with all the talk of exo-planets on cosmic log lately have there been any planets confirmed in the Carina Nebula? is this a silly question?

I would (personally) assume that there must be planets if there were any stars old enough to have a planetary system formed.

Do you think it's possible for a super advanced race of alien being to save their star if it were going this way?

One would imagine that if they are so advanced they would have a thorough understanding of how stars work and what would be needed to save their "home" star. of course, i'm assuming they would save their star for nostalgic purposes since they would undoubtedly be able to leave their system for a new one.

Ahhhh....what a relief to know I can count on Cosmic Log for some thought provocative, purely scientific, no media glitz news!!...In four very short paragraphs I find more info than all the other news sites for the day...personally anyways, and that considers the fact that the bbc is on nearly 24hrs around me...anyways, I am so focused on NASA right now I forget the esa is full of cool stuff too! There are many reasons to watch this star, but I hope ligo and company get wind of what I am posisting. First if what we see is 5lys away (and old)...I wonder where it physically really is right now in relation to us??..few ever think in that mindset....it is important. If when we see it, we estimate that it will blow in 10klys, and 5kys have already passed and we have a 50/50 chance that it has not...asuming it is now somewhere else other than where we see it, we can expect it blowup within 5klys, although it may take about that till the optical evidence arrives HERE!...BUT....I feel that the gravity wave from the explsion will travel at an almost instantaneous speed (yes I know that is not "standard theory" and I do not wish to defend it here...my best experimental evidence comes from a failed venus radar mapping mission where mission control used gravity to complete it's mapping misson)...if you take a leap of faith, perhaps we have a canidate for ligo and the amatuer gravity wave community (ie. me) to put on the "watch for data list".....please don't knock me because I don't fully accept einstines universal speed limit, I use it all the time but always question everything...that is the nature of science after all. I am certain the optical and RF observatories will keep an eye on this (and other) wolf rayets star(s)...capturing the explosion on media will be great, and thinking that within 5000 years we could have some experimental data to confirm a lot of theories makes this one a no brainer, wether or not it will help gravity theory or not is all in the cards now. The next thing we must do is estimate where it should physically be right now!!....I was shocked at all the observatories happening in chile, all that money in one place, and most of what they get is out of my field of view at that, but with all the discoveries coming out of chile I am now wondering which direction is "up" for our universe!..assuming the right hand rule of course (if the universe is not spinning in a favored direction I will REALLY be surprised!!

@mob_barley...great questions!!...I am months behind on my exoplanet webpage, that is exactly one of the type of things I wish to be able to give users the ability to query!! Also I myself can imagine that there is, was or will be a race of beings capable of solar system engineering on the scale you mention....it would be awesome to see such a thing but I doubt at this stage in our development we would have any sort of clue as to how or what was going on!!...I can imagine "feeding" a star a steady diet of "minerals and vitamins" to "heal it" but more so, I could just see an advanced culture prepping a substitute star, popping the old one out and the new in...from our vantage point we would just go nuts with theories of magic...from thier point of view, it would probably have to be some sort of "historic" solar system to expend the sort of energy that we would comprehend as required...(surely we are wrong)...well at least it is nice to think out of the box for a bit, now the naysayers can jump in and tear my post all to hades...doesnt matter to me, I will wait for the next thought provocative episode of COSMIC LOG!!..in the meantime I wish they would at least humor me a bit and TRY to calculate where the star physically is right now in relation to us (ya, I hear them already, pointing up to what they see as Carina..and saying RIGHT THERE!!)...but, not so I say, and if they really got some time for math, maybe they could post thier derivations for just how much energy it would take to manipulate a star in the manner described, rather than just saying it would take more energy than we could find...after all how much is that?? as if we were really so advanced...heck I would even settle for a proof of the speed required of the switch to not pull the orbiting planets (If there are any) away!!...how close could another star pass by our sol system and not capture one of our planets and at what speed (where v<c for the sake of reducing insults as if it replaced the required math)?...sorry my post is longer than the article, I hope someone enjoys it though...

If there are planets in Carina (and there probably are), it's unlikely there's any life on them. These large stars aren't around long enough for higher life, or most likely any life, to evolve. They burn out in a few tens of millions or years. Far too quick to save them.

And why would you? They are important part of the overall evolution of life in the Universe as they shower it with the higher atomic elements necessary for the sustainment of life.

I don't believe these stars can be "healed." Their problem is that they were born with too much mass. They are naturally expelling mass on their own, but that process ultimately leads to the destruction of the star (as well as any planets that may be surrounding it).

Excellent story Alan! Actually Alan that's "Live Fast, Die Young and Leave Good Looking Corpse"! Yep as WR22 dies it sure is looking good. I wonder when it will really go bang and form a black hole. Eta Carinae will look spectacular when it goes supernova, probably won't get to see it go bang in my lifetime. Probably no planets forming around either of these fast living fast dying stars as they accumulate so much mass that there's probably none left for planets or the planets fall in from the gravity of the supermassive star.

I would say you could save a star, it would just be a matter of adding hydrogen to it, and adjusting the amount of helium.

I am no expert but from what I have read about stars the reason they explode is they use up all their hydrogen and fuse it to helium, and then to oxygen(I forget the order) the fusion goes all the way down to iron at which point it takes energy to fuse to any heavier elements.

If some super advanced race could figure out how to restore the balance of outward pressure to the crushing pressure of the stars gravity by adding hydrogen or other elements they could restore and maintain the balance.

I think the only by product of this would be the star would get bigger.

Of course something like this would be mind boggling and the amount of materials needed would be unimaginable but in my opinion I would think it is theoretically possible.

Can any expert on this pipe in, I would like to know if my thinking process is on the right track.

Saving a star would take an unbelievable amount of energy to capture enough hydrogen or helium and compress it into the many planet sized pellets needed to feed into the star. Most stars are massive compared to planets, so the hydrogen/helium would probably need to be harvested from another star. If a civilization was that advanced to do something like that, it seems that they could spend far less resources to create their own energy source on the planet itself and use satellites in orbit to disperse the light and heat.

Aww come on. This should be easy for syfy buffs. What you do is create two stable wormholes to an alternate dimension. In the other dimension, you build a massive fission reactor that's able to tear the helium apart into hydrogen atoms. You pump the helium out of the star in this dimension and pump fresh hydrogen in. You could even pick the best alternate dimension to use so that the laws of physics make for an efficient reactor to function there. If you keep this process balanced, you can preserve the star indefinitely. To us single-dimension-thinking beings, it looks like magic, but to them its just working the way it should work in the known multi-verse. Asimov actually used this idea in a book I read decades ago, pls see "the gods themselves"