{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/638",
    "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": 638,
    "subject": "Science Seance",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-05-19T21:42:00+00:00",
    "last": "1998-05-19T21:42:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0011-0073@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-05-19T21:42:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Science Seance",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Robert Borski,\n\nOkay, so far here's what I've got:\n\nAssuming a 30 hour day and given the 402 day year, we have a local\nyear 1.37577 times as long as a Terran year.  (Any recollection of a\nsimilar ratio given anywhere in the text?  Another possible clue.)\n\n1.37577 = square root of (D^3/M); where D = orbit in AU and M = solar\nmass in Sols.\n\nPlugging in values for M.  An M-type star (M = .35), a K-type star (M\n= .71).\n\nIf M = .35, then D = 0.87 AU\nIf M = .71, then D = 1.10 AU\n\nThe first figure is far outside the lifezone/ecosphere of an M-type\nstar.  The second figure is bad news for a K-star, too.\n\nTangential angel <g>: which astron text is Wolfe using, if any?  I\nmean, our noodling here is in the name of Art Appreciation, and we\nusually trip into the abyss of frenzy of interpretation at one point\nor another (Inspiration Point, I'd call it), but honest to Darwin,\nwhen you start comparing astron reference books you get a scary sense\nof how mixed up, jumbled, and impossible everything is.  I got three\nor more books at hand and they often have very different reality maps\nof supposedly the same realty <g>.  I HAVE CORROBERATION FOR THIS:\nsaw a recent episode of \"Nova\" talking about detecting extrasolar\nplanets.  Team California had been working for ten years, couldn't\nfind a thing.  Team Europe, tinkering around after hours, found the\nfirst one.  How and why?  Well, the Europeans were using a text that\nsaid that particular star fit parameters that they (and everybody else)\nwas looking for; the Californians were using a text in which the info\non that particular star was incorrect, so they never bothered to\nobserve that star.\n\nBrrzzt!\n\n\"Scientist, fetch thy Ouija Board!\"\n\nAnywho, I'm going to guess that if Wolfe is using a text here, it\nwould be PLANETS FOR MAN by Dole and Asimov.  I will try to use it as\nthe primary text in this investigation--no sense clouding things up\nwith astronomy texts written within the last thirty years.\n\nM-type stars are pretty much out of the question.  Entirely out of\nthe question, according to Dole.  K-type stars, well, it depends, but\nthey are more iffy than G-type stars.\n\n(By definition (I think), all Wolf stars are M-type stars, fwiw.)\n\nThe bright eyes of The Shadow Child =might=, just might mean that we\nare talking about a triple star system, with a distant enough binary\nbeing the \"eyes\" for the lonely third star.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}