Today, on an almost monthy basis we get news of some new planet being discovered around a faraway star. At present, they're only able to detect larger gas giants due to gravitational wobble or brightness dimming techniques; only last month have they discovered a relatively small and heavy, rocky planet that's still a far cry from possible Earth-type worlds.
But it occurs to me that in Trek, we never really get a case of some starship running across a brand new star system where they actually know what M-class planets there are in the system, at least not remotely... The starship has to get relatively near to the system first. I suppose that in the Trek universe, they never really improved on planetary detection from Earth to the point that they can routinely detect rocky, Earth-like planets.
Can anyone think of exmples for or against this theory? Having recently watched the first season DVDs, I remember that in ENT they routinely only found planets that they simply stumbled across... For dramatic purposes this is okay, but in the far-enough future I'd think that Starfleet would be able to detect lots of M-classers by themselves, and simply have given Archer a list of potentially cool places to go instead of the aimless wandering they essentially did.
Mark
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
Well, it's now relatively easy to detect a rocky planet orbiting another star, if it's big enough. Determining if it can support human life from a distance would be a pain though. Have to know atmospheric content and surface temperature, if nothing else, and those would be really hard to detect from lightyears away, with any conceivable, non-magic tech. So score one for Trek realism, I say.
Posted by HerbShrump (Member # 1230) on :
The Argus Array was able to spy on Utopia Planetia from fairly far away.
If it could do that, then surely it could scan a planet and see trees and water.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Omega, the things you mention are either detectable or inferable now, or will be in the near future. Anybody with a telescope and a spectrometer can determine the atmospheric content and temperature of anything they can resolve.
Well, I couldn't, but, you know, smart people.
Posted by Topher (Member # 71) on :
I seem to remember someone telling a story once of their ancestors on a colonizing mission to a planet. They were all in stasis. When the ship arrived at the planet, it was inhabitable so they turned around and went back. The details escape me at the moment, however.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
If you go to the right places, you can read long rants about how science fiction in general, written, televised, or otherwise, tends to overlook the humble telescope and all it gives us.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
That colonizing mission thing was a Harry's Ancestor Story (tm).
We can detect chemical composition of stars and planets light years away NOW. Assuming resolution increases to the point where we can resolve a rocky planet (and the James Webb telescope replacement for Hubble just might be able to do it), we'll be able to know what's in the atmosphere pretty easily.
Mark
Posted by Capt_Frank_Hollister (Member # 1639) on :
The Terra Nova colony (ENT: Terra Nova) was established after remotely detecting an Earth-type planet from Earth.
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
...but yet the Reliant failed to detect the absence of a previously-charted planet in the Ceti Alpha system in TWOK.
(Meyer should never be allowed near a Trek production again.)
-MMoM Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
"If it could do that, then surely it could scan a planet and see trees and water."
Unless it spied on UP by tapping into local satellite systems or some other indirect means (the thing was a subspace telescope, as I recall). There's only so far that optical surveillance can go before it becomes prohibitive (that being around the point where you'd need to fabricate lightyear-wide lenses to see anything more than a crude rendition of Pong in your images), even in the 24th century.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Also, anyone who doesn't like every second of Star Trek II will shortly be relocated to Venus, by international agreement.
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
...Where we will begin immediate preparations for the reconquest of Earth and the exile of the TWOK gushers to Ceti Alpha V. And we won't mistake it for Ceti Alpha VI, because we are better. And the Ceti eels will eat your brains, and we will laugh at you.
IN YOUR FACE, BITCHES!!
-MMoM Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim: ...but yet the Reliant failed to detect the absence of a previously-charted planet in the Ceti Alpha system in TWOK.
(Meyer should never be allowed near a Trek production again.)
-MMoM
Amen.
Mabye that fuck Kirk had tweaked the offical records to prevent Kahn from getting any visitors or potential followers out there in the boonies.
In DS9's premiere we saw that starfleet had sent probes as far as the gamma quadrant...that seems to be just stellar cartography stuff thaogh.
Of course, somehow every major power had overlooked the mutherfucking Dyson Sphere too....and that (idiotic) "cloaked planet".
Posted by B.J. (Member # 858) on :
Didn't they discover (or confirm) Spock's presence on Romulus in "Unification" by means of some sort of telescope, looking in from Federation space? If so, that's some pretty fine resolution.
B.J.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Well, you see, the thing about a cloaked planet, that is, its distinguishing feature is, it's cloaked.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
So, how are you supposed to see it?
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
quote:Originally posted by Topher: I seem to remember someone telling a story once of their ancestors on a colonizing mission to a planet. They were all in stasis. When the ship arrived at the planet, it was inhabitable so they turned around and went back. The details escape me at the moment, however.
Yes, because colonising an inhabitable planet would be too easy. Give me Io any day!
Posted by tricky (Member # 1402) on :
A cloaked planet must cloak it's gravitation field, so how does it stay orbating the star? plus the hole in the stella wind must be filled somehow. Maybe they're betting people don't check for these things if they don't know the planet isn't there (no class M planets in this system to see people, move along)
the Dyson sphere, nice idea, not really very useful. Ok, lots of real estate, door entry system tricky but effective, however lethal solar flares from sun in center? Do you want to go around all the time in a lead hat wearing sun factor 1000?
Getting this back on track: You wouldn't be able to see planets around a star when another star or sufficiently dense nebular or dust cloud is it the way. An explanation for starships would be that high res imaging doesn't work to well at warp or though a deflector field, which would seem necessary most of the time
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Well, a Dyson sphere (or swarm) is really all about efficient solar power.
Apparently if you turn the surface into a really big array of lasers, it can also double as a mindbogglingly powerful superweapon, cf. this here discussion. Posted by tricky (Member # 1402) on :
effective in a lightspeed limited universe, but you will have a number of years to do something about it in the star trek universe. However as a powerplant, it's more a matter of logistics. For example, a huge new reactor in the wilds of Scotland isn't going to do much for a lightbulb in New South Wales Australia.
Would make someone a great starbase, but if you can't process the material of the sphere's hull, I doubt there's any other matter available for ship building in a 10 light year radius. Even if you could process the surface, you still need a infrastructure to do the building (Half the planet is made of iron, but cars aren't exactly cheap)
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
"...you have a weapon that can quite readily vaporize planets across intergalactic distances."
Well, I'm sure in the two million years the beam would be underway someone could come up with the idea of a giant mirror.
(OK, assuming instantaneous detection.)
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
A couple of observations at the end of a long, hot and tiring day:
1) Was Terra Nova really spotted from Earth? A probe flyby seems just as likely, considering that really long range robots like Friendship One were being launched at the time. Also, Earth's insistence that Terra Nova was the only inhabitable (and free?) planet within 20 ly could be more justifiably ignored if it was the result of relatively scattershot probe studies than if it was derived from telescope observations.
2) Not all star systems that are named need be "charted". There's no need for the Ceti Alpha system to be charted as of "Space Seed" or as of ST2:TWoK, for example. In "Space Seed", Kirk may simply have ordered the ship to the nearest uncharted but named system, looked briefly around, observed the harsh but habitable fifth planet there, and then called Khan to hear his sentence, without bothering to check out extraneous stuff like planets VI-XXIII. And in TWoK, as suggested above, we can evoke the conspiracy clause: little in the way of log entries need have been made in "Space Seed", and UFP knowledge on the Ceti Alpha system need not have increased.
We also know explicitly that some named systems, like Cheron from TOS "LTBYLB", lie in uncharted space. It's only natural that the Feds would know some if not most systems by "reputation" only.
3) Apparently, basic charting was a major task for the Enterprise in TOS. In "The Corbomite Maneuver", the crew even takes simple starscape photos! This suggests that telescope observations aren't of much worth in the TOS era, or at least require "parallax enhancement" from starship observations.
So why isn't telescopy practical in Trek? The distances involved may be the key - current and foreseeable methods of planetary detection only work to a couple of hundred lightyears, and basic optics set limits for observation of planetary conditions at long ranges. Our TOS and TNG heroes may simply be dealing with such distant systems that remote charting of planetary types has not been viable. Things like the Argus Array may be unable to observe anything but active subspace emitters in realtime; the idea of tapping into spysat signals is a valid one for TNG "Parallels".
Finally, our heroes may have learned the hard way not to trust archive data on star systems. When Sulu reports the presence of X planets of Y types in the system, he may just be confirming what the archives of long range observations already know, rather than sprouting novel information, despite the appearances. Judging by "Doomsday Machine" or "One of Our Planets...", it does sound like a good idea not to trust planetary counts more than a few weeks old!
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Zefram (Member # 1568) on :
quote:the Dyson sphere, nice idea, not really very useful.
I think Larry Niven's "Ringworld" idea makes a lot more sense. Instead of an absurdly large sphere, the structure is a band that surrounds the star. High walls on either side of the ring, along with its spin, keep the atmosphere plastered to the ring's inside surface. Although I'm not sure if its explicitly mentioned in the series, one book's cover illustration shows a series of panels orbiting the star just above the ring's habitable surface, presumably circling the star at a slightly different velocity than the ring is spinning, providing a kind of night for intermittant segments of the Ringworld.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Originally posted by Sol System: Well, you see, the thing about a cloaked planet, that is, its distinguishing feature is, it's cloaked.
Yes, but (as Tricky pointed out) it's gravity would obviously affect everything else in the solar system- including that star.
This "wobble" is how astronemers are finding all these newly discovered planets today, so I'd think the brains in trek would have the technique down.
The Dyson Sphere notion is fun but wildly impractical- literally millions of worlds would have to be destroyed to make even a paper-thin sphere around a star at the relative orbit of earth (the so called "life zone"). That's assinine....the biggest case of overkill imagineable. Turning it into a weapon is even worse- why build a Death Star when a torpedo-sized weapon will kill everything on a given planet?
If solar power is your thing, why not just set up your solar collectors near the star in question and have them broadcast the energy to the other planets or structures in that system. Feck, even the Cardassians can broadcast energy, so I'm sure whatever race built the Dyson Sphere could as well.
[ July 15, 2005, 06:54 PM: Message edited by: Jason Abbadon ]
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
OK. . . first of all, you could build a fine Dyson sphere simply out of the material you get after disassembling Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.
Second of all, Niven's Ringworld as originally described is inherently unstable.
And thirdly, a "real" Dyson sphere probably wouldn't be a singular rigid object. Hence swarm, or cloud, or what have you.
Maybe you should, you know, read about it? Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Er...how do you figure? the sphere's surface area is "millions of earths" if it's built at the orbit of earth. You could encapsulate the star with a smaller sphere, but not build anything like the one shown on Trek.
quote:The original proposal simply assumed there would be enough solar collectors around the star to absorb the starlight, not that they would form a continuous shell. Rather, the shell would consist of independently orbiting structures, around a million kilometres thick and containing more than 1e5 objects. But various science fiction authors seem to have misinterpreted the concept to mean a solid shell enclosing the star, usually having an inhabitable surface on the inside, and this idea was so compelling that it has been the main use of the term in science fiction
A cloud notion is allright, but the hard shell version (Trek's) with room for trillions of inhabitants still seems...pointless. Unless you suddenly had an extreme population explosion or the star was some holy place to the residents or something...you could build astory from there, buy the episode was never referred to again and it serves more as an "alien/artifact of the week" and not much else.
There's still no reason such a massive object was never detected though....even stuff like the Argus Array should have spotted it.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Maybe you should actually read through to the part about how much mass it might take.
Also, this is something for people who need lots of energy, no more no less.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
And mabye you should read my post- I'm talking about the one in the Trek episode- far thicker than the 3 meter example in the article. That example would use everything in our solar system...and I dont buy that, frankly.
Besides, we're far from the topic. I wonder if there is not an entire agency dedicated to unmanned exploration and possibly unmanned First Contact. That could be risky though- it would be like sending out a map to potential threats with the Federation indicated as a big red "X".
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
quote: I wonder if there is not an entire agency dedicated to unmanned exploration
You mean a Space Probe Agency?
Certainly it seems that manned exploration alone would not cover sufficient ground, judging by TOS where exploring ships were implied to be few and shown to be far between. And sometimes our heroes do plunge into adventures by checking out things found by a probe ("Tin Man").
Perhaps such probes are only necessary for exploration "beyond the rim of known", even when there's still lots of uncovered volume inside that rim. Once the Feds perform a cursory manned survey of Sector X, they can probably gather the "missing pieces" by interviewing the locals, studying their star charts and sensor logs. They'll save themselves the effort of detailed charting that way. But to find the said locals, the Feds have to send out the probes and the exploration ships first.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Yes...a Space Probe Agency- but in the DS9 era. Something operated from "Deep Space" stations on the Federation's frontiers. It could certainly serve as the launchpad for new storlines- starships following up on intresting phenomina, retrieving lost probes or even investigating tactical information sent back by the probes (Borg early warning anyone?).
Hmmm....really, I'd love to see a starship use long range probes to explore several adjoining systems at a time- if nothing else, it would serve as an early warning system for approaching ships (or the occasional energy wave o' doom). The Titan (in the first book) kinda does this with it's sensors but tha's more of an enhancment thing and not to inscrease sensor range.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Wouldn't the probe Quadros I be a good example of far flung automated exploration on the part of the Federation - this is the probe that discovered the Idran system that lies at the other end of the Wormhole.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
It might be, if we knew more of it. Did it actually fly to Idran? Or did it rather conduct long base interferometry measurements from within the Alpha Quadrant? Was it launched by the Federation (that is, after 2161), or "inherited" from a member species that had launched it decades, centuries or millennia earlier? Was there a Quadros II, and possibly six thousand other sister probes of rough photon torpedo size, or did the resources of the UFP get drained by building just one of these moon-sized long range behemoths?
Generally, it's difficult to see how probes could perform meaningful exploration unless they were as big and complex as full starships. And if probes like that can be built, why does Starfleet pay Kirk a salary? But the titular probe of VOY "Friendship One" proves that relatively compact automated vehicles can attain extreme speeds and sustain them for long periods of time, spanning the galaxy in their journeys - so there must be some technological trick to doing automatons that are so clearly superior to manned vehicles. Perhaps the super-duper probe engines would kill any crew with their special warp fields or powerplant radiation?
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Or it's a matter of putting large nacelles onto a tiny sensor probe- no mass for crew or consumables would allow for greater warp fields at a lower mass vs. power rate.
Who knows? Mabye starfleet got Transwarp working but not for living things...
I like the notion of a probe that zipps along for decades at high warp and slows to low warp when passing through star systems- recording only basic information (planet numbers, stellar classes, stellar cartography, etc.) and returning on an eliptical path to relay it's findings once it's close enough to the Federation frontier.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
I just took the name "Quad-ros" to imply that it was an interquadrant probe. And quad - sounding english or latin derived.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Hmmmm....or that the four-armed pod people of the Quadros star system made the probe and shared the information with the Federation in exchange for shiney beads, candy and pornograpgy (photoshopped so there were four arms on each model, of course).
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
That's my speciality! Posted by dbutler1986 (Member # 1689) on :
About Ringworld: Yes, the panels are explicitly mentioned. As you may recall, a girl in the village cut her hand off trying to pick up a piece of the cord that held those things together.
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