Abstract
A young star, its fusion furnace recently ignited, is surrounded by a disk of gas and dust, much like Saturn is encircled by its paper-thin rings. The disk is composed mostly of hydrogen, the most basic element and the building block from which all other elements were constructed, but there are other gases like helium.
You cannot look up at the night sky on the Planet Earth and not wonder what it’s like to be up there amongst the stars.
Tom Hanks, Actor
Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon. July 1969 AD. We came in peace for all mankind.
Neil Armstrong, Astronaut, Apollo 11
In terms of Defiance, this world doesn’t actually exist. My job is to convince our audience that it could exist.
Kevin Murphy, Showrunner, Defiance
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Notes
- 1.
One of the most popular episodes of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, “Scar,” was set in one such protoplanetary disk. That explains why the environment between tumbling rocks appeared hazy.
- 2.
Which is why Avatar is frequently referred to as Dances with Na’vi.
- 3.
A mole is a term borrowed from chemistry, also known as Avogadro’s Number, it is 6.02 × 1023. There is one mole of carbon atoms in a 12-gram lump of carbon.
- 4.
The original series Star Trek episode “The Devil in the Dark” explored a situation where, even in the 23rd century, humans colonizing new planets had difficulty identifying truly unusual lifeforms.
- 5.
Contrarily, implied in the books is that Arrakis was more Earthlike before the introduction of the Shai-hulud, not less.
- 6.
Robertson P et al. (2014) Stellar activity masquerading as planets in the habitable zone of the M dwarf Gliese 581. Science 345(6195): 440–445.
- 7.
Famous for the Battle of Wolf 359 from the Star Trek franchise.
- 8.
If you’re interested, you can now do this kind of planet spotting yourself with a modest telescope, a tracking mount, a digital camera, and the right software.
- 9.
Kepler’s main mission ended in 2013 with the failure of 2 of its four reaction wheels (these are called “gyros” on the Hubble Space Telescope) that are used to point the spacecraft precisely. However, researchers have worked out a way for it still to do some observations with just two wheels.
- 10.
Immediately obvious is that the Fahrenheit scale has survived to the 28th century. This is just good-natured ribbing. Clearly a film has to be written in the vernacular of the intended audience, and American audiences are still not wholly comfortable with the Celsius scale.
- 11.
Mercury is not tidally locked, but it spins extremely slowly. Its day is 176 Earth days long, while its orbit is 88 Earth days long. Yes, Mercury has two years in one day.
- 12.
As was the planet Remus of the Romulan Star Empire, which viewers learn in the film Star Trek: Nemesis (2003). The character of Shinzon, a clone of Jean-Luc Picard, says that Reman civilization was confined to the cooler permanently dark side of the planet.
- 13.
Canup R (2013) Planetary science: Lunar conspiracies. Nature 504: 27–29. http://www.nature.com/news/planetary-science-lunar-conspiracies−1.14270..
- 14.
In fact, researchers have shown that because it was devoid of oxygen, the first life thrived—many simple organic molecules do not form in the presence of oxygen. This has dire implications should life ever be extinguished from Earth—in the presence of left-over oxygen from the present ecosystem, it is unlikely that life would re-evolve.
- 15.
This is known, literally, as the “rise of oxygen” or the “Great Oxygenation Event.”
- 16.
Returning to Riddick’s universe, with this in mind, one has to wonder how a planet like Crematoria would have evolved a breathable atmosphere in the first place since the dayside temperatures would have caused any liquid water to become gas and, likely, escape the planet.
- 17.
In the Star Wars expanded universe, it is established that when coherent energy, like laser light, passes through Tibanna gas, the gas emits much more energy than that of the original beam. It is an attempt to explain how small hand blasters can emit so much energy. Blasters, in particular hand blasters, are a trope in science fiction, at least they tried to offer up a rationale for the extreme amounts of energy per blast.
- 18.
To be clear, a “rock” is an aggregate of minerals, and a mineral is any naturally-occurring crystalline substance.
- 19.
Due to a selection bias in the methods astronomers use to detect exoplanets preferentially detecting large planets close to their parent stars.
- 20.
Titan, like Ganymede at Jupiter, is larger than the planet Mercury. Were they either in orbit about the Sun rather than a planet, there would be no debate over their status—they would unequivocally be classified as planets.
- 21.
Jean-Dominique Cassini, who was born in Italy and was originally Giovanni Domenico Cassini before moving to France, is the astronomer for whom the Cassini spacecraft is named. Cassini discovered four moons of Saturn, as well as the gap in Saturn’s main rings, which is known as the Cassini Division (contrary to popular belief, the Cassini Division is not located at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory).
- 22.
Until recently, scientists didn’t believe that icy objects without atmospheres could exist as close to the Sun as Ceres (2.8 AU).
- 23.
Though scientists are discovering that many asteroids in the outer asteroid belt, beyond 2.5 AU, are icy, while those in the inner belt are “dry.”
- 24.
Objects like this have an odd nomenclature. The number refers to the year the object was discovered. The first letter refers to the two-week period of the year in which the object was discovered (52 weeks, 26 letters), the second letter the day (so it’s capped at “G”), and the second number, is an order of objects discovered that day.
- 25.
IAU 2006 General Assembly: Result of the IAU Resolution votes: www.iau.org/static/archives/releases/doc/iau0603.doc.
- 26.
- 27.
Sumi T et al. (2011) Unbound or distant planetary mass population detected by gravitational microlensing. Nature 473(7347): 349–352.
- 28.
Asteroid coined 30 years earlier than known: ‘Big data’ impacts history of science: http://thedailyjournalist.com/uncategorized/asteroidcoined−30-years-earlier-than-known-big-data-impactshistoryof-science/.
- 29.
http://history.nasa.gov/CP−2156/ch2.5.htm.
- 30.
Wiegert PA, Holman MJ (1997) The stability of planets in the Alpha Centauri system. The Astronomical Journal 113(4): 1445–1450.
- 31.
Dumusque X, Pepe F, Lovis C, Ségransan D, Sahlmann J, Benz W, Bouchy F, Mayor M, Queloz D, Santos N, Udry S (2012) An Earth mass planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B. Nature 490(91): 207–211.
- 32.
The trinary star system initially introduced in Kara Thrace’s vision in the Battlestar Galactica episode “He that Believeth in Me” was a bit of an astronomical red herring suggested by the show’s science advisor (KRG). With the show entering its final season, fans would be looking for hints that the rag tag fleet was nearing Earth. Astronomically astute viewers might figure that the star was the Alpha Centauri system, the nearest star system to the Solar System, which is a trinary. Instead, the stars were just another trinary system they passed along the way. Based upon comments on Internet threads, the misdirection worked.
- 33.
There actually appears to be a fifth component to this system, which means that a more accurate description would be of an Alpha Centauri-like system in mutual orbit with a binary pair.
- 34.
The Arrival (1996) was a sort of role-reversed Aliens, with aliens setting up atmospheric processing plants on Earth to make our atmosphere hospitable for them. The film starred Charlie Sheen who is, some would claim, proof that alien life exists on Earth.
- 35.
In Red Planet the algae has been eaten by insect-like creatures that one character refers to as “nematodes.” In fact, a nematode is a type of roundworm.
- 36.
Since terraforming literally means “Earth forming,” the Earth of Defiance was, more correctly, Votaformed.
- 37.
With a rocky envelope surrounding a metal core, the global ocean adds but a trivial amount of mass.
- 38.
And Pink Floyd.
- 39.
Typically, you can do the kinds of back-of-the-envelope calculations like we’ve been doing by calculating out to only two or three decimal places. If you’re going to try to recreate the kinds of calculations we do in this science box, you’ll need twelve decimal places to do it well. The calculation may be difficult using most hand calculators, but spreadsheets like Excel work well.
- 40.
In a recent paper, physicist Stephen Hawking says that information—mass and energy—that passes through the event horizon of a black hole may not be lost forever, although it will be jumbled up. This is an area of active ongoing debate, so stay tuned.
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Grazier, K., Cass, S. (2015). Braver Newer Worlds. In: Hollyweird Science. Science and Fiction. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15072-7_11
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