There are more misconceptions about black holes than probably any other area of astronomy (though I bet cosmology would give BHs a run for their money). A lot of TV shows and movies have exacerbated this, but now a toy enters the ring. Fischer-Price has created a series of action figures (or, as I like to call them, dolls) called Planet Heroes. And what are heroes without a nemesis? So they have introduced Professor Darkness (not to be confused with Captain Harkness or Butters’ alter ego).
For some reason, they have associated Prof. Darkness with black holes, as you can see from the package:
Sure, you may ask, how hard is it to make fun of a product with the tag line, "With his corrupt little minions and negatronic cloud, he has vowed to destroy the solar system!"? Well first of all, I was considering this very line as the motto for my website, but then I realized that
1) my minions aren’t (necessarily) corrupt, and
2) "negatronic" isn’t a word. But it should be.
Also, I’ll note that they have a hole in the plastic urging tots to stick their finger in it. Need I say it? It’s a black hole! Don’t put your finger on it!
Anyway, I applaud Fisher-Price for at least trying to get their description of black holes right, I suppose, but they missed the mark a bit. Well, more than a bit.
The description (seen at the bottom of the picture) has two lines:
A black hole happens when a giant star explodes and collapses.
Can be found anywhere in the solar system.
The first part is close, but unfortunately makes things worse. A black hole can form when the core of a very massive star collapses. Complicated physics ensue (as many details as you could possibly want will be forthcoming in my book), and the utter layers of the star explode outward while the inner core collapses inward. If the core is massive enough, a black hole will result.
Many people get confused about how a star which explodes outwards can form a black hole. But only the outer layers of the star explode; the inner part is what forms the black hole. So Fisher-Price got close, but wound up only confusing things more.
The second one is a bit scary. Black holes are in the solar system! Run for your lives!
First off, I think FP made the all-too-common mistake of confusing the solar system with the Milky Way galaxy. A lot of folks do this (heck, Joss Whedon did in Firefly at least once), but it still makes things difficult for people to understand the scale of space. Our solar system is huge on human terms — it takes our probes decades to get to Pluto, for example — but it is crushed into insignificance by the size of the galaxy. The Milky Way is 100,000 light years across, while our solar system is charitably a light week across. That makes the galaxy five million times bigger than the solar system.
And that’s only diameter. The galaxy has depth, too. Its volumes is approximately… let’s see… carry the three… a bajillion times that of the solar system. It’s no contest.
The galaxy is filled with black holes; no doubt millions of them wander the deep black. But even so, the nearest is probably many dozens or even hundreds of light years away.
And if one were in our solar system, we’d know it. Things would be bad. Again, I give lots of nightmarish details in my book (due this fall from Viking! Order two!), but in general the planets would be out of place, comets would be screaming down from the outer reaches of the system, gamma and X-rays would be flooding out… we’d know. It’s hard to hide a black hole.
So let me wrap up by saying black holes are cool, but grossly misunderstood. Fisher-Price is also cool, and attacking it, even gently and somewhat tongue-in-cheek, may be silly. But I love taking the opportunity of someone else’s error to actually do some real astronomy education. If you want to buy those dolls action figures for someone you know, why, go ahead! But point the kid to a reputable astronomy site, too. After they’re done playing some fantasy, show them how cool the real Universe is too.
Tip o’ the ergosphere to Stanley Wen for pointing this out to me on Facebook.
February 4th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
It’s not silly to attack something that says … black holes […] Can be found anywhere in the solar system.
Even if it’s just a toy
February 4th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Just be careful not to look too closely at a black hole!
February 4th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
What’s the smallest size primordial black hole that wouldn’t have evaporated by Hawking radiation by now? And how noticeable would the gravitational lensing from such an object be? If there are asteroid-mass primordial black holes whizzing around they’d surely be quite hard to detect… how good would such objects be at accreting the interplanetary dust/other random particles filling our solar system?
February 4th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Oh, and my wife loves to tease our almost-11-year-old-son about his playing with his “man dolls”. (”They’re not dolls, they’re ‘action figures’!!!”)
February 4th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
[…] Bad Astronomy Blog added an interesting post on Fisher-Price falls into a black holeHere’s a small excerpt […]
February 4th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Is there a posting FAQ? How does one quote like in andy’s post? (Sorry for posting this question here, but I don’t see a more-relevant place to do so.)
February 4th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
I rather suspect the “Can be found anywhere in the Solar System” line refers to the good, er, bad Professor himself, rather than black holes per se.
February 4th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
On a related note, has anybody played Super Mario Galaxy? It’s an awesome game, but their nomenclature is hopeless.
System =/= Galaxy.
February 4th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
I wanted to mention that about Super Mario Galaxy too, dave… Their galaxies are pretty tiny, yea. And did you also notice you can venture prettyyyy close to black holes in there? And that they are in the middle of planets sometimes?
Pretty awesome game though.
February 4th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Fry: “Hey, nobody knows what happens when you fall into a black hole. She could still be alive, right Professor?”
Prof. Farnsworth: “Oh sure. Sure Sure Sure….. Not a Chance…”
February 4th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
um… Phil, do you walk around toy stores and shopping centres for hours on end looking for Bad Astronomy???
I think you need a day job
February 4th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
The second one is a bit scary. Black holes are in the solar system! Run for your lives!
Maybe Mr. Fisher or Mr. Price knows something we don’t!!!!!!!!
On a related note, has anybody played Super Mario Galaxy? It’s an awesome game, but their nomenclature is hopeless.
Got to about 40 stars but got pulled over to Orange Box and Mass Effect. Still have Assassin’s Creed to start.
Will probably get back to it, but some of the levels were pissing me off. I find bottomless levels where one slip kills you very frustrating, and that’s almost every level in SMG. It should be just one life pie slice.
As for nitpicking it, geez, why not complain about artificial gravity on the space station? It’s a bizarre parallel universe not subject to our laws. It’s next door to Baxter’s supergravity universe.
February 4th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
I’mn sure it’s just due to the same sentiment that makes (some) people refer to a map of the US as ‘the world map’.
February 4th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
“Will probably get back to it, but some of the levels were pissing me off. I find bottomless levels where one slip kills you very frustrating, and that’s almost every level in SMG. It should be just one life pie slice.”
Three words: Luigi’s Purple Coins. It was the last star I had to get before I could play as Luigi. I WANTED TO DIE.
Ahem. What annoyed me in that game at the start was that all these spheres. I mean, I hated the moon stages in Ratchet and Clank, how do you think I felt when I started on Mario Galaxy?
But frankly, the one slip kills you… That’s the Super Mario idea. I mean, falling off somewhere kills you. Though I admit the last time I ever was that frustrated was whenever there were vanishing blocks in Megaman.
Still… BAD SCIENCE THERE! Not galaxies! NOT GALAXIES!
February 4th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
“Negatronic” is absolutely a word. The Negatron is one of the three devices needed to destroy the Omega Virus!
Also, “negatron” is sometimes used to mean a standard electron (as opposed to a positron).
February 4th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Oh you planetocentric types just don’t give our solar system enough credit. As a comet enthusiast, I would make the solar system more like a light year across…..
Those eeeevil black holes….
Jim.
February 4th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
First of all let me start by saying, I want one of these! Now, could you please tell me why “Shrek” is included? I don’t recall him having trouble with black holes in any of his movies. I also noticed that the button is placed in a very suggestive and inappropriate location, between Professor Darkness’ legs. Although I suppose pressing between anyone’s legs would make them glow one way or another, or at least bring a smile to their face.
Another concern I have with, what otherwise seems to be a very enjoyable toy, that any 3 year old would enjoy is the use of the term “Negatronic.” To me this smacks of racial overtones due to the similarity to another very, very, and I mean very bad word that should never be uttered. I suppose it also could be misconstrued as covertly presenting Scientology doctrine, as Lord Xenu is expected to return at some point with his negative (Negatronic?) Thetans (Corrupt little minions?) I think we should have Anonymous look into this.
I just noticed Professor Darkness doesn’t have eyes. Well, never mind eyes, he doesn’t have a face. I’m not sure what message this sends to impressionable young 3 year olds.
At least it has 2 Shrek like figures with faces. One is yellow though, again a misrepresentation of Shrek.
February 4th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Dude, if you think the astronomy on the packaging is bad, you should watch the DVD that comes with the toys (also viewable online at http://www.fisher-price.com/fp.aspx?st=5477&e=dvd). The villainous Black Hole (never called Prof. Darkness in the cartoon) threatens to destroy the solar system (for no particular reason) using the “negatronic cloud” to create a “cosmological vortex” of “negative mass.” Thus the nine Planet Heroes leap into action to prevent this from happening by freezing the cloud with something called “plutarium,” which has to be mined on Pluto. (I’ll give them this much: there are jokes about whether Pluto is a real planet, and its representative on the Planet Heroes team gets amusingly defensive about it.)
My nearly-four-year-old son is deeply in love with this 20-minute video and the toys. He also knows the names of all the planets, most of the moons, and a number of nearby objects (such as the Horsehead Nebula). As utterly flawed as the science is in Planet Heroes, I give it a pass because it supports his interest in things spacey. By the time he’s old enough to understand how bad the astronomy is, he’ll have outgrown the Planet Heroes. But hopefully he’ll retain his love for space. There are worse things for a toy line to promote.
In the meantime, there’s a laughably inane cartoon out there for grown-ups to mock for our entertainment.
February 4th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Ah Phil …. “utter layers of the star” … ooh, so close to a bad joke
And haven’t there been a case or two of possible micro-black holes passing through the earth? I seem to recall reading about two events in Antarctica and the Indian Ocean. But I don’t recall hearing a counter explanation.
February 4th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Well it’s at least marginally better than the ‘Holocaust Denier Little Pony’ they released a while back.
February 4th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
“Negatronic isn’t a word”… this from the guy who says “click to embiggen” when posting pics in his entries.
February 4th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
By the way, I have the Omega Virus. (I mean I have the GAME, not an actual virus… “You human scum!”)
February 4th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
The fantastic Neil DeGT will be at TAM this year. Phil? How about you and he starting a line of Collectible Astronomy Action Figures? Hell, I’d buy ‘em.
February 4th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Am I the only 40+ year old that watched the video and thought it was AWESOME!!! I ordered the free dvd.
I think the guy that did Jupiter was the guy that played Cliff on Cheers.
February 4th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Awesome Phil! Fisher Price should just stick with “Little People”, I loved those things. I like the idea of using a toy like this as a gateway to the coolness of the real universe — despite the misinformation on the packaging.
Those three eyed alien freaks are awesome too, someone get Hoagland to scan Mars crater images, surely this face too appears in one!
February 4th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Look for the Discovery Institute to put out a press release saying that if scientists can’t even agree on whether black holes are at the center of galaxies or in the solar system, how can we trust their theories on evolution. Teach the controversy, they say. Let the kids decide on what to believe.
February 4th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Is there a planet hero for Pluto is it that one a minor planet hero?
February 4th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
A “negatronic cloud?” Sounds like something the folks at the TU24 website would come up with.
February 4th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
This isn’t as bad as Lord Nebula, the villain from “Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys.” He was half human, half black hole. Try to imagine how that union was consummated…
(Captain Simian was actually a really good show.)
February 4th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
To follow up on John Ham’s comment…
Wife: Number One Son just got a new video from the grandparental units. Let’s watch.
Number One Son: Cool! Play it again. And again…
Wife and Self: It burns!!! It burns!!!
And also, not Shrek but schrecklich.
February 4th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
‘“Negatronic isn’t a word”… this from the guy who says “click to embiggen” when posting pics in his entries.
‘
All together now: iT’S A PERFECTLY CROMULENT WORD.
But as to the original posting….
‘it takes our probes decades to get to Pluto….’
DECADES, forsooth?
February 4th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Tu24 would have a negatronic asteroid and protonic planets. Also we do not have electricians we have negatricians.
February 4th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Good one, Larry. But the DI might not even believe in gravity, therefore not in black holes, since scientists admit that gravity is “only a theory”.
February 4th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
davidlpfon asked:
“Is there a planet hero for Pluto is it that one a minor planet hero?”
Yes. Instead of a Batmobile or Rocketship, he rides a motor scooter. One might laugh but remember on Pluto a Vespa is worth the Gross National Product of the United States for last 10 years.
February 4th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
heck, Joss Whedon did in Firefly at least once
I always got the feeling that the “system” in Firefly referred to a cluster of close stars many of which possessed planetary systems. Possibly, given the recurring name ‘Blue Sun’, the entire system is gravitationally anchored by a blue supergiant like Rigel that would itself have a pretty damn big habitable zone.
Although given the nature of the show I’d hope the blue sun would be Bellatrix… have you ever been with a warrior woman?
February 4th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Theory of gravity… it may have been posted a hundred times already, but I have to give the link again
:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39512
February 4th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Makes perfect sense to me.
If Data has a positronic brain in STNG (check with WW), then it is logical that Marvin (in Hitchiker’s Guide) has a negatronic brain.
February 4th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Is that a metric bajillion or an imperial bajillion, Phil?
February 4th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
“heck, Joss Whedon did in Firefly at least once”
What episode? How could I have missed it? I mean, I got a B in Astronomy 101 in college… I couldn’t have missed it! I shouldn’t have missed it.
I feel so ashamed.
February 4th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Both my boys wanted these toys for Christmas, and we got most of them for them. Since then, my oldest, Anthony, who is going to be six later this month, has showed a huge interest in astromony. I am guessing it is part these toys, and part because he is studying the planets in school.
Anything that helps getting them interested in any science field is a good thing. I’ll forgive Fisher-Price for their error if it leads to my sons growing more interested in science.
February 4th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
First off, I think FP made the all-too-common mistake of confusing the solar system with the Milky Way galaxy. A lot of folks do this (heck, Joss Whedon did in Firefly at least once), but it still makes things difficult for people to understand the scale of space.
Wait… WHAT???
I have seen all of firefly a few times and totally missed it.. when did that happen?
Just wondering, useless trivia like this makes me happy
February 4th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
JWK: You beat me to it. Stupid job…
Negatron =is= a perfectly cromulent word.
I myself was wondering, why does Captain =Darkness= have a button that makes him =glow=, especially if he’s some sort of black hole?
Also, Phil, I think you should also point out (although, I presume based on your specialty) that all of this is about stellar mass black holes. Also, please reassure me that the black holes they’re making in the LHC are not going to eat the Earth. “Can’t sleep, man-made black holes’ll eat me. Can’t sleep, man-made black holes’ll eat me.” :O
February 4th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
Joss mentioned somewhere or other (handwave handwave) that all the events of Firefly happen in the one solar system. Something about that popped up in the movie, where they explained that it’s a system with a lot of gas giants with habitable moons or something. Probably multiple stars, weird orbits and so on. Specifically, he said there’s no warp drive in use anywhere in Firefly, so it’s all happening at what your mancrush friend Wil Wheaton would call “impulse speeds”.
So there you go.
February 4th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
“With his corrupt little minions and negatronic cloud, he has vowed to destroy the solar system!”
That sooooo just became the tag line on my Myspace page!
J. D.
February 4th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
I was kidding about the “ebiggen” thing, by the way; I actually like that ‘word.’
So, I guess this might be the time to admit that Space: 1999 had a strong influence in why I studied astronomy every chance I could get… seriously, I loved that show when I was a kid (and still am a fan of its first season), and wanted to know more about the real moon, solar system, the universe in general. What I discovered is that the universe is even cooler than what I’d watched on tv, but that show in particular kicked off my lifelong interest! (And the Eagle is still one of the coolest sf spaceships designed, ever.)
February 4th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Ebiggen? That’s embiggen, of course. Darn poor typing skills coupled with a lack of proofreading!
February 5th, 2008 at 12:17 am
Yeah, there’s a map of the Firefly star system floating around. It’s an open cluster with… I want to say six or seven stars, and lots of planets and moons amongst them. I don’t think there was any confusion about it being a galaxy; the closest I can think of was the emptiness that they said turned people into Reavers, but there’s plenty of empty between star systems that can fit that bill. And those are just folk tales, of course.
February 5th, 2008 at 1:17 am
Utter layers of a star? That’s utterly ridiculous, man.
Also, I may be corrupt, but I ain’t little.
February 5th, 2008 at 4:08 am
>Joss mentioned somewhere or other (handwave handwave) that all the >events of Firefly happen in the one solar system. Something about that >popped up in the movie, where they explained that it’s a system with a >lot of gas giants with habitable moons or something. Probably multiple >stars, weird orbits and so on. Specifically, he said there’s no warp drive in >use anywhere in Firefly, so it’s all happening at what your mancrush >friend Wil Wheaton would call “impulse speeds”.
>So there you go.
Agreed, but that isn’t exactly what TBA said above.. He said Joss confused the solar system with the galaxy. What you are saying, and what i’ve gathered, is that the entire show takes place in just one solar system. Though i don’t think it has multiple stars(well, never stated one way or the other in the show).
But that is an artistic choice by Joss, that is not him confusing the solar system with the galaxy… hence my confusion
February 5th, 2008 at 4:15 am
davidlpfon Wrote:
> Is there a planet hero for Pluto is it that one a minor planet hero?
Sailor Pluto, and here she is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailor_Pluto
Enjoy.
(Nate: Not sure what’s she’s doing now since Pluto was demoted.)
February 5th, 2008 at 5:23 am
What are you trying to pull, Phil? If you ever cared to do a bit of careful research you’d learn that black holes could easily sneak up on us unawares:
Rimmer: …But a black hole is a huge impacted star. It’s millions of miles wide, it’s massive! Why didn’t you see anything on the radar screen?
Holly: Well, the thing about a black hole, its main distinguishing feature… is it’s black. And the thing about space, the colorof space… your basic space color… is it’s black. So how’re ya supposed to see ‘em?
February 5th, 2008 at 5:56 am
Hey Phil, what’s going on the cover of your book?
February 5th, 2008 at 6:21 am
Blue Sun was a corporation, not the system’s name. Although that doesn’t mean there’s not a blue sun in there somewhere.
February 5th, 2008 at 6:35 am
I think Bellatrix is white rather than blue, although I certainly don’t recall its B-V value offhand.
Large blue suns may have large “habitable zones,” but since they last so briefly, they don’t have time for any of their planets to produce oxygen atmospheres.
And as for negatrons…
According to Darkwing Duck, positrons and negatrons are the basic particles of good and evil. (”I learned that in school,” says Gosalyn.)
February 5th, 2008 at 6:37 am
And kudos to Utakata for finally bringing in mention of the Sailor Scouts to this blog. Although my personal favorite is, and always will remain, the incomparable SAILOR MERCURY! Mizuno Ami, the babe of all babes.
February 5th, 2008 at 8:16 am
Given your statement:
“But I love taking the opportunity of someone else’s error to actually do some real astronomy education.”
then perhaps in the future you can include some proof reading?
“the utter layers of the star explode outward”
Hate those “utter” layers….and do things often explode inward?
February 5th, 2008 at 9:13 am
Agreed, but that isn’t exactly what TBA said above.. He said Joss confused the solar system with the galaxy.
There are several instances in Firefly when the word “galaxy” is used instead of “system”. As in: “The Earth got used up, so we moved out and terraformed a whole new galaxy of Earths.”
And seriously guys, I dug it as much as the next rabid Sci-Fi fan, but there’s lots of bits of the physics (and economics) that don’t actually make any sense. Sorry. Joss just chose not to draw attention to those shortcomings with reams of treknobabble.
(Since I know someone’s going to ask… For example: in the first episode they can communicate with no discernible time-lag over a distance that will take some time to cover [I forget exactly how long]. So they must be travelling at pretty low speeds relative to c. But they can travel between all these “planets” or “moons” in sufficiently short times that they must either be travelling at relativistic velocities, or the worlds in question must be very close together. Yet the worlds must have relatively stable orbits [and so can’t be that close together], or there’s no way in hell you could terraform them. Assuming you accept that terraforming is even feasible, never mind in the absurd timescales described [even if they did all miraculously have about the right mass]. And if you were investing sufficient resources to terraform a planet in a few years or decades, does it seem reasonable to leave the exploitation of that vast new resource you’ve just created to a bunch of dirt farmers? Who can somehow afford to have livestock transported across space, but can’t afford a diesel generator or a half-decent machine shop? And don’t get me started on the artificial gravity, which continues to work even when all power, including basic life-support, is gone. Oh, and chance close encounters in deep space? Close enough to risk collision? Orders of magnitude less likely than winning the lottery.)
Me, I think Farscape took the right approach: “We know the science doesn’t make sense, and we don’t care. It’s fiction, guys.”
February 5th, 2008 at 10:08 am
To Mikhail Bragoria:
Phil didn’t scrounge kids toys looking for the blurb — I sent the pic to him after I noticed this watching my kids pore over gaudy plastic toys. Yes, I was bored. And yes I need a new day job but for different reasons.
February 5th, 2008 at 10:49 am
Concerning the term negatron, my son loves this game — Jimmy Neutron vs. Jimmy Negatron (See http://www.amazon.com/Jimmy-Neutron-vs-Negatron/dp/B00006FDLR) I recommend it for 5-7 year old kids.
February 5th, 2008 at 11:26 am
I try to get the science right in my SF. I include some old unscientific SF tropes necessary for the story, like faster-than-light drives, but even there I use a jump or space-straining of some kind (a la Alcubierre) rather than just having the thing zoom past c on some kind of thruster. Maybe only the Niven-boy science geeks will get it, but I just feel better writing the stuff as accurately as I can.
Of course, getting the tech stuff right doesn’t mean it’s good writing…
February 5th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Black hole in the solar system? I’m surprised that no one has mentioned Riofrio; slowing light and GM=tc^3 and all, implying that tiny primordial black holes haven’t evaporated by Hawking radiation, etc.
February 5th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Well, if nobody else will - no fear of LHC black holes, seriously. If Hawking is right, these will “evaporate” rather quickly in a burst of radiation and particles, which will probably be their signature while still in the collider.
Of far more concern are negative strangelets, as outlined in this paper:
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/hep-ph/pdf/9910/9910333v3.pdf
- oh, just somebody TELL the folks at TU24 that the asteroid is made of negative strangelets…
February 5th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
“With his corrupt little minions and negatronic cloud, he has vowed to destroy the solar system!”
Despite your reservations, I still think you should use it.
February 5th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Ugh ugh, why did you guys have to bring in Sailor Moon?
The #1 reason why I hate japan. (I have a lot of #1 reasons to hate japan though.)
February 5th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Dunc:
>There are several instances in Firefly when the word “galaxy” is used instead of “system”. As in: “The Earth got used up, so we moved out and terraformed a whole new galaxy of Earths.”
I always assumed that they didn’t mean galaxy as “a lot”, not the literal meaning of the word. Guess that is why they didn’t pick up on it.
As for the rest of the physics in Firefly(going places too fast), i really do not know how long it would take to fly from earth to Jupiter with a relativistic drive. And they never did explain how they were propelled(ie, in the series, i don’t think i ever heard them say that they were going X% of lightspeed or anything like that).
BUUT, i don’t want to start a whole physics in the firefly conversation, i fully agree with you, it was just the galaxy thing.
And what they did in Farscape was brilliant.. “Einstein was wrong”.. nothing more.. nothing less.. me like
February 7th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
“And that’s only diameter. The galaxy has depth, too. Its volumes is approximately… let’s see… carry the three… a bajillion times that of the solar system. It’s no contest.”
That gave me a chuckle. Cheers.
February 10th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
Hmmm, Firefly wasn’t all bad. As far as I recall, it is 1 star, multiple planets, and the worlds are all actually moons. Hence why some can be travelled between quickly, and some take weeks. It was supposed to be that way. The old west had to move slowly from place to place, so autonomy from a centralised/federal government was easier. Firefly is suggesting that we can return to that pattern once distance becomes so great again that we can’t just cross the entire empire in a day.
Of course the bits involving reaver chases, proximity, and communication (the ‘cortex’) are obviously wrong.
As for terraforming, I think we are meant to use our imaginations. There was enough population or not enough equipment, so the centre worlds were colonised/terraformed first. Then they did the outer moons. There may be social reasons why the worlds couldn’t be properly developed.
Hell, Australia wasn’t exactly exploited for its resources. Why move to a hellhole when you can just deport undesirables there?
August 14th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Thought Matteo, my 4 year old son, as of 8/17/08, was only Planet Hero lover.
Thanks for your support,my wife and I have taken Matteo to planetarium,
but he was too young at 2 and 3.
November 19th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
I think some of you are way too testy about a simple toy. There are toys that “aliens” “ghosts” super heroes that fly, etc.. All sorts of toys that don’t exactly exude accuracy in real life! At least Fisher- Price has found a toy that has my son excited about the planets. He could name them all in order at age 3. The dvd’s are cute little cartoons intended, I’m sure, to ENTERTAIN children. By the way, in the third dvd, there is a flying moon cow that saves the day. We live on a farm and my son isn’t trying to help our cows jump over the moon or fly or save the solar system! So — maybe (just maybe) children can understand that EVERYTHING they see on TV isn’t real. Please find another way to sell your book other than petty attacks against a preschooler’s fun little toy.