What if we could move the entire Earth like a spaceship?

[pywakit]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady_State_theory

 

I wrote a short story a few years back about a rogue, very dense planet ( larger diameter than Jupiter ) on a collision course with our sun.

 

My protagonist saves earth from total annihilation ( redundant? lol ) by engineering the the most astounding feat in Mankind's history.

 

Moving Earth itself to a new home. Alpha Centauri. And I did it with physics.

 

Yes. Earth makes a great space ship.

[mooeypoo]

I wrote a short story a few years back about a rogue, very dense planet ( larger diameter than Jupiter ) on a collision course with our sun.

 

My protagonist saves earth from total annihilation ( redundant? lol ) by engineering the the most astounding feat in Mankind's history.

 

Moving Earth itself to a new home. Alpha Centauri. And I did it with physics.

 

Yes. Earth makes a great space ship.

pywakit, this sounds like a very interesting concept, though off the top of my head I have a few reservations about it, in terms of actual physics. Of course, it's a story, so you do have creative leeway there but it can be interesting talking about it, if you want. You should start a new thread about it, it sounds like a great discussion to have.

[Baby Astronaut]

Moving Earth itself to a new home.

Talk about climate change (while it's enroute)

[mooeypoo]

Talk about climate change (while it's enroute)

I am not too sure there will be an atmosphere at all.

[insane_alien]

there would still be an atmosphere. but it would be incredibly cold. the heat from radioactive decay in the earths core should keep a gaseous atmosphere around us but ther will probably be seas of liquid nitrogen and oxygen as well.

 

one thing is for certain, it'd be frikking awesome watching it all boil as we approach our new suns.

 

edit: just thought, it would probably be cold enough for helium produced through said radioactive decay to hang around the earth until it heat back up again. so if we compressed the atmospheric gasses and warmed it up to feed into our hab complexes we'd all be talking with squeaky voices.

[Sisyphus]

Don't worry about any of that. You could keep the Earth plenty warm with the same magic infinite energy source you use to move it in the first place.

[mooeypoo]

Don't worry about any of that. You could keep the Earth plenty warm with the same magic infinite energy source you use to move it in the first place.

Sisyphus, stop trying to confuse us with facts.

[the tree]

Don't worry about any of that. You could keep the Earth plenty warm with the same magic infinite energy source you use to move it in the first place.

Couldn't you just I dunno, burn Venus for fuel or something?

[Baby Astronaut]

I believe we're getting off topic here

[Sisyphus]

Couldn't you just I dunno, burn Venus for fuel or something?

 

I don't see what planetary-scale venereal burning would accomplish, and I certainly don't think it's any way to start a new life around Alpha Centauri.

[mooeypoo]

I believe we're getting off topic here

Not anymore. Seeing as there was interest in discussing the subject, I took the liberty of moving it to its own thread as a new speculation.

 

If pywakit would like to share with us his ideas we could discuss them. If not, we can continue discussing the idea in general, it seems like enough of us are enjoying the mental exercise.

 

(if you didn't noticed: new topic split to its own thread, yay.)

 

~moo

[Baby Astronaut]

I shall now attempt to return us back on topic. Hopefully forever. And

 

 

ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever

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Ok, for real

 

How many species would die? Mostly all of them, or everything but us and whatever's in our shelters? Unless of course we make huge domes where environments are kept survivable.

[mooeypoo]

Couldn't you just I dunno, burn Venus for fuel or something?

With what? A match?

 

 

Technically speaking, if we could get rid of the sun altogether without burning ourselves in the process, the Earth will keep moving in a relatively-straight line onwards 'till it reaches another big enough gravitation to get attracted to.

 

Alpha centauri is the closest star, so theoretically, if this is timed properly, the Earth could just go on towards it. Of course, the problems of utter darkness and extreme cold (hence, no life, oops) still exists.

 

Also, that leaves a problem of how do we STOP... Last I checked the Earth has no "park" gear.

[Sisyphus]

Everything would die. Basically you would need a habitat as protected and self-sufficient as you would need to live permanently in interstellar space. Because that's where you'd be (just stuck to a giant frozen rock where we all used to live).

 

But I'm still wondering how we're moving the Earth in the first place, as that would probably determine conditions.

[Baby Astronaut]

Also, that leaves a problem of how do we STOP... Last I checked the Earth has no "park" gear.

"Ready? Everyone to the opposite side and we jump at the same time. One, two..."

[insane_alien]

so theoretically, if this is timed properly, the Earth could just go on towards it.

 

except its off our orbital plane so we'd miss it by a few light years at the very least.

 

remember kids, space is 3D can't be having none of that 2D thinking here.

[the tree]

We wouldn't need to stop the planet if we were heading to go past Alpha Centauri, we'd get caught in an orbit like normal.

[Sisyphus]

BTW, just did some rough calculations.

 

The amount of energy needed to get the Earth up to escape velocity for the solar system would be about 4.3*10^32 joules (that is, to add to our current orbital velocity, which assumes we're trying to go somewhere on our current orbital plane, which we aren't), which is approximately 900 billion times the total energy consumption of everyone on Earth in 2008.

 

Of course, that's just escaping the solar system. That's not to get moving fast enough to actually ever get there.

 

Or, you know, stop.

[the tree]

Well if we were headed in the right direction then we'd get there eventually, but it'd take so long that it'd feel a little pointless. Still don't think the stopping should be an issue.

 

If we could get say, the moon to undergo nuclear fusion then we should have enough energy to reach escape velocity.

[Sisyphus]

Yes, stopping would be an issue. Incoming from outside Alpha Centauri's solar system, we would necessarily have a higher than escape velocity by the time we arrived.

 

And we wouldn't necessarily get there "eventually." I mean, on a long enough timeline we'd get anywhere, but presumably we want there to get there before our new sun fizzles out.

[mooeypoo]

except its off our orbital plane so we'd miss it by a few light years at the very least.

 

remember kids, space is 3D can't be having none of that 2D thinking here.

Right. Oops.

[pywakit]

Well. Seems as if you find the topic interesting. Actually, we do have a nice source of fuel. I believe the Antarctic continent holds about 7 million cubic miles of ice. Not to mention the surrounding ocean. This would be an excellent source of fuel ( hydrogen ) and atmosphere ( oxygen ) to pipe down into our underground cities.

 

We current HAVE underground cities. We also have a planet with a core temp of what? 14,000 degrees F. That heat source should last a couple of billion years.

 

Geothermal for all our electric needs. And we'd need A/C ... not heaters ... underground. The wall temp of African mines at 6 miles down is about 170 F.

 

As far as escape velocity, we are not in any hurry. Simply increasing our angular momentum ( orbital velocity ) by any small fraction is going to move us farther from the sun.

 

I was also writing a screenplay ( 2 hour TV pilot ) about this for Geopp Circle, at their request. It is owned by ( or was ) Jonathan Frakes. Commander Riker.

 

Unfortunately, I'm not good at screenwriting, and it has foundered. The working title was/is Earth/Alpha.

 

I will be back in a while to cover the other 'problems'. But I will say that I think I worked them out ... in general terms, anyway.

 

Thanks again for your interest.

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Yes, stopping would be an issue. Incoming from outside Alpha Centauri's solar system, we would necessarily have a higher than escape velocity by the time we arrived.

 

And we wouldn't necessarily get there "eventually." I mean, on a long enough timeline we'd get anywhere, but presumably we want there to get there before our new sun fizzles out.

 

By the way, good points, all. But I really do think there are real, and adequate solutions for all.

 

One of you said a journey this long ( but you haven't heard how long it would actually take ) would be 'pointless'. Hmmm. If the alternative is being blown into space dust, I might want to go along with this 'pointless' adventure.

 

Don't think Alpha will burn out before we get there.

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Remember that this is a project that the earth's entire population would be involved in. ( except those who prefer to stay here and accept god's wrath ... they would be trying very hard to sabotage this effort ) And realistically, we would need a couple hundred years of advance warning to accomplish this.

 

But the most fascinating aspect to this is it should ... in theory ... be quite possible. We could actually move our planet if we chose to do so.

 

Imagine building mile high pyramids on the antarctic continent. ( This is the only reasonable choice as we need a crust below to 'push' against.) Say 3000 of them. A mile square at the base ( resting directly on the ice ) tapering to 500 foot openings at the top. Inside the pyramid we have hundreds of geothermally powered lasers aimed at a central collector at the bottom of a 500 foot diameter ceramic tube. Lasers alone would have very little 'thrust' but if we injected hydrogen into this and excited the atoms they would have little choice but to exit at extreme velocities out the top of the pyramid.

 

Putting them on antarctica serves another purpose. We want to move 'up' from the plane of the ecliptic. ( and by the way, we would lose the moon in this process, but we are beyond needing it now. Man could survive just fine without it. ) Maybe we could 'capture' one on the way in to Alpha!

 

There is a lot of debris from the creation of our solar system, and this would present serious challenges, but by leaving the solar system in this direction, we would minimize our chances of planet-destroying collisions. Still, we would have serious collisions. The arctic would be the best place for these to happen, as the ice, and liquid oceans beneath would make the best shock absorber. Whether or not we would have liquid oceans after we left the sun's influence is debatable. But just like Jupiter's moons, stressing the earths's crust would have the beneficial side effect of heating the earth's core, and thereby assisting in keeping the oceans liquid. But we would definitely be 'snowball earth'. The atmosphere would condense down, and provide us with futher insulation against heat loss, and it would also lessen the impact on our upper atmosphere by our hydrolasers.

 

This process would cause the earth's crust to undergo many stresses, but with sensors planted all over the earth's crust and super-computers to monitor changes in real-time we could actually modify thrust from any and all of the thousands of pyramids to prevent us from 'breaking the egg's shell'.

 

This would also allow us to 'steer' our planet, and with all our forward sensors ( in geostationary orbits ) giving us decades of advance warning, we should be able to nudge our planet out of harm's way. There would be some serious close calls naturally. And again ... some unavoidable collisions.

 

Food. One acre of corn on the surface of our planet feeds (x) number of people, depending on location, and a host of other issues. Now lets go underground. We can take that same acre and stack it 100 stories high. Fully mechanized hydroponics, 24 hour/day light, optimum nutrients ... now how many will that 'one square acre' feed?

 

More later ...

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We could also create plankton feeding grounds by stringing millions of light sources under the ice.

 

Would many species die off? Of course. But I don't think we would. We would have more than enough oxygen. Plenty of heat. Plenty of electricity. And the good news? Internal combustion engines would no longer be necessary. Everything would run on induction. And we would become 100% recyclers. I think life would be way more pleasant than hiding out in dark, cold, drafty caves.

 

Livestock? We already warehouse them. Little change as far as they are concerned. No real problem digging out huge caverns for them to live in. All waste recycled. Methane ( non-polluting?) to add heat where we wanted to.

 

Life on the surface would be harsh, but I bet there would be plenty of people who would choose that route. Domed cities would be buried under a mile of ice, I suspect. Air on the surface might be difficult to breathe, and of course minus 250 degress would require special suits to survive the exposure.

 

But all this technolgy exists today.

 

I would miss my corvette, but you can't have everything.

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How do you get rid of double posts?

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Oh. And don't forget, this is not 'shoot your wad' then hope for the best. It would be impossible to calculate vectors of all the objects between us and Alpha. This is a controlled flight. As we approach Alpha ( assuming we made it this far ) we would have already turned earth around to 'decelerate' so it would not be all that hard to approach Alpha at the correct velocity, and direction to allow our capture in the proper 'goldilocks' orbit.

 

As far as maintaining these machines ... both above and below ground ... we would not be standing still technologically on this journey. We would continue to advance as we always have done. In fact, there is a very good likelihood our advancements would speed up dramatically, due to the circumstances, and new challenges we will be faced with.

 

Another point to consider is that we would continue to accelerate as long as we applied thrust. I think we could acheive rather fantastic velocities on this journey, so I am relatively certain Alpha would still have a few billion years left as a good home.

Edited December 24, 2009 by pywakit
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[Klaynos]

How do we get the hydrogen out of the water?

[pywakit]

How do we get the hydrogen out of the water?

 

Electrolysis powered by geothermal production of electricity.

 

Acceptable?

[Baby Astronaut]

Wouldn't using geothermal energy result in cooling down our planet's interior, especially when its heat is used to such a massive extent?

 

Also, if we could move Earth, then it'd possibly be simpler to (instead) move the rogue planet just enough so that it doesn't collide with the sun