[Mobius]

Generally, we assume the nebula beyond Gamma Draconis was created by the Shivans, who blew a star up during their war with the Ancients. The fact that in FreeSpace 2 a second Knossos, or Knossos 2, was found in the nebula, leads me to ask you all a question. Shouldn't supernova shockwaves literally pulverize all kinds of ships and installations present in a system, and even cause a lot of problems to assets eventually present in systems only a few light years away from it?

In the custom made campaign Warzone,

Spoiler:

the GTVA found debris of a Sathanas that was supposedly destroyed by a supernova.

Is it plausible? In the cutscene End part 1, we see the supernova shockwave turning a Deimos and a Moloch into pieces. What are the chances that, despite known to be very resistant (it took three Meson Bombs to destroy Knossos 1 in A Flaming Sword), a Knossos could survive that and remain functional for at least eight thousand years?

(Jump to 02:15 if you don't want to watch the entire cutscene.)[/color]

[The E]

Generally, we assume the nebula beyond Gamma Draconis was created by the Shivans, who blew a star up during their war with the Ancients.

Do we? I mean, sure, it's not completely unreasonable to speculate that this is the case, but I cannot remember any strong hints about this in canon.

The fact that in FreeSpace 2 a second Knossos, or Knossos 2, was found in the nebula, leads me to ask you all a question. Shouldn't supernova shockwaves literally pulverize all kinds of ships and installations present in a system, and even cause a lot of problems to assets eventually present in systems only a few light years away from it?

Assuming, of course, that the nebula is a shivan-induced supernova remnant, and that the Knossos was there before the nova went off. I am not sure whether there is any canon information that could answer this question either way.

In the custom made campaign Warzone,

Spoiler:

the GTVA found debris of a Sathanas that was supposedly destroyed by a supernova.

Is it plausible? In the cutscene End part 1, we see the supernova shockwave turning a Deimos and a Moloch into pieces. What are the chances that, despite known to be very resistant (it took three Meson Bombs to destroy Knossos 1 in A Flaming Sword), a Knossos could survive that and remain functional for at least eight thousand years?

It's as plausible as anything. There simply isn't enough canon information to decide this question either way.

EDIT: About youtube embedding: To get it to work correctly, you need to put only the youtube video id in between the yt tags (It's the part after the /watch?v= part of the youtube URL). 

[Deepstar]

Despite the Ancient-Shivan War Mod, in which the player participate in the destruction of the system behind Gamma Draconis, i do not like the theory that the Knossos survived the supernova.

I think it is much more plausible, that the Ancients reached this system long centuries after a supernova...so to a time it was already a nebula.
Or, to consider the Ancients behavior in ASW, maybe they returned to this system after the supernova was over and constructed this Knossos to open a path to retake their lost territory... i think the ASW ancients would try everything to get Knossos 3 back under their control, because it is a sacrilege to have an own construction, which symbolized the power of the own race, in enemy hands.

Maybe they open up only the path to their own fall...

[Mobius]

In FS2, the origin of the nebula beyond Gamma Draconis is not explained so we can only speculate. That "generally" at the beginning of the thread goes a bit too ar, as "oftentimes" would be more politically correct.

The Wiki, right here, provides interesting clues that may point to a nebula originated by the Shivans. Obviously we can't be 100% sure of anything, but it's strange that the Wiki doesn't mention Knossos 2's presence in the nebula as proof that the explosion may have occurred well before the system was discovered by the Ancients.

There is no canon information on the real-world astronomical identity of the Nebula System. However, several fans have offered proposals based on hints provided within the game. The two primary candidates are the Crab Nebula and the Lupus Nebula, with slightly stronger support for the former.

Clues
The main clue upon which most arguments hinge is the briefing for SM1-05, Mystery of the Trinity, which states, "We have entered a nebula, a vast and dense ionized field, and possibly the remnant of a supernova." This clearly foreshadows the ending of the game in which the player personally witnesses a supernova. More importantly, many fans have taken the foreshadowing as sufficient justification to claim that the Shivans caused the Nebula System supernova in addition to the Capella supernova.
Since the Ancients created the Knossos network, the most likely scenario is that the Shivans caused the parent star to go supernova at around the same time they destroyed the Ancients' empire. Calculating from the "about 8,000 years ago" estimate from the perspective of Vasudan scientists in 2335, this places the date at 5,700 B.C., give or take a few hundred years.
Accepting the main clue as a foundation, the next clue is Bosch's third monologue, which states, "The nebula is the remnant of a supernova thousands if not billions of light years from Earth; and I wonder now if our ancestors witnessed the death of this star erupting over an Egyptian landscape, blazing with the brilliance of four hundred million suns." This gives an approximate estimate for the distance and apparent magnitude of the supernova.

Conclusions
Based on these clues, GalacticEmperor originally suggested the Lupus Nebula in a forum post in 2003. [1] The available information on SN 1006 (the Lupus supernova) fits the evidence well, as described in this article. Further research led to the suggestion of SN 1054 (the Crab supernova) as a competing candidate.
SN 1006 was about as bright as five billion suns, while SN 1054 was about as bright as 1.25 billion suns. These figures are within approximately one order of magnitude of Bosch's estimate. Furthermore, taking the speed of light into account, SN 1006 erupted in 6,094 B.C., while SN 1054 erupted in 5,246 B.C. These dates are within only 1,000 years (for SN 1054, 500 years) of the Vasudan estimate. Both estimates are surprisingly accurate.
Perhaps the most intriguing connection was discovered by Arcanum in 2006. [2] According to Wikipedia[3],
Theoretical models of supernova explosions suggest that the star that exploded to produce the Crab Nebula must have had a mass of between 8 and 12 solar masses. Stars with masses lower than 8 solar masses are thought to be too small to produce supernova explosions, and end their lives by producing a planetary nebula instead, while a star heavier than 12 solar masses would have produced a nebula with a different chemical composition to that observed in the Crab.
A significant problem in studies of the Crab Nebula is that the combined mass of the nebula and the pulsar add up to considerably less than the predicted mass of the progenitor star, and the question of where the "missing mass" is remains unresolved.
This suggests that the supernova may have been "artificially triggered" in the same manner as the Capella supernova.

[Shivan Hunter]

"The nebula is the remnant of a supernova thousands if not billions of light years from Earth; and I wonder now if our ancestors witnessed the death of this star erupting over an Egyptian landscape, blazing with the brilliance of four hundred million suns."

Anyway. the nebula could possibly be from the Ancient war, if the Ancients lost the system to a Shivan supernova, then tried to retake it by stabilizing the jump nodes (which might have been destabilized by the massive ejection of mass out of the system? idk). This sorta fits the imperialism of Ancient culture, but not the narrative we know of the Ancient war- there's no implication that the Ancients ever 'retook' systems.

Anyway it could easily be a Shivan supernova predating the Ancients from a war with some other species entirely. (and no, the light still wouldn't have reached earth)

[The E]

No, the wiki says "Here's what Fans think about this", without going into detail about which fans, when this speculation occured, or defining what is meant by "many".

I also have a few quibbles with the sentence "This clearly foreshadows the ending of the game in which the player personally witnesses a supernova.".
The use of the word "clearly" implies that this is definitive truth (which it very well could be!), something that is not confirmed by canon sources. Personally, I believe the nebula system is a nebula system as a physical manifestation of diving into the unknown; not something meant to foreshadow the ending.

Personally, this whole section of the wiki article should be severely altered and shortened, or at the very least sourced somewhat better.

[NGTM-1R]

Answering the question in the title: Prove it had to survive a supernova shockwave and the nebula wasn't already there.

[BritishShivans]

My theory is that Knossos 2 spun super fast and did a Death Blossom and smacked the nasty supernova shockwave away.

[General Battuta]

I think the most parsimonious reading of the game is that the nebula was meant to foreshadow the game's ending, though I'm not sure whether this suggests the Knossos was there before or after the supernova.

It probably doesn't matter. The nebula is vast, likely light-years across, and (unless you want to invoke apparent size and luminosity of the star in the nebula background) we don't really know the Knossos' relative position to the supernova remnant, since it's not clear Knossos have to obey usual node placement rules.

The Knossos' physical construction makes it pretty clear there's some powerful binding force at work.

Put all that together and you have the possibility that the Knossos was several AU away from the supernova and fairly structurally robust. Astronomical objects will happily survive at ranges like that.

[Mobius]

we don't really know the Knossos' relative position to the supernova remnant, since it's not clear Knossos have to obey usual node placement rules.

Aren't Knossos portals located right where a jump node is? And aren't jump nodes always fairly close to their respective stars? If the Knossos 2 was there right when the star went supernova, its shockwave would have hit it.

[General Battuta]

Knossos are used (apparently) to stabilize jump nodes that normally couldn't be traversed, so it's unclear. Even if you restrict the Knossos to normal jump node range, this still leaves it a lot of wiggle room - it could have been far enough from the star proper to weather the blast. Or it could be orbiting a companion to the star that went supernova, which seems more likely since the nebula contains a fairly luminous star.

We know a meson bomb can take out a Knossos, so the question is basically whether the supernova struck with comparable force at whatever distance the Knossos was.

[mjn.mixael]

Which is all still assuming the supernova occurred during the battle with the Ancients.. of which, there isn't any strong evidence.. only circumstantial and hardly that.

[FuzzyDarkMatter]

So, I'm going to posit a theory that would support the notion that Knossos 2 was created after the supernova.

Since we know that intrasystem jumps requires the presence of a gravity well, I'm going to theorize that intersystem jump nodes exist at areas of space where multiple gravity waves intersect and cause the proper gravitational anomaly that allows for subspace transit. This would also explain the existence of unstable subspace nodes, and also the decaying of existing nodes, as objects capable of creating sufficient gravity waves move throughout space, thus altering the affects of their gravity wave on that specific point.

If this is true (which can't really be proven, since there are no canon sources to confirm or deny my theory), the supernova resulting in the Knossos 2 nebula would have radically altered the gravitational effects of the surrounding area, and the surviving neutron star would have a significantly different gravitational field compared to the star that it was birthed from. The supernova could have created a new subspace node which was then stabilized with the Knossos 2.

This may also explain why the Shivans destroyed the Capella star, in order to alter the existing subspace nodes that were being created by Capella, shutting down some existing subspace lanes and creating new ones that could lead anywhere.

[Mobius]

I believe that Wiki article should be edited and cite Knossos 2, at the moment it covers only part of the information that we've got about this specific subject.

By the way, according to Wikipedia, a supernova shockwave goes at 30.000km/s, roughly one tenth of the speed of light, so the kinetic energy upon impact would definitely wipe out any kind of space craft or installation, Knossos device included. Also note that temperature should be atted to the equation.

[-Norbert-]

How about a really crazy idea:
The Knossos has some kind of protective mechanism that allowed it to divert the incoming shockwave into subspace. The only reason why the destruction of the Knossos in Gamma Draconis was successful was because the bombs were placed within the portal and thus were too close for the device to "react" in time.

Or another crazy notion:
From the Bastion and Lucifer we know that a collapsing jumpnode stays open a few seconds. Maybe the gate opened a jump-point and instead of hitting the Knossos, the energy in it's surrounding was sucked into subspace. That this destabilized the jumpnode doesn't matter, since the portal could easily re-stabilize it afterwards.

Now let loose the physics specialists to poke holes into those two

[BritishShivans]

but my theory is better though

****ing knossos shuriken, man

the ancients only lost because of the lucifer

[Mobius]

How about a really crazy idea:
The Knossos has some kind of protective mechanism that allowed it to divert the incoming shockwave into subspace.

I had a crazy idea too but considered it too crazy to be proposed. Basically, the Knossos may have entered subspace on its own (or following a coded Ancient transmission), where the shockwave would have had no effect, and returned back after centuries.

[Megawolf492]

I think a big key here is the briefing text from Mystery of the Trinity:

We have travelled (sic) farther than any Terrans in the history of subspace travel.

Of course, we know the Trinity made it first, but it still stands; Lt. Samsa had a reason for saying that. Was it they knew the exact location of the nebula from the stars (somehow) or other navigational equipment, like subspace tracking? Did it take a much longer time than a normal jump? I say the latter, but it doesn't really matter. I don't think it was a case of Sam Gamgee saying "If I take one more step, I'll be further away from home than I've ever been." They were much further away from home then they've every been. I believe that the Knossos can create a subspace tunnel that couldn't form naturally. Now, is it to the other side of the galaxy, no.

So it is obvious that the Ancients specifically chose that system to set their Knossos to (and build another one in it). Now, if it was already a nebula when they found it, the only reason I can see is they found it to be a good hiding spot from the Shivans or their lesser enemies. Sure, they could have used it for gas mining, but the Knossos "chain" that goes through there suggests a trade route or military highway.

If the system wasn't a nebula initially, it could have been a colony or manufacturing facility. When the Shivans (presumably) made the star go nova, the Knossos could have survived. It could have been built like a Mass Relay, but then someone would have to "catch" it. More likely is it was destroyed and the Ancients simply rebuilt it.

[The E]

So it is obvious that the Ancients specifically chose that system to set their Knossos to (and build another one in it). Now, if it was already a nebula when they found it, the only reason I can see is they found it to be a good hiding spot from the Shivans or their lesser enemies. Sure, they could have used it for gas mining, but the Knossos "chain" that goes through there suggests a trade route or military highway.

This is only true if Knossos devices can manipulate the endpoint of a jump (i.e. actively influence the location a jump node leads to). There is no evidence that this is the case.

[Killer Whale]

I theorise that in response to the shivans' dashingly good looks, Knossos 2: The empire strikes back, exploded. This explosion pushed the supernova away so that the Knossos was protected from damage and lived on to die another day.