Standardized calendar in this verse?
POSTED BY: jewelstaitefan
UPDATED: Thursday, February 7, 2008 06:53
VIEWED: 4077
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I had been thinking until this moment that seasons would be an issue for planets of varying axial tilt. As I think about it, though, this is something that might be changed through terraforming technology. After all, they can make planets of varying masses all have more or less earth gravity, so possibly they have that direct, finite control over the climate as well.
Off-topic: [It occurs to me that the terraforming devices are the one major piece of technology in Firefly that we just have to take on faith. It is never explained how they work, or if they could even exist. True, people talk about terraforming Mars, but it is very earth-like, and even then they do not talk about being able to alter the gravity. I read an article about old sci-fi once that stated that in the earliest days, the audience was only willing to give a sci-fi writer one major assumption that broke from reality. You could have faster-than-light travel or you could have sentient aliens, but not both. You could have teleportation devices or robots, but not both. As time went on, this became less and less the case as audiences were willing to give the author some staples of the genre (ftl travel, AI, aliens) for "free," and then expect only one or two deviations from THAT model (like the Force). With Firefly, though, the terraforming is the only major assumption we have to allow to make the show "work." So while in some ways it is highly innovative sci-fi, in this way it is almost going back to the genre's roots.]
"When you can't do somethin' smart, do somethin' right!" -Jayne Cobb quotes Shepherd Book
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The seasons we know are resultant of the sun's rays (disregarding the treehuggers claim that our sun does not affect our global climate or temperature).
If the terraforming to match earth norms uses mostly varying degrees of "greenhousing", then seasons would become less resultant from solar power and irregularities. A world closer to the solar center woud need less greenhousing to allow dissipation of solar heat.
But a world farther from the solar source would have greater greenhousing to trap and retain the heat generated from the solar energies (including the heat generating processes of flora and fauna), and this would be more likely to envelope the global whole, thus negating "seasonal" effects.
So I think distance from the solar source and size of the world would determine how much greenhousing was needed to achieve Earth-norm, assuming gravity is adjusted to Earth norm. Closer to center of system would be more seasonal, farther away less seasonal.
On Earth, the closer to the equator (non-seasonal) the greater agricultural availability year-round, but the mid way (between poles and equator) regions (most seasonal) are more hospitable to advanced cities besides being only seasonal agri-use. Think of London, New York, Moscow, Chicago. I don't recall how seasonal Sydney is, sorry.
So the 2 largest worlds in this verse, Shinon and Londonium, are core, central, likely more seasonal - and "more civilized", and the outer rim are likely more agri-use, ranching, less "civilized". I've seen no mention of the 2 core planets degree of tilt, but we may assume some exists otherwise they would be highly unstable geopgraphies if they had no tilt.
Just an exposition on the thought.
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