Black Hole Sun The Urth list — 4 messages, 4 voices, 30 Nov 1999 https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1989 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. ============================================================================== Jim Henley — 30 Nov 1999, 20:06 > -----Original Message----- > From: urth-errors at lists.best.com [mailto:urth-errors at lists.best.com]On > Behalf Of Greene, Carlton > > > Personally, I prefer the theory that Erebus and Abaia took up > shop on Urth > in part because of an absence of harmful solar radiation that made the > planet a comfortable dwelling place. I tend to think of them as home grown - Abaia as maybe the first giant (or maybe just the guy who was _meaner_ than the first giant, if you get my drift), and I'm really taken with the idea that Erebus is a "chem"/giant robot/machine intelligence now. He might then be a leftover from first-empire days. Why is he in Antarctica? Why, so the chips don't overheat of course! Scylla and Arioch? Oh who cares. Let's face it - they just don't have the Q Rating the other two do. It was a bad career move on Arioch's part to leave Moorcock - he was a star there. > One last thought: Has anybody questioned why a White Fountain > would stop a black hole? I can see it. A "white fountain" is a wormhole, which is (or was, I'm hardly current) conceived of as the opposite of a black hole. On the theory that black holes are drains into other universes and white holes are drains _from_ other universes, one could imagine some physical interaction whereby the white fountain adds more stuff than the black hole takes away. (At first I thought they might just "cancel out," but that wouldn't be enough because the sun needs rebuilding, not just an end to its consumption.) Best, Jim ****************************************** "What fades in time Costello/ will hurt much more" Bacharach, "My Thief" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Daniel Fusch — 01 Dec 1999, 06:13 follows, by subject match Jim Henley Hello! Jim said... (snip) "Scylla and Arioch? Oh who cares. Let's face it - they just don't have the Q Rating the other two do. It was a bad career move on Arioch's part to leave Moorcock - he was a star there." That's pretty funny. I suppose we could also say that Scylla should have stuck with the Odyssey! I like the north/west/east/south hypothesis that's up in the air, by the way.... (snip) "On the theory that black holes are drains into other universes and white holes are drains _from_ other universes, one could imagine some physical interaction whereby the white fountain adds more stuff than the black hole takes away. (At first I thought they might just "cancel out," but that wouldn't be enough because the sun needs rebuilding, not just an end to its consumption.)" This is how I've always pictured it, too. However, this does raise the question--if the White Fountain adds more than the black hole can take, then won't that build up, causing the New Sun to grow constantly brighter at a steadily increasing rate? That doesn't sound very hospitable! Hmmm...any thoughts on how this is supposed to work? (Physics isn't my strong point, I fear.) One final conjecture: when reading TBOTNS, I always received the impression that the giants/entities/whatever were immeasurably ancient (of course, all of Urth is immeasurably ancient). They had an "eternal" feel to them. Certainly, there is never any mention in the Book of how these entities arrived. Granted, at the moment, I have no textual evidence to give you, but here's a speculation: what if Abaia & Co. are presumed to be already living in the sea (or on Mt. Erebus, if that is taken as Erebus' physical throne) in our own age--simply inactive (because they are young, or because they are waiting, or for some other reason). Only a hypothesis--but perhaps an interesting one. Well, that's all I have for now. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Michael Straight — 01 Dec 1999, 08:30 follows, by subject match Daniel Fusch > On Tue, 30 Nov 1999, Greene, Carlton wrote: > One last thought: Has anybody questioned why a White Fountain would stop a > black hole? One cannot (at least as we understand it now) "fill up" a black > hole by bringing another star (or quasar) into the picture. So does this > mean that the White Fountain is merely outshining the black hole while the > hole slowly feeds off it? Is the Messiah's salvation merely a temporary fix > (albeit a long one)? That seems very unsatisfying from an allegorical > standpoint. Perhaps the lesson is that Man is not truly redeemed, merely on > probation. On the other hand, it doesn't make much sense to assume the white hole is an eternal solution to entropy. All the stars are gonna die eventually (unless this is a gnab gib universe). The white hole prevents the premature end of the sun. -Rostrum ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Greene, Carlton — 01 Dec 1999, 09:23 follows, by subject match Michael Straight > I wrote: > One last thought: Has anybody questioned why a White Fountain would stop a > black hole? One cannot (at least as we understand it now) "fill up" a > black > hole by bringing another star (or quasar) into the picture. So does this > mean that the White Fountain is merely outshining the black hole while the > hole slowly feeds off it? Is the Messiah's salvation merely a temporary > fix > (albeit a long one)? That seems very unsatisfying from an allegorical > standpoint. Perhaps the lesson is that Man is not truly redeemed, merely > on > probation. Rostrum wrote: <> Certainly the White Fountain will not prevent the eventual fizzle or re-crunch of the universe. What disturbed me is the notion that the White Fountain may not "root out" the worm gnawing at the heart of the Old Sun. It just gives the worm more to gnaw on -- "chew all you want -- we'll make more!" From an allegorical standpoint, it takes away much of the punch of the New Sun burning away the old corruption, etc. Carlton ------------------------------------------------------------------------------