Tea at Trianon: A Diamond the Size of the Earth?

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, June 29, 2023

A Diamond the Size of the Earth?

What? From Gagadget:

The white dwarf is located 104 light years from our planet. The star is believed to have been around for 4.2 billion years, but astronomers can't establish its exact age because the core is in the process of crystallisation. A star loses its outer shell during its transformation into a white dwarf. Its mass decreases and when it runs out of fuel, the star may turn into a black hole. During the crystallisation process, the temperature drops due to a lack of additional energy sources. Astronomers speculate that such stars will eventually become black dwarfs with a diamond structure. The process is thought to take over 13.8 billion years, so it's likely that no such objects yet exist in the Universe. But this is the fate of almost all the stars in the Milky Way, including our Sun. (Read more.)