Joni Mitchell Got It Right

The Butterfly Nebula

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team

We are stardust / We are golden / We are billion year old carbon

There are certain arcane corners of the human pursuit of knowledge—archeology, philosophy, and particle physics come to mind—that strike me as almost perverse. Most of what their acolytes study is, and will forever remain, in human-race terms anyway, untestable and unknowable.

I applaud these advocates of pure speculation, who must be driven by something like curiosity for curiosity’s sake. I can relate to an unquenchable curiosity for understanding how and why things are as they are, but I don’t think I could wrap my head around the certainty that my best and most solid theories are beyond proof, either due to time (prehistory), distance (the cosmos), or the limits of my own intelligence and instruments (theoretical physics).

But I guess all of scientific inquiry could be said to fit this definition. Anti-science types like to mock studies of climate change or evolution, for example, as “only theories.” They don’t understand that science is about testing, not about proving. Everything called a theory has actually been thoroughly and repeatedly tested—back when it was only a wee young hypothesis. It’s only after exhaustive examination and nitpicking that a hypothesis graduates to theoretical status. And I have no idea, Schoolhouse Rock notwithstanding, how a theory becomes a law.

I find myself mulling all this over as I proof a textbook on astronomy. Understand that physics is emphatically not my strong point, so I’m struggling with all the ionized particles and fusion reactions. But I’m also struck by the author’s clear spiritual, philosophical bent, which does get my attention. “Astronomy is about you,” he says.

I admit I’ve never shared this view, but wait a minute. I DO believe that we’re all fundamentally connected, and astrophysics proposes that this is true for reasons that are well beyond my grasp. But basically the theory says that all atoms get endlessly recycled, so there are bits and pieces of us that were once part of the core of an anonymous red-giant star ten billion years ago. And when our own star, the Sun, finally snuffs out, that’s not the end of us either, atomically speaking, anyway.

There are apparently a couple of likely endings to the Sun’s story, but the Carl Sagans of the world would argue that they’re not really endings at all. If the Sun cools slowly as a white dwarf, it’s likely to expel large amounts of its mass in the form of hot stellar winds that would certainly engulf and incinerate the closest planets, including ours. The resulting conflagration would recombine our atoms with those of the Sun.

Or for a more spectacular version of Earth’s closing ceremonies, as a dying white dwarf, the Sun might still be able to generate enough heat to expel gases that get lit up to form a beautiful gaseous shroud called a planetary nebula. And I’m told it is from such turbulent, element-rich, yet seemingly insubstantial stuff that new suns, planets, and solar systems are born.

The Helix Nebula
credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA
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Now I’m big on recycling, so this is great news. Even better than being fertilizer for a newly planted tree, which is my current post-viability plan. But there’s another perk to this Theory of Ultimate Connectedness, and this one’s aesthetic.

There’s some evidence that a white dwarf star could develop a solid core of pure carbon. And we all know what happens when Superman picks up a chunk of carbon and subjects it to Kryptonian pressure and temperature—it becomes a diamond. So if our own white dwarf sun were to be subject to those same forces, it could crystallize, floating forever as a glittering monument to us all.

Even if that doesn’t happen, just take a minute to marvel at these actual planetary nebulae, some of the most exquisitely knock-your-socks-off sights in the universe. That could be us! You and me and Uncle Irving! Better than a tombstone, better than a pyramid, better even than a diamond.

And that’s a theory I can get behind.