OT Which would you Choose

[capnq]

Randallw said: Maybe the other books are better, I'll never know. I gave it a chance, he failed to interest me adequately. No more giving him money.

If you have access to a good public library, you don't need to spend any more money.

I couldn't give Firefly the benefit of the doubt when the intro messed things up by saying they found a system with 100s of habitable planets. Now unless aliens, that were never mentioned, were involved I assume they meant to say a section of space.

I've seen lengthy discussions on other forums debating how to rationalize that and other incongruities in Firefly. Some people interpret that bit as hundreds of terraformable planets/moons/etc., others prefer multiple stars in a relatively small cluster. There are also debates over whether they have FTL drives, gravity control, and assorted other superscience technologies.

I think one of the problems with the hundred-planet system idea is that as far as we understand gravity, that many planets in one star's habitable zone couldn't maintain stable orbits over time.

[Randallw]

capnq said:
If you have access to a good public library, you don't need to spend any more money

I was in fact at the library today and that occurred to me. I didn't see any of the books though.

[dmm]

capnq said:
I think one of the problems with the hundred-planet system idea is that as far as we understand gravity, that many planets in one star's habitable zone couldn't maintain stable orbits over time.

Believe it or not, I am such a nerd that I actually did some research into this a while ago (out of curiosity unrelated to Firefly). The conclusion I came to (FWIW) is that you can get a lot of "planets" in stable orbits in the habitable zone around a single star if (and only if) they are actually planet-sized moons of giant planets (themselves presumably uninhabitable due to high gravity). The giant planets don't have to be as far apart as our system's gas giants. In addition, you can (in principle) have stable binary and trinary star systems with the stars pretty close together and not stealing each others' planets. It helps to have cooler stars, as their habitable zones are thicker. (Also, since you've got several stars close together, you want to minimize high-energy photons.) Multiply it all together, and you can get quite a few habitable worlds all in one system and not super-distant from each other. And you could use the slingshot effect to help conserve fuel as you traveled between them. But could such systems actually FORM in RL? I would bet "no" but we have a lot to learn. And could you get HUNDREDS of worlds? Wow, that's a real stretch.