Eta Carinae collapse forecast
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The Eta Carinae collapse forecast was a joint estimate issued in 10477 by the Local Survey Office at Eta Carinae of when the primary star, Eta Carinae A, would collapse without intervention. It put the collapse two to four thousand years away. That span covered two fits from the survey branches of Mira Tavari, each published in its own likelihood table. It became the first planning assumption of the Eta Carinae intervention.
A second calculation accompanied the forecast. The Lifting Feasibility Group, a working group of the Survey Office, estimated when the outer layers would become too tightly bound for the proposed lifters: 10740, within a range of 10700 to 10790. That was 1,737 years before the earliest collapse in the joint range.
Survey inputs
The seed complex arrived in 10472. Its data bundle held 47,860 neutrino events and 38 oscillation spectra, and wind samples came from condensations listed in the Ejecta Registry. Earth's observations were not used, since they showed the star as it had been about 7,500 years earlier.
The Survey Office kept two readings of the neutrino signal: one allowed a substantial helium-burning interval, the other required intervention much sooner. Mira Tavari had divided into two working copies before the forecast, each with its own station, staff and budget. The Halden station followed the sooner reading and the Osse station the longer one. Both copies submitted under the same name, so the Survey Office recorded them as Mira Tavari (Halden) and Mira Tavari (Osse).
The two fits
The Forecast Panel, chaired by P. Osei, met for twenty-three sessions in 10477. The Halden table gave a central estimate of 2,800 years, with bounds of 2,000 and 3,500. The Osse table gave 3,300 years, with bounds of 2,600 and 4,000. The joint range of 2,000 to 4,000 years is the span covering both tables, and the report gave no probability to either interval or to the joint range.
At its fourteenth session the panel declined to average the tables, since an average of two fits is a fit that neither branch had submitted. Its minutes also record that the mean of the central values, 3,050 years, was not a forecast and would not appear in the report. The tables were printed in order of receipt, which placed Halden first. The Osse branch asked for the first position because its wind samples were more recent. The panel refused and printed the sample dates as a footnote beneath the Osse table.
Schedule and publication
The schedule adopted after the 10478 pilot set the end of the outer-layer campaign at 10680, twenty years before the lower limit of the lifting range. The calculation did not cover the core, for which the report gave no date. The programme later turned to the burn-decretion torus, which replaced plans for fusion furnaces and photon beams.
The report, sent to Earth in 10477, reached the Earth-side archive in 17977, when the upper bound of the joint range had already passed at Carina. The archive filed it without annotation. The Carina Recovery Authority, formed in 10480, used the lower bound as the earliest date for collapse-response planning. Its reserve depots for evacuating branches were modelled on cocoon harbour colonies, living settlements woven by silk-producing animals.
See also
- Eta Carinae intervention
- Arrival of the Carina seed complex
- Carina charter convention
- Pilot-stream dispute
- Publication of the Carina closing account
This article is a stub.