A Thought About Ceti Alpha VI

[somebuddyX]

Why would they? It's been said over and over again, both in this thread and many others; they don't need to know which planet by count from the primary (that's the local sun). They only need to know which planet is the one they're looking for, and they then fly to that planet and begin their tests. It doesn't matter which orbit it's in, it only matters that it meets their initial criteria for testing.

I'm not sure if you read the part that I was quoting or my original post that Timo was replying to in the quote, but my point was that it would have made more sense to me if Ceti Alpha 4 had exploded, that way when Reliant scanned the system Ceti Alpha 5 was tagged as 4 and Ceti Alpha 6 became 5. Reliant beams down to what they think is Ceti Alpha 4 not realising it's where Khan and his buddies are. I figure once they're in sensor range of a star system the location of all planetary bodies would be determined and their orbits calculated and automatically give them names based on how far away they orbit the Ceti Alpha star. I just assumeed this would be all done by the main computer.

 

[DonIago]

I think it may be a safe assumption that we've spent more time thinking about this than the screenwriters did.

 

[somebuddyX]

I think it may be a safe assumption that we've spent more time thinking about this than the screenwriters did.

We need this on a T-shirt.

 

[Morpheus 02]

Hey...Just wondering if when a planet "explodes", enough can remain to seem like a planet. Also, how does Khan know which planet explodes?

Can such an explosion shift orbits of planets?

 

[DonIago]

I believe the novelization and "To Reign in Hell" have CA6 close enough to CA5 that it resembles a moon more than a planet in its own right, which could also explain why whatever happened to it was so devastating to CA5. As we only have Khan's description of the incident as an "explosion", it's hard to discuss the details. Khan could have misinterpreted what occurred, though I see no reason for him to actively be lying.

 

[Ronald Held]

Unless the planet disinterested the mass is still there, short of any that achieve escape velocity from Ceti Alpha. Still shoddy work not charting a barely scanned system. Reliant was not in a time crunch to find The Planet.

 

[DonIago]

I wonder whether Our Heroes noted that the system only had five planets but simply assumed the last survey data they had was inaccurate. "Unreliable survey says six planets, but we only see five. Even so, #5 meets all of the criteria we were expecting to see for #6. Good enough!" At that point they may have considered it simply good luck that they'd found a workable planet despite inaccurate data, especially after weeks or months of surveying with nothing to show for it.

As it's easy enough to assume Our Heroes didn't know Khan et al. were on CA5, it doesn't really matter whether they have any reason to believe they're beaming down to CA5 rather than CA6.

 

[FormerLurker]

DonIago, no one ever said there were only six planets in the system. There could have been twenty. What matters is that our heroes weren't there to survey the system, they were there to find CA6 and scan it for suitability in the Genesis experiment. They never needed to make certain it was the sixth planet from the stellar center, they never needed to make sure it was even a whole planet. Only that it had the mass and the surface conditions that they required. And possibly that it was in the Goldilocks zone.

Wouldn't they have scanned the entire system? Or did they already have Ceti Alpha VI in mind?

See my reply to DonIago above.

 

[Nerys Myk]

DonIago, no one ever said there were only six planets in the system. There could have been twenty. What matters is that our heroes weren't there to survey the system, they were there to find CA6 and scan it for suitability in the Genesis experiment. They never needed to make certain it was the sixth planet from the stellar center, they never needed to make sure it was even a whole planet. Only that it had the mass and the surface conditions that they required. And possibly that it was in the Goldilocks zone.



See my reply to DonIago above.

Wouldn't they have to scan the system to find out where CA6 was at that moment? And again I have wonder if CA6 was on a list.

 

[DonIago]

DonIago, no one ever said there were only six planets in the system. There could have been twenty. What matters is that our heroes weren't there to survey the system, they were there to find CA6 and scan it for suitability in the Genesis experiment. They never needed to make certain it was the sixth planet from the stellar center, they never needed to make sure it was even a whole planet. Only that it had the mass and the surface conditions that they required. And possibly that it was in the Goldilocks zone.



See my reply to DonIago above.

...That was kind of my point. What might have been most relevant to Our Heroes wasn't whether it was CA6, CA10, CA23.5, but only whether it was "close enough" to what they were looking for and that it might serve as a decent test planet for Genesis.

 

[Timo]

Wouldn't they have to scan the system to find out where CA6 was at that moment?

No doubt. But the scan would be likely to return a "Desert planet found at coordinates XYZ" faster than the helmsman could say "I only have these buttons on my console, not a single display screen", and the officers would not dwell on the other planets scanned or not scanned in any fashion.

And again I have wonder if CA6 was on a list.

We know that Chekov dictates his First Officer log on "orbital approach" to what he thinks is CA VI. This sort of suggests this planet was the first one in the system to warrant a visit by the ship: if Chekov made such notes every time the ship was on orbital approach, there wouldn't be enough resolution in the decimals of the stardate to differentiate between the assorted Ceti Alpha planets...

So, three possibilities. Does the ship first approach "CA VI" because that one is on a list of probables while CA I-V and VII-? are not? Or just because "CA VI" is the first one they encounter when approaching from the random direction they are approaching from, and they later decide it looks like the library description of CA VI so they start calling it that? Or because they scanned the whole system and then homed in on the planet the scanners flagged with "Potentially suitable desert", again only thereafter bothering to check the library data for the likely identity of this promising planet?

All three are possible, and all might result in the heroes ignoring all other planets in the system. The first option is the only one where the heroes might use their sensors to determine which ordinal the planet carries - in the other two, the desert nature is the key. But even in the first one, the heroes could have looked for the desert planet known in advance to reside there, and used that to determine the ordinal, not any sort of a comprehensive analysis of all the rocks in the system.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[FormerLurker]

^Exactly.

 

[MAGolding]

Morpheus02 said:

Hey...Just wondering if when a planet "explodes", enough can remain to seem like a planet. Also, how does Khan know which planet explodes?

Can such an explosion shift orbits of planets?

For orbital calculations, the mass of a planet can be considered to be all at the mathematical center of the planet. Thus if a planet exploded and turned into an expanding cloud of dust and gas (that would continue to follow its old orbit), there would no effect on the orbits of other planets. Not until the expanding cloud expanded far enough to pass other planets, and then parts of the expanding cloud would pull on the other planets from different directions.

The orbit of a typical planet with a stable orbit - like Ceti Alpha V musht have had - in a typical star system is mainly influenced by the gravity of its star. The gravitational pull of any other planet would be very weak in comparison, and would only cause minor perturbations in the planetary orbit. If the gravitational pull of some other planet disappeared, the minor perturbations it caused would disappear and the planet's orbit would become slightly more regular.

Donlago said:

I believe the novelization and "To Reign in Hell" have CA6 close enough to CA5 that it resembles a moon more than a planet in its own right, which could also explain why whatever happened to it was so devastating to CA5. As we only have Khan's description of the incident as an "explosion", it's hard to discuss the details. Khan could have misinterpreted what occurred, though I see no reason for him to actively be lying.

If Ceti Alpha VI was a moon or double planet with Ceti Alpha V, the Reliant would expect to see Ceti Alpha V when they approached what they thought was Ceti Alpha VI. If they approached a planet-moon or double planet system, and didn't see one of the two worlds, they wouldn't assume that the one they saw was either one. They would examine the mass, diameter, density, etc., to find which one was the closer match. Thus they would never have thought that Ceti Alpha V was Ceti Alpha VI.

And there would be a certain minimum safe distance between Ceti Alpha V and Ceti Alpha VI for the disaster to have had such a slight effect on Ceti Alpha V. I would guess that tens or hundreds of millions of miles might be needed for Khan's people to survive as well as they did.

According to the transcript:

Starship log, stardate 8130.4. Log entry by First Officer Pavel Chekov. Starship Reliant on orbital approach to Ceti Alpha VI, in connection with Project Genesis. We are continuing our search for a lifeless planet to satisfy the requirements of a test site for the Genesis Experiment. So far no success.

[Reliant bridge]

TERRELL: Standard orbit please. Mister Beach. Any change in the surface scan?
BEACH: Negative. Limited atmosphere, dominated by craylon gas, sand and high velocity winds. It's incapable of supporting lifeforms.
CHEKOV: Does it have to be completely lifeless?
TERRELL: Don't tell me you've found something.
CHEKOV: We've picked up a minor energy flux reading on one dynoscanner.
TERRELL: Damn! Are you sure? Maybe the scanner's out of adjustment.
CHEKOV: I suppose it could be a particle of preanimate matter caught in the matrix.
TERRELL: All right, get on the Comm-pic to Doctor Marcus.
KYLE: Aye sir.
TERRELL: Maybe it's something we can transplant.
CHEKOV: You know what she'll say.

Chekov's log makes it uncertain if they have studied other planets in the Ceti Alpha system before going on to what they think was Ceti Alpha VI. But the longer they were in the system the harder it would have been to miss noticing that one of the planets was missing. So probably the Reliant entered the Ceti Alpha system, probably from an angle "above" or bellow' the plane the planets orbited in, so there would be no possibility of assuming any planet was hidden behind Ceti Alpha, and headed straight for the calculated coordinates of Ceti Alphia VI.

Beach says that the planet's atmosphere is incapable of supporting lifeforms, despite all the exotic alien lifeforms seen before, including some that can live in the vacuum of space. That certainly does make it hard to understand how Khan's people survived for almost 15 years.

CHEKOV: You lie! On Ceti Alpha Five there was life, a fair chance.
KHAN: This is Ceti Alpha Five. ...Ceti Alpha Six exploded six months after we were left here. The shock shifted the orbit of this planet and everything was laid waste. Admiral Kirk ...never bothered to check on our progress. It was only the fact of my genetically engineered intellect that enabled us to survive! On Earth, ...two hundred years ago, ...I was a prince, ...with power over millions.

In "Space Seed":

KHAN: I have a few questions first. What is your heading?
KIRK: Our heading is Starbase Twelve, a planet in the Gamma 400 star system. Our command base in this sector. Is that of any use to you?

So it seems that the Botany Bay was found in the same sector as an established Starbase, and thus probably not too far from it. And the Enterprise would get closer to Starbase 12 by the end of the episode.

KIRK: Mister Spock, our heading takes us near the Ceti Alpha star system.
SPOCK: Quite correct, Captain. Planet number five there is habitable, although a bit savage, somewhat inhospitable.

The details of the planets in the Ceti Alpha system would have been discovered by long range astronomical study and/or by visits from space ships. Quite possibly by a number of long range astronomical studies and a number of later visits by space ships. And even if the Enterprise was the first starship to actually go to the Ceti Alpha system it is likely that some other ships did so later, considering that it is relatively close to Starbase 12.

Spock would not call Ceti Alpha habitable unless its orbit was known well enough to calculate that surface temperatures in the best climate zones would be tolerable. Thus the orbital parameters of Ceti Alpha V would be known already before the Enterprise went there and Spock would certainly search for any evidence that the planet was less habitable than believed in order to call off leaving Khan and co. there if any problem was detected. So Spock would probably reobserve and recalcuate the orbit of Ceti Alpha V.

Unless Ceti Alpha VI was considered a totally uninteresting and useless planet its orbit would also have been calculated enough to predict it's position.

So apparently Ceti Alpha V moved into the orbit vacated by Ceti Alpha VI and was close enough to the calculated position that nobody noticed the difference. I would say that the odds against that happening would be astronomical.

And apparently nobody noticed that the alleged "Ceti Alpha VI" had a different diameter, mass, density, rotation period, landscape, etc. than recorded for Ceti Alpha VI in previous surveys. I would say that the odds against that happening would be astronomical.

And I would say that the odds against the catastrophe changing the atmosphere of Ceti Alpha V to closely resemble the recorded atmosphere of Ceti Alpha VI would also be astronomical.

So that is the problem that has to be explained.