That's the fault of the director for not having consulted the science technical advisor on how long it should take and making it look that way.
Funny you mention gravity, or better yet, the speed of gravity. Most scientist believe gravity also moves at the speed of light. A small few believe that the effect of gravity moves faster than light. Maybe the effect of gravity moves faster in subspace like subspace radio, so, the subspace gravity wave affected the ribbon almost instantly.
It sounds like in "Generations" gravity propagates at FTL speeds since the Amargosa star destruction affected the gravity in an *entire* sector forcing a ship to adjust it's course and also shifting the Nexus' trajectory. As far as the visible light timing it could just be due to video editing of the scene. For example, when Soran's missile launched from Veridian III, dialogue said the flight time would be 11 seconds (FTL) to the star. The scene had multiple shot changes and total screen time from launch to star darkening the sky was 14 seconds. We only see the missile in flight for around a total of 3 seconds. It can be argued that there are 8 seconds of missile flight time plus an unknown amount of time that transpired after impact but before the sky darkened that were edited out but still occurred in "real time" to the characters. We the movie viewer just didn't see it due to editing, IMHO.
It's Weirdness City in any case, like Discofan said. Even a supernova explosion wouldn't really alter the mass of a star enough to change its pull at a distance, either seconds after the kaboom or millennia after the kaboom. Yet we know for a fact that it did affect the courses of starships and of the Nexus. The heroes didn't seem to think it would pull any planets out of their orbits, though. Possibly there's our key: it's not the gravitic pull changing, but its subspace component, which thus only affects starships and Nexi, not planets. But it isn't a different phenomenon, just the well-known subspace side of the same phenomenon, and familiar to all the skippers who struggle with the "warp tar" effect of gravity. Timo Saloniemi
Yes, it definitely has to be something like that. As for the delays, let's call them poetic license...
Agreed, definitely weird. The Nexus trajectory shifted yet the planet conveniently did not. Now the Nexus is supposedly traveling FTL through the galaxy and yet slows down as it passes by the planet? Is it slowed down by the presence of gravity or subspace speedbumps? Is this phenomena confined to just the movie "Generations" or does it show up in other episodes? DS9's "By Inferno's Light" has something similar. Given that DS9 crew was aware of the potential supernova and the ships in the system should have had plenty of time to warp away why did they think that they were doomed? The E-D managed to warp away from the supernova shockwave in "Generations". KIRA: A bomb. If it explodes inside the sun DAX: It could trigger a supernova. Wipe out the entire fleet, the station SISKO: If the sun had gone nova, it would have wiped out the Dominion fleet too. The relevant dialogue below. Huh, the one time where I wished TNG got more technobabbly and throw in "subspace" for good measure DATA: According to our current information, the destruction of the Amargosa star has had the following effects in this sector. ...Gamma emissions have increased by point zero five percent. The Starship Bozeman was forced to make a course correction. ...Ambient magnetic fields... PICARD: Wait. The Bozeman. ...Why would it make a course correction? DATA: The destruction of the Amargosa star has altered the gravitational forces throughout this sector. As a result any ship passing through this region would have to make a minor course correction. PICARD: A minor course correction? ...Where's the ribbon now? DATA: This is its current position. PICARD: Can you project its course? ... PICARD: Enhance grid nine-A. ...Where was the Amargosa star? ...Now you said when the Amargosa star was destroyed, it affected the gravitational forces in this sector. Did the computer take that into account when it projected the course of the ribbon? DATA: No sir. I will make the appropriate adjustments. PICARD: That's what Soran's doing, ...he's changing the course of the ribbon. ...
Gravity also affects space-time along with light. Technobabble implies that gravity has a large effect in subspace, too. Gravity-time-light-subspace are all related. In "The City on the Edge of Forever", the Guardian was putting out "time waves" into a vast region of space, certainly moving at FTL speeds. The Enterprise bounced through them like ocean waves in subspace. Maybe there was a gravity component, too? It may be the reverse effect, but since everything is related, it could be a similar effect to cause starships and other FTL/subspace phenomena to change course.
But if the Sun in the Bajoran system goes SuperNova due to terrorist activities and the Dominion Fleet knows about it's actions and are ready to warp away, only the Federation & Bajorans would be screwed since it wouldn't have enough time to get everybody out. And you know the Federation would send in ships to try to evacuate a entire planet even if it's pointless and would only save a fraction of a % of Bajor's population.
Don't forget about anti-time! I have no idea what it is but Data talks about it in "All Good Things...". I guess if you put time and anti-time together, you're out of time!!!
Right, you would think that however the dialogue was specific. At the point in time when they discover the attempt there is plenty of time to issue orders for the fleets to warp away (heck, the Defiant has time to shoot at and then warp over to intercept the Yukon) but his and Dax's dialogue indicate that neither their fleet or the Dominion's would have escaped the nova. So it's an interesting case about novas in DS9 at least.
The Federation side is making assumptions on the Dominion's Fleet Readiness which can't be a 100% certain/factual. If the Changeling planned on the Super Nova and the Founders weren't being a douche and thought (Screw My Forces, they're just sacrificial pawns in the greater intergalactic game), I'd assume that the Dominion Fleet would be ready at a moments notice to escape the moment they detect the escape signal. If the Changeling was a douche, then I can see him sacrificing a giant chunk of his forces pointlessly.
Well, that and there were no Dominion Forces in the system at all....just sensor shadows. Once the runabout was gone, the sensor shadows vanished.
Warp theory changes constantly: Sometimes warp Ten is infinity, sometimes they reach warp 13 (which would be meaningless, what's greater than infinity?)
That's true. But the point still remains that Dax and Sisko thought there would have been no escape for either fleet despite their lead time of knowing the star was about to be attacked.
Nah, it's fine. Plenty of functions have vertical asymptotes. See for example the trig functions of tangent, cotangent, secant, and cosecant, each of which in fact has infinitely many vertical asymptotes. What's proposed with warp 13 is that the part of the speed scale on the other side of the vertical asymptote at warp ten behaves differently from the part before. According to the TNG tech manual, warp factors occur where power consumption is locally efficient. The idea is that if the abscissa (warp factor) parameterizing warp field geometry is increased beyond ten, new optimal nodes appear, one of which is indexed by the abscissa value of 13.