The Firefly/Serenity Solar System
POSTED BY: FraserBW
UPDATED: Tuesday, March 7, 2006 10:55
VIEWED: 27197
PAGE 3 of 11
Only now do I notice that four minutes before I posted a thing telling people to do the math someone had done (some of) it.
Makes me look silly or stupid, perhaps both.
That's what I get for taking so long to write a fairly short post.
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Quote:
Originally posted by GreenFaerie:
The stylized map of the solar system in the movie only shows the planetary orbits around one of the stars of the 'verse. It has been shown in the movie as well as the official visual companion that the entire "system" includes other stars and their planets as well as the "core" system shown in the opening of Serenity.
Later, River looks at this map, showing other stars and orbits. A similar map was printed in the visual companion.
The visual companion also has Joss's shooting script, which includes a scene where River is looking at a map of the "solar system of stars, planets and moons" connected by colored lines. This is evidence enough to me that Joss has it in his head that the 'verse has several star systems that comprise of the "solar system". Very unscientific, but very Joss.
I can just hear Kaylee saying "awwwwh...poor Joss." Wow, there are some real problems with that graphic. I'm not sure how to take it, because their are some clear planet-like objects in couple of sectors on it (see the grids) with no orbit paths marked, and then a few "glowy-thingees" that seem to have orbits mapped out around them. If you take it as a 2 demensional map of several sectors, the scales on the objects are all wrong. The planet-objects are as big or bigger than the star-objects. But those star-like objects could be gas giants with moon orbits on them. But still the scale is all wrong, they're either really huge for their orbits or really close together in their orbits (both impossible). If this is perhaps just a perspective of these worlds/stars from the viewpoint of Serenity (perhaps magnifying it a bit) the scale is still way off. Even close planets like Venus and Earth appear as very bright stars each other. These bodies are just way to close to each other to be a considered as anything but a highly stylized representation and something the audience could see, because the characters could see smaller and better scaled worlds on the graphic, but it wouldn't look like anything even on the big screen.
I'm pretty sure those "stars" on the graphic are really gas giants and not seperate star systems. If the alliance were made up of multiple star systems that are relatively close, you would still need faster than light travel for Firefly to visit any of these worlds in the 8 month period between the pilot and Serenity the movie. Otherwise they would have been limited to just one of those systems for those 8 months.
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Quote:
Originally posted by christhecynic:Quote:
Originally posted by FraserBW:
I assume non-sciencey Joss mean 500 years of Earth time
I have to disagree with you on that, Joss may be non-sciencey but he isn't an idiot.
(almost) No one is going to hop on a ship, have five years pass, and then hop back off of the ship and say, "No, five years didn't really pass, more years passed because from the point of view of some observer we'll never meet in some place we'll never go more than five years passed."
The same holds true for ten years, and for twenty, and for one hundred and for any other number you choose.
People simply don't operate that way and Joss is smart enough to know that.
If the people in the Firefly verse say it is 2507 that means that it is 502 years of relative time from now.
It depends a bit on how the travel is going down - if it was a mass exodus to one particular solar system, all moving at the same rate, then yeah, that seems a reasonable approach to take (with a few people like science geeks keeping track of the 'real' year).
If there was intent to keep in contact with Earth, or if different colonies went off in different directions, they may well have kept track of Earth Time and just all made the adjustment. Even if all the ships were
travelling to the same place, simply going at slightly different speeds would have different ships winding up with a different 'date' - they may simply decide to keep Earth time because that's fairest, or they may agree to some average or take the time of the first ship to arrive, or something like that.
However, all we've seen suggests a single mass exodus, so it's reasonable to say they just kept track of relative time, more or less.
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Quote:
Originally posted by christhecynic:
Then take that distance, use it to draw a sphere around our planet, tell us how many stars are within that sphere, how many could conceivably house multiple planets, and how many of those could have a large habitability zone after atmospheric meddling.
.
I have software that my department bought called Deep Space Explorer. I allows me to back out so far from Earth and look at stars. I'm not finding any other bi or tri star systems around Sol, so there seem to be a few single star system possibilities in the neighborhood. But I still need to know how far out the settlers traveled by knowing how fast they traveled in their 2/3 generation trip (and that is kinda based on whether 500 years in the future is Earth time or relative time for the settlers).
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I always thought the map was stylized just like many maps on earth are. If the point is not to show scale, which it shouldn't be if you want to include moons, there is not a need to even consider scale.
I wish I had a tourist map to scan and post to show you what I'm talking about if you don't know. Another example might be a trail map of a ski resort, the intent is to show all of the trails and, if possible, how they connect to each other. What results is a highly useful map that has almost no correlation to reality.
-
On a side note, when they discovered the most recent tenth planet candidate, which they say is larger than Pluto, it apparently caused a stir about what a planet actually is. One of the things I learned from this is that by many definitions the Moon is not a moon, it is a planet. If the great enlightened Alliance used the enlightened definition any planet with a "moon" such as ours* would count as two planets, but there would obviously be only one orbit.
*Someone else can do the math on the odds of a favorable impact creating such a moon in Serenity's more crowded solar system, I'm sure the odds are still quite low.
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Quote:
Originally posted by FeatherontheWind:
I don't want to seem like a complete idiot, but would it be possible for planets to orbit in different directions? For example, could one planet orbit around the sun's "equator" and another along a "meridian"? Also could planets orbit at different levels or do they all orbit around the widest part of the sun?
"Pain is scary." -Jayne
OK, I will actually take a few posts and meld them together here for sake of "planets." The term "planet" is just not a relevant term anymore. If you count Pluto as a planet than you probably should count its moon Charon as a planet, because they both orbit around each other and their are two moons recently discovered in orbit around Pluto/Charon. Xena and Gabrielle are also similar to Pluto/Charon and even orbit closer to the sun during part of their larger eliptic orbit. And Sedna is an even larger than Pluto and orbits way outside Pluto's orbit (we only saw it because it was at the closest point in its orbit). So for those of you counting that is 13 planets now, if you are part of the Pluto is a planet crowd. All of these objects are located in the Kaiper Belt, the inner belt of comet material. These objects are best described as Kaiper Belt planetoids. They are different from Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune in several ways. First they are smaller than any of these. They have highly eliptic orbits that look more oval than circular. Pluto/Charon and Xena/Gabrielle cross the orbit of Neptune, Sedna and Xena/Gabrielle cross each other's orbits. Their orbits are offset from the ecretian disk of the sun, so they orbit at a diagonal to the other the orbits of the 8. And most importantly for the Firefly universe, they are too small and far away to be terraformed. The diagram of the Firefly system in Serenity shows planets with near circular, non-overlaping orbits which suggests that none these are Kaiper Belt-type planetoids. It is likely that the Firefly system has these planetoids, but they are not important because they are not terraformed or have no moons that were terraformed (but probably have mining industry on them).
Now the remaining 8 planets are really 2 types of objects, best referred to as terrestrial planets and gas giant planets. Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars are all terrestrial. Earth you know about, skip it. Mars is smaller but probably the best prospect in our system to terraform as it once had an oxygen atmosphere, oceans, and probably life (the terraforming would not last as long as Earth's biosphere, but perhaps millions to hundreds of millions of years with maintenance). Venus could be terraformed, but it would take a lot of work. Mercury is just too small and too close to the sun to be terraformed. Now this area has been referred to as the zone of life in the past, but this idea has fallen by the wayside as we have discovered that many moons outside of this zone have potential for current life. Which brings us to the gaseous giants. We can't terraform these, there's no rocky surface to them. But many of their moons are good prospects for Terraforming. Around Jupiter; Europa, Ganymede, and Calisto are likely candidates for terraforming but Io is likely too close to Jupiter. Around Saturn, Titan is also a possible candidate for terraforming. I'm not familiar enough with any of these moons to narrow it down to the best possible candidate moons, but There might be more I haven't mentioned. Uranus and Neptune's moons are too small and none have atmospheres, so there are not likely candidates.
Now Neptune's moon Triton has a thin atmosphere but most notably orbits backwards. When the solar system is viewed from above, all terrestrial planets, the asteroid belt, gaseous giants, and Kaiper Belt planetoids orbit the sun in a counterclockwise fashion. The rotation of the terrestrial and gas giant planets are counterclockwise as well. Only Triton orbits in a clockwise direction. Because of this, it is slowing down and will eventually will degr
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Uh-oh, I noticed an error in the calculations. Alpha Centauri is 4.3 light years away. You must have doubled that to 8.6 light years.
Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:
If I can get mathematical:
t = t0/(1-v²/c²)½
where: t = time of external observer
t0 = time on board ship
v = the speed of the moving object
c = the speed of light in a vacuum
So given a trip to Alpha Centauri at 0.5c:
t0 = t * (1 - v²/c²)½
t0 = 8.6 * (1 - 0.5²)½
t0 = 8.6 * 0.866
t0 = 7.4
Mor
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That equation is to work out the total time that has passed on a journey based on the time for an outside observer and the speed of the craft.
The speed of the craft (v) is 0.5c. The time of the journey for the outside observer (t) is 8.6yrs.
That is a simplification as it doesn't take into account acceleration and deceleration. A Bussard Ram Scoop would be operated at 1g acceleration (which would also give earth norm gravity to the ships occupants) for half the journey, and then 1g deceleration for the last half.
At half the speed of light time dialation isn't particularly noticable. At higher velocities it becomes far more apparent.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
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Quote:
Originally posted by TenthCrewMember:
What if there were more than 1 planet in an orbit?
This's actually been done several times. SOLAR CRISIS, I think, might be wrong, was the title of one film... they can't see it from Earth, as it is exactly opposite Earth- (which I think is bad science, should be at the laGrange points). It got sorta mystical with an alternate Earth there, everybody left-handed... anybody remember that flic?
Also, check out the Hubbble results- Joss is on target, its our solar system that now seems unusual. Gas giants in close to suns... poor Kepler!:]
Don't think we'd want to put all our eggs in a system that had two or more suns. Agriculture needs stable, predictable seasons. We are gonna find out more about that, I'm afraid.
Does raise a possibly useful point- did they send colony ships to only one place? Might be a way to get Serenity out of Fox's grasp once & for all!:]
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Quote:
Originally posted by aahhaaa:
Does raise a possibly useful point- did they send colony ships to only one place? Might be a way to get Serenity out of Fox's grasp once & for all!:]
Y'know, what *IF* after the settlers of the current system, others managed to leave but head elsewhere...I think you have a great idea there...
Now to pitch it to Joss and Co.
BWAH!
TCM
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