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Megastructures: Bigger-Than-Worlds
Make Room! Make Room! - Mega-Scale Planet Engineering
Overheard
in the future: "We already talked about how to add extra storage space
to your continent by turning mountain ranges into bookcases, turning
lakes into bath tubs, and continental shelves into decks (see also our
popular Future Plate Tectonics
article). Well, in this special episode we're going to be taking the
same approach but ramping it up a bit because, let's face it, even the
best planet can only hold so many people." One day – though probably
not anytime soon – all of us are going to need to do some serious
expanding.
(Dyson's Sphere as imagined by M. S. Escher? - via, "M.C. Escher's Concentric Rinds": Cordon Art B.V. - Baarn - Holland)
Dam!.. why didn't we think about it before?
Back
in the 1920s Herman Sörgel had the right idea, though on a pretty small
scale. Herman's plan was to do a bit of tinkering with a rather tiny,
almost insignificant, part of the Earth: the Mediterranean Sea. Using readily available materials – though a lot of them – and technology he drew up plans to put a dam
across the Straights of Gibraltar, and then to drain a large portion of
the sea. The dam, he said, would provide power, and the radically
lowered Mediterranean would give Europe and Africa a bountiful new
spread of fertile land. Alas, Herman's Atlantropa never got off his
drawing board but you have to admire his creativity – even if he didn't
think big enough.
Christian
Waldvogel, though, realized that if you're going to do some serious
structural work it's better to overdo it than underdo it. Let's face
it, if you’re going to tear down an old classic like the Earth you might
as well get as much from it as you can. Waldvogel's idea was to take
the planet, every bit of it, and reform it into what he called Globus
Cassus: a massive hollow shell that humanity would live inside of, sunlight coming in through continent-sized windows.
Since
Globus Cassus would use all that wasted matter that otherwise is doing
nothing but giving our little world gravity it would be much bigger, and
with much more surface and living area than what we have now: imagine
being on the inside of something the size of Jupiter. Since there'd be
no gravity the people living inside would be held in place by inertia –
what used to be called centrifugal force -- by giving the structure an
appropriate amount of spin.
The
obvious question is that if you're going to be a doing a bit of
fixing-upping then why just stick with the Earth? There are plenty of
other worlds in the solar system that are just sitting there, taking up
space. Adding their mass to your plan opens up whole new opportunities
to add some serious dimensions to your expansion.
One of the smallest of these is Larry Niven's legendary Ringworld.
The idea of rather simple: take most of the planets in the solar
system, chew them up, and then turn them into a ring as long as Earth's
orbit, as wide as the planet, with 1000 mile high edges to keep the air
in. A Ringworld would certainly give you lots of extra space –
something on the order of three million earths – and, like Globus
Cassus, it would be spun to make fake gravity. You could even make
parts of it higher off the surface if you like your air a bit thinner,
and if missed days and nights then you could put a row of black squares
in an inner orbit to cast shadows.
(left image: Stephan Martiniere's cover to Larry Niven's "Ringworld's Children"; right image: a "Horizonless Map of Manhattan", via - a curved landscape view, reminiscent at once of Ringworld and... "Inception")
(the Halo Array, also known as Sacred Rings - more info)
This is what it might look INSIDE the Ringworld - concept art by Alexander Preuss:
No insult to Larry Niven and his Ringworld,
though, it is on the smaller end of what you can do with a solar system
if you really put your mind to it. Dan Alderson thought a bit bigger
with his Disc idea. Once again, all you need to do to create one
is take every speck of matter in the solar system but instead of
creating a ring you make a disc. Think a CD as thick as the earth's
diameter – to make gravity – and with our sun in the center. If you
like it warm you can get closer to that center and if you like it colder
then step back a bit. If you miss the sunrises and sunsets then just
bob the sun up and do so the folks on one side will get a bright day
while the folks on the other will get a cooler night. And since the
disc is as thick as the earth you don't need to worry about needing to
fake gravity.
How such colossal cosmic structures may be constructed in the far future? Well, here is a fragment of the epic artwork by Adam Burns, which offers us a glimpse - taking the whole planet, and... turning it inside out! -
But,
once again, we just aren't thinking big enough. Ponder the sun for a
sec: isn't a lot of it being wasted on both a ringworld and a disc? Why
not simply put a sphere around a sun to catch every little photon and,
as a huge bonus, give you a lot of real estate to play with.
The also-legendary Freeman Dyson had the very same thought, thus the structure that bears his name: a Dyson Sphere (info).
The only problem with a Dyson Sphere, aside from certain logistical
headaches, is one of gravity as you can't do the same trick with a disc
that you can do with a sphere. But that doesn't mean you couldn't just
spin the sphere, giving folks on the inside an illusion of it – though
if you walked too far up or down the inside there might be some very odd
effects.
If you really want to be ambitious, though, why not
simply make the sphere as thick as the earth and have your population
live on the outside? Light could be provided by a parade of fake suns
powered by the real sun trapped inside the sphere under their feet.
Next...
Well, next we'll discus how to add some serious space to your solar
system by taking the idea of the Dyson sphere and ramping it up a bit.
After all, if you can cage a star why not do the same to a solar system
or even a galaxy?
The sky -- to dismiss the cliché -- is not the limit when it comes to planetary engineering.
(this
image is "...based on the Halo universe: a forerunner Dyson sphere type
construct being built, with nearby moon being mined for resources" -
art by Adam Burn /Phoenix-06 - click to enlarge)
