Timeline for Can we build a world in 1,000 years?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
9 events
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| Feb 21, 2017 at 0:10 | comment | added | Schwern | @Mark You're right about the power-law distribution, and that works against us. The four largest "asteroids" (one is a dwarf planet) in our own Solar System are only 1.5e21 kg or about 2% of the Moon. There isn't enough material in the various Asteroids in our own Solar System to form the Moon let alone another Earth. | |
| Feb 21, 2017 at 0:04 | comment | added | Robotnik | @Mark - Even with larger bodies they would take inversely more energy (and time) to move. If moving a mile-wide asteroid is difficult (as in point 1), imagine a several-thousand mile 'moon'. | |
| Feb 20, 2017 at 23:02 | comment | added | Mark | You don't need very many trips to get enough mass for your planet: asteroid sizes follow a roughly power-law distribution. Grabbing the half-dozen or so largest bodies should get you the majority of the available mass. | |
| Feb 20, 2017 at 21:18 | comment | added | Cort Ammon | You'd have to make them do something akin to a gravity slingshot or two on the way out, so that you maximize the escaping energy and minimize the lost mass. As for the guys standing out there, I think you could sell this as a defensive approach: porcupine teraforming! | |
| Feb 20, 2017 at 20:58 | comment | added | Youstay Igo | O.o Hmm. But won't a large number of them go the other way right into the Big Brother or out of the solar system altogether? I mean, some will come falling inwards, but many would also go to the big, bad, sinister guy standing out there. It will take much, much more energy to bring those escapees back :D :p @CortAmmon | |
| Feb 20, 2017 at 19:48 | comment | added | Cort Ammon | I'm rather curious now if you could play some serious games with the N-body problem, and try to perturb thousands of orbits slightly to get the asteroids to manage some of the energy problems themselves. Certainly an absurd idea, but hey, that's world building, right? | |
| S Feb 20, 2017 at 17:04 | history | suggested | rav_kr | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Feb 20, 2017 at 17:02 | review | Suggested edits | |||
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| Feb 20, 2017 at 13:44 | history | answered | Youstay Igo | CC BY-SA 3.0 |