The Absurdity of Borders in Space

[ticktock]

In Star Trek much is made of border violations by the feds,romulans,klingons and others.

Much is made of "this is our border you have crossed".

i put it to you that the idea is absurd.

everything in space is MOVING relative to everything else.

a planet is moving around a star which is moving around the galactic center and the galaxy is moving around the center of gravity of a galaxy cluster which is moving away also...


these speeds range from a few km/sec to many hundreds of km per sec and every star and planet is moving at a different speed.

thus the idea of a fixed border is absurd.

in fact any border defined by stars or planets would be a fluid border which waxes and wanes,being ill defined due to no fixed defining elements, depending on the speed of the defining stars and planets...


so any 3 dimensional space or empire could not be rigidly defined at all as the defining elements are not fixed but are moving both relative to each other and also to some non-specifiable point of origin,presumably the big bang from which all matter is expanding away from but which cannot be located as space itself is expanding,thus the point being no rigid boundary could be defined in space due to the multiplicity of aforementioned reasons.

 

[Deckerd]

Would you say there was a border between a solar system and the void around it?

 

[GodThingFormerly]

so any 3 dimensional space or empire could not be rigidly defined at all as the defining elements are not fixed but are moving both relative to each other and also to some non-specifiable point of origin,presumably the big bang from which all matter is expanding away from but which cannot be located as space itself is expanding,thus the point being no rigid boundary could be defined in space due to the multiplicity of aforementioned reasons.

Present-day astronomers employ the ICRS/ICRF to precisely describe the epoch position and proper motion of astronomical objects using extragalactic radio sources (i.e., quasars) as reference points, so why couldn't a similar mechanism be employed in the future to define the spatial borders of interstellar empires located within the Milky Way?

TGT

 

[Deckerd]

^^I love the juxtaposition of the first and second halves of that sentence.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Borders are established solely for political reasons and to establish regions where governments don't trample upon the sovereignty of others. When such things do occur, wars generally start.

It could be argued that borders between governments do change over time. The treaty that redefined the Federation-Cardassian DMZ in TNG may have been the result of some worlds crossing into each other's territories and a redefinition of the borders in that particular region. To avoid a reignition of old hostilities, compromises may have been made resulting in the Federation trading some colonies to the Cardassians and vice-versa.

 

[FalTorPan]

i put it to you that the idea is absurd.

Let's assume that a fixed border is absurd. It is reasonable to hypothesize that the various interstellar political entities have defined their borders based on positions of stars and other interstellar objects.

Consider a political body with member worlds in one star system. Such a body might define its "border" as a spherical surface projected an arbitrary distance from the star system's center of gravity.

Now consider a political body with member worlds in two star systems -- A and B. Such a body might define A's "border" as above, and B's "border" as above -- with the possibility of the center-of-gravity-to-border distance being defined differently for A and B. The entire entity's "border" might be a projection from one sphere to the other, with the resulting shape resembling a capsule.

Using similar logic, a political body with member worlds in three star systems might resemble a triangular wireframe -- each edge being a capsule -- or a single triangular solid with rounded vertices. A four-system body's territory might resemble either a tetrahedral "wire frame" or a tetrahedral solid.

This sort of logic could easily be extended to a political body with member worlds in n star systems.

 

[Triskelion]

Yeah, ideals are fine and well until the praetor decides to annex your hometown.

 

[Danoz]

Yeah I would tend to agree with C.E. Evans, and I've thought about this before. And remember that there are vast areas of space where there is virtually no life-- I could see a solar system itself being part of a boundary. In the Gamma quadrant, powerful alliances like the dominion take up hundreds of solar systems and areas of space. If humanoid, space-dwelling species filled the universe in countless trillions-- intergalactic political boundaries would have to exist.

What I would find confusing is the plotting of 3D space on a 2D map, but I'm not an astronomer or a scientist.

 

[FalTorPan]

What I would find confusing is the plotting of 3D space on a 2D map, but I'm not an astronomer or a scientist.

This is a straightforward procedure -- just pick your viewing angle and project the points onto a plane. On the other hand, a single 2D map is probably not very useful.

 

[Unicron]

Borders are established solely for political reasons and to establish regions where governments don't trample upon the sovereignty of others. When such things do occur, wars generally start.

It could be argued that borders between governments do change over time. The treaty that redefined the Federation-Cardassian DMZ in TNG may have been the result of some worlds crossing into each other's territories and a redefinition of the borders in that particular region. To avoid a reignition of old hostilities, compromises may have been made resulting in the Federation trading some colonies to the Cardassians and vice-versa.

Yep. Modern geographical borders could be considered equally absurd in many respects.

 

[stj]

The technical difficulty of distinguishing one volue of empty space from another volume of empty space is soluble. The point is, why? "Borders" in Trek are merely a senseless projection of contemporary politics into a situation where it cannot possibly apply. The correct view I think would be that space is the equivalent of the high seas. Planets are islands. The old marker of territorial waters as those controlled by land based cannon would also apply. Any space targetable from the planet is it's territory.

 

[Deks]

Borders are usually littered with sensor stations/platforms that clearly divide two or more powers in Trek.

It's quite simple really ... production of those sensors would be next to nothing, their implementation would be easy and that's it.
Most of those are placed along the borders of Fed/Card/Klingon/Rom space.
Everything else usually has a starbase, either in orbit of planets outside Federation space, or on planets ...
depends which.

 

[Tyberius]

everything in space is MOVING relative to everything else.

a planet is moving around a star which is moving around the galactic center and the galaxy is moving around the center of gravity of a galaxy cluster which is moving away also...


these speeds range from a few km/sec to many hundreds of km per sec and every star and planet is moving at a different speed.

thus the idea of a fixed border is absurd.

in fact any border defined by stars or planets would be a fluid border which waxes and wanes,being ill defined due to no fixed defining elements, depending on the speed of the defining stars and planets...

Hence the necessity for a Neutral Zone

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Yep, I've noticed for a while that Starfleet has a silly notion about borders. To them, borders are whatever they want them to be. Remember how Archer blundered into Tandaran space and got mad when they got mad at him for trespassing because they didn't mark their borders well enough? They were marking their borders - with warships, and by shooting at interlopers. There's no other effective way of claiming any sort of border in space. Did he expect some sort of "rope" at the entryway? It would have had to have been something akin to a very large Tholian web. Imagine the expense of enveloping a whole star system in something like that. Wotta maroon.

And don't get me started about their refusal to respect Dominion borders. Just because you find a wormhole doesn't mean the space at the other end is unclaimed territory, you Starfleet doofuses!

Borders are imaginary lines in space that start wars when you don't respect them.

 

[Anwar]

I'm guessing the borders are properly marked via beacons giving off the message of what space is claimed by whom, with military force being sent to intercept if intruders continue despite beacon warnings.

 

[Sci]

Borders are necessary in order for states to exercise power over their citizenry. To that end, they will be implemented in an interstellar state in some form or another. It may be absurd -- but so's the idea of a German bothering to fight a Frenchman over an imaginery line on a map.

 

[FalTorPan]

What exactly makes a border absurd? For an FTL-capable, interstellar political body... maybe. For a star system, it makes a good deal of sense.

 

[Kegek]

Granted, Borders is in dire financial straits apparently at the moment; but I wouldn't rule their expansion into the cosmos entirely out of the question...

 

[Timo]

The correct view I think would be that space is the equivalent of the high seas. Planets are islands.

But you wouldn't want to have enemy ships between your islands, not with their long range ballistic or aerodynamic nuclear weapons.

The concept of high seas is the one that is rapidly growing absurd. It was relevant back when means of naval motion were primitive, but today a mere 12 nautical miles of territorial waters is a relic that defies all economic and strategic logic. For reasons of economic exploitation alone, the oceans should be divided with sharp borders, trivially easily marked with GPS coordinates, so that there would be no ambiguity on whose laws apply on the fishing or drilling vessels within. (Or then there could be an international system of controls. And when we get that, I'd like a ponygirl, too.)

An interstellar empire operating Star Trek ships, sensors and weaponry would have it very much in its interests to keep enemy vessels away from the void between its star systems. The abstract notion of a border would not serve as a physical rampart on its own, of course, but it would legitimize any search-and-destroy activity within the thus established "territorial space".

As for the original point about motion of objects in space, it would in practice be so slow that entire species might disappear and new ones be born before those mere thousands of km/s really made any sort of a difference.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MarianLH]

I like the idea of the islands metaphor, and it works pretty well for the Honor Harrington novels, where ships in hyper are effectively untrackable. But in Star Trek, ships seem to be very easily detectable from great distances when travelling at warp, even with sensors small enough to be carried aboard ship.

Large passive sensors on the fringes of member systems might extend far enough to bridge the gaps between inhabited member systems. Where the gap is too big, there might be a lot of places where Starfleet has a "listening post" in an otherwise empty system, or even deep space. A station in insterstellar space would need to occasionally move to maintain its relative position, but only rarely, and if anyone was watching there are tricks that would let them "drop back off the radar" with their final position obscured.

On a side note, I've often mused that if you ignore everything that came after, "Balance Of Terror" itself works much better on the assumption that the Romulans are confined to a single star system, with the Earth outposts in various outer orbits around the star.

And when we get that, I'd like a ponygirl, too.)

Marian