Cumaean???

Pedro Pereira · 14 Dec 2007, 23:31 · from 2007-December.txt.gz

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From: domus_artemis at hotmail.com (Pedro Pereira)
Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2007 01:31:52 +0200
Subject: (urth) Cumaean???
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> On Dec 14, 2007, at 4:13 PM, Pedro Pereira wrote:> > > > But I think 100K to 1M years is too short a time: some serious > > geology takes> > > place between Sev's time and ours, enough so that human structures> > > (made of materials strong enough to endure the process) are > > subducted> > > into the ground and then uplifted as part of mountains. I'm not > > sure how> > > long orogenesis actually takes, but I'm guessing it's on the > > order of millions> > > of years. Any geologists in Da Howse?> >> > I'm a geologist.> > There's no "serious" geology going on between Severian's time and > > ours. South America seems to be basically the same as now. So there > > are no substantial destruction of human structures by subduction, > > that become part of the mantle and then eventually become part of > > the crust again during orogenesis. Orogenesis makes itself felt on > > the order of the millions of years, or hundreds of thousands of > > years, although its not so linear as that.> > I'm guessing Dan'l is referring to the scene where Severian, IIRC, > describes climbing a sheer cliff with strata after strata of human > artifacts exposed by erosion. How would a geologist account for that?

I don't remember the discription and I'm too lazy to check it out. So, I don't know the particulars of the description. Anyway It doesn't strike me as something impossible. It would depend on a lot of things like WHERE it occurs, the nature of the sedimentary basin, rates of erosion/filling, etc. Anyway I think that Wolfe takes some "artistic liberties" with that, but still its not unconciavable. The only thing is that that would imply a continuous occupation through a loooooonnnnngggg time to acumulate so much strata of material on the same place. > I personally suspect that something other than uniformitarian > geological process is responsible for that cliff. One of the fun > controversies on this list has been over the magnitude of the > timescale required to reach Wolfe's dying earth. Wolfe is partly > responsible for that, as he gave, in an interview, a figure for the > time until Severian that seems orders of magnitude too small (was it > 100,000 years).

"...the magnitude of the timescale required to reach Wolfe's dying earth."

It has been stated that the dying Sun is not a natural phenomena. Its a black hole put there intentionally. The Sun still has 4 billion (american) years to go before it turns into a red giant.

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