Scientists: Block the sun to stop climate change

@Shallow-Blue
For some reason I never got into Niven. I was more into Butler and Clarke and Anderson.

@sonhouse said
@Shallow-Blue
For some reason I never got into Niven.

@sonhouse said
@mlb62
There you go, put a Dyson sphere around our planet, then let the place see what it would be like to have the sun totally blocked off, maybe it was a secret weapon to freeze out the enemy, and cleverly designed vanes lets sun into the motherland but those dirty FRAUDS calling themselves a country, see how they deal with 100 below for years on end.

A Dyson sphere with the radius of Earth's orbit would have to be prepared to get struck by an asteroid or comet with fair frequency. How would that work, exactly?

I suppose every asteroid would be hunted down and consumed for its raw materials during construction...

@Metal-Brain
Now I am thinking you are one of those AI chatbox dudes but with a much more limited CPU.

@Soothfast
And that brings up the question of how you get even close to Earth G, if it was say an artificial planet with a patina of matter on the surface, the gravity would be next to zero with say only 20 or so km of dirt under your feet and propped up by supports going all the way across, all the asteroids in the solar system would not allow the construction of a Earth mass and size planet, I doubt you could build Pluto that way🙂
You could just live on the underside of the works and spin it up so you feel good old 1 g which I guess is how one would have to design it in a closed system with a sun in center but I don't see how ANY amount of matter floating around some solar system could allow construction of a true Dyson sphere, and besides there would be a problem there too, suppose they got the stuff to make a DS, the stars are not forever, they slowly get hotter and eventually run out of hydrogen at which point if the DS was the size of Earth orbit, the expanding sun would turn the whole construct into a giant weenie roast....

@sonhouse said
@Soothfast
And that brings up the question of how you get even close to Earth G, if it was say an artificial planet with a patina of matter on the surface, the gravity would be next to zero with say only 20 or so km of dirt under your feet and propped up by supports going all the way across, all the asteroids in the solar system would not allow the construction of a Earth m ...[text shortened]... size of Earth orbit, the expanding sun would turn the whole construct into a giant weenie roast....

@AverageJoe1
Suppose you have a flat Earth. So you fly in a straight line but you have to curve to go around the equator on a flat Earth. But on the real Earth, you go on the equator, you don't need to turn at all, just keep driving or flying right above the equator in a perfectly straight line. You will follow the equator doing just that. But on flat Earth, the equator is a circle alright but on a flat surface, the only way you can follow the equator is to keep slightly turning left or right depending on which direction you travel.
That is just one problem with flat Earth.
Another is, looking at the north star, Polaris, if Earth was flat you could see Polaris anywhere on the surface of Earth, Not so with the real Earth because Polaris can NEVER be seen south of the equator.

Another issue is why are ALL the rest of the planets clearly sphericalish and just Earth is flat?

Those effects are not seen so Earth is round, an oblate sphere, a wee bigger around the equator than around north to south pole because it is spinning.

But arguments like that mean nothing to the flat earth crowd, it is more like a religion to them, don't confuse me with facts, my mind is made up.

Another effect, if Earth was flat you would be able to send radio and TV signals right across the world with no need for repeaters or satellites but of course we see for instance, a powerful laser beam running in a straight line, you can't see it more than about 7 odd miles and the only reason you could see it past the horizon would be because of atmospheric bending of light but even that runs out proving once more Earth is round.

I could go on for hours on that subject but you get the gist.

@sonhouse said
@AverageJoe1
Suppose you have a flat Earth. So you fly in a straight line but you have to curve to go around the equator on a flat Earth. But on the real Earth, you go on the equator, you don't need to turn at all, just keep driving or flying right above the equator in a perfectly straight line. You will follow the equator doing just that. But on flat Earth, the equator is ...[text shortened]... proving once more Earth is round.

I could go on for hours on that subject but you get the gist.

@averagejoe1 said
Thankyou. I will wow my coffee buddies, though they will know that I do not know what I’m talking about! Good stuff. With your knowledge, you could go to podcast , there of 28,000 of them or million whatever, and many of them are about the flat earth cults. If you listen to them, you will not be able to stand it because they skip all around flat earth and talk about gibberish.

@AverageJoe1
My thing is music. I am up to 283 tracks on Soundcloud, I compose tunes on guitar and mandolin and keyboards and wife is ill and in hospital so I don't have much time to spend here.

@averagejoe1 said
Hi Sonhouse. I appreciate your being interested in my thread! I have another question. As to the flat earth concept, nowhere that I google do I see a clear explanation of how it can be flat. Yet there are PODCASTS and Societies, all just gabbing.
Like, simply put, where is the edge of earth?
Thankyou.

@moonbus said
Flat Earthers typically hold that the centre of the disc is the North Pole, and that there is no South Pole. They propose that the rim of the disc is the totality of Antartica, and that there is an ice wall around the edge, which keeps the oceans from flowing over the edge into space.

There are so many obvious flaws in this that it hardly merits refuting all of them. I mig ...[text shortened]... otia and Hamburg, this can best be explained by positing that we live on a globe rather than a disc.

@AverageJoe1

Yes, they claim it’s really flat, not warped like the top of a frisbee. if you were to drive or fly away from the North Pole in a straight line far enough, you would reach the ice wall at the edge of the disc. If you were in a car, you could get out, climb the wall and look over the edge into space. If you were flying and kept on flying, you’d fly off the edge and into space.

This is where flat earthers go down the rabbit hole. They claim that people who got to the wall and looked over the edge are part of a great big conspiracy to conceal the ‘truth’.

https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/why-do-some-people-believe-the-earth-is-flat

You can google "Gleason's Map" -- that is the one flat earthers usually appeal to as proof the planet is a disc. It shows the earth viewed from the 'top', above the North Pole. The N. Pole is at the centre, and Antartica forms the outer edge, a ring of ice. It is disputed whether Gleason himself believed the earth to be flat, but that's the map flat earthers refer to to support their own theory.