What If We Could Build an Alderson Disk?

[Music] this is not some DVD floating in space it's a mega structure that might one day become humanity's home the earth might not remain habitable forever it could get engulfed by a massive solar flare or become too hot due to climate change or have all its life wiped out by one enormous asteroid what if I told you we could outlive all these disasters and that we could do that by building a space mega structure bigger than the Sun itself just how big would we have to make it and what would life be like on a structure like that this is what if and here's what would happen if we could build an Alderson disk why would we colonize other currently uninhabitable planets if we could hypothetically build a habitat of our own something that would host many billions of future humans without ever running out of space it does look like a DVD doesn't it only it has the mass of three thousand suns the reason why we need our Alderson discs to have such a huge mass is gravity all objects with mass are gravitationally drawn to each other and objects with a greater mass have a greater gravitational pull for the Alderson disc to be stable enough to host life we've needed to have a stronger pull than the Sun does that's where it gets tricky because the Sun is the most massive object in our solar system accounting for ninety-nine point eight percent of its total mass to have enough material to outweigh the Sun we'd have to get it by breaking down every planet moon and asteroid in a radius of hundreds of light-years around us or we could give our Alderson disc artificial gravity this type of gravity isn't caused by attraction but by acceleration or centrifugal force in other words we'd have to spin our disk fast enough that it doesn't collapse into a doughnut or get swallowed by the Sun but since we haven't really figured out artificial gravity yet let's stick with the first option and make our Alderson disc very very massive 241 million kilometers wide that would make it stretch past the orbit of Mars it would also be several thousand kilometers or miles thick and would have a surface-area equivalent to over 1 billion Earth's [Music] just imagine how many billions of humans could live on it ah but not so fast our Alderson disc wouldn't be habitable everywhere and before I explain that let me talk about the Sun for a moment our Sun would be sitting stationary in the hole at the center of the disk and because of this our disk would have no day and night cycle only a never-ending Twilight but since our disk would have a bigger mass in a stronger gravitational pull there's a chance that the Sun would wobble up and down that would somewhat solve our day and night problem but it could also increase the possibility of colliding with our star we might need to install gamma-ray lasers to have more control over the sun's wobbling and still our disc shaped world would need way more things to become suitable for us to live on it one of the most important things is an atmosphere on earth the atmosphere protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation it reduces temperature extremes and it creates pressure that allows liquid water to exist we'd need an atmosphere to do all the same things for our elderson disk and to keep the Sun from stealing it we'd need to build a wall around the disks inner edge unlike earth the Alderson disk wouldn't have liquid metal in its core to give it a magnetosphere a magnetic field is important because it keeps the solar wind from stripping off the atmosphere without it the solar wind would erode the part of the Alderson disc closer to the Sun this could make the entire structure unstable and possibly destroy it altogether once we figure out how to make the atmosphere and magnetic field we could bring in water we'd make holes in the disk that would allow for oceans because of the way gravity would work on our Alderson disk the water could be suspended the oceans on the disk shaped structure would literally be bottomless for the same gravitational reasons humans would be able to live on both the top and the bottom side of the disk for those living on the bottom side it wouldn't feel as if they were walking upside down it would be just normal on each side but of course this space mega-structure could have some flaws because of the discs enormous mass its gravity might make it collapse into a gigantic torus or even worse a black hole then there are asteroids even though we used up all the nearby asteroids to form our Alderson disk in the first place there's no guarantee new interstellar space rocks wouldn't come and bombard our disk world not just asteroids but rogue planets as well even the slightest hit could destabilize the disk and plunge it right into the Sun speaking of the Sun remember I said that not all of the Alderson discs would be habitable that's because the Sun wouldn't be heating it evenly the inner side of the disk would be very hot to withstand the tremendous heat we'd have to give our disk a heat shield just like the one we developed for the Parker Solar Probe the outer edges of the disk would be freezing cold but the middle band of the structure would be just perfect for life although there would be a lot of unused space the habitable area would still be 50 million times larger than the entire surface of Earth so a giant platter with the thickness of several thousand kilometers it might not survive in space luckily I have another idea in mind but that's a story for another what if you

Channel: What If

Views: 1,130,270

Rating: 4.8267918 out of 5

Keywords: what if, what happens if, scifi, science documentary, what if scenario, mysteries, what if earth, what if cosmos, what if earth shape, what if we could build an alderson disk, alderson disk, what if space, megastructure, artificial world, artificial planet, Mega Engineering, disk world, world building, building a habitat in space, building artificial home in space, building a new world in space, cosmic megastructures, scientific answers to hypothetical questions

Id: -e2mBJ0O3Rw

Length: 7min 44sec (464 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 14 2020