Vulcan endangered question
- Thread starter nyc12182
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I think the only Vulcan colony mentioned - by name anyways - was where Tuvok was born.
I wonder what happened to T'Khut (Vulcan's twin planet - not a moon, as such) in the Abramsverse. If it supported life, and there were any sizable number of Vulcans living there, Nero probably destroyed it as well.
If the pair were anything like Romulus and Remus, then the companion world would be an obvious target, yes - but Nero wouldn't really have had time and resources for a double kill. Unless we assume he killed T'Khut first, which is where the initial seismic trouble came from (it couldn't have come from Nero's drill, because that had not hit Vulcan yet!).
On the other hand, if the monster from the original ST:TMP scenes is T'Khut, odds are that it is a gas giant at a fair distance. If it were a rock world with that apparent size (and with another spherical and thus sizeable world between it and Vulcan!), Vulcan wouldn't survive!
The most likely setup for the TMP scene is that Vulcan doesn't have a moon because Vulcan is a moon. The second possibility is that Vulcan and T'Khut are neighboring planets that both go around the local star in nicely separate orbits, and only come to close contact every now and then - the same setup as with Romulus and Remus, if the ST:NEM diagram Data shows in the briefing is to be believed. In both cases, T'Khut would appear to be a giant world unlikely to harbor life, and perhaps too big for Nero to tackle.
Timo Saloniemi
On the other hand, if the monster from the original ST:TMP scenes is T'Khut, odds are that it is a gas giant at a fair distance. If it were a rock world with that apparent size (and with another spherical and thus sizeable world between it and Vulcan!), Vulcan wouldn't survive!
The most likely setup for the TMP scene is that Vulcan doesn't have a moon because Vulcan is a moon. The second possibility is that Vulcan and T'Khut are neighboring planets that both go around the local star in nicely separate orbits, and only come to close contact every now and then - the same setup as with Romulus and Remus, if the ST:NEM diagram Data shows in the briefing is to be believed. In both cases, T'Khut would appear to be a giant world unlikely to harbor life, and perhaps too big for Nero to tackle.
Timo Saloniemi
T'Khut is uninhabitable, according to all the Trek Lit I've read (where it's sometimes a sister planet and sometimes another planet in the Vulcan system whose orbit sometimes brings it into "spectacular view" range)
Vulcanis Lunar Colony. It aways brought to my mind the image of a couple thousend Vulcans living under a pressure dome. But, I guess it could be anything.
Vulcanis Lunar Colony. It aways brought to my mind the image of a couple thousend Vulcans living under a pressure dome. But, I guess it could be anything.
I wonder if the shock of Vulcan's destruction could in itself have destroyed T'Khut (without Nero even needing to fire at it), much like what happened with Ceti Alpha V and VI?
At the very least, it's orbit at the time the worlds are in eyeshot (ditto Delta Vega) would be affected.
...Assuming Delta Vega is in the system, which seems unlikely for a number of reasons. And Spock being able to "see" the destruction of Vulcan from the surface is basically the only reason to think Delta Vega would be in the Vulcan system - but Ben Kenobi could "see" the destruction of Alderaan from much farther off...
I'm actually not convinced that the disappearance of a rock planet the rough size of Earth would really have much of an effect on the orbits of the other planets in the system, least of all a giant like T'Khut. (Or T'Rukh, as it was called by Crispin - with the cute caveat that the monster in the sky changes name with seasons or whatnot...) Jupiter wouldn't mind if Earth went missing - not even if Earth were riding in one of its Trojan points, or passing by every ten years on a nearby orbit. But Earth would mind if Jupiter disappeared in such circumstances!
Timo Saloniemi
I'm actually not convinced that the disappearance of a rock planet the rough size of Earth would really have much of an effect on the orbits of the other planets in the system, least of all a giant like T'Khut. (Or T'Rukh, as it was called by Crispin - with the cute caveat that the monster in the sky changes name with seasons or whatnot...) Jupiter wouldn't mind if Earth went missing - not even if Earth were riding in one of its Trojan points, or passing by every ten years on a nearby orbit. But Earth would mind if Jupiter disappeared in such circumstances!
Timo Saloniemi
Vulcan didn't disappear. . .its mass is still there. . .so unless something fell into its event horizon. . . nothing in that system is going to change. . .
~FS
^ Actually, Vulcan did disappear. Its mass was swallowed and crushed by the black hole.
Nope. . according to the laws of conservation of mass and energy, matter can neither be created nor destroyed... Vulcan's mass is still there. . the black hole may be the size of a pea, but it has the same mass as Vulcan did.
~FS
Doesn't sound convincing to me. The mass of the Narada no longer is in the late 24th century where it was "swallowed by a black hole", nor is the mass of Spock's little ship there/then. For the sake of consistency, Vulcan's mass also currently resides in some other timeframe, too, and there's literally nothing in that spot in 2258.
Really, that's the likelier ultimate outcome of the calamity in terms of real world physics, too: if somebody somehow were able to crush a Vulcan-sized planet into a black hole, the resulting hole would be so small, light and insignificant that it would be unstable and would quickly evaporate into energy that exerts no gravitic pull on the neighboring worlds...
Timo Saloniemi
Really, that's the likelier ultimate outcome of the calamity in terms of real world physics, too: if somebody somehow were able to crush a Vulcan-sized planet into a black hole, the resulting hole would be so small, light and insignificant that it would be unstable and would quickly evaporate into energy that exerts no gravitic pull on the neighboring worlds...
Timo Saloniemi
You're assuming Trek's "black holes" operate similarly to real-life black holes. Trek's seem to be much more of the magical space/time portal variety. They crush you and suck you in, but, if you're lucky and survive the crushing part (which the ships from the future could, but Enterprise could not), you'll be spit out elsewhere.
Nero's and Spock's ships didn't go into the blackhole, they "skipped across" the event horizon.
I don't think there was enough mass in Vulcan, or any planet, to form a black hole. As I understand it, even our own sun is too small to collapse into a black hole ... it would become "just" a black star instead. like the one in Tomorrow is Yesterday.
Mass isn't a requirement - with the help of red matter, even stark vacuum can become a black hole, as seen at the end of the movie.
Although actually we are never told that the tunnels-through-time would be black holes. Our Starfleet heroes never recognize them as such, at any rate. Spock Prime says his intention was to create a black hole to "absorb the exploding star"; we don't know if he succeeded in that or accomplished something else altogether. Spock of 2258 and Chekov in turn are agreed on Nero trying to create a black hole inside Vulcan, and succeeding. But both of these explicit references to black holes involve great masses, either planetary or stellar. Perhaps when red matter is used in absence of suitable mass, the results are something else altogether?
Timo Saloniemi
Although actually we are never told that the tunnels-through-time would be black holes. Our Starfleet heroes never recognize them as such, at any rate. Spock Prime says his intention was to create a black hole to "absorb the exploding star"; we don't know if he succeeded in that or accomplished something else altogether. Spock of 2258 and Chekov in turn are agreed on Nero trying to create a black hole inside Vulcan, and succeeding. But both of these explicit references to black holes involve great masses, either planetary or stellar. Perhaps when red matter is used in absence of suitable mass, the results are something else altogether?
Timo Saloniemi
CHEKOV: Captain, gravitational sensors are off the scale. If my calculations are correct, they're creating a singularity, that will consume the planet.Nero's and Spock's ships didn't go into the blackhole, they "skipped across" the event horizon.
I don't think there was enough mass in Vulcan, or any planet, to form a black hole. As I understand it, even our own sun is too small to collapse into a black hole ... it would become "just" a black star instead. like the one in Tomorrow is Yesterday.
SPOCK: They're creating a black hole at the center of Vulcan?
CHEKOV: Yes sir.
The idea was not that red matter somehow makes Vulcan collapse but that it creates a singularity, probably a pretty tiny one, out of nowhere and that this singularity than swallows Vulcan.
I prefer Wells to Verne, I am not at all into hard sci-fi but even for me the "black hole works like a wormhole" idea was too anti-scientific. Unscientific is no problem, I don't mind fictional technologies that can do all kind of fancy stuff, but so far Trek has managed very well to merge real technology (fusion power, matter-anti-matter reaction) with fictional technology (dilithium crystal as magical substance that "mediates" the matter-antimatter reaction, warp plasma as a substance that is routed through the ship, magically powers every ship system and makes every every console on the ship super-dangerous, making some of them explode during every second firefight).
The only thing going against that in the movie is that the black hole that swallows Vulcan creates an "unsafe distance" from which the Enterprise has to escape. That shouldn't happen if the mass of Vulcan simply decides to move from the planetary volume to a smaller volume in the middle.
In that sense, the Vulcan black hole is just as "aphysical" as the one that swallows the Narada in the end. Apparently, red matter does contribute something really exotic to the phenomenon...
Timo Saloniemi
Didn't he call it a black hole when he recounted how he and Nero were pulled into it?
Spock Prime said he created (or at least tried to create) a black hole in the Prime side of things, to contain the supernova. But when Nero and later Spock emerged from the other end of this phenomenon, Starfleet's finest did not recognize it for a black hole. Rather, they were so stymified they settled for calling it a "thunderstorm in space". Which IMHO tells that whatever it was, it did not look like a black hole from the Rebooted end of things, even if it did from the Prime end.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
Probably because it was a white hole at that end.
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