Earth's Location

[Verno]

Ok, here's another one I'd love to hear some opinions on.

Where is Earth?

In regards to Beast Wars, it's stated that Earth's location is a carefully guarded secret in the years post The Great War and the signing of the Pax Cybertronia.

But how is that possible?

Transformers, on both sides, have been trapsing back and forth from Earth to Cybertron for years, how is it that it's location is suddenly a secret?

Was it moved?

Was it blown up and the population moved to another planet?

Its reason for being a secret is obvious: with the development of TransWarp technology, someone might want to go back in time and change thing (like that would happen), but how could they control that information?

I'd love to hear some theories.

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

It's here.

On a more serious note, wasn't G1 Cybertron really close to Earth/our solar system after The Ultimate Doom anyway? For a species with a decent space fleet which is big on exploring the Maximals did a pretty decent job of keeping a key historical planet a secret.

[GoktimusPrime]

After the signing of the Pax Cybertronia, all contact and travel to Earth was forbidden and its location became secret. Hence the current generation of Transformers had lost the ancient knowledge of how to travel to Earth.

At the end of the Great War the Transformers completely abandoned Earth -- and when a location becomes abandoned, knowledge about that location can become lost. It happens with cities on Earth too, e.g.
* The Arabian city of Ubar (aka Pillam)
* The Greek city of Troy
* The Incan capital of Vilcabamba
* Machu Picchu (aka "The Lost City of the Incas")
* The Phoenician city of Carthage
* The Chinese city of Xanadu
* Jordan's Petra (where the Tomb of the Primes was discovered in ROTF)
* The Aztec city of Aztlan
...et al.

And there are some lost cities that have never been rediscovered - and we only know about them in legend, so whether or not these cities even exist is questionable. e.g. Camelot, Atlantis etc. Some legendary/mythological cities have actually been found, like Troy -- but most remain legend.

Look at the location of Earth in post-War Cybertron like a Dead Language (e.g. Latin). It was once widely known, but the knowledge has since been lost and is only kept by a small minority (i.e. surviving Autobots and Decepticons). When knowledge stops being transmitted from one generation to another, then that knowledge can be lost. That's why nobody speaks Latin as a mother tongue today (even the Pope speaks it as a non-native language - his mother tongue being German).

Odie: Cybertron returned to Alpha Centauri after the events of "The Ultimate Doom," -- hence why all those crazy global storms that were tearing Earth apart stopped. I don't know how big the Maximals' expeditionary fleet was... we didn't really see any other expeditionary vessels besides the Axalon and the ship that Botanica served on. The only fleet we did see was actually a military fleet (日本の自衛隊みたいかなぁ*) -- although they didn't last very long against Unicron, heh. It's possible that all travel to the Milky Way may have been forbidden, hence locating a tiny speck like Earth within an entire galaxy would be rather difficult. It would be very time and resource consuming to scour the Milky Way to find Earth... much like if we were to try scouring Earth's oceans in search of Atlantis. It would be far easier to steal the Golden Disk and learn of Earth's exact location.

*like Japan's self defence force

[griffin]

Considering how everything Cybertronian that leaves the orbit of their planet manages to crash here, I'd imagine that Cybertron is like 5 meters away from Earth...

(anyone seen that recent DrWho episode, of the aliens that no one can remember once they turn away? Maybe something like that prevents everyone from either planet from seeing or knowing where the other one is.)

[GoktimusPrime]

And in every continuity the Autobots always seem to arrive in the United States of America.

My favourite line in "Monsters Vs Aliens":
"Once again, a UFO has landed in America, the only country UFOs ever seem to land in."

[Verno]

The 'loss of information' is perhaps the most plausable, but something doesn't quite sit right. I mean, they're robots, they have hard-disks for memory, not this fleshy thing we have. They also live for hundreds, thousands or in some cases, millenia it seems.

I was musing upon it this morning in my theory class and came up with the following:

Perhaps it's location wasn't that well known to begin with. Leaders knew it's exact location, troops simply knew 'of' it but had no reason to know exactly where it was.

Ships and Space Bridges could get you there, but it's not like you had to walk there yourself if you were a soldier.

So if the co-ordinates weren't that widely known to begin with, it would then be easier for the information to be lost over time, and squirrelled away by those in the know.

[Paulbot]

Perhaps it's location wasn't that well known to begin with. Leaders knew it's exact location, troops simply knew 'of' it but had no reason to know exactly where it was.

Ships and Space Bridges could get you there, but it's not like you had to walk there yourself if you were a soldier.

So if the co-ordinates weren't that widely known to begin with, it would then be easier for the information to be lost over time, and squirrelled away by those in the know.

This is likely, in most G1 stories it's not like there's a lot of ships going back and forth from Earth and Cybertron.

It's also possible that in the Beast Wars timeline that some Maximals or Predacons, or both, were travelling to Earth anyway on the sly since both groups had Great War veterans in their ranks. Whatever BW Megatron did to travel where he wanted to go seemed to be a fluke and caused some sort of rift - I'm not convinced time travel was that easy.

[Verno]

It's also possible that in the Beast Wars timeline that some Maximals or Predacons, or both, were travelling to Earth anyway on the sly since both groups had Great War veterans in their ranks. Whatever BW Megatron did to travel where he wanted to go seemed to be a fluke and caused some sort of rift - I'm not convinced time travel was that easy.

Yeah, I've always subscribed to the idea that The Predacon Ship had a prototype TransWarp engine in which they'd basically hope to hit not only Earth but also hit the right time.

When they arrived, Megatron didn't really care if it was Earth or not, but simply if it had Energon.

The crude TransWarp engine tore a hole in Space and Time, and it created a wormhole, through which Depth Charge fell in his Star Hopper; the area of space had been ruled off-limits by the Maximal High Council - perhaps another ship had fallen through so they called it a no go zone.

The TransWarp cruiser flown by Ravage seemed to also travel through the same wormhole. But why his ship wasn't slammed with the transwarp wavefront like Depth Charge's is unknown. Perhaps it did fly on its own route as it was TransWarp capable.

But yes, the Predacon Ship's flight definately caused some kind of rift in Space/Time.

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

Odie: Cybertron returned to Alpha Centauri after the events of "The Ultimate Doom," -- hence why all those crazy global storms that were tearing Earth apart stopped. I don't know how big the Maximals' expeditionary fleet was... we didn't really see any other expeditionary vessels besides the Axalon and the ship that Botanica served on. The only fleet we did see was actually a military fleet (日本の自衛隊みたいかなぁ*) -- although they didn't last very long against Unicron, heh. It's possible that all travel to the Milky Way may have been forbidden, hence locating a tiny speck like Earth within an entire galaxy would be rather difficult. It would be very time and resource consuming to scour the Milky Way to find Earth... much like if we were to try scouring Earth's oceans in search of Atlantis. It would be far easier to steal the Golden Disk and learn of Earth's exact location.

*like Japan's self defence force

Really? I always thought it just ended up somewhere around the edges of our solar system, hence why the Combaticons and Starscream were able to fly there on their own...
That must've been one big explosion that knocked it away, lucky for the Autobots it didn't wipe out Earth. Take that physics!

[GoktimusPrime]

The 'loss of information' is perhaps the most plausable, but something doesn't quite sit right. I mean, they're robots, they have hard-disks for memory, not this fleshy thing we have. They also live for hundreds, thousands or in some cases, millenia it seems.

Yes but if the information stopped being transmitted before the rise of Maximals and Predacons, then that new generation would simply not have it. As Maximals and Predacons became the majority on Cybertron, then those with knowledge of Earth became a minority.

Perhaps it's location wasn't that well known to begin with. Leaders knew it's exact location, troops simply knew 'of' it but had no reason to know exactly where it was.

Ships and Space Bridges could get you there, but it's not like you had to walk there yourself if you were a soldier.

So if the co-ordinates weren't that widely known to begin with, it would then be easier for the information to be lost over time, and squirrelled away by those in the know.

Yep, this sounds totally plausible too. So we'd be looking at a small minority within a small minority of Cybertronians who would know how to get to Earth.