In the ever-raging battle for internet eyeballs, here’s a Yahoo News headline that probably grabbed more than a few:
REAL DEATH STAR COULD STRIKE EARTH
Wow, that is a big story. An actual man-made, planet-sized, battle-station could attack planet earth, just like in Star Wars. That certainly pushes the Hilary and Obama mudwrestling show under the fold (or whatever the online version of that is). If this story is true, you could stop worrying about declining home values, and spend your remaining cash eating at three-star Michelin restaurants and having sex with seven-diamond rated Emperor’s Club V.I.P. prostitutes (topical) until the day the Grand Moff of this particular Death Star turns our planet into the next Alderaan.
Yep, it’s quite a story.
Oh, wait. It’s not a deadly, moon-sized space ball full of Stormtroopers and Grand Moffs. It’s a “beautiful pinwheel” — two stars locked in each other’s orbit, which might someday explode. Maybe I’m a purist, but unless it has a small thermal exhaust port, right below the main port, it’s not a Death Star.
Calling these two dancing stars a “Real Death Star” is like calling my Toyota a “Real Landspeeder.” (Actually, a car is much more like a landspeeder than this fruity binary system. A car can drive on sand.) This lame-ass pinwheel can do nothing except maybe supernova “any time within the next few hundred thousand years.” It’s 8,000 light years away, and doesn’t even have a special room for Darth Vader to air out his helmet. I’m not Joël Robuchoning myself to death quite yet.
Laser cannon.
Laser Floyd.
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This story, originally from Space.com and picked up by Yahoo News, is littered with “mights,” “potentials,” “one days,” “coulds,” “remains uncertains,” and, finally, a big fat juicy “don’t worry.” Once scientist remarks that a Gamma Ray explosion aimed directly at the Earth might “cut off 1 or 2 percent of total sunlight. It might cool the climate somewhat, but it wouldn’t be a catastrophic ice age kind of thing.” Global cooling? That sounds like a good thing. Maybe this “Real Death Star” could save us all .
Perhaps, technically, the gas balls in question are potential “death stars.” However, if these twirling celestial bodies did blow up, and litter the planet with Gamma and Cosmic Rays (hopefully creating big piles of Incredible Hulks and Fantastic Fours), at least we’d be free of cheap, deceptive internet headlines like the ones you see every day on Yahoo.com. It would be worth it.