(urth) UotNS and how it screws with your head

[Gerry Quinn]

From: "David Stockhoff" <dstockhoff at verizon.net>

> When?

That may not be a very sensible question.  White holes, effectively, travel 
backwards in time; and this is supported in the text by the negentropic 
effects such as healing the sick and raising the dead which Severian effects 
by way of his association with the White Fountain.

We know that the black hole was created, or arrived, during the reign of 
Typhon.  I am not certain that it makes sense to worry about when the white 
hole becomes physically present in our universe, or indeed how and even 
whether it travelled to the Sun.  About the only thing we know for certain 
is that gravitational radiation is emitted shortly before the final merging 
of the black and white holes; the ringing of the bells does suggest that the 
two entered an inwardly spiralling orbit.

Time does not run in Yesod as it does in Briah... an event in Briah might 
happen at any Urthly time coordinate, or perhaps at more than one.

There is also the issue of mass - surely the black and white holes have to 
be the same size to cancel each other?  i suppose it would work well enough 
if they were *approximately* the same mass, but still...

- Gerry Quinn



> Gerry Quinn wrote:
>> I think it was the white fountain too.
>>  Of course, there is another issue with the white fountain, which Mr. 
>> Thallassocrat, at least, may find interesting.  The concept of a white 
>> hole comes from the maximally extended Schwarzschild solution for a black 
>> hole.  Few nowadays think that white holes exist in nature - but if one 
>> does it should be associated with a black hole (though perhaps in a 
>> different universe).
>>  It would also make sense in that the result of combining the two should 
>> be to negate both - this doesn't seem so probable if an arbitrary black 
>> hole meets an arbitrary white hole.
>>  Could Severian, therefore, also have created the black hole in the Sun?