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I'm writing a story about potential off-world colonization in the dawn of interstellar commerce, and despite such a plot necessitating some degree of FTL travel I'd like to keep the rest of my science at least relatively plausible and somewhat credible. So my question is this:

Assuming the existence of a septenary star system where six smaller main sequence stars maintain hierarchal orbits around a more massive Wolf-Rayet star, could an Earth-like planet capable of sustaining life develop anywhere in this system and if so, where would the most likely habitable zone be?

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  • $\begingroup$ These stars are extremely short lived (only a few 100,000 years), and their presence near a nice ordinary star like the sun would probably cause extreme havoc to a life bearing planet. You certainly don't need to assume any gravitational binding between the individual systems and the WR, it could just be "coming trough" (it would barely "move" during its lifetime). If you have FTL, you are already totally implausible on the science scale, so unless the WR is a necessary plot device (Is it perceived as a god by the primitives?) I really don't see it buying you any "cred". $\endgroup$
    – CuriousOne
    Commented Jun 14, 2016 at 19:00
  • $\begingroup$ Then could a less massive star sustain the orbits of six main sequence stars? Or would it be better to make the central mass a black hole instead of a large star? $\endgroup$
    – Z.Schroeder
    Commented Jun 14, 2016 at 21:15
  • $\begingroup$ Do you know about stable n-body choreographies? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-body_choreography I would say that if you wanted to do something really, really far out there that may actually be technologically feasible for a super- or hyper-civilization, rearranging stars in a cluster into a long term stable configuration may just be it. I would also agree that the dynamics of a series of stars moving at very high velocity around a supermassive black hole makes for quite an interesting background for a story. Did you see youtube.com/watch?v=EvuV3GdVaY4? $\endgroup$
    – CuriousOne
    Commented Jun 14, 2016 at 22:18
  • $\begingroup$ I would guestimate that technically one could imagine stable choreography configurations with planetary systems with 0.1 ly distance between the stars, which removes the FTL requirement if you can stretch the plot's timeline to the decade range. That would also gel well with the first necessity for interstellar civilization: longevity. Travel times of 100+ years should be manageable within the biological, social, political and economic limits of the involved civilizations. There is also the light-speed travel per "telegraph", just send a cyber-copy of yourself to another star system. $\endgroup$
    – CuriousOne
    Commented Jun 14, 2016 at 22:24

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