It’s a classic sci-fi disaster scenario – the intrepid explorers find themselves trapped in the inexorable gravitational pull of a star, facing annihilation in its blazing core. But this is no late-night double feature B-movie. Scientists have expressed concern that the Earth itself is caught in the gravity field of a massive star burning at up to 5700 degrees Kelvin.
A statement released from Hawaii AstroLabs early this week warns, “There’s really nothing we can do about it now, we fear it is too late. We are so close to the apocalyptic fires of the star that if you look at the sky, you can often actually observe it, easily distinguishable from other, more distant, stars.”
After the initial panic over the shocking discovery, more details emerged. Our planet is swinging in a reckless circle around the star, moving at unimaginable speeds. And it gets worse: the star itself is hurtling through space. Although we have apparently been approaching this disaster for some time now, astrologists explain that, “In our job, we’re really used to looking at things that are very, very far away. It wan’t until someone looked at stuff that’s a lot closer that we saw this giant star right near Earth and thought- uh oh, this could be bad.”
