Star Trek Voyager's IMPOSSIBLY Tiny Planet 

Those aren’t banded gas clouds. The entire micro-“planet” is an art installation commissioned by the Federation for Star Fleet recruiting videos. The planet was carved from colored sedimentary rock, hauled out to space, spun, then decorated with a ring system. There was a bit of controversy about funding the project, but even its critics agree “It looks cool.”

"So you beamed down to a random location on a _planet,_ and it just _happened_ to be within walking distance of the 'plot'?" "Well, the planet _was_ only 6.2km in diameter." "Oh, well that's perfectly reasonable then."

The VFX artist seeing this: "Dude, you could've just said the reflection didn't make sense. You didn't have to make my children ashamed of their father."

I imagine the 3D artists from Voyager watching this and they’re pulling their hair out while muttering to themselves, “it’s just a show. It’s just a goddamned tv show!”

3D artist: Ah its finished! Art director: Cool! How bout ad a reflection on the rings? 3D artist: Yea good idea!

That's why Voyager does a flyby because the Dwarf Planet is Technically impossible yet, there it is. Definitely needs a scan.

Those reasons would give full justification for Voyager tanking an interest in that Object.

This is why you have to be very careful when you make a show that has a huge nerd following. We'll calculate the dumbest things that we notice.

Q made the planet as a joke

My thought: the 3d artist who did the intro is not a scientist. :)

If Pluto is now categorized as a dwarf planet, this is OBVIOUSLY a "gas dwarf". The treknobabble explanation is probably "graviton infused squeezeum gas"

This is from the episode “One Big Ship” where Voyager was transformed to huge size by a spatial distortion. They were able to get some extra distance behind them because their speed scaled up along with it.

OR! This was a COLOSSAL Voyager sister ship!

Honey, I shrank the gas giant.

"Whenever you notice something like that...a wizard did it"-Lucy Lawless

It's fine, Q just changed the gravitational constant of the universe in that one area so he could have a cute pocket-sized gas giant planet.

so from what I've understood the 3D animator could've easily avoided this if he didn't add the ships reflection on to the ring?

"Oh can we have the ship reflect in the ice asteroids?" - "They're too far away, the reflection would be tiny." - "Just make it bigger, then! Noone is gonna care." Never underestimate Trekkies.

"This planet seems impossible." ... and that's why there's a Federation vessel with a science suite doing a flyby, I guess? "Explore strange new worlds" is in the mission statement, after all.

THIS is why I love our Fandom. We obsess over things like this and get such massive satisfaction out of it.

Easy answer: this was an artificial satellite they just visited. The species that built it had a sense of Aesthetics that made the idea of using artificial gravity and whatnot to make their station look like a planet a reasonable expense. I mean, why would Voyager be cruising that slowly that close to a random Planet anyway?

“It’s not only small for a planet, it’s smaller than many asteroids!” IT’S SMALLER THAN A CITY, MAN

This is just part of an ongoing scaling issue that has always existed in Star Trek (and a lot of other sci-fi) since the beginning. When Kirk's enterprise is seen orbiting planets in TOS, you can see the 1701 arcing. But it should be so small compared to the planet, and so distant from the planet behind it, that it's path should appear completely straight to the naked eye. If it arced that much compared to its size, it would do a full circle much smaller than the planet behind it and much closer. The bottom line is that they don't want to put it at correct scale because it wouldn't communicate an orbit to the eye of the audience. Same thing in this Voyager shot, except that the rings make the flawed perspective a little more obvious.

Video effects people: “I knew we shouldn’t have let executives talked us into adding the frickin reflection!”

i just think you like showing Robert Picardo's name over and over :)

You gotta look at this from the perspective of the time it was made: In the mid 90´s that effect was breath-taking. They are just trying to show off their CGI, basically. Even most people like me, who found it implausible back then already when it aired, were pushing that concern aside and just enjoyed the spectacle.

They found the Kerbol system

“The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.” -- Neil deGrasse Tyson

"It's only a model." "Shh!"

This is an “L-Class Planet”. They are impossible for us to see in detail with our current telescopic technology, but on stardate 12561.8, (year 2247) the constellation-class starship Ferdinand will classify its type upon examination of verified data from a class 1 probe.

It has a solid uranium core 80% of the diameter. And a thin dense layer of a hydrogen uranium compound gas.

The funny thing is that in Star Trek, all of this could totally happen. There's a planet whose atmosphere speeds up time.

I know how it's possible! 1st law of science fiction physics: "The laws of physics are only applied when the creator wants them to."

I guess the Little Prince got himself a bigger and fancier planet at some point.

I've seen Voyager, the explanation is simple: IT'S A SUBSPACE THINGEY.

Now we must bring this to the star trek writers and have them make an episode about it

Let's not forget that in the "Blink of an Eye" episode there was a planet that literally rotated once per second.

This is why details can matter a lot, even in terms of logical errors during effects production. :-D If they had dropped the unnecessary reflection on the rings, we'd just write that planet off as an ordinary gas giant with rings.

Either the planet is frickin' tiny or Voyager is frickin' huge. How large would Voyager be if we calculate the planet from a Saturn sized reference frame?

Voyager VFX crew: this will be so cool the fans will love it. The Fans:...

Breaking News! Hollywood creatives get physics wrong.

it was either this or a planet with a screeming sun.

A couple of possibilities that occurred to me while watching: It could be an artificial construct of some kind. There were plenty of "forgotten" artificial planets in the Alpha Quadrant that were rediscovered in both TOS and TNG, namely the amusement park planet that recreated the crew's innermost desires and the Dyson Sphere, so there is precedent for artificial worlds, plus given all of the fallen and forgotten civilizations found by Voyager in the Delta Quadrant, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say it was a leftover relic from an ancient civilization. It could also be the work of Q or another Q-like entity as either a science experiment or a prank done out of boredom (or even done as a dare between juvenile members of a Q-like race). There is also the possibility that the planet's core is made up of some sort of hyperdense material or particle with unusual properties, as with the tachyon core planet that progressed through time at a much more accelerated rate than the space around it. Others have speculated that the planet could have formed around a piece of a neutron star that was ejected from its parent or could have some sort of micro black hole in it's center. We know that micro black holes do exist in Star Trek as most Romulan military ships are powered by artificially created micro singularities. To my understanding, such micro singularities can be formed naturally but are very short lived as they lack the sufficient mass to maintain themselves, but there could be some quirk in the fabric of space/subspace at that location to allow such a micro singularity to persist and build up a planetary sphere around itself or perhaps some sort of exotic particle "contaminated" a micro singularity to make it more stable. Personally, I lean more towards the first idea that it's some sort of artificial construct, though to what purpose I couldn't guess. If I were forced to take a guess, though, I'd say it was probably a science experiment either as a test for a new technology or as a means of generating power for a civilization. It may also be the remnant of some ancient conflict; it could be the remnant of a gravitic weapon of some sort, like a massive gravity bomb or some sort of gravity based beam weapon that malfunctioned catastrophically. Or, it could be that there used to be a much larger planet there that was hit with a massive gravitic weapon attack (or the target of a test fire of a gravitic weapon) that caused the planet to collapse in on itself and this tiny ball of condensed gas was the result. Of course, this is all speculation as there is not nearly enough information from that one short clip to base any sort of real conclusions on, but those are, to my mind, the most likely scenarios for why such a small, complex planet could exist within the framework of the Star Trek universe.

I'm reminded of Spinal Tap's 18 inch stonehenge model that was supposed to be 18 feet. Oops.

You've heard of gas giants, well how about *gas dwarves*

this is a stretch but, maybe, if a highly dense object (very small neutron star?) wandered into the solar system at creation, it might been able to form a gas shell from the dust and pulled together some rings, but everything would have to happen just right. but, as we seen recently in astronomy, anything is possible.

The simplest answer is usually the correct one. The visual team that created the intro thought it would be cool without considering the ramifications of the scale of the reflection. tl;dr they fucked up because hurrrrr shiny

Visual Artist: Makes Reflection of Ship This guy: *cracks knuckles* "That was a mistake"

Well, if the planet had a dense core with a serious magnetic field or a core made of a high atomic count like osmium, then it's possible to have a planet of that size with a complex ring structure and gases. If you look at Venus, from the outside, it appears to be a gas planet, but we know it to be a solid planet of incredible volcanic activity, giving it the appearance of a gaseous planet. A similar situation could be looming here on the Voyager planet.

Maybe it's an artificial structure created by an alien civilization. Possibly a monument to their long destroyed host planet around which their home moon once orbited.

To be fair: it could just be an extraordinarily dense planet.

The only way I could explain such a gravity for such a small and relatively light object is a dense, very heavy core. Really heavy. We're speaking brown dwarf kinda heavy. But for some reason it's not a brown dwarf but blue instead.

It could have an incredibly dense and heavy core, in turn giving the planet enough of a gravitational influence to maintain its shape and atmosphere.

Someone at CBS hire this man to do scaling for all STAR TREK Series from now on!

here is an idea that "planet" is not a real planet is was a spaceship or station made by / for a SUPER RICH "person". or just a giant art piece.

Are you telling me that starships with warp engines are not real? :D JK. Funny video.

If they just left the reflection off it would have been ok.

Im not sure if you know this but Star Trek is NOT a documentary.

It’s the Rick and Morty planet. There. Solved.

The craziness of the planet is why voyager makes a fly-by

Guess this planet is made of some super dense material, the closest thing to this in real life is a Neutron Star, and it would have to be made of degenerate matter. It could be a cold Neutron Star with a small but dense atmosphere.

:video starts: "Meh, it could just be perspective." :reflection: "Ohhhhhhh."

Thanks for this - I always knew that planet looked weird! As for explanations - errrm, maybe it's not a reflection, just a bunch of rocks in the gas giant's rings that merely happen to look like the Voyager?

Maybe that is why Voyager flew so close. Because the planey is so unique and they simply had to conduct some readings and observations of this anomaly.

I love the Star Trek fandom! Like who else would do this? Measure a planet by a reflection from the intro of one spin off series! Star Trek is the oldest and most intricate fandom which is why I love it so much!

This is an age-old set building technique called forced perspective. See also: how they made the hobbits small in The Lord of the Rings, and how they made Cinderella's castle look tall in Disney World

"If you're wondering how he eats and breathes And other science facts, Just repeat to yourself "It's just a show, I should really just relax..." A la la! 🤓

I figure it’s something relatively obvious like it just has an extremely dense but small core. Basically a tiny super dense ball of whatever that’s on the verge of collapsing into a black hole, but not quite yet. The high gravity could allow some wonky physics at a very non typical scale.

AH HA! It’s a holodeck simulation! Puzzle solved!

You're being way too kind. In fact this is the case in every episode of every star trek show ever made. They have never rendered the planet at a realistic size for the ship in orbit shots. "Ah but," fans will say "you don't know what altitude they're orbiting at, the planet could just be very far away". No. Before the end of the shot you can see the curve of the ships trajectory. The planet they're orbiting is never any bigger than a few km across at most. I have no doubt this is because in the pre-orbital-space-station era when the original show was made, the only good planet photos we had seen were from the Apollo astronauts either on the moon or near it. And when they finally saw real orbital photos they thought "nah, doesn't look orbity enough".

Asura: "Every time I gaze through my astronomical telescope, I am always amazed at how gassy Uranus is." Norn: "I can't help it. It's the barbecued Dolyak meat." Asura: (face palm) Guild Wars 2

"I _told_ you to skip the reflection, Kevin! But noooo..."

Trek fan with a little too much time on his hands 😂 🖖

Yo, EC Henry, if you're *not* an astrophysicist, then, may I ask what it is that you *do* for a living? I mean, all your videos are *super* in depth and well-researched, and since you've done videos about linguistics, astrophysics, starship design, and the math of the Star Trek economy (to name a few), it seems that you're at least a decently familiar with all of those topics. So...what in the world do you do that gives you this much knowledge on this many diverse subjects?! Or do you really just do, like, hours and hours of research for each 5 minute video? Because if that's the case, then I'm pretty sure that would make you one of the few RU-vidrs I know who is *that* dedicated to each video. Like, that is some seriously impressive dedication my dude.

I have yet to see a real answer to the question. The real answer is that white dwarfs die much faster than thought and two dead low mass white dwarfs (black dwarfs) hit each other breaking into billions of pieces. A small piece of the "black dwarf" found its way into a solar system where it's gravity was strong enough to capture an atmosphere and rings.

I guess now we know why Starfleet was so interested in it. I guess they sent Voyager to study it

The orbital velocity of such a ring system would be insanely fast.

Depends on the actual view, for example if you used zoom on a camera it can throw proportions off especially at certain angles

An object that small wouldn't even be round. There is a limit of mass, at which a stellar body becomes a sphere and this "planet", judging by its size, cannot be round. Though, if it's composed of something heavy, then, perhaps it could be. Star Trek is, after all, 70% science fiction, not a science fact.

hypothesis: this is the exposed core of a now completely black-cold neutrol star. Prior to cooling it was actually even smaller but the way it crystalized as it cooled caused it to expand. It's a sphere of frozen neutroniium 'foam' with roughly the mass of Luna. The banding was the result of shear tearing as it solidified at different lattitudes due to different torque values, as its rotational momentum ground apart at different 'sticking' strata.

Voyager is not flying my smart man, I love Voyager the way it is, don’t mess with my favorite Science Fiction passion.

I bet you the CGI guys never figured on this level of scrutiny!

The purpose of the Star Trek intros is to inspire and express the imagination of the human mind. Imagining little fiercely dense spherical planets with reflective rings is only a sample of the composure's imagination. I did note the reflection and I thought is was a excellent element to add to the scene to give dimensional, or visual depth. If there is anything I would of added to the scene is to see a cool splatter or wave of disruption of the ring's aggregate as Star Ship Voyager passes through it.

"Bloody nerds, stop ruining TV for the rest of us." ~By me, a nerd

Love the science and research that went into this. I concur with the reasoning, but would logically say it's an error in the production. Clearly the reflection, as great as it seemed, is a blooper,

Great. Now I'm going to be thinking about it every time I watch Voyager. Haha

Q.

This is why I still like youtube; you still run across these gems every once in a while

That Always Bothered Me

Wouldn't this be solved if the planet was made out of something astonishingly dense?

Could be the reflection is deceptive: the math assumes a clean reflection but rings are made of little floating ice bits that reflect light in unpredictable ways, it could be that Voyager is much further from the rings and its reflection simply looks bigger than it should for its distance.

I bet the CGI artists of the show didn’t expect that several decades later, someone would analyze the clip, do tons of science and lore research, create 3D models and animation, and create a video that would be viewed more than 600M times that proves the physical impossibility of the scale and dimensions portrayed in their 5 sec clip... Of course they just wanted to make something that looks good on TV. Star Trek visual design was always about portraying the strangeness and beauty of space rather than the actual vastness and scale. I will never doubt the observational skills and obsessive nitpicky-ness of sci-fi geeks haha

I choose to believe there's a huge moon/planet above the shot, moving past with Voyager, that amazingly has a very similar reflection on the ring as the ship. Also what we're looking at might not be Voyager but the mimetic copy after losing its molecular cohesion, spread to an enormous 'shadow' resembling the original form.

Janeway:"If that kazon ship gets away we'll be in big trouble. Disable it's engines before it gets to that gas giant." Obi wan Kenobi: "that's no gas giant. It's a poorly rendered intro sequence." Janeway stares confusingly at Obi wan standing at ensign Kim's operation console. Janeway:"Tuvok! How did you lose the high ground!?"

The star parallax in the TNG intro shows that the stars are about 15 meters wide.

This was the one shot from the intro that always felt off to me, but I never further thought about it. Thanks for pointing it out. This shows why everyone needs some scientific understanding, but especially artists, who are depicting science (fiction)

Maybe it was artificially constructed by someone who thought it looked pretty. ;P

Artificial planet

There's this theory that characters like the cookie monster, who speak in incomplete English, are actually good for developing language skills in children. The idea is that hearing nothing but proper English leaves a child linguistically complacent, while being exposed to improper English from time to time makes a child think about it and analyze (on some level) why Cookie Monster's speech is so different, thus improving their ability to recognize improper speech when they hear it. I wonder if there's something similar going on here. If there were no such errors in Voyager, then this video wouldn't exist. There would be no reason to think about such an innocuous shot in the show's opening. The calculations and research featured in this video wouldn't have been needed and this learning opportunity would be gone.

I guess this explains why the Voyager is flying so close to it. They wanted to take a close look at the impossible planet.