OT: Ceres more interesting than previously thought

[ToddT]

Someone mentiond story referrencing tranparent shup hulls, the only one i can think of was "ringworld Engineers" by Larry Niven.

It was a short story - probably only 1000 or 2000 words. If I remember rightly some guy was sent to investigate a mysterious and deadly stellar phenomonomnom of some sort, and was given a ship to do it in.

I've never read any novels by Niven so I doubt it's him, although if he's ever featured in any short-stroy anthologies I might have stumbled across him without realisng it. I'll take a look at my bookshelf later.
*** far as short stories go I've read a lot of Asimov, a fair bit of Bradbury (Illustrated Man was his, wasn't it?) and various others. From memory I have "The Golden Apples of the Sun" on my bookcase. Was that by one author or a collection of people?

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Hmm golden Apples not sure i herad of it, deffinitley haven't read it.
ok as for Ringworld Engineers< before i posted these i went and dug out the book from storage, as i suspecte it was the Sequal to Ringworld, both are noveels by Larry Niven. Ring world is copyrighted in 1970, the copy i have was printed in December 1981. Ringworld Engineers was copyrighted in 1980 and the copy I have of that is May 1983, seventh printing, there is the nineteenth.
I have around 450 to 500 books on scifi and i read who knows how mny more, i even have the book Tin Woodman which the Episode Tin Man in STNG is based on.

As for threads topoic i don't remeber all the numbers but there have been Gamma ray bursts detected that where so powerful if they had been aimed in our direction from a few hundred lightyears out, would have vaporized the side of the earth facing it.