The founder homeworld.

In "The Search", the founder homeworld is described as a "rogue planet", one without a solar system.
It is also referred to as a Class M planet... and indeed, Humans, a Bajoran, a Trill and a Romulan are shown to be able to survive on it with no adverse effect.

How does that work out? How does a planet support Human life without being in a solar system's goldilocks zone?
It's a relatively minor plot point in the end, but it is somewhat intriguiging, hence my quandary.


Just thought of a possible explanation: planetwide artificial life support put in place by the founders to allow survival of Vorta and non-sentient life.
Bit weak/hair-pulled, though.

 

It's unlikely that this place would have been the actual homeworld of the species, considering the history of the species. Rather, it is likely to have been one in a long string of hideout worlds, of which we saw two during the show: the rogue planet at Omarion, and the more conventional world introduced in "Broken Link".

The Founders are supposedly billions of years old as a species, and the Dominion is thousands if not tens of thousands of years old as a political structure. There would have been plenty of time for the Founders to arrange for the construction of an entire rogue planet complete with companion starlets (after which they would of course kill all the builders in classic villain fashion). All sorts of "cheats" would be possible, including reinforcing the gravity by the usual artificial means, enclosing the atmosphere in a containing forcefield and so forth.

The planet does have a companion light source:

http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/3x01/thesearch1_591.jpg

Since Kira and Odo agree that there is "no star system", this light source probably isn't a star. A large artificial satellite with big searchlights, or something else obviously "mechanical" like that? Or a small ball of fusion fire, starlike enough but evidently engineered because stars that small couldn't exist naturally, at least not long enough to be accompanied by planets?

Timo Saloniemi

 

You mean the kind of device that would light up a sensor grid and have curious people poking around? Doesn't seem very seclusive to me. But this isn't the first habitable "rogue planet" with it's own light source in Trek.

 

I just brought this up in another thread, about Enterprise's episode "Rogue Planet". Apparantly the explanation given for how it could sustain life was "hot gases from the interior". But I always thought the source of heat was nuclear fusion, or a sun, so it didn't seem possible to me.

But I did some research and it seems it may be possible for a wayward planet to maintain it's internal heat for some time before cooling off. The concept is called a "Steppenwolf planet".
http://www.popsci.com/science/artic...ithout-stars-sustain-them-astrophysicists-say
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/02/steppenwolf-planet/

 

We could argue that Trelane's rogue world in "Squire of Gothos" had a light source as well, sort of. But that one wasn't an orbiting spot of light, just some sort of a cheat arranged by the squire.

Quite possibly, anything and everything could be hidden inside this "Omarion nebula" thing, including a rogue planet with ersatz suns, or a giant space station, or fleet upon fleet of Jem'Hadar ships. That the Founders decided to use a rogue planet might tell us... Nothing at all, I guess.

Timo Saloniemi

 

It was probably kept warm by radioactive decay of materials in the core. This is what accounts for a noticeable percentage of the warmth on Earth.

 

As far as we know, the Link itself could create the illusion of the planet having a warm surface. Even a single adult Founder has great powers over its environment, sometimes shrugging off phaser blasts like in "Heart of Stone", sometimes roaring like a wall of flame like in "Chimera". And we never quite learn what a Founder requires of the environment in return. Possibly next to nothing, considering the backstory of Odo wandering through space in his youth, the more expository version of Laas actively flying through space, or the infant from "The Begotten" surviving in a simplistic-looking little canister.

Timo Saloniemi

 

I was reading everyone's points intelligently and this one also made perfect sense to me; my brain however, immediately uploaded an image of a planet full of Shatners and now I'm laughing like a big idiot

 

I watched this episode for the first time ever recently, and I thought it was very awkward that they showed that very bright star looking thing RIGHT after they both just said there was no star system... and no explanation was offered or even hinted at.

I think if they are going to make the effort of telling the viewer there is no star system, which is an unusual (but not unrealistic) concept, they should probably explain what the extremely bright star looking thing is that they show 5 seconds later.

I wonder if whoever did the special effects was just not aware there wasn't supposed to be a star. Perhaps a miscommunication between writers and special effects people? Have any of the people who worked on the show ever addressed that? It struck me as quite odd.

 

We might argue we're reading the dialogue all wrong.

Perhaps this means that there's a Class M planet circling a star alone, without companion planets or planetoids, which disqualifies the arrangement from being a "system" in the Trek sense, and establishes it as "rogue" instead.

Timo Saloniemi