vanished people=Hieros

Gerry Quinn · 10 Nov 2011, 15:37 · from 2011-November.txt.gz

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From: gerry at bindweed.com (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2011 15:37:28 -0000
Subject: (urth) vanished people=Hieros
In-Reply-To: <1320937366.33938.YahooMailClassic at web161803.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>
References: <1320937366.33938.YahooMailClassic at web161803.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <AED5C90BF33D49E9A8358298885C68AA@Rover>

From: Marc Aramini 
Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2011 3:02 PM
To: The Urth Mailing List 
Subject: Re: (urth) vanished people=Hieros
--- On Thu, 11/10/11, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Can the moon be an asteroid or not? No? 

I suppose it could be described as one, especially by someone who didn?t know where it originated.  The definition of ?asteroid? is a bit vague, but it?s generally thought of as a small body, too small to become a sphere due to its own gravitational force.
The largest asteroids are about 500 miles in diameter somewhat ellipsoidal ? there are moves to categorise them as dwarf planets.  The Moon is over 2000 miles in diameter and spherical.  So it doesn?t really fit the picture if you expect an asteroid to be somewhat irregular in shape.
Also, the Moon?s gravity would render hollowing it out next to impossible.  And despite the Whorl being both large and of ill-defined size,  it is difficult to imagine that it could be as large as the Moon.
> > The passage of time makes it difficult to imagine that the
> > long sun whorl didn't go somehwere, unless it's not 300 but
> > 3000 years as the lost digit in Maytera's ruminations might
> > hint at - not enough information.  It seems to have
> > gone somewhere.

I?m guessing the intention is that it travelled for 300 years Whorl-time, but due to relativistic time dilation that was about 2000 years on Urth.  [A problem is that Sol seems to be visible, albeit dimly, in the skies of Blue, indicating a distance of less than a hundred light years.  Another is that if Typhon had that much energy at his disposal, solar dimming shouldn?t have troubled him.  But it?s in accordance with SF tropes, so I think we are probably intended to read it so rather than nit-pick the physics.  An alternative explanation is that the Whorl travelled at only a small fraction of light speed, in which case only 300 years passed on Urth also.]

> > I always saw it as an ark, too.

Well, a generation ship in SF *is* an ark.  But if the implication of ?ark? includes escape from a disaster, it doesn?t really work.  Typhon was surely at the height of his powers when he had it constructed.

- Gerry Quinn

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