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| More Astronomical Goodness | |
| Posted By: SiliconDream =PN= <querl@uclink4.berkeley.edu> | Date: 7/24/00 12:21 a.m. |
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Crossposted from Rampancy (astonishingly enough): Having far too much time on my hands, I decided to compare the positions of iota Horologii and HD 177830 (the two stars listed on Bungie's signs from E3 and MWNY, which are known to have planets) to other important heavenly bodies in the Maraverse with known positions--namely, Tau Ceti and the Galactic Core (thanks to Loren Petrich for having info on these last two up on his site). The results were fairly interesting. Distances from Earth: iota Horologii: 56 light years HD 177830: 192 light years Tau Ceti: 11.9 light years Galactic Core: 26,000 light years Distances and angular separation (in Earth's sky) of objects iota Horologii--HD 177830: 228 light years, 123 degrees iota Horologii--Tau Ceti: 49.1 light years, 28 degrees iota Horologii--Galactic Core: 26,000 light years, 91 degrees HD 177830--Tau Ceti: 195.5 light years, 105 degrees HD 177830--Galactic Core: 26,000 light years, 58 degrees Tau Ceti--Galactic Core: 26,000 light years, 107 degrees Now before I start babbling about why I think these are interesting, I want to review what we know, and what I think we can infer, based on the information we've gotten up to now. Tau Ceti is, of course, the site of the Pfhor attack on the ill-fated Marathon. The Pfhor Empire doesn't seem to include the Tau Ceti system; if there was a permanent Pfhor presence there, then a) the Pfhor would have easily located and attacked Earth prior to Marathon 1 and b) it wouldn't have taken months for reinforcements to arrive after the takeover of the Sfiera. So apparently Tau Ceti is a region of space not well-known to or well-traveled by the Pfhor. It's also apparent that Tau Ceti was never recolonized by humanity following the destruction of the Marathon colony; otherwise the existence of aliens would be common knowledge prior to Halo (which is not the case). The Galactic Core is the location of L'howon, the S'pht homeworld, and also seems to be roughly where the Pfhor Empire is located. Pre-Halo Human colonization of other star systems is in the Corewards direction from Earth (which is a little strange...wouldn't you think they'd colonize outwards in all directions? More on this later...). Based on the fact that the Covenant attack from a wide range of directions but all generally Corewards, I think we can assume that the Covenant own/inhabit a Corewards region of space which is much wider (that is, covers a larger angle as viewed from the Galactic Core) than Human space. We need not be surprised if the Covenant don't interact with the Pfhor, even if they're both Corewards; 26,000 light years is a lot of room and their respective zones of operations could be separated by quite a bit of space. The Halo system's location is unknown, but we can narrow down the possibilities a bit. First, it probably isn't directly Corewards from Earth. There isn't any really unknown space in that direction; after the human colonies, you (apparently) reach Covenant space. Someone would have already found the system. Second, it probably isn't directly opposite the Core, relative to Earth. (That is, Earth isn't directly Corewards from it). The big climactic human-Covenant battle was Corewards from Earth, and the PoA wouldn't have headed away from the Core after the battle; that would just bring the Covenant closer to Earth. Third, the Halo system is probably fairly close to Earth (that is, as close to Earth as the farthest human colonies). Humanity doesn't seem to have very fast FTL drives at the moment; otherwise they would have explored farther afield and discovered aliens long before they could have, say, gotten a population of 700 million on a colony world like Reach. So if the PoA left a battle which was much closer to Earth than the farthest colonies are (we know the Covenant started with the farthest colonies and steadily got closer to Earth), and took a fairly short time to reach the Halo system (it probably didn't take months or years, since the Covenant would have broken off pursuit and/or located and destroyed Earth), it's likely that that system is pretty close to Earth. Now let's look again at the distances and angles. We see that iota Horologii is in roughly the same direction from Earth as Tau Ceti, but is farther away. We see that HD 177830 is roughly Corewards, while Tau Ceti is in roughly the opposite direction. Here are my theories, based on this data. *drumroll* 1. The events at Tau Ceti are the reason for the Coreward direction of human colonization. It's almost a certainty that *some* humans know about the events of Marathon 1. After all, as soon as humanity developed FTL drive they would have gone after the Marathon. It's one of the most famous ships in history; it's the reason Mars only has one moon; and, if successful, it's given rise to a human colony. If only out of curiosity and desire to exploit Tau Ceti's resources, we would have gone over there. But we know that the Marathon and the Tau Ceti colony never received an FTL visit from home prior to Marathon 1 (okay, maybe it happened secretly, but I doubt it). The Marathon folks don't even know FTL travel is possible until the Pfhor arrive, and they see no method of informing Earth of danger other than oh-so-slow radio transmissions. This means that Earth explorers must have reached Tau Ceti after the colony was destroyed. Or else they received the message from Leela, or the visit from Durandal, before they had a chance to go. Either way, somebody high up in the Earth government has to be aware that there's a major alien civilization operating out by Tau Ceti, which enslaves or annihilates humans that show up there. Now, they aren't going to let the Tau Ceti findings become common knowledge; telling humanity that we're under attack by incredibly powerful space aliens would probably be somewhat counter-productive. But they are going to do their best to make sure humanity stays away from the Tau Ceti region from now on, just to avoid trouble; and that means influencing colonization to take place in the opposite direction from Earth. Corewards. 2. HD 177830 is either Covenant-owned or orbited by a Human colony world. Not much reasoning needed here; it's Corewards from Earth, and we know all that region is either human or Covenant. If we knew how far inwards humans have traveled, we'd be able to say for sure who owns it; offhand, I'd guess that this is the Reach system, but that's just because I don't know any other Covenant worlds or human colonies. 3. iota Horologii is the Halo system. Why? Well... a) iota Horologii is fairly close to Earth but is neither directly Corewards nor directly opposite the Core (in fact, its angle is almost exactly halfway in between), so it matches the position predictions I made earlier for the Halo system. b) iota Horologii is beyond Tau Ceti, and is therefore in a region of space that humanity's leaders would steer us away from so that we wouldn't encounter the Pfhor. So it makes sense that it would be unexplored, as the Halo system is known to be. c) iota Horologii is a very sun-like star orbited by a (probably) gas giant in a very Earth-like orbit. This matches what we know of Threshold and Soell. d) The sign that was held up as a Clue was the "Horologium" one. Hmm.... Comments? --SiliconDream
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| Replies: |
| More Astronomical Goodness | SiliconDream =PN= | 7/24/00 12:21 a.m. |
| Re: More Astronomical Goodness | Dan Rudolph | 7/24/00 8:11 a.m. |
| Re: More Astronomical Goodness | SiliconDream =PN= | 7/24/00 12:42 p.m. |
| Re: More Astronomical Goodness | Dan Rudolph | 7/24/00 3:44 p.m. |
| Re: More Astronomical Goodness | SiliconDream =PN= | 7/24/00 10:35 p.m. |
| Different Paths | Octavio XVIII | 7/24/00 5:06 p.m. |
| Re: More Astronomical Goodness | John Caf | 7/24/00 11:57 p.m. |
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