{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/891",
    "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": 891,
    "subject": "5HC: star system",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-07-02T21:33:00+00:00",
    "last": "1998-07-02T21:33:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0015-0068@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.geis.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-07-02T21:33:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) 5HC: star system",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Roborski,\n\nRight, just when we thought we could cool down, take a breather,\nsuddenly prion comes along and turns us into mad cows . . . or maybe\njust a raving two-headed moon calf?\n\nAnyway, a few words about the star system and the planets in orbit\nthere.\n\nYes, prion, the double planets are not tide locked.  Which does go\nagainst the wisdom of PLANETS FOR MAN and other texts.  Then again,\nthey are double planets of equal mass, orbiting around a common\ncenter, and the tidal force, while producing high tides, isn't so\nhigh to bring them grindingly into a tide-lock (Luna experiences 177\ntimes the tidal force that Terra feels [177 x terra] and is\ntide-locked; the Sts. C/A planets, otoh, seem to experience only 5\ntimes the tidal force [5 x terra]).\n\nGranted that having such \"double planets not tide-locked\" itself is\nso wild that it smacks of planetary engineering, still I don't think\nthis detail is necessarily \"bad science.\"\n\nThe best candidate for \"bad science\" IMHO is an orbital position that\ngives a solar year of 402 days (each day being 30 hours).  For a star\nlike Wolf 294, this means an orbit of .33 AU, which is nice and close-in\nby our standards, but far outside the most optimistic \"life zones\"\nof that star (i.e., between .1 and .22 AU).  Which means frozen\nsolid.\n\nBut maybe the Shadow Children mind-control cloaking device is just\nmessing up our readings of that star, so that we won't bother visiting.\n\nThere was a rash of \"twin planet\" stories in the seventies, wasn't\nthere?  5HC, and then THE DISPOSSESSED, and who knows what else.\nOdd.\n\nSo, the twin planets might be an artifact of forerunners building\nretirement homes around nice and stable, long-lived M-type stars (a\nconceit I'm fond of, myself, and I picked it up from ON CIVILIZED\nSTARS.  A sort of VERMILION SANDS in the sky, I suppose.).\n\nBut the other details of the system, the planets Swift (ala Mercury),\nDead Man (ala ruddy Mars), and Snow Woman (ala white Venus), added to\nan enhanced version of Terra/Luna double-planets (Sts. Anne/Croix),\ntogether start to spook me.  And it gets worse when I figure out that\nLune's terraforming and orbital shifting may have been done by humans\nimitating the set-up they found at Wolf 294 (I think the tidal forces\non Urth caused by Lune are about the same as those experienced on\nSts. A/C, but I can't find my notes at the moment).\n\nThe point being that we know Urth/Lune is a part of an \"optimized\"\nterraformed system; and Wolf 294 seems even more so.\n\nNow kaballah has this notion of multiple genesis, each less perfect\nthan the last.  Since the Wolf 294 system offers a \"more perfect\"\nversion of the Solar System, whether it is due to \"natural\" evolution\n(however unlikely) or Yesodic tinkering (however mysterious) is\nbeside the point.\n\nThis thing I'm trying to transmit grows out of prion's idea that the\nWolf 294 system is the true human genesis point.  Without getting\ninto the various waves of possible immigration back and/or forth,\nwith flintstone footrockets colliding with atlantean aethersails, I\njust want to agree with certain elements.\n\nLook: in the hard sf mode we can say, \"This twin planet thing was built\nby ancient aliens.\"  In the mythic/fantasy mode we can say, \"This\ntwin planet situation is the mythic AEgypt from which we have fallen\nand to which we long to return.\"  (Even if only as immitative\nterraformers.)\n\nAnd the Wolf 294 system is a mythic AEgypt, the land of Fairy.  The\nhumans who go there bring along all their human-making-psyche-baggage;\nthey \"see\" things only as they can comprehend them, translating true\nstrangeness into ready archetypes of strangeness.  Just as the European\nexplorers arriving in the Americas (well, aside from the peace loving\nScandinavians who were genocided over a little milk-among-the-lactose-\nintolerant <g>) didn't go around saying, \"Where are the Klingons?  Take\nus to the Barsoomian Temple of Reward!\"  No, they went around looking\nfor all the legendary things they'd been talking about for hundreds or\nthousands of years (and the spooky part is where random legend meshed\nwith some kind of reality, especially the cities of gold).\n\nWhich is why, seems to me, the mythic landscape of Sts. A/C are so\ncharged with French (and the Greco-Roman it contains) stuff.\n\n(Note that Yesod itself takes the place of AEgypt in the Urth Cycle,\nbut the situation is the same--that is, the thing I'm trying to\nexpress is that in some vague sense Sts. A/C are to Earth as Yesod is\nto Urth.)\n\nAnyway, that wandered all over the map!\n\nMu!  Mu!  By these words I undo, I undo!  Untie, unthink, untry,\nunsink!  Mu!  Mu!\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}