wild Abyss

Amy Leach writes

A star will not shine until it has assembled enough self [and] once it has enough self it cannot help but shine; once it starts to shine it cannot help but burn the self up and blow the self away upon the stellar winds.

The star system PSR J0348+0432 consists of a white dwarf and neutron star 830,000 kilometres apart --about twice the distance from the Earth to the Moon. They orbit around each other once every 2 hours and 27 minutes. at a velocity of about 2 million kilometres per hour. The neutron star is about 26 kilometres in diameter and has mass is twice that of the Sun. It spins on its axis about 25 times a second.  Gravity here is over a hundred billion times its value on Earth.

General Relativity predicts, and measurements confirm, that the two stars will spiral in towards each other, emitting gravitational waves.

A white dwarf that is not caught in such a system may continue to exist almost indefinitely – or at least 10³² years. Eventually, it may turn into a black dwarf. None of these exist yet because their precursors would have to be older than the universe.

Image: ESO/L. Calçada

A million bombs all the time

The glory of the sun is violent and uninflected; its features are all flames and its sounds are all explosions. The Sun is so loud, like a million bombs all the time, that fine-spun sounds cannot be heard, like birds wading or figs tumbling or the muttering of mathematicians.

Things That Are by Amy Leach (2012)

But the energy density of life is greater by a factor of 10,000.

Image from Mundus subterraneus by Athanasius Kircher (1665)

The glittering hour

And then one of your little days, like a kingfisher, will fly over the waters, diving own beneath the opaque golden surface of your mind, where swim your earliest, submarine memories. What is caught is a tiny primeval memory that should mean nothing, a throwaway. Yet when pulled out of the water, gripped in a birdbeak, lashing the air and throwing flashing grapefruit-coloured waterdrops from its glittering tiny perishing silver self, this forgotten, underwater matter will suddenly mean the world to you — the long lost glittering hour that means more than age, more than logic, more than lore.

Things That Are by Amy Leach (2012)


Photo by author