"Probe outside the galaxy"...what did they expect?

[Gotham Central]

One of the things that I always found strange about "Where no Man has Gone Before" is the fact that they were treating the concept of leaving the galaxy as some sort of huge event. Given the fact that they were unaware of the barrier, one wonders why they were treating it as such a major event worthy of study. Unless one is actually traveling to another galaxy, there would not be much to see or do once you "left" this galaxy. More importantly, ignoring the sillyness of the barrier, would an observer even notice that they had left the galaxy. All that should happen is that gradually the number of stars and gasses bound by the Milky Way's gravitational pull ought to thin out.

One wonders what they were expecting to do out there.

 

[MANT!]

Explore, of course...

 

[Wingsley]

Since the SS Valiant never reported back, and the ore ships only visit Delta Vega only once every twenty years, it would seem that this part of the frontier is really isolated and "out there". And maybe no starship ever ventured outside of the Galaxy before.

In a similar context, one of NASA's Voyager probes has been hailed for its ongoing departure from the Solar System. What will happen to it once it crosses the threshold of interstellar space? Nobody knows, maybe nothing, but NASA/JPL is giddy about it.

 

[SchwEnt]

What did they expect?
Quite simply, to go "Where No Man Has Gone Before".
Perhaps that suffices.

But I see your point. Similar to launching the first man into space in the 60s? Where did they think he was gonna go except "up there", outside the atmosphere? And then what?

That's the thing with exploration. You don't necessarily do it to find what you're looking for. You do it just to find out. Sometimes it's wonderous, sometimes it's nothing.

 

[Warped9]

Today a lot of space going SF can be casually dismissed or treated in an offhand manner by what could be called a lot of jaded viewers---yeah, yeah, spaceship, aliens, technobabble, goin' out there, yeah, yeah...

But Star Trek was produced in quite a different era when more than just those interested in space sciences thought of what might be "out there." The U.S public and many around the world were captivated by the "space race" between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs really fueled our imaginations.

Who knew what to expect on the Moon or on Mars (if the U.S. had kept going)? So who could imagine what could lay beyond the edge of the galaxy?

The space sciences have also really advanced since the mid '60s. Back then little was really known about space beyond our tiny corner of it. Even today with the great strides made in understanding what lies over the next hill there are still a lot of unknowns.

And that's where imagination lays...

 

[Christopher]

Unless one is actually traveling to another galaxy, there would not be much to see or do once you "left" this galaxy.

That's not actually true. There's a lot of stuff out there. Beyond the galactic disk is a spherical halo of about twice its diameter, consisting of gas, dust, globular clusters, and very old stars that were left behind when the bulk of the galaxy coalesced into a disk. There's also a dark-matter halo that extends about three times farther than that. Plus there are various satellite galaxies surrounding the Milky Way. Most of that would be too far to reach, but getting outside of the galactic disk might allow clearer and more detailed observations of them. And taking a look back at the galaxy from outside could help give new information about its structure. So while there wasn't likely to be a lot of seeking out new life and new civilizations, there could've been plenty of pure science done.

More importantly, ignoring the sillyness of the barrier, would an observer even notice that they had left the galaxy. All that should happen is that gradually the number of stars and gasses bound by the Milky Way's gravitational pull ought to thin out.

I've imagined that there might be some kind of "galactopause" where the galaxy's magnetic field or interstellar medium (ISM) drops below a threshold level relative to the halo beyond. Like the Sun's heliopause, the surface at which the pressure of the solar wind falls below that of the ISM, and which is often considered to be the beginning of interstellar space. Such a galactopause might analogously be considered the border between the galaxy proper and the halo.

EDIT: I did some research for "galactopause," and though there was only a handful of Google hits (and this post was #2), there apparently is such a theoretical concept. However, according to the text in the first hit, the galactopause would have a radius of about 220,000 light years, more than twice the radius of the galactic disk. So much for that idea.

 

[Wingsley]

Whether a Federation starship is traveling a frontier within our Galaxy or beyond our Galaxy, there's always the possibility they will discover something new. It could be some local phenomenon or it could be a chance to look at our Galaxy from a different perspective. It could be a wormhole or a derelict spacecraft.

The basic point is that if your ship is probing a new frontier, you don't know what you'll find. TOS was based on the premise that there are always new frontiers, new lessons to learn, and new risks to take in dealing with the unknown...

 

[Timo]

Given the fact that they were unaware of the barrier

Why "given"?

Our heroes are headed out of the galaxy, and they first make an unscheduled stop to pick up the recorder marker, but then make a scheduled stop at the "doorstep", where the barrier is clearly visible. Nobody seems to be surprised to find it there. Kirk then orders the ship to head out, at which point his crew begins an analysis of this "forcefield of some kind" - as if this were the ship's designated mission.

And indeed Kirk appears to deliberately fly into a phenomenon he could steer around, explaining that he has to assess the dangers so that others can follow.

For all we know, Kirk's mission was a success and all the goals were met: the risks of leaving the galaxy were established. Later on, leaving the galaxy is portrayed as a fairly mundane event, in the sense that it's considered risky (except the risks fail to materialize in "By Any Other Name" and are different in "Is There In Truth No Beauty?" from the ones in "Where No Man Has Gone Before") but not unique or exceptional in itself. Possibly others read Kirk's report, prepared accordingly, and probed into the space beyond the barrier, experiencing standard Star Trek adventures there.

Kirk's pilot mission might be part of an initiative to probe beyond the barrier, or then just a preliminary sortie that will some day allow Starfleet to propose such an initiative to the funding parties. We know there's some sort of infrastructure in place, including a refinery in the immediate proximity of Kirk's departure/reentry point. It's apparently not yet an integral part of Kirk's mission, as Spock has to remind Kirk of its existence when it promises to be relief for their acute crisis. But it's probably not a coincidence that Kirk chose to depart the galaxy at that specific point...

Incidentally, there's no indication that the barrier would block anybody's view of the outside. Starfleet might be fully aware of the interesting star systems that lie beyond this well-defined barrier, and eager to explore them with starships (because Star Trek nicely establishes that remote observations don't reveal much in that universe, and entire planets can go missing until a starship visit establishes their current status). The inside and outside of the barrier might not be exotically different, not until one sails a further couple of thousand lightyears from the barrier and reaches the halo. But the barrier itself would be an intriguing, "population-separating" phenomenon, worth crossing for the very reason that it is there.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[jayrath]

Why leave the galaxy?

Why climb mountains...

 

[Captain Robert April]

Isaac Asimov initially thought the barrier was a ludicrous idea.

Then Sam Peeples tore into him.

I have no idea about the contents of the somewhat one-sided discussion, but at the end of it, Asimov had changed his mind on the matter.

 

[RAMA]

Isaac Asimov initially thought the barrier was a ludicrous idea.

Then Sam Peeples tore into him.

I have no idea about the contents of the somewhat one-sided discussion, but at the end of it, Asimov had changed his mind on the matter.

Well Asimov was right.

 

[SchwEnt]

Asimov was right about what? The galactic barrier?
I don't know about that...

There are discoveries being made all the time.
Few years ago, the IBEX mission explored the limits of our solar system and found an "energy ribbon" around our star system, in addition to the heliopause and interstellar boundary layer and all that. Scientists were baffled and it remains unexplained. So there's that.

Then the previously mentioned "galactopause" similar to our heliopause. Plus new discoveries about "dark matter halo" surrounding the Milky Way and all manner of phenomena. Weird and strange things being discovered all the time.

A negative energy barrier around the Milky Way isn't so unbelievable.

 

[BillJ]

A negative energy barrier around the Milky Way isn't so unbelievable.

 

[Christopher]

Few years ago, the IBEX mission explored the limits of our solar system and found an "energy ribbon" around our star system, in addition to the heliopause and interstellar boundary layer and all that. Scientists were baffled and it remains unexplained. So there's that.

Don't oversell it. It's just a region where there are more energetic neutral atoms than we would've expected, in a different configuration than we would've expected. It doesn't mean there are fundamental laws of physics that needs to be abandoned or replaced, it just means that our assumptions about the shape of the heliosphere and its interactions with the interstellar medium are in need of revision.

A negative energy barrier around the Milky Way isn't so unbelievable.

Except that "negative energy" probably doesn't exist. Not to mention that when "By Any Other Name" called it a barrier made of negative energy, I think the writers were misinterpreting Spock's description in the second pilot. He said his scans showed "Mass negative, radiation negative, energy negative," which I take to mean that he got no readings for any of those properties. (After all, what the hell would "negative radiation" be? Absorption?) So "negative" in the sense of no result (like testing negative for a disease) rather than in the sense of a minus sign.

 

[SchwEnt]

Well I was just offering up an example rather than proof.
What we think we know and what we dismiss so easily can come back to bite us in the ass later on, particularly in light of recent discoveries in astrophysics and astronomy.

Negative energy barrier may be nonsensical in terminology, but some sort of galactic boundary of energy isn't too fantastical. Back in TOS days, would "dark energy" and "dark matter" have made any more sense?

 

[Potemkin_Prod]

I've always figured it was a benchmarking mission.

 

[Ronald Held]

I think that the scan should be interepreted as Christopher said: nothing was detected.

 

[xortex]

I'm crushed by a bus negative, though I should watch out what I say. The confusion of double negatives and such opposites attracting paradoxes. I could get hit by a flying paradox. They're hard to see coming and even harder to kill. But it all started with Gary Mitchell going through that great barrier, didn't it? Am I the only one that thinks he didn't die on Delta Vega?

 

[Timo]

...Of course, both interpretations may be correct at the same time, in-universe. That is, Spock detected no energy there, but later studies revealed the presence of negative energy.

I guess the interesting question is, if there's nothing there, why does a starship get lost (á la "In Truth") or damaged (á la "No Man")? Supposedly, something was there after all, despite Spock's inability to see it. And that something might well defy the laws of the "regular" universe, negative energy style, if it can negate simple inertial navigation. Indeed, if the Galactic Barrier and Great Barrier are zones where basic geometry falls apart somehow (except for Medusans), then it's not only understandable that starships get lost, it's also reasonable that a seemingly flat and thin band could form a three-dimensional barrier, or at least one that stops three-dimensionally maneuvering starships.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[RAMA]

Well I was just offering up an example rather than proof.
What we think we know and what we dismiss so easily can come back to bite us in the ass later on, particularly in light of recent discoveries in astrophysics and astronomy.

Negative energy barrier may be nonsensical in terminology, but some sort of galactic boundary of energy isn't too fantastical. Back in TOS days, would "dark energy" and "dark matter" have made any more sense?

There's plenty of "stuff" at the end of solar systems and galaxies and anything that energetic in space is going to have some trace of it...but a negative barrier? Not likely. Some things are even more incredible, like huge jets of gamma rays shooting out from a black hole, and the aforementioned dark matter, but let's not re-write history so WNMHGB was right.