Hacker News Reader

Comment by detritus | Hacker News Reader

How can you know that?

I mean, you're probably correct, but given we have precisely one datapoint for life, it's a bit much to extrapolate further - there might be aeons-old silicon-skinned space whales congregating around Betelgeuse for their thrice giga-millennial spawning season, or something... . Probably not.

- ed

'thrice kilo or mega millennial' seems a bit less unlikely!

View on HN

Giant stars are quite short-lived, with Betelgeuse estimated to have at most a 15 million (not billion!) year life before becoming a red supergiant . If simple life did evolve in time, it was wiped out about 100,000 years ago as Betelgeuse became a supergiant.

One last fun fact: Betelgeuse is about 125,000 times brighter than the Sun in absolute luminosity.

Well, disregarding radiation resistant space whales (which would be able to migrated to another star anyway), I think it's pretty clear the radiation and onslaught of solar winds from Betelgeuse will sterilise everything in the vicinity.

But you are right, nothing can be ruled out ;)

If we're talking hypotheticals, a tidally locked planet would lose its volatiles pretty quickly, but one could in theory bunker up on the far side of the planet and survive.

But you'd be stuck there forever, right? Diffraction means that the shadow only goes out so far before you're being cooked again by one form of particle or another.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com