How did throwing the black hole into the star solve anything?

[Caledonian]

During the confrontation with the Lone Power, He places the black hole orbiting the sentient planet's primary in a position such that all light from the star is prevented from reaching said planet.

In response, newly-augmented Dairine throws the black hole into the star.

Wouldn't this destroy the star? Even ignoring the possible consequences to the planet, aren't wizards supposed to avoid annihilating entire stars? Not to mention the effects on the black hole, which couldn't have been all that great...

I don't get it.

Logic is a poor servant, but an excellent master.
-- The Book of Forgotten Things

[thatdarncat]

I don't get that either. Maybe Dairine was operating on some priniple of physics that we don't know about yet?

postcount = postcount + 1
Personal: www.fivekingdoms.net
Chat Administrator, www.enworld.org

[Rice]

of physics, that is.

First off, it was a _micro_-black hole, so it's not going to destroy the star any time soon (especially a red giant). When the "mouth" of the hole is only an atom wide (give or take), you have to wait a _long_ time for it to "eat" a significant portion of matter.

What slinging the BH into the sun did was give it a jumpstart. The gravitational distortion from the black hole "squeezed" the core of the sun, causing the fusion reaction to increase.

Of course, it's slightly nit-picky because fusion energy from the core of a star takes millions(?) of years to diffuse. So _maybe_ the BH just acted as a lense, causing a flare of energy from some more exterior portion of the star.

In any case, you sling a BH into a star, there _will_ be an energetic reation.

The question that _ought_ to be asked is "How is a tiny little micro-BH blocking all that light?" It'd have to be either not-so-tiny, or else _really_ close to the planet, or something else strange. The gravitational effects from a micro-BH are powerful, but not necesarily wide-ranged.

I could be wrong, though.

-Eric ('bounced' physics major)

"Omnia mutantur, nihil interit."

Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost.

[Caledonian]

Originally posted by Rice:
First off, it was a _micro_-black hole, so it's not going to destroy the star any time soon (especially a red giant). When the "mouth" of the hole is only an atom wide (give or take), you have to wait a _long_ time for it to "eat" a significant portion of matter.

Perhaps, but red dwarfs take a very long time to die. They're more or less immortal, but now the star will die that much more quickly because of the interference.

Logic is a poor servant, but an excellent master.
-- The Book of Forgotten Things

Just finished a reread and I think it's a question of balance.

Yes, the star will probably die sooner, (assuming they don't fix it), but if she hadn't gotten rid of the black hole, the entire race would have died.

Entropy is. She moved some around, slowed it down, gave the new life she had started a chance to reduce it more in the future.

In the first book, the trees fight, and some die, for the existence of everything. A tree gives a limb to aid wizardry. Little deaths traded for the hope of greater life.

There is no other wisdom, and no other hope for us, but that we grow wise
- Surak of Vulcan

[Hannah :)]

Gah. It's times like this when I wish I'd listened in physics...

It works out, I think... and besides, it's so technical sounding that even it it *was* unphysically sound, then we'd all believe it anyway. Meh. It's Dairine. She can do anything...

Hannah [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

http://timeheart.fateback.com

'Felis Catus is your taxonomic nomenclature. An endothermic qaudroped, carniverous by nature.'

http://www.geocities.com/booknightmoon

What I think is that the Lone Power gave the Black Hole a boost. Magick itself is basically physics. What Dairine did was two things...she hurt the Lone Power because of the light was intense and she gave the Mobiles more power.

[PK]

I think the points about sacrifices and tradeoffs are very good ones; I also think tossing the black hole into the star was largely a gesture of defiance, actually.

On the other hand, it was also... well, if you look back through the book, you'll see that having the black hole transit across the star, even not crossing it dead-center, was painful for the planet and the mobiles, even if it was also what let the motherboard become sentient. And having it fixed permanently in eclipse position would certainly have been bad, and was definitely scaring her friends; I think chucking it into the star was to avoid basically arm-wrestling the Lone One over its orbit.

It's still slightly worrying given that, well, Fred used to BE a star and before that presumably a black hole, so I'm wondering whether there were consciousnesses coexisting there or what....

And then the Lone Power put the star out ANYWAY, not to mention quite a few others, but somehow I imagine those probably got fixed the way our sun did in SYWTBAW. Hope so, anyhow.

[jen26]

Quote from Htownballer: "...Magick itself is basically physics"

I disagree. Wizardry, as presented by DD in YW, is more or less - aw nuts! I can't find my copy of SYWTBAW. Well anyway, just read YOUR copy over, especialy the Oath, and you may see what I mean.

WIZARDRY IS NOT PHYSICS!!

Jen26

[Vaughn]

What magic is?

Um, considering the descriptions of it, as well as the ongoing computer motif - kernels and all - it's pretty obvious.

Magic's done by interrupting space - ie. escape sequences.


The whole thing feels a bit prophetic, really; it could perfectly well be set in our own future - anyone who has read Greg Egan's books will know what I mean. Make superintelligent AIs, have them figure out a way of doing an infinite amount of computation (which _might_ be physically possible), and simulate a universe or two. Then move your entire civilization into it so you avoid entropy and all. Of course, that last bit didn't work so well...

Of course you'd want ways of affecting the system, and you'd want to make sure that your junior administrators couldn't overdo things. Thus the "magic has a cost" thing, and sponsoring for when the people in charge don't want it to. People might want do die - or the universe might crash - but you don't want them to die permanently, so you create a catch-all base universe - Timeheart. And as seen in HW, the remaining Powers are still working on universes without entropy; the ones we're reading about are "draft models", created that way because they're closer to the original, which they *know* works, if somewhat badly.


Just to set it all off nicely, the usual name (not just sci-fi, used quite seriously) for superintelligent and super-powerful beings (usually AIs) is - yep - Powers.

[Caledonian]

Nah. The Powers already knew how to make such universes. That's why they could make Timeheart as a "patch" for the damaged worlds. Everything would have been fine if the Lone Power hadn't messed things up.

Regarding the name "Powers": perhaps that trend was started by A Fire Upon the Deep, which makes some rather unusual assumptions about the nature of the world. The Transcendent Beings that inhabit the outer rim of the galaxy are called Powers.

To be wise, learn foolishness. To be strong, learn weakness. To know joy, learn sorrow.