{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3883",
    "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": 3883,
    "subject": "Heat of Ascension",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2003-03-07T09:13:39+00:00",
    "last": "2003-03-07T09:13:39+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0303-3026@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Jeff Wilson",
        "address": "jwilson at io.com"
      },
      "date": "2003-03-07T09:13:39+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Heat of Ascension",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "From:\nLisa Schaffer-Doggett <harlekin at earthlink.net>"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "\"A New Zealand atomic scientist assured me the other day that \nChristianity had received it's heaviest blow in 1945:  a fundamental \ntenet of the Church, namely that Jesus's material body was \nimmaterialized  at the Ascension had, he said, been spectacularly \ndisproved at Hiroshima and Nagasaki - anyone with the least scientific \nperception must realize that any such break-down of matter would have \ncaused an explosion large enough to wreck the entire Middle East.\"\nCould it cause a release of energy large enough to create a white \nfountain?  Any takers for the pros or the cons?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "No way. The White Fountain is a massive object, in both the physical and \nthe prosaic senses. Converting Severian into energy and back into mass \nwould yield no more than the original mass of Severian, while the White \nFountain's passing causes floods and earthquakes.\n\nI think it is more likely that Severian's body and the White Fountain \nare both some kind of eidolon originally projected from Yesod. Normally \nthis would take gobs of energy, but if the White Fountain is a white \nhole in order to cancel out the black beans/black holes, it might even \nhave a =negative= mass, an eidolon of which might produce energy rather \nthan consume it. This would let Severian's mass-energy relate to the \nWhite Fountain, perhaps it's output was shunted into making up his \nbodily mass.\n\nBut an agency capable of making negative mass can make any amount \ndesired, as long as they also produce positive mass, for a net increase \nof zero. Perhaps the positive mass is stashed inside Lune, increasing \nits gravity?\n\nAs for \"immaterialization\", I don't see that this requires convering \nJesus into energy. He might just as well have been transubstantiated \ninto a cloud, as at the end of _THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD_ with Max \nVon Sydow, with only some mild light and warmth to account for the \ndifference in molecular binding energies."
        },
        {
          "kind": "sig",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com\n< http://www.io.com/~jwilson/gurps/ >\n\n\n\n-- "
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}