"What would life be like at the Galactice core?" Topic

And don't give ma a bunch of about, "There can't be any." This is the SF board for chrissy's sake! Put on your propeller hats and think away!

Should, of course, be "Galactic".

With all those suns lighting the place up I think it would be always about 3 PM… with cocktails served on the patio by the pool.

You'd be dead from the Mega-supernova expanding outward from the core… don't you read Larry Niven?

My pointy tinfoil hat says:

It would be hot.
It would be dry.
It would be light if not bright all the time.
It would be Mutant Paradise due all the radiation.
It would be a nice place to visit, to see the locals.
It would be a place where I wouldn't want to live.

I don't have a propeller, so maybe my ideas are incorrect.

Jim

Unlike anything we are familiar with and I mean that sincerely.

Even assuming there is not a large singularity, ther is bound to be a level of radiation at the galactic core that would make any environement we know of to look like a cloudy evening; The density of stars alone woule ensure that. Also, the number of stars in a given area would be large as well, so light on any planetary body there would be pretty near continuous.

Given all that, plus the fact that space in the zone could well be a 'solid vaccuum' of gas particles, we have conditions that would be hostile for life that was made up of solid matter. So, I would be expecting the sort of charged plasma like forms described by Sir Arthur in two of his early stories – basically, shimmering fields of energy sustaining themselves by the sbsorbtion of nuclei and appearing most clearly on radar. Other creatures ight exist there, but they would be very exotic, almost like living minerals that would to our eyes be more like plants in that they consume charged plasma or even gamma radiation in the way plants do for energy; Their lifestyles might be slower than ours or faster depending on the level of radiation and energetic reactions that could take place on the surfaces of worlds they dwell on, or perhaps even in the photosphere of stars themselves.

Think of the worst fog you've ever driven in. Now, light it up with magnesium flares of every color and then realize that you're in a big microwave oven.

If you buy into the fact that FTL doesn't work in a gravity well, you'd have to travel through the area very slowly because anything close to relativistic speeds would cause the gas particles and etc. to sandblast the hull right off your ship.

Any planets in there would be extra crispy – if they hadn't been blown out of orbit.

Wyatt

Depends exactly WHERE you are in the 'core'…..as it's considered an 'area'/region, (by most astronomers), than a 'spot'…

Technically the exact? center is a 'supermassive black hole'….which is not only a song from the first TWILIGHT MOVIE….but not a place you'd normally expect to find life, stable solar systems or even stars!

Or it could be a planet where 'God' is supposed to be…(if you watched Star Trek V: The Final Frontier….) They also had an energy barrier surrounding the core region, just like the one at the edge of the Galaxy…that no ship/probe had 'sucessfully penetrated'….but THAT's another story!

They've talked about similar things on 'UNIVERSE' on the History Channel and if the system wasn't too close to the actual 'supermassive black hole'….it might not be overly 'irradiated'…but the nights might not be 'dark'/be very bright/star-filled as you could have hundreds of stars within a less than a parsec (3-light-year) 'cube' surrounding your 'system'….

I wouldn't go 'writing off' life, let alone INTELLIGENT life-forms from something like that….(considering all the extremophiles we've found JUST on Earth so far/may yet find on/in/under other planets, moons or dwarf-planets here in our OWN solar system….

But it would sure be 'interesting' to go exploring there!

Sgt DWW-btod

Yes, very hot and bright, in addition to being very visually stunning.

Probably worth the price of admission, assuming the shields on the ship will hold up to the radiation, and other solar emissions.

Hot and bright don't cut it. The sheer radiation / gravitation matrix that would control all aspects of evolution leans towards non-caporeal lifeforms. Biomass, as we know it, would not have a hope. Think Star Trek: TNG wibbly special effect aliens, rather than some b-grade comedy actor with a rubber cast of someone's genitals glued to his head. Self-aware hyperstring constructs might be an idea, but how you'd apply them in a gaming setting? Hmmm…

short…

:>

If there is a super massive black hole at the center of our galaxy why isn't it contracting instead of expanding?

Or is it like trying to catch a Helium Balloon with a dust-buster?

Could be like "Nightfall", if you remember that Asimov story.

If there is a super massive black hole at the center of our galaxy why isn't it contracting instead of expanding?

For the same reason that objects that orbit the earth can potentially escape. A black hole is not unique; it has gravity like every other object, and the force of gravity drops significantly the further out you get from it. A supermasive black hole could be as small as 93,000mi in diameter (size of the Event Horizon), which on a galactic scale is not very large at all (it is IIRC smaller than the diameter of the Sun).

Damon.

Well. . . if I were going to write a sci-fi story about it and assume that star-trek style life could arise there. . .

. . . the stars there are very old and packed together tightly. So there might be a lot of ancient races fighting this huge interstellar war and its been raging for hundreds of thousands of hears. Everywhere you go you would find dead planets and destroyed civilizations.

Everyone knows that all life at the G-core is slightly out of phase with the actual G-core baseline, or absolute zero.

So life goes on without issue. Most if not all life has transended into energy.

A great place to sell sun glasses

SP 2 billion tanning lotion?

Radioactive.

OK, here's some possibilities from science fiction.

Vernor Vinge suggested "intelligent gasclouds" in Fire Upon the Deep but IIRC didn't describe them in any detail. Entities somewhat similar can be found in a number of books tho, Iain M Banks' Matter is the latest I've read (albeit in that the enitity thrived in a planetary atmosphere).

Cohen & Stewart briefly showed "magnetotori", beings living in the photospheres of stars, in The Wheelers.

Supertechnology provided a way to transmit consicousness into the event horizon of a black hole in John C. Wright's Golden Oicumene trilogy. Tho that would not be life as we know it, Jim.