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| "The Star" | |
|---|---|
| Short story by H. G. Wells | |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | science fiction |
| Publication | |
"The Star" is an 1897 apocalyptic short story by H. G. Wells. [1]
On New Year's Day (about 1900, presumably), astronomers announce that the orbit of the planet Neptune has become erratic. Soon it's discovered that a strange luminous object has entered the Solar System, its gravitational pull causing the disturbance. The object is visible in the sky through "any decent instrument" in the constellation of Leo near Regulus.
Although initially it is only of interest to astronomers, eventually the world media announces that the object is on a collision course with Neptune, and a "planetary collision" is predicted. People around the world gather to see the phenomenon. When the collision occurs, the impact causes a massive explosion, merging the two objects into a single massive conflagration. It is seen from Earth as a bright new star in the sky. The impact robs Neptune of its centrifugal force and out of its solar orbit, sending the fireball careening toward the sun.
As it rises each day, the star is noticeably brighter and larger than the day before, and people realize it is nearer. Many panic and take it as a sign of the end times, while others cite the year 1000, in which humanity also anticipated the world's end. Scientists assure the public there is no danger, as they have plotted the Star's trajectory to carry it harmlessly millions of miles from Earth. Most people go on about their lives without concern for the Star as anything more than a curiosity. Meanwhile a mathematician takes days to calculate a new trajectory, factoring the gravitational pull of Jupiter, previously overlooked by other scientists, which will alter the course of the Star and indeed put Earth in its path. The mathematician claims the fireball will either collide with or closely pass Earth. He is largely ridiculed by science deniers, but soon his theory is proven to be accurate.
Even from millions of miles away, the heat of the star causes the winter snow and ice to thaw, and it begins to melt Earth's ice caps and glaciers, causing global flooding. Its gravity causes massive Earthquakes, tidal waves, volcanoes and hurricanes around the world. Night is turned into a second day, and the skies become a luminous blue. People everywhere seek shelter in the mountains and caves, or crowd aboard ships braving the tumultuous seas. Massive tidal waves wipe out entire islands. Millions perish.
It seems all hope is lost as the massive star is overwhelmingly bright and hot. A collision seems imminent when suddenly, an inexplicable shadow passes across the land, blocking the unbearable light and heat. People look up to see the star has miraculously passed the Earth, and watch as it continues toward the sun. Later it's determined that the gravity of the Earth's moon diverted the Star away from Earth, saving the fraction of humanity who was able to survive.
The landscape of the Earth has been permanently altered, the equatorial regions uninhabitable. Humans settle in new areas close to the poles, where the climate is more temperate. At the end of the story Martian astronomers have witnessed the event, and observe that not much has changed on the distant planet apart from the melting of ice at the poles.
An astronomer named Ogilvy appears at the start of the story. An astronomer named Ogilvy also appears at the start of Wells's novel The War of the Worlds .
The early part of the story, before the dire danger had become obvious, includes a reference to a South African city where "a great man had married, and the streets were alight to welcome his return with his bride. 'Even the skies have illuminated,' said the flatterer". This is considered to be a snide reference to Cecil Rhodes, at the height of his power and influence at the time of writing.
The master mathematician's defiance of the Star: "He looked at it as one might look into the eyes of a brave enemy. 'You may kill me,' he said after a silence. 'But I can hold you - and all the universe for that matter - in the grip of this small brain. I would not change. Even now" is a clear statement of 19th century scientific rationalism, the world-view which Wells strongly shared.
This story is often credited with having created a science fiction subgenre depicting the impact event of a planet or star colliding, or near-colliding with Earth—such as the 1933 novel When Worlds Collide by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer (made into a film in 1951), Fritz Leiber's The Wanderer (1965), and Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (1977).
However, it was preceded by two stories in 1894: Omega: The Last Days of the World by Camille Flammarion (the astronomer of the Flammarion Catalog) and Olga Romanoff or, The Syren of the Skies by George Griffith. In 1895, Griffith used a comet disaster again in The Outlaws of the Air . Edgar Allan Poe's 1839 The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion depicted an Earth collision with a comet that altered the atmosphere, causing a higher concentration of Oxygen which subsequently immolates to destroy all life on Earth. Jules Verne's 1877 novel Hector Servadac describes a comet colliding with Earth, taking bits of land (and inhabitants) with it on its orbit around the Sun.
The story is mentioned in Arthur C. Clarke's novel Rendezvous with Rama , and Clarke also used the title for a story of his own.
The radio anthology series Radio Tales adapted the story into an episode called "Asteroid".
The graphic novel Bloodstar uses Wells's story as the prelude to the post-apocalyptic situation in which the plot - itself derived from a short story by Robert E. Howard - is set.
Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 broke apart in July 1992 and collided with Jupiter in July 1994, providing the first direct observation of an extraterrestrial collision of Solar System objects. This generated a large amount of coverage in the popular media, and the comet was closely observed by astronomers worldwide. The collision provided new information about Jupiter and highlighted its possible role in reducing space debris in the inner Solar System.
The Kuiper belt is a circumstellar disc in the outer Solar System, extending from the orbit of Neptune at 30 astronomical units (AU) to approximately 50 AU from the Sun. It is similar to the asteroid belt, but is far larger—20 times as wide and 20–200 times as massive. Like the asteroid belt, it consists mainly of small bodies or remnants from when the Solar System formed. While many asteroids are composed primarily of rock and metal, most Kuiper belt objects are composed largely of frozen volatiles, such as methane, ammonia, and water. The Kuiper belt is home to most of the objects that astronomers generally accept as dwarf planets: Orcus, Pluto, Haumea, Quaoar, and Makemake. Some of the Solar System's moons, such as Neptune's Triton and Saturn's Phoebe, may have originated in the region.
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Following the discovery of the planet Neptune in 1846, there was considerable speculation that another planet might exist beyond its orbit. The search began in the mid-19th century and continued at the start of the 20th with Percival Lowell's quest for Planet X. Lowell proposed the Planet X hypothesis to explain apparent discrepancies in the orbits of the giant planets, particularly Uranus and Neptune, speculating that the gravity of a large unseen ninth planet could have perturbed Uranus enough to account for the irregularities.
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Pluto is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume, by a small margin, but is less massive than Eris. Like other Kuiper belt objects, Pluto is made primarily of ice and rock and is much smaller than the inner planets. Pluto has only one sixth the mass of Earth's moon, and one third its volume.
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An impact event is a collision between astronomical objects causing measurable effects. Impact events have physical consequences and have been found to regularly occur in planetary systems, though the most frequent involve asteroids, comets or meteoroids and have minimal effect. When large objects impact terrestrial planets such as the Earth, there can be significant physical and biospheric consequences, as the impacting body is usually traveling at several kilometres a second, though atmospheres mitigate many surface impacts through atmospheric entry. Impact craters and structures are dominant landforms on many of the Solar System's solid objects and present the strongest empirical evidence for their frequency and scale.
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The Star public domain audiobook at LibriVox