Stars have vanished without a trace. where did they go?

This is very nearly the same as when this was posted a few days ago, except this time it omits what sure seemed like the most likely explanation (at least for most of them): the stars were never there, and were just radioactive contamination of (especially) 1950s astronomy photo negatives. On account of all the above-ground nuclear testing.

Interesting this has actually been observed to happen! Two stars disappearing from the night sky, is the central plot point in the first book of the commonwealth saga by Peter F Hamilton, which I quite enjoyed. I wonder if the 1952 event was what inspired this plot point…

"overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out."

I like this explanation[1]: We live in a simulation where crypto became popular. All those hash function evaluations can't be approximated by the simulation engine, unlike most other natural phenomena, and so our reality uses up more compute than it was allocated. The renderer compensates by removing the most distant objects. It's a cosmic renice.

[1] https://blog.fefe.de/?ts=a308f88d

I've always heard that if you see a star, you're seeing the light from a star that is long dead. Could not the light completely reach us and fade away?

What makes a star permanent?

Truly awful website keeps reloading every few seconds. I think it even changed to a different CSS at one point? Then it crashes. Mobile safari.

I only have so much patience as the subject matter and mysterious tone of the title are ripe for clickbait.

No ...It was indeed not a dream. We really did it. The King of All Cosmos has really done it.

A sky full of stars ... We broke it. Yes, We were naughty. Completely naughty. So, so very sorry.

But just between you and Us, It felt quite good.

They clearly went to GitHub ;).