Why so little regard for the Beta Quadrant?

[Temis the Vorta]

"Alpha Quadrant" Is probably just the common term for the part of the galaxy that's near to Earth/Sol (Federation, Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians etc.).

Seems reasonable. If both Alpha and Beta quadrants are "local space" it would be clumsy to talk about both them. So as a shorthand, anything nearby is "Alpha Quadrant." Works for me.

 

[Timo]

The only problem with putting Earth in the middle of Alpha is that this makes all other quadrants, including Beta, completely inaccessible to Earthlings, barring wormholes or divine intervention.

And the only problem with that is the unfortunate fact that there have been references to human presence in Beta. That is, it would take decades for Sulu to do his Beta hop in ST6, not just three years. Unless we assume his ride was "still" capable of ST3-style transwarp...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[neozeks]

If Sol was in the center of the Alpha, the Delta/Beta border would have been closer to Voyager and they would have crossed it at some point.

That is, it would take decades for Sulu to do his Beta hop in ST6, not just three years.

Yeah, those are valid objections. I guess one could try to explain them by saying that Earth (and the Federation) isn't really at the center of the AQ but more to the side, closer to the AQ/BQ border. Of course, that brings up the question of why would the quadrants be positioned in such a way? Like I said, perhaps it's not a human system after all, maybe it's a remnant of some old galaxy-spanning civilization (Iconians?) that was adopted by most later civilizations. That would also remove any need for UT translation. Though this whole explanation wouldn't really be as simple and practical anymore.

 

[MacLeod]

I also like the Greenwich/Prime Meridian analogy as well.

The thing is - that system is entirely based upon the location of London on the globe. London sits on the Prime Meridian, but the dividing line between days is the International Date Line, which is on the opposite side of the planet.

I like that idea with relation to Earth in Trek. Earth sits on the Prime Meridian of the Alpha Quadrant, and thus is in the center, like London is in the "center" of Earth.

It depends on if you class it as local time or UTC. i.e

An event occurs on 13-03-12 at 10:00 local time but it might be 12-03-12 23:00 UTC. So which day did the event occur on?