A little footnote on the Battlestar Galactica debate: It’s been suggested that perhaps this is all happening in our past, and that the Colonials actually establish the human presence on Earth that gives rise to us. To an extent, this notion is a holdover from TOS, whose voice-over narration basically told us that this is the case. (More precisely, it was the Thirteenth Tribe that established the human presence, then Galactica and the fleet show up in 1980 to fight pollution, evil land developers, and Nazis.) To give you a taste of the inanity that was the original BSG, here’s that introductory narration:

There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. That they may have been the architects of the great pyramids, or the lost civilizations of Lemuria or Atlantis. Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive somewhere beyond the heavens…

It hides behind the “There are those who believe. . .” cop-out, but in context, we’re clearly supposed to believe that the “life here began out there” idea is basically true: i.e., humans aren’t native to Earth. The contradiction between this and every shred of genetic, archaeological, anatomical, and anthropological evidence we have about the origins of Homo sapiens is consistent with the general Mormon wackaloonery of the original series; further, it’s consistent with the general carelessness in portraying basic scientific realities that permeates that show. (They never even bother with the conceit of FTL travel, for example; it always looks like they’re using their piddly chemical rockets to zip around the galaxy.) The main point is this: We know humans evolved here naturally, because we have fossils of us and our mammalian ancestors going back hundreds of millions of years. We’re even becoming able to track the genetic changes that occurred over that period and compare them with the changes that occurred in our fellow animals. “Those who believe” that we’re not related to them are ignorant or insane. Or just lying.

With the reimagining of BSG as naturalistic science fiction (and since, as far as I know, he has no religious or ideological axe to grind) it’s unlikely that Moore would be that cavalier with rewriting everything we know about human history. Further, they’ve already written themselves into a corner with the reliance on the zodiacal constellations as navigational markers, and that’s really what I want to talk about here.

The premise that the Earth that the Colonials are searching for is the one place from which all these constellations are visible simultaneously limits us not just in space but in time as well. Stars move as they orbit the galactic center, and they move at different velocities and in different directions relative to us. The changing alignments render constellations unrecognizable within a million years. Since we don’t know exactly how much wiggle room Gaeta’s computer allows when it gives him a match, as it did in “Revelations”, we can’t precisely say how far removed in time they are from the present, but we can probably assume they look generally the same as the patterns in the Tomb of Athena, which are the modern constellations. (Some observant fans have claimed they spotted Orion in some of the recent external shots.)

So the past is eliminated as a likely possibility because (a) it’s unlikely Moore will ignore the evolutionary history of our species to a crackpot religious extent, and (b) any scenario in which humanity is native to Earth but the Colonials repopulate it and reboot civilization after a planetwide calamity would have to have occurred impossibly recently given the constraints of the constellation patterns that we know they recognize. Why impossibly? Because if a planetwide technological civilization existed and had a nuclear war that recently, there’d be evidence all over the frakin’ place. The door’s still open for Moore to do some hand-waving and have something miraculous happen that wipes all those pesky burned-out buildings and radioactive isotopes away, but that would be lame.

The idea that the series is set in our future is much more plausible; it would, after all, explain how they know Greek mythology.

As usual, Carl Sagan explained the astronomy better than anyone else I’ve seen:

COSMOS - Clip 11: “Constellations Over Millions of Years”

Seriously, Cosmos is a great series. Watch it.

Tags: Astronomy, BSG