Urth geochronology

Macronaut · 31 Jul 2006, 14:44 · from 2006-July.txt.gz

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From: macronaut at yahoo.com (Macronaut)
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2006 07:44:19 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) Urth geochronology
In-Reply-To: <cc8d0a80a18e68893dd9f7d75bc70f85 at stanfordalumni.org>
Message-ID: <20060731144419.88812.qmail at web51108.mail.yahoo.com>

A good point but, as the cooling sun teaches, we
cannot discount action by intelligent beings as the
cause of apparently natural phenomena.  Given
mankind's other advanced technology, it's more than
possible that men engaged in some large-scale activity
which, intentionally or not, resulted in the cooling
at an accelerated rate.

Macronaut

--- Jeffrey Lefstin <jeff.lefstin at stanfordalumni.org>
wrote:

> > Jeff Wilson wrote:
> 
> > More ambiguous. At one point he says Urth is
> "perhaps a million years 
> > in
> > our future."
> >
> 
> If we were really trying to deduce the age of Urth
> from the text, it 
> must be older than that.  At several points Severian
> mentions the lack 
> of volcanic activity on Urth and the solidification
> of the Urth's 
> interior.  I'm not a geologist, but a few million
> years, or even a few 
> tens of millions of years, isn't going to cut it if
> we assume that 
> volcanic activity has ceased due to natural cooling
> and decay.
> 
> But since Wolfe is not a hard SF writer I wouldn't
> make too much of it.
> 
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