{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1988", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 1988, "subject": "Infrared star", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "1999-11-30T17:05:48+00:00", "last": "1999-12-01T12:51:08+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at sirius.com" }, "date": "1999-11-30T17:05:48+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Infrared star", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Maybe we should just go ahead and call the Old Sun, aka the dying sun, an\n\"infrared star.\" This because: it ain't natural (must always bear that in\nmind); with a hypothetical IR star you have the output so shifted into red\nthat there is no blue to scatter in the atmosphere, and it stays dark in\nthe day (as in the text); a habitable zone (planetary orbit around a star)\ncan be maintained by IR heat, so there will be liquid water and dim\nillumination, but if I understand it correctly, plant life needs higher\nenergy (like ultraviolet grow-lamps), so the plant life begins to fall off\n. . . and ultimately the entire life network relies upon plants.\n\nIn this model, the \"dying\" of the sun is experienced on Urth as a shifting\nof the solar output down from the blue end and into the IR--that is to say,\nit is \"dying\" in the sense of pigment rather than mortality ( to Charles\nDye, remembering the \"These Are the Jokes\" one about the dyer). Animal\nhabitability is maintained, but plant habitability is shaved away bit by\nbit (which in turn reduces long term animal habitability).\n\nJust a thought.\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "mark millman", "address": "millman at us.ncipher.com" }, "date": "1999-12-01T12:51:08+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Infrared star", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At 05:05 PM 30-11-99 -0700, mantis wrote:\nMaybe we should just go ahead and call the \nOld Sun, aka the dying sun, an \"infrared star.\" \nThis because: it ain't natural (must always bear \nthat in mind); with a hypothetical IR star you \nhave the output so shifted into red that there \nis no blue to scatter in the atmosphere, and it \nstays dark in the day (as in the text); a habitable \nzone (planetary orbit around a star) can be \nmaintained by IR heat, so there will be liquid \nwater and dim illumination, but if I understand \nit correctly, plant life needs higher energy (like \nultraviolet grow-lamps), so the plant life begins \nto fall off . . . and ultimately the entire life net-\nwork relies upon plants.\n\nIn this model, the \"dying\" of the sun is exper-\nienced on Urth as a shifting of the solar output \ndown from the blue end and into the IR--that \nis to say, it is \"dying\" in the sense of pigment \nrather than mortality ( to Charles Dye, \nremembering the \"These Are the Jokes\" one \nabout the dyer). Animal habitability is main-\ntained, but plant habitability is shaved away bit \nby bit (which in turn reduces long term animal \nhabitability).\n\nJust a thought." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Clever thought, mantis, but I can't swallow that idea. Master Ash \ntells us that ice covers the entire globe in his time, which implies\na cooling process. Hallvard and Typhon confirm this. If loss of \nplant life affected Urth's albedo so that more solar radiation were \nreflected, cooling might result, but a) such a change in albedo \nthrough loss of plant life seems unlikely, and b) even if there were \nsome such change, so extreme an effect seems beyond the range \nof possibility. " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And at 05:37 PM 30-11-99 -0500, Carlton Greene wrote:\nOne last thought: Has anybody questioned why \na White Fountain would stop a black hole? One \ncannot (at least as we understand it now) \"fill up\" \na black hole by bringing another star (or quasar) \ninto the picture. So does this mean that the White \nFountain is merely outshining the black hole while \nthe hole slowly feeds off it? Is the Messiah's sal-\nvation merely a temporary fix (albeit a long one)? \nThat seems very unsatisfying from an allegorical\nstandpoint. Perhaps the lesson is that Man is not \ntruly redeemed, merely on probation." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Regrettably, it seems that Wolfe was using science obsolete even at\nthe time of his writing when he came up with the White Fountain\nidea. (This is the part of UotNS I perhaps like least.) There had \nbeen a theory that the energy absorbed by black holes was some-\nhow shunted into other dimensions or universes via what came to\nbe known as wormholes, but the \"missing\" energy was adequately \naccounted for when the polar X-ray jets that black holes emit were \ndiscovered. We know that the White Fountain was meant to be \nthe output of a black hole from another universe from Severian's\nexperiences in Yesod--I believe (though I'm not sure, and I don't \nhave the book here to check) that Apheta tells him how the White\nFountain is to work. \n\nNow we know that Wolfe likes, or says he likes, generally-discred-\nited scientific theories, such as Lamarckism. In \"Silhouette\", he even\nhas Johann adhere to an older (and, in the story's context, obsolete)\nunderstanding of relativistic time dilation (Johann believes in the Ein-\nsteinian model, in which the time difference can never be made up,\nwhere other characters believe that by following the exact same path\nback that was taken out, the time difference can be erased). So in\nthis case, he may again be indulging his penchant for old science. \nBut I rather think that he chose to use the Fountain for its symbolism, \nand let science go hang.\n\nI'm not, now that I think about it, bothered by the thought that the \nsolution is only \"temporary\"; we know that Briah, or its current \ncycle, will come to an end in the Grand Gnab, and the Green Men, \nand thus the Hieros, know how to walk the corridors of time. I \nthink that the idea is more that the premature end of life on Urth is \nan evil to be avoided, rather than that any end is bad. After all, to \nevery thing there is a season, etc. And besides, the symbolic value of\nsaving the home of humanity must be weighty to the Hierodules.\n\nMark Millman" } ] } ] }