Science Fiction Trivia

[ffutures]

Not sure which colour this is - green? VERY silly anyway...

https://imgur.com/a/kP1pz

[Disembodied]

Arguably this is a blue, for planet and police box … in the Doctor Who story "Journey's End", the TARDIS tows the Earth:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxILNKZCMzE&t=34s

[RockDoctor]

Not sure which colour this is - green? VERY silly anyway...

https://imgur.com/a/kP1pz

Green? Doubly-ionized oxygen - "OII" - emission, usually triggered by fluorescence from ultraviolet in the stars spectrum. Which would imply that SB has only just got started, or has been very unlucky in accidentally encountering another star while towing his chain of planets.
But yeah, it's a planet-mover. Pure handwavium circuitry, with nary a hint of unobtanium.

[RockDoctor]

Arguably this is a blue, for planet and police box … in the Doctor Who story "Journey's End", the TARDIS tows the Earth:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxILNKZCMzE&t=34s

I should have guessed the Tardis would get involved somewhere.

[RockDoctor]

So we have

[*] 1 -ffutures with SuperBoy doing a dope-on-a-rope trick with a chain of planets from an exploding galaxy,
[*] 2 - Disembodied having everyone's chain pulled by the Tardis

Very much the Usual Suspects.

[spud42]

thats one hell of a chain super dude is using... dont worry about the planets are not rotating and the complete disaster that would have been to the planets... or the gravity effect of so many planets so close together.....

they probably would have lasted longer being left in the dying galaxy!

i am not sure i have read anything where a planet was towed.. even if it was physically possible!

[RockDoctor]

even if it was physically possible!

The materials are not strong enough - by a LOT. You'd need to put your tisket and tasket of a planet into some sort of little basket. I'm not sure what spacing of your unobtanium cables would need to be, to avoid them cheese-wiring through the continents and mantle to leave a trail of (briefly) glowing little asteroidlets of diced planet behind them.
<P>Let's have a think. Without buoyancy forces, the granites at sea level underneath Everest are strong enough to support it in the medium term (see ... 2016? Nepal quake for "long term" ; personally I still count the Himalayan Front thrust system as the likely nexus of the first million-plus casualty earthquake ; I re-evaluated that opinion after the 2004 "Boxing Day" tsunami, but I think I'm still safe with my beer money on the HF fault system. Unless Tokyo goes. <i>That</i> is going to be ugly. And it's a "When", not an "If".)
But regardless of earthquake prediction lotteries, If you're spreading your load over a few tens of metres width of unobtanium, you'd probably be good for ... 10km spacing of the towing basket straps.

[RockDoctor]

dont worry about the planets are not rotating

Ohhh, that would change the geometry of the diced planet. More like thin-sliced planet. Cosmic-scale bacon slicer.

[ffutures]

dont worry about the planets are not rotating

Ohhh, that would change the geometry of the diced planet. More like thin-sliced planet. Cosmic-scale bacon slicer.

If you think that one's silly, there's another story from around the same period where someone wants a photo of Superboy doing something impressive, and he stands on his hands for a while. When someone asks what the point was, he tells them to turn the picture upside down and check with an observatory - who tell them that the Earth's orbit has changed.

Given that the total area of two hands is well under 0.1 square meters, the logical consequence would be him driving into the ground with ridiculous amounts of force, but apparently comic book physics doesn't work like that.

[RockDoctor]

Given that the total area of two hands is well under 0.1 square meters, the logical consequence would be him driving into the ground with ridiculous amounts of force, but apparently comic book physics doesn't work like that.

Sorry, I've just been facing a torrent of the Niburu-gormless in response to Konstantin Batygin (half of the "Brown & Batygin" team who've re-ignited the "hunt for Planet 9" ; Brown rejoicing in the nickname of "PlutoKiller" for his former activities in this area). Some people do think real world physics works like that.
Quoth one, "If we replaced the asteroid belt with Planet 9, just for 6000 years, would it have noticeable effects?" This after Batygin had stated there best model for P9 is about 6 Earth-masses (so, a sub-Neptune). "Replace something in orbit with something about 50000 times heavier ; will it have an effect? Jeeez, but the moronicity is strong this weekend.
I know I'm a bit too serious about keeping close to physical reality in-game, but sometimes you do despair and want to relax in a sane (if imaginary) universe.
On which subject - Formula 1, then snooker. Real reality! F really does equal m × a !

[ffutures]

Have another one - in The Witches of Karres (1966, expanding a 1949 novelette) by James H. Schmitz the titular witches - who it turns out can be male as well as female, but in this case are women - have reality-distorting "Klaatha powers" that (considering the stories first appeared in Astounding under John W Campbell's editorship) were probably supposed to be psionic in origin. The hero, who is not from Karres, is conned into helping two witches escape from slavery on another planet. They then proceed to use their powers to "help" him - mostly by getting him into more trouble.

One of these powers they use is the Sheewash drive, consisting of several small pieces of wire twisted together in a special arrangement and activated by Klaatha. It's used several times in the story as a super-drive to make the hero's spaceship cross vast interstellar distances in a fraction of the usual time. Later in the story it's mentioned that the witches occasionally move their planet from one solar system to another to get away from nosy neighbours - the hero then has a vision of a stadium filled with witches activating a Sheewash drive built of twisted girders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witches_of_Karres

[RockDoctor]

One of these powers they use is the Sheewash drive, consisting of several small pieces of wire twisted together in a special arrangement and activated by Klaatha. {...} Later in the story it's mentioned that the witches occasionally move their planet from one solar system to another to get away from nosy neighbours -

Sounds good, so the scores in the pockets of out list of planetary drives are :

1. (yellow) ffutures with SuperBoy doing a dope-on-a-rope trick
2. (green) Disembodied having everyone's chain pulled by the Tardis
3. (brown) ffutures' again with the "Sheewash" drive from the planet Karres
4. (blue) -
5. (pink) -
6. (black) -

Jones had better buck his ideas up to give people come more time to get their entries in.

[Disembodied]

In the Red Dwarf episode "White Hole" the crew use a thermonuclear device to cause a solar flare, knocking a planet off its orbit, sending it cannoning around a solar system, colliding with other planets, and eventually plugging up a white hole …

[RockDoctor]

In the Red Dwarf episode "White Hole" the crew use a thermonuclear device to cause a solar flare, knocking a planet off its orbit, sending it cannoning around a solar system, colliding with other planets, and eventually plugging up a white hole …

I can't give Series and Episode on that, but I think it sounds like "H"-Head and The Slob at work. 4th position in the rack for you.
Actually, that's sufficient reason to set a series or two up on the media server.

[ffutures]

In the Red Dwarf episode "White Hole" the crew use a thermonuclear device to cause a solar flare, knocking a planet off its orbit, sending it cannoning around a solar system, colliding with other planets, and eventually plugging up a white hole …

Which reminded me of this - not sure if it counts since it's something a character read about rather than actually occurring in the story. From the final episode of the first TV series of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

Ford Prefect : I read of one planet in the seventh dimension got used as a ball in a game of intergalactic bar billiards. Got potted straight into a black hole, killed ten billion people.
Arthur Dent : Madness. Total madness.
Ford Prefect : Yeah. Only scored thirty points too.
Arthur Dent : Where'd you read that?
Ford Prefect : Oh, a book.
Arthur Dent : What book?
Ford Prefect : The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.
Arthur Dent : Oh. That thing.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1113232/ch ... /nm0228797