XPost: alt.history.ancient-egypt, alt.paranormal.reincarnation,    
   lt.culture.egyptian   
   XPost: soc.culture.egyptian   
   From: Bill.Gates@MSN.com   
      
   Apparently on date 4 Oct 2004 15:12:40 -0700, rewindme@lunarmagazine.com   
   (Aquatic DubMonkey) said:   
      
   >is given seven choices as to where it is to incarnate for further   
   >learning. One of the choices was to incarnate as an intelligent form   
   >of life in the Sirius system.   
   >   
   >  Does anybody know who this women is,  and/or where I can find out   
   >more about this??? Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.   
      
   Had the ancient Egyptians possessed an understanding of stars being remote suns   
   capable of supporting planets and intelligent life just like our own, these   
   concepts would have been developed and incorporated into their written language   
   (which I gather lacks the terms necessary to describe this concept in any but a   
   sort of vague, open to interpretation way that suggests it wasn't important   
   enough to be plainly expressed or understood.)   
      
   It's not a difficult or secret piece of information, the only reason to imagine   
   the stars are not suns like our own, is because you think they are something   
   else, or just have no idea what they are. Once you think that each star is a   
   sun in its own right, adding planets and populating them with intelligent   
   beings is almost a natural progression. Combine that with a belief in   
   reincarnation and it's logical enough that you might be reincarnated on one of   
   these other worlds instead. Then, which would be best? Naturally, the one which   
   presents greater challenges and benefits compared to the last one.   
      
   This is not how ancient Egyptians viewed the world AFAIK but sounds much more   
   like a far eastern perspective. Still, who's to know?   
      
      
      
   As per the actual belief, Sirius is a binary star, with Sirius B about the same   
   mass of our Sun and Sirius A about double. They co-orbit around a central spot   
   with Sirius A following a path 10 AUs out and Sirius B 20 AUs, facing each   
   other with a common period (this is a typical description of binaries. An AU is   
   the distance our planet is from our sun.)   
      
   Any planets orbiting these stars would be grossly irregular and experience vast   
   changes in temperature, the remotely stable orbits are either too close to one   
   or other star to avoid having a molten rock surface, or too far away from   
   either to avoid being frozen solid much like Pluto, and probably experience   
   both alternating (life-extinguishing) periods in other orbits.   
      
   Added to this less than convenient location, is the fact that a white dwarf is   
   a star which is one step away from a black hole and emits little optical light   
   but shedloads of X rays so tends to sterilise carbon-based lifeforms on planets   
   (or spaceships) daring to come anywhere near it.   
      
   To cut to the chase, it's possible to overcome these issues with extremely   
   unlikely orbits and special use of technology and similar, but you really   
   wouldn't go looking for life on a planet of this sort, any more than you might   
   search for interesting types of mouse in the molten lava flow of an active   
   volcano (where conditions are actually a lot more favourable than some   
   solutions around Sirius). Put me down on this one as "you cannot be Sirius".   
      
   So I'd guess the belief was reasonable in ancient times but a bit implausible   
   with the scientific development of knowledge about the stars, much as Atlantis   
   made sense before it was possible to show that there had not been a large   
   sinking continent in the ocean for a minimum of hundreds of millions of years.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)