Tea at Trianon: Inside the Stars

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

Sunday, October 11, 2020

Inside the Stars

From Phys.org:

There has been plenty of speculation about alien life. Much of it has centered on life that isn't carbon-based. Could Titan have nitrogen-based life, where methane replaces the role of water? Could silicon serve as the fundamental element? Would organisms depend on sand the way plants on Earth depend on carbon-rich soil? Could organic life survive in the cold depths of space, perhaps on icy comets in the Oort cloud?

But there are some, often writers of science fiction, who have explored even wilder ideas for life. In the 1980s, author Robert L. Forward proposed a form of life-based not on atoms, but atomic nuclei. In "Dragon's Egg," he described a species known as the cheela, who lived on the surface of a neutron star. Because nuclear interactions occur at a much faster rate than atomic chemistry, the cheela civilization moves from simple tools to advanced technology in the span of a month.

While it makes for a great tale, the idea doesn't help much in searching for life. In the novel, the cheela are only discovered when humans visit their neutron star. Cheela civilization couldn't be detected from light-years away. There is also a great deal of hand waving done by Forward to advance the story. While nuclear chemistry can be complicated, we don't know that it could give rise to some DNA-like structure that could allow for evolution.

Recently, however, a team looked at this idea in more detail. Their paper is wild and speculative, but it is an interesting read. Rather than relying on pure nuclear interactions to play the role of DNA, the team proposes cosmic strings and magnetic monopoles. Cosmic strings are hypothetical fissures that might have formed when the early universe underwent a phase transition during the creation of matter. Magnetic monopoles are particles that have only one magnetic pole (north or south) rather than all known magnetic particles that have both. While there is no evidence that either of these exists, theoretical work suggests they might.

In the paper, the team proposes that monopoles would cluster along cosmic strings, and the gravity of stars could capture these strings. Given the turbulent motion of nuclei within the cores of stars, these beaded strings could entangle so that they encode and replicate information. And if all that is true, then maybe it could be the seed for nuclear life. (Read more.)