Hierogrammates, Briah and Yesod

Gerry Quinn · 10 Aug 2010, 17:14 · from 2010-August.txt.gz

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From: gerryq at indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2010 18:14:22 +0100
Subject: (urth) Hierogrammates, Briah and Yesod
References: <SNT123-W4086C55EFA2AA826A1DF38CF950 at phx.gbl><4C616809.1010603 at gmail.com>
	<AANLkTikMK4dfpaDfaR1TdtsLpZ2EaD8Xcbq5bY8+uks- at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <6E768E26BF204375AEB7627AE1E2DDE2@jill>

From: "Lane Haygood" <lhaygood at gmail.com>

> I always interpreted what Severian saw as he traveled from Briah to
> Yesod via the Ship as entering a black hole and emerging from a white
> hole, which is consistent (with what I know; philosophy student, not a
> physicist) with some of the many-worlds intepretations of quantum
> theory:  every black hole is connected to a white hole in another
> universe.  Now, as for what would happen to our individual perceptions
> upon entering the event horizon of a black hole, that's a good
> question.  How do basically spatiotemporal creatures deal with gravity
> so strong it bends the fabric of space-time such that the
> fastest-moving thing in the universe is too slow to escape?

"Many worlds" interpretations don't really have anything to do with the 
"many universe" theories you are talking about. They can probably be linked 
to them as a way in which multiple manifolds might be formed but they are 
not strongly related concepts.  And quantum theory sits poorly with general 
relativity at the best of times.  The black hole - white hole concept comes 
from certain general relativity solutions (nowadays considered obsolete, but 
that is irrelevant for a book written a quarter century ago).

If black holes do connect to white holes, the general relativity concept of 
black holes near the event horizon must therefore be correct (this remains a 
reasonably popular position among physicists, though it is eroding fast). 
If so, someone entering a large black hole feels nothing unusual.  The logic 
is that no matter how curved spacetime is over a large region, if it is 
smooth then locally it must still be fairly flat.

My interpretation of the 'Diadem of Briah' is that it is a 'starbow', i.e. a 
visual effect arising from travelling through interstellar space at a 
relativistic velocity.  Stars behind will be red shifted, stars in fron blue 
shifted; the effect will be to render both largely invisible by shifting the 
peak emissions of average stars out of the visible region.  Meanwhile 
surrounding the ship, orthogonal to the direction of travel, there will be a 
ring of visible stars - blue shifted on the forward edge, red shifted on the 
backward one..

- Gerry Quinn

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