Some ideas regarding Firefly

[SMJB]

Firstly, FTL communication is never explained. Here's my theory: with artificial gravity, you're theoretically capable of creating artificial black holes, right? And according to Einstein there's a wormhole at the center of every black hole, right? Granted, it's infinite distance away from the surface, but it's quantum and according to The Verse in Numbers artificial gravity is also quantum in nature, so I'm sure some sort of torturous logic ought to be able sort that out. Therefore, mine artificial wormholes out of artificial black holes, do some quantum stuff to make sure you've got both ends of your wormhole, contain them in a way that they won't collapse in gravity, shoot lasers through them to communicate, and you've got yourself an ansibel. Put one end in your ship and one end in some futuristic version of an old-timey telephone bank. It would certainly help the Alliance's control of information if bottlenecks like these existed, which would explain how they're able to hide a planet.

The first hurdle to this explanation is that in the first episode Dobson tried to call out and was detected and blocked by Wash. This should not be possible if his communicator has it's own wormhole--there wouldn't exactly be any radio waves, after all. But perhaps he was using the ship's WiFi? This may seem like a stupid thing to do, but Dobson had no idea the ship was crewed by petty crooks with stolen cargo aboard who would be paranoid about any outgoing signals. Also? He was kinda stupid.

The second hurdle, and last as far as I was able to pick up, was Mal telling the Operative that he couldn't trace Mal through the signal, which if my theory is true ought to have been beyond obvious, as it's impossible by definition, and therefore doesn't need to be said. I have a couple of possible explanations: Perhaps Mal meant that he couldn't find Serenity's IP address. Perhaps he meant he wouldn't be able to hack the ship's computer through the signal and get it to spit out their coordinates. Perhaps the creators decided it was worth shedding a little "realism" in order to keep the audience from wondering why Mal was willing to talk to the Operative at all.

The second issue is how do you get a moon terraformed to have 1 g orbit a planet that also has 1 g. My theory is, simply, artificial gravity doesn't work like regular gravity. Either an artificial gravity well has far "steeper sides" than a natural one, creating a Hill Sphere many orders of magnitude smaller than one for the same amount of natural gravity, or they can simply turn the gravity off above the atmosphere. Either way, once you're out of the artificial gravity well, you're only effected by the world's natural gravity, and so you get to use naturalistic laws to create the Verse without having it tear itself apart as soon as humans start meddling.

[Starglider]

The second issue is how do you get a moon terraformed to have 1 g orbit a planet that also has 1 g.

I thought this just required a much higher density than the planet (e.g. lead core moon orbiting aluminium core planet). Astrophysically implausible perhaps but not requiring artificial gravity on a planetoid scale.

[SMJB]

They have artificial gravity on a planetary scale, though. And apparently cheap enough where they can do it properly while half-assing everything else.

[Simon_Jester]

Firstly, FTL communication is never explained. Here's my theory: with artificial gravity, you're theoretically capable of creating artificial black holes, right?

This is probably way too much work to be justified for every person who wants an FTL space-telephone. Firefly certainly wouldn't have such a device, unless you posit technomagic manipulation of black holes so great that you might as well just give them warp drives and have done with it.

It would certainly help the Alliance's control of information if bottlenecks like these existed, which would explain how they're able to hide a planet.

Yes- but it's equally plausible that they have a stranglehold on the people who make computer servers for interplanetary comm units, thus allowing them to insert hardcoded software into the machines. That gives them ECHELON-style surveillance and the ability to selectively delete 'undesired' content on most of the system's computer networks.

The second issue is how do you get a moon terraformed to have 1 g orbit a planet that also has 1 g.

I thought this just required a much higher density than the planet (e.g. lead core moon orbiting aluminium core planet). Astrophysically implausible perhaps but not requiring artificial gravity on a planetoid scale.

This results in two bodies co-orbiting a common center of mass located well outside both of them; very interesting.

[SMJB]

Firstly, FTL communication is never explained. Here's my theory: with artificial gravity, you're theoretically capable of creating artificial black holes, right?

This is probably way too much work to be justified for every person who wants an FTL space-telephone. Firefly certainly wouldn't have such a device, unless you posit technomagic manipulation of black holes so great that you might as well just give them warp drives and have done with it.

But they DO have FTL communication! Several times during the show Mal calls/is called by someone on another planet and talks to them in real time!

The second issue is how do you get a moon terraformed to have 1 g orbit a planet that also has 1 g.

I thought this just required a much higher density than the planet (e.g. lead core moon orbiting aluminium core planet). Astrophysically implausible perhaps but not requiring artificial gravity on a planetoid scale.

This results in two bodies co-orbiting a common center of mass located well outside both of them; very interesting.

A moon suddenly becoming a co-planet would play merry hell with the system's stability.

[NecronLord]

A moon suddenly becoming a co-planet would play merry hell with the system's stability.

This also applies to artificial gravity. Artificial gravity is still gravity.

[Simon_Jester]

This is probably way too much work to be justified for every person who wants an FTL space-telephone. Firefly certainly wouldn't have such a device, unless you posit technomagic manipulation of black holes so great that you might as well just give them warp drives and have done with it.

But they DO have FTL communication! Several times during the show Mal calls/is called by someone on another planet and talks to them in real time!

And I conclude "therefore, they probably have a more compact and easier way of making FTL comms work than by having a beat up old tramp like Firefly haul around a quantum black hole."

The second issue is how do you get a moon terraformed to have 1 g orbit a planet that also has 1 g.

I thought this just required a much higher density than the planet (e.g. lead core moon orbiting aluminium core planet). Astrophysically implausible perhaps but not requiring artificial gravity on a planetoid scale.

This results in two bodies co-orbiting a common center of mass located well outside both of them; very interesting.

A moon suddenly becoming a co-planet would play merry hell with the system's stability.[/quote]Basically, you'd have no stable solutions except two-body solutions; it is hard to put a small object in orbit around a large pair of co-orbiting bodies, unless it orbits very very close to one of the bodies, or very very far away from both.

[LadyTevar]

Or they used moons that were already in orbit. Occam's Razor, gentlemen.

[Simon_Jester]

I'm picturing a machine that generates a localized gravitational field (they must have it on starships), instead of just somehow arbitrarily increasing the gravitational mass of the entire moon. If you had such a generator, you could just have Earth-normal gravity in a spherical shell right by the surface of the moon, and then have it be whatever it'd be naturally elsewhere.

[Steel]

I'm picturing a machine that generates a localized gravitational field (they must have it on starships), instead of just somehow arbitrarily increasing the gravitational mass of the entire moon. If you had such a generator, you could just have Earth-normal gravity in a spherical shell right by the surface of the moon, and then have it be whatever it'd be naturally elsewhere.

This would also explain how liftoff is so easy most of the time, as you only have to fly in 1g for a short distance, and then it drops off much faster than normally. Although Firefly was able to land on normal planets, and they didn't seem to have to do anything extra special there, so this could not be the case, or they just don't remark on using 30x as much fuel or whatever.

[SMJB]

A moon suddenly becoming a co-planet would play merry hell with the system's stability.

This also applies to artificial gravity. Artificial gravity is still gravity.

Ahem: "My theory is, simply, artificial gravity doesn't work like regular gravity. Either an artificial gravity well has far "steeper sides" than a natural one, creating a Hill Sphere many orders of magnitude smaller than one for the same amount of natural gravity, or they can simply turn the gravity off above the atmosphere. Either way, once you're out of the artificial gravity well, you're only effected by the world's natural gravity, and so you get to use naturalistic laws to create the Verse without having it tear itself apart as soon as humans start meddling."

This is probably way too much work to be justified for every person who wants an FTL space-telephone. Firefly certainly wouldn't have such a device, unless you posit technomagic manipulation of black holes so great that you might as well just give them warp drives and have done with it.

But they DO have FTL communication! Several times during the show Mal calls/is called by someone on another planet and talks to them in real time!

And I conclude "therefore, they probably have a more compact and easier way of making FTL comms work than by having a beat up old tramp like Firefly haul around a quantum black hole."

1) I looked again and at no point in your last post did you actually say that.

2) Even ignoring the fact that the entire point of the theory is to limit the violations of physics in the firefly universe to artificial gravity and psychics, the one thing we know about artificial gravity in the Firefly universe is that it is cheap and easy--so cheap and easy, in fact, that the Aliance can half-ass settling worlds and still get the artificial gravity right.

A moon suddenly becoming a co-planet would play merry hell with the system's stability.

Basically, you'd have no stable solutions except two-body solutions; it is hard to put a small object in orbit around a large pair of co-orbiting bodies, unless it orbits very very close to one of the bodies, or very very far away from both.

I've been assuming, like everyone else in literally every discussion I've heard tell of this topic, that they're terraforming moons, planets, and planetoids that are already there.

I'm picturing a machine that generates a localized gravitational field (they must have it on starships), instead of just somehow arbitrarily increasing the gravitational mass of the entire moon. If you had such a generator, you could just have Earth-normal gravity in a spherical shell right by the surface of the moon, and then have it be whatever it'd be naturally elsewhere.

Which is functionally the same exact thing as what I said.

This would also explain how liftoff is so easy most of the time, as you only have to fly in 1g for a short distance, and then it drops off much faster than normally. Although Firefly was able to land on normal planets, and they didn't seem to have to do anything extra special there, so this could not be the case, or they just don't remark on using 30x as much fuel or whatever.

The ship has artificial gravity itself; if you can manipulate gravity enough to create it whole cloth out of nothing, you can manipulate it enough that your ship can completely ignore delta-v.

[Simon_Jester]

And I conclude "therefore, they probably have a more compact and easier way of making FTL comms work than by having a beat up old tramp like Firefly haul around a quantum black hole."

1) I looked again and at no point in your last post did you actually say that.

I thought it was implied. I often assume a conclusion is obvious, when other people do not find it so. My apologies.

See, my original point was "having a quantum black hole would be too much work."

And you replied "But they DO have FTL comms!"

I fail to see how those two statements are mutually exclusive. Isn't it simpler to imagine that they have some other way of communicating FTL, that does not involve putting black holes on tramp freighters? That other method might even make some other use of their sophisticated gravity generators.

2) Even ignoring the fact that the entire point of the theory is to limit the violations of physics in the firefly universe to artificial gravity and psychics, the one thing we know about artificial gravity in the Firefly universe is that it is cheap and easy--so cheap and easy, in fact, that the Aliance can half-ass settling worlds and still get the artificial gravity right.

However, it seems somewhat problematic to assume that Serenity has a quantum black hole aboard. I submit that we might want to think about other, 'easier' ways that artificial gravity could be manipulated to allow FTL communication.

A moon suddenly becoming a co-planet would play merry hell with the system's stability.

Basically, you'd have no stable solutions except two-body solutions; it is hard to put a small object in orbit around a large pair of co-orbiting bodies, unless it orbits very very close to one of the bodies, or very very far away from both.

I've been assuming, like everyone else in literally every discussion I've heard tell of this topic, that they're terraforming moons, planets, and planetoids that are already there.

This is a misunderstanding. My use of the verb "put" is imprecise. It would be more accurate to say "it is unlikely that you will find a stable orbit of object C around the twin-object A and B, unless C is small, and in close orbit around one of the other two, or in distant orbit around their common center of mass.

My use of the verb "to put" was not intended to imply that all those planetoids were moved into their present positions by Alliance terraformers.

I'm picturing a machine that generates a localized gravitational field (they must have it on starships), instead of just somehow arbitrarily increasing the gravitational mass of the entire moon. If you had such a generator, you could just have Earth-normal gravity in a spherical shell right by the surface of the moon, and then have it be whatever it'd be naturally elsewhere.

Which is functionally the same exact thing as what I said.

Yes. How is that a problem? Do you think everything I say is an attempt to disagree with you?

Whether we both thought of it, or only one of us did, it neatly removes the problem of making this little moonlet suddenly mass as much as Earth and throw off the dynamics of the whole planetary system though, which is kind of the point.

This would also explain how liftoff is so easy most of the time, as you only have to fly in 1g for a short distance, and then it drops off much faster than normally. Although Firefly was able to land on normal planets, and they didn't seem to have to do anything extra special there, so this could not be the case, or they just don't remark on using 30x as much fuel or whatever.

The ship has artificial gravity itself; if you can manipulate gravity enough to create it whole cloth out of nothing, you can manipulate it enough that your ship can completely ignore delta-v.

I'm not sure that's the case. For example, Serenity's shipboard gravity generator might have to experience an action-reaction force: pulling Mal toward the deckplates also pulls the deckplates (or the ship's generator) up toward Mal.

In that case, moving the ship around with gravity manipulation has some limitations:

1) It's still running on Newtonian physics, so the ship's engine has to do some kind of work to get the ship moving, or to stop it while moving, or to lift it out of a gravity well.

2) The ship and its gravity generator can't move itself, except by pulling or pushing on some other object. Thus, it would not work well for course changes in deep space unless we assume these drives are "tractor beams" with interplanetary ranges, which raises a whole new class of other problems.