story identification - Tiny lifeforms on planetoid that live at accelerated time rate

A book I once owned and read back in late-80's or early-90's that I have not been able to identify title & author for: It was a SF story concerning tiny native lifeforms, living on either a planetoid or possibly a dead/neutron star, that evolve at a seemingly accelerated time rate. Most of their story is told in the few days of observation (from orbit) by a human expedition to the planet, during which time-frame the race below progresses from stone-age tech level to being more advanced than the human observers, and eventually flying up to meet the humans in small advanced craft powered by micro-singularities... one of which accidentally 'disintegrates' the tip of a human scientist's nose in the process.

Answer

Possibly Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward. To quote Wikipedia:

In the story, Dragon's Egg is a neutron star with a surface gravity 67 billion times that of Earth, and inhabited by cheela, intelligent creatures the size of a sesame seed who live, think and develop a million times faster than humans. Most of the novel, from May to June 2050, chronicles the cheela civilization beginning with its discovery of agriculture to advanced technology and its first face-to-face contact with humans, who are observing the hyper-rapid evolution of the cheela civilization from orbit around Dragon's Egg.

I haven't found any references to disintegrating the nose, but when the two cultures meet, the Cheela gravitic craft technology does result in a bloody nose for one of the human ambassadors due to the nose being accelerated to 3Gs versus 1G for the body.

Comments

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