How old are the Colonies???

[bionicbob]

SAGA and TMWNL both clearly establish that Human society is in its 7th millenium. I assume this time encompasses the period Humans existed on Kobol. And we know the war with the Cylons was waged for 1000 Yarhens, so I assume the Colonies are at least this old. But is there any literature on how long ago the Human Exodus of Kodol occurred?

And why would they still be calling themselves Colonists after existing for thousands of yarhens as an independant civilization?

Any thoughts???

[Dawg]

They keep a firm hand on their history. They honor their past and make a point to keep it "living", so it's not forgotten.

They know their ancestors left Kobol to found the 13 Colonies. Therefore, they are Colonials, colonists that left thier homeworld to live on other planets.

I am
Dawg

[BST]

Originally Posted by bionicbob

SAGA and TMWNL both clearly establish that Human society is in its 7th millenium. I assume this time encompasses the period Humans existed on Kobol. And we know the war with the Cylons was waged for 1000 Yarhens, so I assume the Colonies are at least this old. But is there any literature on how long ago the Human Exodus of Kodol occurred?

And why would they still be calling themselves Colonists after existing for thousands of yarhens as an independant civilization?

Any thoughts???

I was always of the opinion that the "7th millenium" was a reference to the exodus from Kobol, i.e, the age of the Colonies as colonies.

Regarding the usage of the word, "Colonist" or "Colonies", it's likely that the original colonists who emigrated from Kobol used the terminology so often that, it just caught on as the vernacular.....colonist instead of citizen, colony instead of planet, etc.....

[Damocles]

Originally Posted by bionicbob

SAGA and TMWNL both clearly establish that Human society is in its 7th millenium. I assume this time encompasses the period Humans existed on Kobol. And we know the war with the Cylons was waged for 1000 Yarhens, so I assume the Colonies are at least this old. But is there any literature on how long ago the Human Exodus of Kodol occurred?

And why would they still be calling themselves Colonists after existing for thousands of yarhens as an independant civilization?

Any thoughts???

This gives me an interesting mirror.

Let us assume for the sake of discussion that Humanity on Earth was civilized by the Kobolians 7000 BCE. that puts the first Kobolian into orbit around Earth about 5000 years after Jericho graduated from mudhut village to our first "discernable" city. Big problem. If the Kobolians were the Daniken progenitors, then they had to hotfoot it here from Kobol 3000 years before there were Kobolians able to build spaceships?

Recompute!

7000 years ago, there were Kobolians who built pyramids.
4000 years ago, there were Terrans who could build pyramids.
Difference is 3000 years.

It took about two to four wormhole inflations to get from Kobol to the Twelve Colonies of Man. That means the tramline was not greater than two months in ship's time. [SoaSW, LPoTG]. After a year of wandering the Colonials picked up a weak TV signal from Earth.

No data for how far a wormhole transit is.
No data for how long the interval takes in subjective ship time.
I'm flying blind here!

Go real science, then. This will yield an unexpected result based on archaeology and physics.

The average mean distance between stars is 1.7 measured parsecs locally which translates into about 5 LYs. A wormhole loops figure eight around two gravitational masses and in order to be inflatable without collapsing the two masses into a singular hyperdense solid and tearing local spacetime a new one, the endpoints have to be no closer than 10e6 radians of the radius of the larger mass, usually a star. In the casre of our sun that is 10e8x2x10e2 light seconds. That is 2x10e8 light seconds for a minimum wormhole inflation event.

8.64x10e4 seconds=LD
2.59x10e6 seconds=LM
3.11x10e7 seconds=LY

6.43 lightyears is the median tramline range for a stable wormhole anchored by a G0^2 style white dwarf like our sun.

So we now speculate that the Twelve Colonies of Man by the factors that they must be comfortable orbiting a star like our own must be within two and not more than four wormhole inflation events from Kobol. I'll be generous and assume that the casino planet is midway between the second and fourth interval and park the Twelve Colonies of Man within 24 LYs of Kobol.

24 episodes with an estimated single wormhole interval per episode. 154 LYs traversed by the RT fleet. At around the end of the run we get the Apollo Moon Landing signal [in HoG] which occurs after 150 LY years of travel.

Based on our own ability to coherently discriminate our own teleivision signals at the strength we broadcast, we can detect such signals at a maximum range interval of 3000 years. that is the maximum range that the Coloonials can be from us. But they aren't as you will shortly see.

3000 is a nice convenient number for the Kobol to earth timelag provided that the Koboloian 13th tribe found mudhut Humans just entering the city stage. This means they were teachers to the native Terrans.

Try this one for size.

The Kobolians became Egyptians 7000 years ago and toddled along for 3000 years. Then the LBs picked out the 13th Tribe and exodused them to Earth. Instant Egyptians on Earth deposited 4000 years ago. Pyramids everywhere!

Meanwhile the Staybehinds on Kobol screwed up their ecology and ruined their planet. Give them a 1000 years to do this deed[3000 years in our past]. The LBs serruptitiously suggest that there is a nice new home for the Kobolians about 24 LYs away-next door to the Cylons. [2000 years in our past]

The 12 tribes move by slowboat[STL] taking about 500 years to reach their new homes[1500 years in our past] and have 1000 years of peachy keen, fine and dandy; building up the Twelve Colonies of Man. That puts them 500 years before our present when they START the 1000 year Cylon war. We sit around and develope our own history having lost our own identity. So the Twelve Colonies of Man have about 2000 years of history before CIMTAR writes finis 500 years into our future.

I estimate Adama and company are 500 years in our future just receiving the Apollo moon landing message from 500 LY away as they flee the Cylons. They need to endure 77-80 inflation events to reach us at the rate of one event a week. They will take two years to make the crossing. When they reach Earth;



I'm sure the 13th Tribe will be waiting.

As always;

[KJ]

Originally Posted by Bionicbob

SAGA and TMWNL both clearly establish that Human society is in its 7th millenium. I assume this time encompasses the period Humans existed on Kobol. And we know the war with the Cylons was waged for 1000 Yarhens, so I assume the Colonies are at least this old. But is there any literature on how long ago the Human Exodus of Kodol occurred?

And why would they still be calling themselves Colonists after existing for thousands of yarhens as an independant civilization?

Simply put, most of the colonial tribes probably still knew of their Kobollian origins despite a few thousand years prior to the 1,000 years of war with the Cylons.

The Pyramids seen on Caprica during the pilot episode at least suggested that at least capricans knew of their Kobollian origins due to the fact we later see Pyramids on Kobol, a planet which was left for dead in the black void but was identified as the home planet for all human life by Adama.

At least in that respect, you could see why they still refered to their home planets as colonies rather than their original home worlds of birth. They still knew they were 'nomads' of a sorts caperble of traveling the universe to look for a place to call home.

I think a better question is; What were the 12 colony worlds like before the 12 tribes of Kobollian humans settled there?!

Twelve planets so close to each other surely weren't all Earth or Kobol like in appearences and had some alien enviroments that had an effect on the human condition on humans for generations, before the grand space exodus, after the horrific Cylon holocaust destroyed their worlds.

KJ

[Emerys]

Damocles makes a very cogent point on asking 'why?' Lets face it, despite a very nice baisc storyline we all enjoy and one of the biggest special effects budgets ever seen, they prodicers didnt spend a thin dime on anyone who knew beans about science - particularly astronomy. I cringed every time they said they were going to hop over to the next galaxy, etc etc. I was about 10 at the time and I knew better. Astonomy students get paid less than back alley musicians and starving artists - while continuity issues can creep up in the very best productions, this was easy stuff and no one in Hollywood seemed the least concerned with bringing that element of reality to our suspension of disbelief. They spent millions on special effects. They probably could have gotten an astronomy buff for the price of a good meal. Thats an observation more than a complaint (ok, a bit of both) - the point being that some of the writers tended to let continuity slip pretty glaringly.

As for the original question, I'm perfectly willing to accept that being considered a 'colonial' was part and parcel of their cultural identity. The exodus have been a milestone in their cultural being, and the differences that were presented in the colonies (Ok, the Gemonese and Scorpians were only really picked out, but we have to suspect there were differences unique to the cultures of each world) could reinforce that sense that they were subsets of a greater whole.

As for a timeline, lets go with what we know. The Cylon war is 1000 yahren old, so we have to presume the Colonies were fully operational entites; since the capacity to explore and wage organized warfare is pretty complex on that scale, lets say a minimum of 2000.

Humans on Earth were building pyramids 4000 years ago. Lets throw into the mix the idea that these are gutted remains, or cultural relics (the idea that the pyramid is the right shape for a building handed down from great grandad) and tack on 1-2000 years for humanity to arrive here, spread over the planet and have some sort of disaster that caused the colony to not quite fail, but for colonial civilization to be lost.

That puts the exodus and the creation of the colonies at about 6000 years ago as a minimum, and 7 as a maximum. Any differences between a yahren and a year also need to be factored in. One presumes a Kobol year (presuming they adopted a standard time or date system) and an Earth year might be about the same. Similar planet would be formed in a similar way, similar day cycle, distance from the sun, etc - so a similar year - but it would not be exact. Add or subtract a 10-30 days in a planetary rotation period and over 7000 years you have a fair margin of error.

[gmd3d]

Originally Posted by Damocles

I estimate Adama and company are 500 years in our future just receiving the Apollo moon landing message from 500 LY away as they flee the Cylons. They need to endure 77-80 inflation events to reach us at the rate of one event a week. They will take two years to make the crossing. When they reach Earth;



I'm sure the 13th Tribe will be waiting.

As always;

This thinking I like .. 500 years into our future .

[spcglider]

Originally Posted by Damocles

This gives me an interesting mirror.

Let us assume for the sake of discussion that Humanity on Earth was civilized by the Kobolians 7000 BCE. that puts the first Kobolian into orbit around Earth about 5000 years after Jericho graduated from mudhut village to our first "discernable" city. Big problem. If the Kobolians were the Daniken progenitors, then they had to hotfoot it here from Kobol 3000 years before there were Kobolians able to build spaceships?

Recompute!

7000 years ago, there were Kobolians who built pyramids.
4000 years ago, there were Terrans who could build pyramids.
Difference is 3000 years.

It took about two to four wormhole inflations to get from Kobol to the Twelve Colonies of Man. That means the tramline was not greater than two months in ship's time. [SoaSW, LPoTG]. After a year of wandering the Colonials picked up a weak TV signal from Earth.

No data for how far a wormhole transit is.
No data for how long the interval takes in subjective ship time.
I'm flying blind here!

Go real science, then. This will yield an unexpected result based on archaeology and physics.

The average mean distance between stars is 1.7 measured parsecs locally which translates into about 5 LYs. A wormhole loops figure eight around two gravitational masses and in order to be inflatable without collapsing the two masses into a singular hyperdense solid and tearing local spacetime a new one, the endpoints have to be no closer than 10e6 radians of the radius of the larger mass, usually a star. In the casre of our sun that is 10e8x2x10e2 light seconds. That is 2x10e8 light seconds for a minimum wormhole inflation event.

8.64x10e4 seconds=LD
2.59x10e6 seconds=LM
3.11x10e7 seconds=LY

6.43 lightyears is the median tramline range for a stable wormhole anchored by a G0^2 style white dwarf like our sun.

So we now speculate that the Twelve Colonies of Man by the factors that they must be comfortable orbiting a star like our own must be within two and not more than four wormhole inflation events from Kobol. I'll be generous and assume that the casino planet is midway between the second and fourth interval and park the Twelve Colonies of Man within 24 LYs of Kobol.

24 episodes with an estimated single wormhole interval per episode. 154 LYs traversed by the RT fleet. At around the end of the run we get the Apollo Moon Landing signal [in HoG] which occurs after 150 LY years of travel.

Based on our own ability to coherently discriminate our own teleivision signals at the strength we broadcast, we can detect such signals at a maximum range interval of 3000 years. that is the maximum range that the Coloonials can be from us. But they aren't as you will shortly see.

3000 is a nice convenient number for the Kobol to earth timelag provided that the Koboloian 13th tribe found mudhut Humans just entering the city stage. This means they were teachers to the native Terrans.

Try this one for size.

The Kobolians became Egyptians 7000 years ago and toddled along for 3000 years. Then the LBs picked out the 13th Tribe and exodused them to Earth. Instant Egyptians on Earth deposited 4000 years ago. Pyramids everywhere!

Meanwhile the Staybehinds on Kobol screwed up their ecology and ruined their planet. Give them a 1000 years to do this deed[3000 years in our past]. The LBs serruptitiously suggest that there is a nice new home for the Kobolians about 24 LYs away-next door to the Cylons. [2000 years in our past]

The 12 tribes move by slowboat[STL] taking about 500 years to reach their new homes[1500 years in our past] and have 1000 years of peachy keen, fine and dandy; building up the Twelve Colonies of Man. That puts them 500 years before our present when they START the 1000 year Cylon war. We sit around and develope our own history having lost our own identity. So the Twelve Colonies of Man have about 2000 years of history before CIMTAR writes finis 500 years into our future.

I estimate Adama and company are 500 years in our future just receiving the Apollo moon landing message from 500 LY away as they flee the Cylons. They need to endure 77-80 inflation events to reach us at the rate of one event a week. They will take two years to make the crossing. When they reach Earth;



I'm sure the 13th Tribe will be waiting.

As always;

Are you assuming that the TV signal from earth DIDN'T go through a wormhole or some other space anomaly to reach the fleet? Because the origin of that signal would have been the 1960's and (NOT ignoring Gal 80) the Galactica shows up at Earth in 1980. But Adama says something about "these many years we've endured the wilderness of space" and I think it was stated that they had been traveling for at least 20 years. Which doesn't add up in any case. If you do ignore Gal 80, then there's no telling how long the transmission in HOG had been traveling or what might have happened to that transmission on it's travels.

There's also the problem that the yahren MAY NOT be exactly equal to one Earth year. But that's a whole different can of megadriles.

I'm sure there's a convoluted logic by which the differential between earth time and Colonial time could be reached, but I think that, if you ignore the events of Gal 80, one does not have enough information to determine the comparison basis.

Not that it isn't fun to try, though.

-G

[spcglider]

Of course, the whole question may be answered by assuming that the events we see in Battlestar Galactica and Galactica 1980 occur in an alternate universe from our own. Then you can write whatever solution you desire and change whatever Earth time you like to synch up with Galactica time.

If you only pay attention to Battlestar Galactica, we have no idea what's happening on Earth while those events occur. As Damocles says, it could very well be 500 years in our future.

If you do acknowlege Gal 80, then you've got something to work with as to time comparison in a modern sense. Though it creates more problems than it solves. And just rankles most people anyway!

-Gordon

[Damocles]

Originally Posted by spcglider

Are you assuming that the TV signal from earth DIDN'T go through a wormhole or some other space anomaly to reach the fleet?

Information passing through a wormhole must be directional and it would still be speed of light and modulated. You should see the wormhole, itself, either as a modulated rotating ovoid; or as a distant winking light, timed to the frequency of the radio beam outputted. Topologically speaking, we did not see a wormhole effect within the local observer event horizon of the RT fleet, just normal spacetime revealed to the observer interval limit. Presumption I make due to the lack of the event required for a wormhole transitting radio beam? Radio waves passing through normal space is what I see.

Because the origin of that signal would have been the 1960's and (NOT ignoring Gal 80) the Galactica shows up at Earth in 1980. But Adama says something about "these many years we've endured the wilderness of space" and I think it was stated that they had been traveling for at least 20 years. Which doesn't add up in any case. If you do ignore Gal 80, then there's no telling how long the transmission in HOG had been traveling or what might have happened to that transmission on it's travels.

20 years in the wildness of space could mean anything; layovers for fuel, volatiles, and biomass replenishment, a long slog of STL coasting to get out of Cylon FTL event detection range, Passing through a flatspace desert, who knows? The wormhole inflation math says a minimum of 76 inflation events to cross 500 LYs. If it takes four months per inflation event it might take twenty years? Once again, who knows? I can only compute maximals and minimals limits. I have no mean data range here to establish the time passage between inflation events. I just have the weekly episodic TV interval limits, as that was the nature of episodic television.

There's also the problem that the yahren MAY NOT be exactly equal to one Earth year. But that's a whole different can of megadriles.

Jahrens is a term that is virtually useless in my computations and to me not totally relevant to the problem speculation. My measure estimates are based on the standard Gregorian Calanderic interval light second as the measure of my base interval.

Now you must understand that the term interval, here, not only refers to the perceived DISTANCE, but also the perceived DURATION of the event. So when I use the measurement of light seconds; I mean units of spacetime- not just units of distance like 2.97x10e5 kilometers.

I'm sure there's a convoluted logic by which the differential between earth time and Colonial time could be reached, but I think that, if you ignore the events of Gal 80, one does not have enough information to determine the comparison basis.

You can always try to calculate the physical interval, and you can always set the range limits of the interval when you try.

Not that it isn't fun to try, though.

As I just did.

-G

Best of the New Year, Gordon;

-F

[Sarika]

Your opinions, knowledge and thoughts here are all totally fascinating!

But if the 12 colonies orbited thier host star -sun similar to Earth...though I hardly think this would be likely, as I wonder how in hades could twelve planets orbit a single star in similar obital patterns as each other, when our own solar system planets all have a different path each around the sun, hence having a different length of measure for a year on those planets?

The other thing that bothers me, is in I think the episode of "The Lost Planet of the Gods", Part 1, Adama says to Serina,( after dining on a fine meal prepared by her, for Adama, Apollo, and friends, to announce her engagement to Apollo), "If only I were 100 yahrens younger....", to mean he would be just as interested in Serina if he were more her age contemporary.

So how old do the Colonials live to? How old was Adama? If he took off 100 years from his age, would that make him the age of Serina and Apollo ?How old were they?

Does a year on their home planet(s) in the great 12 colonies, take much longer to orbit thier sun? Hence forth, they age slower?

Love to hear your thoughts people?

[Senmut]

The Colony of Caprica orbited a binary sun, as evidenced by the view from Adama's ruined home in the pilot movie. Baltar looks out over the bay, as the suns come up. In such a system, more than one planet might orbit within the so-called "life zone". Also, if we postulate that orbiting furthur out from the twin suns, say at a distance similar or greater than the distance of Pluto from our sun, is another star of simialr spectral type, it could also have planet capable of supporting life forms. So, it might be possible to have Twelve Worlds, some probably moons of major planets, all withing a fairly small area of space.
Once the Colonials rediscovered spaceflight, it would only be a matter of time until they began visiting each other. Even for the most distant colonies, the trip would be possible before FTL was developed, if somewhat protracted.

[KJ]

I do believe that its stated somewhere in a book or other that Adama was 130 yahrens old!

And War Of The Gods has Adama stating that Kobollian human's ages were presently, Cylons not withstanding, at 200 yahrens give or take. Which isn't hard to believe, many person's refered to in the Bible lived for hundreds of years like Noah, Moses, isaac, King David and so on. Adam lived the longest after God banished him from the garden of Eden stating that he'd live for "ONE" of his day's. And Adam lived for close to over 950 years to practically 1,000 years (and had many children besides Cain and Abel) and thats always put a shadow of doubt on exactly how many days God managed to form the Earth in the bible (7 day's or 7,000? a day to a God wouldn't be by mortal standards now would it?)

When the Earth wasn't fllled with modern society's polution problems, germs and diease in the beginning and was rather rich with an echo system that supported life to the fullest, you've gotta believe that life cycles were much greater and people lived far longer than they do nower days. Our ancestors hunted and ate food sources that no longer exist anymore, for all we know that problaby was a source of nourisment and combination of broken down acids, salts and sugars, carbohydrates and protins in ones system, that made their metabolism's far more efficient than ours.

Since Battlestar Galactica draws heavily from bibical references as well as mythological ones, its problaby a fact that humans from the Kobollian era and the Colonies are like our ancestors and had much longer and healthier lifespans, if they didn't get directly involved in warfare or lived a particularly dangerous lifestyle!

KJ

[KJ]

And Galactica did try to add reasonable science issues later on during the "Terra Trilogy" of stories and had the Michael, Sarah and children from Lunar 7 on their way to Paradeen. The people's from Terra and their Lunar colonies settled on worlds that made it difficult for them to settle elsewhere due to their bodies being unable to survive on planets with higher or lower air pressures and differences in gravity fields.

One could assume the different colony worlds might have had this problem also, 12 planets can't all have the same atmosphere and air pressures and gravity let alone the differences in hours, days and years on their planets.

Yes Battlestar Galactica had its flaws but they're usually minor compared to the fasinating elements it introduced. We aren't the only group of fans talking about an old TV show and its episodes on the net.

[WarMachine]

Sarika: To echo Senmut, if you watch the backdrop on Caprica Carefully, there are a mminimum of two suns, and there might be a third. In either case, the life-zone would be extremely large in comparison to ours, but there is also the possibility that the arriving Kobollians "terraformed" the system, moving planets around -- and no, there is no evidence of that in the series, but the possibility should not be ignored.

LKJ: Re the Terra Trilogy, I don't think it's a case of them not being able to survive well in Colonial atmosphere; more likely, it's a simple case of a rapid shift in pressure. Such an event would be very dangerous for most people, potentially resulting in the "bends", as per deep-divers surfacing too quickly. I note that Sarah was not overcome as quickly as Michael, and neither appeared to suffer any long-term effects.

[spcglider]

From the dialogue of the premiere, one could get the impression that all the colonies were floating around a single star (or binary star). Omega says "launching to all outer planets"... which gives that impression.

But I always envisioned Caprica as a "central" location in a much larger grouping of solar systems. Like our solar system. So each planet had it's own set-up.

It'd be REALLY tricky to get 12 planets twirling around a single sun, make all of them habitable, and not run the risk of them crashing into each other. Not impossible, but near to it.


-G

[Damocles]

Originally Posted by Sarika

Your opinions, knowledge and thoughts here are all totally fascinating!

More speculation follows.

But if the 12 colonies orbited thier host star -sun similar to Earth...though I hardly think this would be likely, as I wonder how in hades could twelve planets orbit a single star in similar obital patterns as each other, when our own solar system planets all have a different path each around the sun, hence having a different length of measure for a year on those planets?

Have you ever heard of the Klemplerer Rosette? There is a limit to the Lagrange nodes but twelve is quite workable though six seems to be more likely. Note that this condition would be artificial? The Colonials apparenently don't know that. We would.

https://www.burtleburtle.net/bob/physics/kempler.html

The other thing that bothers me, is in I think the episode of "The Lost Planet of the Gods", Part 1, Adama says to Serina,( after dining on a fine meal prepared by her, for Adama, Apollo, and friends, to announce her engagement to Apollo), "If only I were 100 yahrens younger....", to mean he would be just as interested in Serina if he were more her age contemporary.

If it is not an Adama exaggeration, then that instantly tells me Caprica's orbital period based on his actual physical condition.

1/2 year.
Mass =1 earth
Orbital radius mean 4.7 light minutes.
Solar mass of star =0.4->0.6 Sol
Luminosity per square meter 1/2->1/3 shifted toward the yellow.

Caprica would have to be within 10% of Earth normal to account for Caprican physiology.

So how old do the Colonials live to? How old was Adama? If he took off 100 years from his age, would that make him the age of Serina and Apollo ?How old were they?

A human-sized animal without our mechanical aided enhancements of fire and machines has a maximum mean average in the wild, a life span of 40 years.

This is the body design limit. After age 40 we start to die in earnest.

Does a year on their home planet(s) in the great 12 colonies, take much longer to orbit their sun? Hence forth, they age slower?

No. Human means Human. Entropy like gravitation is a[relatively] fixed constant. We are as subject to it, as the merest rock. We go from a more disordered condition [living and warm] to a more ordered condition.[cold and dead] within a clearly defined decay rate based on our metabolism. This is biologically ratioed as to our size and species type. Mammals decay faster than reptiles. Large mammals decay slower than small ones. Logically crocodiles should be able to live longer than elephants, which live longer than us. All variables being equal this would be true and it so evidences out.

Crocodile=75 years
Elephant=60 years
Human=40 years.

But we cheat. So the crocodile becomes a handbag when he is big enough, the elephant winds up overworked in a circus, and we die of heart attacks, diabestes, the flu, and cancer between 60->80 years of age.

Love to hear your thoughts people?

This continues, further;

Originally Posted by Semmut

The Colony of Caprica orbited a binary sun, as evidenced by the view from Adama's ruined home in the pilot movie.

Quite possible, though it would not be as seen. The second son should not be so bright or large or close. Roche limits. That close and the two suns would look like lopsided eggs, with the narrow ends pointed at each other.

Baltar looks out over the bay, as the suns come up. In such a system, more than one planet might orbit within the so-called "life zone". Also, if we postulate that orbiting furthur out from the twin suns, say at a distance similar or greater than the distance of Pluto from our sun, is another star of similar spectral type, it could also have planet capable of supporting life forms. So, it might be possible to have Twelve Worlds, some probably moons of major planets, all withing a fairly small area of space.

There would be stellar dimorphism. every binary we see has a large star and a dwarf orbitting around each other in a maypole dance. We have yet to discover planets in the vicinities of such binary pairs yet. That doesn't mean that the rosette description below is impossible.

See above for how a Klemperer Rosette functions.

That rosette would be aproximately ten light minutes across and could orbit a blue white stellar primary at a distance between 4->6 light hours radius. The blue white primary could be no more than 3 solar masses to act as a stable locis A anchor point and not introduce too much tidal tug into the rosette to destroy it.

One thing is certain. Seasons on Caprica are weird. You have a long period summer fall winter spring cycle that has each season lasting aprroximately fifty terrestrial years while inside that cycle you have four mini seasons that last forty to fifty days each depending on the rosette's orbital inclination to the primary and whether the Twelve Colonies of Man have any sideral period. Some of those worlds could be tidally locked.[Caprica isn't, it has a day night cycle(SoaSW)]

Interesting conclusions? Once every 225 years or so the Colonials have an ice age that deep freezes them.

Colonial worlds would be iron rich with thinner atmospheres and more CO2 than our own. They need the thinner air with more greenhouse gasses to get the necessary sunlight from their weaker shiner star pair than we get from our own warm lovable sun and to trap the heat from reradiating into space. In point of fact their worlds could be actually smaller than Earth by about 10% with a corresponding weaker gravitational influence. that would make for less tidal stress and a more stable rossete.

Did I forget to mention that the Colonials would be very familiar with planet quakes and coriolis storms[hurricanes]?

Once the Colonials rediscovered spaceflight, it would only be a matter of time until they began visiting each other. Even for the most distant colonies, the trip would be possible before FTL was developed, if somewhat protracted.

A Hohlman trajectory could take up to a year long depending on what pursuit ellipse was selected in the orbital plane.

____________________________________

More........................

[Damocles]

We dig up people in the middle east, or rather their bones and we measure them forensically. The specimens we dig up are from pre-Abrahamic times-considerably before the time of the patriarchs.

There are no giants. The people seem to be about the normal size range you expect for modern humans, which is be tween 1.4 and 1.7 meters tall, and between 50 and 80 kilograms mass on an average. The specimens tend to the smaller end of the range.

Most of them died before forty-five years of age from natural causes; such as trauma[they fell down a lot], infectious disease, etc. Too many of them were killed and eaten, not all of them by wild animals.

Moderm humans tend to be tougher and more disease resistant then the ancient strains. This is logical. Survivors tend to be more disease resistant in a series of epidemics and they pass this trait along to their children. Modern humans also tend to be less clumsy than their forbears and have better aim. This again is a result of a process called culling.

When you look at the process in detail you marvel at how those early humans made it., Too many of them were weaklings, with bad teeth, apparently poor eyesight, lousy motor skills, poor endurance, weak stomachs, etc.

We may not be able to bend steel bars in our bare hands like a gorilla, but people forget;

We can throw a baseball up to 80 meters and put it within a circular error of probability of about a half meter across, catch it bare handed at the other end, and for us this is NORMAL.

We can run ten kilometers at a constant speed of ten kilometers per hour, and for us this is NORMAL.

We can eat anything organic after we burn it and remove alkaloid based poisons. No other animal on Earth except for the hyena and the vulture comes close. We can even eat stuff that would kill them.

We can sew. Our only competitor there is the spider and it took it a hundred million years to develop the specialized organs to do it.

And if we can find a rock in which to wedge that steel bar and put our backs into it, we CAN bend that steel bar.

And we have a berserk mode, which no other animal has, that allows us for brief periods to exceed our normal 1/5 horsepower[150 watt] output 10x.

That is twice the strength of a horse for thirty seconds. Or enough of an adrenaline rush for a woman in Utah to stand off a full grown grizzly bear that threatened her kids and WIN.

I tire of those who believe our ancestors were better than we are. They were NOT. Our children will be BETTER than us.

So shows the evidence.
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What does the above tell us about the Colonials?

1. They should be right at home on planets like Artic where the Ravishol pulse cannon was located.
2. They should be less susceptible to radical climate change than we are.
3. Astronomically and mathematically, they must be dumber than rocks.
4. Ditto biologically.
5. And the LBs are far more intrusive in the affairs of the 12 Tribes than I first believed in the CBSGverse.

Why?

Somebody had to guide them to the Twelve Colonies of Man and BUILD the Twelve Colonies of Man for them.

Simple; just like we know that something played billiards with Neptune and knocked it over so that its sideral rotation is in plane with its orbital elliptic(Its knocked over on its side so that its poles point at the Sun at various times in its orbit and it spins like a wheel when we look at it instead of a top.] so we would easily detect the weird gravitational effects on a star caught in the middle and acting as a gravity anchor for a Klemplerer Rosette. That is so unlikely that we would be doing an immediate SETI sweep of that section of the sky looking for modulated radio waves and more oddball gravitational influences.

As always;

[Senmut]

Originally Posted by BST

I was always of the opinion that the "7th millenium" was a reference to the exodus from Kobol, i.e, the age of the Colonies as colonies.

Regarding the usage of the word, "Colonist" or "Colonies", it's likely that the original colonists who emigrated from Kobol used the terminology so often that, it just caught on as the vernacular.....colonist instead of citizen, colony instead of planet, etc.....

Yes. It seems pretty solid that the Colonies have existed for 7,000 standard yahrens. With all these different orbital periods, they'd have to work out a basic "standard" yahren, eventually.