A Tranquil Star

Good science is always poetry; some writers are just better at bringing it out than others. In this week’s New Yorker, Primo Levi (in a posthumously translated story) shows us how it’s done.

An observer who, to his misfortune, found himself on October 19th of 1950, at ten o’clock our time, on one of the silent planets of al-Ludra would have seen, “before his very eyes,” as they say, his gentle sun swell, not a little but “a lot,” and would not have been present at the spectacle for long. Within a quarter of an hour he would have been forced to seek useless shelter against the intolerable heat—and this we can affirm independently of any hypothesis concerning the size and shape of this observer, provided that he was constructed, like us, of molecules and atoms—and in half an hour his testimony, and that of all his fellow-beings, would end. Therefore, to conclude this account we must base it on other testimony, that of our earthly instruments, for which the event, in its intrinsic horror, happened in a “very” diluted form and, besides, was slowed down by the long journey through the realm of light that brought us the news. After an hour, the seas and ice (if there were any) of the no longer silent planet boiled up; after three, its rocks melted and its mountains crumbled into valleys in the form of lava. After ten hours, the entire planet was reduced to vapor, along with all the delicate and subtle works that the combined labor of chance and necessity, through innumerable trials and errors, had perhaps created there, and along with all the poets and wise men who had perhaps examined that sky, and had wondered what was the value of so many little lights, and had found no answer. That was the answer.

Some poetic license with the concept of simultaneity, but that’s okay. Read the whole thing. Hat tip to Bob Kirshner, who was the fact-checker’s fact checker. There’s an accompanying article about the translation.

5 Comments

5 thoughts on “A Tranquil Star”

  1. hmm… reminds me of a comment some unnamed person once made in a book about the light from a dude going in to a black hole becoming redder and redder, as if to convey the dude’s embarassment about his stupidity in diving in.

    Will that one make the second edition? 🙂

  2. Beautiful writing; I look forward to reading the entire piece when I catch up on New Yorker issues. The concept reminds me of an Arthur C. Clarke story that goes something like this: An astronaut who’s also a religious man studies the traces of a civilization that had flourished on a scorched planet. It turns out that the star that had flared in night skies over the Middle East, which his Bible tells him heralded the birth of Jesus, is the same star that incinerated this planet and its people.

    That’s the sort of thing that can make you go “wow” in high school. Levi’s piece does it for me now.

  3. Well, my wife Jayne Loader, said, ” I’ve heard that before….”
    And she went and found another way to keeep the idea of the lost planet humming. Personally, I’m down with “..no answer. That was the answer.”

    To wit:

    An unsophisticated alien probe assumes a relative position, holding steady with the U.S.S. Enterprise, and releases a nucleonic particle stream that penetrates the ship’s shields. Focusing solely on Picard, the beam knocks him unconscious. When he wakes up, Picard finds himself in unfamiliar surroundings, being cared for by an attractive woman. The woman, Eline, tells him his name is “Kamin,” and he is her husband of three years. She also tells him that he has been sick and must be experiencing a memory loss. Picard soon learns that he lives on the planet Kataan, where he works as a simple iron weaver. His confusion is compounded when he notices that Eline wears an exact replica of the alien probe as jewelry. She tells Picard he gave her the necklace as a gift.

    On the Enterprise, the crew is unable to revive Picard. Realizing the particle emission that has attached itself to him may control his life, they are afraid to destroy the beam. Only a few moments have passed, but on Kataan, it is already five years later, and Picard is settling into his life. He comes up with a solution to the drought that is destroying the planet, but his advanced ideas are laughed at by leaders of the primitive society. However, his life is not without its pleasures. Picard kisses Eline, an act that causes his pulse to rise back on the Enterprise. Worf insists they must destroy the beam since their Captain is under attack.

    They do so, and Picard’s pulse drops dramatically. On Kataan, where seven more years have passed, he falls to the floor. Acting quickly, the crew restores the beam. Back on Kataan, another 12 years have passed, and Picard has two children. The drought continues to worsen, and Picard’s teenage daughter, Meribor, realizes their planet is doomed. At the same time, Geordi and Data are able to chart the probe’s radiation to Kataan, a planet that was destroyed in a supernova explosion over a thousand years ago.

    On Kataan, the years continue to fly by. Picard continues his quest to get something done about the drought, but his suggestions fall on deaf ears. Later, Eline dies, as does Picard’s best friend Batai, and his first grandchild is born.

    The elapsed time on the Enterprise is still only a few minutes. However, Dr. Crusher becomes alarmed when she realizes that Picard’s metabolic rates match those of an 80-year-old man. In fact, Picard is actually 85 years old on Kataan, where the drought has almost completely destroyed the planet. His children and grandchild convince the unwilling old man to accompany them to a missile launching — an event they are all very excited about. Picard doesn’t understand the point, knowing the missile will do nothing to save the planet or its people. However, as the missile takes off, his family, with the help of Eline’s spirit, explain to Picard that they are launching a probe into the future to find a person who will bring them immortality by telling others about their planet after it is destroyed. Picard realizes the missile is actually the probe that brought him to Kataan over 30 years ago. As this happens, he wakes up aboard the Enterprise and is amazed to learn he has only been unconscious for 25 minutes, in which time he lived a third of a lifetime.

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