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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>I got to thinking about the distance from Urth
to Blue today and after looking up some stuff I found a problem.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>On Blue, SilkHorn explains to prospective astral
travellers that they can, if they peer for some time, see a dim red star - this
is of course Sol, etiolated by the black hole inside it. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>I looked up some stuff, and as near as I can tell,
they following is true: </FONT><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Sol (currently) has
an absolute magnitude of 5. That means it would be barely visible from 50
light years away. Red Sol will be even dimmer.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>But if the Whorl only travelled 50 light years,
relativistic time dilation will have been fairly insignificant.
Specifically, there's no reasonable way that you could 'lose' more time than the
distance you travelled in light years. On this basis, the Whorl was
launched no more than 350 or so years ago in Urth time.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>On the whole, I put this down to Wolfe not fretting
too much about the details - I still think there is supposaed to be a
relativistic time dilation factor of up to five or six, even if it is
contradictory in some ways (it also fails because the energy needed to
accelerate the Whorl to such a velocity would have been more than enough to
replace the solar energy deficit, and Typhon would surely have repurposed the
Whorl drive for this).</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>But if the physics is correct, the Whorl has little
in the way of time dilation, and Typhon lived only about 350 years before
Severian.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>- Gerry Quinn</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
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