Stars, States & the Firmament of Nations: The Birth, Evolution, and Death of Countries
How astrophysics reveals the birth, growth, and collapse of countries in the terrestrial order and the continental constellation.
Stars, and Stellar Performance of Nation States
1. Prologue: From Narlikar to Nations
Last night, my mind was immersed in thoughts of Professor Jayant Narlikar. I had just completed a tribute to this colossus of Indian astrophysics, whose death closed a chapter of profound cosmic enquiry. Simultaneously, I was polishing my humble article on a Pauri of Sukhmani Sahib, which was scheduled for publication at 3 a.m. IST. As always, geopolitics tugged at the edges of my consciousness—fluid borders, fragile unions, collapsing empires. By dawn, these streams converged into the inspiration for this essay, which I now pen for the benefit of my esteemed and informed readers: to draw parallels between the life cycles of stars and the fates of nations.
2. The Cosmic Blueprint
Astrophysicists teach that all stars begin in the gravitational collapse of a nebula. Political communities are no different—they emerge from compressed forces of history, geography, ideology, and rebellion. Sikh scripture captures this primordial unfolding with profound simplicity:
ਕੀਤਾ ਪਸਾਉ ਏਕੋ ਕਵਾਉ ਤਿਸ ਤੇ ਹੋਏ ਲਖ ਦਰੀਆਉ ॥
By one Word, the vastness was stretched out, and from it, a hundred thousand rivers sprang forth.
— Japji Sahib, Pauri 16, SGGS Ang 3
From the Divine Command arose galaxies and nations alike—an eternal expansion shaped by law and energy.
3. Nebular Accretion & the Birth of the United States
The solar system formed from a rotating disc of dust and gas around a proto-star. Through gravitational pull and repeated collisions, planets emerged. Likewise, the Thirteen American Colonies began as scattered settlements, orbiting the distant gravitational authority of the British Crown. By 1776, revolutionary heat ignited a new political star—the United States of America. In that moment, like the Sun stabilising at the centre of its system, a new nation set the architecture of its orbiting states.
This central gravitational mass continued to grow. Texas, originally a province of Mexico, declared itself an independent republic in 1836—much like a planetary body achieving temporary orbital independence—before voting to join the United States in 1845. Alaska, once part of the Russian imperial periphery, was purchased by the United States in 1867 in a calculated act of geopolitical expansion—akin to gravitational capture of a free-floating object into a planetary system. These events reflect how some components of a nation are not born in revolution, but drawn in through ambition, strategy, and opportunity.
4. Binary Stars: When Polities Form in Pairs
Roughly half of all stars exist in binaries—two stars born from the same nebula, locked in gravitational balance. The metaphor extends elegantly to states:
Malaysia & Singapore: A textbook binary. Formed together in 1963, they separated in 1965 due to internal instabilities, yet remain in each other’s gravitational field through trade, culture, and proximity.
Britain & the United States: A long-term binary realignment. Once locked in antagonism, they eventually fell into cooperative orbit through shared language, democratic ideals, and strategic imperatives.
Czech Republic & Slovakia: A peaceful binary split—the "Velvet Divorce" of 1993—where two near-equal masses achieved equilibrium by separating.
A related example is the United Arab Emirates (1971)—not a binary, but a compact cluster of small political entities that coalesced under regional and geopolitical pressure into a stable federation, akin to a tightly bound multi-star system.
Binary star systems highlight that some unions are unsustainable at close range, yet their fates remain entwined over vast distances.
5. Supernova States: Nations Born in Cataclysm
When a massive star exhausts its nuclear fuel, its core collapses and rebounds in a supernova, dispersing matter and creating new possibilities. Political analogues abound:
India and Pakistan (1947): A communal and colonial supernova. The disintegration of British authority triggered two blazing nuclei, and decades later, Bangladesh emerged from Pakistan’s fragmented shell.
Yugoslavia (1990s): Another violent supernova, shattering into multiple states through war, nationalism, and ethnic cleansing.
South Sudan (2011): A nation born of pain and persistence, carved from the long shadow of Sudanese civil war.
5A. Rogue Stars and Divided Orbits: The Cases of Tibet, Taiwan, and Korea
A different set of trajectories can be seen in Tibet, Taiwan, and the Koreas. Tibet’s forced integration into the People’s Republic of China in the 1950s resembles a stellar body collapsing into a larger gravitational mass—its distinct orbit erased by a dominant central force. Taiwan, in contrast, began as a political fragment flung outward in the aftermath of the Chinese Civil War. Over decades, it has condensed into a fully functioning, though diplomatically constrained, quasi-sovereign entity—a potential rogue star that continues to defy Beijing’s gravitational pull. Whether it will remain in stable orbit or be pulled back into China’s sphere remains uncertain, but growing local identity and global engagement suggest a long resistance.
North and South Korea, meanwhile, are twin stars born of geopolitical supernova—World War II and Cold War polarity. Their continued separation reflects opposing ideological cores, yet their eventual convergence—whether through peaceful merger or strategic realignment—remains a possibility in the longer cosmic timeline of nationhood.
6. White Dwarfs & the Soviet Implosion
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar defined a mass limit (1.4 solar masses) beyond which a star cannot sustain equilibrium. Stars below this limit become white dwarfs; those above implode or explode. The Soviet Union exceeded its systemic mass—military burdens, ideological rigidity, economic inefficiency—and collapsed not in a fireball but a quiet fade. Fifteen post-Soviet republics drifted outward like cooling fragments. The political white dwarf of Russia now pulses at the centre, holding some in orbit, others far beyond reach.
An instructive contrast is Nepal, which remained outside the orbit of the British Empire. Despite its geographic proximity and martial tradition, it maintained its independence—partly as a buffer state, partly due to its strategic utility as a supplier of Gurkha soldiers. Like a rogue star, Nepal moved under its own gravitational logic.
The European Union, by comparison, reflects a different stellar analogy: a system of multiple forces—commercial, regulatory, migratory, and monetary—pulling states into varying degrees of union. While the EU and the Eurozone share economic and fiscal harmonisation, NATO provides a strategic-military spine. Yet, this multilateral structure faces centrifugal strain: the United Kingdom’s Brexit in 2016 was a significant political ejection, driven by sovereignty anxieties and nationalist resurgence—an orbiting mass that escaped the system’s gravity, though its economic and strategic fields remain entangled.
The European Union remains a star in formation—accreting mass but always at risk of becoming unstable if cohesion fails to keep pace.
7. Narlikar’s Legacy & Steady-State States
Jayant Narlikar—whom India lost just yesterday—offered an alternative to the Big Bang: a quasi-steady-state cosmology where new matter is born continuously. Some countries have evolved in that quiet rhythm. Canada, moving from Dominion status to full sovereignty between 1931 and 1982, underwent no war, no revolution—just incremental maturity. Bhutan, from absolute monarchy to constitutional democracy over a decade, did the same. These are the slow-burning stars of geopolitics—creating light without noise.
8. Gravitational Ambitions: Greenland, Canada, and Cosmic Intent
When former U.S. President Donald Trump proposed buying Greenland from Denmark in 2019—and frequently referred to Canada as the “51st state”—many dismissed his words as political theatre. But seen through an astrophysical lens, these gestures reveal gravitational ambition: a central star extending its pull toward loosely tethered or unbound masses. Greenland, with its strategic Arctic location, and Canada, economically and culturally aligned with the U.S., resemble celestial bodies whose trajectories occasionally intersect dominant gravitational wells. While these integrations are unlikely in practical terms, the metaphor underscores a pattern: great powers often seek to draw nearby territories into their spheres through political suggestion, economic leverage, or cultural proximity. The cosmos, too, is full of capture attempts—some successful, others deflected by competing forces.
9. Entropy, Hukam & the Impermanence of Empires
ਜੋ ਉਪਜਿਓ ਸੋ ਬਿਨਸਿ ਹੈ ਪਰੋ ਆਜੁ ਕੈ ਕਾਲਿ ॥
Whatever has been born shall perish—if not today, then tomorrow.
— Salok Mahalla 9, SGGS Ang 1429
Even stars decay. Even white dwarfs cool to blackness over aeons. Gurbani recognises this ultimate impermanence. No sovereignty is eternal. Power must be managed, legitimacy must be replenished, and ambition must remain within the bounds of structural stability. Otherwise, entropy overtakes even the brightest star—or the mightiest empire.
10. Conclusion: Lessons Written in the Stars
From nebular unions to binary separations, from supernova states to quiet white dwarfs, the cosmic story of stellar life offers profound insights into the nature of political birth and death. Stars and sovereignties both emerge from turbulence, stabilise in balance, and expire in silence or spectacle.
To understand the physics of the heavens is to gain metaphorical clarity about history on Earth. The wise statesman, like the wise stargazer, knows when to hold together, when to divide—and when to gracefully dissolve. For it is from stellar death that new elements arise, and from fallen empires that new orders may one day be born.
About the Author
Karan Bir Singh Sidhu is a retired Indian Administrative Service officer of the 1984 Punjab cadre. He qualified for the Civil Services Examination with Physics as his optional subject in both the Preliminary and Main stages. A lifelong admirer of scientific thought and rational inquiry, he writes on science, public policy, geostrategy, and history—combining the intellectual curiosity of a college sophomore with the rigour and discipline of an administrator.