The "Everyone is Right Theory" on Firefly Planets

POSTED BY: JavidRho
UPDATED: Friday, March 5, 2004 15:35
VIEWED: 8854
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AJ

Friday, March 5, 2004 9:23 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Drakon:
The primary difference between science and religion (according to me) is that science uses observation and logic to arrive at models of how the world works and what it contains, etc. The scientific method....

In principle, anyone can make a scientific observation, or experiment and come up with a viable theory.

Well, strictly speaking, science makes use of hypothesis, and the proving (or otherwise) of theories, in order to advance. Generally, as you say, it's based on observation and logic, but has plenty of room for imagination and inspiration as well. Pedantic? Me?

Quote:
Originally posted by Drakon:

Religion uses appeal to authority, or references subjective data. The problem with subjective data is not that it might be wrong, is that there is no objective way to tell if it is true or not.

Bit of a generalisation about subjective data, but I guess you're talking about unverifiable data (e.g. 'one person sees a unicorn, it's an hallucination' type of thing). For me, this is the primary difference - the accessibility of the data; not having to "take somebody's word for it" (or take it on faith). After all, if we discover science behind magic, it ceases to be magical (e.g. If 100,000 people see a unicorn, it's a horse with a horn).

After all that, I think we're basically saying the same thing, just from a different angle.

AJ

Friday, March 5, 2004 9:52 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by bbay:
I'm afraid that FTL is the only correct theory. Based not on current scientific possibility, but purely on the plot of the show.

You can't "keep pushing further out" when you're in a single solar system.

You can't plot a course "off the alliance radar" in a single solar system.

You can't be out of range of even present day lightspeed communication in a single solar system. (We can still talk to the pioneer spacecraft.)

A single solar system is just too small to have the "wild west" themes of FF. Imagine "40,000 firefly's still flying" in one solar system, that's way crowded. And that's just a single class of ship.

At the level of technology in FF, a single system would quickly be completely saturated by civilization.

I think 'the only correct theory' is perhaps a little too dismissive of other possibilities.

Why can't you keep pushing out, or stay away from Alliance radar in a single solar system?

I, too, imagined the single solar system theory to be too crowded at first, but now I'm not so convinced. In a larger system than ours (more of that later), maybe it's not so crazy. Imagine, say, 100,000 ships (only 2 classes, not necessarily popular) cluttering up the distance between Earth and the moon - nightmare! How about between the Earth/Mars orbits? Still very congested; Venus/Jupiter? Fairly busy still, but you start to get a picture. Venus to Pluto? Double the diameter of the system, and that's a lot of space to fill.

Quote:
Originally posted by bbay:

Also, it's germane to point out that the big solar system theory usually postulates a mode of travel that is "conventional, but better". Proponents of this theory fail to take into account that even travel between planets, on the timescales that we see in the show, present technical difficulties well into the realm of the fantastical. The amount of propellent and energy that would be required to burn from one planet to another, even planets in similar orbits, in eight or ten hours is so outlandish that you really might as well allow FTL travel, from a standpoint of how it violates the laws of physics as we know them.

And yet there is also talk of journeys taking weeks and months on the show. The colonisation of moons has already been discussed at length. Could not these by a mere ten hours apart?

Quote:
Originally posted by bbay:

And the jump gate theory doesn't hold up either. Such gates would become alliance chokepoints that would make hiding fugitives, smuggling or eluding the authorities basically impossible.

Indeed they would (this has the potential for dramatic plot development - talking purely aesthetically), but in a crowded system there would be so much traffic it would be impractical to police them quite that thoroughly, whereas in my less crowded system our Firefly crew may never need to use them.

GROUNDED

Friday, March 5, 2004 10:09 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Drakon:

It is more scientific extrapolation these days than you might think. FTL looks more promising these days, we actually have a theory that allows for it, without actually creating any "rubber" science to get it to work.

I have heard of several groups who are working through the mathematics, and trying to figure out how to build it today. (Well in the next few years) One even has submitted papers to LANL, and has a yahoo group. It may not be like MIT or Cal Tech kind of folks, but then neither were Wilber and Orville.

Single photons have been teleported - but does anyone genuinely believe we'll be teleporting humans within 500 years? I'm not disputing the validity of any FTL research, but having theories and making advances are two entirely different things.

BBAY

Friday, March 5, 2004 11:08 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by AJ:

I think 'the only correct theory' is perhaps a little too dismissive of other possibilities.

I'm very sorry, I didn't mean it like that at all. I am, in fact, a fan of hard sci-fi that takes place in a single solar system. What I'm suggesting is that there are several plot elements in FF that pretty much require FTL as a premise, even though we may wish otherwise.

Quote:

Why can't you keep pushing out, or stay away from Alliance radar in a single solar system?

A) You can't keep pushing out. You run into the edge of the habitable zone. (OiS: "No matter how long the arm of the Alliance might get, we'll just get ourselves a little further.") And you can't run away from an Alliance cruiser at light speed or lower, they would just watch where you went. (Assuming they were serious about enforcing the law, which is a safe bet.) And then they'd radio their nearby friends to track you, and then they'd catch you.

B) It only takes 4 hours for light to travel from the orbit of pluto to the sun. OiS again, you simply cannot be so far off the beaten path that your signal won't reach somebody. Note that they didn't say that no one could reach them in time, they said that the signal wouldn't "go far enough", which speaks to some kind of FTL radio governed by different rules than the inverse square of the distance.

Quote:

Quote:
Originally posted by bbay:

And the jump gate theory doesn't hold up either. Such gates would become alliance chokepoints that would make hiding fugitives, smuggling or eluding the authorities basically impossible.

Indeed they would (this has the potential for dramatic plot development - talking purely aesthetically), but in a crowded system there would be so much traffic it would be impractical to police them quite that thoroughly, whereas in my less crowded system our Firefly crew may never need to use them.

Have you been through customs lately? (Ha ha.)

Making the science argument, I wonder if anyone has done the math on the BSS theory. If we assume a habitable zone with a solar flux similar to what we find between Venus and Mars (because the sun looks similar regardless of what planet you're on). And we assume the planets are arranged in kemplerer rosettes (a stable configuration, with five planets per orbit). And we assume that the orbits of planets have to be a minimal distance from each other to avoid unpleasantness slingshot effects. We could, in theory, compute the size of star necessary to produce a habitable zone that could contain 70 planets (with the afore mentioned inverse square law). (Anyone here know the math to do this? I'll try to give it a shot, but I'm more of a formal systems guy, I've forgotten all my physics training.)

Of course, there could be planetary systems around gas giants which could increase the number of planets per orbit, but which would also serve to reduce the total number of orbits that you could populate because the increased gravity of the main planets would increase the necessary distance between orbits.

That sciency stuff is all beside the point anyway. The main point that eliminates the light speed barrier is that if you can only travel below light speed, then you're never out of sight. And that's contradicted by the cannon.

(I'll stick by the FTL theory, but if Joss himself came down and contradicted it, I'd still watch. I LOVE this show.)

DRAKON

Friday, March 5, 2004 11:35 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Grounded:

Single photons have been teleported - but does anyone genuinely believe we'll be teleporting humans within 500 years? I'm not disputing the validity of any FTL research, but having theories and making advances are two entirely different things.

Good point. I personally ain't stepping in one of those things, no matter how safe they say they are. But that is me.

Here is the deal with warp drive right now. We have a theory, which is consistent with General Relativity, and does not "break" it in any way. It is dependent on how true the energy conditions are, and from quantum research, there is some area to doubt that the energy conditions will hold, and in most cases, quantum effects that appear to be gross violations of them.

The energy conditions are an extra set of postulated and reasonable sounding constraints on what a "proper" metric tensor, (the mathematical description of the curvature of the space-time manifold. And no, that is not technobabble, although it looks like, don't it?) should look like. The reason for their inclusion is because as it stands, there is no limitation on the Einstein equations, and some pretty weird configurations would be more prevalent. But like all postulates, there is no known underlying cause or reason for the conditions.

If the energy conditions are false, then negative mass/energy is possible. Most of the energy conditions state that such is impossible, to some degree or extent or another. But the problem is that research at the quantum level keeps showing small and limited violations of these postulated energy conditions.

GR is on more firm ground than Quantum Mechanics, heck I think there are something like 3 different major interpretations of QM (Copenhagen, Everette's Multiverse, and Bohm's "pilot waves") as well as a lot of smaller, less well recognized interpretations. GM is well tested, and keep passing, as well as, as near as I can tell only two major interpretations. Well one major and the other (variations of aether theory) considered crackpot.

The trouble with multiple interpretations is that it is difficult to know which is right (at least at this stage of the game.) In the case of both QM and GR, most of these interpretations don't mean much. Whether the cat is in an undead/not alive state or not, or whether the universe bifurcates and are all but identical except in one the cat is alive and in the other, its dead, does not matter too much. We are in this universe and the cat's state will "collapse" when we open the box. It all ends up the same anyway.

Anyway, it is a fasinating subject. I know of some research work being done on it, and am quite hopeful for the outcome. NASA used to have an Advance Propulsion Group working on awarding research contracts on a number of different interstellar flight ideas. Will I see it in my lifetime, I wish I could say definitatively one way or the other. But I am getting old, so....

"Wash, where is my damn spaceship?"

AJ

Friday, March 5, 2004 12:55 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by bbay:
Quote:
Originally posted by AJ:

I think 'the only correct theory' is perhaps a little too dismissive of other possibilities.

I'm very sorry, I didn't mean it like that at all. I am, in fact, a fan of hard sci-fi that takes place in a single solar system. What I'm suggesting is that there are several plot elements in FF that pretty much require FTL as a premise, even though we may wish otherwise.

no offence taken

a) Pushing further out - fair point, but then this is a crew who take advantage of salvage (often Alliance), and have a supply of Blue Sun products in their galley. How figurative is this statement?

b) I took flying below their radar to mean, basically, going where the Alliance don't pay much heed to what goes on, keeping your head down, etc.... Not a very scientific viewpoint, I know.

Quote:
Originally posted by bbay:

Quote:
Originally posted by bbay:

And the jump gate theory doesn't hold up either. Such gates would become alliance chokepoints that would make hiding fugitives, smuggling or eluding the authorities basically impossible.

Indeed they would (this has the potential for dramatic plot development - talking purely aesthetically), but in a crowded system there would be so much traffic it would be impractical to police them quite that thoroughly, whereas in my less crowded system our Firefly crew may never need to use them.

Have you been through customs lately? (Ha ha.)

A-ha, yes! Well, my experience is more of UK customs procedure - perhaps that might explain the difference in outlook! Not that I would rule out the possibility of smuggling and the like still continuing in the US even as we speak....

Quote:
Originally posted by bbay:

Making the science argument, I wonder if anyone has done the math on the BSS theory.... We could, in theory, compute the size of star necessary to produce a habitable zone that could contain 70 planets (with the afore mentioned inverse square law). (Anyone here know the math to do this? I'll try to give it a shot, but I'm more of a formal systems guy, I've forgotten all my physics training.)

That sciency stuff is all beside the point anyway. The main point that eliminates the light speed barrier is that if you can only travel below light speed, then you're never out of sight. And that's contradicted by the canon.

(I'll stick by the FTL theory, but if Joss himself came down and contradicted it, I'd still watch. I LOVE this show.)

Not a scientist myself (with nothing remotely resembling physics training!), so I'll have to leave the finer details to others, I'm afraid.

Personally, my initial instincts were towards FTL only outside actual solar systems/habitable zones, if only because the feel of the show seemed to operate below light speed for much of the time (experiences with reavers et al).

On the last point - totally agree. I enjoy discussing the science, but (as you can probably tell from this post) that's not the main reason for watching Firefly!

DRAKON

Friday, March 5, 2004 2:06 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by AJ:
Well, strictly speaking, science makes use of hypothesis, and the proving (or otherwise) of theories, in order to advance. Generally, as you say, it's based on observation and logic, but has plenty of room for imagination and inspiration as well. Pedantic? Me?

Grin, you and me both. Good points btw.

Quote:

Bit of a generalisation about subjective data, but I guess you're talking about unverifiable data (e.g. 'one person sees a unicorn, it's an hallucination' type of thing). For me, this is the primary difference - the accessibility of the data; not having to "take somebody's word for it" (or take it on faith). After all, if we discover science behind magic, it ceases to be magical (e.g. If 100,000 people see a unicorn, it's a horse with a horn).

After all that, I think we're basically saying the same thing, just from a different angle.

Yes. For me the fact that the data is not independently accessible is what marks the difference between the objective and subjective realms. Not just the primary difference, but really, the only difference I can think of.

It don't mean the data is wrong or the observer is flawed. It means its impossible to tell without that observer, or independent from them.

Now once technology like from the movie "Brainstorm" comes around, that might muck with things a bit.

"Wash, where is my damn spaceship?"

AJ

Friday, March 5, 2004 2:35 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Drakon:
Now once technology like from the movie "Brainstorm" comes around, that might muck with things a bit.

Haven't seen it, but just done some reading - yep, that would liven up the debate a little!

ROCKETJOCK

Friday, March 5, 2004 3:35 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Hans:
Quote:
Originally posted by Shiny:
This was a show that had enough respect for science fact to avoid having sound in space. Since 2001 (the movie, not the year) every single sci-fi movie and TV show has had sound in space, but it was important enough for the creators to include this aspect of realism (despite the fact they probably had to fight the network to keep this aspect of the show intact).

Hans

Slight historical note for the sake of accuracy: Babylon 5 (and its sister shows and spin-offs) has an excellent record for silence in space. (I don't count dramatic music timed to give the impression of sound effects, which is a trick both B5 and the various Star Trek shows have used to good effect over the decades)*

B5 also had excellent understanding of how things move in a zero-gee environment, which is an area of scientific accuracy Firefly also scores high points on.

As for me, I think the "Multiple systems settled, but Serenity only tools around one of them" theory is dramatically sound. Scientifically it doesn't answer the nonvariant size of the sun problem, but I can accept a dozen or so solar systems each having a rosette or two of three to five terraformed planets and/or moons -- most worlds would then be placed in the "life belt", or close to it, and the apparent size of the local sun wouldn't seem to vary much. Just so long as you're not trying to place 70+ worlds in the same system, I can buy it.

And if Serenity ever needed to go outsystem, perhaps they could hitch a ride on some kind of FTL ferry ship (at considerable expense, and with appropriate dramatic complications,of course.)

"You can't take the sky from me."

*Footquote: "In space, no one can hear your siren." -- From the movie "Galaxina"

RocketJock

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