I Know This Isn't Realistic
POSTED BY: Haken
UPDATED: Saturday, September 28, 2002 05:47
VIEWED: 4955
PAGE 1 of 2
Take a look at this from the 'The Train Job'
I'm guessing the largest one in the background is a planet. The other two are moons. One seems to be terraformed. The one Malcolm is on must be a moon as well because there's just no way for two planets to be that close together.
But how the heck do you explain all these terrestial objects being so close together in distance without gravity ripping everything apart? There's just no way.
A bit overzealous with the cut and paste I think.
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Great looking shot though.
The answer is that the moon they're on has a strange chemical that magnifies images that are outside the atmosphere :)
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May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May you be in heaven an hour before
The Devil knows you’re dead.
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________________
"I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass." —Maya Angelou
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How can you form any judgment about how big these objects are if you don't know how far they are? And vice versa? Look up in the sky some time when both the sun and the moon are visible. Their apparent size is very close (a coincidence that has always bothered me). Yet the sun is 400 times bigger than the moon! Being 400 times farther away cancels this out.
In any case, one's perception of the "size" of the moon is grossly distorted. A full moon looks like it takes up a huge chunk of sky, especially when it's near the horizon:
http://facstaff.uww.edu/mccreadd/
But look how tiny the moon actually is against an objective backdrop:
http://www.freemars.org/jeff/Luna2b.htm
I don't have the math to say this with authority, but try this: Mal's moon is about 500,000 KMs from the big red planet, which is probably a gas giant. That's about 1/4 farther than the our own moon is from us. The other terraformed moon is earth-sized and about 200,000 kms further in. My intuition is that this picture would look about right. And, yes, there'd be massive tidal forces (lots of earthquakes!) but not enough to break up the planets. Just a wild guess.
Did I hear somebody say "moonquakes"? Don't go there. A certain level of nitpicking is intolerable, even by me!
JOSS, WHERE'S MY CHECK???!!!
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Quote:
Originally posted by Zicsoft:
How can you form any judgment about how big these objects are if you don't know how far they are? And vice versa?
Oh, come on, stretching it a bit here. Granted, there's truth in what you're saying, but the image just doesn't make sense. And you don't need fancy math to know that. A bit of geometry and some basic understanding of gravitational forces and their effects on orbiting bodies will suffice. The orbits are all wrong.
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BTW, let me just add that since Mal and the rest of the folks on that rock he was on seems to be walking normal. Gravity must be equal to that of Earth's (assuming that they still go by Earth's gravity as a point of reference).
So, without needing to know how large the moon he was on is, my guess is that either the planet has very weak gravity or those moons are orbiting the planet really really fast, which, in that case would just cause all sorts of other problems.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah... these are all good points. But we're getting away from the important point: It looks pretty.
________________
"I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass." —Maya Angelou
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Quote:
Originally posted by LivingImpaired:
Yeah, yeah, yeah... these are all good points. But we're getting away from the important point: It looks pretty.
Yes it does. Never been one too into debating anyway.
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The cool thing about that shot, I don't know if anybody else realized, is that those are the bodies Serenity can be seen crossing over later in the teaser.
--- Joe
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Overheard Joss telling his writers:
"Okay, let's check the Sci Fi completely
at the door. You have just entered the
world of completely fantasy."
Come on! There has to be *some* element
of believ-ability. I can't just throw
out my entire believe system for the
sake of moronic entertainment. I am
not a big movie-physics buff. But having
that sort of atmosphere, climate,
gravity at that close to that Gas Giant!?
Fantasy I can deal with. Generally
suspension of disbelieve - okay. But I
just can't literally "check my brain at
the door" if I am watching anything
close to a SciFi. 
Quote:
Originally posted by LivingImpaired:
Yeah, yeah, yeah... these are all good points. But we're getting away from the important point: It looks pretty.
________________
"I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass." —Maya Angelou
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