Several Questions Regarding "Paths of Disharmony"

[Sci]

^Well, proximity isn't everything. The Romulans have also been very insular for most of their known history. From 2160-2266 and from 2311-2364 they were almost completely closed within their borders. And we know the Typhon Expanse was named by the UFP no later than 2368, and probably somewhat sooner.

Not to mention that Star Charts's 2-dimensional maps don't always give an accurate sense of the true 3-dimensional distance between things. The Typhon Expanse could be considerably "above" or "below" the plane of the page.

They've been somewhat insular at key points, but even during those key points, they were active in interstellar politics, just keeping it below the radar. And before their first period of isolationism, they had a deeply expansionist ethic, as established in ENT. So I think it probably they would have named an interstellar expanse so close to their own boundaries.

 

[Christopher]

But if the Federation already had a name for it, the Romulans might've just used a Romulanized version of that name for simplicity's sake. That's the way it happens when one culture is dominant in a field -- other cultures tend to follow its linguistic lead even if they aren't friendly with it. That's how we got so many French legal terms, how German became the international language of chemistry, and why English is the universal language of space travel and the Internet.

 

[captcalhoun]

and air travel.

 

[rfmcdpei]

But if the Federation already had a name for it, the Romulans might've just used a Romulanized version of that name for simplicity's sake.

Or perhaps equally likely, the Romulans have kept their name for the astrographic region but adopted the "Typhon Pact" variant for their new bloc.

 

[Sci]

But if the Federation already had a name for it, the Romulans might've just used a Romulanized version of that name for simplicity's sake.

Sure. But I'm speculating that the Romulans may have already had a name for it since well before the Federation did, because they were expansionists who may have encountered the Typhon Expanse before the Federation even formed.

 

[Christopher]

Sure. But I'm speculating that the Romulans may have already had a name for it since well before the Federation did, because they were expansionists who may have encountered the Typhon Expanse before the Federation even formed.

Well, I've already disputed the assumption that the Romulans are intrinsically expansionistic; statistically, they've been shown to have expansionistic policies for no more than 30 percent of the time humanity has known of them. And I've already cautioned against taking the appearance of proximity in the 2D Star Charts maps too literally. But look at what's between the Expanse and the Romulan Star Empire on the Star Charts map. There's the Neutral Zone, the monitoring outposts, and a swath of Federation territory. And note that the Nimbus system is located along that part of the NZ. That tells us that portion of the NZ was already in place as of 2267 when Nimbus III was founded, and thus must've been in place since the NZ was established in 2160. So even if the Romulans were expansionistic, they couldn't have expanded in that direction. They were already blocked by the Federation for more than two centuries prior to the formation of the Typhon Pact. So it is not, in fact, true that the Typhon Expanse is closer to Romulan territory than Federation territory. It's the other way around.

 

[Stoek]

Based on A Singular Destiny, my understanding is that Typhon Pact is printed on the coin they find belonging to the dead Ferengi female.

Personally I think the TP has chosen to use the Terran terminology as a way of setting up a constant reminder that it is because of the direction that Earth has influenced the Federation to develop over the years that the Pact ultimately came to form. Or to put it more bluntly that it is the humans fault that the Pact came to be.

 

[Sci]

Sure. But I'm speculating that the Romulans may have already had a name for it since well before the Federation did, because they were expansionists who may have encountered the Typhon Expanse before the Federation even formed.

Well, I've already disputed the assumption that the Romulans are intrinsically expansionistic; statistically, they've been shown to have expansionistic policies for no more than 30 percent of the time humanity has known of them.

I'm not claiming that the Romulans are intrinsically expansionistic. But ENT's Aenar trilogy explicitly establishes that the Star Empire was a deeply expansionistic power in the years leading up to the Earth-Romulan War. It features Valdore's big monologue about how he had been kicked out of the Senate for questioning the Star Empire's policy of unlimited expansion -- and event implied to have occurred decades prior to the trilogy.

So while the Romulans are not intrinsically expansionists, they were expansionists in the years before the war -- that war from which their anti-spinward frontier was frozen. And given their advanced espionage programs in what later became the Federation "core worlds" region, I find it hard to believe that they wouldn't have had the sort of program of exploration that would have encountered the Typhon Expanse prior to formal territorial annexation -- especially given how close it appears to be to their territory (and there's no evidence it's not close to their territory). So I don't think my hypothesis -- that the Romulans would have their own term for the Typhon Expanse and consequently the Typhon Pact, even if more insular cultures like the Breen just use the Federation Standard name -- is unreasonable.

 

[Christopher]

^I'm not saying it couldn't be the case, just warning against taking certain assumptions (like the apparent proximity) for granted.

And I don't think it's the most likely scenario. The Expanse could be close to Romulan territory, but there are hundreds of light-years' worth of Z-axis uncertainty to take into account. The galactic disk is up to 1000 light-years thick at our radius, so the odds that the Expanse is within 100 light-years of the plane occupied by Romulus are only 1 in 5, within 200 light-years only 2 in 5. By simple numbers, the Expanse is more likely to be far from Romulus than close to it. Indeed, the fact established in "Cause and Effect" that the Expanse remains uncharted by the Federation as late as the 24th century strongly suggest to me that it must be farther away from known space than it appears on the map, that its Z-axis displacement is probably rather high.

And why was the Neutral Zone placed where it was? Probably because it represented the outermost limits of the territory Romulans held at the end of the war. Since they were only being pushed back from the direction of Earth, it follows that their coreward exploration hadn't gotten much further than their postwar border. So again, I find the proposal that they'd reached the Typhon Expanse to be, while not impossible, still considerably less probable than the alternative.

And there's just Occam's Razor. Why would they put "Typhon Pact" on their own currency if they had a different name of their own? Real-life historical examples offer a handy explanation -- that if one nation leads the way in discovery or invention in a given field, other nations often end up using their nomenclature. Given that the Federation has long been such an active power in space exploration, it's reasonable to expect that a lot of other cultures would use their names for things in space.

 

[Gatekeeper]

Agreed, 24th Century Trek Lit still has a long ways to go before I'd call it dystopian. Sure some bad stuff happened, but there was also some good, with the closer alliances they now have with some of the non-TP powers.

Yes, it would be hard to top S.M. Stirling's "Draka" series of novels when it comes to dystopian themes.

Still, losing a *founding* member of the Federation is an absolutely horrendous blow. Hmm. I wonder how the nuTrek Federation is doing, now that Vulcan is nothing more than an asteroid field.

Gatekeeper

 

[BrotherBenny]

Christopher, since the Romulans have had to curb their expansion at the Federation and Klingon borders, why couldn't they have expanded further rimward into the BQ?

 

[Christopher]

Christopher, since the Romulans have had to curb their expansion at the Federation and Klingon borders, why couldn't they have expanded further rimward into the BQ?

I'm not sure what you're asking. I'm not saying the Romulans couldn't expand at all, I'm saying that the Neutral Zone and the Federation territory (in blue on the maps) to coreward would prevent them from expanding specifically in the direction of the Typhon Expanse (which is directly coreward of Romulan territory, so I'm not sure how a discussion of their rimward expansion is relevant). Anyway, if you mean "rimward" as in "radially outward from the galactic core," they're completely blocked by the UFP and Klingon Empire in that direction. The Neutral Zone surrounds them most of the way around in the plane of the map, and probably comparably to galactic north and south ("above" and "below" the galactic plane), so really the only direction they're free to expand is antispinward (to the right on the maps).

 

[BrotherBenny]

I was thinking rimward, as in toward the rim of the galaxy, away from the core. I don't exactly get spinward and antispinward. Could you explain them to me?

 

[Christopher]

I was thinking rimward, as in toward the rim of the galaxy, away from the core. I don't exactly get spinward and antispinward. Could you explain them to me?

The galaxy is rotating. The stars orbit its center, just as a star is orbited by its planets. Spinward is the direction of that overall rotation, antispinward the opposite direction. Basically they're clockwise and counterclockwise.

So basically, the Alpha Quadrant is spinward of Beta, and Beta is antispinward of Alpha. And the directions on the Star Charts maps of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants (but not Gamma and Delta) are as follows:

Toward top of page: coreward
Toward bottom of page: rimward
Toward page right: antispinward
Toward page left: spinward

 

[BrotherBenny]

I was thinking rimward, as in toward the rim of the galaxy, away from the core. I don't exactly get spinward and antispinward. Could you explain them to me?

The galaxy is rotating. The stars orbit its center, just as a star is orbited by its planets. Spinward is the direction of that overall rotation, antispinward the opposite direction. Basically they're clockwise and counterclockwise.

So basically, the Alpha Quadrant is spinward of Beta, and Beta is antispinward of Alpha. And the directions on the Star Charts maps of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants (but not Gamma and Delta) are as follows:

Toward top of page: coreward
Toward bottom of page: rimward
Toward page right: antispinward
Toward page left: spinward

So spinward and antispinward are left and right, but coreward and rimward are up and down, on the z axis, not the x/y?

 

[Christopher]

So basically, the Alpha Quadrant is spinward of Beta, and Beta is antispinward of Alpha. And the directions on the Star Charts maps of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants (but not Gamma and Delta) are as follows:

Toward top of page: coreward
Toward bottom of page: rimward
Toward page right: antispinward
Toward page left: spinward

So spinward and antispinward are left and right, but coreward and rimward are up and down, on the z axis, not the x/y?

What???? No, no, coreward/rimward is the X axis, from top to bottom of the page. The maps are essentially looking straight "down" at the galactic disk face-on. The line dividing the Alpha Quadrant from the Beta Quadrant is the X axis; it's the radius connecting the center of the galaxy with Earth. The Y axis is left to right on the page. The Z axis is perpendicular to the plane of the page, representing galactic north and south.

 

[BrotherBenny]

OK, I get it now. Thanks.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Where's my Playmates' Stellar Cartography holographic playset?

 

[Christopher]

Where's my Playmates' Stellar Cartography holographic playset?

It'll be in on Tuesday.

 

[rfmcdpei]

^I'm not saying it couldn't be the case, just warning against taking certain assumptions (like the apparent proximity) for granted.

And I don't think it's the most likely scenario. The Expanse could be close to Romulan territory, but there are hundreds of light-years' worth of Z-axis uncertainty to take into account. The galactic disk is up to 1000 light-years thick at our radius, so the odds that the Expanse is within 100 light-years of the plane occupied by Romulus are only 1 in 5, within 200 light-years only 2 in 5. By simple numbers, the Expanse is more likely to be far from Romulus than close to it. Indeed, the fact established in "Cause and Effect" that the Expanse remains uncharted by the Federation as late as the 24th century strongly suggest to me that it must be farther away from known space than it appears on the map, that its Z-axis displacement is probably rather high.

And why was the Neutral Zone placed where it was? Probably because it represented the outermost limits of the territory Romulans held at the end of the war. Since they were only being pushed back from the direction of Earth, it follows that their coreward exploration hadn't gotten much further than their postwar border. So again, I find the proposal that they'd reached the Typhon Expanse to be, while not impossible, still considerably less probable than the alternative.

This is where a three-dimensional version of the Star Trek universe's maps would be helpful.

To me, this map makes it look as if the top line came within a few light years of the Romulan home-system itself dozens of light years from Sol (140 light years if, as some say, Romulus is near Epsilon Phoenicis), while the much nearer Alpha Mensae (33.1 light years from Sol) and Beta Pictoris (63.4 light years from Sol) are inside the neutral zone.

To me, the map describes a more chaotic settlement than status quo ante bellum. If that was the case, I might have expected Romulus to be surrounded by substantially more territory, extending well toward Sauria and Bolarus.