{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/333",
    "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": 333,
    "subject": "Time & Map Tidbits",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-02-01T23:46:00+00:00",
    "last": "1998-02-01T23:46:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0006-0494@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.geis.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-02-01T23:46:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Time & Map Tidbits",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Reply:  Item #5381601 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET#\n\nraster,\n\nOkay, your \"Mal & Pal\" LOL!\n\nRe: the polychrome sand, I know what you mean, but no, I don't know\nwhere it is at the moment.\n\nRe: the state of the universe expanding.  Doesn't \"official\" opinion\non this flip-flop a bit?  What was that recent thing in the\nnews--wasn't it something like \"whoops, not enough mass--no\ncontraction--universal entropy here we come\" (again, yet as if for\nthe first time).  Well, for the fiction of TBOTNS, of course it is\n(and has to be) a motor from Big Bang to Grand Gnab; so one has to\npepper one's meditations with knowledge of this cycle, and being in a\nrun down little dump like Urth, it might be comforting to think that\nthe whole universe was poised on the edge of decline!\n\nAnywho, here are some new fresh tidbits to play with:\n\n\"The billion aeons of its [Urth's] existence\" (III, ch. 27).\n--Lessee, we're currently at, what, five billion =years=, right?\nWell, \"aeon\" isn't usually used for such a paltry period as five or\nten years . . . (then again, the \"collapsing scales\" I mentioned\nbefore often have to do with Severian's personal perception: for\nexample, the citadel seems like a big world until he gets out into\nNessus, which seems large until he crosses the countryside, which\nseems vast until he leaves the planet, etc.)\n\nText to the effect that: It takes 50 generations to shift a group\nof colonists into the continent's version of humanity; i.e., 50 times\n20 years to transform colonists into neo-autochthons (V, ch. 10).\nRight.  Well this means that all the non-autochthons we see in TBOTNS\nare offspring of offworlders who have come to Urth =since= the time\nof Ymar.  Maybe this also helps explain the exultants, the things they\ndo to maintain their ways and avoid \"going native\"?\n\nCartography:\nMount Typhon: the saddle of jungle is thousands of cubits above Nessus\nand lower reaches of Gyol (III, ch. 23).\n\nSugarcane Groves: after they cross the river (supposedly Gyoll, but\nthe PLAN[E]T ENGINEER map shows us \"Cephisus\") at the sandbar (II,\nch. 28) they see some sugarcane groves.  Okay, so what lattitudes can\nsugarcane be grown?  Hawaii: 20 degrees N. Louisiana: 30 N. Peru: 18\nS. Argentina: 23 S.\n\nCoffee? 23 degrees to 0 degrees. (They drink coffee in Commonwealth.)\nPampas? 37 degrees to 25 degrees. (There are Pampas.)\nSteppe/Prairie? 30 degrees to 53 degrees.\n\nHOWEVER, all these numbers are for Earth and assume an Earth-level of\nInsolation (Solar energy).  Lower Insolation will require a narrowing\nof the bands.\n\nTIDES OF LUNE\nThere is talk that Lune at an orbit of 50,000 leagues will cause\nenormous tides.\n\nT = M/R^3\n\n(T = Tidal Force of Luna on Earth; M = Mass; R = Radius of orbit)\n\nT = 1/(0.6)^3\n  = 1/0.216\n  = 4.629 (or about four and a half times the tides we experience)\n\nLUNE QUESTIONS\nIf Lune has been terraformed into a habitable world then it must have\nhad its local day spun up from 28 days to something between 96 and 24\nhours.  The text is clear that Lune still has an orbital period of 28\ndays, but is there any indication in the text that Lune is rotating\nrather than being tide-locked with one face to Urth?\n\n(raster--the gas loss on Luna isn't as bad as you seem to think.\nFogg in TERRAFORMING states that, once an Earthlike atmosphere is in\nplace on Luna, it would naturally take longer than 10^8 years to bleed\noff.  I wonder if those forests of Lune act as a natural canopy to hold\natmosphere in as well as pollute it with their waste oxygen?)\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}