(urth) Problematic element in chronology - Red Giants

[Gerry Quinn]

From: "Sergei SOLOVIEV" <soloviev at irit.fr>
> 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).

I agree with Jeff that the red giant idea has a lot of problems, especially 
when really the only thing it is needed to fix is a likely small slip by 
Wolfe with regard to the visibility of Sol from Blue.  There is no evidence 
that the Sun looks especially large as seen from Urth, and we have Typhon's 
assertion that the solar output decreased rather than increased.


> Possible explanation. In Typhon's time or earlier the technical power of 
> humanity
> seems to be sufficient to make the distance of Urth from the Sun greater, 
> to
> prevent its burning or swallowing by the Sun. Maybe it was done. Notice 
> that in the BotNS there is
> no clear indication how long is their year, I don't remember anything 
> about
> the names of the months, that there is 12 months (or other number, maybe
> 17), how much days is in one month, how much days in a year, how much
> hours in one day. There are watches - yes - but I think all concrete 
> indications
> are eliminated (deliberately?) by GW. The mass of the sun when
> it becomes Red Giant doesn't change, so the orbital period for
> more distant orbit has to be longer. By the way, if their year is longer,
> it may explain the "too rapid" ascencion of Severian to power.

Wolfe is indeed vague about time but mostly with regard to long times (he 
even says so in an appendix - arguably defending himself neatly in advance 
against threads such as this!)  Children don't seem to age in a matter of a 
few years, though I cannot think of any specific proff that years are much 
longer than now.  Nobody mentions it, though.


> 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. 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.

Jeff has proposed some alternatives.  Personally I think the simplest thing 
is to believe that there is indeed a black hole in the sun, as everyone in 
the story agrees.  It may not be swallowing the sun rapidly due to the 
formation of an accretion disk which pushes infalling matter away from it. 
On first principles, one might expect such a black hole to make the sun 
hotter, but it would be hard to prove that no mechanism exists that could 
cause a reverse effect!

As for the white hole, one might expect an explosive encounter, but since 
white holes don't actually exist it is hard to be sure of one's predictions 
in that regard.  Wolfe has also referred to a form of anti- matter which is 
repulsive to gravity.  If such anti-matter exists, it seemingly has negative 
energy, and it might be that the White Fountain also does, in which case it 
might conceivably just cancel out the black hole.when it collides, leaving 
only second-order perturbatory effects.


> Remark. I think that my views about the importance of human and 
> psychological
> side are slightly distorted on the list, I do not reject mythological and 
> "gnostic" meaning
> at all, I just don't agree when the abstract symmetry of these schemas 
> does
> contradict the truth of characters described by GW as I see it from
> the text. (I'll try to develop it in another mail.)

I agree with you in general, although I don't quite go so far as to think 
that character studies are the major focus of Wolfe's work - I think they 
are important to him, and theories that do violence to character are proably 
wrong.

- Gerry Quinn