Re: AKICIF: Origin of film "Sunshine"

In article <fnjlp3$cir$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Keith F. Lynch <kfl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Dorothy J Heydt <djheydt@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Butch Malahide <fred.galvin@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"City at World's End" by Edmond Hamilton. The sun has not gone
out but has weakened a lot in its old age; the magic of advanced
technology rejuvenates it, making the earth habitable once again.

Actually, no. What made earth uninhabitable was that its cities
were using heat from the planet's core, to power and warm their
cities. And that had cooled down.

That's almost plausible. If they relied on geothermal power, and
somehow had a way to tap large amounts of it (trillions of heat pipes
riddling the planet?) that could cool down the Earth's interior over a
few decades or centuries. While this wouldn't cause any harm to life
on Earth (except over geological time scales) it would of course put
an end to their supply of geothermal power.

Earth's internal heat isn't primordial, as many people think.
It's produced by radioactive decay. So it would get replenished
eventually, but, like fossil fuels, not soon enough.

The cityful of 20th-century people who had been forcibly
time-traveled into this far age dropped an A- or maybe H-bomb down
one of the shafts and rekindled the core.

That's not plausible, even if they could get a bomb into the core.

That was not a problem; there were shafts leading from inside the
city power station deep into the core.

The core isn't a reactor. The only heat you'd get is from the bomb
detonation itself. A one megaton nuclear explosion can heat one cubic
kilometer of water by one degree celsius. Not really very impressive
on a planetary scale.

Oh yeah.

Mind you, I don't know if this is really physically feasible; nor
whether the sun would still be in the preliminary cooling-down
stage, not yet gone red giant, at the time the earth's core had
cooled to that extent.

The sun is very gradually heating up, not cooling down. This will
culminate in a few billion years with the sun becoming a red giant,
and possibly vaporizing our whole planet.

Well, there you go. But it was, I repeat, 1951.

Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djheydt@xxxxxxxxxxx
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: AKICIF: Origin of film "Sunshine"
    ... somehow had a way to tap large amounts of it (trillions of heat pipes ... time-traveled into this far age dropped an A- or maybe H-bomb down ... one of the shafts and rekindled the core. ... The sun is very gradually heating up, ...
    (rec.arts.sf.fandom)
  • Kartan stone tools add to evidence of ancient phonetician mining activity in South Australia 3200 y
    ... The Bronze age collapse of 1300 BC was almost certainly caused by the ... Who else are called Kartan people or Martu people or Per Amun People ... Three types of large stone tools found on the island: ... The distinction between Kartan and core tool and scraper ...
    (soc.history.ancient)
  • Re: Sirius B
    ... left the core of the galaxy empty. ... On top of it the magnitude of the flare not weakens as it exist the ... Imagine 500 years of accelerating heat. ...
    (sci.astro)
  • Re: fission question
    ... > A core such as this, in five seconds, would be fairly accurately ... Just not time for the heat to move around ... > (thermally as well as by induced radiation) fairly quickly. ... Figure 2.5 neutrons per fission and you get 5 MeV in neutrons ...
    (sci.physics)
  • Re: How low-density can a terrestrial body be?, or, help
    ... And could actually be significantly denser, ... this large a body should not be this low density. ... core, ... simple cooling of the interior (that is, it is ancient heat left from ...
    (rec.arts.sf.science)