OT: BSG Discussion

[geoschmo]

All of which proves my point I believe. Starbuck talks about looking for star patterns. That tells me they don't know exactly what stars they are looking at, which they would if the colonies were in the constellations. The constellations are metaphors. The only way the map is useful is by comparing the view form different planets to find one that matches the view shown on the map.

The Lagoon nebulae is the only specific object they recognized. But you can't triangulate a position from one point and a bearing. You need at least two known points with bearings to them. That would give you two possible locations for earth. A third known point and bearing would give you the exact location.

What the Lagoon nebulae does give them is an general idea of the part of the galaxy to look in. Since they know they need to look for a planet where the Lagoon nebulae would be visible, that gives them a point and a distance. From that you can't triangulate an exacpt position, but you can plot of sphererical area of space in which to search.

Everything you've posted here agrees with my idea that the constellations are simply patterns that represent the colonies, and not actually locations of the colonies themselves.

[geoschmo]

geoschmo said:
You need at least two known points with bearings to them. That would give you two possible locations for earth.

This part wasn't quite right. I was thinking about plotting locations in two dimensions, like on the surface of a planet. Traveling through space in 3 dimensions two known points and bearings would allow you to plot a circle perpendicular to a line connecting the two points and bisecting the line. It would be way more then two locations, but it would cut down tremendously on the number of systems you had to check as it would be way less then all points in the galaxy.

Three points should give you all you need though to reduce that to two possible points. And if you had twelve points, it should be easy to narrow it down to one location. A trained navigator or pilot should be able to do it almost without a computer.