Science in the Re-imagined Series

The Re-imagined Series thrives on its concentration on its story and the characters that develop it, rather than attempting to awe its audience and drive the story by futuristic technology. Nevertheless, Battlestar Galactica is still a science-fiction program. Its writers may choose to adhere with Einsteinian, Euclidian and Newtonian principles as we know them here on the real-world Earth when ships, characters, and events require a particular physical result in, say, a space battle, in a medical complication, or when travelling from place to place.

This article summarizes or notes information about scientific objects and events in the Miniseries and regular series and attempts to draw more information, cite problems or contraditions, or conclusions of the scientiic principles revealed as part of the series' plot. In short, this article analyzes Battlestar Galactica's "technobabble" and determines how much of it is accurate, interesting, or just plain made-up.

Why Gaeta Will Never be "Spock"

The writers intentionally avoid characters discussing any super-technical particulars in depth in the Regular Series. This is logical in that, if the characters know that they can or cannot reach a particular location (they can see their own displays), there's no practical reason for the characters to discuss it amongst themselves (and therefore to us); it would be meaningless dialogue in a show that is heavily supported by the personalities of the characters (and is limited in time to tell viewers a story). The iracible Colonel Tigh would look at Lieutenant Gaeta as if he grew a third eye in his forehead if Gaeta started to spout off the precise distances and time necessary for Galactica to travel from place to place. Talking about such minutae in BSG is just not in character.

Still, the show gives us clues about the solar system of the Twelve Colonies to note some interesting facts.

Distances and Speeds in the Mini-Series

• Battlestar Galactica was approximately 335,540,340 miles from one of the Colonies, ostensibly Caprica, at the start of the Miniseries.

To reach this number, we needed clues from Billy Keikeya, onboard Colonial Heavy 798, enroute to the battlestar for its decommissioning ceremony. In the Miniseries, Keikeya tells Laura Roslin that he had sent a copy of her ceremony speech to President Adar for review, but warns that there is a time delay of 30 minutes between Galactica and Adar's actual location, which is confirmed as Caprica City, the apparent seat of the Colonial Government .

We know that Battlestar Galactica's universe sticks to the same speed of light constant as real-world Earth (and the universe, of course): 186,282 miles per second. If President Adar sent a wireless message from Caprica to Galactica in an attempt to correct Roslin's speech, how long would it take the message to get there? Billy gives this answer: 30 minutes. This gives the answer we need if we use the equation that distance=speed x time:

(3 x 10^8 m/s) (the speed of light) x 1800 s (30 minutes * 60 seconds/minute) = 5.4 x 10^11 meters or 335, 500, 000 miles

Simplfied, the wireless message travels over 335.5 million miles in 30 minutes to Galactica. This is approximately 3.5 astronomical units, or three times the distance between our Earth and our sun.

• Colonial Heavy 798 is travelling at a sublight speed of over 61,000,000 miles per hour to get to Galactica for the decommissioning ceremony.

Right after Billy Keikeya's conversation to Laura Roslin on her speech, we overhear the captain of Colonial Heavy 798 on the public address intercom of the starliner, telling the passengers how long their trip to Galactica will take: 5.5 hours. Assuming that the starliner has just left the neighboring space of Caprica and has reached its cruising speed, and given that we know Galactica's distance from Caprica, we can determine Colonial Heavy 798's cruising speed with the same formula as above, now adjusted to calculate speed:

5.4 x 10^11 meters (the distance in meters) / 19800 (5.5 hours x 3600 seconds/hour) =

2.7 x 10^7 meters/sec, or 61, 000, 000 MPH

While Colonial Heavy 798 is making a very serious clip across space at 61, 000, 000 miles per hour on its sublight engines, this is only approximately 11 percent of the speed of light, so passenger liners do well in getting from place to place, or colony to colony. To give a real-world comparison, Colonial Heavy 798 could fly from our sun to the Earth in about 90 minutes. The light from the sun takes only 8 minutes to arrive on the Earth's surface.

Given the velocities involved, extremely high accelerations must be used to attain them in reasonable (useable) time frames involved for in-system transportation. Such G forces would kill any humans involved unless some means of dampening them were employed. Given that the technology to perform space-folding FTL jumps is also available, the technology to manipulate gravity would lie in the same area.

• Colonial Heavy 798 and it's passengers would lose about 1 minute and 19 seconds during their trip to Caprica (relative to the time observed on Caprica), if they had completed their trip as planned, due to Time dilation.

T = T0 / sqrt(1 - v^2/c^2)

• T0 = 5.5 hours. (as observed by Colonial Heavy 798)
• d = 335,540,340 miles.
• v = d/T (as observed by Caprica)
• c = 670,616,624.4 mph
• T = 5.52 hours. (1:19 longer observed on Caprica)

Of course, this assumes that Colonial Heavy 798 took the same path to Caprica that it's transmission would take. This isn't likely, for various reasons, so the distance is off a little.

Artificial Gravity

(Much of this topic is derived from information in an article on the subject on Wikipedia. Not all of Battlestar Wiki's contributors are rocket scientists.)

Of course, it's very practical for humans, who evolved in gravity, to have it aboard their ships. Cinematically, it also makes it much easier to keep production costs down by not having to simulate weightlessness.

That doesn't mean we can let the Colonial Fleet get away with just having artificial gravity without some explanation, especially given Ron D. Moore's realistic science fiction principles of his show. From a science fiction perspective, this has always been the hardest "technology" to explain away in a show. Most shows don't even bother unless the temporary loss of artificial gravity would make a good plot complication.

Throwaway graphics in the upper right corner of this computer display shows terms relating to the artificial gravity in a Raptor.

So far, the only information acknowledging the use of artificial gravity in the series comes from a few close-ups of computer displays, where the terms "Gravity control" and "synthetic gravity" are shown (look to the upper right of the picture shown).

From what our scientists have theorized here on the real-world Earth, you can generate gravity from several ideas:

• Rotation of the spacecraft to generate centrifugal forces within a spacecraft.

Remember the playground merry-go-rounds of your youth? Same principle. In fact, one of the Fleet's ships uses this form of artificial gravity when it feels like it: the Space Park. Viewers can get a good view of this ship in motion when the Fleet leaves Ragnar Anchorage in the Miniseries.

• Keeping the ship at constant acceleration, with the crew standing in the opposite direction of acceleration.

Same principle that every astronaut experiences as their rocket launches into space and accelerates. In this principle, you won't take your hands off the throttle, keeping the ship's engines on at all times.

• Place something with a lot of mass within your ship.

This isn't artificial gravity, but the real thing. But there is the matter of the energies required to move your ship, the large gravity well that wants to attract other objects into your ship's general direction, and the shape of your ship. Gravity just works, pulling from every direction, so you would need a round ship to keep from strange changes in gravity aboard a ship. Worst of all, the amount of fuel needed to move a ship with a local mass concentration would be really, really high.

• Use tidal forces.

Stretch a tether with a small mass between a large gravity source and the ship you want. Cheap, fuel-free, and reliable. There's the matter of actually being able to travel somewhere besides planetary orbit without losing gravity, however.

• Fake gravity by using another classic force, magnetism.

The big term for this is diamagnetism, or, more specificially for this application, diamagnetic levitation. Based on the technologies we've seen in the Re-imagined Series (such as their use of magnetism for landing and launching Vipers), this principle has the most viability, but it also fraught with huge problems in application.

Everything has a magnetic attraction, but most objects (a human body included) has so little magnetism that we don't really think about it. This principle could be used to force everything in a particular direction. But, first off, using magnets together usually makes objects float between them, not drop, so you have to figure out how to angle things for the proper effect. Scientists here on Earth have actually levitated a frog at a force of 1g (Earth's gravity), but it took a massive amount of cryogenically frozen hardware to do it, and that was using the magnet to push away from Earth's gravity, not push the object down. Also, high magnetic field concentrations are probably not very healthy] in the long term.

If the writers have to dive back into the old fictionalized bag of tricks, you could consider these fanciful notions for keeping your deck crews on the deck:

• Use rotational gravity.

This variation of centrifugal gravity generation has been done in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey (the crew compartment inside the Discovery spun) and the venerable TV show "Babylon 5" (the cylindrical space station spun on its longitudinal axis).

• Simulate gravity with force fields.

The central spaceship in the TV show "Andromeda" uses "gravity generators". The "Star Trek" saga has a similar idea. This concept seems also to be a slap in the face of realistic SF concepts since it's a completely fanciful concept with no basis in scientific plausibilty at present.

• Spacetime manipulation.

The ability to do Faster Than Light travel indicates the Colonials have the advanced technology to manipulate the fabric of spacetime. This same ability might be harnessed to provide artificial gravitation. However, the connection between the use of Galactica's FTL drives (which are inactive until "spun up") makes this idea inconsistent with story elements where the FTL drives must be prepped before using. Also, this idea is also fanciful in its basis in known scientific fact or theory.

So, there are no definitive answers to the issue of what comes up and must come down in Battlestar, and the concept of artificial gravity in the show has yet to be explained anytime soon by the writers. Maybe a Raptor will lose their gravity on a mission one day in an episode, and the writers will have to have the characters curse about the issue.

What about the flight pods on Pegasus?

Unlike Galactica's, each flight pod on the advanced battlestar Pegasus are divided along its length into two landing bays. In "The Captain's Hand," viewers see Vipers inverting (relative to the battlestar) and landing on the bays "upside down." Is artificial gravity to be credited with this?

The answer is more likely magnetism. Vipers are launched with a magnetic catapult, and (as seen in "The Hand of God") can magnetically mate using their landing skids to a metal surface (in this case, the interior of a freighter). Like gravity, magnetism works in any direction, and takes little to maintain. Confirming this idea is a scene from the miniseries. As Colonial Heavy 798 lands in Galactica's port flight pod to offload passengers for the decommissioning ceremony, we see two spacesuited figures working on the deck. The two crewmembers are floating, suggesting that artificial gravity is not in use. Reinforcing this are the combat landings done by Vipers. The fighters bounce very noticeably at high speeds but, unlike a rock skipping across a pond, the Viper bounces less ballistically, suggesting that magnetism, a weaker force than gravity, is at work. How the Vipers get from the upside-down flight deck to the right-side-up hangar deck, however, has yet to be seen.

Light-speed Travel

The good news is that, from a theoretical point of view, the Re-imagined Series has this covered well by the use of wormhole theory, instead of grandiose methods such as in "Star Trek", through the use of fantastic energies. For more detail on how Jumps work and how the Colonial's manner of apparent faster-than-light travel differs from the more fanciful non-Einsteinian "warp drive" technology in "Star Trek", see the article on Faster Than Light travel.

Why Didn't Colonial Heavy 798 simply Jump to Galactica?

In the Miniseries, the starliner known as Colonial Heavy 798 casually traveled 5.5 hours at sublight speeds to get to battlestar Galactica. Why did the starliner take its sweet time? Why didn't they simply Jump to Galactica to save time?

There are several possibilities.

• Discomfort. FTL travel is a very disconcerting sensation to most humans. Even trained military staff such as Cally hated the sensation caused by wormhole travel. And, if the Colonies are full of lawyers as the real-world Earth is, think of the litigation created by people who aren't prepared for Jumping, and sue the starliners. Starliners would rather not Jump if they can help it, and probably explicitly warn travelers when they book a Jumping flight.
• Scheduling. Galactica's decommissioning ceremonies were for a specific time and date. While Intersun could have created an FTL flight, passengers still need time (mentally or physically) to prepare for their trip. As humans without instantaneous travel ability, we may not realize that such travel may create issues of logistics for passengers (many who are late or procrastinate) who actually anticipate that they will get 5 hours to plan for their event, or to just sleep.
• Flight rules or protocol. It may be against Colonial flight protocols for any non-military vessel to Jump to the adjoining space of a Colonial Fleet vessel. This makes the most sense because ships such as battlestars are always on the lookout for a sudden appearance of any ship that approaches them; they are a warship, after all. An incident where Vipers are scrambled from a battlestar after a civilian ship Jumps too closely would be like a Lear Jet flying too closely to a United States aircraft carrier. If Colonial Heavy 798 were to Jump straight to the battlestar, all kinds of alarms would go off in CIC until the battlestar could verify the incoming vessel was friendly. And, given that terrorism existed in the Colonies, even a "friendly" vessel may not be necessarily be a "friendly" (remember the events of September 11, 2001, where passenger airliners were used in the attack).
• Expense. The ships of the escaping survivors that make up Galactica's civilian Fleet use FTL travel frequently because they have to. There's little discussion of the economy or frequency of using FTL regularly before the Colonies were attacked.
• Distance. There may be a minimum distance where using FTL can be considered practical. As seen in "Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down," a (supposedly) damaged Raider is capable of making random Jumps in such close proximity to each other that the CAP is able to intercept it again in a matter of seconds. The key point is that ships cannot perform many Jumps in rapid succession; they need to take time to calculate a new Jump and power up their FTL drive engines (while vessels on Star Trek are capable of going to "warp" speed instantly). During this time lag, a ship might be able to close the distance to its required destination simply by using its normal sublight engines. For example, during the Battle of the Resurrection Ship, most of the Cylon fleet's Raiders are lured away from their fleet, but they didn't Jump back to defend against the Colonials when the ruse is discovered. A likely explanation is that it would have actually taken less time to cover this distance at sublight than it would to perform Jump calculations for several minutes, then Jump.

Why hasn't Galactica Jumped in over 20 years?

Before the attack, Galactica herself hadn't jumped for over 20 years, according to Saul Tigh in the Miniseries. Aside from the general reasons for not Jumping about (see above), Galactica may have been a special case:

• Galactica was among the oldest ships in the Colonial Fleet. In comparison to its modern sister battlestars, Galactica's unrefitted status may have made it woefully poor for modern battlestar training. Some Colonial Fleet staff may have also felt that Galactica's age and lack of advanced Colonial technology had deemed it unspaceworthy for regular Jumping (as Saul Tigh appeared to believe, training notwithstanding).

• It's also likely that Galactica was also an historic vessel that few Colonial government politicians would care to lose to an FTL accident if they were defense spending proponents. Therefore, Galactica may have been practically "dry-docked" around the vicinity of Caprica, still commissioned and regularly manned, but not considered an effective warship on normal patrol. Presumably, when the costs of running Galactica as a regular warship became too high, the idea of formally dry-docking the ship in orbit around Caprica is considered. The United States has a counterpart to what Galactica might have been or was to become: the USS Constitution--"Old Ironsides."

The Tylium Question

Tylium is a curious substance in the universe where the Twelve Colonies resides. Used by both Colonials and their foes, tylium has the properties of a mineral or fossil fuel in as that the substance is mined and refined. Like some fossil fuels, tylium isn't useable until refined. While the ore can't be detonated, its precursor (similar to refined crude oil before its refinement into gasoline and other products) is very explosive. The fuel itself isn't as explosive as precursor, however.

So, is tylium a made-up substance or would it have a counterpart or comparative substance to the elements we know of here on the real-world Earth?

One speculation is that tylium can possibly be similar to Helium-3. Helium-3 is a primordial component in the Earth's crust, is deposited via solar wind on moons and asteroids. But, while helium-3 has potention as an energy source, the amount of energy needed to ignite it (fusion) would be more than the energy it would expel for use as an energy by-product.

There is a problem with this speculation in that helium-3 is a gas, not a mineral or solid element. A tylium counterpart should be a solid, non-radioactive, and likely non-organic substance. Coal would fit the tylium concept were it not a fossil fuel, which would suggest that life forms existed and died on the celestial bodies where the substance is mined. Perhaps another element from the Periodic Table could be a counterpart of tylium.

The Cancer Cure of Laura Roslin

This section was originally written from a layman's perspective. As such, the information in this section is speculative and with little professional background. Battlestar Wikipedians with more experience and training in biology, medical science, and genetics are strongly encouraged to correct and expand on this section.

The episode "Epiphanies" showed dying President Laura Roslin receiving the fetal blood from Sharon Valerii's and Helo's child, which dramatically annihilated the breast cancer and its subsequent metastasis (spreading) that almost kills Roslin.

The believability of this event is low given that viewers have seen, from the first moment we meet the character of Laura Roslin, that cancer in the Twelve Colonies is just as dire as it is on the real-world Earth.

Killing cancer cells is not inherently a problem in treatment. But killing cancer growths without damaging healthy tissue is the larger issue. As cancer spreads and grows, it infests itself in healthy tissue where surgery is made impossible (brain cancer is commonly inoperable because of the likelihood of damage to critical areas of the brain). Likewise, chemotherapy is less invasive, but can also leave nasty changes to body chemistry and highly undesireable side effects. Roslin mentions that her mother also had breast cancer that she had treated with diloxin therapy, which appears to be a form of chemotherapy. Roslin declined this treatment in favor of Chamalla extract, a treatment that led to interesting side effects, but ultimately failed in slowing or stopping her cancer (as Dr. Cottle predicted).

The cancer cure seen in "Epiphanies" appeared to accomplish the following abilities:

• Destroyed all cancerous and pre-cancerous cells in the bloodstream (to prevent relapsing)
• Destroyed all cancer cells in organ tissue while repairing damage to organs with tumors or other infection
• Differentiated between the host's healthy cells and the cancerous cells
• Be effective with a relatively small dose, since fetal blood volume is low and cannot be taken in large amounts
• Left few or no immediate side-effects

There could be some logic to the use of the Cylon hybrid fetal blood, but this requires some stretching of the imagination and perhaps some genetic work.

• Earth science has confirmed that stem cells, undifferentiated cells found in fetal tissue that change into any needed organ or body part, can be used to aid in cellular repair. (According to the podcast for this episode, this was, in fact, the agent of the cure. However, Moore believed the explanation would be too much technobabble for audiences and had the explanation truncated.)
• Moore's use of fetal stem cells appears to support early research, but with a new twist. According to new research, fetal stem cells from the placentas of babies (born or not) leak into the body of a mother and appear to act as specialized "protectors" that can repair or lessen the effects of damaged tissues or disease. The presence of these cells can be for years, and is compounded by the number of pregnancies of the mother.
• Earth science has also confirmed that the human immune system mounts a response to cancer, which can lead to the regression of tumors. People with compromised immunity, such as those infected with HIV, suffer from malignancies that are uncommon in the general population. Some cancer researchers have speculated that improving the immune response could provide a cure for cancer possessing all of the above features.
• Earth science has found that several viruses are capable of rapidly infecting and killing cancerous cells while lacking the same infectivity of healthy cells. Experiments have been conducted in which mice which were deliberately given massive tumors were rapidly cured by direct infections of the tumors by viral agents that did not harm any healthy tissues. In terms of the show, perhaps the cylon-hybrid cells are capable of mimicing these abilities.
• Despite their appearance, humanoid Cylon agents are not human, but created. Perhaps in their creation, Cylons designed the humanoid bodies to fight off or identify genetic malfunctions immediately, or may be created without any of the historic genetic abnormalities found in humans that could trigger cancer or other diseases.

Cylon Genetics

The exact technical nature of the humanoid Cylon models is unknown. Apparently, they are the result of incredibly advanced bio-mechanical engineering. A great deal of technical insight into the humanoid Cylons, and more specifically, the Cylon-Human Hybrid fetus, was going to be revealed in “Epiphanies”. However, according to Ron D. Moore’s podcast for this episode, almost all of these were cut, to the point that in the final edit Baltar is left saying that the “blood” of the hybrid is “special”. Many fans thought this explanation was a little too abrupt. RDM explained that he was afraid that viewers would react to a longer, more detailed explanation as technobabble, and edited the material out as a result. This doesn’t mean that this material is ‘’incorrect’’; nothing Baltar says in the aired episode would be contradicted by further elaboration, as Baltar’s comments that the blood is an “amalgam”, etc. are so vague that further information wouldn’t contradict it. These scenes will probably become available in the Season 2.5 DVD box set.

However, several shots of Baltar going through notes on the genetic structure of the Hybrid’s DNA, etc. can be seen in promo commercials for this episode. Although no screencaps exist for this, careful analysis has yielded several new insights.

File:Uracil.png

Uracil

Baltar is seen looking at this base of a nucleotide which belongs to the Cylon-Human Hybrid: The nucleobase he examines is recognizable as Uracil (which is actually used in mRNA, not DNA):

This would seem to support the notion that the humanoid Cylons are indeed carbon-based, as opposed to silicon-based. However, just as the human body contains the metal Calcium but is not calcium-based, the Cylons incorporate silicon (as noted in the vague reference to "silica pathways") into their physiology, but appear to be carbon-based. In fact, since silicon does not share the organic nature that enables carbon to form the building blocks of life (silicon can't make as many molecular bonds as carbon), it would be practically impossible for most of a Cylon's body to be anything but a carbon-based life form. Else, the pregnancy between Helo and Sharon Valerii would be physically impossible, even if "love" was needed to make it happen. Certain kinds of radiation have adverse effects on Cylon technology (as shown on Ragnar Anchorage), but this appears to be based on the tissue-level structure of silica pathways, not their underlying cellular basis.

The Problems of Colonization

The harsh conditions in New Caprica City illustrate the difficulties of establishing a colony on a new planet, let alone one that is as inhospitable as New Caprica. These difficulties are greatly amplified by the small size of the surviving human population.

A small founding population is prone to the effects of inbreeding, but the historical example on Earth indicates that, with the proper regulation of consanguineous marriages, it should not be a problem for a city larger than a few hundred people. The population on New Caprica was drawn from the full Twelve Colonies so its initial genetic diversity should be high.

The more serious problem is that the population bottleneck suffered by the humans has also resulted in a knowledge bottleneck. Moreover, the survivors appear not to represent a full cross-section of Colonial society. Military personnel are clearly overrepresented. Gaius Baltar appears to be the only surviving scientist of any note, and Dr. Cottle the only physician. In an advanced country on Earth, a population of 50,000 would have at least 100 doctors and roughly the same number of doctoral scientists and engineers. Although the Galactica may have digital libraries embodying the knowledge of Colonial society, the population will also need to develop knowledge specific to their new home, and small size of the population does not allow for a high degree of specialization.

These factors are not specific to New Caprica. They will apply wherever the human population settles, assuming it does not find the Thirteenth Colony with its existing population base or merge with the Cylon population by surrendering. There is a reason it took Homo sapiens on Earth over 100,000 years to grow from a population of 50,000 to a global technological civilization: population size is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for economic development, because it allows for division of labor. The Colonials may be able to leapfrog because of their existing knowledge and skills, but judging from the History of the Twelve Colonies, it took the tribes leaving Kobol roughly 2,000 years to develop into an advanced civilization. One can argue that it would take the surviving human population an equivalent length of time to do the same---perhaps longer, given that their exodus was unplanned.

The humans will have to develop agriculture, industry, and infrastructure almost from scratch. In the time it takes them to do so, there will be a slow erosion of knowledge, as the original population with its memories of the Twelve Colonies dies off. It is quite likely that economic development would regress before it improves. Indeed, after less than two years, the humans have already exhausted their supply of medicines and have developed no way to manufacture more.

See Also

• Naturalistic science fiction
• FTL
• Sublight Propulsion