{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1994",
    "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": 1994,
    "subject": "Maybe it's not a black hole",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "1999-12-01T13:31:50+00:00",
    "last": "1999-12-01T14:39:12+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0557@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Straight",
        "address": "straight at email.unc.edu"
      },
      "date": "1999-12-01T13:31:50+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Maybe it's not a black hole",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "On Wed, 1 Dec 1999, mark millman wrote:\nRegrettably, 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.  "
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Does Apheta or anyone else use the words \"black hole\" to describe the\nother end of the White Fountain or the thing eating away at the sun?\n\nPerhaps there is some other phenomenon, unknown to 20th century\nastronomers because it doesn't emit jets of x-rays, that is not a black\nhole but is a rift between universes where energy is sucked out of one\nuniverse and emerges as a White Fountain in the other.\n\n-Rostrum"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0560@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "mark millman",
        "address": "millman at us.ncipher.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-12-01T14:39:12+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) Maybe it's not a black hole",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0028-0557@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "At 01:31 PM 01-12-99 -0500, Rostrum (Michael Straight) wrote:\nDoes Apheta or anyone else use the words \"black hole\" \nto describe the other end of the White Fountain or the \nthing eating away at the sun?\n\nPerhaps there is some other phenomenon, unknown to \n20th century astronomers because it doesn't emit jets of \nx-rays, that is not a black hole but is a rift between uni-\nverses where energy is sucked out of one universe and \nemerges as a White Fountain in the other."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Of course nobody uses the term \"black hole\"--it would ruin Wolfe's\ncarefully crafted diction.  But the \"worm gnawing at the heart of \nthe sun\" and the description of the White Fountain that Severian gets\nin Yesod--not to mention the discussion on this list--make it pretty \nlikely that black holes and their associated phenomena are what \nWolfe had in mind when he was writing.  \n\nBesides, this is science fiction.  While you are certainly free to believe \nwhat you please about possible future discoveries in cosmology, I'm\naddicted to the idea that the best writers will use established science\nin making their extrapolations.  Your statement requires Wolfe to \nhave created a new form of astronomical event from whole cloth,\nwhile to me, and based on the evidence that I saw, Occam's Razor \nsuggests that Wolfe was working from an obsolete model of the \nstructure and behavior of black holes."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "And at 9:58 AM 01-12-99 Tony Ellis wrote:\nBut there is. We've been down this road before. Right \nat the very end of The Shadow of the Torturer, Jonas \ntells the story of the woman who comes back with \nspace with a handful of magic beans, and threatens to \nthrow them into the ocean.\n\nErebus and friends aren't genetically modified humans \nlike Baldanders, they're alien lifeforms. That grow."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Well, could be.  But they could also be people who have returned from\nthe stars, with changes.  They could be kind of like Typhon and the ex-\nultants, only less human(e) (or not, who knows?) still.  After all, beans \ncome from Earth, or Urth, too.\n\nMark Millman"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}