The location of the wormhole in the Bajor system

[Lynx]

I've started to think about Bajor, its rotation around its sun and the location of the wormhole in the Denorios belt.

Let us start with Bajor.

The planet is obviously the seventh planet in the Bajoran system. As such, it must be located at a distance similar to Earth's asteroid belt. Bajor's sun must be bigger that Earth's sun because otherwise Bajor would not have the warm climate it obviously has.

Bajor has a rotation of 26 hours compared to Earth's 24. But due to the distance from the sun, Bajor must have a longer orbit around the sun. Some poster on reddit or whatever suggested a rotation of 13 Earth years around its sun.

As for the wormhole, it's located in the Denorios belt which is stated to be 160 million kilometers from Bajor. According to some pictures over the systems, there is one planet located between Bajor and the Denorios belt.

The station Deep Space Nine was orbiting Bajor when the Cardassians were in charge but in the episode Emissary it was moved to a position outside the wormhole.

Then we come to the interesting point.

The wormhole is said to be stable. Therefore it must be located at the same spot in the system all the time and so is also the station.

But in that case, the distance from the station to Bajor must vary, due to Bajor's rotation. So if Sisko want to go to Bajor to have tea with the Kai, then the trip from the station might take some hours when Bajor is at its closest point to the wormhole.

But about 7 years later when Bajor is on the opposite side of the sun, it will take a longer time for Sisko to go to Bajor. OK, the space shuttles are fast so it might only be about hours but still it will take longer time.

Anyone else who have some thoughts about this?

Picture of Bajor system can be found on this site.

 

[Osol Twist]

I never thought about it but yeah it would take lets say like 20 times longer when Bajor is at the other side of the sun
so a four hour trip would turn into more than 3 days. That must have been the perfect excuse for Sisko to say no to a lot of tea-invitations from the Kai,
no wonder Winn was so grumpy and mean all the time...

 

[publiusr]

I might have had it orbit a gas giant—could it be in a libration point?

I could see it in the barycenter between two co-orbiting gas giants of the exact same mass—that might explain the stability as compared to the Barzan wormhole on walkabout.

 

[Farscape One]

The wormhole was stable because it was artificially constructed by the wormhole aliens (Prophets).

The travel time from DS9 to Bajor was 3 hours, and that stayed pretty much the same throughout the series.

An interesting thought about Bajor's orbit and the position of DS9... never really thought about it before.

 

[Lynx]

The wormhole was stable because it was artificially constructed by the wormhole aliens (Prophets).

The travel time from DS9 to Bajor was 3 hours, and that stayed pretty much the same throughout the series.

I interesting thought about Bajor's orbit and the position of DS9... never really thought about it before.

I never did until recently.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Some poster on reddit or whatever suggested a rotation of 13 Earth years around its sun.

The Peldor Gratitude Festival, an annual festival, happens twice in the course of the series, in Fascination and Tears of the Prophets. Assuming there were no others that happened in between, the length of a Bajoran year would be 3 and one half years.

 

[Farscape One]

The Peldor Gratitude Festival, an annual festival, happens twice in the course of the series, in Fascination and Tears of the Prophets. Assuming there were no others that happened in between, the length of a Bajoran year would be 3 and one half years.

Except in "FASCINATION", Kira tells Bareil that Dax has been helping her prepare for the festival on DS9 for the last two years and it's 'becoming a tradition' with those two.

 

[Lynx]

The Peldor Gratitude Festival, an annual festival, happens twice in the course of the series, in Fascination and Tears of the Prophets. Assuming there were no others that happened in between, the length of a Bajoran year would be 3 and one half years.

Except in "FASCINATION", Kira tells Bareil that Dax has been helping her prepare for the festival on DS9 for the last two years and it's 'becoming a tradition' with those two.

Ooooops!
Here we have a problem.

Since the Bajorans hardly celebrates the Peldor Gratitude festival more than once a year, we have to assume that the planet rotates faster than three years around it's sun.

Can it be possible that Bajor actually have something similar to Earth's rotation around the Sun despite the fact that Bajor is the seventh planet in the system?

 

[Farscape One]

Why not?

They have 26 hours in a day instead of our 24. (Mentioned many times throughout the series. Yet another reason why the world of DS9 feels so lived in and real and alive... little details like that.)

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Can it be possible that Bajor actually have something similar to Earth's rotation around the Sun despite the fact that Bajor is the seventh planet in the system?

The star system contains an artificially created gravitational well, so we could assume that non-standard configurations are possible.

 

[somebuddyX]

Maybe the wormhole rotates too.

 

[kkt]

I don't think there's a single standard configuration for star systems. The planets might be clustered in close ot their stars, or more spread out. There might be an astroid belt, or not, or two.

 

[Osol Twist]

Maybe the wormhole rotates too.

yeah... the wormhole is still there (and stable) even if the "door" to the corridor is closed, so if the wormhole, the station and the planets are orbiting around the sun, then the distance between the station and bajor never changes. I dont know how wormholes behaves but the "corridor" could possibly stretch and contract when orbiting while the entrance and exit points stay "the same" in relation to whatever starsystem these points are at.?

 

[The Newer England]

I have never thought about it, but it would make sense that the stability of the wormhole would have to include it being somehow linked to either the sun or Bajor. If not, if it was stable to the point of being locked to a specific place in space, than as Bajor and it's system travel through space it would leave the wormhole behind. As the wormhole was created, my assumption would be that it was locked to Bajor.

 

[Lynx]

I have never thought about it, but it would make sense that the stability of the wormhole would have to include it being somehow linked to either the sun or Bajor. If not, if it was stable to the point of being locked to a specific place in space, than as Bajor and it's system travel through space it would leave the wormhole behind. As the wormhole was created, my assumption would be that it was locked to Bajor.

And to the Denorios Belt in which it was located.

Maybe we can assume that it was locked to bajor in some way, it actually followed Bajor's orbit around the sun, always at the same distance to Bajor.

We can also assume that Bajor's sun is bigger than Earth's sun, there fore bajor despite sevnth planet has a climate similar to Earth's and some what warmer and that all the planets in the system rotates faster around the sun than the planets in our system, thus giving bajor a year somewhat similar to Earths year, maybe with a 14 months rotation and a day of 26 hours.

 

[Paul Weaver]

Wormhole doesn't have any noticable gravitational effect otherwise sensors would have picked it up from miles away, not just in the local vicinity. Quite possible that the wormhole's end point is in orbit.

Bajor was sometimes the 11th planet, sometimes the 7th. We don't even know how the term "planet" is being defined in the 24th century though. In the real world, Kepler-11 is a Sol-type star which has 6 planets within 0.5AU so it seems possible for Bajor to be at 1AU and be the 11th planet. Especially with planets in resonance with each other. This could put Bajor 8/9/10/11 in goldilocks (Bajor 8 or Andros was habitable), or Bajor 7/8 in the zone.

As to 1AU, we can assume Bajor is in the goldilocks zone for liquid water.

A star would realistically be between 0.5 and 1.2 solar masses to live long enough to have planets provide life, much larger they'd be too short lived, much smaller and you get severe flares

That puts the goldilocks in the 0.5AU / 150 day to 1.5AU / 600 day years

The easy answer to keeping the denaris belt the same physical distance from Bajor is to put it at L4/L5 La Grange points, putting the distance a constant orbital radius. At 150 million km that would be about 5% speed of light with instant acceleration (which inertial dampening allows us), well below any time dilation issues and thus no need to use warp. A constant acceleration drive would do that in 3 hours with a 260g acceleration.


However the other option for "distance" would be to assume the bulk of the transit time is a speed limit of 100,000km/hour for 300,000km around Bajor, so the 3 hours is basically the same time to get to Bajor from anywhere in the Bajoran system, as you can whizz in at warp to the Bajor defence perimeter.

 

[Macintosh]

The wormhole is said to be stable. Therefore it must be located at the same spot in the system all the time and so is also the station.

There is no such thing as a fixed point in space. Per the DS9 Technical Manual:

"The wormhole terminus exists in the star system's distant plasma torus known as the Denorios Belt, some three hundred million kilometres from the sun, Bajor-B'hava'el.

[...]

"The basic mechanics and properties of the wormhole have been studied thoroughly since 2369, when Deep Space 9 was first moved outward from its orbit around Bajor. It is known that the Bajor terminus moves with the Denorios plasma field in an orbit about the sun with a period of 13.5 years. The average orbital period of the belt is faster, 13.1 years, creating periodic density waves that can upset station operations.

[...]

The fact that the Bajor terminus orbits the sun implies that the quantum emergence point possesses definite mass, though the exact nature of this mass is assumed to be weakly interacting material related to dark matter. The terminus as well as the domain interior do interact with various substances and electromagnetic (EM) fields, so the dark matter component is probably only one of many entangled layers and quantum strings."

Picture of Bajor system can be found on this site.

Per the top comment on that post, the image is quite inaccurate and disagrees with information given in the show.

 

[Lynx]

There is no such thing as a fixed point in space. Per the DS9 Technical Manual:

"The wormhole terminus exists in the star system's distant plasma torus known as the Denorios Belt, some three hundred million kilometres from the sun, Bajor-B'hava'el.

[...]

"The basic mechanics and properties of the wormhole have been studied thoroughly since 2369, when Deep Space 9 was first moved outward from its orbit around Bajor. It is known that the Bajor terminus moves with the Denorios plasma field in an orbit about the sun with a period of 13.5 years. The average orbital period of the belt is faster, 13.1 years, creating periodic density waves that can upset station operations.

[...]

The fact that the Bajor terminus orbits the sun implies that the quantum emergence point possesses definite mass, though the exact nature of this mass is assumed to be weakly interacting material related to dark matter. The terminus as well as the domain interior do interact with various substances and electromagnetic (EM) fields, so the dark matter component is probably only one of many entangled layers and quantum strings."



Per the top comment on that post, the image is quite inaccurate and disagrees with information given in the show.

Can you tell me what is inaccurate in the picture I linked to and how it disagrees with information given in the show.

I'm a nitpicker when it comes to such things.

 

[Macintosh]

Can you tell me what is inaccurate in the picture I linked to and how it disagrees with information given in the show.

I'm a nitpicker when it comes to such things.

Well... DS9: "The Nagus" tells us there are fourteen planets in the Bajoran system (the map you linked to shows fifteen), and that Bajor is the largest planet is the system. There's also some tenuous evidence to suggest that Bajor is the eleventh planet in its system given that we see an LCARS schematic of the Bajoran system and the eleventh planet is the largest, which would mean that the dynamics of the Bajoran system are very odd compared to our own. However, it's also impossible to reconcile all the facts we're given about the Bajoran system – early on we're told that Bajor has three moons (also "The Nagus"), then we're told it has five ("Progress"/"The Siege"), for example.

A while ago I discussed some hypothetical planetary details of the planet Bajor here, here, and here, where I arrive at the conclusion that in order for what we're shown about Bajor having inhabitable moons to make sense it has to be a super-Earth around ten times the mass of our own planet.

 

[Takeru]

A while ago I discussed some hypothetical planetary details of the planet Bajor here, here, and here, where I arrive at the conclusion that in order for what we're shown about Bajor having inhabitable moons to make sense it has to be a super-Earth around ten times the mass of our own planet.

If Bajor had ten times the mass of earth surface gravity would most likely be 2-3 times that of earth or more. Bajorans wouldn't have evolved to look like humans with ridges on their noses, with that much gravity bajorans would most likely not walk upright because it would be significantly harder to pump blood upwards into the brain, life on Bajor would literally be closer to the ground with them walking on four limbs and having much thicker and denser bones.
The atmosphere would also be thicker and hotter and escape velocity would be so high space travel would be significantly harder to achieve requiring way more energy and technological advancement that what earth required when we started to go into space.

The fact that both humans and bajorans live under the same gravity, temperature and atmospheric pressure on DS9, that Bajor looks like a pleasant planet to Sisko where he wants to build a house and not a hot hellhole where can barely breath and walk without passing out and that ancient bajorans somehow managed to get into space in wooden space ships with sails pretty much disproves that Bajor has a significantly higher mass than earth.

But of course the writers just through random facts into the scripts, without thinking about it too much so maybe neither should we.