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Worldbuilding

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  • $\begingroup$ You couldn't distinguish stars from galaxies with the naked eye, and a more homogeneous distribution of stars wouldn't necessarily preclude you being in some other place in our universe - the distribution might not fit any place we know of/can think of, but that's difficult to judge for a layman. And even the most stunning arrangement (eg. rectilinear) might be explained by the existence of type 3 civilizations creating artificial structures of multiple stars, eg. for travel (a 100x100x100 grid of stars might be a comfortable "generation ship")... $\endgroup$
    – sh4dow
    Commented Mar 26 at 14:05
  • $\begingroup$ @sh4dow, Andromeda has an apparent brightness of 3.4, so it's well within naked eye visibility. The Large Magellanic Cloud is even brighter, and is clearly not a star. Although notable homogeny could be accomplished through artificial means, it would clearly violate most people's intuition. $\endgroup$
    – Robert Rapplean
    Commented Mar 26 at 19:44
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    $\begingroup$ I kinda like the idea of giant black tendrils blocking out stars. They could be subtle at first, especially if not too wide, and if they move slowly. $\endgroup$
    – LarsH
    Commented Mar 26 at 20:45
  • $\begingroup$ @RobertRapplean not every galaxy necessarily has satellite galaxies, and whether you are located in an isolated galaxy or some more unusual collection of stars (perhaps the remains of a galactic collision, with the original galaxies indistinguishable from stars?), not seeing any non pointlike object doesn't immediately preclude being in this reality. Also, while there is certainly some amount of homogeneity that effectively precludes a natural (or at least random) origin, I think most people would have difficulty making remotely accurate judgements about that (unless you literally have a grid) $\endgroup$
    – sh4dow
    Commented Mar 27 at 23:40
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    $\begingroup$ @sh4dow, I think we'd have to generate images to actually test this. My supposition is that there's an uncanny valley to the pattern of stars in the sky, where an artificial arrangement looks unaccountably wrong. If you were to adjust physics so that the stars arranged themselves similarly to how atomic nuclii spaced themselves via electromagnetic repulsion in a non-crystaline structure, I think people would notice. $\endgroup$
    – Robert Rapplean
    Commented Mar 29 at 19:02