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There’s indeed something cosmic about “Eta Carinae: Divinatory Claims,” a vast drawing of billowing red specks that takes part of its name from a distant star system.

Alternatively, a civilization that happens to reside near a massive star such as Betelgeuse or Eta Carinae could park numerous light sails around it, awaiting the powerful explosion that would launch these sails to the speed of light at a minimal cost.

For example, Eta Carinae has a lifetime of a few million years, but forecasting its death to a precision of mere millennia would be as challenging as predicting in which year an old person might die after reaching the average life expectancy.

Very massive stars, like Eta Carinae, might collapse to a black hole and produce powerful beams of radiation that astronomers observe from across the universe as gamma-ray bursts.

Eta Carinae is a star system located around 7,500 light-years away.