Well a normal nova has a reach between 50 to a 100 lightyears. It is possible that certain systems will be affected to varying degrees in the upcoming years.
The Romulan Supernova: The final, canon word
- Thread starter F. King Daniel
- Start date
Yeah, gamma ray bursts are no joke. supernovae can devastate and potentially sterilise whole systems for many light years distant. (one may have even been responsible for the O–S extinction events) Yes the wavefront would be moving at around the speed of light, but even with a few years warning, moving *hundreds of millions* of people to new viable worlds is a colossal logistical undertaking and not something that can be done all at once. It'd take time and all the while the blast wave is getting closer. Make no mistake, it'd still be a matter of urgency even if the wave won't hit for half a decade.
But yeah, this does rather smack of a larger conspiracy. I just hope it's not more Temporal Cold War shenanigans, that just gives me a headache (even though it's conveniently the Trek answer to "a Wizard did it!")
The lengths Garek will go to to cover his tracks...
But yeah, this does rather smack of a larger conspiracy. I just hope it's not more Temporal Cold War shenanigans, that just gives me a headache (even though it's conveniently the Trek answer to "a Wizard did it!")
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You mean just like a normal supernova would?
One thing BOTH the 2009 and STP agree on was that the Romulan homeworld star system star exploded and wiped out Romulus (and had an effect on other nearby worlds). STP doesn't go into any of the events, natural or otherwise that may have caused the star to explode; nor any of the other efforts that were undertaken to prevent/mitigate the explosion.
"Remembrance" establishes that it was the Romulan sun itself that went supernova, with no mention of Hobus, or a chain reaction, or it expanding faster-than-light as the original Countdown comic or Star Trek Online: The Needs of the Many previously established. Picard left the Enterprise to head up a rescue mission that would save 900,000 Romulans but it all fell apart after the Synths destroy Mars.
So Spock's "a star will explode, and threaten to destroy the galaxy!" from Star Trek (2009) is rendered nonsensical, but "Rememberance" does explain why Spock went it alone, because the Federation withdrew support for the evacuation effort after the Synths destroy Mars. His was a last ditch effort. Nero's cries that "The Federation did nothing!" are confirmed and his vendetta against Spock is about him breaking his promise to save Romulus - although Romulus could never survive without a star anyway so...
I'm glad I never bothered with the comic because I don't know what the hell a Hobus is. Just going off the film and show, I got the strong impression that it was simply Romulus' star that went supernova. The details of what exactly caused it were left to my imagination until the films/shows would come up with a definitive answer. For the moment, my head canon is that the star went supernova due to causes that aren't natural, which is why the Romulans were not prepared for evacuation.
Maybe it was the same thing that caused Ceti Alpha VI to spontaneously explode?
You never know...
Stellar nucleoplothesis.
Heh ... technically, PICARD must be "Fan Fiction" also, since it was written by a HUGE Trek Fan ... Michael Chabon.
He was essentially late.
The plan probably was to use the Red Matter to stabilize the star, but time ran out so Spock hoped to at least use it to dissipate the wave.
According to STO, the area is now known as "The Great Bloom".
(a rather large green nebula)
I mean the nova had happened and then Spock went to work with the Jellyfish. He was late to getting to Romulus before it hit.
The Countdown comic has been categorically retconned out of canon by Remberance, because even if you somehow fix the Hobus stuff, Data survived in B-4 and went on to command the Enterprise-E. Since this didn't happen either, it seems the whole story has to get the boot.
With that being the only mention of 'Hobus', we can now choose any Romulan Star we want.
Second, I can't find dialogue that says "a Romulan Star" not "the Romulan Star" but the easiest way to fix that is to assume the Romulan system is a binary system. I'm not sure we have ever seen enough of their sky to prove or disprove this but even if we have, the companion star could be dim or orbiting far away (beyond Pluto distance, for example). Maybe it's even called Hobus. And "threatened the galaxy" is easily about the political ramifications.
With that being the only mention of 'Hobus', we can now choose any Romulan Star we want.
Second, I can't find dialogue that says "a Romulan Star" not "the Romulan Star" but the easiest way to fix that is to assume the Romulan system is a binary system. I'm not sure we have ever seen enough of their sky to prove or disprove this but even if we have, the companion star could be dim or orbiting far away (beyond Pluto distance, for example). Maybe it's even called Hobus. And "threatened the galaxy" is easily about the political ramifications.
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As I said before, in its day, Star Trek was closer to "hard" SF than anything else on TV. Everything else was pure fantasy and often painfully science-illiterate. Star Trek actually consulted with real scientists and engineers, and though they often chose to ignore the scientists' advice in favor of a more fanciful approach, it was always an informed choice rather than the lazy ignorance of its contemporaries and successors. I doubt you can find anything in 1960s, 1970s, or 1980s SFTV that's anywhere near as credible as Star Trek was at the time. Well, maybe the 1988 series Probe, which was co-created by Isaac Asimov, but that lasted all of 8 episodes.
Part of the reason Star Trek was so compelling to so many people when other SFTV shows fell by the wayside is that it was the only SF future on TV that felt even remotely close to plausible. So when people today dismiss it as being just as fanciful as its contemporaries, or even worse, they're misunderstanding why it was so important and special for its time. The only reason today's shows have surpassed it is because they built on the foundations it laid. In its day, nothing else even came close to its level of believability, even with all the liberties it took.
Generations' whole plot depended on the supernovae triggered by Soran having an instantaneous gravitational effect on the Nexus from parsecs away. The Stellar Cartography scene showed the gravitational shifts acting instantly on starships parsecs away. Similarly, the Excelsior in TUC was struck by the shock wave from Praxis right after it happened, even though there's no way a Starfleet vessel on routine patrol would've been just a few light-minutes from the Klingon homeworld. So as silly as it is, it's a canonical fact that cosmic explosions' effects can propagate FTL.
A hypernova is theoretically powerful enough that its radiation could devastate worlds for many thousands of light-years around, although it's now known that most of the effect would be concentrated into two emission cones along the magnetic poles.
Although I like the explanation someone offered before that it was the political chaos from the destabilization of the Romulan Empire that could endanger the known galaxy.
Again, there's plenty of Trek precedent for inhabited planets' stars going supernova. It happened twice in TOS's third season alone, to Minara in "The Empath" and Sarpeidon in "All Our Yesterdays."
That makes more sense than what was shown in the movie. I think we have to treat the images in the mind meld sequence as figurative, perhaps how Kirk's mind was interpreting Spock's mental impressions. (There's no way he could've seen Vulcan's destruction with his naked eye from the surface of another planet, so I've always assumed that was figurative.) The most sensible explanation is that they knew in advance the supernova would happen, Spock tried to get to it before it happened in order to neutralize its effects, but it went off before he got there.
It was never in canon to begin with. None of the IDW comics have ever been claimed as canon, except once when an overzealous interviewer browbeat Roberto Orci into conceding they were canon just to shut the interviewer up about it, and then Orci retracted it in the article's comments hours later.
Countdown was never entirely consistent with the movie anyway, since it made Spock and Nero good friends when the movie dialogue seemed to indicate they'd never met before. It also made some bizarre, fanservicey changes to the movie's intent, like taking the Vulcan-built Jellyfish and saying Geordi La Forge designed it.
No.
Whether or not the movie makes this clear, this is what I'm going with, as it's the only interpretation that holds up!
Heh ... technically, PICARD must be "Fan Fiction" also, since it was written by a HUGE Trek Fan ... Michael Chabon.
I'll only be happy once Star Trek is written entirely by people with nothing but contempt for the material!
No, I don't want Abrams to do any more Trek films.
RE: comics. Those have never really held any sway in Trek canon, no matter who writes them or whether they're claimed to be "the official story". Expect the current tie-in comic to get contradicted at some point just as soon as some live action production has a story to tell. Ain't nobody trying to make Trek a (mostly) cohesive multi media inclusive continuity like Star Wars is trying to be.
I'm about 90% sure the figure-eight shaped nebula seen in the final sequence with the Borg cube is exactly that. I mean it looks a lot like a supernova remnant to me, and it is green...
