Is it possible to cloak an entire planet?

[Romulan_spy]

I know it is illegal for the Federation to use cloaking tech but from a purely tech point of view, is it doable?

We know from that TNG ep, that a phase cloak is workable on a small scale. If the Federation could generate the massive amount of power needed, it should be possible to cloak an entire planet, right?

Surely, the Federation could find a way to generate enough power. They could build a hundred M/AM reactors and link them all together on a planet to create the energy needed to power the phase cloak generator. Would that work? If it worked, it would be a great way to protect a planet from enemy attack.

 

[wonderstoat]

Asides from the power issues, it wouldn't really protect a planet from attack. Planets followed fixed orbits that can be extrapolated far into the future. An attacker would just whip out their Space Almanac, work out where the planet is according to it's orbit, and regardless of if they can see it or not, just open up with weapons ... ka-blamm!!

Even if they don't have their copy of the Almanac to hand, there's another way to do it. In 2008 scientists can find "invisible" extrasolar planets by the minute gravitational influence they exert on their parent stars. Presumably this technique would be fairly easy using the scanners and computing power of a starship. Even for Klingons ...

 

[SonicRanger]

Possible? Yes.

Can the Feds? No.

In TOS, Scotty was doubtful that Gary Seven's sponsors kept their planet cloaked in "Assignment: Earth."

In TNG, the crew was amazed that the planet Aldea was cloaked in "When The Bough Breaks" -- and the cloak was wrecking the planet's ozone layer.

 

[Romulan_spy]

Asides from the power issues, it wouldn't really protect a planet from attack. Planets followed fixed orbits that can be extrapolated far into the future. An attacker would just whip out their Space Almanac, work out where the planet is according to it's orbit, and regardless of if they can see it or not, just open up with weapons ... ka-blamm!!

Even if they don't have their copy of the Almanac to hand, there's another way to do it. In 2008 scientists can find "invisible" extrasolar planets by the minute gravitational influence they exert on their parent stars. Presumably this technique would be fairly easy using the scanners and computing power of a starship. Even for Klingons ...

I guess I am thinking of something like the phase cloak where the planet is shifted out of phase. Presumably, enemy weapons would just pass right through it.

 

[Butters]

Yeah, the gravity well would be the big give away. I don't think theres anything even in trek's mumbo-jumbo to help hide that.

Having said that, Gary Seven was from a world hidden from the federation, and a DS9 ep had a non-corporeal world, so anythings possible.

 

[Timo]

Agreed. And I wouldn't even put it past Trek technology (even UFP tech) to hide gravity. I mean, cloaks do work in hiding starships - and sensitive gravitic sensors should be able to pick up the invisible ships if they let their gravitic pull leak to the outside of the cloak.

Remember that the Trek folks, even primitive ones, are masters of gravity already. They can create one gee on each deck of a starship, yet have zero gee just outside the hull. A bit more precision control, and the ship would cease to display gravitic attraction.

Now, cloak an entire planet from gravity, and it will cease to wobble its star. Of course, it will also cease to orbit that star, slowly heading into the interstellar abyss... But if the intent is to hide the planet, this may be a smart move. The loss of the star wouldn't matter much anyway, since the planet can't be allowed to absorb any of the star's radiation, lest the cloaking effect be ruined.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dayton3]

Agreed. And I wouldn't even put it past Trek technology (even UFP tech) to hide gravity. I mean, cloaks do work in hiding starships - and sensitive gravitic sensors should be able to pick up the invisible ships if they let their gravitic pull leak to the outside of the cloak.

Actually in one of the ST:TNG episodes "Face of the Enemy" IIRC, where Troi is disguised as a Tal Shiar agent, it is basically said by the Romulan Warbird commander that gravitic sensors can see through a cloaking device.

When "Troi" orders the Warbird to the Federation border, the commander lists a number of ways that Federation border defenses might detect them even cloaked.

She mentions a "Tachyon Detection Grid" (Redemption II).

She also mentions "Gravitic sensors".

 

[Silversmok3]

In fact,this is the exact task an alien culture attempted in a USS Titan novel I read.

They failed in cloaking their planet,however their phase-shifting space-fold tech folded the planet into a 4-D tesseract.

(Plain English is the cloak cut their planet into two timelines simultaneously,so when they used it the homeworld existed in two times in the same place.Yep,messy )

I'd imagine a planetary cloak would require so much energy it would self defeat its purpose.It'd be like hiding a nuclear reactor from a geiger counter.

Sure,the planets invisible but all the bad guys need to do is check their energy readings,and shoot for the bright spot.

Or conversely,do a background radiation scan ,find the giant sphere shaped area of zero background emissions,and aim in the middle.

I imagine if your civilization can build a cloak(especially a phase shifting one ) without screwing up,you can handle the bad guys without it.

 

[UssGlenn]

A recent Star Trek: Destiny book referenced the USS daVinci successfully hiding the planet Troyus from the Borg by making the planet disappear. I fully expect the full story to be told in a future Corps of Engineers book. I'm guessing they used a phased cloaking devise on steroids.

 

[Santaman]

There's a SF novell series called Perry Rhodan, in it they cloaked the entire solarsystem including the sun by shifting it 3 seconds into the future, that would make everything including the gravity well disappear.

 

[Timo]

"The Next Phase" and "Time's Arrow" put together make it sound as if this is also how the Federation phase cloak works...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Butters]

There's a SF novell series called Perry Rhodan, in it they cloaked the entire solarsystem including the sun by shifting it 3 seconds into the future, that would make everything including the gravity well disappear.

Would you not just need to wait 3 seconds then? If you shifted it through time, it still exists in time and an outsider would catch up with it. Like Back to the Future, when Doc sends Einstein a minute in to the future.

 

[Timo]

But supposedly the planet would always stay those three seconds ahead, never dropping back into "our reality" like the dog did.

We run into the "Langoilers" problem there, then: once I have lived this moment, is something of me left behind for those coming "after" me to catch?

I'd argue not. Or if something remained, I wouldn't care if it were eaten by Langoilers or assimilated by the Borg, because it was only my past shadow. My self, shifted into the future, would be immune.

"The Next Phase" might suggest that a bit of a shadow does remain. Perhaps Ro and LaForge are a bit in the past there, and thus see the shadows of the other heroes, but cannot send anything into the future so that it would cast a similar shadow onto the other heroes. They might also be breathing the shadow of the regular world's air, giving them some minor oxidation of their blood, but the interaction with this oxygen would be much weakened. The electromagnetic interaction which makes walls appear solid would be even more weakened, allowing for the walk-through trick, while gravitic interaction would leave a strong time shadow, thus keeping them from falling through the gravitic nets in the floors.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Santaman]

Yeah the solar system stays 3 seconds ahead in time, Rhodan tech is a bit more potent then anything Trek ever came up with.

 

[SoM]

I've never liked the "shifted out-of-synch" idea for the exact reason Butters gives - even if you never lose that fraction of a second/three seconds/a minute/however long "gap", then all that should do is give you 3s (or however long) of warning at best.

If you slid three seconds "sideways" in time, maybe (i.e., along a fifth dimensional axis), maybe, but not forward.