{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/799",
    "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": "whorl",
  "thread": {
    "id": 799,
    "subject": "Horn's body, Green's orbit, and candles",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-04-02T14:52:58+00:00",
    "last": "2000-04-02T14:52:58+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0010-0286@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Adam Stephanides",
        "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net"
      },
      "date": "2000-04-02T14:52:58+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Horn's body, Green's orbit, and candles",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "alga wrote:\nSince Horn is going to inhabit Silk's body[...]"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "From reading the archive, this seems to be the consensus.  It is clear\nthat Horn is in a new, or at least transformed, body.  I have a problem\nwith this body being Silk's, though: if Horn is inhabiting Silk's body,\nwhy doesn't he know it?  That he doesn't know it is shown by Horn's\nthoughts on p. 66: Silk \"might have landed on some part of Blue remote\nfrom us.  (This still seems possible to me, as I wrote when I began this\nstraggling history.) ... Here I am in a part of Blue a very considerable\ndistance from New Viron, and hear nothing of Silk; but that means\nnothing.  If he were a hundred leagues east of Gaon and me--or on\nShadelow--it would explain everything.\"  From this passage, it seems\nclear that Horn does not even know whether Silk was on the Whorl when he\nreturned.\n\nIt could be argued that Horn is referring to another lander that\nreturned from the _Whorl_ after Horn's revisitation, which Silk might\nhave been on; but the wording of the next-to-last sentence, which\nimplies that Silk is not now at Gaon _or_ New Viron, makes this\nunlikely. Furthermore, if Horn has Silk's body, and Silk is on Blue,\nit's presumably in another body, in which case there would be no need to\ninvoke distance to explain why Silk is unknown.  (Horn clearly thinks\nthat if Silk is on Blue, he is trying to avoid being found.)\n\nAnd if Horn knows he is in Silk's body, why doesn't he say so?  True, he\nnever explicitly says that he is in a new or transformed body either. \nBut if he were in Silk's body, this would have more relevance, given his\nfrequent references to his failure to find Silk."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Well, we learn about this in OBW. The orbits of the planets are irregular,"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I have a great deal of trouble putting together the fragmentary\ninformation in OBW on the orbits of Blue and Green.  At first I assumed\nthat they orbited each other, like Earth and the Moon or St. Anne and\nSt. Croix (possibly because I'd read the speculation that Blue and Green\nwere St. Anne and St. Croix).  But then I read Horn's words on p. 182:\n\"We know that conjunctions with Green occur every sixth year.  That\ninterval is determined by the motion of both about the Short Sun.\"  This\nseems to say that Blue and Green independently orbit the Short Sun, and\nsimply come near to each other in their separate orbits every sixth\n(Blue) year.  And if Green orbited Blue, and conjunction occurred only\nevery six years, that would mean that Green's orbital period around Blue\nwas six times as long as Blue's around the Short Sun, which I doubt\nwould be possible.\n\nBut then I came to p. 223, where Horn refers to \"the slow circling of\nthe Short Sun and the other, more distant, stars, and the somewhat\nquicker rising and setting of Green.\"  Unless Horn is being pedantically\naccurate, this suggests that Green moves significantly with respect to\nthe stars in a single night, something I don't think is compatible with\nGreen being an independent planet with an orbit close to Blue's.  And\nagain, on p. 195 when Horn is in the pit, he writes: \"I remember seeing\nGreen directly above my upturned face, and later seeing it no longer,\nbut only the innocent stars that had fled before it and returned when it\nhad gone.\"  This also suggests that Green moves visibly with respect to\nthe stars in a single night.  True, it might just be a clumsy way of\nsaying that the stars moved and Green moved with them; but elsewhere\nHorn's narration is neither clumsy or pedantic.  Furthermore, as someone\nelse once pointed out, if Blue and Green's orbits brought them into\nconjunction as frequently as every six years, they would not be stable:\nthe repeated perturberations from each other's gravity would pull them\ninto new orbits.\n\nI'm not sure what kind of \"irregularity\" would solve this problem. \nNeither Blue or Green can have orbits that are too eccentric and remain\nhabitable for humans.  The best I can come up with is that Green\nnormally orbits the Short Sun, but every six Blue years makes a sort of\nfigure eight around Blue.  I have no idea whether this is even possible,\nlet alone stable, but I suspect it isn't."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "and at \"confluence,\" and only then, the inhumi are able to suspend breathing (as in > the burials) long enough to to fly from Blue to Green (and back, presumably)."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Has anyone figured out what is the minimum possible distance Green can\napproach Blue at confluence?  Green has to be a lot heavier than the\nMoon to retain a breathable atmosphere (unlike Lune, presumably, neither\nthe inhumi or the Neighbors have the technology to artificially supply\nGreen with an atmosphere).  And while Green's tides are stronger than\nthe Moon's, they aren't so strong as to destroy everything on the\ncoast.  I suspect that these two facts, taken together, imply that Green\ncan't approach any closer than the Moon does the Earth, but I haven't\ndone the calculations.\n\nWhile we're on the subject of science, I just noticed something else. \nOn p. 223 again, Horn says \"everyone has seen the flame of a candle\ndisappear in sunlight and knows that the invisible flame will burn a\nfinger.\"  I've never seen this, and I've never even heard of it.  Is\nthis true on Earth?  If not, is it telling us something about the Short\n(or Long) Sun?  Or just about the candles Horn has seen?  Or about\nHorn's accuracy?\n\n--Adam\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}