Tea at Trianon: The Curious Case of Proxima C

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

Saturday, April 4, 2020

The Curious Case of Proxima C

From Scientific American:

Proxima Centauri, the star closest to our sun, may harbor a second planet—still. “Still,” because astronomers first announced this candidate world in April 2019, based on observations and analyses that had yet to be published or peer-reviewed. Now more thoroughly vetted and bolstered by additional data, the study reporting the potential discovery appears today in the journal Science Advances. Yet certainty is elusive—the planet could still prove to be a mirage.

“Since the very first time we saw this [potential planetary] signal, we tried to be its worst enemies,” says Fabio Del Sordo, an astronomer at the University of Crete in Greece, who spearheaded the study, along with his colleague Mario Damasso of the Astrophysical Observatory of Turin in Italy. “We tried different tools to prove ourselves wrong, but we failed. However, we have to keep the doors open to all possible doubt and skepticism.” (Read more.)