The Integral Trees
Larry Niven (perhaps not one of his best, but still nominated for a Nebula and a Hugo)
Thirty-three light years away from us – quite close by astronomical standards – Hubble has found a surprisingly large gas cloud near an exoplanet. What's got the Hubble Space Telescope crowd excited is that the gas cloud is huge – around 50 times the size of the parent star – and seems to be atmosphere evaporating away from …
Larry Niven (perhaps not one of his best, but still nominated for a Nebula and a Hugo)
"Artist's Concept"???
My desktop wallpaper is a real Hubble image, part of one of these.
Yes, well isn't that where all that Facebook inanity was sent? I assume the signal has entered a micro blackhole, wormed it's way to the near vicinity of Gliese 436, exited from a micro white hole and they all just farted in fright. Facebook may be responsible for the first interstellar genocide..
A quick search on "Gliese"[1] reveals it was Bebo[2] and Gliese 581.
Now if they were out when it arrived at 581 and it got left at 436 by the postman......
[1] Yes, there is a search facility here.
[2] A week may well be a long time in politics, but a couple of years is an entire lifetime on the internet.