(urth) Problematic element in chronology - Red Giants

[Jeff Wilson]

On 5/28/2011 3:51 PM, Sergei SOLOVIEV wrote:
> Dear Gerry,
>
> please, have a look at Red Giants (final stage of evolution of sun-like
> stars). Obviously,
> the sun in the "BotNS" entered this stage - the atmosphere of the star
> becomes very large
> and red (the temperature drops, but the total luminosity is much
> greater).

This is not obvious to me. Details of shadows' boundaries and of dawn 
and dusk (the same thing, since they are the boundaries of the earth's 
shadow) are much as they are today. The solar disc might even have 
shrunk slightly if the "50,000 leagues" turns out to be a 
misinterpretation of the moon appearing larger than the sun instead of 
being roughly equal as they do today.


> It does pose other problems, I agree. Red giant may have a diameter like
> Venus orbit,
> and if Urth were at the same distance as Earth, it would be burned (even
> if the
> temperature of the surface of the star is less). I don't know whether
> Gene Wolfe
> did take all this physics into account, maybe not, but I am sure he did
> know
> about red giants.

And we are equally sure that Skuld still appears in the sky of 
Severian's time.

> I think (I repeat myself) that GW tried to be very careful about scientific
> details. Do not take for granted the idea that inside the old sun there is
> a black hole. It is something that is presented as common idea in
> Severian's
> times, but I don't see from the text that GW himself thinks that.
> I sounds "mythologically" beautiful, but it was easily accessible
> information to GW
> in 70-es, and even more easily later, that black hole will swallow very
> quickly
> all the atmosphere of the red giant.

Not if it is a quantum or merely small black hole, or a swarm of several 
suggested by the black beans. They are too small to eat much even in the 
impressively dense core of the sun, but their gravitation could could 
disturb the sun's burn rate by supression of light element fusion via 
gravitational containment and/or premature instigation of heavy element 
fusion in an asymetrical patter, cutting down on overall energy output.

It can also keep the intermediate layers disrupted so that energy 
transfer to the outer layers is decreased, or possibly increased then 
decreased. Stars are amazingly complex and contrary that way, like when 
supernova explosions turn out to be primed by the collapse of the core 
and the end of fusion there.

> It would by the way be an explosive
> process
> that would burn everything a couple of light years around
> (kind of supernova). An encounter of a real black hole
> with a white fountain would be also extremely explosive - not just tides.

Er, the white hole is already extremely explosive. Anything that comes 
out arrives at escape velocity for the entire universe, and the energy 
is blue-shifted accordingly. But the White Fountain is almost much 
smaller than the sun, with which the earth cohabitates already.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >