Forgive the thread title, I genuinely couldn't think of something better. So, a bit of a question has been rolling about in my head, and that question is thus: where did the star go? By which I mean, in Trek '09, Ambassador Spock throws a jar of jelly at a star so hard that it rips open a black hole that gobbles it up - but bringing both him and Nero along for the ride. This black hole, as it turns out, brings them to what is now referred to as the Kelvin Timeline, which is sort of an alternate timeline, sort of a parallel universe, but definitely separate from the Prime reality. Now, when you enter this black hole, the point in space it spits you out of on the other side is predictable - Nero knew exactly where Spock was gonna end up when his delayed journey reached its destination. And for the brief window that the black hole was open (since they seem to close once they finish the job), it would seem anything that goes through would come out in this spot. So, with all that out of the way, here's my question: What happened to the star? Did it also appear in the Kelvin Timeline? It was a galaxy-destroying explosion, Spock said - that's not good news. But it came through before Nero, and when Nero shows up, there's still a galaxy. I don't think the Federation would knowingly just dump the doomsday star on some other universe's doorstep, thus committing alternate universe genocide, but I'm really not sure how the star was vaporized safely while Spock and Nero were not. And as a bonus question I've just thought of: Did the Red Matter Black Hole that Nero was stuck in and that the Enterprise had to escape from at the end of Trek '09 create a third reality, or at least serve as an unused doorway into one? Or I guess that would be fourth, since by that logic, some poor reality is going to find a lot of Vulcan chunks on its doorstep...
It was supposed to be decalithium--whatever that is. The sign of a star really dying--it burns all the way down to iron--then it's over. Just iron.
Seems to be something from Comics and STO rather than the films. And because its such a small Universe, its what Nero was mining.
I read somewhere that the reason the Narada and Jellyfish survived and emerged from the black hole and the supernova stuff (or Narada wreckage at the end) didn't is because of the ships' warp fields prevented them from being crushed into nothingness. But, really, movie magic. Lithium is one. Dilithium is two. Trilithium is three. Decalithium is, like, ten. Rad.
IIRC, Orci or Lindelof actually did want to address what would have happened to the star, but Abrams overruled them saying "science isn't cool."
A couple of points, or at least tangents: 1) When Spock negates the supernova that killed Romulus, he puts a single drop of red matter in the way of the still expanding shockwave. We then see the drop cause a ripple effect that slowly spreads along this spherical surface; we don't see any effect moving towards where the star used to be. Red matter really is potent stuff if it can ultimately consume the entire shockwave, even if it is just 1 AU in diameter at the point of red matter injection (that is, if the star that blew was the Romulan homesun). But where does the black hole end up in such a process? At the location of deployment? At the center of the late shockwave? (Why?) 2) What was Spock hoping to accomplish? Turning the star into a black hole would only help if it was not the Romulan homestar. But not only do we see a subspace shockwave, we see a continuous visual run from the supernova to Romulus, across just one asteroid belt. Moreover, we see the reverse run before this, again across that belt. OTOH, if Spock all along wanted to punch a (black) hole through the shockwave, Romulus might well survive. There'd be no blast to pulverize the planet, and there'd be a leftover starlet that would help support life on Romulus as planetwide evacuation proceeded. Whether a hole in the shockwave would suffice for saving the galaxy remains debatable. Perhaps the whole wave would eventually be gone. Or perhaps the threat to the galaxy came solely from the potential of Romulus blowing up - a bit like Berlin getting nuked in 1961 or thereabouts. 3) At the other end of the wormhole, we see this angry-looking orangish star. Now, such dim stars are probably among the least dangerous ITRW, but boy does she look angry. Perhaps this is the star that blew? After all, time travel in Star Trek generally doesn't move one from place to place (regardless of whether said places are in motion, and indeed every place should be ITRW). When Spock emerges, the star isn't seen, but it might be behind the camera for all we know. OTOH, Nero's crew doesn't appear to have much confidence in the calculations of their skipper: they doubt whether this is the right time or even the right place to welcome Spock. There could have been endless possibilities there, then. If timeholes take stuff from time T1 to time T2 but from location L1 to location L1, then Vulcan in some poor parallel universe just received another load of Vulcan, and two of the planets were in fact lost. Likewise, a star might have been dumped on a star. But if Spock just sent the shockwave to a parallel reality, then all would be more or less dandy. The red matter appears to have strong (if local) gravitic effects unrelated to the mass of the substance it has consumed, and would have twisted the shockwave out of its destructive shape while squeezing it to that other reality... 4) When frothing on Pike's face, Nero claims that he "prevented" genocide. He seems to realize that he can't bring back his wife even if he stops the Last Trump from sounding this time around. But he doesn't appear so deranged as to think that killing most Vulcans would stop the star from exploding, i.e. he probably doesn't blame the Vulcans for active genocide. He might blame Spock, but at that point he has failed to kill Spock (that is, the young one who originally lived till the 2380s and failed to save Romulus - Spock Prime won't matter here). So, how has he "prevented" anything yet? We know that at this point, Nero has been in possession of Spock Prime and his red matter for quite some time. He got the matter one hour before Uhura overheard the message about action at the Klingon prison planet, and that was during the West Coast night preceding the action day over Vulcan. So, perhaps Nero has been to the evil star and taken care of it with a droplet already? 5) As said, red matter seems to create gravitic pull all by itself, regardless of the matter consumed. A single drop worked on the supernova shockwave. A single drop killed Vulcan and caused sudden gravitic pull that jeopardized the Enterprise where there had previously been no jeopardy, only a sedate orbit (or hover or whatnot). And a whole canister shredded the Narada and then threatened to pull in the Enterprise, fittingly much harder than in the case of Vulcan. So if Spock was worried about dumping a star onto somebody else's star, then he could have used more than a droplet, compacting said star into a harmless little baseball first. Sure, there'd be a black hole (a "real" one, with all the red matter already consumed in making it) inside the other star now, but that in itself wouldn't be particularly harmful to that star. 6) But as said, we don't know what Spock intended. He claimed in the meld that he wanted to create a black hole all along, but we see he didn't create it at the evil star. For all we know, he wanted to create a timehole so that he could go back in time to gently persuade the star from exploding... Timo Saloniemi