Wow! They've actually researched and compiled a detailed (and very attractive ) map of the " 'Verse", as they often referred to the universe in Firefly and Serenity. Apparently, they're going to also use this model of the 'verse in the Serenity RPG. One of the things I find interesting is that they have modeled a multiple-star system, which would go a long way to explaining how there could be so many habitable planets and moons in one system; good to see that there is an actual 'Blue Sun' . Shiny!
Well dammit. And I just got done reorganizing EVN Firefly to use a multi-star system with completely different star names.....not to mention I put the blue star at the center. The question is, should I go an change it now?
emits low whistle in admiration That is one shiny piece of mappin'! And a poster would definitely be nice!!
Something about that project tells me it was pulled off by people who really love their work, and/or really love "Firefly". It's very striking. And it's on my Christmas wish list.
I am takin' a likin' to a whole multi-star system, with planets 'round each star, kinda makes no real needing for extreme high falootin' FTL type veloc'ties.
Would that work? I'm no physicist so it seemed plausible to me, but I've asked physics students and they seemed to doubt it would be possible.
"That" what? A multiple-star system? Can't think of a good reason why not - Jupiter is not all that far removed from becoming a star, and it's been in orbit around Sol for quite some time, plus it has moons that are the size of solar planets. It's just a matter of orbits vs. gravity, basically. The Map does a great job of resolving the issues of how so many worlds could be terraformed if they were all in one system, since distance from their primary is a very touchy item when it comes to maintaining an environment, and keeping them in one system also negates the need for FTL drives and explains why, in some cases, it takes weeks rather than days to get to a world. And it's just so very shiny!
Would it work? Assuming all the planets and stars had the right mass and the orbits and gravity were where they needed to be, SURE! It's just very lucky that the humans who left Earth-that-was found such a conveniently large system!
There are many multiple-star systems in the galaxy, some with as many as six or even eight stars, but something with that many stars in that configuration seems unlikely. Instead of one central star with the others in concentric orbits around it, you'd more likely have nested sets of pairs. For instance, Castor A and B orbit a common center of mass, but each of them is in turn a binary star, so you have an orbiting pair of orbiting pairs -- and that system in turn is being orbited by the Castor C binary pair at a much greater distance. What would make more sense would be if you had a White Sun/Blue Sun pair and a Georgia/Kalidasa pair orbiting a common center of mass (since binary pairs tend to be of similar or identical spectral types), with a couple of red suns circling them further out. As it is, the orbital configuration and the relative positions of the stars make no sense -- and if those planetary orbits are shown to scale, they make even less sense. The gravity of the nearby stars would perturb those planets right out of their orbits. Indeed, the gravitational interaction of all those stars would probably prevent any planets from forming at all, even if there were enough material left over from their formation to make any planets out of. Then there's the simple fact that there is no such star system known to exist within any reasonable distance of Earth. There doesn't seem to be FTL drive in the 'Verse, so the new system would have to be within maybe a hundred light-years or so, and there's no system like this within that distance. So it's a very cool map, and a very imaginative exercise, but it's a fantasy construct.
I also love maps, and this one is beautiful. Wish they had large-sized images online. Guess you gotta buy it.
I know it's been a while since I last watched Firefly, but I don't recall noticing any of the planets having more that a single sun. I mean I'm no astrophysicist, but I would've thought that if the stars are really that close then surely at least some of the neighbouring stars would be visible from a given planet, even during that day. Unless of course they just happened to be eclipsed by the local star, gas giant, moon or was only visible from the other side of the planet during every episode where they touched down.