Tea at Trianon: “Mirror Image” of the Earth and Sun

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, July 9, 2020

“Mirror Image” of the Earth and Sun

From SciTechDaily:

Space telescopes such as CoRoT, Kepler, and TESS have allowed scientists the discovery of about 4000 extrasolar planets (planets around distant stars) within the past 14 years. Most of these planets are the size of the gas giant planet Neptune, about four times the size of the Earth, and in relatively close orbits around their respective host stars. But scientists have also discovered some exoplanets as small as the Earth that could potentially be rocky. And a handful of these small planets are also at the right distance to their host star to potentially have moderate surface temperatures for the presence of liquid surface water – the essential ingredient for life on Earth.

“The full picture of habitability, however, involves a look at the qualities of the star too,” explains MPS scientist and lead author of the new study Dr. René Heller. So far, almost all exoplanets less than twice the size of Earth that have a potential for clement surface temperatures are in orbit around a red dwarf.

Red dwarf stars are known for their extremely long lifetimes. Life on an exoplanet in orbit around an old red dwarf star could potentially have had twice as much time than life on Earth to form and evolve. But the radiation from a red dwarf star is mostly infrared rather than visible light as we know it. Many red dwarfs are also notorious for emitting high-energy flares and for frying their planets, which would later become habitable, with enhanced stellar luminosities as long as these stars are young. Moreover, their faintness requires any habitable planet to be so close to the star that the stellar gravity starts to deform the planet substantially. The resulting tidal heating in the planet could trigger fatal global volcanism. All things combined, the habitability of planets around red dwarf stars is heavily debated in the scientific community. (Read more.)