Let us speculate that humanity survives its intellectual infancy.\u00a0 Let\u2019s imagine that it\u2019s now 10,000 A.D. (that\u2019s right, the Year of the Lord) and our smartest Earth scientists have calculated that by 100,000 A.D. the Earth\u2019s magnetic field is going to shut down for good.\u00a0 I have no reason to believe this is an accurate number.\u00a0 By all accounts we should have many millions of years on the warranty for the magnetic field but just let\u2019s say for the sake of discussion it will.<\/p>\n
Well, there we are ultra-modern humans with a world government, a genetically engineered genome that includes a third set of teeth and a three-hundred-year lifespan.\u00a0 We hear that our distant descendants are going to lose their atmosphere, oceans and have to wear SPF 50,000 rated sunscreen for days at the {dry) beach.\u00a0 So, what will they do?\u00a0 Well, with a ninety-thousand-year window of opportunity, if they\u2019re my descendants they\u2019ll probably waste the first twenty thousand years dithering.\u00a0 After that they\u2019ll start engineering the crap out of their options.\u00a0 But what will that be?\u00a0 Let me try to guess.<\/p>\n
So, the Earth\u2019s liquid iron core produces a magnetic field because it is a moving electric field.\u00a0 So, all we have to do is produce a moving electric field between Earth\u2019s atmosphere and the sun (and to a lesser extent all of the universe around us.\u00a0 Well then shouldn\u2019t we install solar panels in orbit around the Earth and run a current through a really long piece of copper wire that is moving and thereby set up an electromagnet?\u00a0 Now someone with any kind of electrical engineering knowledge or a physicist who specializes in E-M would slap me across the face and say, \u201cWhat the hell are you rambling about?\u201d\u00a0 And he would be right.\u00a0 But just for the sake of getting through this exercise let\u2019s say that it is theoretically possible to have a framework around the Earth that converts solar energy into enough of a moving electric field to induce a magnetic field as strong as the current field we enjoy today.<\/p>\n
Postulating that, is it technically feasible?\u00a0 Or would the amount of mass needed to create this device be completely ridiculous from the point of view of the energy needed to boost it into space ?\u00a0 Would the weight of the conductive material and the photoelectric cells be just so enormous that it would be beyond all of the resources of even a distant future civilization to put in orbit from Earth?<\/p>\n
Now this is a cheat.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know the answer.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t tried to estimate the amount of material needed to produce such an enormous electrical field.\u00a0 Something with a diameter of more than 24,000 miles and with the structural integrity that that requires seems absurd.\u00a0 I, of course am aware of the science fiction convention of a ring or (Dyson) sphere around a star used to harness some significant portion of the energy output of the fusion reaction going on inside every star but I don\u2019t know that anyone with enough of a technical background has tried to do a back of the envelope calculation to see if the numbers are just too scary to make any sense.<\/p>\n
So, I\u2019ll throw this one out to the readership.\u00a0 What have you heard?<\/p>\n