You’re absolutely bonkers.
(What? I didn’t say you were crazy!)
[pictures in mind’s eye…]
GILLIGAN!
[/pime…]
:mad: MY NAME IS NOT GILLIGAN, IT IS GILLIAN, THANK YOU VERY MUCH BYE. :mad:
pant, pant
Sorry 'bout that.
ROTFLMAO! Best SDMB comment I’ve ever seen.
Is that Sol & Sol’s Deli? They make the best whitefish there.
What makes you assume that the story in the OP was referring to the sun at the center of **our ** solar system?
You know what they say about people who assume …
No, no. Would you rather be shot with a pen missile or with a penile, Miss?
Well, whilst we’ve found planets around other stars, we’ve not found intelligent life on them (and sometimes I think we’re mistaken about this planet too). But, hey, if you can provide me with factual scientific evidence of life on other planets…
…Can I plagarise your evidence and get my PhD now please? 
Dwarf != Midget
Quite correct. However…
Jokes != invitations to nitpickery
danceswithcats said “No, no. Would you rather be shot with a pen missile or with a penile, Miss?”
I don’t know. And don’t call me Miss.
As far as nitpickery goes, what about this:
-
Our sun is a yellow dwarf. Insert non-PC joke correction here.
-
Isn’t the term ‘the sun’ just a general term used to refer to the star that the Earth orbits around? I know I’ve heard other stars referred to as ‘suns’, but that’s, to my mind, not strictly accurate. So someone help me out. Does this equation make sense in any way:
The sun is a star, but a star is not necessarily a sun (I suppose sun-like stars could be called suns?)
Er, last time I checked our sun was a bog standard main sequence star. Not a dwarf of any description.
Yeah. And to avoid confusion, sun-like stars are generally referred to as being ‘sun-lke’
Are they suns or stars?
Dwarves and midgets arguing
Time to go to bed
“Bog standard”? Translation, please?
The problem lies in an obsolescent system of terminology which uses:
White dwarf: Degenerate-core star at lower left of H-R diagram
Red dwarf/yellow dwarf: Main sequence star in lower right quadrant of H-R diagram, so called to distinguish from red giant/yellow supergiant
Red giant: Distended-atmosphere star in upper right of H-R diagram
Blue or blue-white giant: Main sequence star in upper left of H-R diagram
For obvious reasons, the terminology combines unlike things and has effectively been disregarded for some time, but it’s still used in some older popular works on astronomy, and it is a royal PITA to deal with.
Astronomers are anti fur?
Run of the mill, everyday, average. Its a Brit thing.
My point being that our sun, compared to all the other stars that we can see, is not really remarkable in any real way. Apart from the life thing, of course.
You mean, the Sun is alive!?
:eek:
Whipping Star indeed.
This terminology is the bread and butter of astronomers.
No, astronomers love fermions. It’s the sailors they can’t quite figure out - they find it hard to gauge bosons. Can anyone shed any light on this?
Well yeah… that’s why we feel obligated to squint.
Bosons are just wierd. You need particle physicists for that kind of thing.