Taln's Scar. Something more than just a constellation?

[realmatist]

I like to think that it has something to do with Odium. The odds that there are a WHOLE bunch of stars that are ALL red is pretty much astronomical (no pun intended). Sure, that might happen, but it would be just here and there, not a whole swath of the sky. Perhaps Odium is shaping the cosmere somehow. Two possibilities I see are that he is altering the stars' heat/radiation/fusion, or possibly he is moving a large section of space away from Roshar at an incredibly fast speed (hence the redshifting). Whatever it is, it's really cool and there's at least a 50/50 chance that it is important.

 

Unrelated: in several video games (battlefront II included), whenever I capture a planet it turns red. Idk if that's relevant or not.

[Senor Feesh]

There's also the possibility that it's caused by atmospheric conditions - rather than actual red stars, there's something in that part of the atmosphere filtering the light from them. Though it's unlikely that you'd see no effect then during the day... perhaps some kind of nebula in the interposing space?

[Isomere]

I think the fact that Taln's Scar is red hints that the local galaxy is much older than our Milky Way. Aging selects for red stars in three ways:

 

• As stars get older they have various stages of color. Most stars seem to eventually end up turning red, which correlates to the surface temperature dropping.
• Big stars die faster than little stars. Yellow, white and blue stars burn hot, but die in billions of years while small Red Dwarves live for trillions.
• Red Dwarves get brighter over time.

So if we waited long enough even our milky way (which is about 75% Red Dwarves) could end up creating a red swath across the sky as the big stars die and the red stars grow brighter. 

Edited May 31, 2013 by Isomere