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August 26, 2023, 11:02
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The Void

I've always enjoyed the Voyager episode "Night" but for a few logical flaws, one being the fact that once they emerge from the area the stars all of a sudden blink into existence as if they were coming out of a haze. Though the area would be dark, you should be able to see some stars. They would be dim but visible, just as many stars more then 2,500 light years away (the diameter of the Void) can be viewed by us from Earth.

Then I got to thinking about how this might be possible. There are Dark Nebulae made of small, solid grains of cosmic dust that block visible light but glow in Infrared. This is interesting since the alien on Voyager was invisible until they shown a light on it - it's possible it could have been an Infrared light. He had adapted to living in the area perfectly.

Dark Nebulae:
Composed of small solid grains of cosmic dust. These dark nebulae block visible light and glow in Infrared. Dark Nebulae can hide entire galaxies. They often reveal themselves by an absence of stars in an area.

Additionally, Voyager was unable to make use of it's sensors to detect stars on the other side of the Void because the theta radiation being produced by the contaminated antimatter :-/ that the Malon were dumping in the area. So, with sensors active they could have easily seen the stars and known how far they had to go using other spectra, but they were reliant on visual only, thus they were unable to see them.

So, given that information, the final scene of them emerging from a haze into a field of stars actually makes sense. They were emerging from the massive nebula.

Clearly there were stars in the Void itself, somewhere for the aliens to live, and for the vortex to be created from, you just can't see them without the aid of other spectra besides visible light - which was impossible at the time because of the Malon pollution.

If you'd prefer to stick with there being no or few stars though, which does not negate the above explanation, then...

The Milky Way most likely collided with a galaxy that was larger then it is some billions of years ago, stripping the Milky Way of a stream of stars in that part of the galaxy between the Sagittarius and Centaurus Arms where Voyager was travelling at the time.

This "stripping of stars" from smaller galaxies to larger galaxies is not unusual, in fact the Milky Way is currently doing exactly that to the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy which is on the far side of the galactic core from us and was only discovered as late as 1994.

(Theory by Bond, James Bond)



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