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There's got to be some sort of remote sensing way to tell what it's made of. Mass spectroscopy maybe? Or X-ray scintillation?


Kinda feel like you just keep digging at that site until you find the second oldest bottle of wine, and then just open and analyze that one.

(Tongue in cheek, but only partially)


I feel like they could also probably take a miniscule sample (like a cubic mm) without upsetting things. That should be enough to do all kinds of analysis.


The means by which the wine would be removed would introduce contaminants.

These contaminants might ruin the wine for whatever purpose they are saving it for.


Funny that we can know what's the center of the Sun made of, but who knows what is inside that bottle! :)


Unlike a bottle of wine, the sun is an electromagnetic energy source. Without accessing the wine its chemical composition is unknown. Consider medical diagnostics like MRIs and CT scans ... they detect density and shape, but for a biopsy you need tissue.


God this is peak HN


Are we even sure the sun isn't filled with a "mix of various herbs"?


Even if you allow "mix" to mean "pressure cook under 250 billion atmospheres at 15 million Kelvin", herbs contains too much carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorus to make a G-class star that tastes like our sun. So, yes.




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