by Immerman · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The principle is simple enough - searching for life in the cosmos is *hard* to the point of near impossibility. If an identical twin sister-civilization was orbitting the nearest star, it's unlikely we could detect it from here. *Maybe* we could detect their military radar pulses. Maybe.

    So, what do you do? You either give up the search completely, or you confine it to looking for things you might actually be able to detect with your current technology. That is - you look not for things that are particularly likely to exist, but for things easy to detect. Because those are the only things you have *any* chance of spotting. Star-eaters would qualify I think.

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    --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
  6. Kardashev by Livius · · Score: 4, Informative

    So, instead of looking for a Kardashev type II civilization, we should look for a Kardashev type II, um, organism, or something?

    Maybe there is such a thing, but it would be so different from life on Earth that I'm not sure it would even make sense to try to distinguish an organism from a technological civilization (especially when even on Earth that distinction can sometimes be a little bit blurry).