Will there be a day when the stars will vanish from the night sky?

WE USED TO BELIEVE THAT THE STAR WERE ETERNAL and the Universe was infinite and immutable, but we now know that this is not the case.

From vast clouds of cosmic gas, stars condense, ignite and burn themselves to death. Even the Universe had a moment of birth and one day it too will die. But surely, as long as there is a Universe to house them, there will be stars?

Maybe not. Could it be that, one day, mankind’s distant descendants will gaze at the night sky and see a starless carpet of perfect black?

A new study suggests that the best days of the Universe’s star formation are long behind it and that most of all the stars that will ever be born already have been and are now creeping into old age.

[Above: A newly discovered exoplanet, HD 40307g, could be the best candidate for alien life yet found. It is the closest Earth-like world discovered that isn’t tidally locked to its star (it rotates rather than always having one side facing the star). Image: ESO]

IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, the Italian philosopher-cum-astronomer Giordano Bruno speculated that stars (which, at that time, were thought to be little more than God’s way of decorating the firmament) were in fact suns around which might be ‘... an infinity of worlds of the same kind as our own’.

Bruno’s heretical speculations led to him being burned at the stake by the Inquisition (not solely for his astronomical thinking). But he wouldn’t be the last great thinker to suggest Earth may not be the only world in the heavens capable of nurturing life – Isaac Newton had similar thoughts 100 years later.

It wasn’t until the early 1990s that the existence of the first extra-solar planet (exoplanet) was definitively confirmed – although unconfirmed discoveries had been staggering in since 1988. 

Since then, exoplanet discoveries have rolled in thick and fast and the total of confirmed discoveries now stands at almost 850 (with thousands more awaiting confirmation). 

We don’t like microbes. We associate them with disease and death and spend a lot of time and money trying to eradicate them from our lives (and in doing so create super-strains that are many times more deadly).

But many types of microbe can be helpful (your body is more bacteria than human and couldn’t survive without them) and some may actually hold the key to fighting global warming, cleaning up pollution and even help cure cancer.

The snappily-named Geobacter sulfurreducens, for example, has an exciting double party trick. 

Under certain conditions, this handy little bug can grow special hairs, called pili, that can zap uranium from polluted water supplies and, if attached to an electrode, can be used to generate electricity. In fact Nasa plan to employ the energy generating talents of this particular bug to help power their next generation of miniature robotic rovers.

Another strain of pollution-busting bacteria, called Alcanivorax, can break down the hydrocarbons in crude oil and is hard at work right now at the Deepwater Horizon spill, helping to mop up the mess. 

Here are three ‘helpful’ microbes with the potential to change our lives for the better.