I'd love to populate the map using the bitmaps from the official visual companion (below) and have in fact pieced those out, but I'm having the classic problem of sorting out what goes where. I've sort of guessed where Sihnon and Londinium go here, but I'm hoping someone here knows a good resource (other than the straight Wiki) or knows someone else who is tackling this.
It's hard even just sorting out what's a moon and what's a planet...
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-------------------- I'm slightly annoyed at Hobbes' rather rude decision to be much more attractive than me though. That's just rude. - PsyLiam, Oct 27, 2005.
Registered: May 1999
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I never really bought the idea of that many planetary bodies surviving in a multistellar system. And so I ignore that map (which is dreadfully beautiful, mind you) and focus on what we saw teacher telling about in the movie. I'd perused the Wiki earlier, but at he who shall not be named's suggestion, I returned and so did the following:
Lookie! Colors! And planets are related to one another and I mostly ignored the whole orbital proximity thing in favor of things making sense in my head.
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I don't understand. Maybe because I haven't actually seen the film yet (bought it first day out in the UK, but I've been busy what with moving and all). But Hobbes' map seems to imply the 'Verse is a small globular cluster or complex binary/trinary/whateverenary star system. That sort-of makes sense, although best I can remember such systems have conditions that aren't really conducive to supporting life, or at least letting it develop.
So why then do it as a map showing everything as in orbit of one star, especially when it ignores the theory of the circumstellar habitable zone? Sure, that's just a theory, mind, but it's a good one. And according to that theory, the CHZ's distance to the star may change according to the star's mass, luminosity etc., but the size of the zone itself varies very little. You're not gonna get several dozen planets/planetoids/moons/moonlets into it without multiple/shared/overlapping orbits. And the chances of that. . .
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In one star system, or a one-star system? Do they talk about one star, or something being "The Sun?"
Credibility. . . Whedon had just come off a show where he'd created a whole universe that was ostensibly like our own but actually quite different, in terms of the use of magic and the existence of magical creatures. The question then becomes, could he do the same with a science fiction show, with slightly different physical laws, and get away with it?
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Not to give anything away, but I literally traced this off of screen-caps, Lee. I do get you on the CHZ thing, and the whole plausibility thing. I have a hard time thinking wee Lilac out there is getting anywhere near enough light, but I do what the voices tell me. They murmur a bit about all the terra-forming plus there's all that gravity technology evidently in regular use in the show and the movie (which you should probably watch soon.)
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One possible way to explain the outer reaches of the system, at least that I've thought slightly plausible, is that most or all of the outer planets are actually moons orbiting gas giants. That would allow there to be many Earth-sized bodies per orbit (since our own star system shows that's probably possible). But it wouldn't exactly explain the lighting...
Concerning the CHZ idea, I've kinda always thought that a bigger star � one that generated more heat and energy � would also have a wider CHZ. The statistics for various stars that I've seen � for example at the Internet Stellar Database � seems to indicate that hotter stars like Sirius have a wider CHZ. (The database lists the CHZ as the "Comfort Zone".) So, who knows? Maybe it's within the realm of physics that more planets could fit around a larger star and still be habitable.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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Is it possible that there are one or more brown dwarfs in this system that some of the planets are orbiting? That would heat those planets and give them some more light, and you wouldn't have to deal with another full-on star.
I made the most distant body more star-like as I never had a name for it and it might explain the vast CHZ.
As it is, Georgia and Heinlein are both listed as gas giants around which many of the worlds the BDH explore are to be found. Those can be emissive without actually being stars right? (watched 2010 too many times when I was young.)
For what it's worth, these are two of the images upon which I'm basing all this:
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Well proximity to a star isn't the only way for a planet to warm up enough for life. Jupiter for instance keeps Io nice and toasty with all that gravitational tidal forces bending the mantle. Then there's the terraforming efforts which may have included induced greenhouse effects, orbital mirrors and just plain 'ol hight tech gobbledy gook.
The bottom line is that we really don't know enough about star systems to form a definate opinion as to what's possible. For starters we've only studied one in any real detail and there's shed loads of systemsout there, most of which are probably unique.
Oh and Joss Whedon isn't the sciency type and so he (rightly) dosen't care. It's a fictional story that takes place in a system with lots of planets, ergo the system has lost of planets. Unlikely you say? Well that don't mean they ain't there now does it?
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Well, the Serenity 'verse certainly makes the Twelve Colonies being located inside a single star system seem a whole lot more reasonable.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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posted
Firefly (and Battlestar Galactica too) are good examples of how picking a handful of realistic elements and sticking to them can let talented storytellers get away with all sorts of weirdness elsewhere.
Maybe?
(Also, what is it with Walt's mom and kids with psychic powers?)
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