Can I ask a few dumb questions?

[Jedman67]

Except that's not how astronomy works. We can tell that very distant stars are within a few hundred thousand years of going supernova just by using present-day detection methods. It is ridiculous to postulate that the technology 400 years from now would be incapable of registering the same things we're already fully capable of detecting today.

And really, why is this even on the table? What is gained by the Romulans having years more advance warning than the Federation? Why is that a desirable premise at all? If anything, it makes more sense the other way around, if the Romulans were slow to notice and react. The fact that they were caught unprepared is a key part of the story. Giving them some magical, scientifically nonsensical means of having years of extra warning actively undermines the credibility of the scenario rather than benefiting it.

All our detectors relying on TODAY, 2020 technology, use information gathered at the speed of light. Unless the federation has some reason for using FTL sensors on Romulus, any standard astronomical data gathered would be years old, and then of course is the process of refining the data to a degree to be certain of what it is indicating.

I stand that it is eminently plausible that the Federation doesn't know shit about what's going on deep inside Romulus's sun. Without any reason to be pointing sensors and scanners at Romulus, any information gathered would be either relayed - from Romulan scientists with the approval of the Government, or gathered using standard astronomical observations. Of course all this relies entirely on plot speculation. For a series not even halfway through its first season.

So we shall see

 

[XCV330]

Still, I'm betting a slip of latinum that the Hobus/Eisn/whatever supernova turns out to be artificial, and both it and the suppression of knowledge of it in the Romulan Star Empire turn out to be the work of somebody with a really nasty grudge against the Romulans. Or another front of the Temporal Cold War. Or both.

Of course, since latinum doesn't exist, that amounts to a "gentleman's wager" at the very most.

I suspect the words "temporal" "Cold" and "war" will never be used in the same sentence in Star Treg again, but the rest, yeah I could see it.

 

[Christopher]

Unless the federation has some reason for using FTL sensors on Romulus, any standard astronomical data gathered would be years old

That's getting it backward. Star Trek has always assumed that people rely routinely on FTL sensors and consider old-school electromagnetic detection to be outmoded. In TOS they always talked about "old-style radio" or "conventional radio" as a system long since superseded by subspace. In TMP, Kirk reacted to the news that V'Ger was sending a radio signal as if it were totally unbelievable that it would use something so obsolete.

Without any reason to be pointing sensors and scanners at Romulus

Are you kidding? It's the capital system of a rival power, a traditional enemy. Of course the Federation would be watching it constantly.

Plus... it's just the sky. This is what I'm saying. Things aren't hidden in astronomy. There are no horizons in space like there are on the ground. Everything is visible to anyone looking in its direction. Astronomers watch every part of the sky constantly. The Federation undoubtedly has millions of astronomers on its various planets, and any number of telescopes (and FTL subspace sensors) would be pointing at any given part of the sky at any given time, performing any number of different scientific surveys. Even without the intelligence reasons to monitor the system, it would surely get observed.

And I ask again: Why even argue this? What is so objectionable about my premise that the Federation found out almost as soon as the Romulans knew? The story as it's been presented makes far more sense if the Romulans didn't have years of advance warning.

 

[NCC-73515]

Not the same thing. Radiation in the air is hard to localize to a specific point of origin. But we're talking about a single specific star here. Any Federation astronomer who happened to be monitoring it would detect any changes in its spectrum as soon as they occurred. And since it's the home system of a rival power, I'm sure the Federation monitors the Romulan system constantly for any kind of anomalous energy readings that could tell them about what's going on there.

You are correct. A star and a nuclear plant are different things. Now do you have a better example showing how real-world politics deals with such issues of disasters & secrecy?

 

[Sci]

Side-note: IIRC, the old Rihannsu novels by Diane Duane called the Romulan star Eisn. I'm stealing that name when I need to use a proper noun, even if it's non-canonical.

@Christopher to refute your point, while it's true civilian and spy installations could detect changes in the makeup of the romulan sun, don't discount the Romulan governments ability to downplay the data.

Amongst the Romulan population, maybe. (Though "Unification" made it clear that there are Romulan dissidents who don't believe or trust their own government.)

Amongst Federation and Klingon and Cardassian and Ferengi and Tholian and Talarian and Breen and Tzenkethi scientists? No fucking way.

Romulans are very good at hiding what they want hidden.

You can't hide a star.

Eventually, the Federation would find out, you are correct. But it would take them time to refine their data,

That's like saying "Eventually the U.S. would find out that the Kremlin was on fire, but it would take them time to refine their data to see the flames." It's nonsense. You can't hide the kinds of energies being emitted by stars on the verge of going supernova.

especially if they have no reason to be specifically monitoring their sun.

It's the star system of the capital planet of the Federation's oldest rival. I promise you, I promise you, at any given moment, Starfleet Intelligence alone probably has dozens of subspace telescopes aimed at Eisn, Just In Case. And they probably have since the Federation was founded.

And that's to say nothing of the millions of astronomers who would also be studying Eisn for purely scientific reasons at any given moment.

My argument is that the Romulans would have several years of stonewalling before the Federation figures out what's really happening.

Your argument is obviously built on the fact that you don't understand how astronomy works.

All our detectors relying on TODAY, 2020 technology, use information gathered at the speed of light. Unless the federation has some reason for using FTL sensors on Romulus,

Gosh, what POSSIBLE reason could the Federation have for wanting to use long-range FTL sensors on the capital system of a rival power that has gone to war with the Federation or tried to attack it multiple times across two hundred years??

I can't possibly imagine why they might do that!

any standard astronomical data gathered would be years old

I have no idea why you think anyone wouldn't be using FTL sensors as a matter of course for precisely that reason.

I stand that it is eminently plausible that the Federation doesn't know shit about what's going on deep inside Romulus's sun.

No, you just don't know shit about how astronomy works.

You are correct. A star and a nuclear plant are different things. Now do you have a better example showing how real-world politics deals with such issues of disasters & secrecy?

A much better comparison would be to a hurricane and to how governments react to such things.

You can't hide a hurricane, but you can prepare for one -- or refuse to prepare for one, and then try to spin the consequences of those choices.

If the Romulan government tried to stonewall their public from knowing about Eisn's fate for a time before it happened, I would in particular think it appropriate to compare the Eisn supernova crisis to the events surrounding the landfalls of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 and of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico in 2017.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

I suspect the words "temporal" "Cold" and "war" will never be used in the same sentence in Star Treg again, but the rest, yeah I could see it.

Unless it's something like 'this Temporal anomaly has sent us back to the COLD WAR

 

[Timo]

As regards hiding things in the sky, it's a feature of the Trek universe that many if not most things far away go unseen even if they are relatively major. From a popular episode and popular movie, we e.g. learn that planets amounting to entire star systems may go kaboom and the only way to tell in real time is to fly a starship into those systems.

However, this may well be due to nobody pointing a FTL telescope to those insignificant systems at the key moment. Odds would be astronomically against anybody doing such pointing, of course: billions of things to choose from, and certainly fewer than billions of telescopes to do the pointing with.

But as already said, this is not relevant with Romulus: if the UFP has fifty subspace telescopes capable of realtime monitoring of distant locations, 24 of those will be pointed at Romulus and 24 at Qo'noS, with the remaining two alternating between studying the respective homestars and the rest of the galaxy.

We don't know for certain what the UFP is pointing at Romulus, admittedly. But something they pointed at it gave them imagery of Spock's face in "Unification"... Now, intel organizations always hide the source of their intel, and perhaps that shot was made by the pigeon-shaped drone of a field agent at the Capital City, rather than by an orbital or interstellar spying device. Yet the field agent's other pigeon-shaped drone probably would be studying the local star every now and then. After all, why wouldn't it? If you insert agents on Romulus, you probably want to insert them good: constantly inserting and extracting is an undue strain on the operation. The agents could then do maximal good and study everything they can.

But the big issue here is, what are the reasons for somebody suddenly starting to think the Romulan star will explode? Is the star really undergoing an observable change? Or is it undergoing something ambiguous that might not even amount to change, until the very last moment? Since it's pretty unlikely that the kaboom was in any way related to what precious little we ITRW know about supernovas, all bets really are off: perhaps a main sequence star blows up without symptoms the UFP or Romulan science would agree on?

This is in fact the best possible scenario here. Any ambiguity in the doomsday prediction works in favor of the drama. And ambiguity on such matters is a damn good reason for those risky UFP missions into studying supernovas in inhabited systems at the last possible moment, as in "The Empath" or "All Our Yesterdays".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Christopher]

Now do you have a better example showing how real-world politics deals with such issues of disasters & secrecy?

Yes -- climate change. The Trump administration is doing everything it can to stymie American scientists' attempts to address climate change, but since climate change is an undeniable physical fact observable all over the world, the US government has no power to prevent other nations from acknowledging its reality and taking action to address it. By the same token, the Romulans could only prevent their own people from learning about the supernova, not the Federation or other nations. Even the most oppressive regime cannot prevent outside nations from acknowledging a physical reality that is easily observable by everyone.

 

[Skipper]

Without any reason to be pointing sensors and scanners at Romulus

Yes, because today the USA is completely ignoring data about Pyongyang or any other capital of a nation considered hostile. And it's not like there are satellites up there just for similar tasks.

And obviously why Star Fleet should scan the home world of an enemy power? It's not like that monitoring, I don't know, the starships' traffic can reveal anything. Absolutely not.

Look, I wouldn't be surprised that there were entire departments dedicated to studying and analyzing every little detail of the data from Romulus scans. And we have already seen in Star Trek that even simple solar activities can bring consequences, and therefore it is absolutely normal that even its sun can be under observation, just as today the weather is kept under osservation in a "critical" nation.

 

[NCC-73515]

Yes -- climate change. The Trump administration is doing everything it can to stymie American scientists' attempts to address climate change, but since climate change is an undeniable physical fact observable all over the world, the US government has no power to prevent other nations from acknowledging its reality and taking action to address it. By the same token, the Romulans could only prevent their own people from learning about the supernova, not the Federation or other nations. Even the most oppressive regime cannot prevent outside nations from acknowledging a physical reality that is easily observable by everyone.

I was thinking of things that have happened and are over, like the supernova, but you're right, that's a good example as well.

 

[Christopher]

I was thinking of things that have happened and are over, like the supernova

But we're talking about the situation before the supernova occurred. The question is whether the Romulans could've detected the warning signs of a future supernova and somehow hidden that evidence from the Federation for years. Which they couldn't, because their star would be in plain sight for any Federation observer.

 

[Timo]

Yet not all things in a star system are in plain sight to the faraway observer, not in Trek. Supposedly, in the Trek reality, every star around Sol is teeming with industrialized civilizations right now, yet somehow our astronomers have failed to spot their inevitable emissions. We may have to postulate a dampener of some sort, perhaps a subspace bubble around stars that tones down the EM leakage. Might be it also makes us see the stars "all wrong", resulting in false models of stellar physics and hiding the telltales of major developments. But not from those who live inside the subspace bubble...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Jedman67]

But we're talking about the situation before the supernova occurred. The question is whether the Romulans could've detected the warning signs of a future supernova and somehow hidden that evidence from the Federation for years. Which they couldn't, because their star would be in plain sight for any Federation observer.

The real question is whether the Romulans could have refined the data collected on their sun to be certain that a supernova was imminent. RL knows the classic signs, but those signs are subject to interpretation. And being that, to the best of our knowledge, the Romulan Star is similar to Sol, it's not the kind of sun that is possible to go supernova as we understand things now.
The signs, malfunctions or dips in light put out by Romulan Star need to be analyzed, correlated, interpreted in order to understand what exactly is going on there.
Of course, in Star Trek anytime something goings wrong the sensors are able to determine exactly what happened, nearly to the instant, no matter how far away as long as the plot depends on it. Which makes for far better drama if you know that star over there is in the process of going kablooey, right now; instead of anylzing reams of data from optical, xray and infrared telescopes over the course of a few years or so.
Thing is tho, that if you're trying to hide information from another government, you take steps to fool whatever intelligence assets you know are watching you. So for North Korea, they know the US has got some pretty slick satellites watching them. So they've been hiding their nuclear research in underground installations, or disguising military bases as civilian installations, etc. Is it perfect? Not at all, but it does keep a bit of uncertainty regarding what exactly they're doing, even though we have a pretty good idea.

So the romulan government knows their sun is exploding in a few years. They don't want anyone else, especially not the feds to know. So they try to interfere with what they know is watching them, using counterintelligence to spread misinformation and half truths, all while knowing eventually there's going to be too many anomalies in the data to hide it forever.
Eventually someone is going to realize what's really happening and call the romulans on it. All they can do is spread misinformation ("oh it's just plasma magentic storms in the coronosphere. It will be over in another year". "Oh supernova? not for another hundred years") etc.

 

[Christopher]

The real question is whether the Romulans could have refined the data collected on their sun to be certain that a supernova was imminent. RL knows the classic signs, but those signs are subject to interpretation.

Maybe, but I trust the Federation's astronomers more than the Romulans', because the Federation is a free society whose government encourages science rather than suppressing and censoring it as any dictatorship would. So I can't believe Romulan scientists would be years ahead of the Federation in correctly analyzing the warning signs.

And I still don't see why it's remotely desirable to postulate something like that, which actively works against the story we've been presented with, a story in which the Romulan government was caught totally flatfooted by the crisis and was far slower than the Federation in taking action to address it. It's gratuitous conspiracy-theory thinking that provides no benefit whatsoever, that just needlessly complicates a perfectly straightforward scenario.

And being that, to the best of our knowledge, the Romulan Star is similar to Sol, it's not the kind of sun that is possible to go supernova as we understand things now.

This has been pointed out a million times already, and I've pointed out a million times that TOS had numerous inhabited planets around stars that went supernova -- Fabrina, Minara, Sarpeidon. It's a phenomenon with multiple precedents in the show's universe, so they should be able to interpret the signs by now.

So the romulan government knows their sun is exploding in a few years. They don't want anyone else, especially not the feds to know. So they try to interfere with what they know is watching them, using counterintelligence to spread misinformation and half truths, all while knowing eventually there's going to be too many anomalies in the data to hide it forever.
Eventually someone is going to realize what's really happening and call the romulans on it. All they can do is spread misinformation ("oh it's just plasma magentic storms in the coronosphere. It will be over in another year". "Oh supernova? not for another hundred years") etc.

That's not how it was shown in The Last Best Hope, though. In the novel, at most a few weeks passed between the Federation's first detection of something unusual happening to Romulus's star (in fact, it was suggested in the book that it was the Enterprise crew that made the first detection, or at least that they were one of the groups that detected it independently) and the Romulan government confessing that it meant a supernova was imminent.

 

[Jedman67]

Maybe, but I trust the Federation's astronomers more than the Romulans', because the Federation is a free society whose government encourages science rather than suppressing and censoring it as any dictatorship would. So I can't believe Romulan scientists would be years ahead of the Federation in correctly analyzing the warning signs.

And I still don't see why it's remotely desirable to postulate something like that, which actively works against the story we've been presented with, a story in which the Romulan government was caught totally flatfooted by the crisis and was far slower than the Federation in taking action to address it. It's gratuitous conspiracy-theory thinking that provides no benefit whatsoever, that just needlessly complicates a perfectly straightforward scenario.

And yet, in nearly every episode it seems the romulans are trying to sabotage (or someone was sabotaging) relief efforts. It's not without precedent that the Tal Shiar or this super-secret Romulan CIA knew what was happening, or possibly even caused it to happen for reasons of their own.
I'm not speculating on what the actual revealed plot is or should be, rather on what could be plausible in-universe explanations. Plausible does not need to mean likely or probably, just theoretically possible.

That's not how it was shown in The Last Best Hope, though. In the novel, at most a few weeks passed between the Federation's first detection of something unusual happening to Romulus's star (in fact, it was suggested in the book that it was the Enterprise crew that made the first detection, or at least that they were one of the groups that detected it independently) and the Romulan government confessing that it meant a supernova was imminent.

I don't read the novels; and to the best of my knowledge are not considered canon in any way, shape or form.
I also haven't seen more than a handful of TOS episodes, so all I know about how trek deals with Supernovas comes from Generations and Voyager.

As for the science thing, China has arguably made more efforts in recent years in advancing it's knowledge of the "theoretical sciences" (astronomy, quantum physics, etc) because the government has poured a shit ton of money into the field. Doesn't make them better than, say France, or Germany or even the US, but it certainly bring them onto the playing field. So Romulans may not be as good but that doesn't make them not qualified.

 

[Christopher]

Plausible does not need to mean likely or probably, just theoretically possible.

No, that's exactly what the word "plausible" does mean -- believable, credible. There are many things that are "theoretically possible" but not even close to plausible because they're so unlikely. It's like the legal standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt -- the defense may be able to present an alternative explanation for the crime that's theoretically possible but is so hugely unlikely that the jury doesn't find it plausible. So plausibility and probability are absolutely linked. A more likely scenario is more believable, more plausible, than a less likely one.

I don't read the novels; and to the best of my knowledge are not considered canon in any way, shape or form.

Oh, canon, schmanon. Canon doesn't matter. It's all just stories; canon is as imaginary as any other account. The novel is the only version of the supernova backstory that exists to date, there's no alternative version to compete with it, and it was written in close consultation with Kirsten Beyer, who co-created the show and is one of its producers.

So Romulans may not be as good but that doesn't make them not qualified.

I never said "not qualified." What I said was that I don't believe that Federation scientists would be that much less qualified than Romulan ones.