^Except option 4 doesn't make sense, since the Red Matter then spends at least a day on Nero's ship, perfectly content.
Only in its spherical form, mind you. When a droplet is extracted into one of those cylinders, it might be unstable.
Remember that according to the meld, the star goes supernova before Spock even meets with Romulan leadership, and before the Jellyfish is prepared.
Only if we assume the meld, and Spock's narrative, is linear.
The events could go differently, though. Spock figures out Eisn is going to blow; he equips a ship with red matter in an attempt to stop that from happening; his predictions are slightly off and he's too late.
If the star had already exploded when Spock set course for Romulus, his predictions would
not be off: there'd be nothing surprising about Romulus being destroyed (although it could still be "unthinkable", even if Vulcans aren't famed for refusing to think about that which is). If there's nothing surprising about the timescale of destruction, why bother going there in the first place, when chances of success are exactly zero?
I guess it all boils down to whichever theory best explains how Spock could have "little time"
after Romulus was lost. If a distant hyper-supernova did it, why would there be particular hurry at that point in stopping it from destroying the rest of the galaxy? Why not a few hours or weeks or centuries later? if Eisn blowing did it, what else in the Romulan star system would remain to be saved in a hurry? Remus? But most theories would have Remus dying simultaneously with Romulus anyway. And the visuals show a slowly moving wave of destruction; even if it's extreme slow motion, the physical appearance of the destruction is a better match for a STL than a FTL wave.
This is why the "unstable primed red matter" theory might offer the best explanation to Spock's tight schedule in closing the barn door after the horses have stampeded the farmer's family to death.
Timo Saloniemi
