(urth) What's So Great About Ushas?

[Jeff Wilson]

Roy C. Lackey wrote:
> Gwern Branwen quoted and wrote:
>>> 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.<<<
> 
> Maybe I didn't convey the sense of it clearly enough. In context, it is
> apparent that something unusual had happened to the sun *before* the
> astronomers made there predictions as to what the effects of the change
> would be, a change that they didn't think would be noticed in a human
> lifetime. Here is the quote.

The timeline of change is fairly arbitrary. The factoid about light 
emitted in the core of the sun taking millions of years to reach the 
surface is technically correct according to now- and then-current 
quantum mechanical reasons, but also depends on the internal, notional 
structure of the sun being fairly static; the introduction of one or 
more black holes of some size could churn things up a bit, and changes 
in the density, pressure, temperature, etc. can propagate much much 
faster, in some variable star cases in as little as a few weeks.

It's also arbitrary in that while Wolfe *can* bone up on fine details of 
physics, as in "How I Turned Back the German Invasion...", he doesn't 
necessarily do it in all cases (for example, the bogus explanation of 
magic mirrors accelerating light), and the gnawing worm at the heart of 
the sun, or the black beans cast on the sun's grave may only share with 
the then-current black hole models the quality of being a hidden 
celestial object of possibly cosmic, devouring gravitational potency and 
being linked to an opposite counterpart of brilliant radiance and equal, 
  creative potency.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >