In the preceding chapters, Anderson has described:
stars, galaxies, clusters and newly termed "clans," i.e., groups of clusters of galaxies;
cosmic processes - stellar aging and universal expansion and contraction.
Now, however, after the contraction, his space-traveling characters observe and even directly experience the pre-cosmic process of monobloc formation. Anderson's text has to become more poetic and epic, less prosaic or scientific:
space flames;
a firestorm;
glowing hydrogen;
a supernal sun forms and brightens at the heart of existence;
galaxies fall into it;
gaseous sheets, banners, aurora, flame, lightning and radiant spears hide it;
vast electric, magnetic, gravitational and nuclear forces tear through its atmosphere;
shock waves, tides, currents and cataracts burst across megaparecs;
the ship flies along the outer fringe while cycles of billions of years pass as moments -
- and my willing suspension of disbelief has fled in the attempt to quote/summarize (this post combines both).
A pilot rides the ship down a wave whose foam is supernovae. (No, he doesn't! - and there are no stars left to go nova.) Force fields burn and roil, spewing sparks and globes:
"It believed in the metal of the ship, in flesh and skulls." (p. 182)
"...believed..." is wrong but I am not sure what word it should be.
The deck pitches. If the forces are physically affecting the ship that much, how can human responses possibly cope?
They must hold the ship away from the lethally radioactive monobloc but must also keep it where the gas is dense enough to decrease their tau. They are still emulating their literary predecessor, the Time Traveler, although in conditions that neither he nor his creator could have imagined. Gigayears must become hours. Without instrumental or computational aid, human instincts and trained reflexes alone must ride the ship safely through forces that will reduce it to particles if they strike full on. The pilots are guided only by a screen somehow displaying those exterior force fields. Surely this is impossible?
Reymont, relieving a pilot, steers, eases, vectors, thrusts, brakes, swings wide...
The screen blanks, the ship darkens and everyone feels heavy, then light, as inertia and the natural constants change, space-time-matter-energy ultimately convulses, light returns, the storm worsens, the monobloc explodes, creation begins and the ship decelerates.
2 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I have two hardback copies of TAU ZERO, and I looked up that part of Chapter 21 to see to see if the textual anomaly you noticed was repeated there. My thought before doing so was that Anderson had used "It BELLED in the metal of the ship..." But when I found the same line in both of my copies the the word used was "It bellowed in the metal of the ship..." So it's plain the correct word was "bellowed."
The erroneous "believed" you noticed was plainly a misprint. An interesting example of how errors can creep into a text. The editors of any COMPLETE COLLECTED WORKS OF POUL ANDERSON will need to take special care to eliminate as many errors of this kind as possible.
Sean
Were physical constants to change slightly, life would be impossible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_Universe
Martin Rees formulates the fine-tuning of the universe in terms of the following six dimensionless physical constants.[1][12]
N, the ratio of the strength of electromagnetism to the strength of gravity for a pair of protons, is approximately 1036. According to Rees, if it were significantly smaller, only a small and short-lived universe could exist.[12]
Epsilon (ε), a measure of the nuclear efficiency of fusion from hydrogen to helium, is 0.007: when four nucleons fuse into helium, 0.007 (0.7%) of their mass is converted to energy. The value of ε is in part determined by the strength of the strong nuclear force.[13] If ε were 0.006, only hydrogen could exist, and complex chemistry would be impossible. According to Rees, if it were above 0.008, no hydrogen would exist, as all the hydrogen would have been fused shortly after the big bang. Other physicists disagree, calculating that substantial hydrogen remains as long as the strong force coupling constant increases by less than about 50%.[10][12]
Omega (Ω), commonly known as the density parameter, is the relative importance of gravity and expansion energy in the universe. It is the ratio of the mass density of the universe to the "critical density" and is approximately 1. If gravity were too strong compared with dark energy and the initial metric expansion, the universe would have collapsed before life could have evolved. On the other side, if gravity were too weak, no stars would have formed.[12][14]
Lambda (λ), commonly known as the cosmological constant, describes the ratio of the density of dark energy to the critical energy density of the universe, given certain reasonable assumptions such as positing that dark energy density is a constant. In terms of Planck units, and as a natural dimensionless value, the cosmological constant, λ, is on the order of 10−122.[15] This is so small that it has no significant effect on cosmic structures that are smaller than a billion light-years across. If the cosmological constant were not extremely small, stars and other astronomical structures would not be able to form.[12]
Q, the ratio of the gravitational energy required to pull a large galaxy apart to the energy equivalent of its mass, is around 10−5. If it is too small, no stars can form. If it is too large, no stars can survive because the universe is too violent, according to Rees.[12]
D, the number of spatial dimensions in spacetime, is 3. Rees claims that life could not exist if there were 2 or 4 dimensions of spacetime nor if any other than 1 time dimension existed in spacetime.[12]
-kh
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