Lead
In the Ali district of the Republic of Mali in West Africa, there lived an ancient tribe whose name was called the "Dogons", and the slight disagreement with the Dogon was that most of them did not speak, but could communicate using a set of social skills consisting of spoken and body language, and the ancient Dogon people did not even have a written language, and these exchanges could only be passed down by word of mouth among themselves.
The Dogons, however, have an astonishing understanding of Sirius.
After the story of the Dogon was discovered, some believed that the Dogon were more closely related to Sirius, and some even doubted that they were from Sirius.
1. The mysterious Dogons.
In the Dogon tribe of Mali, the unwritten Dogon use their own unique set of methods of communication, however, when night falls, they gaze together at the sky and look up at Sirius, the brightest star in the starry sky.
Sirius is a star about 8.6 light-years from Earth, and in the night sky, Sirius is about five times brighter than the second brightest celestial body, the Moon, and its apparent magnitude is about -1.44.
The Dogon knew Sirius a little more than even the professional astronomers of the West.
The Dogon people know that Sirius is actually a binary star system consisting of two stars, the great star Sirius A, also known as "Sirius Great", is a blue type B main-sequence star, which is a dwarf star.
The small Sirius B, known as "Sirius", is a white dwarf.
In the mouths of the Dogons, they call the white dwarfs "actresses".
Sirius has an apparent magnitude of -1.46, 25.4 times brighter than the Sun, and a surface temperature of up to 14,500°C, 4,000°C higher than the Sun's, which is where its blue color comes from.
Sirius, on the other hand, has an apparent magnitude of +11.4, which is smaller than the Sun, but this does not mean that Sirius is brighter than the Sun, but because it is only 0.06% of the Sun's brightness, it is a very faint star.
However, Sirius's surface temperature is a bit higher than Sirius's, reaching 25,000°C, so Sirius' light looks relatively harsh.
Not only did the Dogon know that Sirius and Sirius were a pair of stars, they were also well aware that it would take 50 years for the pair to go around each other.
The Sirius Galaxy was formed about 200 million years ago, and both stars have a larger initial mass than the Sun, so they are both massive stars, but Sirius A is the slightly less massive of them.
After the formation of Sirius, due to the huge gravitational force, Sirius B quickly fused the hydrogen atoms in the core into helium atoms, and when the nuclear fusion stopped, Sirius B began to occupy its own mass for nuclear fusion to maintain its equilibrium until it ran out of mass.
By this time, the mass of Sirius B was much smaller than that of Sirius B, which evolved from a main-sequence star to a red giant.
Red giants usually destroy the surrounding planets, but since Sirius is a bit more massive than Sirius B, he saves the planets around Sirius, and the planets and space objects formed by Sirius' gravitational pull gather around him and move together, eventually forming a large planetary belt.
During the red giant, Sirius B will continue to eject generated material into the surrounding area, some of which is carried away by Sirius, but some of which is too far away to be intercepted by the surrounding large planetary belt.
After Sirius ejected a large amount of material, the red giant star became a white dwarf, and at the same time, the large planetary belt received a large amount of material impact, some of the material flew in the direction of Sirius, and the other part was shattered into hundreds of millions of asteroids or comets because of too much impact, which were attracted by Sirius' gravity and continued to fly towards it.
To this day, Celestial Star is still surrounded by hundreds of millions of celestial bodies that are part of the Sirius Galaxy.
But because Sirius B was a red giant star in the past, releasing a lot of residual heat during evolution, the temperature on the surface of Sirius B is still very high, up to 25,000°C.
As a result, Sirius B emits high-intensity ultraviolet light, accompanied by a large amount of white dwarf's residual heat, which makes Sirius look unusually glaring, as if emitting a holy light.
2. Stability of the Sirius system.
Although the Dogon knew about Sirius in great detail, even with the most advanced astronomical technology, it was not always possible to detect the presence of a large number of planets and planetary belts in the Sirius system.
It is difficult to spot the planets around Sirius, but that doesn't mean the planets don't exist.
The continuous evolution of the Sirius system has been going on for billions of years, culminating in the formation of today's Sirius A and B, and the continuous evolution of the pair of binaries also determines that the probability of the Sirius galaxy forming a planet is very low.
Sirius B was once a red giant, and the whole evolution process is very violent, mainly involving the helium nuclei that have not been completely transformed at the beginning, when these substances are pressed to a certain pressure because they cannot continue nuclear fusion, they will continue to fuse, but this fusion will greatly increase the energy of the helium nucleus, resulting in the continuous impact of the helium nucleus, so the whole process looks like a violent "hydrogen bomb".
Repeatedly striking with this astonishing energy, Sirius B quickly used up all the raw materials, and then merged the most massive helium nuclei in pairs to fuse, and the merged elements continued to fuse until iron was formed.
However, the fusion iron core is an extremely difficult step, because the fusion iron core can no longer release energy, but will absorb the energy flowing into it, and the energy of Sirius B can only maintain the temperature of the iron core, and cannot continue to heat the iron core, so the iron core has been painfully deposited in the center, gradually compressed until the pressure of the iron core can no longer resist the strong internal gravity, so an ultra-new explosion erupts, releasing the residual heat.
The evolution that followed was relatively quiet, with several successive super-new explosions taking place inside Sirius B, during which the huge shock wave destroyed most of the surrounding planets and planetary matter, while also consuming most of the elements and energy, reducing the mass of Sirius B to its present state.
As a result, a large number of planets may have formed in the early years of the Sirius system, but as Sirius B continues to undergo super-new explosions, the planets will also be destroyed until they eventually evolve into what they are today.
The enormous amount of energy that Sirius B will release is mainly emitted through neutral and ionic atoms, and there is no form of radio waves.
Therefore, even when Sirius B undergoes a super-new explosion and releases a large amount of energy, the Sirius system at this time is still only a cold nebula, unable to interfere with other galaxies.
The same is true for Sirius A, however, due to the instability of the binary star system consisting of Sirius A and B, it is difficult for planets to form between them, so it is difficult for stars in the Sirius galaxy to have life.
However, in the West, there are also those who believe that the Dogon came from Sirius, and even believe that they have the ability to come to Earth, and that there are planets and life in the Sirius system.
However, this statement not only has no scientific basis, but also has many differences from all living things on the earth, so it is more reliable to say that the Dogon people were born on the African continent of the earth, and the reason why they were able to know Sirius well should be that the Dogon people have passed down the accurate observation and astronomical knowledge of Sirius from generation to generation, so as to be able to explain the highly developed astronomical knowledge and the unwritten Dogon people.
3. Life on planets other than Earth.
Being able to know that the Sirius binary system is a dual main-sequence star shows that the Dogons were very keen and meticulous in their observations, and not only that, but they were able to find that Sirius B was a little brighter than Sirius A through optical observations, which was also a remarkable achievement.
Today, even with the most advanced astronomical equipment, it is very difficult to determine with relative accuracy which star in a pair of observed binary systems is more massive and who will become a white dwarf in the evolutionary process.
The fact that the Dogon had such observation techniques shows that even in the absence of modern science and technology, the ancient peoples could have learned astronomical knowledge through observation.
Today, astronomers use new technology to discover that there are no planets in Sirius, which is not good news, because in the evolution of Sirius A and B, they will constantly affect each other, which is easy to push the originally relatively stable planetary orbits into unstable, and these planets will affect each other, constantly colliding and recombining, as a result, the planets cannot be stable, and life is difficult to be born.
However, the existence of life on Earth also reflects the fact that our understanding of the origin of plants and animals on Earth and the origin of cellular life forms is still very weak.
The absence of planets in the Sirius galaxy does not mean that there is no possibility of life in this galaxy, so in today's technology, there is another unusual form of life, for example, in the deep sea on the earth, lava vents and lava lakes and other places, there may be a kind of microorganisms that are sensitive to extreme environments such as pH, temperature and pressure, these microorganisms have a strong ability to adapt to temperature, pH, oxygen and other environments, and can survive tenaciously in these environments, and these extreme environment scenarios, It may not be uncommon on planets other than Earth.
epilogue
The Dogon people's understanding of Sirius is a miracle, and the possibility that there are no planets and life in the Sirius system is the result of modern astronomical research, which also gives us a warning that there are planets in our solar system, but in the universe, many star systems have no planets, or even no planets at all, so there may not be flourishing life on planets other than Earth, and it may also be generated.
With today's technology, we can predict the abundance of life on planets by detecting planetary habitability, but this is still based on the limited human knowledge and level of living things, and there will always be organisms that can adapt to the environment that we think is not suitable for life.