{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/910",
    "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": 910,
    "subject": "black holes + origins",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-07-03T10:28:01+00:00",
    "last": "1998-07-03T10:28:01+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0015-0099@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Peter Stephenson",
        "address": "pws at ifh.de"
      },
      "date": "1998-07-03T10:28:01+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) black holes + origins",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I suspect prion's right about what a real black hole would do to the\nsun.  I don't necessarily think that matters to Wolfe.  (He doesn't\nnecessarily believe in wooden spaceships with sails, either.)\n\nThe following was probably not known to Wolfe, but I find it\ninteresting anyway --- it show the way his worlds suck in all known\nand unknown facts about the universe and spit them out completely\nwarped.  (Warp factor 10, in fact.)\n\nThe growth of black holes is related to thermodynamics:  their\nentropy (loosely, disorder, but it is a well defined physically\nquantity, something that often gets ignored in general discussions) is\nproportional to their area.  So their behaviour seems to be related to\nthe arrow of time; at least, the growth of disorder is the only\nphysical quantity definitely related to that as far as seems to be\nknown at present.  Now, there's a speculation by Hawking that black\nholes are in fact white holes!  Black holes radiate by Haking\nradiation:  in a universe in equilibrium, they radiate as much as they\nsuck in; only in our temporally lop-sided do they seem to go only one\nway.\n\nSo the relevant point is just that Severian's journey back in time to\nbe the Conciliator, and the apparent non-linear time associated with\nthe white fountain, actually seem to be vaguely related to the\nphysics.  Which is typically weird.\n\nOrigins of the torturers' guild:  I had them mentally associated with\nsome of the orders of flagellants who roamed Europe in the middle\nages:  there was an article about the remnants of one in the Italian\nmagazine `Medievo' a couple of months ago; they were hooded, but wore\nwhite, not fuligin.  These people were certainly `seekers after truth\nand penitence', but it was their own, not other people's.  The\nambiguity of that pharse has always tickled me.\n\nPenitenzeagite,\ncorncrake"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}