After posting
Neutron Star last night, I read in
The Mind's I, edited by Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett, that, on the surface of a neutron star, nuclear particles combine and recombine so rapidly that, theoretically, they might form minute self-replicators whose lives would pass in an eye-blink with civilizations rising and falling in a few Earth days. This reminded me that I should have referred to the neutron star inhabitants in Poul Anderson's
The Avatar:
The Avatar VI: the jumps, 1-4
The neutron star is in jump 4.
I had also discussed the black star in The Enemy Stars in Neutrons.
In The Avatar, Anderson acknowledges Frank Drake as the originator of the idea of life on pulsars/neutron stars.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And I will look up Jump 4 in THE AVATAR.
And there's also the equally mind blowing flaming plasma beings we see in "Kyrie."
Ad astra Sean
See "Dragon's Egg" by Robert L. Forward.
He uses exactly that idea in the novel. A neutron star passes close enough to the solar system for an STL human expedition can get to it and communicate with such a civilization.
Kaor, Jim!
Then I need to look up the works of Robert Forward.
I have wished Barnard's Star and Alpha Centauri were "only" two light years from Sol--because even with only our current tech humans could travel to these stars.
Ad astra! Sean
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