828 meters.
That is the height of the record 150-storey Burj Khalifa
skyscraper in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, the tallest construction
ever built, the tallest building in the world.
For those who have never seen such a grandiose structure, it is perhaps
quite difficult to even imagine the entire scale of such an architectural masterpiece.
However, this building is not at the limit of our capabilities.
Try now to imagine a building whose windows open out into space, perhaps where
the Moon almost seems closer than the shopping center located next
door!
Perhaps we can go a little further...try to imagine a skyscraper
with a billion floors!
How one could actually bring this insane idea into the realm
of reality, Ill tell you just a little later.
the meantime, I want to first introduce you to another giant structure,
with a billion floors!
which in the near future may just break the record of the Burj Khalifa.
Burj Khalifa.
This is the Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid A 240 storey tall
project which is being actively developed by Japanese architects.
In its design, it somewhat resembles the futuristic
headquarters of the Tyrell Corporation from the much beloved cult sci-fi
film Blade Runner . The size of the structure will be 14 times
larger than the pyramid at Cheops.
It will consists of 204 smaller pyramid constructions, each of which is equal in area
to the huge Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas.
Despite the greater number of floors, the Shimizu pyramid will be
slightly shorter than the Burj Khalifa - just 730 meters.
But it compensates for this with its impressive size in general,
and its ability to accommodate an astounding over 1 million people.
Now this project may seem a tad ambitious, but architects are already
dreaming about even greater super-constructions.
You might ask: would it even be possible for anyone ever to create
a super building with a billion floors?
Of course, nothing prevents you from endlessly laying a brick on a
brick on a brick, or mounting one section over another, and so on.
But the higher a building rises, the greater the headache
it becomes for the
builders.
First of all, the force of the structure pushes down with ever
greater pressure on itself the taller and therefore heavier it is.
Meaning: If you do not create some kind of a heavy-duty
foundation, the upper part will become too massive for the lower to support,
and the entire structure will collapse, flattening into a pancake.
According to the calculations of one of the creators of the Burj Khalifa, one William
Baker, a skyscraper with a height of 8,849 meters - a little over 10
times the height of the Burj Khalifa - would need to be built on a base of approximately
4.1 thousand square kilometers.
This height was chosen as it is one meter higher than the tallest
mountain peak above sea level on the planet - and that is, of course, Mount
Everest.
The area at the base for such a structure would have to be about
equal to the area of Polynesia.
However, it is quite very much more than difficult to prepare a site of that kind for
such a huge foundation.
This is because such a ginormous, Bunyonesque foundation
to be constructed, the area covered would most likely be spotted
and crisscrossed by waterways, and perhaps even contain mountains
or valleys.
If this normal- style foundation were abbreviated in the slightest,
the building built atop it would fold like a house of cards.
But William Baker proposes another possibility: building skyscrapers around a
smaller but yet still powerful central core, which could then support numerous
columns, which in turn support the building.
In this way the foundation could be significantly narrowed.
If one were to construct a building using this “pedestal” method,
and if one were to still use a base of 4 thousand square kilometers in area,
according to the Baker method, it can hypothetically rise to an astounding
59 thousand meters in height...or about 6 and two thirds times taller than
Mount Everest.
That’s approximately 10 thousand floors...give or take a
floor or two.
True, even with a terrifically strong foundation, to build such a skyscraper
would not be easy in any way, shape, or form.
At that height, hurricanes force winds are frequent and troublesome.
They would blow against the sides of the structure and create powerful
and possibly deadly turbulence.
They could rock the building back and forth during storms, making the
structure somewhat dangerous to live in.
In fact, the whole building could potentially be blown over.
To avoid such difficulties, it is proposed that
skyscrapers be built in a more streamlined fashion, so that they will be less
damaged by whirlwinds, hurricanes and tornados.
A circular shape, an oval, a triangle, and a rhombus with rounded
corners have all been proposed, all of which would work better than
a square.
Also needed: super strong and highly resistant meta-materials.
Perhaps the new and quite innovative transparent aluminum could be used.
This amazing stuff is three times stronger than steel, and see through
to boot.
Or maybe nanomaterials, as some of them, according
to scientists, are almost completely impossible to destroy.
But even after having built an uber- building from such exotic stuff, you will
still probably stress your noggin to the breaking point over the interminable problem
of the elevators.
Conventional elevators tend to occupy way too much space, and in such an
uber-building there would be almost no space left for anything BUT elevator
shafts.
However, the latest developments in the design and creation of
super-compact and ultra-fast catapult elevators might save the day.
There is also a promising idea regarding flying
up and down on the exterior of the building using industrial strength balloons.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
Lets say the engineers are able to solve such problems and overcome the
milestone of 10 thousand floors.
Now let us try to mentally climb higher and build a megascraper of 100 thousand floors.
The top of this architectural extravaganza will reach near-Earth space.
And suddenly it will be right in the middle of a microgravity dumping ground,
full of debris from space stations, probes, comets, and asteroids.
Already, according to NASA estimates, about 170 million remnants of satellites
rotate here, from tiny little specks to fairly large hunks and chunks
of broken up machinery.
And to top it off, the speed of many of these
objects reaches a deadly 56 thousand km/h - something like the speed of
a bullet fired from a Kalashnikov assault rifle.
Scientists are promising to have this area swept
clean of debris in the near future.
They have already tested something called the “RemoveDEBRIS” device, a kind
of high technology space harpoon with a net,
which during testing did manage to gather quite a good catch of space rubbish.
And experts from the Surrey Space Center created a model of an orbital
vacuum cleaner with a kind of sail, capable - they say - of
carrying out the general cleaning of all of near-Earth space.
So then, theoretically anyway, we will be able to continue building our super-duper
ultra-skyscraper without fearing that a hunk of a satellite
or wayward piece of leftover rocket will destroy the entire thing in an instant.
So, if we put one hundred mega-scrapers, each with a height of 100
thousand floors, on top of each other, then we get a mega-mega building
with 10 million floors.
And then if we build another 100 of those mega-mega
buildings on top of each other, then...finally, we will have our giga-scraper
with a total of one billion floors.
Alas, according to the calculations of specialists, there is barely enough material
and energy in the entire world to fashion even half of such a giga-scraper
construction.
For this we need the resources of other celestial bodies.
Judging by the rapid pace of development of science and technology, according
to some forecasts, this will be do-able in the coming centuries.
At that time then, finally, perhaps, it will be possible to encapsulate a star with
a swarm of energy gathering satellites, whereupon we can consume as much
energy as our hearts desire.
The building materials could be borrowed from any other resource-
rich nearby planets and asteroids.
And finally, a skyscraper will appear with a billion floors, which, most likely, won’t
be just a building, or even a city, but something like an entire world unto itself.
It could be enveloped in a flexible shell filled with an artificial atmosphere,
and lit by the light of a man- made sun.
Inside their different sectors, people will ride on supersonic
elevators, and between different sections - on some type of aircraft or even
spacecraft.
But at the apex of our Giga-scraper will be the Moon itself, and our Lunar
companion could even crash into our structure if we aren’t careful.
So, we will have to protect our Giga-floor-building
from our eternal night light with, say, a protective grid.
Or we might even have to remove our satellite a bit
from the Earth to some safe distance a tad farther away.
Still, the main problem with our building will be its incredibly
price.
It will probably cost hundreds of trillions of dollars, which is
quite a lot.
With this amount of
money, we could alternatively give each inhabitant of the planet a lump
sum payment in the millions of dollars, or even rent a fleet of dozens of
huge space ships.
No one really wants super tall buildings if they have to
pay for most of it out of their own pockets.
But what if one day, say, some global catastrophe, cataclysm, or epidemic
drove everyone to have to hide together in the same building?
Lets see if our giga-skyscraper could shelter all of humanity.
Now on our planet we have a population of about 7,600,000,000 people.
According to some calculations, ten people of average height and weight
can stand on one square meter.
So, a square with sides 28 kilometers long, giving it an area of ​​784 square kilometers,
could accommodate the entire population of the Earth.
This is slightly larger than the total area of ​​New
York City.
Many experts are quite confident that a building the size of a city
could be built today.
However, to fit everyone on Earth into this structure,
they would have to stand shoulder to shoulder, and back to face with all of
their neighbors.
To live under such conditions is, of course, impossible.
We do not want to be packed into such a building
like sardines in a can - or monkeys in a barrel, as it were.
According to UN and UNESCO standards, an average person needs a space of at least
30 square meters to live anywhere near a normal lifestyle.
And we will need space to accommodate communications, common and ancillary facilities,
and et cetera.
Then, if we consider that roughly 500 people can be comfortably
accommodated on one floor in a modern skyscraper, then a little
more than 15 million of these will be needed for all of the present inhabitants
of the Earth.
So then, with a billion floors, there will be more than enough
space for stadiums, parks, artificial lakes and ponds, recreation areas,
and all the other various spaces you can think of.
In time, if such a situation came to pass, we would even
have enough room for a small alien civilization to move in with us, if need
be.
If you want to know more about the incredible buildings and amazing
constructions of the future, don’t miss a single one of our videos!
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