Earth’s Sequential Abandonment by Terra-creatures
and Subsequent New Niche-creation (Space Habitats)
Geographos
1608 East Broadway
Suite #107
Glendale, California 91205-1524
USA
E-mail: rbcathcart@msn.com
Viorel Badescu
Candida Oancea Institute of Solar Energy
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering
Polytechnic University of Bucharest
Spl. Independentei 313
Bucharest 79590
ROMANIA
E-mail: badescu@theta.termo.pub.ro
Abstract
Since Earth became extant ~4.6 ×109 years ago and will naturally not exist ~5 ×109 years hence; “unending” Earth-biosphere change is an impossibility, so a merely geopoetical or ludic discussion of “ending” global change everywhere in our Solar System via an Macro-engineering of excoriation is appropriate. (Such a didactic idea stems from Homo sapiens’ Space Age Zeitgeist.)[1] A revolutionary Hyper-modern Environmental Geology requires Earth’s fracturing first, eventuating in localized life’s first Dyson Sphere, which will harness this Solar System’s largeness and largess following a major anastrophe, which is a sudden, drastic constructive change in biological evolution. Subsequently, a star-powered mobile Dyson Sphere can be piloted within the known Universe. The Dyson Sphere’s inhabitants, comprised of AI robots (“legal persons”), will be an autogenic social group called “Terra-creatures”, a community which will relieve this Solar System of the burden of certain future physical decay.
Introduction
Endowed by God with a sensorium and receptors, unaided humans can sense 0.1 mm to a few kilometers geographically and remember from ~70 mms to 8+ decades of otherwise unrecorded events. During Europe’s Baroque Period (1600-1750), developed investigative tools enlarged our perceptions of Earth, our Solar System and the innumerable stellar systems and things beyond. Beyond the constraints of extant early- 21st Century knowledge-making technology, beyond obviously verifiable science, are the sub-microscopic (smaller than one Fermi, 10-13 cm) and super-macroscopic (the Universe, and any thing bigger than it)[3] realms of our ultimate environment into which living persons are admitted only by means of ultra-sensorial faculties of intuition, inspiration or revelation.
When James Hutton (1726-97) stated in 1788 there was “…no prospect of an end…” for Earth, he meant there were then no measured indications of our planet’s eventual absence, not that it was an eternal object. Calculations recently completed by G. Bowen and L.A. Willson (and first publicized in “Miras, Mass-Loss and the Ultimate Fate of the Earth” at the February 2000 AAAS meeting in Washington, DC) show that Earth, if it stays at 1 AU from the evolving-towards-Red Giant stage Sun, reaches a peak T ~2306 K before it eventually falls into the Sun and finally vaporizes (into an impalpable boiled-off “smoke”-like product); an Earth vaporized terminates the residence time of all its planetary materials and propels them into interstellar space where they are most likely to be classed as “waste” if they are noted at all. Thus, George Hoggart Toulmin (1754-1817), who once did vigorously assert the eternity of Earth, and presumably the other known planets too, is now all but forgotten by Geology, his opinion dismissed by moderns as useless.
Founded in 1807, The Geological Society of London is the world’s oldest geology-focused social group. On 19 February 1830, in a lecture to the group’s membership, Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873) admonished geoscientists to foreswear environmental futurism and not “…to speculate about the physical revolutions of the ages which are not yet come”.[4] Even so, as planetary passengers we’ve been forced to seek foreknowledge (using “virtual geology”)[5] because, unlike the Earth at Oklo, Gabon[6], our species has assumed the task of safe disposal of our most long-lasting industrial wastes.[7] More importantly, geoscientists now realize that their long-espoused Law of Superposition has revelatory historical implications for the topmost Holocene stratum upon which our ambulatory species is currently treading “…since…[its long-term] preservation potential is much smaller than that of older deposits…”[8] (such as pre-Pleistocene strata) because, owing to its unprotected surface position and exposure, its vulnerability to common and extra-ordinary human instrumentalities of material mobilization is very great. Late in the 20th Century, the USA’s National Research Council (organized 1916) assigned Environmental Geology a big task which entails a very challenging ultimate goal: to understand the past, present, and future behavior of the whole Earth”.[9]
Unquestionably, Homo sapiens’ most important task, and many of its machine creations as well, is mind-endowed life’s preservation. Like Carl Bernhard von Cotta (1808-79) who, in 1852, announced his thought-belief that our species “…must accept a more gifted successor as ruler of this Earth…”[10], Hans Peter Moravec foresees intelligent robots with artificial emotions–so that these “legal persons” may understand their human contemporaries and absent predecessors better and to achieve self-psychoanalysis and self-improvement–that could, by 2050, operate our world-civilization increasingly well without our species’ active participation; eventually, “…their activities may become incompatible with…Earth’s continued existence”.[11] Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio’s Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species (2000) embraces a hybrid species (the product of human-machine hybridization) endowed with intelligence so demonstrably superior to that of a purely biological mankind that the new species achieves global physical prominence (out-masses mankind) as well as intellectual dominance (controls mankind) during the late-21st Century.
In summary, these referenced robotists, and others of their ilk, promote a (scathingly non-censured) viewpoint on the Universe that indicates humans lack the ability to rule the Earth and, possibly, even the right to do so–i.e., this millennium will bless or curse our species. All human populations are Earth-biosphere immigrants–this is a theory espoused by Biblicists and Anthropology–and, logically, that means it is almost foolish for humans to claim unique possession of any particular landscape; Astrobiology’s ever-broadening Panspermia Theory also undercuts the uniqueness of Homo sapiens as an original tenant. To compound the fact of settlement, with the aspect of terrain, into an abstract of eternal and immutable ownership is an obvious cultural trait that is exhibited by all humans. Will post-Homo sapiens AI robots exhibit the same trait?
At the same time radical Green humans, especially propagandists of the Gaia persuasion, nowadays tout the “sacredness” of the Earth as a whole unit[12], they also strongly assert that only human values and ethics (i.e., societies) determine the dividing line between legal persons and non-persons.[13] Such a posture encourages our purely logical speculation about a massive post-Homo sapiens “robotic society”, and its logical effect upon Earth’s future existence or non-existence. Railing against simplified Earth-wide ecosystems during 1970, an American radical Green celebrity demanded humanity burden itself forever with an international treaty-enforced global biological diversity accomplished by a single species–Homo sapiens–with a single goal which he desires: “…a vision of the kind of Spaceship Earth that ought to be and the kind of crew that should man her”.[14] Such extremist geopolitical sentiment trivializes any veritable global Nature and makes human-conceived and visited Art, whether fantastic or purely practical, a travesty. A year later, in 1971, Paul Ralph Ehrlich (b. 1932) also condemned Homo sapiens as “the negative animal” because of its supposed destructiveness, the still-active misguided perpetrator-species of a suicidal geocide: a pro-space exploration-exploitation declaration, “off the Earth”, has another meaning (in Standard English slang) for all Green advocates such as Ehrlich–Gaia’s torturous murder by a merciless mankind. Still, Ehrlich did offer some sound philosophical advice via a quotation attributable to Aldo Leopold (1886-1948): “The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts”.[15] This Solar System, which has a gravitational influence extending almost one-half the distance to the closest star, is comprised of many atoms.[16]
So far, space exploration is the most fundamental change in Environmental Geology’s history because it opens an almost infinite number of new places and space[17] between places for humans and robots to map and exploit.[18] We’ve selected the Greek prefix hyper to denote a usefully revealing style of Environmental Geology which is “more than” today’s. In his 2nd Edition (1874) of The Earth as Modified By Human Action, George Perkins Marsh (1801-82)[19] included a Chapter VI, “Great Projects of Physical Change Accomplished or Proposed by Man”, with the following prognostication: “Yet among the mysteries which science is hereafter to reveal, there may be still undiscovered methods of accomplishing even grander wonders than these”. Today’s Hyper-modern Environmental Geology instructs interested persons about how spacecraft and space colonies without atmospheric pressurization and barely-encapsulated space-based AI machine-staffs can undertake and complete very big object-manipulation tasks.
A rhetorical question, by definition, is a query “asked merely for effect with no answer expected”; for example, “What’s our world coming to?” Eduard Suess (1831-1914) opened his Das Antilitz der Erde (1909) with a literary description of Earth’s visible sunlit hemisphere from the viewpoint of a spationaut approaching it from the Moon. Once human spationauts observed Earth from the Moon’s surface, simultaneously televising their perspective to all humankind, it became possible then for our kind to envision Earth, at the very least its biosphere, as a “living organism capable of death”.[20] Since 20 July 1969, geo-conservation, a globally organized program for the preservation of our Earthly geological heritage, is promoted by the International Union of Geological Societies and UNESCO through their GEOSITES project. Geo-conservationist might wish to preserve a few tiny spots on the Moon; with a Moon surface of area of ~3.8 ×1017 cm2, Neil Armstrong’s easily overlooked tiny lunar boot-prints are an outstanding potential GEOSITE. However, a natural geomorphic process, the lunar gardening effect promoted by the diurnal thermal pulse, will gradually erase his historic imprints in about 100 years (that is, circa AD 2069). Nevertheless, AI robotics enthusiasts compel all geoscientists to ask themselves “What is coming to our Earth-biosphere?” and, subsequently, “What will inspired AI machines do with planet Earth?”[21]
The irrefutably direct precursor to all global contamination and pollution, solid litter from stone-flaking industry, is an indicator/symptom of Homo sapiens’ Paleolithic Period. Deposits of anthropurgic debris, however, failed to impress Charles Lyell (1797-1875), one of Geology’s most effective proselytizers. He exhibited a remarkable narrow-mindedness with his contemptuous published interpretation of the discovered artifacts of Europe’s pre-historic humans; Lyell presumed his own ancestors were a lot less intelligent than his contemporaries. Early stone implements were not strictly utilitarian since some Paleolithic tools are made with better workmanship than was needed to make them useful–their design, therefore, was beyond mere technology, grading into artworks. His sternly dismissive assessment of Paleolithic people (those humans alive prior to 6000 BC) resulted in a nasty mockery. If these “savages” had been as intelligent as the UK’s Victorians, he announced, then Archaeology ought to have found “…lines of buried railways or electric telegraphs, from which the best engineers of our day might gain invaluable hints; astronomical instruments and microscopes of more advanced construction than any known in Europe, and other indications of perfection in the arts and sciences, such as the nineteenth century has not yet witnessed…. Vainly should we be straining our imaginations to guess the possible uses and meaning of such relics,–machines, perhaps, for navigating the air or exploring the depths of the ocean, or for calculating arithmetical problems, beyond the wants or even the conception of living mathematicians.”[22] We believe this haughty attitude is still, unfortunately, prevalent: Lyell’s remarks bear a strong resemblance to the “Stone Age bodies and Stone Age minds” lament voiced by radical Green preservationists; such a generalization means that Homo sapiens is genetically unprepared for impending Earth-saving or mind-preservation tasks! (And, these same busybodies virtually disallow public consideration of human genetic improvement–like, say, a marked increase in the average human intelligence quotient–even after completion of the Human Genome Project.) The Antikythera mechanical computer, a complex analog device for the calculation of time’s passage and astronomical cycles, dredged from the Aegean Sea in 1901–the final year of the UK’s Victorian period–clearly indicates that some ancients were demonstrably our equals intellectually.
We think it is possible that our species may become “obsolete” within the purview of AI robots. If AI mechanical adaptation could respond sufficiently rapidly to Solar System changes, this would eliminate any need for the Earth to be artificially regulated (geo-engineered[23]) because all possible states of the AI machines’ environment would be equally tolerable. However, the thermodynamics, chemistry and physical structure of AI machines will set bounds on the range of environmental conditions that can be adapted to; as these yet-to-be-discovered boundaries are approached, environmental conditions would then limit growth rate, and adaptations necessary for social group survival can also cost energy.[24] (Half-jokingly, of course, we sometimes privately refer to this possible future robotic society as “Doozy World” since it is an extra-ordinary one of its kind and is Sun-centered.)
The English-language phrase “Geological Time” was first used circa 1837. Realization of AI robotic technology could abruptly and forever terminate Geological Time for terrestrial-size objects in our Solar System that have Geologic Rock Cycles; were this ever to happen, then “Geological Time” would be rendered useless as a professional term, at least locally (in the Milky Way Galaxy). It is remarkably likely a team of human-AI robot persons (“Terra-creatures” because they initially inhabit and maybe originate within the Earth-biosphere) will command a really big machine to appropriate celestial objects and then, on a timetable, crumble such objects into harvestable artificial asteroids.[25] Terra-creatures, we suppose, are to be functionally confined only to accessible universal space-time, and to be unbothered by any “life expectancy” limitation, although they may come to consider a vanished Earth as their lost “Garden of Eden”. Such a social group of living AI machines, who may not have adopted our species as its role-model, will be directly solar powered and therefore will have a metabolism quite different from our kind, a true anastrophe in biological energy conversion.[26] (Some AI machines may be quite small in size, almost ant-like; Earth’s ants currently out-mass our species by a 4:1 ratio!) However, the main characteristic that will truly separate “them” from “us” is that “Terra-creatures” will not be restricted by mental inhibitions; un-socialized “Terra-creatures” will be totally unhindered by any social limits on the acquisition of knowledge/data/information; since their macroprojects wont have a big monetary price tag, “Terra-creatures” are unlikely to forego the idolatry of Giantism, which was needed by their human predecessors. (Technological fantasy served two good purposes for humanity: as a manifestation of techno-enthusiasm and as comprehensive guidance toward future geophysical-cultural realities.) If all post-human “life” is technological then the concept of technology becomes vacuous.Our world’s end has been imagined resulting from a general nuclear war[27] or some other (equally devastating) natural or unnatural event-process.[28] Most of these doomsday scenarios dealt with the demise of Earth’s biosphere[29], not with the planet’s actual disappearance from universal space-time, as will occur if the Universe changes as predicted.[30] By mid-1999, however, it seemed to the uninformed as if Earth might be dematerialized[31], and Homo sapiens made extinct, by a piece of laboratory science equipment, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at the USA’s Brookhaven National Laboratory (organized 1947), which was suspected by some physics experts to be a mechanism capable of creating a deadly tiny Black Hole from quark-gluon plasma.[32] To allay, if not dispel, the world-public’s groundless concerns, a 10 October 1999 Environmental Impact Statement was published[33]; the RHIC’s normal and safe operation by 10-12 June 2000 proved the new equipment’s benign behavior–so far.[34] (If Earth were a Black Hole, it would have a radius of ~0.887 cm; in comparison, were the Sun a Black Hole it would have a radius of ~2964 m.)
World-civilization commenced when people gathered in cities, and modern-day cities cannot exist without Macro-engineering–indeed, the most theoretical of macro-engineers are called “geoengineers” and “terraformers”, persons now training themselves to build and maintain humanity’s global urban infrastructures in the face of natural and extra-ordinary changes or to make other planets comfortably inhabitable by Homo sapiens.[35] Both branches of Macro-engineering reign Earth’s inherent materials and intrinsic energy to the best use. Quite remarkably, neither social group of theoreticians seems to ponder two questions: (1) “What if only Terra-creatures dominate the future Earth-biosphere?” and (2) “What does that event-process portend for the whole Earth?” In 1966, Freeman John Dyson (b. 1923) proposed a colossal space-based robot planet-fragmenting machine as a means to quickly convert planets into artificial asteroids using centrifugal force to excoriate planets for the good purpose of creating the ultimate city, a Dyson Sphere partially surrounding the Sun.[36] (In fairness, it must be understood that Dyson is no impresario advocating a human-instigated Earth obliteration.) A discontinuous shell of ~100,000 totally-automated machines (appropriately modified O’Neill Model 4 Space Colonies[37]) about most of the Sun can carry Terra-creatures to others places in the Universe, extending mind-endowed life’s survival options from mere multiple local globetrotting to a prolonged, intensive and extensive exploration of the Universe.[38] Planets are dynamic systems[39] resulting from severe chemical fractionation caused by gravitational settling that do not lend themselves to preservation as artworks do; were automated machines made, then Terra-creatures most likely would know how to preserve them “forever”. Title to the Sun during that period of Cosmic Time–Geological Time by then having ceased to be a locally useful measurement–becomes indisputable, unless Alien claimants, whether kindred spirits or otherwise, make themselves evident or known.[40] Perhaps that social group might be convinced that a planet-leasing agreement is mutually profitable. Using the proposed Badescu-Cathcart twin stellar propulsive engines approach to interstellar Terra-creature travel–published and peer-reviewed ideas which render meaningless the term “interstellar travel” since the piloted Sun + Dyson Sphere vehicle is forced to go exactly where it is directed, which is most likely towards another Sun-class star for the purpose of solar exchange (abandonment of our present-day Sun and the replacement of it by another star for the purpose of continuing a star-centered civilization)–the Earth may become obsolete as a life-carrying “Spaceship”, along with eight other planets its crumbling needed for a comprehensive, efficient operation of a migratory Dyson Sphere. The Badescu-Cathcart stellar engines are directly spun-off from a 1987 proposal, by Leonid Mikhailovich Shkadov (b. 1927), announced at the 38th Congress of the International Astronomical Federation’s 10-17 October 1987 meeting in Brighton, UK. It is possible the Sun + Dyson Sphere, by itself subsequent to the birth of its mentality, may eventually come to identify itself as a singular “Terra-creature”. This is so because our species has already transmuted light into matter[41] and, within a span of perhaps two centuries or less, will (or its post-Homo sapiens unionized descendents will) achieve real-time computation at the ultimate physical limits.[42]
By 1952, ten years after the tentative start of Homo sapiens’ Space Age in wartime Germany, Geology recognized that at the present rate of bio-carbon cycling, if integrated over Geological Time, the total mass of living cells would be about the mass of the Earth![43] That fact’s import is great: Earth has been well utilized, and possibly over-used, for at least 0.5 ×109 years by organisms that may, or may not, have originated within the planet’s sheltering atmosphere.[44]The Extended Organism: The Physiology of Animal-Built Structures (2000), by Jeffrey Scott Turner (b. 1951) has demonstrated that animals have always constructed and used structures and buildings to control their enveloping geological environment; animal-built facilities function as external organs of physiology of their builders. Environmental geologists have proved, beyond cavil, that industrious ancient peoples reshaped Earth’s landmass and this new anthropogeomorphological fact[45] simply means that modern humans live within an already rather unnatural Earth-biosphere setting.[46] Living when the Earth-biosphere’s stable climate regimes were different from those currently existing at the same sites, prehistoric peoples did grand-scale Earth-crust alterations by piling soil and rock or digging into it[47]; the UK geologist Robert Lionel Sherlock (1875-1948), in 1922 and 1931, wrote the first modern texts on technogenic excavation’s history.[48] In many instances, people have helped to reactivate natural Earth processes such as landslides, thereby causing enormous units of crust material to change location at accelerated rates.[49]
Hyper-modern geoscientists, such as Roelof Dirk Schuiling (b. 1932), have even planned a macroproject to elevate parts of the Earth’s uppermost crust a tiny distance in certain especially valuable regions via common geochemical reaction![50] Mineralogy, which is at least a Hyper-modern Environmental Geology cornerstone–some would allege it is a capstone–continues to adapt to our Space Age’s advent[51] during the last century.[52] James Ross Underwood, Jr. (b. 1927) categorized rocks by adding a fourth standard basic class of such materials (Anthropic Rocks), thereby adding much to the complete technical understanding of Earth’s Geologic Rock Cycle; his most thorough discussion of this new rock category (i.e., supplementing the out-of-date igneous, sedimentary, metamorphic scheme) has appeared, during 2001, in the journal Environmental & Engineering Geoscience.[144] Coming subsequent to E.C. Harris’s 1979 Principles of Archaeological Stratigraphy, Underwood’s contribution may foment a totally explicit 21st Century archaeological approach for Stratigraphy that is applicable to culturally manipulated sediments in a way thoroughly analogous to Sedimentology’s composition/texture/fabric methodology.[53] Perhaps the only human in recorded history to own (as legally recognized real property) an active volcano from its initial formation was Dionisio Pulido, when Paricutin erupted from beneath his Mexico farm’s sheep pasture at 4:00 P.M. on 20 February 1943; Paricutin became “dormant” by 1952. During 1979-80 the US Government caused to be constructed on Runit Island in the South Pacific Ocean’s Enewetak Atoll a 45 cm-thick unreinforced concrete cap to protect a mound of radioactive and otherwise contaminated material from natural erosion by wind and water. But, recently, Alexander Kremenetsky and Felix Shaderman, both from the Institute of Mineralogy, Geochemistry and Crystal Chemistry of Rare Earth Elements in Moscow, Russia, planned to encase ~35% the volcano Kudriavy’s fumarole field (on Iturup Island in the North Pacific Ocean) with a concrete or ceramic dome in order to economically capture rhenium (Re) for industry’s use.[54] Humanity has progressed from baking silt into stone[55] to surrounding its planetary residence with non-contiguous orbiting solid wastes[56] and from urban landfills (bedded formational clues to human social group histories) to utilizing–since 21 April 1997–the Earth-atmosphere as a secondary crematorium for de-orbited human ash containers.[57] (Emotive persons have demonstrated attachment for certain haphazardly aggregated piles of rock, and even for hideous artificial slag heaps!)[58]
“Dyson Spheres are impractical”[59], says a popular space-science proponent. Too exuberant, his overstated opinion is an easily misunderstood quip. Since astronomers look for Alien-built Dyson Spheres[60] the writer surely must have meant to assert this Solar System has too little solid mass to provide enough rocky material (in the form of human-made or Terra-creature created asteroids) for a successful Homo sapiens or Terra-creature Dyson Sphere building project. But, what if the mind-endowed social group attempting such a feat were exclusively a population of Terra-creatures, not materially weak humans? Frail humans may seek to become Terra-creatures, since that could be deemed a wise strategy to avoid the unpleasantness and stressful rigors of Earth-world over-crowding (strictly imposed rationing, mandatory rationalized recycling, and costly interminable worldwide reconstruction).[61] Perhaps Terra-creatures would build a Dyson Sphere simply because they are power-hungry and also because a lack of gravity or air in their Sun-orbiting space settlements should be no hardship; machines without organic parts can work in a gravity field/acceleration ~25,000 times greater than any human and can tolerate killing radiation and zero air pressure; machines must have power. Still, such an undertaking is a last resort Macro-engineering, at a sub-galactic level of social group organization[62], in a single industrialized Solar System: briefly, extremist materials processing. Since Earth is immersed in a complex, dynamic plasma system (the Sun, solar wind, magnetosphere, and ionosphere), Kardashev Type II Civilizations must be actively responsive, not merely sensitive, to changes in their central star’s behavior during a long period of Cosmic Time.[63] David Russell Criswell (b. 1941) has helpfully suggested what a proper practical response might be: a pre-Red Giant stage Sun life span-prolonging tele-quarrying macroproject.[64] A few years earlier, in Patience dans l’azur: L’evolution cosmique (1981), the astrophysicist Hubert Reeves (b. 1932) had devised a hypothetical Sun revival technique using a powerful, tunable, penetrative shaped laser-beam to “stir” the Sun’s unused H mass shell, located between its fusion-dominated core and the solar surface, with a photonic swizzle-stick; such disturbance is supposed to make the central deposit of H available for further transformation into He, extending the Sun’s life-time by a factor of ten! Laser tools were invented in 1960; currently, continuous wave laser powers of 1 TW+ are foreseen. Such power, of course, could be focused over a small aperture using a phased array, in order to keep the energy density “high” and perhaps for spatial multiplexed beam purposes (targeting selected different Reevesean “Hot Points” within the Sun). Hypothetically, we’ll be able to control the laser-beam’s intensity, and monitor its effectiveness by observing the emission of neutrinos, by helio-seismology and by any change in the total luminosity of the Sun.[65] (Asteroid 9631, discovered in 1993, is named to honor Reeves.)
Dosmozoicum vocabulary
Geoscientists evaluate our species’ extant world-maintaining capacity as a 0.3- 0.7 Type Kardashev Civilization (i.e., <Type I or, better stated, ~30-70% Type I) with a capability to become a Type II Kardashev Civilization provided humanity develops the means to multiply its power usage by >2.21 ×109. For certain purposes, it is expedient to separate living organisms into two distinctive groups: (1) “autogenic engineers” which change ecosystems by their own growth all the while remaining integral to the altered ecosystem and (2) “allogenic engineers” which alter the ecosystem and then leave non-living physical structures behind. Humans are tinkering allogenic macro-engineers par excellence, and also mimic the behavior of autogenic macro-engineers by constructing glasshouses. (Few geoscientists seem aware artists have harnessed geothermal energy.)[71] This working classification[72], magnified by the fact the human brain seems to have a dedicated brain region that is used for macro- and micro-engineering thoughts exclusively, allows the cautious surmise that it fits well with Strughold’s categorization and, moreover, ought to meld usefully even if only Terra-creatures exist![73] Appropriately modified O’Neill Model 4 Space Colonies may become 100,000 Terra-creature “nursery” environments after Terra-creatures destroy their out-moded Earth-biosphere niche-homeland.[74] Clustered Terra-creatures, gathered in these nurseries, will naturally exhibit both positive phototaxis and positive gravitaxis. The intellectual potential powers of future autogenic Terra-creatures are not even guessable.[75]
Clair Cameron Patterson (1922-95), the discoverer of Earth’s age (and whose name identifies Asteroid 2511), alleged that separate regions of the human brain are used for “scientific versus engineering modes of thinking”.[76] As Macro-engineers we cannot speak to that purely biological-psychological-theological problem, surely more than an issue of mere tissue, but we do note that two major propagandists for post-Homo sapiens inspired AI machines (Moravec and Raymond Kurzweil[77]) were both born during 1948, the sea-change year when humans diverged into two major geopolitical camps (East and West) and scientists were absolutely perplexed by measurements which indicated Earth was older than the Universe.[78]
Because we deal on a daily basis with the physical reality of our Earth-biosphere, macro-engineers are blessed with a lot of commonsense. Still, we do relish a delightful fantasy now and then; for example, the Banach-Tarski Theorem[79] (by which mathematicians rearrange a solid Earth into two solid Earths of the same radius using as few as five pieces) and Albert L. Stasenko’s amusing mining macro-plan increasing Earth’s surface area by 102 through planet hollowing![80]Freeman J. Dyson’s motor will be to our descendent, perhaps transcendent, Terra-creatures’ Dosmozoicum what Thomas Newcomen’s steam engine was to Homo sapiens’ Industrial Revolution. Earth is the universal space-time test site for the invention and study of the new relationship between Terra-creatures and all else created by applied Macro-engineering; their first planetary test site will prove or disprove remotely sensed data as to the planet’s constitution via rapid, rough planet dissection.
After proposing Dyson Spheres as Alien abodes in 1960, F.J. Dyson made his first approximation for his asteroid-creation machine, which in its operational mode is quite like the Alfven Propulsion Engine.[81] Using his postulated device, and making Earth a gigantic armature of a Sun-powered electric motor with elements placed in LEO, HEO, and VHEO, Earth would be caused to spin faster and faster on its natural rotational axis until its crust structurally failed after centrifugal effects caused gravity to fall to zero at the planet’s Equator.[82] Operationally, this motor–hereafter dubbed “Archimedes”–was to place the Equatorial zone’s underlying crust under great tension at the Equator, a 40,076 km-long potential Earth-crust rupture zone equidistant between the North and South Poles; its sole purpose is to shatter and scatter Earth’s materials. Archimedes (FIG. 1), kindly sketched by Martyn John Fogg (b. 1960), is an adaptation of an illustration in his Terraforming: Engineering Planetary Environments (1995).
Achievement of high-temperature superconductivity would revolutionize the adapted Alfvenian engine used for tectonic plate removal, a post-Paleolithic “stone control” writ large.[83]-[84]For Archimedes to work efficiently, the space it will occupy must be clean.[85] The electrical cable windings (snugly draped upon Earth’s surface) used will then be vulnerable to the hazards induced by any G5 (Extreme) space storms engendered by the Sun.[86] A Satellite Power System (SPS) serving Earth’s humans was first proposed, by Peter Glaser, in 1968.[87] The SPS hardware component would consist of an array of photovoltaic cells mounted on a platform located in geosynchronous orbit above Earth’s Equator. The solar cells convert sunlight into electrical energy 24-hours/day, and the electrical energy is converted to microwave energy which is transmitted to Earth-based receivers (rectennae) located either at the place of need or at a central receiving station; a 500 kWe power level requires 0.00785 km2 for a single rectenna located exactly on the Equator; for any rectenna located poleward from the Equator, the rectenna’s shape changes from a 100 m-diameter circle into an ellipse and also increases in area.[88] If an SPS constellation is ever launched, and if it is ultimtely unified with a worldwide electrical energy transmission-distribution system promoted by the Global Energy Network Institute[89], then such tied-circuit systems ought to be appraised properly as the elementary technological mock-up for a Dyson-Alfven Motor. Subsequent to space clearance, a very large-scale tele-quarrying effort will then begin–a planet’s crust is just so much (valuable) overburden–so that no Earth materials are ever classified as “waste” (i.e., only educts, no products) for lack of a fully robotized and truly total rock cycling program. At 1 AU, the escape velocity (from the Sun) is < 42.5 ×103 m/s; thus, if this rapidly quarried material moves at < 42.5 ×103 m/s, but >11.2 ×103 m/s, it will remain “forever” available to Terra-creature macro-engineers (at 1 AU). Each Archimedes ought to be customized for the job it must do; a Dyson-Alfven Motor is a life-of-planet asset, meaning it is built for a specific planet’s demolition and operates until all materials are harvested, but before they are sorted. If planets are serially demolished, then some off-planet mechanical parts from the very first Dyson-Alfven Motor might be reused; a large problem arises from the fact that these parts, unless they are self-propelled AI robots, will be mixed with the destroyed planet’s wildly rambunctious debris field. However, using rockets, such recyclable parts might escape damage or destruction by leaving the LEO, HEO and VHEO interplanetary space region immediately upon sensing and reacting to, or being instructed by distant macroproject technicians, to avoid encountering uncontrolled debris erupting from a distorted gravity well below! Mercury and Venus are separated from Earth and Mars by a significant distance; perhaps self-replicating seed elements of the very first local Archimedes ought to be ordered to move in opposite directions: 66% towards the Sun and 33% away from it? Mercury and Venus should be used quickly lest the Sun’s natural changes make them worthless (processing monetarily too costly or subject objects are totally absent).[90] To overcome Earth’s gravitational binding energy (~2.18 ×1032 W), the total output of the Sun for less than a single Earth-normal month should suffice to satisfactorily do the complete job.
It is the “wildness” of artificial asteroids that really dictates Terra-creatures must crumble Earth first. Earth normally becomes ~10,000 tonnes more massive per annum owing to in-fall of natural space debris–that is the single most vital reason for the Torino Impact Hazard Scale.[91] If Mercury, Venus and Mars are broken first then Earth soon thereafter will be bombarded more intensively; if Earth is broken first, Venus and Mercury will then be most heavily bombarded by debris. Life’s tolerable temperature is ~20° C, plus or minus ~15° C. Approximately 0.5% of space rocks leaving the Asteroid Belt (situated between Mars and Jupiter) normally strike Earth, mostly because the Yarkovsky Effect constantly nudges these objects sunward.[92] Hypothesizing, were the Earth-atmosphere subjected to an hour-long shower of rocky asteroid fragments (10 kg/m2), the absorbed energy suddenly could raise the troposphere’s average T by ~10 to 30° C. Probably only life’s underground and oceanic species could safely weather such recurrent flash-type waves of heating without experiencing great metabolic stresses and suffering unusual deaths. Although atmosphere-upper crust warming may eventually lure deep-biosphere lithoautotrophic microbes towards the surface, it wont badly affect Terra-creatures–but, the impact of non-intercepted meteorites has to pose, at least theoretically, a somewhat distractive, perhaps destructive threat.[93]
During the Cold War (1948-1989), pre-Hyper-modern Environmental Geology practitioners conducted expensive fieldwork and intellectually abstract study to learn if it was possible to effectively use tectonic plates to focus seismic energy on an adversary’s homeland.[94] On 24 December 1963, William Mansfield Adams was granted USA Patent #3115194, “Nuclear Reactor Apparatus for Earth Penetration”, for a needle-shaped robotic tele-mining nuclear reactor with a bulk density of 7.6 g/cm3. His thermal tool was intended for direct investigation of planet interiors, and the return to the surface of macroscopic material samples. Sunk into the Earth-crust, it ought to be capable of moving at a rate of ~7.8 km/yr, penetrating the Mohorovicic Discontinuity within ~6 yrs. Soon, neutrino tomography (using six detectors: two located on the Equator, two at 45° North and two at 45° South latitude) will unveil Earth’s density profile three-dimensionally–density variations of materials there drive some geological processes–and (most notably for this discussion) reveal exactly the motivation for Earth’s plate tectonics. Density measurements are essential data for unraveling the mineralogical constitution of our planet. A detected swarm of neutrinos vertically traversing an Earth diameter encounters ~1010 g/cm2; the total characterization of several paths should reveal Earth’s true gross and fine-scale structure. In addition, it will be possible to achieve “…the first global transuranic chemical analysis of the Earth”.[95] Such mappings and information, eventually thoroughly done on other planets also, will prove invaluable to Terra-creatures intent on asteroid-creation jobs.
Almost every solid object in known space-time rotates as a result of the way it formed, or because of collisions with other objects; gravity and magnetism can slow the rotation of objects but there is little in our Universe that can completely stop object rotation.[96] About three centuries ago, William Stukeley (1687-1765) and other geoscientists thought easterly dipping coal-bearing strata indicated unmistakable sedimentation influence by Earth’s rotation.[97] Today, some radical Green anti-technologists publicly claim to believe that to deform or destroy (by spin-up) any planet is to present God to humanity as the ineffectual governor of something not really the Creator’s own; Terra-creature-directed fragmentation of God’s planets does not have this result when something glorious and good-for-all-life is constructed subsequently. During 1994, an AI machine developer and philosopher, Marvin Minsky (b. 1927), affirmed the consensus group forecast that robots will “inherit the Earth” (from Homo sapiens).[98] His internationally recognized expertise makes his conclusion considerably less suspect than Hilary Putnam’s mind-bending geo-philosophical premise that any rock may be interpreted as mind-endowed.[99] The largest semi-AI robot built so far is a field machine of 3,500 tonnes used by Australia’s coal stripping industry.[100] One of us (RBC) has already published a brief on Societies-and-Sun–“Project Future HOME”–as the singular spatiographic human experience circa AD 12,000.[101] HOME (Habitat of Mankind’s Economies) was a Hyper-modern Environmental Geology structure (Dyson Sphere) that was not self-referential or a parodying of human Architecture’s old forms.
Archimedes at work
All earthquakes are ultimately caused because Earth’s materials have been deformed by gravity and planetary rotation, which long ago caused the formation of constantly moving tectonic plates.[104] Some 85% of Earth’s crust consists of rigid tectonic plates and ~15% is composed of deforming crust and other materials in tectonic plate boundary zones.[105] Existing varyingly dense layered and colliding tectonic plates have dynamically unstable cracks, which sporadically experience colossal shearing failures. Decreasing Earth’s rotation time means the Eotvos force will become greater owing to Earth’s induced angular velocity and topographic flattening.[106] The Earth has been altered by its rotation into an equilibrium shape such that particles at rest on the planet’s surface can remain at rest and not be swung out to the Equator, in the absence of any additional horizontal force; an additional horizontal force, induced by the Dyson-Alfven Motor, will cause material to be flung into interplanetary space.
A Terra-creature instigated shortening of a day’s length must increase the Earth-crust’s stress and, very probably, reinvigorate the planetary geodynamic process. This strengthened process will be observed by real-time monitoring; through the use of ground-level latitudinal cable windings necessary for the Dyson-Alfven Motor vital measurements can be safely taken.[107] Neotectonic deformations, caused by sporadic shallow magma body bulges and collapses, are monitored by a variant of this technique.[108] During 1968, a prediction was made that the natural temporary demise of the main dipole would happen circa AD 3700 to 4000[109]; at the 1995 International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics XXI General Assembly, Robert L. McPherron reinforced that notification by announcing the dipole moment would cease circa AD 4000. Its absence (during a dipole switch-over period lasting thousands of years) will then affect all Earth-biosphere biota and the highly integrated electronics of any extant Terra-creatures when it falls to zero from its average[110]; in other words, pre-Dosmozoicum Terra-creatures may reschedule this natural event-process according to their societal needs and wants. Re-energizing of the Earth-mantle by mass redistribution due to centrifugal force caused by induced spin-up increases the future possibility of a historically recorded true polar wander (drift of the planet’s spin axis relative to the mantle).
A pulsed secular change in Earth’s curvature–expansion with continuing tectonic plate subduction–will cause the surface curvature to gradually decrease resulting in “flattening” of the semi-rigid crust. Flattening results in lower-crust extension that inverts and folds the already laid-down upper-crust sediments. Sidney Paige’s controversial 1955-published theory that our Sun was the source of energy expended in Earthly orogenesis and epeirogenesis will remain unverified here, but it will in future receive a full-scale test.[111] The straight-line distance (through Earth’s liquid-solid mass) between the North and South Pole, which are true antipodal places, will be shortened by ~500-800 km; the Equatorial Zone, a superficial latitude-demarcated climatic zone, is the most noteworthy geographical region of Earth expansion in a future Freeman J. Dyson-inspired macroproject program of Terra-creature organized Earth demolition. That zone will become the most disturbed part of any future spun-up Earth: it will be geographically tumultuous with hot terrain–so chaotic that only continuously operative supercomputer “real-time” models, not stale two-dimensional maps, could be used to keep track of the superficial region’s structure.
The Equator-to-Poles surface air temperature difference generally increases with the increase in planetary rotation rate.[112] The Coriolis force requires winds and ocean currents to move nearly perpendicular to thermal gradients. When an elegant computer-simulated Earth rotates in 180 minutes, the climatic zone dominated by the Hadley cell’s circulation extends between ~15° North and South latitudes (Earth-normal = ~5 to 35°), truncated by Coriolis forces that deflect Equatorial Zone air masses azimuthally.[113] The boundary layer air temperature in the steamy Equator-straddling region would be ~310 K whilst at the Poles ~230 K prevails. Ice will accumulate at the Poles and this ought to change the gravitational torques acting on the Earth from the Sun and Moon (present-day ratio of solar to lunar torques is 1 to 4.6), forcing a marked change in Earth’s axial tilt. Other torques acting at a distance are frictional (wind stress over land and sea, ocean bottom drag, and viscous stress at the core-mantle interface), pressure (acting across the troposphere and surface topographic interface), gravitational and magnetic generated by Earth’s natural geodynamo.[114]
Increased T equability would be more important to the terrestrial biota than to the marine biota because of seawater’s ameliorating effect as a medium. (Some flora and fauna are never to be removed from the planet simply because Terra-creatures could find it unnecessary or undesirable to conserve some species–those post-Homo sapiens ecologically insignificant units–and also because not all individuals can be caught! Too, it is unlikely that every Earth species will ever be inventoried.) Related climatic results include changes in precipitation and atmospheric circulation patterns at every geographical scale of examination. A much lower sea-level would likely stimulate numerous submarine and sub-aerial volcanic eruptions, causing climates to change radically and unpredictably through injection of dust and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.[115] A planet-wide cloudy sky surely must cause a global reduction of precipitation owing to the cessation of the Hydrologic Cycle.[116] With 100% cover, Earth’s albedo will double. Wildfires will consume vast amounts of tinder-dry biomass affected by a wide-spread hyper-drought condition, making nearly all land not only arid but with significantly altered, even charred, ABC soil-horizons. Eventually, all abandoned animals will become malnourished, soon sickening or starving to death; meantime, fresh-water aquatic life forms will become extremely rare or extinct. Water losses to space due to dissociation of molecules and the loss of H2–now assumed to be ~104 km3/yr–would continue unchecked. If all plant photosynthesis ceased because of induced daytime darkness, then atmospheric oxygen content would decrease ~1% over a period of ~20 years; CO2 gas could increase slightly for ~100 years thereafter, then remain unchanged.[117] Creatures in the deep-biosphere may continue to survive, virtually unchanged, perhaps until the planet is entirely broken.
In a surface-of-Venus-like low-light period, the cold and murky ocean stands low but is circulating, well aerated and replete with nutrients. Secular cooling would compel the migration of marine thermophilic macro-organisms towards the Equatorial Zone. This simplistic Earth-normal (“as is” planet) computer-model scenario is complicated by other geophysical factors: wide-spread sea-water turbidity, powerful new oceanic currents and rapid neotectonic changes in the ocean-basin’s shape (a significantly shallower Equatorial Zone ocean region?), makes predictions about global sea-level astonishingly difficult; the ocean may then account for < 70% of the planet’s surface area. More than likely, the Equatorial Zone’s sea will be largely heated by a globe-girdling submarine volcanism, inducing symmetrical northward and southward moving ocean currents–one chronic high-T hydrothermal mega-plume extending from seafloor to watery surface! The clash of cold and warm ocean currents will give birth to violent weather in air masses that will rival, or exceed in power, today’s devastating super-typhoons. And, of course, this mega-plume would force the diffusion of various gases (CH4, H2, He, CO2) spewed into the atmosphere, changing its volume, relative constituents and other characteristics.
When Archimedes increases Earth’s rotation to 100 minutes, the geographic region (bordered by 5° North and 5° South latitudes) bisected by the Equator would be about to escape, since the ratio of centrifugal force to gravity exactly at the Equator is 1/288. Earth-normal rotates from West to East at ~1675 km/hr; close to its moment of break-up Earth-abnormal will spin at ~24120 km/hr. Just prior to its crust’s shattering, Earth’s ellipticity will be ~0.24 (Earth-normal = 0.0033)–the planet will be a maximally oblate spheroid. Off-planet Terra-creature observers could countdown to the moment of crust lift-off by reading a digital tachometer display gauge.[118] When Earth finally rotates at 24120 km/hr, crust rupture and upper-mantle explosion cannot be stabilized, halted or reversed; simultaneously, a technogenic gravitational sorting commences within the remaining lower-mantle and whole core, which also cannot be stabilized, stopped or reversed (by any known or speculated means). Remote radar observation during a 100-minute sidereal day implies that space-based HOME-makers’ remote-controlled monitors will have a line-of-sight observation station; monitoring of a single significant human structure (a Gibraltar Strait Super Dam perhaps[119]) or other obvious surveyed monument or landmark for ~50 minutes. Day/night T changes would be fast-paced, extreme, and only the hardiest biota could cling to the constantly shaking landscape in ultra-gale force winds.
A polar displacement of < 1° will cause very extensive sea-water inundation of the landmasses, destroying a lot of humanity’s and Terra-creatures’ deserted infrastructure. Near sea-level infrastructure would very quickly become ruined by many mega-tsunami inundations, in addition to abnormally rapid weathering subsequent to abandonment. In many places, mega-tsunamis relentlessly sweeping broken infrastructure inland will mark their maximum water wave run-ups with an anti-gravitational gradation, an erosion and deposition operating mainly from a lower to a higher elevation. Heaped man and Terra-creature manufactured materials will therefore form a continuous trace paralleling the former shoreline, visibly demarcating the distance the strongest mega-tsunami wave moved inland from the violently sloshing ocean.
All excavated crust-material will be torn into many pieces by core-mantle gravity when the crust’s fracture criticality is exceeded and a breakdown in shear strength occurs at some level of anisotropy >10%, creating a debris field in space consisting of earth, gases, dead organisms as well as previously unseen pulverized stuff. We suppose the intentional jetting of Earth-material into interplanetary space as a kind of one-time-only artificial volcanic eruption–a sustained, global Plinian column virtually without fall-out, in fact the Earth is a single volcano! This ejected “rubble” mass will constitute a free-floating “conglomerate” having no significant structural strength other than its self-gravity, which will have a gravitational “sphere of dominance” extending ~106 km. Possibly, < 1% of the material will collide with the Sun, Venus and Mercury. Crumbling Earth means that all underground biota (all those microbial creatures residing in and defining this planet’s deep-biosphere core-enveloping boundary), whether alive or dead, would undergo exhumation; naked living organisms flung into space would burst, becoming blob-like desiccated remnants identifiable only after forensic laboratory study, if collected by curious Terra-creatures. Killed by space conditions, space causes a precautionary partial sterilization of the materials that later will be gathered to construct the needed Terra-creatures’ Dyson Sphere (or our future HOME?). (The deep-biosphere’s lithoautotrophic microbes were Earth’s first globally dominant species; outer space-using Terra-creatures will eliminate the globe containing their shell-shaped rocky homeland but will imitate their activities on a much grander spatial scale!) Archimedes ultimately allows, at least, the prospect of directly sampling any planetary mantle.
With parity of other conditions, when total crust tension at Earth’s Equator increases beyond a certain level, Terra-creatures can expect the crust there to shatter in different but already defined places (most likely at tectonic plate boundaries paralleling lines of latitude). Lift-off would be descriptively complicated because ~78% of Earth’s crustal material is concentrated in land, and because the underwater and sub-glacial crust exactly at the axial Poles does not rotate at all; the above-sea level part of the continental crust amounts to ~2.5% of the crust’s bulk down to the Mohorovicic Discontinuity, and about 2% of their weight. Thin sub-oceanic tectonic plates (Pacific, Cocos, Nazca) could structurally fail somewhere at the Equator in advance of the final, global up-lift tectonism of thicker sub-aerial tectonic plates (South American, African), which are also denser than sub-oceanic plates. Intact tectonic plate rock properties and the discontinuity of a plate’s rock mass (i.e., its boundary zone) are among the most important geophysical variables affecting Earth’s loss of integrity.
Immediately following a fast crust-material removal, the upper mantle-material would self-excavate by turning molten “instantaneously”; the magma induced to become lava contains great quantities of H2O and gasses which, absent ~0.48% of Earth’s formerly overlying mass, would cause lava to exsolve volatiles explosively. Certainly the lower mantle material and possibly core material–actually, all materials lying deeper than the Mohorovicic Discontinuity–previously very compressed and very hot will react to their introduction to space’s vacuum; it is possible that as much as 99% of Earth’s mass will vaporize, becoming “smoke” as it were. As a result of their varying initial velocities during ejection, most of the cooled crust-mantle fragments will spread out into a toroidal cloud that eventually expands volumetrically until it is bounded only by the limits of their aggregated maximum inclinations and distances; the faster the initial velocity, the speedier the debris cloud’s formation and its self-definition under gravitational influences. We assume the solid and gaseous debris cloud will lock into a Keplerian orbit of the planet’s intact core; materials comprising this toroidal debris cloud will, at first, be distributed in altitude and inclination about those values of the original parent satellites’ Sun-centered orbit, entirely in accord with gravitation’s long-range influence. It will continue to move about the Sun at ~30 km/s and will certainly have a volume >1.08 ×1021 m3. If that core-material “New Earth” is a large radioactive metallic nugget (without cracks) in that debris field, which as it cools and contracts will increase its rotational speed, then the derelict “New Earth”–that is, a place spoiled by the extraction of minerals–eventually may have to be broken by some other technique (such as by vaporization via directed mirror solar heating to T ~3800+ K over a long time period or explosively via a thermonuclear explosion of < 1016 Mt yield detonated at its center of mass) or still another perfected machine invented by imaginative Terra-creatures (or borrowed/adapted from Alien technology). In 1903, Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) thought that if “…a proper detonator be found, it was just conceivable that a wave of atomic disintegration might be started through matter, which would indeed make this old world vanish in smoke”.[120] Although artists and physicists–Henning Genz’s Nothingness: The Science of Empty Space (1998) says it all–sometimes treat a vacuum as a very pliable material; boiled-off or blown-away “Smoke” is usually useless stuff because it is not easily contained or bottled. By 1989, humans already had successfully schemed to engineer quark matter, which has long-term prospects for energy generation.[121] Bolstered by post-RHIC experimentation, circa AD 2050, humans may arrive at a stage in their species’ technological evolution where “the effects of space quantization…are expected to determine the next quantitatively new level of physical phenomena.”[122]
Still, as recently as 1930, Robert A. Millikan (1868-1953) thought there was no risk whatsoever that Homo sapiens could do real harm to any solid object as large as a planet the size of Earth.[123] Aristotle (384-322 BC) held our globe constituted an unstable combination of the four elements (earth, air, fire and water). In his 12 May 1948 Halley Lecture at Oxford University in the UK, Fritz Zwicky (1889-1974) suggested that one of our Solar System’s uninhabited small bodies might be explosively shattered to demonstrate to human observers Earth’s geophysical instability as well as the disruptive effectiveness of nuclear explosives. He stated also that there were two “obvious goals” for a total Solar System remodeling: “…to gain both more living space and to separate the representatives of those political and moral ideologies which on the Earth seem incompatible”. Furthermore, he announced the possibility of “accelerating…[our Sun] to higher speeds, for instance 1000 km/sec directed toward…[Alpha Centauri A, ~265,740 AU distant in the constellation Centaurus] in whose neighborhood our descendents then might arrive a thousand years hence. All of these projects could be realized through action of nuclear fusion jets, using the matter constituting the Sun and the planets as nuclear propellants”.[124] (Astronomy calculates the solar apex, the point on the celestial sphere towards which our Solar System is currently moving at ~20 km/s, is located in the constellation Hercules.) F.J. Dyson and L.M Shkadov owe a great intellectual debt to Fritz Zwicky’s experimental Hyper-modern Environmental Geology idea. (Zwicky’s Halley Lecture was printed in the 1948 volume of The Observatory, 68:121-143.)
Planet demolition plus other Solar System object obliterations should provide Terra-creatures with malleable rubble. All this stuff (~0.278852 ×1030 kg, or ~0.14% of this Solar System’s known mass) would soon have to be given controlled, Sun-focused orbits after being robotically equipped with robustly reliable vernier rockets and autonomous computerized guidance packages because, otherwise, the debris cloud’s rambunctious asteroids would menace all spacecraft and armored space habitats sharing the plane of a once extant Earth’s orbit. A choreographed swarm of managed technogenic asteroids would then be forced to move unidirectionally together around the Sun; some asteroid orbits must be shifted gradually by attached gimbaled propulsive solar engines[125] instead of by random collision and the I.O. Yarkovsky Effect[126] (the radiation pressure recoil force acting upon anistrophically emitting spinning space rocks warmed by sunlight to different T in different regions of their surfaces) to orbits out of a ring-shaped belt about the Sun’s Equator, in order to enclose much of that radiant star for Terra-creatures’ long-term energy-capturing purposes. (The Yarkovsky Effect is noteworthy since the momentum carried by sunlight at 1 AU amounts to ~4 ×10-5 dynes/cm2–over a year’s time amounting to ~103 dyne-sec/cm2 of impulse actuation.) The original ring-shaped debris disc would extend to ~25° above as well as below the plane of the ecliptic, with its surface area then amounting to < 13.9% of a total Sun enclosure; this structure will capture ~5.407 ×1025 W. A 100% Sun-surrounding space structure, capturing the total solar luminosity, is improbable.
Donald G. Korycansky, Gregory Laughlin and Fred C. Adams formulated a far more difficult scheme to alter the Sun-centered orbits of whole planets like the Earth; doing what is necessary to keep control of an asteroid pack seems not so technically difficult.[127] They assert the accompanying unpreventable speed-up in Earth’s rotation, and the terrible risk of catastrophic asteroid impact on the human-inhabited planet Earth, are non-negligible risks. Their intention to use Jupiter’s gravity–its gravity is great simply because its mass equals ~70% of all other Solar System planets combined–during asteroid fly-by maneuvers is contingent upon its being extant; should a single Terra-creature (or Alien-made) nuclear fission reactor[128] fall into Jupiter’s 7,000-km thick atmosphere of hydrogen gas and liquid, according to Lawrence E. Wharton (b. 1947), then it would function as a detonator (actuated solely by progressive uniform Pu-239 hydraulic compression until catastrophic energy release happens) and the Jovian atmosphere would explode, destroying all forms of Earth life via a maximum shock-period of 35 minutes to ~103 Earth-days duration afterwards (under an optimal planetary alignment like that of 5 May 2000 AD near 8h Universal Time, provided we imagine the absence of intervening spherical solid objects between Jupiter and Earth, as for example the Moon)–except, possibly, those still deeply embedded in the crust (lithoautotrophic microbes)–from the resulting electromagnetic and charged particle energy flux, even though only ~1% of the exploded Jupiter’s blast-wave can hit Earth.[129] Too, unlike the two-method Badescu-Cathcart solar travel scenario, wherein a future solar exchange for a “dying Sun” scenario is taken for granted, this miniscule tinkering social group only slightly prolongs our civilization situated solely in a still mostly intact Solar System.[130] A large asteroid impact of the Moon would be nearly as devastating to the planet Earth as an Earth impact. In this report, we’ve chosen to ignore the Moon’s mass of 7.3483 ×1022 kg because we conveniently anticipate that it wont exist astronomically, and therefore it can’t be a relevant astrophysical factor (or disturbing function[131]) at the commencement of any Terra-creature disassembly of Earth; this simplification is a necessity since otherwise the authors could suffer mind-meltdown. A 1980 NASA Conference Publication, #2255 (“Advanced Automation for Space Missions”), develops a convincing Moon-quarrying scenario; carried to its ultimate that celestial body might provide the materials needed to “feed and house” Terra-creature persons whilst they systematically transform their Solar System into a Dyson Sphere.[132] Molecular nanotechnology’s infamous predictive “lithophagic scenario” (of runaway rock-devouring, self-replicating assemblers) postulates the Moon’s consumption (via its conversion into non-cannibalistic nanomachinery) in a < 2 Earth-days period of time; the Moon’s absence then immediately induces destabilization of the Earth’s obliquity.[133]
There are still no baselines for determining the types and rates of natural rock space weathering since Project SWITCHO, originated by Ramon Edward Bisque (b. 1931) at the Colorado School of Mines in 1971, literally never got off the ground.[134] At that time it was hoped large pieces of common Earth-crust rocks (sulfides, sulfates, clay) would be rocketed to the Moon by NASA’s Apollo Mission expeditions, exposed there for many years to ambient conditions (hard vacuum, solar radiation, micro-meteorite impacts), and later retrieved for rigorous evaluation. After Project SWITCHO’s cancellation, only iffy physical simulations[135] and some computer modeling[136] is being done today to inform Hyper-modern Environmental Geology of the ambiguous effects on rocks of long-term exposure to space; this dearth of scientific knowledge means all discussion of asteroid use is pure physical speculation: there is no truly reliable data yet on raw materials extraction, raw materials beneficiation, processing of bulk raw materials, or manufacturing techniques! Material pulverization in space, solar furnace melting, and subsequent hot-shaping will, more or less, sterilize used construction materials. Never will there be salvage. The industrial processing of all objects gravitationally bound to the Sun will erase all fossils and unsaved cultural records–Terra-creatures mightn’t make any effort to save the USA’s Plymouth Rock, the Kaaba’s Black Stone and Scotland’s Scone Stone because these objects have no symbolic meaning for them–and thereby removing from existence forever all planetary pollution. From nine “Little Bangs” to the “Big Clean-up”!
In the aggregate, a Dyson Sphere constitutes an example of “backstop technology”[137] in which a cooled hydrogen maser clock–theoretically accurate to ~1s/300 ×106 years–records, if not actually sets, the pace of space industrialization and the progress made by Terra-creatures. A spatially enormous control system will be needed to oversee all object movements, a kind of integrated immortal consciousness of daisy-chained AI robots. This control system would be a never-lackadaisical heliotrophic robotized orrery-oracle, a deus ex machina sapiens, not God. Acquainted with all of this Universe’s influences, and aware of the positions at any given instant of all the objects in the Terra-creature social group’s technogenic “Solar System”, this controller ought to include in one and the same formula the motions of the largest objects and those of the smallest important objects. Any changes to the fabricated (incomplete) “Sphere” would have to be imposed by the robot’s programming as a form of “process control” writ large.
At ~1 AU, the Terra-creature Kardashev Type II Civilization’s exterior surface will be < 3 ×1017 km2 (in solar actuality, however, probably < 50% of that statistic). Viewed from exterior space (by human eyes)–literally, “outer space”–the Dyson Sphere may then be a pale red-colored crystalline ball; seen from its interior, within the cavity almost enlacing the Sun’s corona, its surface (< 100% opacity) will conform to all ideas of desirable beauty and truth crystallized in Terra-creature minds. Terra-creatures invested with spirit will be true “environmentalists”: “environs” means the terrain surrounding a place (the Sun) not a person; they may also be Sun-worshipers not attached to any particular stellar object but simply to any luminous star. “Inner space”, the volume of this Universe between the Sun’s photosphere and the inside of their Dyson Sphere, may be a high-traffic zone for vehicles constituting a circulation pattern; in a way, it would be reminiscent of, or actually resemble, vanished unitary planetary materials stratification (geological strata) and materials circulation (Hydrologic Cycle and Geologic Rock Cycle)–in both aspect and prospect, it will be a gigantic version of “city metabolism”.[138]
Too, a Dyson Sphere would provide Terra-creatures with a walled heliosphere laboratory.[139] A part of that wall, the former Earth’s ~1049 atoms, will then be available for experimentation. A curious note: an anagram of “terraformings” is “art reigns form”–meaning, of course, that technology creates objects through its wielder’s control of energy and materials; Italian artists first anticipated the controlled use of nuclear energy via a Nuclear Art social group movement, active circa 1952, espoused by Enrico Baj (b. 1924) and Paolo Deganello (b. 1940). And, as well, “SCIART”–a neat word-blend of “Science” and “Art”–has been fostered by Bern Porter (b. 1911), a popular tract-publishing physicist who, in 1971, was first to advocate the use of nuclear particle beams to form major artworks! It stands to reason that Terra-creatures might (psychologically) experience a seeking need to rein their collective survivalist will and to wield solar power with works of self-pleasing art.[140]