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> On Dec 14, 2007, at 4:13 PM, Pedro Pereira wrote:<BR>> <BR>> > > But I think 100K to 1M years is too short a time: some serious <BR>> > geology takes<BR>> > > place between Sev's time and ours, enough so that human structures<BR>> > > (made of materials strong enough to endure the process) are <BR>> > subducted<BR>> > > into the ground and then uplifted as part of mountains. I'm not <BR>> > sure how<BR>> > > long orogenesis actually takes, but I'm guessing it's on the <BR>> > order of millions<BR>> > > of years. Any geologists in Da Howse?<BR>> ><BR>> > I'm a geologist.<BR>> > There's no "serious" geology going on between Severian's time and <BR>> > ours. South America seems to be basically the same as now. So there <BR>> > are no substantial destruction of human structures by subduction, <BR>> > that become part of the mantle and then eventually become part of <BR>> > the crust again during orogenesis. Orogenesis makes itself felt on <BR>> > the order of the millions of years, or hundreds of thousands of <BR>> > years, although its not so linear as that.<BR>> <BR>> I'm guessing Dan'l is referring to the scene where Severian, IIRC, <BR>> describes climbing a sheer cliff with strata after strata of human <BR>> artifacts exposed by erosion. How would a geologist account for that?<BR>
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I don't remember the discription and I'm too lazy to check it out. So, I don't know the particulars of the description. Anyway It doesn't strike me as something impossible. It would depend on a lot of things like WHERE it occurs, the nature of the sedimentary basin, rates of erosion/filling, etc. Anyway I think that Wolfe takes some "artistic liberties" with that, but still its not unconciavable. The only thing is that that would imply a continuous occupation through a loooooonnnnngggg time to acumulate so much strata of material on the same place.<BR> <BR>> I personally suspect that something other than uniformitarian <BR>> geological process is responsible for that cliff. One of the fun <BR>> controversies on this list has been over the magnitude of the <BR>> timescale required to reach Wolfe's dying earth. Wolfe is partly <BR>> responsible for that, as he gave, in an interview, a figure for the <BR>> time until Severian that seems orders of magnitude too small (was it <BR>> 100,000 years).<BR>
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"...the magnitude of the timescale required to reach Wolfe's dying earth."<BR>
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It has been stated that the dying Sun is not a natural phenomena. Its a black hole put there intentionally. The Sun still has 4 billion (american) years to go before it turns into a red giant.<BR><BR>
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