More on the ancient worlds of Kapteyn's star

[LongTomH]

DUer n2doc has already posted about the discovery of an ancient star only 13 light years from Earth. The interesting facts about the star are, summarizing:

• Kapteyn's Star is an incredibly ancient red dwarf, at least 10 billion and maybe as much as 13.7 billion years old.
  
• From its motion, astronomers have deduced that it originally came from a dwarf galaxy which collided with the Milky Way billions of years ago.
  
• It's only 13 light years from our Solar System now, 11,000 years ago it would have been as close as 7 light years.
  
• It has two planets orbiting it (That is, we have detected two planets to date!).
  
• The inner planet, Kapteyn b is within the habitable zone of the star, it could have, or have had, liquid water on the surface.

Paul Gilster, has an article at the Centauri Dreams blog, with more information on Kapteyn's Star and its planets: Probing an Ancient Planetary System. Gilster's article has more information on the star and the discovery of its planetary system; but, the fun part of the article is excerpts from a news release from the University of London, which in turn includes excerpts from a short science fiction story: Sad Kapetyn. The story is an account of the report of an artificially intelligent probe investigating the Kapteyn's Star planets:

"Make of this what you will - put it down to failing programming if you like - but I feel the age of this place in my bones. All right, my main bus chassis. I don't have bones; I know that. But believe me, this system feels truly time-haunted. The silence and the stillness are almost unbearable, like an endlessly building pressure. Nothing has happened here for entire turns of the galaxy; nothing will happen. Kapteyn's star simmers, eeking out its nuclear lifetime. The dead worlds tick around their dead orbits."

..............//snip

"The fact is, it wasn't hard to detect. Cities cover almost the entire surface of that world. Enormous structures - they must have reached into space! Dishes and towers and the remains of what I think must have been space elevators, climbing all the way to synchronous orbit. A moon, its surface covered by the same kinds of architecture. Evidence of colonisation of the second planet, Kapteyn c, in its much colder orbit.

Wonders beyond comparison, but scoured into a kind of tomblike grey uniformity, after aeons of micrometeorite and cosmic-ray bombardment. Cities as mute as sphinxes.

And nowhere the slightest sign of life."

..............//snip

"Continent-sized craters mar Kapteyn b, and I wonder if they speak of some truly awesome catastrophe - a cosmic accident, or something worse? Whatever the case, the builders of these cities are long gone. Perhaps they were dead even before Kapteyn's star was snatched from the clutches of its mother galaxy.

At the risk of inferring too much from too little data, I can't help indulging in a little speculation. I too was the product of a technological civilisation, with the capability to transform a planet, to colonise other moons and worlds, to build daunting structures. The people of Kapteyn b were clearly more advanced than you, my own builders - but given time, you too could have transformed a world in this manner.

Something to think about, isn't it?"

I wonder what the science fiction writers on this board could make of Kapteyn's Star's ancient planets?

[Tansy_Gold]

1. The stuff of stars

I think I have posted in CTYankee's art threads before that I was forever impressed with Poul Anderson's short story "The Light" and that it left me with a kind of awe for the way art and science and speculation and imagination can all work together in amazing ways. And if I haven't posted there, well, I'm posting here.



Now, reading about Kapteyn and its ancient planets, I'm reminded of another science fiction story from my own far distant past, Arthur C. Clarke's 1956 Hugo winner, "The Star."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_(Clarke_short_story) (Linked article contains total spoiler)



Indeed, there is nothing new under our ancient skies, and yet we can marvel at it all.