Two nearby supernovae

[TomMazanec]

Novels. Both 1990s.
One supernova was a Ia Type of Sirius. The author used hand waving, leg kicking, head nodding and torso twisting arguments (invoking the "red" appearance of Sirius in ancient times) to justify such an unlikely SN. I found it almost as hard to believe that the supernova appears in Earth's sky on January 1, 2000.
The other was Alpha Centauri. This is totally impossible, but I found it easier to swallow because the scientists in the novel declared that it shouldn't have happened. The SN blasts a jet straight to Sol. In a sequel it is revealed that plasma beings lived in Alpha Centauri A. They are a species that migrates from star to star every ten thousand years or so by making the star explode them to a neighboring star. They do this by a version of the old joke about China using radio to synchronize 800 million Chinese doing jumping jacks to cause an earthquake in America.

 

[BAYLOR]

All of the three star in the Alpha Centauri system are all the wrong type . They can;t ever go supernova.

Stars that go nova tend to be Blue stars which are far more massive then our sun , and burn alot hotter . They exhaust their fuel in few million and then explode.

 

[TomMazanec]

I know that, BAYLOR. So did the characters. I explained that it wasn't a "normal" SN.

 

[Peter V]

Sorry, I have no idea what the book is but this has made me think. It's SF, so I will accept that alien intervention has artificially enabled Alpha Centauri to go supernova. However I am wondering at the time difference between observing the event 4.367 years after it happens and all life on Earth being extinguished. I am assuming we would in fact have time to observe it before the shock wave and accompanying radiation obliterated us but with one so close, how long would we have to come to terms with our fate?

 

[TomMazanec]

The enhanced luminosity temporarily gave Earth a "second sun" (in both books). It did not extinguish all life on Earth, but caused huge climate change and global agricultural failure. In the Alpha Centauri book sequel the point was that the plasma beings would colonize the Sun and, in 12000 or so, blow it up so they could go to Tau Ceti or some other nearby star.

 

[Danny McG]

Plasma beings in stars:

This makes me think of a Frederick Pohl story but I can't think of the title.
(It's got 'worlds' in it - I think)

 

[PaulMmn]

Plasma beings in stars:

See the James Blish novel "The Star Dwellers." Originally serialized in Boys' Life magazine. They were non-harmful to our sun; we encountered them when they started taking up residence in the fusion reactors of exploratory space ships.

 

[chrispenycate]

The Pohl novel is 'The World at the End of Time.. But I got the idea that "Wan-To was the oldest and must powerful intelligence in the universe, a being who played with star systems as a child plays with marbles. Matter occupied so tiny a part of his vast awareness that humans were utterly beneath his notice.

The colonists of Newmanhome first suffered the effects of Wan-To's games when their planet's stars began to shift, the climate began to cool down, and the colony was forced into a desperate struggle to survive." Wan Ton was the intelligence of a star' (Like Herbert's Fannie Mae in the Dosadi.experiment). Not that there aren't intelligent plasma beings - as in 'Sundiver' and the plasmoids in Wheelers. (Stewart and Cohen), but neither fits the Alpha Centauri detail.

 

[TomMazanec]

The Sirius one might have had Supernova as or in the title but I haven’t found it looking for that.

 

[PaulMmn]

Then there's THANG by Martin Gardner: (THANG)

THE Earth had completed another turn about the sun, whirling slowly and silently as it always whirled. The East had experienced a record breaking crop of yellow rice and yellow children, larger stockpiles of weapons were accumulating in certain strategic centers, and the sages of the University of Chicago were uttering words of profound wisdom, when Thang reached down and picked up the Earth between his thumb and finger.

Thang had been sleeping. When he finally awoke and blinked his six opulent eyes at the blinding light (for the light of our stars when viewed in their totality is no thing of dimness) he had become uncomfortably aware of an empty feeling near the pit of his stomach. How long he had been sleeping even he did not know exactly, for in the mind of Thang time is a term of no significance. Although the ways of Thang are beyond the ways of men, and the thoughts of Thang are scarcely conceivable by our thoughts; still——stating the matter roughly and in the language we know——the ways of Thang are this: When Thang is not asleep, Thang hungers.

After blinking his opulent eyes (in a specific consecutive order which had long been his habit) and stretching forth a long arm to sweep aside the closer suns, Thang squinted into the deep. The riper planets were near the center and usually could be recognized by surface texture; but frequently Thang had to thump them with his middle finger. It was some time until he found a piece that suited him. He picked it up with his right hand and shook off most of the adhering salty moisture. Other fingers scaled away thin flakes of bluish ice that had caked on opposite sides. Finally, he dried the ball completely by rubbing it on his chest.

He bit into it. It was soft and juicy, neither unpleasantly hot nor freezing to the tongue; and Thang, who always ate the entire planet, core and all, lay back contentedly, chewing slowly and permitting his thoughts to dwell idly on trivial matters, when suddenly he felt himself picked up by the back of the neck.

He was jerked upward and backward by an arm of tremendous bulk (an arm covered with greyish hair and exuding a foul smell). Then he was lowered even more rapidly. He looked down in time to see an enormous mouth——red and gaping and watering around the edges——then the blackness closed over him with a slurp like a clap of thunder.

For there are other gods than Thang.

 

[TomMazanec]

That's not it, but I loved it! And loved it when I read it years ago!
Fantastic flash fiction.