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Did a Lost Star Inspire the Oldest Tale of Humanity?
On the origins of human thought, the missing star of the Pleiades, and the dawn of science.
This story was originally published by The Quantum Cat, a regular newsletter covering space and science. Get it for free by signing up today!
Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro’ the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid.
Here about the beach I wander’d, nourishing a youth sublime
With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time;
~ Locksley Hall, Lord Alfred Tennyson
Long ago, long before Tennyson wrote Locksley Hall, or Homer wrote the Iliad, or even before unknown people painted the caves of Lascaux, the Pleiades were born.
Modern science has a story of how this happened. It involves clouds of dust, the force of gravity, and shockwaves from dying stars. The Pleiades were born slowly, in this narrative, through the unhurried gathering of atoms into tenuous clouds, and then rapidly, when the shock of a nearby supernova made those clouds collapse into balls of fire and a cluster of stars.
