Poul Anderson's "We Have Fed Our Sea," later re-entitled The Enemy Stars, was published in 1958. Neutron stars were discovered in 1967. See here. In The Enemy Stars, Maclaren wonders whether a dark star:
"'...doesn't go over to an entirely new stage of degeneracy at the core. One gigantic neutron? Well, maybe that's too fantastic. But consider -'" (p. 35)
We are living in the fantastic universe considered by Maclaren.
I wanted a short, incisive point to end on for this evening so that it is and also a conceptual cross-over point with Larry Niven's Known Space future history series.
Look up at the night sky and good night.
4 comments:
"The universe is not only stranger than we imagine; it is stranger than we -can- imagine."
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Absolutely! And I was interested to realize how some scientists were groping their way to some understanding of what came to be called neutron stars and black holes in 1958.
A foreshadowing of Anderson's "Kyrie."
Ad astra! Sean
By the 1930s it was realized that white dwarf stars would collapse further if they were more massive than about 1.4 solar masses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrasekhar_limit
The neutron star and the black hole were theoretical possibilities before Anderson wrote "The Enemy Stars", but examples were not discovered until later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_star
So Anderson was using then current scientific speculation.
Kaor, Jim!
I agree, of course Anderson would know about all these things in theoretical physics as of the time he was writing THE ENEMY STARS.
Ad astra! Sean
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