Bored of living on Earth?
Don’t worry
We got you!!
Let’s start building something interesting in space
We already have a space station
But is it possible to build a planet from scratch?
Well, let’s Speculate about this scenario in today’s video of DiscoverZen
The total time for the formation and evolution of our current home planet is estimated to be about 4.5 billion years.
But we don’t have so long to build our new planet.
Neither do we have the materials required for this humongous construction.
We can go to our nearest asteroid belt in between Mars and Jupiter to extract as many materials as we can
but even all the asteroids combined would not be enough to build something liveable for humans.
If we can extract materials from all of Jupiter’s moons, we can make up a planet that would be as big as 10% of the earth.
Even this option would take thousands or even tens of thousands of years to build.
Other than that, we don’t have any more practically feasible options with our present-day technology.
Now, let’s say we got all the materials to work with, but still, it will take an enormous amount of time to practically build the planet.
Everything has to be assembled in space, so scientists and engineers need to work there.
The whole project will cost us quadrillions of dollars and millions of rocket launches.
We might even have to establish a moon base for this project.
We will cover this topic in a different video.
So, make sure to subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon to not miss any future videos.
Let’s say we started building our planet, but where is the right location to do that?
Our habitable zone in the solar system, also known as the Goldilocks zone, starts right after venus and ends after mars.
Anything nearer to the sun from this boundary is too hot for life to sustain and anything away from this zone is too cold.
So, we will prefer to stay inside this Goldilocks Zone.
Okay, so let’s say we finished building our planet but to make it habitable for humans, we need oxygen.
We can put some greenhouse gases for the plants which will use sunlight and carbon dioxide for photosynthesis and give us breathable air to survive.
We will also add some ammonia in the atmosphere to make it denser and liveable for humans.
But one thing that is quite hard for us to do will be the protection against solar radiation.
Our current home planet’s core is filled with superheated iron which when the Earth rotates produces a Magnetic field around the globe.
In our artificial planet scenario, it’s impossible to fill the inner core with that kind of material
and it’s nearly impossible for us to really build an earth replica with our present-day technology, but there is some workaround there.
NASA already proposed an idea to build an artificial magnetic field around mars using satellites.
So, when that idea can be implemented practically in the future, then we will be able to use that concept for our artificial planet.
Moving on...
Gravity similar to Earth is essential for the long-term living of humans.
If we don’t have one Earth ‘G’ on the planet, we will have to deal with multiple medical issues similar to what astronauts experience in International Space Station
such as Bone Mass Loss and Low Blood Pressure.
The artificial Planet would need to rotate to produce gravity, via centrifugal force, outwardly along its equator.
This also allows the planet to have day-night shifts.
Getting the planet to rotate wouldn’t be hard.
Angled rockets could start the whole planet spinning and maintain it at the rate required for Earth-like gravity.
The rockets would not need to continuously fire because the planet is spinning in space, so there's nothing there to slow it down.
Do you think that the idea is super cool, but it needs too much technological development?
and it’s impossible that humans will try this big in the 21st century?
But what if we try something that’s possible with our present-day technology?
like What happens if we terraformed Mars?
Well, that sounds like a different scenario to speculate on DiscoverZen.