So, basically, this is cooler than just about any world that's been depicted in sci-fi.
http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/startrek/images/2/29/Vul... [edited for direct .jpg]
So, what did J.J. know, and when did he know it? And for that matter, how did he know?
Also, I'm relatively positive that JJ (in the sci-fi works he actually, well, worked on), himself, knew nothing (see Armageddon for sources) and that his script supervisors dealt with any discrepancies with reality JJ had.
[1] the reversibility it the hard part. Tech for halting metabolic processes irreversibly has been around for quite some time ;)
Closer than what? This system is significantly smaller than Firefly's. Or do you mean closer than this system is to Earth? Don't worry about that, since in Firefly it's one super-system with five main stars. http://i.picresize.com/images/2013/02/06/BMhCv.jpg It's about 55 light hours across.
The 'systems' in Firefly are really all one star system. The system includes a central star orbited by planets, four other stars, and a host of "protostars" (they really mean brown dwarves). I've tried, and can't imagine a scenario where, even if such a system could form, that it could be configured in this way. The barycenter of the masses of this system can't possibly remain in the central star indefinitely, for starters. And the whole thing sounds hostile to planets - I imagine them being thrown out of the system constantly. But if you accept that, and you accept travel at some fraction of c, then you wouldn't expect them to age much like they would traveling between systems.
In contrast, Proxima Centauri orbits from a distance of about a quarter lightyear, and we've found a single planet orbiting very tightly. We've also found a single planet around Alpha Centauri B, also orbiting very closely. There may be more we haven't found, but probably not nearly as many as in the Firefly system. Firefly seems to use the idea that more stars mean more planets, but more stars and planets during formation means more chaos, more things to swallow up or rip apart planets, and more mass to throw them out of the system.
I don't think the Firefly system is necessarily impossible. You can even construct models such that the white star is at the focus of all other orbits (you know, if you're the Alliance and you need to do that for political reasons). (An Earth-centric model of our solar system needn't necessarily be wrong in terms of its ability to predict the position of bodies in the solar system - It's just needlessly difficult and convoluted.) I just think the Firefly system is highly improbable.
If you travel at light speed from your own point of view you arrive instantly due to time dilation, so even if it takes years according to an outside observer (because the distance you're travelling is light years) you wouldn't age at all.
From a photons point of view, it is emitted and absorbed by its destination instantly.
My understanding is that Firefly does not have FTL travel at all, in fact that makes it rather unique among spaceship sci-fi. Also, they're in a single (though very large with multiple stars) system. They get around quickly because their ships are a lot faster than our slow-ass chemical rockets, but they're still traveling at sublight speeds, which is why it takes days or weeks to get places, instead of mere minutes (for example, at lightspeed, it would take less than 6 hours to get to Pluto). Notice that, in the show, they took paying passengers, and it took a fair amount of time to get between the "outer worlds". It was a lot like cargo ships of yesteryear, rather than modern airplanes, as far as travel time. They don't have tech to halt their metabolisms for the same reason we don't: they haven't invented it yet.
The battery life is really good though.
You get a lot more crazy worlds in written sci-fi. You can start with the Culture orbitals, some of the Commonwealth Saga worlds or Alastair Reynolds' inhibitors. If you count a neutron star with life on it, you get dragon's egg which is a must-read.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/moonfact.html
> The Moon is about 2% of Earth's mass, not 27%.
2% of mass, yes, but also 27% of the diameter.
You are both right.
Then 0.27^3 = 0.0197
And then, only 60% as dense (no core) so 0.0119 :)
And only just barely! You get to around 99% of the Earth's mass with the rest of the inner solar system.
All of the other rocky bodies in the solar system give you another 10% of Earth's mass out to Pluto and another 10% beyond.
Is that correct? Venus alone is about 90% the size of Earth, and Mars roughly 33%. It really seems like all those bodies put together should be greater than 1 Earth mass (but less than 2 Earth masses).
Venus is about 81% Earth's mass, and Mars is only a little over 10%. Mercury gets you another 5.5%, the Moon (as above) another 1.2%, and the asteroids are negligible.
In the outer solar system, it's basically all the Galilean Moons + Titan.
ETA: Hmm, or maybe those are surface gravity numbers you're thinking of?
I do find it really interesting and a little mind-boggling that the Moon, as huge as it is, with a good 1/6 of Earth's gravity, only has 1.2% of Earth's mass. Same with Mars: a good 1/3 of Earth's gravity, but a mere 10% of its mass. I really thought there'd be more direct correlation between mass and gravity than that. Of course, surface gravity is related to mass with both density and radius, but still, I would have assumed that the densities of these bodies would have been rather similar, as they're all small, rocky worlds.
Consequently, the mass of an object with a given surface gravity is inversely proportional to the square of the density. If the Moon were the same density as the Earth, and had the same surface gravity as it does now, it'd actually mass less than it does now -- and Uranus, despite have 15x the mass of Earth, has a lower surface gravity, because its density is so low.
The rule of thumb for space is "any way your intuition can be wrong, it will be wrong". :-)
What do we know about the gas giants' cores?
Due to the intense conditions inside a gas giant, we're not sure if they still have a rocky core, or if the cores have liquified or even convected away to mix with the gasses.
So the answer could be "there are dozens of times the Earth's mass worth of rocky material inside gas giants" or "there is no rocky material inside gas giants", or anywhere in-between. We need more detailed study of the gas giants before we can answer that question.
Models of solar system formation also suggest the Kuiper belt started with dozens of times Earth's mass, but we only see about 10% there now, and we only have pretty good guesses about what happened. (I mean, it almost certainly got ejected, but the "why" is harder.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_(spacecraft)#Scientific_o...
I actually think the rock getting into space with the microbe embedded in it is not that unlikely (many rocks in the earth are laced with bacteria), nor the space transport. I think the excessive heat of rentry, the force of impact, and the difference in target ecosystems are what are going to kill the microbes.
But certainly someone here knows more than I do about it ...
edit: Mongo from Flash Gordon