Brad Ideas - Naked Singularities and Antarctica - Comments

Languages in BSG

Anonymous — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:09:43 -0700

I don't have a screencap handy, but there is hebrew lettering on some Raptors. It isn't on all of them, which leads me to think it isn't all all the models they use for filming, maybe only 1 or 2.

That is comedy!

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 07:24:51 -0700

And if a singularity follows no rules, it could leak lawlessness into the universe, destroying any concept of cause and effect.

You know, sometimes you just have to sit back and appreciate the better societal jokes.

It can't exist because it follows no rules and therefore cause and effect would not exist. If it exists it has existed this whole time and cause and effect still work. The singularity doesn't just pop up out of thin air because all of the sudden a bunch of scientists decide it is actually there. Did gravity not exist before Galileo? Before that did things not fall when dropped? So the truth is a bunch of scientists just haven't figured out how it would work, but instead of saying, "We don't understand it," they chose to say, "That is unpossible because it would destroy the fabric of reality as we know it." It is truly a wonder the clergy and scientific community don't get along better. They have the same reaction to things they can't explain.

kugelmass

zarg05 — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 06:52:16 -0700

Artificial black holes have occassionaly cropped up in literary sf. Greg bears "eon" and Fred Pohl's "Heechee series" where an alien race is utilising and congregating mass (a kugel mass Pohl calls it) to collapse the universe and also as a huge source of energy. The Heechee apparantly live inside black holes, hiding from a malevolent alien race.

the end

zarg05 — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 06:45:24 -0700

I hope they don't go this route, but there are many inklings it may. Just because there is a naked singularity does not mean there are no rules or laws in the universe. it is not carte blanche for magic, chaos and fantasy or any other eschatological religious fantasy. That would be taking the notion of naked singularity way beyond any sort of reason. It just means we will have to work out a quantum theory of gravity which includes possible infinite densities- it will just show up problems with current theoretical physicals and show the way to better models and understanding. I don't think black holes are the last refuge of god or the devil, that would be massively simplistic and a very silly cop out for the show. If it does go that way i'll be selling the entire collection of BSG on amazon soon after never to watch again. It would be the ultimate cop out. I do hope they end it sensibly.

There may be some indication that the laws of cause and effect will be effected as there is no event horizon to shield the more bizarre physical effects of a naked singularity. So the door is open for a highly advanced technological society to utilise these effects from a future time to make sure they cause the events that got them there in the first place (Cyclic concept) This may somehow explain starbucks apparent re emergence after the explosion of her ship, but doesn't explain her retaining memories of everything that's happened after that point and a brand new viper. Unless that is still to happen. According to relativistic theory which shouldn't really hold up near or in black holes all time exists at the same instant, we are travelling at the epeed of light through time in a sense, so there may be a spanner thrown in the works of narrative linear time coming up? My brain is beginning to hurt.

If all else fails i hope they leave the End open to interpretation from a rational and mystical viewpoint??

I got no proof, but I expect

Bobby — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 06:41:13 -0700

I got no proof, but I expect we will get a completely new plot point tonight and that is the notion that Cavil is getting direction from a higher source too. Like I said, they haven't shown anything to necessarily suggest it, but I am pretty sure Cavil is a puppet.

naked singularities NEW SCIENTIST article

zarg05 — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 06:22:18 -0700

Love the Blog Brad, you are a keen analyst. Found this article while browsing the new scientist database.
new scientist is a british science magazine with articles written by leading science writers and scientists. This article is somewhat more user friendly and comprehensible than the scientific american one which is quoted everywhere. The link is http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12707

Not the sunset zones

brad — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 12:22:14 -0700

I refer to the section that is far away from the terminator where neither the clouds or the ground are subject to direct or even fairly indirect sunight. Those clouds and the ground should have the same albedo.

Anyway, we’re niggling on the colour when the stars and sun say they are not being particular on technical accuracy if they want it to be real Antarctica.

One Way Trip

Lisa — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 08:25:33 -0700

I agree, but by the time going through is an option I think Adama will be dead. The Galactica is going there as a "one way trip." Those who were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice will receive the ultimate reward: resurrection in some fashion, either in another universe where they find Earth or in an afterlife where they find Earth. The fleet is already splintered with the Galactica going on this mission. With both Roslin and Lee as part of the suicide mission, the only person left to lead is Baltar.

Thematic Connection

Lisa — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 08:20:11 -0700

I don't think the writers should have introduced something like a singularity this late in the game without some foreshadowing. Like Alvin said, most viewers aren't dissecting the show as we are. Many viewers don't understand how black holes function either, let alone how a naked singularity is different and controversial. Even more so, I wouldn't be surprised if most viewers do see a connection between the novas talked about in other episodes, the swirling mass of clouds that looked like the Eye of Jupiter that Starbuck saw when she blew up, and this black hole. I see a thematic connection between those elements, but obviously not a scientific one. Most viewers aren't going to make a distinction.

tan + black = brown

Michael Hall — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 02:59:44 -0700

Brightness...

The albedo of the clouds and the snowy areas of the continent should be similar, but the lighting should not be similar. All of us know this from experience: it's dusk, the sun has set from our perspective, it's getting dark... but up in the sky, the tops of the clouds are brightly lit, even many kilometers towards the darkness. And even when the sun has set finally on those cloud tops, they can still get some light scattered to them from the atmosphere above them, if the Sun still shines there.

Brownness...

The light is reddened at sunset, and this is due to the light passing through more atmosphere, so the effect is stronger at the ground than at altitude. Here is a sunset at Antarctica:

http://k53.pbase.com/g6/58/777058/2/90258360.WCIuPZ7f.jpg

It's photographed from the surface, but almost the same color is going to be reflected to space. Here is a sample of the color from that image:

http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/1040/colorofantarcticaatsuns.png

That can only be described as brown. There is blueish-white color from the snow, plus yellowish-white light from the Sun that is reddened at sunset, so mix that together and you get brown.

Barry Norman, the film

Anonymous — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:38:09 -0700

Barry Norman, the film critic, hates Deus Ex Machina. I can't recall any specific movies but he certainly leapt on "and with a leap and a bound the hero was free" trick if some director tried to pull it. I recall, that's what made a lot of people unsatisfied with games. The thin pretence of a story and changing controls and gameplay between games made any investment worthless. It doesn't get any better and as you get older it becomes more noticeable.

The Galactica is going there

Dustin — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:17:35 -0700

The Galactica is going there for a battle, remember. IF they get sucked in, it will be by accident. I can't see any of the characters realizing they need to go through, convincing Adama, jumping back to the fleet, telling them to come along, and then making that final jump back.

Lots of them

brad — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:12:24 -0700

And when done properly, after you see the surprise ending, you understand how it was all building up to that from the start. Like The Sixth Sense or Planet of the Apes or Blade Runner or anything by Agatha Christie or most other mystery novels. There are hundreds of them. And the good ones generally don’t pull something out of left field you never heard of before in the story to resolve it. Usually if it’s a Deus Ex Machina the audience and critics rightly complain.

You ever seen a movie with a

Anonymous — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 19:06:33 -0700

You ever seen a movie with a surprise ending?

I see no tan in those images, actually

brad — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 18:21:53 -0700

And more to the point, compare the clouds over the (dark) parts of the continent with the land. The albedo of the clouds and the snow should be similar, and the albedo of the water much lower. I see the land a little brighter than the water, and much darker than the clouds, even in very dark regions where there is no chance the clouds are high enough for solar illumination.

Naked Singularities and Antarctica

brad — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:30:33 -0700

In the first part of Daybreak, we are told that the Colony is in the accretion disk (a reasonably close orbit) of a naked singularity. Naked singularities are an unsettled question in physics. Some don’t think they can exist, others say they can. Here is an explanation from Scientific American written from the pro side.

Such singularities, if they exist, are still massive and have a deep gravity well, but the singularity is not covered by an event horizon. There may be an event horizon present (black hole,) but it is outside it.

The presence of such an object seems important. You just don’t throw one of these into a show if you don’t intend to use it. A black hole or singularity is highly powerful and destructive. So it may exist just to provide a destructive tool, something that can be used to even the odds in the otherwise futile attempt to attack something as large as the Colony.

That’s not so easy. Because singularities and black holes have such deep gravity wells, you can’t just push the colony into one, any more than you could push the Moon into the Earth. Once in orbit, you are very stable, and in fact absent friction you would stay there forever. Pushing something in orbit around a massive object into the massive object is actually harder to do than pushing something far away that is not in orbit, as counterintuitive as that sounds. If you were still in space, and you wanted to put something into the sun, you would just drop it. From the Earth, in orbit around the sun, it would be much harder to get something to go to the sun.

Near a massive object, there are strong tides on anything that is as large as the colony. This is to say, the gravitational force on the close part of the colony is stronger than the force on the distant part, resulting in a net force that would be trying to tear it apart. The colony would have to be strong if it is subject to such tides. However, if there were such tides, you would find the close and far ends of the colony regularly pelted with rocks which would be orbiting at different speeds than the colony as a whole is. If the rocks are still with respect to the colony, tides are not strong.

That one can jump to the mouth of the colony opens up one of the scientific issues with all forms of teleport. The colony has vastly different gravitational energy, space curvature, kinetic energy and angular momentum than ordinary flat space. BSG FTL jumps, however, seem to somehow account for all that, ignoring important rules of conservation. When they jump near a planet, they seem to jump into orbit around it, rather than watching it zoom away.

Many SF stories that have FTL jumps, by the way, make it a rule that jumps can’t do this, they must be done from relatively flat space to relatively flat space. You can’t jump near anything. They do this not simply to be more accurate. Limiting jump technology is a good idea as it can be a plot killer. It’s good to make it hard. If you have it, anybody can escape from anything, anybody can get into anything, and anybody can put a bomb anywhere. When Galactica jumped into the atmosphere in Exodus, it was wicked cool, but also generated a lot of plot holes. Why don’t they do this all the time? Why do colonial ships even have the ability to fly in space, if they could just jump from atmosphere to atmosphere? Why don’t they just jump nuclear bombs next to targets in the middle of battles? Better not to have to ask those questions.

Naked Singularities and SF

SF Writers love naked singularities, because the rules of physics break down. They feel they can write anything, use them as a handy plot device, because nothing you write would be known to be wrong. That’s not quite true, but naked singularities have become a standard in the toolbox for writers that want to do FTL jumping, time travel and alternate realities.

Does this mean we’re in for this? I would be disappointed because this naked singularity has been introduced only in the last episode. I don’t like it if a story resolves its problems with something magically powerful, out of the blue, in the last episode. That cheats the audience. Some readers here think there have been hints of singularity based teleportation. They point to the maelstrom from which Starbuck’s body was transported after the viper exploded. They think this suggests a singularity inside the maelstrom. Leaving aside the questions of the difficulty of having that in physics, this show already has teleportation in the form of FTL jump ships, so the OTG hardly needs to bring in a singularity.

Others have wondered if the singularity might be the path to our real universe, an alternate universe from that of BSG. Now the truth is that travel “through” a naked singularity is a concept that SF writers love but which is actually quite difficult to work out in reality, even with the little we know. But leaving that aside, it is writable in the traditions of the SF that uses naked singularities. Would this ending satisfy you as a “wrap it up” ending? I can’t say it would do so for me.

Ron Moore of course, as a writer for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, has a history with magic wormholes, though he didn’t create the setting for that show. To my mind the most satisfactory plot use of the singularity would be as a means to make it possible to destroy the colony, but it is a strange enough object to introduce that I suspect it will be more.

Antarctica

Several have noticed that the land mass shown on the blue planet with sunrise at the start of the episode is Antarctica. It follows the land patterns precisely. The editing tells us this is Caprica. Is it just the graphics crew using some stock images to make it easy to make a realistic Caprica? Or is it a subtle hint that real Earth is out there?

First of all, the land mass is brown, not white. But we saw Earth in “Crossroads” at the end of season 3 and it had normal sea levels. It was not a planet of melted polar ice caps.

Secondly, the stars in the background, which have come to be less and less reliable, are the stars of the solar system, but they are from the Zodiac. As you can figure out, if you were looking at the Earth over the south pole, the stars in the background would be those of the north pole, such as the little dipper and North Star, and the stars around them. The sun, however, only appears in the Zodiac, and it never appears where they show it in this picture. Of course, they have used the Earth stars in the wrong way many times now, but you would think that if they were showing real Earth, they would take some care this one special time.

Finally, the terminator (day-night line), instead of going from polar region to polar region, curves east-west. It does do this in Antarctic winter (July) though I am not sure it ever gets quite like this, with the sun rising in the North, rather than slightly east or west of North.

So, hint of Earth, or graphics dept. borrowing some images?

Anders

Something revealed in the comments that I didn’t know. The reason we have seen Anders in a hospital bed or in a tank for all these episodes is external to the show. The actor, Michael Trucco, broke his neck in a car accident and was still recovering when this was shot. He is better now, except for some fused vertebrae, but back then he really couldn’t act below the neck! So Anders the perfect machine, one with Galactica, looks like a last minute addition to the plot, but it’s going reasonably well.

Asian style writing

In the zoom-overs on Caprica, it is interesting to note that four buildings have Asian style writing on them. I don’t think it’s actual asian writing (perhaps those who can read it will tell us) but it is obviously styled on it and reads downwards rather than left to right. In one case, there is a street with three shops with asian style signs, and a 3rd saying “McCool” — it’s quite common for Asian streets to have signs with English words.

On the other hand, Laura’s door says “701” in good old arabic numerals. In Asia they use those as well.

This implies that the Capricans really write with an Asian script. But all papers and signs on Galactica are in English, and read horizontally, not down. Of course we see English because the audience needs to see English, but this is a bit hard to reconcile. Perhaps they just bought the 3-D city simulation from some Asian graphics company and forgot to edit out the signs when they added the Colonial Heavy luxury ships etc.?