posted
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.
posted
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.
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
Registered: Mar 1999
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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.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
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.
-------------------- I haul cardboard and cardboard accessories
Registered: Mar 1999
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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.
Registered: Mar 1999
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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.
Cartman
just made by the Presbyterian Church
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posted
"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.
Registered: Nov 1999
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Also, anyone who doesn't like every second of Star Trek II will shortly be relocated to Venus, by international agreement.
Registered: Mar 1999
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...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
-------------------- The flaws we find most objectionable in others are often those we recognize in ourselves.
Registered: Jun 2001
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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".
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
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.
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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