Galactica: A Possible Astronomy Spoiler Question

[dewline]

Okay, something's started bugging me since "No Exit" aired last week...



So. The Final Five had to take a relativistic flight to get from their "Earth" to the Twelve Colonies in their hopes of averting a second "organics vs. Centurions" war, such as wrecked their world and caused the sundering of the Thirteen Tribes on Kobol. That relativistic flight took "2,000 years" in real-universe terms.

So...would the "real-universe" time-elapsed be any kind of useful clue in figuring the distance from "Earth" to the Colonies?

Note also: I'm figuring "Elder Cylon Earth" to be fairly close to Sol. It has to be, for the constellations from which the Colonies derived their names to visually match records in the Tomb of Athena on Kobol(per "Home, Part II") so closely as they did in "Revelations".

Comments

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

To get relativistic effects they had to go close to the speed of light so they went a bit less than 2000 LY.

[(Anonymous)]

Less than 2000 LY...that really covers a lot of "ground".

Granted, Moore probably doesn't want to worry too much about that sort of detail, but someone was going to ask this one eventually.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Sorry, that was me.

[quietdarkness.livejournal.com]

What bugs me is who built the Cylons on Earth originally? I was under the impression that the Cylons were a relatively new phenomena, first metal and then taking human form.

I suppose the new series "Caprica" is going to answer my first question, but it bugs me now.

Frankly, I'm still trying to wrap my head around last week's episode and I still don't know what Kara is.

[querldox.livejournal.com]

No, per last week's info dump, it appears that Earth was a 13th colony that, unlike the other twelve, was colonized by fleshjob Cylons, who were originally created much further back that 2,000 years. Knowledge of this was forgotten, and the Cylon centurions reinvented by the 12 colonies circa 50-100 years ago.

Then the war between centurions and colonists was going on when the Final Five showed up and taught the centurions how to build skin jobs. Although on typing that, I realize it doesn't make sense with respect to Saul's personal timeline with Adama. So maybe I'm misremembering some of the info dump.

[wyldemusick.livejournal.com]

Tight and Adama didn't meet until fifteen years after the war.

C'est Correct!

[dewline.livejournal.com]

The Final Five showed up in time to talk the Centurions into not finishing off the Colonies and ending the First Colonial-Cylon War by withdrawing in return for "skinjob" and "ressurection" tech. The Centurions, seeing no need to tell the Colonials what happened on their end of things, kept the Colonies in the dark about it, got whatever additional concessions they could from the Armistice Treaty and backed off behind the Armistice Line.

This apparently allowed the Brothers Cavil - once they got the upper hand over the Five, their brother and sister "skinjob" models and the Centurions - to plant the Five on the Colonies with little or no suspicion.

Starting with Saul.

[wyldemusick.livejournal.com]

If you're approaching it from a strictly scientific point of view, the relativistic sublightspeed travel would have to be some percentage under the speed of light, due to energy requirements and mass issues (at the speed of light mass becomes infinite and energy demands correspondingly so.)

Even so, the distance could still be considerable -- anything past 100 light years out would be quite some travel; the indications with the RTF is that their jump engines don't take them *that* far each time, plus if we accept that their route wasn't direct initially (plotting jumps on a globe before getting to Kobol) and was thereafter a bit scattered, taking as much as three years to finally encounter Earth is acceptable.

It would be interesting to know how much time passed for the Five on their journey, because then it should be possible to work out not only what their general velocity was, as well as the distance from Earth to the Colonies.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

I wonder if that info's ever going to be included. Would they want to leave it vague?