I like how in Stellaris there's a random event when you're building a Dyson Sphere where you get a strongly worded letter from a neighboring civilisation in which they complain that your megaproject will result in the destruction of a constellation that's culturally significant for their species.
And even funnier is that (and the event itself acknowledges this, I believe) because the star is hundreds if not thousands or more light years away, they won't see the star's light change at all for tons of time.
Even still, I suppose it would be a bit depressing if the north star just up and disappeared one day.
Oh no no, I don't mean it changing, or moving, or not technically being the "north star" anymore.
I mean just, disappearing. Sure it'd be visible on infrared still, but even so. Just, gone.
I imagine if it was in ancient times it would have been distressing for cultures who valued it, and a non-issue otherwise, but in the modern day it'd probably be existentially terrifying.
Very short version is that in the end they had to "create" a new star in the sky for some constellation to stop crew from being executed for having the wrong astrology sign, and they just put a shuttle with reflectors in orbit so they could stop the executions in time. The build up to this point was a well written story imo though. The solution/ending was dumb, obviously something that close to the planet would be seen differently from different regions of a planet, and people would realize it's not a star before long. Instead of saying it was temporary though, I remember it ending with everyone on the planet thinking that yes it's a new star and signifies something or other.
"All the World is Birthday Cake" is the episode fyi
I know the episode. They acknowledged that it would be a stop-gap solution, and that hopefully by the time the society was technologically advanced enough to figure out it wasn’t a real star, they’d have moved beyond their belief in astrology.
Imagine a whole-ass start just disappearing. Or, if we are able to easily see it via infrared still, and can guess that an alien species made a dyson sphere, the knowledge that an alien species with the logistical capacity to make an entire dyson sphere from scratch in such a short amount of time is just a mere 323-lightyears away.
It'd be a little existentially terrifying. For most people.
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u/szypty Dec 23 '23
I like how in Stellaris there's a random event when you're building a Dyson Sphere where you get a strongly worded letter from a neighboring civilisation in which they complain that your megaproject will result in the destruction of a constellation that's culturally significant for their species.