Sirius in fiction below)—and even if such were eventually discovered, with an estimated age of 230 million years the system is too young to have fostered the development of life or a complex biosphere. Sirius AB is the alpha star of the constellation Canis Major (the great dog, sometimes styled as Orion's hunting dog), whence its cognomen "the dog star". The most commonly used proper name of this star comes through the Latin "Sirius", from the Greek Σείριος ("Seirios", "glowing" or "scorcher"). The ancient Greeks observed that the appearance of Sirius heralded the hot and dry "dog days" of summer, and feared that
The Sirius Mystery that the Dogon probably gained from Europeans to some extent resembles the facts about Sirius, the presumed original Dogon knowledge on the star is very far from the facts. Ridpath concluded that the information that resembles the facts about Sirius was probably ascertained by way of cultural contamination. More recent research suggests that the contaminator was Griaule himself. Astronomer Carl Sagan touched upon the issue in his book "Broca's Brain" (1979), seeing problems in Temple's hypothesis. As an example, Sagan believes that because the Dogon seem to have no knowledge of another planet beyond Saturn which has rings, that their