Talk:Asteroids in fiction/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Update flag

I'm removing this, because I have no idea what it is doing in this article (it seems particularly inappropriate to an article about works of fiction). RandomCritic 16:47, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Merger

As far as I can tell, "merger" will essentially take the form of deleting the entire section from the Asteroid article; there's nothing there that isn't already here. Which does not, of course, mean that it's a bad idea. RandomCritic 19:47, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Can anyone hunt this one down?

I remember an old Outer Limits-like episode (B&W, ca. 1960s or early 1970s) taking place on an asteroid, where the plot is about the search for a fossil (Archaeopteryx-like) that an astronaut had glimpsed. He fails to find it (his air running out, or some such) by a hair's breadth (it was litterally behind the last rock he turned back at). Ring any bells? Urhixidur (talk) 05:23, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Earth-to-rubble energy computation

A simple estimation, assuming uniform density, goes as follows. The energy required to pull the Earth apart is equivalent to that released during its formation (one process being just the time-reverse of the other). Midway through the process, we have a central sphere of radius r, density ρ, upon which accretes a shell of thickness dr (same density). The energy involved is just the gravitational potential energy, GMm/r. The central mass M is (4/3)πr³ρ, the shell mass m is 4πr²drρ. Thus the total energy is:

Plugging in the numbers for G (6.67242×10−11 m³/kg s²), R (6.371×106 m), and ρ (5.515×103 kg/m³) we get 2.24×1032 J. Dividing by the Sun's luminosity of 3.85×1026 W yields 5.83×105 s = 6.75 d. The equation can be rewritten as 3GM²/5R, if you wish to apply it to other bodies such as Venus, Mars, Jupiter, etc. Urhixidur (talk) 19:12, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Gundam Entry

Sorry for not noticing the paragraph down there before adding stuff. The problem here is, Juno(renamed Luna II in the series) is a real asteroid, while the others have no real world reference. Would it be better to have it seperated from the virtual ones and listed under Juno, or would it be better to tag everything down in the virtual section? Seems like the virtual section is a bit to long for now(most information could be found on the page I linked to on Luna II anyway), we can trim it down and just mention the names and location instead of having the lengthy plot here. MythSearchertalk 07:20, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps a Gundam Wing reference can be added under Mineral Extraction. There were various asteroids designated MO#. With MO III being destroyed in Endless Waltz; It was a mobile suit factory/base. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.167.230.161 (talk) 19:04, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Navigational hazard examples

I was surprised to see that the navigational hazard section has no actual examples of asteroids as a navigational hazard in science fiction.

Can I suggest: a good example to start it off might be Asimov's 1938 story Marooned off Vesta - his first published story. It opens with a spacecraft that got damaged seriously as a result of the captain's decision to take the more hazardous flight through the asteroid belt rather than flying over it :). Robert Walker (talk) 15:32, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

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Fiction Negativity

No more berating fiction jokes please!  This article could do without the whole, "unlikely in the next millennium" attack on the credibility of the fiction.  Much of fiction invents new historical events, one.  Two there are interstellar asteroids which would kill badly and are not easily spotted even.  And three this used to be considered a real threat and still is by scientists for a very long, long, long time.  This wasn't just fiction being stupid! 64.109.54.132 (talk) 22:54, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

poor

This article is disjointed to the point of being almost incoherent and is certainly useless. Citing few early works, one of which may have the wrong author. Does it mean to refer to Crack of Dawn by William Minto rather than Robert Crombie? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.121.126.67 (talk) 19:22, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Deleting the examples has broken references elsewhere

I came to this article from the "In fiction" section of 324 Bamberga. Now there's no longer any mention of that asteroid here. Presumably the same is true for many of the other former examples. Just deleting the examples without modifying the articles that referenced them is sloppy to the point of vandalism. 2601:C6:4100:F980:3934:6750:E4CE:7832 (talk) 15:57, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Using the "What links here" link in the sidebar (which leads to Special:WhatLinksHere/Asteroids in fiction) allows you to see which articles link here. When you notice something like this, you could always fix it yourself. I have now done so for you. I would argue that adding unsourced WP:Original research to Wikipedia in the first place is way more disruptive than cleaning up an article without adjusting all incoming links from other articles. We certainly wouldn't want to discourage people from improving articles by imposing additional workloads to other articles, now would we? TompaDompa (talk) 17:42, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

"1 Ceres in fiction" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect 1 Ceres in fiction has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 February 21 § 1 Ceres in fiction until a consensus is reached. Steel1943 (talk) 20:36, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Unrealistic depiction in film/tv

I recall some sources discussing how sf films and tv show unrealistically dense asteroid fields for stunning visuals and various plot points like navigating through asteroid fields (Star Trek, possibly The Expanse, Star Wars, etc.). Might be worth mentioning if we can locate those sources. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:40, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

See the "Navigational hazard" section. I'll see if I can find sources discussing the visual appeal aspect. TompaDompa (talk) 11:46, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

GA Review

Passed. Ghosts of Europa (talk) 05:30, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

GA toolbox
Reviewing
This review is transcluded from Talk:Asteroids in fiction/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: TompaDompa (talk · contribs)

Reviewer: Ghosts of Europa (talk · contribs) Hello! I've enjoyed your previous articles on planets and the Sun in fiction. Looking forward to reviewing this! 04:48, 20 March 2024 (UTC)


GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)
  1. It is reasonably well written.
    a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):
  2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.
    a (reference section): b (inline citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism):
  3. It is broad in its coverage.
    a (major aspects): b (focused):
  4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.
    Fair representation without bias:
  5. It is stable.
    No edit wars, etc.:
  6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.
    a (images are tagged and non-free content have non-free use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
  7. Overall:
    Pass/Fail:

This is a very entertaining and educational article!

  • No edit warring.
  • Good images with captions and permissive licenses.
  • Neutral.
  • This does a great job providing enough scientific background for me to understand these topics, without going overboard with detail. It remains clear and focused throughout.
    • It could use a working definition of "asteroid". The wikilink to asteroid is kind of misleading. That article says an asteroid orbits within the inner Solar System, but this article uses a broader definition that includes asteroids from the Oort cloud and other Solar Systems (e.g. in The Empire Strikes Back).
      • That's a rabbit hole I would prefer not going down. Part of the explanation is that the sources of course do not stay strict with their definitions. Asteroids in other systems and in the Oort cloud are really anomalies in this context, and I've tried to make that clear in the text of the article. If you want me to I could remove the Oort cloud example, though I do think it adds value to the article. I could perhaps define asteroids as "medium-sized rocks in space" or something along those lines, but I think that raises more questions than it answers, and I think a plain link to asteroid is better. I really don't want to get into the details about dwarf planets, minor planets, and so on here—it gets very confusing very fast for the average reader, and is not necessary to understand the topic of fictional depictions of asteroids. TompaDompa (talk) 08:44, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
        • Fair point on risking excessive detail. I found the Oort cloud reference a bit disorienting, but I can't claim the article would be better without it. If you think a full definition would be too messy, maybe include a footnote for the Oort cloud example, or an introductory clause, or say something like "asteroid-like objects from the Oort cloud"? I don't know my astronomy well enough to offer a clear solution. In any case, this isn't worth holding the GA over :) Ghosts of Europa (talk) 05:02, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
  • The prose is definitely GA quality, and I didn't catch any errors. You don't have to change anything for this review!
    • That said, if you don't mind some feedback, I think this article is more difficult to read than it needs to be. It uses some very complex sentence structures, and it often discusses multiple works in a single sentence when it's not clear they're tightly linked. Personally, I find this readability script from Phlsph7 extremely helpful. Here's how I would split up a complex sentence without radically rewriting it:
      • Later works mostly recognize that the individual asteroids are very far apart—the average distance between them being comparable to the Earth–Moon distance—and accordingly pose little danger to spacecraft, though this need not necessarily be the case in asteroid fields outside of our Solar System -> Later works mostly recognize that the individual asteroids are very far apart: the average distance between two asteroids is similar to the distance between Earth and the Moon. Accordingly, asteroid belts pose little danger to spacecraft, although this is not necessarily the case outside of our Solar System.
  • No copyvio concerns. Earwig gives a 13% match, almost certainly just because of all the proper name titles.
  • Well cited with no OR. I spot checked 15 citations and found no issues of plagiarism, source-text integrity, unsourced claims, or anything else.

Great work! Ghosts of Europa (talk) 05:27, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Globalizing

1) Niewiadowski, Andrzej; Smuszkiewicz, Antoni (1990). Leksykon polskiej literatury fantastycznonaukowej (in Polish). Wydawn. Poznańskie. ISBN 978-83-210-0892-9 mentions a short story by Polish writer Witold Perkowicz (no pl wiki article yet) in his short story "Posłanie z piątej planety" (no pl wiki article yet but there is one for the anthology with the same title it was published in: Posłanie z piątej planety [pl]). They discuss it briefly saying that the story contains a sf explanation of the formation of an asteroid belt in Solar System, and they use this work as one of the exmaples of sf work that try to posit a scientific hypothesis for various phenomena. Actually you can see this entry, partially attributed this time, at https://encyklopediafantastyki.pl/index.php?title=Powie%C5%9B%C4%87_hipotezy Note the second example related to Tunguska event (pl:Witold Zegalski has article, his short story not yet), which does not seem to be mentioned in our article yet? It probably should have its own paragraph. More recently in Polish sf, Tunguska event is part of the setting of Dukaj's Ice (Dukaj novel). Plenty of sources for Dukaj: [1]. Note [2] which also helps with general context: "The Tunguska event of 1908 in central Siberia has provoked and inspired numerous theories"

2) anime: Knights of Sidonia [3]/[4]/[5], Cowboy Bebop (in particular, episode 'Asteroid Blues' [6], see also sources [7]) and Asteroid in Love come to mind. The first one is set on a hollowed asteroid spaceship/colony. The second one features asteroids in various episodes as locations or navigational hazards. Third one, see plot. There is more but I don't think there are RS for stuff like https://gineipaedia.com/wiki/Category:Asteroids or https://gundam.fandom.com/wiki/Palau / https://gundam.fandom.com/wiki/Axis , those may have to wait for SFE updates... --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 11:49, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

The Tunguska event is something of a tricky one to fit in here, because it hardly gets a mention by sources on the topic of asteroids in fiction. It does get mentioned by a couple of sources that discuss both fact and fiction—in the fact part of the text, as background. When its appearance in fiction gets mentioned by sources on other topics, it is often revealed to have some other cause (aliens or whatever). There's also the question of whether this belongs on a page about asteroids in fiction, as opposed to meteors/meteoroids/meteorites in fiction (or comets in fiction, for that matter—some sources mention it in a cometary context). I don't think it's a good idea to try to cover asteroids and meteors/meteoroids/meteorites in the same article, because while the asteroid–meteoroid distinction is a sliding scale, the "shooting star" phenomenon is really a completely different subject (for the record, Brian Stableford's Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia has one entry for "Asteroid" on pp. 40–41 and another for "Meteorite" on pp. 301–303, while Gary Westfahl's Science Fiction Literature through History: An Encyclopedia has one entry for "Asteroids" on pp. 139–141 and another for "Comets and Meteoroids" on pp. 205–207). I'm inclined to think we should have an impact events in fiction article, which I might work on when I'm done with this article and could incorporate material from both this article and comets in fiction, as well as others. We do however have a Tunguska event in popular culture article (though it is absolutely terrible at present), which I have linked in the "See also" section for now. I have also watchlisted that article (and its redirect Tunguska event in fiction—I'm inclined to think it should be moved back there) and may work on it in the future. TompaDompa (talk) 12:16, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
I have created an impact events in fiction article (currently, a stub). Feel free to add to it. TompaDompa (talk) 22:02, 29 March 2024 (UTC)
I'll take a look at the sources for globalizing later. TompaDompa (talk) 12:18, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
Alright, I have added Knights of Sidonia to the article as an example of converting asteroids into spacecraft. I think that will have to do for now. The explanation for the asteroid belt thing seems to be about the Phaëton hypothesis, which is well-covered in the article. TompaDompa (talk) 16:04, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
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