What's So Great About Ushas?

Gwern Branwen · 10 Jun 2008, 02:48 · from 2008-June.txt.gz

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From: gwern0 at gmail.com (Gwern Branwen)
Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2008 22:48:16 -0400
Subject: (urth) What's So Great About Ushas?
In-Reply-To: <000e01c8c9e7$6c2a50c0$73d24a0c at rclackey.stic.net>
References: <000e01c8c9e7$6c2a50c0$73d24a0c at rclackey.stic.net>
Message-ID: <20080610024816.GA24836@craft>

On 2008.06.08 23:15:11 -0500, "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net> scribbled 2.7K characters:
> Andrew wrote:
> >[Digression: I still think that the wounding of the sun might in
> >fact have happened back in Apu Panchu's day. It takes millions of
> >years for photons to travel form the core of the sun to the
> >surface. Wound the core, and perhaps the effects will only be
> >apparent on the timescales required for this. For the story, I
> >think this would be pretty neat thematically: eg the
> >Hierogrammate's plans unfolding over practically *all* of human
> >history. But anyway ...]
>
> Against this are Typhon's comments about his astronomers being wrong in
> their predictions about the rate of change in the sun's output. Contrary to
> their predictions, it had declined by a small but detectable amount in just
> a "few years", followed by crop failures, famine and riots. So Typhon had
> *some* reason to be keeping an eye on the sun even before effects of the
> change became apparent. The change seems to have happened on his watch.
...
> -Roy

I'm not sure this is useful to know. Of course he has reason to keep an eye on the Sun, but that tells us nothing. After all, *we* [modern-day humanity in general] would definitely notice a decline in luminosity in a few years - we keep a very close eye on the Sun for all sorts of reasons, none of which are because we rule an evil empire or anything.

--
gwern
Pershing osco TACSAT SIN MI-17 DEVGRP Whitewater imagery lock PCMT
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