Oh boy, just 30,000 more years! Seriously, though, I hope that in 30,000 years we're 1) still around and 2) able to go check this out.While this is the closest flyby detected so far, Dr Mamajek thinks it's not uncommon for alien stars to buzz the Sun. He says a star probably passes through the Oort Cloud every 100,000 years, or so.
Eh. It's a white guy's take on Saudi Aramco bedouins circa '64. You will not be at all surprised that the white guy is the messiah of prophecy destined to lead those beknighted but noble brown people out of savagery, nor that he immediately exceeds their skills at their native crafts while also charming their women (all one of them). The bad guys, on the other hand, are straight out of the Dutch East India Company, with the Catholic Church circa Pope Pious IX thrown in for good measure. I fucking hated Dune.
I wish I could get through dune, holy crap that book is dull. And there's like 40 of them.
In all fairness, I thought Dune was... okay. I finished it and was eager to start the second one because it looked like Herbert was building up an interesting world. Then I started Dune Messiah and by halfway through the book I wasn't finding a whole lot that was interesting anymore.
Don't let kb's dislike prevent you from reading it. It's well worth reading, IMO.
Problem being red dwarfs aren't particularly bright. Proxima Centauri is a couple points brighter than Pluto and a couple points dimmer than Neptune. Having tried to hunt both of those with a 10" Dobsonian in the high desert under ideal conditions and meeting with failure, I can tell you that things with a magnitude in the positive double digits are... underwhelming for observation by non-astronomers.
