How did Khan survive?

[Aaron]

Wouldnt it spread out into a ring like we have between Mars and Jupiter?

In 20 years? If the explosion was that violent than Khans planet likely would have been destroyed in a rain of debris.

[Teaos]

How long would a orbit be? 1-2 years? so in about 15 orbits the debre wouldnt have spread out around into a ring?

[Aaron]

How long would a orbit be? 1-2 years? so in about 15 orbits the debre wouldnt have spread out around into a ring?

We have no idea what the orbit of the planet was but things that happen on a stellar scale rarely happen in a short time frame. I've always thought it likely that the planet would eventually reform simply based on the fact that Ceti Alpha V wasn't completely uninhabitable.

[Teaos]

Why would it reform? If it did shouldnt our astroid belt form into a planet?

Well I think it is safe to assume its oribt wouldnt be to much longer than Earths, it was a yellow star (I think) and a M class planet, that means that the planet is a fairly standard distance from the sun, thus its orbit time shoulb be close to Earths.

Thus it probably had anywhere from 10-20 orbits. If the debre was traveling at even slightly different speeds it would spread out quite a bit in that time.

[Sionnach Glic]

It all depends on how the planet was destroyed, and how long its orbit was. It's very concievable that it could have reformed back into a planetoid.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

Well, even if we grant for the sake of argument that Reliant had no reason to check the number of planets, the fact remains that they confused one planet for another. We know for a fact that Reliant was running scans of the planet thought to be Ceti Alpha VI, and we shouldn't expect superficial similarities to fool 23rd Century sensors when our own, current, technology could pick up that the planet has a different mass, radius, magnetic field, composition, etc than it should have. Either Ceti Alpha V & VI were exactly alike (a highly unlikely coincidence) or Reliant mistook one planet for another despite what should have been noticeasble differences.

[Sionnach Glic]

Fair point.

[kostmayer]

Also, the Reliant was specifically looking for a completely dead planet. Assuming they weren't going round looking at Planets at random, it would make sense that they would have pretty detail information on all the planets they were surveying.

[Mark]

Also, how did they not pick up the lifesigns of Khan's people? Just one blip on a dynoscanner. Did they not even scan the planet before beaming down?

[Captain Seafort]

The containers they were living in probably blocked the sensors.

[Mark]

But IIRC they weren't in the containers at the time, right?

[kostmayer]

Ironically, if they hadn't picked that blip up, then Khan, his followers, and the earwigs from hell might well have been disintegrated along with the rest of Ceti Alpha V and turned into a paradise planet. At least till it blew up as well.

(am watching B5 atm - poor Chekov is still chasing blips)

[Teaos]

If Genesis turned Khan into part of the new planet he'd find a way to make it get revenge on Kirk.

[Mark]

Maybe that's why Genesis blew up. Because it hated Kirk!!!

Somehow I doubt it though

[Aaron]

But IIRC they weren't in the containers at the time, right?

The atmosphere was probably interferring, high velocity winds, kralon gas etc.