“The double-sun system was relatively poor in comets; there were only a hundred billion of them.”

— Iain Banks , Culture series

Source: Culture series, Excession (1996), Chapter 5 “Kiss the Blade” section I (p. 133).

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Iain Banks 139

Scottish writer 1954–2013

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“Comets are flying around the solar system. As they near the sun, they develop a tail as material is blown off by the solar wind. Most astronomers agree that comets cannot be more than 10,000 years old. They would have completely disappeared by now. Some scientists have recognized this as a serious problem for the theory that the earth is billions of years old, so they have proposed a new theory that new comets are constantly being introduced into the solar system to replace the old ones that burn out. They say they are coming from the “Oort Cloud.” No one has ever seen this Oort cloud, Oort never saw the Oort cloud! There is NO scientific evidence for its existence, but in their mind, this answers the serious problem the short lives of comets creates. There is a simpler answer, of course: the universe is NOT billions of years old!”

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“Whenever I saw the sun, I reminded myself that I was looking at a. One of over a hundred billion in our galaxy. A galaxy that was just one of billions of other galaxies in the observable universe. This helped me keep things in perspective.”

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“The same Being that fashioned the insect, whose existence is only discerned by a microscope, and gave that invisible speck a system of ducts and other organs to perform its vital functions, created the enormous mass of the planet thirteen hundred times larger than our earth, and launched it in its course round the sun, and the comet, wheeling with a velocity that would carry it round our globe in less than two minutes of time, and yet revolving through so prodigious a space that it takes near six centuries to encircle the sun!”

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868) English barrister, politician, and Lord Chancellor of Great Britain

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“Man's skull represents the same infinity for the movement of conceptions. It is equal to the universe, for in it is contained all that sees in it. Likewise the sun and whole starry sky of comets and the sun pass in it and shine and move as in nature... Is not the whole universe that strange skull in which meteors, suns, comets and planets rush endlessly?”

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“The double-sun system was relatively poor in comets; there were only a hundred billion of them.”

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Iain Banks 139

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