PSA: Space is BIG
You know how we all have different triggers that will make us backbutton a fic? (And yes, btw, 'to backbutton' is a perfectly valid verb in my head) Spelling, grammar, misspelling of characters' names, whatever?
I can deal with the odd typo, but the one thing that will have me reaching immediately for the backbutton is completely implausible science (yeah, I'm a geek. But also, this is kind of my job, you know?). And I don't mean 'red matter' kind of implausible (because, duh, that's real). One of the things that's starting to irk me in NewTrek fic (and OldTrek fic, come to that) is misunderstanding of scale.
Imagine you're reading a story set on 20th Century Earth, and this humble country girl leaves rural Wales, goes shopping in Los Angeles, and is home in time for dinner. Unless this is an AU with teleportation, this is going to make you go 'Huh?', right? Well, this is how I feel every time the Enterprise zooms from one end of the Milky Way to the other in an instant, or - even worse - takes a quick diversion over to another galaxy.
And here's why. (This is aimed at Trek fanfic writers, but most of it is kind of relevant to all science fiction.)
Obviously there are different units for measuring distance. A carpenter might work in millimetres, but if you ask Google Maps to plot you a route from London to Newcastle you'd expect the answer to be in miles, right?
Astronomers make this infinitely more difficult by having all sorts of random units of distance (though in fact, they rarely talk about actual distances at all, but we'll overlook that). The important ones are:
Kilometres: Really, really tiny in astronomical terms, and shouldn't be used unless you're absolutely sure it's what you mean. For example, in TOS they would sometimes use kilometres to talk about how far away a ship is that can be seen on the viewscreen (and even then the answer tends to be hundreds of thousands).
Astronomical Units (AUs...but not the fic kind): One AU is defined as the distance between the Earth and the Sun, so again it's pretty small in astronomical terms. The only time you'd use this is if you're talking about the distance of a planet from its host star, or maybe the distance between two planets in the same system.
Light-years: Thankfully I have not seen any fics that treat this as a unit of time (!), so I trust everyone knows that one light-year is the distance travelled by light (in a vacuum) in one Solar year. It's equivalent to a shade under 10^13 km, so is really, really far. Light-seconds and light-days can also be used for smaller distances, but I don't often see them. In practice, astronomers rarely use light-years (and it's often a source of annoyance that journalists insist on taking redshifts - the only completely unambiguous measurement of distance - and converting them into horribly inaccurate but more sexy-sounding light-years, but I digress).
Parsecs: The most commonly used unit in astronomy, the definition is kind of convoluted but is to do with the apparent motion of stars due to the Earth's rotation around the Sun. It's equivalent to about 3x10^16 m, or about 3.26 light-years.
So which unit should you use?
Although I said light-years are not often used in astronomy, they make the most sense for navigational purposes in Trek fic, because the speed of the ship is given in terms of the speed of light (see stuff about warp factors below). However, parsecs make more sense if you're looking at things in the distance.
So in short, I would expect Sulu to work in light-years, but Spock to report sensor readings in parsecs. While I've never sat down and kept count, I'm fairly sure this is how it worked in TOS most of the time.
The part that a lot of people seem to misunderstand is just how massive and empty space is.
If you look up at the sky at night with the naked eye, you can see hundreds, or maybe thousands of stars (depending on your local light pollution). The important thing to note is that these are all in our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Off the top of my head, I can think of only three exceptions:
- Andromeda, which is about the same size of the Milky Way, can just about be seen as a faint smudge in the Andromeda constellation on a dark night. Think about that: it's as big as every other star you can see plus billions of more that you can't, all squished into that tiny little area, and you can still only just see it. That's because it's really, really far away. Just under 800kpc (that's 800,000 parsecs), in fact, or two and a half million light-years.
- The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are two small satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. They can only be seen from the southern hemisphere. The LMC is about 50kpc from us, and the SMC about 60kpc (160,000 and 200,000 light-years respectively)
So you can see why it makes my eyes bleed to read about the Enterprise heading off to other galaxies?
Even within the Milky Way, distances are pretty vast. The galaxy is reckoned to be about 25kpc across, or 100,000 light-years. It contains hundreds of billions of stars, most of which are thought to have planetary systems of one sort or another, many of which may be Class M. So there's lots to play with without needing to leave the galaxy (and this does rather beg the question of why anyone bothers with interstellar wars since there's plenty of room for everyone, but there you go).
As for how far apart things are, well our nearest star is about four and a half light-years away. So they're not exactly packed in like sardines, you know?
All of this distance and emptiness is why, as of 2009, we haven't yet been able to just go out looking for planets around other stars. They're really, really far away. On top of that, we have the annoying inconvenience of the laws of physics, which seem to insist that the Universe has a speed limit, namely the speed of light. Even at the speed of light (which is pretty quick), it would take four and a half years to get to our nearest star, and that's more than a tad inconvenient.
Luckily, science fiction is not burdened by the laws of physics, and Star Trek in particular benefits from warp drives.
There's a lot of confusion over what 'warp factor' means, so this is the rule from TOS (it changed by TNG, but not by much):
v = w^3 x c
where: v = velocity, w = warp factor, and c = speed of light.
So if you're travelling at Warp 3, you're going 3^3 = 27 times the speed of light.
As for what speeds are reasonable, that's also a matter of debate. Scotty seems to get wibbly above about Warp 7. In The Enterprise Incident Kirk orders Warp 9, but that's a pretty urgent lets-get-out-of-Romulan-territory-quick thing. The fastest they ever went was Warp 14.1 (That Which Survives), and that results in badness. In general, you want to keep it below Warp 10 (and in TNG this became an actual limit, which suggests it's reasonable).
Warp 9, btw, is 729 times the speed of light. That is really, really fast, but even so it will take 137 years to get across the galaxy at that speed. And for the record, it would take three and a half thousand years to get to Andromeda. So not exactly a day trip. (Don't believe me? In By Any Other Name, Kirk or Spock (I forget which) says that it would take thousands of years to get to Andromeda, and Spock expresses surprise that these super advanced aliens can do it in only 300 years.)
(BTW, if you're wondering where I'm getting these numbers from, this is why I think light-years make the most sense for navigational purposes: just take the distance in light years and divide by the warp factor cubed to get the travel time in years.)
Now, I'm not saying that fanfiction should obsess over this kind of detail (I do, but that's personal preference). Indeterminate time lapses are great for this purpose.
Take STXI, for instance. We know Vulcan is about 16 light-years from Earth, so even at Warp 9 (and I can't remember whether they specified a warp factor in the film), that trip takes 8 days. Yet in the film it seems to take a few minutes, right? Except it doesn't, because Kirk is unconscious for much of the trip (and we know some time has elapsed because Bones has had time to change clothes). So for the purpose of maintaining dramatic tension, we feel like no time has passed, but for suspension of disbelief we can insert as much time into that gap as we like.
For what it's worth, btw, I don't believe they were trying to imply that the trip took 8 days. But some artistic license and hand-waving is fine - it's the completely ridiculous 'other end of the galaxy and back before dinner' or 'a quick mission off in Andromeda' that will throw me out of a fic.
In short: if you're zooming between planets, a scene break of indeterminate length will keep me happy. Just think carefully before crossing the entire galaxy in your coffee break, yeah? (Though if you do specify distances and work at reasonable speeds, I am likely to declare my undying love, just FYI.)
Also, a semi-related rant: the word 'intergalactic.' This word keeps showing up in fic. Worse, in reviews of Star Trek in respectable papers like the Times. WTF? No. Interstellar is what you mean. Intergalactic? As I've explained, you need a whole new kind of warp drive for that.
There we go, rant over. Wasn't that fun?
This entry was originally posted at http://rhaegal.dreamwidth.org/12029.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
I can deal with the odd typo, but the one thing that will have me reaching immediately for the backbutton is completely implausible science (yeah, I'm a geek. But also, this is kind of my job, you know?). And I don't mean 'red matter' kind of implausible (because, duh, that's real). One of the things that's starting to irk me in NewTrek fic (and OldTrek fic, come to that) is misunderstanding of scale.
Imagine you're reading a story set on 20th Century Earth, and this humble country girl leaves rural Wales, goes shopping in Los Angeles, and is home in time for dinner. Unless this is an AU with teleportation, this is going to make you go 'Huh?', right? Well, this is how I feel every time the Enterprise zooms from one end of the Milky Way to the other in an instant, or - even worse - takes a quick diversion over to another galaxy.
And here's why. (This is aimed at Trek fanfic writers, but most of it is kind of relevant to all science fiction.)
Obviously there are different units for measuring distance. A carpenter might work in millimetres, but if you ask Google Maps to plot you a route from London to Newcastle you'd expect the answer to be in miles, right?
Astronomers make this infinitely more difficult by having all sorts of random units of distance (though in fact, they rarely talk about actual distances at all, but we'll overlook that). The important ones are:
Kilometres: Really, really tiny in astronomical terms, and shouldn't be used unless you're absolutely sure it's what you mean. For example, in TOS they would sometimes use kilometres to talk about how far away a ship is that can be seen on the viewscreen (and even then the answer tends to be hundreds of thousands).
Astronomical Units (AUs...but not the fic kind): One AU is defined as the distance between the Earth and the Sun, so again it's pretty small in astronomical terms. The only time you'd use this is if you're talking about the distance of a planet from its host star, or maybe the distance between two planets in the same system.
Light-years: Thankfully I have not seen any fics that treat this as a unit of time (!), so I trust everyone knows that one light-year is the distance travelled by light (in a vacuum) in one Solar year. It's equivalent to a shade under 10^13 km, so is really, really far. Light-seconds and light-days can also be used for smaller distances, but I don't often see them. In practice, astronomers rarely use light-years (and it's often a source of annoyance that journalists insist on taking redshifts - the only completely unambiguous measurement of distance - and converting them into horribly inaccurate but more sexy-sounding light-years, but I digress).
Parsecs: The most commonly used unit in astronomy, the definition is kind of convoluted but is to do with the apparent motion of stars due to the Earth's rotation around the Sun. It's equivalent to about 3x10^16 m, or about 3.26 light-years.
So which unit should you use?
Although I said light-years are not often used in astronomy, they make the most sense for navigational purposes in Trek fic, because the speed of the ship is given in terms of the speed of light (see stuff about warp factors below). However, parsecs make more sense if you're looking at things in the distance.
So in short, I would expect Sulu to work in light-years, but Spock to report sensor readings in parsecs. While I've never sat down and kept count, I'm fairly sure this is how it worked in TOS most of the time.
The part that a lot of people seem to misunderstand is just how massive and empty space is.
If you look up at the sky at night with the naked eye, you can see hundreds, or maybe thousands of stars (depending on your local light pollution). The important thing to note is that these are all in our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Off the top of my head, I can think of only three exceptions:
- Andromeda, which is about the same size of the Milky Way, can just about be seen as a faint smudge in the Andromeda constellation on a dark night. Think about that: it's as big as every other star you can see plus billions of more that you can't, all squished into that tiny little area, and you can still only just see it. That's because it's really, really far away. Just under 800kpc (that's 800,000 parsecs), in fact, or two and a half million light-years.
- The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are two small satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. They can only be seen from the southern hemisphere. The LMC is about 50kpc from us, and the SMC about 60kpc (160,000 and 200,000 light-years respectively)
So you can see why it makes my eyes bleed to read about the Enterprise heading off to other galaxies?
Even within the Milky Way, distances are pretty vast. The galaxy is reckoned to be about 25kpc across, or 100,000 light-years. It contains hundreds of billions of stars, most of which are thought to have planetary systems of one sort or another, many of which may be Class M. So there's lots to play with without needing to leave the galaxy (and this does rather beg the question of why anyone bothers with interstellar wars since there's plenty of room for everyone, but there you go).
As for how far apart things are, well our nearest star is about four and a half light-years away. So they're not exactly packed in like sardines, you know?
All of this distance and emptiness is why, as of 2009, we haven't yet been able to just go out looking for planets around other stars. They're really, really far away. On top of that, we have the annoying inconvenience of the laws of physics, which seem to insist that the Universe has a speed limit, namely the speed of light. Even at the speed of light (which is pretty quick), it would take four and a half years to get to our nearest star, and that's more than a tad inconvenient.
Luckily, science fiction is not burdened by the laws of physics, and Star Trek in particular benefits from warp drives.
There's a lot of confusion over what 'warp factor' means, so this is the rule from TOS (it changed by TNG, but not by much):
v = w^3 x c
where: v = velocity, w = warp factor, and c = speed of light.
So if you're travelling at Warp 3, you're going 3^3 = 27 times the speed of light.
As for what speeds are reasonable, that's also a matter of debate. Scotty seems to get wibbly above about Warp 7. In The Enterprise Incident Kirk orders Warp 9, but that's a pretty urgent lets-get-out-of-Romulan-territory-quick thing. The fastest they ever went was Warp 14.1 (That Which Survives), and that results in badness. In general, you want to keep it below Warp 10 (and in TNG this became an actual limit, which suggests it's reasonable).
Warp 9, btw, is 729 times the speed of light. That is really, really fast, but even so it will take 137 years to get across the galaxy at that speed. And for the record, it would take three and a half thousand years to get to Andromeda. So not exactly a day trip. (Don't believe me? In By Any Other Name, Kirk or Spock (I forget which) says that it would take thousands of years to get to Andromeda, and Spock expresses surprise that these super advanced aliens can do it in only 300 years.)
(BTW, if you're wondering where I'm getting these numbers from, this is why I think light-years make the most sense for navigational purposes: just take the distance in light years and divide by the warp factor cubed to get the travel time in years.)
Now, I'm not saying that fanfiction should obsess over this kind of detail (I do, but that's personal preference). Indeterminate time lapses are great for this purpose.
Take STXI, for instance. We know Vulcan is about 16 light-years from Earth, so even at Warp 9 (and I can't remember whether they specified a warp factor in the film), that trip takes 8 days. Yet in the film it seems to take a few minutes, right? Except it doesn't, because Kirk is unconscious for much of the trip (and we know some time has elapsed because Bones has had time to change clothes). So for the purpose of maintaining dramatic tension, we feel like no time has passed, but for suspension of disbelief we can insert as much time into that gap as we like.
For what it's worth, btw, I don't believe they were trying to imply that the trip took 8 days. But some artistic license and hand-waving is fine - it's the completely ridiculous 'other end of the galaxy and back before dinner' or 'a quick mission off in Andromeda' that will throw me out of a fic.
In short: if you're zooming between planets, a scene break of indeterminate length will keep me happy. Just think carefully before crossing the entire galaxy in your coffee break, yeah? (Though if you do specify distances and work at reasonable speeds, I am likely to declare my undying love, just FYI.)
Also, a semi-related rant: the word 'intergalactic.' This word keeps showing up in fic. Worse, in reviews of Star Trek in respectable papers like the Times. WTF? No. Interstellar is what you mean. Intergalactic? As I've explained, you need a whole new kind of warp drive for that.
There we go, rant over. Wasn't that fun?
This entry was originally posted at http://rhaegal.dreamwidth.org/12029.html. Please comment there using OpenID.