Life in the centre

I am reading further into Neil Comins. Yesterday I evaluated his Urania, which I found unlikely for an inner-planet. As for why not, this deserves its own post.

Our Uranus got so tilted because something of comparable mass hit it from top or bottom, less likely out-to-in. That can certainly happen out on the rim where tiny deviations from ecliptic compute to vast vertical distances. I am not seeing these maths add up within 5 AU. Was Theia, here, rogue planet Yuggoth from beyond the System? Or maybe it's some Venus-sized comet from the Oort ungently adjusted.

This may segue to Comins' Cerberon. That's where another star, or - Comins calls this next event, Diablo - black hole gets close enough to us to affect our orbit and the orbit of comets. Comins thinks, 30 AU, about where Neptune's at. That's right: we're back to the collision of worlds. At any rate somewhere between that fine piece of 1930s schlock and Gliese 710 which, in 1993, was unbeknownst to Comins.

GJ 710 gets the press it gets because it's coming within 14000 AU... not 30. I believe black holes are rarer still. We could also talk Comins' Antar, a Type II 20-sol supernova within 50 light years but we can bargain this down to 5-sols within single-digit LY ("what if Alpha Centauri was four times as large"?).

I am not buying the Brakenridgery for our solar-system. I don't think this part of the Milky Way is all that exciting - meaning, that crowded. I think all four of these what-ifs fall under the same heading - What If We Came Within the Crowded Part, mayhap. It's all better shifted to Comins' second book, where he discusses stars closer to the Core. Otherwise SF authors (here, Trek authors) can consider unlucky stars for rescue-missions on Alcubierre.

I admit, I should be the very last writer / compiler to criticise another one for scattering his essays across unfocused collections.

UPDATE 12/24: being centrally located implies, for luckier planets, other aliens to talk to. Until they kill themselves.