Will some Trek historians help me out here? I’m confused by Earth’s Alpha/Beta Quadrant positioning.

The first Starfleet ship to leave the sol System was Enterprise.

Where ever that ship left from... Mars?

The orbital platform draws the x Axis which is rushing around the planet geosynchronously?

 

And "sector" also has its specific meaning in geometry, although this rarely trumps its more general usage.

But at least cube-shaped sectors are just a matter of fancy naming; imagining quadrants (in the TOS and early TNG sense) that divide a cube evenly in four is more demanding. Which of the three Cartesian axes is sold short there?

Timo Saloniemi

 

Dividing the galaxy into 4 quadrants is used in present day astronomy. Sol is at the pole of the mapping system

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_quadrant

http://galaxymap.org/drupal/node/171


So, according to present day Earth astronomy, our sun is at the corner of all 4 quadrants

 

Earth springs forward into the Alpha Quadrant and falls back into the Beta Quadrant

 

I am glad somebody pointed out that having "maps" is problematic, since galaxies are constantly rotating, while each system is orbiting.

 

Traditionally Earth is the dividing point between alpha and beta quadrants, but this version fits the dialogue (especially that of DS9) much better.

 

Not that quickly. It would take thousands of years for the relative positions of stars to change perceptibly enough to require issuing a new map. Maps of Earth become obsolete faster than that due to shifting political boundaries, new highways, etc.

Plus presumably the actual maps would be 3D computer maps updated on a regular basis, like Google Maps.

 

I wonder if the definition of the Quadrants had been moved multiple times, as we know the definition of stardate has. The dividing line was set to Earth in Picard and perhaps as early as Enterprise, but in Discovery, a different star was chosen, and in DS9/Berman era, the line was even further away as proposed by dupersuper to account for Romulan Alpha Quadranters. It would be a different angle, to account for the shared point (Sagittarius A*, presumably) in all systems, even if it's going through Sol or Romulus or Cheron.

 

Or maybe they're just speaking imprecisely. Where I'm from, we refer to portions of Northern Kentucky across the river from Cincinnati as "Greater Cincinnati." They aren't legally part of Cincinnati, but we call them that anyway. So I have no problem with the notion that parts of the Beta Quadrant could be vernacularly referred to as "Alpha Quadrant" without any need for it to be literally, factually correct.

 

They're almost certainly speaking imprecisely. There isn't an adequate word, I suppose, to define the peoples and cultures on one side of the wormhole versus the others. The Founders are referring to people from opposite the wormhole as "Alpha Quadrant" because that's the way the translator translates their native term for that people based, perhaps, on their own cartographical findings. We don't have an accurate map of the Gamma Quadrant, and we could suppose that some of the Dominion bled over into the Delta Quadrant, but it never came up in the shows because of cartographical confusion.

This doesn't explain the two conflicting maps that imply a disconnect between Quadrant borders between 2256 and 2399, but eh. The maps are made by computer overlays and their might be a mishap in the system. Nothing to worry about if you don't care to speculate further.

 

I don't understand what you're saying here. I don't see any indication of an Alpha/Beta Quadrant border on the map in that video. It seems to be focused on the Klingon/Federation border instead.

 

All it has is a reference to Alpha Quadrant in one corner, without a corresponding reference to Beta Quadrant, thus perhaps indirectly suggesting that all we see in the map portion of the graphic is Alpha and none of it is Beta, which would be in contrast with the DSC definition of the border.

But we still seem to lack an onscreen map that would place the actual A/B line anywhere else but the location seen in DSC. What map of 2399 would have this feature? On screen, I mean - would we get to see the Jarvis graphic so that we can make sense of the shaded squares and the grey line? I can't see the line even in the best of shots, not just due to glare and lack of focus, but because the dark grey really doesn't work as a color. That is, there's no ambiguity about the location of the line - rather, there's no hint of the existence of the line!

Timo Saloniemi

 

Christopher,

In the video at 0:34, in the lower left corner, there are these words: "Alpha Quadrant". Sector 01 is shown to be near the border with the Klingon Empire.

About the dialog from DS9, we have this piece from "In the Pale Moonlight".

SISKO: I'd pick the side most likely to leave us in peace when the dust settles. Maybe you're right. Maybe the Dominion will win in the end. Then the Founders will control what we now call Cardassia, the Klingon Empire and the Federation. So, instead of facing three separate opponents with three separate agendas, you'll find yourselves facing the same opponent on every side. There's a word for that. Surrounded.

This dialog helps to understand other events in the series, like how the Klingons were able to invade Cardassia, or how Carraya was not far from DS9 (from TNG).

 

Okay, but we don't have to be bound by that. I'd just call it a sloppy bit of graphic design and leave it at that.

 

We don't have to be bound by any of the evidence. Yet, for a complete understanding of the history of Sol (Earth)'s position, we need to present all that is known, which I did.

 

I don't get the role of the words "Alpha Quadrant" there. They are correctly positioned in that particular map regardless of where the line against Beta might run, to the far left. Heck, they could even be taken to mean "Alpha Quadrant this way, click here to scroll left" if we want to draw the line so that Earth is in deep Beta. The map as such seems to match the Star Charts continuity of things.

Which is quite the blessing: with a template existing, odd changes are actually rather unlikely, since nobody draws "a map of Star Trek" out of memory for these projects. When it's all copy-paste rather than freehand, any change is bound to be quite deliberate. And DSC gave us the location of the A/B line at long last, while PIC didn't quite manage to.

As for the Feds being "surrounded", that's what such maps generally show. The surrounding enemies not sharing border with each other is what the adventures in turn tell us: for a Klingon invasion of Cardassia, the Klingons have to go through UFP and neutral space first, while OTOH Jaglom Shrek doesn't need to penetrate either Cardassian or Romulan space in order to get from Bajor to Carraya. It's just that it's never a long way from A to B: these guys are not waging a land war in Asia, but in Central Europe.

Timo Saloniemi