Timeline for How is it that the outer planets in Firefly are not frozen?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
8 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 4, 2015 at 17:35 | comment | added | Nerrolken | @Dima I know this conversation is super-old, but it's also worth noting that the people living on the Outer Planets are specifically said to NOT be the ones who terraformed them. The "cowboys" were dropped there after terraforming was complete, presumably by the pre-war Alliance. It's speculation, but it's not hard to imagine that the Alliance has highly sophisticated terraforming techniques, with special tools for warming and cooling entire worlds, creating artificial gravity (like they do on ships), lensing or mirroring to increase sunlight, etc. It's scifi science, but then this is scifi. | |
| Apr 7, 2011 at 19:01 | comment | added | Dima | @Xantec: You are right, of course, it is all possible in principle. However, there is no mention of such capabilities in the series or the movie. Interplanetary travel and cowboys on horseback is already an odd combination. | |
| Apr 7, 2011 at 18:26 | comment | added | Omega Centauri | The planetary atmospheres folks say runaway greenhouse (caused by ocen evaporation/steam atmosphere cannot happen below a ceratin level of solar input per square meter. I don't think there is any way to make the inhabitable region very wide. Just another example of not letting science/physics get in the way of a good story. | |
| Apr 7, 2011 at 17:39 | comment | added | Xantec | @Dima depending on how extreme you wanted to get, assuming you had the resources, you could alter the mass of a planet, change the energy it receives from its star and change its location/orbit around said star. it is only terraforming based on our current abilities that limits most interpretations to something along the lines of: "terraforming is only altering the atmospheric characteristics and introducing flora and fauna". | |
| Apr 7, 2011 at 13:14 | comment | added | Dima | Also, even if the greenhouse or heat from the core explanation can explain the surface temperature, it cannot explain the bright sunlight that we see on all the planets. They are too far away from the sun for that. And if you are not getting enough sunlight, typical Earth plants cannot survive. | |
| Apr 7, 2011 at 13:12 | comment | added | Dima | Yes, I know they were terraformed. But "terraforming" is not a magic wand that fixes everything. You cannot alter the planet's mass to change its surface gravity, and you cannot change the amount of energy it gets from the sun, unless you somehow move it closer. Greenhouse effect is a possibility, but it does not seem plausible that you can significantly increase the surface temperature without the greenhouse effect getting out of control and turning your planet into Venus. | |
| Apr 7, 2011 at 8:54 | comment | added | Sinan | Also it could be that the systems have binary stars. | |
| Apr 7, 2011 at 3:56 | history | answered | user1027 | CC BY-SA 2.5 |