The Genesis planet...

Discussion in 'Star Trek Movies I-X' started by los2188, Sep 26, 2012.

  1. beamMe

    beamMe Commodore

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    Have you seen what a large area the explosion affected? Those nice looking ILM-smoke-rings covered quite some distance while the Enterprise warped just ahead of them.

    It could be that which magics the Genesis-magic on Regula.
    Or the the Genesis-magic magiced up a whole new planet that wasn't there a few moments before.
     
  2. beamMe

    beamMe Commodore

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    Yeah, only there is nothing that seems familiar about that explosion, there is nothing there that resembles the earlier Genesis Effect only larger.
     
  3. Therin of Andor

    Therin of Andor Admiral Moderator

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    Exactly, created from the nebula material, and the Reliant and its (super)human contents. :vulcan:

    And yet, you recently said, "the glow is the same phenomenon we see in the presentation video".

    The explosion wasn't meant to happen inside a nebula. But it did.
     
  4. beamMe

    beamMe Commodore

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    What created, after the initial expansion caused by the explosion, the necessary gravimetric pull to draw all that matter back in so that Genesis could bake it so fast into a whole new living, breathing planet?
    It didn't even take "six minutes".
     
  5. beamMe

    beamMe Commodore

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    And if you'd read that post carefully, you'd have noticed that I wrote "could also be explained as:".
     
  6. Tiberius

    Tiberius Commodore Commodore

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    That's speculation.

    Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it COULDN'T have been the same star. But speculation doesn't make it true. And we also saw several rings appearing around the explosion of the Reliant. This is what we see in a naturally forming solar system, just much faster. The center of the rings - the Reliant explosion - becomes the system's star. The rings of matter coalesce to form planets. And there's certainly enough matter in a nebula to form an entire solar system.

    How do you know?
     
  7. Therin of Andor

    Therin of Andor Admiral Moderator

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    Who knows? You seemed to suggest we couldn't even speculate unless it was spelled out by canon.

    Perhaps it was something built into the program?

    Or, as the next film suggested, protomatter.

    I noticed. It seemed, to me, to be the first time you were actually seeming to be open to the possibility. ;)
     
  8. beamMe

    beamMe Commodore

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    Wait, weren't you the one who didn't even notice that the Mutara nebula was visible from Regula?

    By, you know, watching the movie.
     
  9. beamMe

    beamMe Commodore

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    We can all speculate our brains out, but that doesn't make those speculation "canon".


    Something that, what?, acted as a kind of magnet, gravity sink to draw all that matter back?
    How do you explain the fast cooling down - all that matter must have been under enormous pressure when it collapsed into that to-be newly formed planet.

    No, not really.
    But I've said a few times now that the movie's visuals are vague as to what happened and there is no dialogue in the film that supports or contradicts either of the two interpretation.

    That things happened how they happened in the novelverse is entirely beside the point so far as on-screen "canon" is concerned. If it weren't then it could be argued that the "god" in TFF was the last trapped and left behind Shedai.
     
  10. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    There can be only one star within impulse range of things. If there were two, we'd be seeing twin shadows and all.

    No such ability was ever indicated. You can turn the surface of a dead moon into moss, but the vice-versa isn't included in "a process whereby molecular structure is reorganised at he subatomic level into life-generating matter of equal mass".

    Sinking under the waves, that is. The mountains we do see up close are "flat terrain" in terms of the initial and final views, not visible from that distance at all - the zooming makes that clear. But the height of the crater rims is not established.

    And that's being really generous because we see the departure speed vis-รก-vis the Regula rock in the background, and that's not an appreciable fraction of lightspeed.

    Let's remember that Kirk would have had no reason to hold back on speed when leaping from Regula to Mutara, and it is suggested everybody had to slow down once entering the nebula. Spock also seems confident that they can get into the nebula before Khan, in a faster ship, catches up on them. The sum total of all this would appear to be a relatively slow transit of very short duration (essentially seen in real time) in two badly wounded ships, into a dense nebula that for all we know is inside the Regula system and in the process of being sucked into its star (or having been burped out by it in the very recent past).

    As for transforming that nebula into a planet and a star, we might do some math on the masses involved. Assuming a tiny planet where gravity is largely magical (and "in flux"), and a tiny star that will only burn for a few centuries and need not obey any particular laws of astrophysics, we're still probably discussing much more than 10^27 kg of mass (because how do you get a glow out of a star more than a thousand times smaller than our sun?). If Mutara is as dense as a thick Terran water vapor cloud, 1 g/m^3 (at least a quadrillion times denser than normal nebulae, but do starships really shudder when running into a cumulonimbus, admittedly at high speed, but with deflectors on?), then we're talking about a nebula just a few million kilometers in diameter - something we can shove as close to the Regula star as we please. A number of implausibilities suggested or allowed in the movie (absurdly high density of cloud, fairly small mass of star) would then conspire to make possible the conversion process. But only if Genesis efficiently used all of the available mass.

    With more realistic nebula densities, the Genesis wave would have to reach out farther to gather then pseudorealistic amount. Reaching back to Regula would never be a problem under any parameters, not in comparison with what's required to make a planet and a star. Or even a planet, really, as something like Mars already weighs in at about 10^24 kg.

    Timo Saloniemi