tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22974616.post3761214741128606818..comments2023-10-02T14:33:18.136+01:00Comments on The Very Fluffy Diary of Millennium Dome, Elephant: Day 2272: Mysteries of Doctor Who #8: Logopolis… what's THAT all about?Millennium Domehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430269096817934037noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22974616.post-4493933287330635172007-03-03T10:36:00.000+00:002007-03-03T10:36:00.000+00:00Our friend Mr Alan writes…I refer the right honour...Our friend Mr Alan writes…<BR/><BR/><B><I>I refer the right honourable elephant to the reply given by Douglas B <BR/>Killings in the rec.arts.drwho group on the 19th September, 2000:</I></B><BR/><BR/>OK, this is uncanny. And also more proof that I have far too much time on my hands.<BR/><BR/>Let me backtrack a moment. A few messages ago I asked for information about the location of Skaro according to the books. Someone produced some evidence from Terry Nation himself, to the effect that Skaro was located in Galaxy Seven, which Nation states is "out beyond Andromeda".<BR/><BR/>I in turn speculated that this might mean Galaxy Seven was one of the<BR/>Maffei objects, a set of galaxies out beyond M31. Well, after putzing around some of my astronomy texts and poking around the internet, I'm finding that identifying Galaxy Seven as a galaxy in the Maffei family (called the IC342/Maffei Group, after two of it's most prominent members) is actually a very good fit, given some of the stated evidence.<BR/><BR/><BR/>1) In Genesis of the Daleks, Davros states that Skaro was the only<BR/>planet "in the thirteen galaxies" that contained life. This fits very well with the IC342/Maffei family, which appear to form a small group of their own. At this time there are thirteen known members of this group.<BR/><BR/><BR/>2) Location. The galaxies are all in the 9-10 million light year<BR/>range. The group was probably at one time a member of our Local Group (which contains the Milky Way and Andromeda/M31 galaxies), but evidently was ejected after a close encounter with Andromeda. The galaxies currently sit in the direction of Andromeda but well beyond it. Again, this fits very well with Terry Nations's description.<BR/><BR/><BR/>3) In The Dalek Masterplan, mention is made that the Daleks were in the process of conquering a neighboring galaxy, with the aid of some<BR/>allies. Later on, it is mentioned that at least one of those allied<BR/>races came from Andromeda, which makes it probable that that is the<BR/>galaxy being conquered. From the IC342/Maffei group the next set of<BR/>galaxies after our own would be another < 10-12 million ly distant in<BR/>very nearly the opposite direction, which means that any aggressive<BR/>species in that group would be more inclined to head our direction than not.<BR/><BR/><BR/>4) Most of the galaxies in this group are small, dwarf ellipticals,<BR/>consisting primarily of old (9-12 billion year old), small stars. This fits very well for a couple of reasons. First, the older the stars the less likely they are to have formed rocky planets [1]. Also, dwarf ellipticals such as these tend to be compact, with thousands of stars in relatively small volumes of space; again, a condition which does not lend itself well to the formation of planets in stable enough orbits to permit life. Thus, we can extrapolate that if Skaro is in one of the Maffei objects, it is a stable, rocky planet in a corner of the universe where such stable worlds are rare. <BR/><BR/>This leads to the second reason, which is that it provides an excuse for the Daleks wanting to invade the planets of our galaxy -- there are few habitable worlds from which to choose from in their neck of the woods, so their only alternative for expansion is to seek other worlds in other galaxies.<BR/><BR/><BR/>[1] This is because in the younger universe heavier elements like oxygen and iron were not as abundant or even non-existent -- these elements were primarily formed as a byproduct in the process of ordinary stellar life, and were ejected into space as stars aged and burned through their hydrogen (or, in the case of heavier elements, formed in cataclysmic events like supernovae). Thus, the earliest waves of star formation probably did not include rocky, solid planets, and so the older the star the less likely it is to have rocky planets such as Earth or Skaro.<BR/><BR/>This does not mean that planets cannot form in these galaxies; stars do continue to form, and presumably later generations of star systems would have the materials needed for rocky worlds to come into being. However, small galaxies such as these also have much smaller amounts of materials from which stars might coalesce, so the formation of such stars would be rare and planetary systems even rarer. All of this indirectly supports Davros' claim that there was no life in the 13 galaxies nearest Skaro. Indeed, the formation of life on Skaro may very well have been a lucky (or unlucky, as the case may be) fluke.<BR/><BR/><BR/>Taken together, based on some evidence from the TV series and from Terry Nation himself, it seems probable to me that a good case can be made for Skaro's location being in the IC342/Maffei group of galaxies. Of these galaxies, it seems to me that Maffei-1 is the most likely culprit, as it is probably the largest galaxy of the bunch (and hence more likely to have star formation recent enough to form planets) as well as being closer to us than either IC342 or Dwingeloo 1 (another prominent member of the group).<BR/><BR/><BR/>God, I need a real life. Oh yeah, I already have one. OK, I'll take<BR/>the fannish one after all.<BR/><BR/><BR/>And if any author is reading this and decides to use it in their novel, please, please, please stick in an acknowledgement. Something to prove that the last several hours trying to nail this down weren't wasted...<BR/><BR/>:-) Thanks!<BR/><BR/><BR/>--<BR/>Douglas B. KillingsMillennium Domehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08430269096817934037noreply@blogger.com