ArtilloZ@aol.com wrote:
> I have a thought.... what if we used a series of black holes or maybe white
> dwarves... something with a lot of gravity and/or magnetic force and spaced
> strategically apart... to force a star into a toroidal shape... a galactic
> scale plasma chamber! put a planet at the center of rotation, and you
> accomplish a torus of star material and a planet or planets in the middle
> benefitting from almost total solar usage too :) Now of course some people
> are going to argue the technical aspects of how to get very large mass bodies
> into control, but I really just pulled that thought from the top of my head
> and had to see what you guys thought!
Not sure if black holes and white dwarves would be the best ways to do
this. Perhaps reshaping the system's asteroids and unwanted
planets/moons into an electromagnet/Dyson Toroid, with the bit facing
the planet at the center exposed? The Dyson near-shell would
hopefully provide at least enough power to sustain the electromagnet;
indeed, this would probably prove to be quite similar to a modern
tokamak reactor (which can contain plasma without 100% of the toroid's
surface actually doing anything).
Now, if that were done, every point on the planet would see a permanent
arc of light in the sky where the sun is - which would make seeing in
certain directions impossible without shades. (Then again, there would
never be a "night" there, so most likely everyone walking outside on the
surface would have to wear shades, at least if the indoor areas where
people can shut off the lights to get some sleep were kept near
Earth-normal luminescence, and assuming normal human beings as
colonists.)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:50:33 MDT