In the distant future, humanity has spread across the galaxy. And the more time passes, the more obviously female astronomers seem to be almost always right. Why?

They call it the curse. In the 23rd century, humanity colonised the stars. We'd been dreaming of it for centuries, and when our first generation ships left the solar system, Earth itself seemed to heave a collective sigh of relief. The nearby stars were colonised first, of course. Then, as humanity's technology improved, we pushed further afield. And that was when the trouble started. It was a woman called Dr Kamilah Patel who first discovered what we now call 'the curse'. She was on a fleet of ships that we sent to the furthest reaches of the galaxy, searching for habitable planets to settle and mine for resources. Millions of people were on those ships - and they thought they would find paradise. Of course, they didn't. What they found was a planet full of signs that a civilisation had flourished there once, but that it had been utterly destroyed by some cataclysmic event. And then, when they'd finished their survey of the planet, they'd vanished. We think that they were wiped out when their fleet ran into an asteroid. We never found any wreckage, and it's possible that they drifted into intergalactic space, destined to roam the void for all eternity. But they'd left something behind. A log from Dr Patel, which had been transmitted back to earth before they'd gone silent. 'Every day,' she wrote, 'I become more convinced that the stars are female.' We didn't know what to make of this at the time. She'd mentioned it in other logs, too, but we'd put it down to stress and boredom. Being in a metal box for decades, with no way to turn back, was a terrible psychological strain on those early pioneers. We'd lost several ships to riots, mutinies, murder and other crimes committed by people who just couldn't cope. But Dr Patel wasn't like that. She was one of the voices of reason on her ship, a calm, collected woman who'd worked tirelessly to keep her crew safe. So why had she started writing about the gender of the stars? The next time we encountered the curse was a few decades later. We were exploring a planet in the outer reaches of the Andromeda galaxy when we discovered the remains of an alien city. It was a beautiful place. The buildings were intricately carved, the streets were paved with glittering silver stone, and a fast river ran through the centre of the city. We were awestruck by what we'd found, and spent several months exploring the ruins and trying to learn more about the creatures who'd lived there. A woman called Dr Natalia Velasquez was the head of the archaeological team attached to the colony ship. She was a world expert on deciphering alien languages, and she was the first to notice the strange carvings on the city walls. They depicted a woman, sitting on a throne and surrounded by stars. It was only when they'd cracked the code of the alien language that they discovered the truth. The carvings were of a goddess - a goddess of the stars. The aliens had worshipped her, and believed that she had sent them a sign when their star began to die. They'd built a generation ship to take them to a new home, under her protection. But the ship had never arrived. Over the next few centuries, we discovered more ruins like these ones. Every time, the inhabitants of the planet had believed in a goddess of the stars. And every time, their civilisation had been wiped out when their sun had gone supernova, or their planet had been struck by an asteroid. We were starting to suspect a pattern. All of these suns had looked completely stable when we'd observed them. There was no reason why they should have exploded. But we didn't think much of it. After all, the universe is a big and unpredictable place. Stars and planets can be destroyed by all sorts of factors. We couldn't see any reason why our sun would be any different. It was a woman called Professor Elara Vonn who first realised exactly what was happening. She was an astronomer, working in a telescope array on one of our outer colonies. She'd always been fascinated by the curse, and she'd made it her job to find out more about it. One night, she was looking at a star when she felt a sudden sense of certainty. The star was going to explode. She told her bosses, but they didn't believe her. There's no reason why that star should have been unstable. It had been studied for decades, and every indication was that it would last for tens of thousands of years. But Professor Vonn was adamant. She spent all of her spare time pleading with them to evacuate the colonies in the star's orbit. She was so persistent that she was eventually fired. And then, two years later, the star went supernova. The colonies were destroyed, and tens of thousands of people died. We were horrified. If only we'd listened to Professor Vonn, we'd have been able to save them. But how had she known? What had made her so certain? She said she'd just had a feeling. But one of her colleagues came forward and said that she'd been acting strangely for some time before she'd made her prediction. Every time she looked at a star map, she'd smile and say that 'she was happy'. It was then that we discovered that Professor Vonn was a member of a cult. They called themselves the Stellaluna, and they worshiped the star goddess. They believed that she was guiding them, showing them which stars were stable and which were not. They'd been right every time. And they'd been warning us about the dangers of the stars for years. We tried to arrest them, but they'd gone underground. We couldn't find any of them, except for Professor Vonn. And when we'd put her in prison and interrogated her, we discovered the horrifying truth. The curse wasn't a curse at all. It was a blessing. The Stellaluna had been given a gift - the gift of sight. And they were using it to protect us, to save us from the dangers of space. They'd warned us which planets were stable, which suns would explode, and where we would find asteroid fields. They'd saved countless lives. And in return, we'd persecuted them. We let Professor Vonn out of prison, and promised to leave the Stellaluna alone. We offered them a place at our table, and asked them to help us explore the galaxy. They refused. They said that we wouldn't be able to understand the way they looked at the stars, and they were right. We couldn't. But we'd learned our lesson. And from that day on, we gave the Stellaluna the respect they deserved. Because in a vast and terrifying universe, we needed all the help we could get.

In the distant future, humanity has spread across the galaxy. And the more time passes, the more obviously female astronomers seem to be almost always right. Why?

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