All the countries in the world pool their resources, money, and scientists in order to manufacture 20 Hugenourmous Jet turbines and place them around the earth pointing in the direction of the earth's rotation. When activated, the turbines will speed up our earth's rotation, reducing the effect of gravity. This would likely result in a huge decrease in greenhouse gas emissions, as everyone would prefer leaping to wherever they happen to be going, waving to their fellow business men as they bound along the roads. Airplanes would suddenly become much more efficient, as less fuel would be needed to overcome gravity, and all the world records for long/high jumps would be broken within a few minutes of the reduced gravity. Jet-packs would quickly become a viable source of transport, as would the helicopter hat, hoverboard and pogo stick. The only people that lose out are the skiers.-- erenjay, May 04 2012 erenjay http://www.blogger....1431518798642745655 [normzone, May 04 2012] Prior art. World-wave [2 fries shy of a happy meal, May 05 2012] How much emissions would be put out by the hugenourmous turbines?-- RayfordSteele, May 04 2012 They wouldn't have to run for very long, and it would be worth it-- erenjay, May 04 2012 Wheeeee...bad science. The turbines would have no effect on the earth's rotational speed.-- ldischler, May 04 2012 Ok, so we now have the planet going one way, and the atmosphere the other; and the Hugenourmous Jet turbines have stopped from a lack of oxygen.
The only people that lose out are the skiers and anyone/anything else that breathes for a living. Or anyone/anything which depends on there being a lack of hurricane force winds at any given moment.
(May be interesting to see how fast the earth would have to be spun to reach said gravity reduction, and how fast the atmosphere would have to be rotated to antispinward in order to mop up that much angular momentum. Maybe I'll cook up the math later.)-- lurch, May 04 2012 Just to get a sense of magnitude, since the earth weighs about a million times that of the atmosphere, accelerating the atmosphere to 1000 miles per hour relative to the equator would accelerate the earth by about .002 mile an hour in the opposite direction. Gravity in the equatorial latitudes is reduced by the earth's rotation by about 1/3%, and this idea would increase/decrease that by a factor of about 1.0002. Turn off the turbines and the earth would return to a 24 hour day and zero human carbon emissions, since all humans (except for a few Eskimos) would be dead.
But on further reflection, all of the oil and coal deposits would be needed to get the atmosphere spinning that fast, so not only would all humans be dead in the global hurricane, but they would be cooked as well by the massive pulse of global warming that would last for thousands of years.-- ldischler, May 04 2012 //The turbines would have no effect on the earth's rotational speed.//
They would if you could somehow exhaust them into outer space. Pumping our atmosphere out into the cosmos doesn't seem like a very good idea, though. After all, there might be life out there somewhere.-- ytk, May 04 2012 Well, there's the problem: [ldischer] only took the atmosphere up to 1000 miles per hour. We need to get it up to escape velocity as proposed by [ytk].
More practically, we should launch chunks of rock dug from the earth's core. As the core gets smaller, the continental plates will move closer together, so we'll launch some water from the ocean as well to avoid flooding. This has the added benefit of reducing the total mass of the earth to further reduce gravity.-- scad mientist, May 04 2012 Your species just HAS to do that… guaranteed top spot on "Galactic Jackass".-- 8th of 7, May 04 2012 Would it not be more efficient (and possibly more survivable) to spin the Earth's liquid core instead of its atmosphere?
This could be done electromagnetically. There must be large numbers of old fashioned copper cables lying under the ocean, made redundant by fibreoptic links. Just figure out the appropriate figurings, pump the necessary power into these cables, and you're home dry.
In the unlikely event that that scheme fails to work quite as expected, we could instead attach four rather large paddles to the Earth, around its equator, all painted black on the widdershins faces and white on the other. This would allow god's own organic solar power to spin us up nicely.-- MaxwellBuchanan, May 04 2012 //spin the Earth's liquid core//
The earth's solid inner core already spins at a different rate than the earth, no doubt due to a previous civilization's disastrous efforts to make themselves lighter.-- ldischler, May 04 2012 //attach four rather large paddles to the Earth// Man, how have we missed this solution to the orbital junk problem?-- lurch, May 04 2012 ohh Space Junk Ping-Pong!!-- xandram, May 04 2012 // a previous civilization's disastrous efforts to make themselves lighter //
You had to be there. Oh, how we laughed ...-- 8th of 7, May 04 2012 so.... given that Earth has a magnetic field, how low could gravity get before we started losing atmosphere ?-- FlyingToaster, May 04 2012 //how low could gravity get before we started losing atmosphere //
There's always some loss, FT. It has to do with the escape velocity being less than the speed of molecules in the upper atmosphere. There are always some molecules at a high enough velocity, according to the Maxwell distribution.-- ldischler, May 04 2012 I'm thinking a very long buckytube cable anchored to the ground, most of it wrapped around the equator, the far end attached to a very fast moving massy celestial object...
//Pumping our atmosphere out into the cosmos doesn't seem like a very good idea,
Aha, so the rise of allergies on earth is due to some other planet pumping...-- not_morrison_rm, May 04 2012 //They would if you could somehow exhaust them into outer space. // How about we all build hugenourmous Rockets, and tether them to the earth with space-elevator-wire and use them to make the earth go faster?-- erenjay, May 04 2012 Multiple science errors. Not allowed. Halfbaked not equals Wrong.-- sqeaketh the wheel, May 05 2012 Hang on, if we all started running in the same direction at the same time..but would that be spin-wards or anti-spin-wards?-- not_morrison_rm, May 05 2012 or walked... I like walking better.-- FlyingToaster, May 05 2012 I'll settle for dawdle then, I'm easy.-- not_morrison_rm, May 05 2012 or just levelling all the high areas on Earth, in the manner of an ice-skater bringing their arms in, to spin faster.
Ok, wouldn't do much but cut down on accidents in tunnel's cos fewer tunnels.-- not_morrison_rm, May 05 2012 And the prize for "Giving new meaning to the words **Fucked up the planet with a single idea**" goes to [erenjay].-- UnaBubba, May 05 2012 Turbines? We don't need no steenkeen turbines. [link]-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, May 05 2012 // And the prize for "Giving new meaning to the words **Fucked up the planet with a single idea**" goes to [erenjay]. //
You mean we're stripping [beanangel] of his title? But he's worked so hard!-- Alterother, May 05 2012 heh-- blissmiss, May 05 2012 Only for a week or so, [Alter]. It's a cruel world.-- UnaBubba, May 05 2012 Oh wow. I...don't know what to say, it's such an honour...thank you so much [UnaBubba]. I feel like my entire life has been leading up to this moment, and now that it's here...it's...just wonderful.
And [normzone], thanks for the <link>, but I seem to be having some difficulty finding its relevance to the current topic, which happens to be //"Giving new meaning to the words **Fucked up the planet with a single idea**"// rather than finding information about the recipient of such a prestigous award.-- erenjay, May 06 2012 //prestigous award.
Oh come on, it's just a colander sprayed with gold paint..-- not_morrison_rm, May 06 2012 You can even wear it on your head, to deflect slings and arrows.-- UnaBubba, May 07 2012 The oceans are going to act like a giant governor anyway. Listen to them, they're already telling the coastlines to not be "economic girlie-shores."-- RayfordSteele, May 07 2012 Another big problem with this idea is that if implemented, it would not have any net benefit because all the people living on this inside would have their weight increased.-- pocmloc, May 07 2012 Surely you could just mine all the fissile material on the planet and build nuclear weapons with it, then detonate them in the appropriate direction round the equator? Or maybe tow Jupiter to Earth orbit?-- nineteenthly, May 07 2012 Directional nuclear bombs? They're not exactly shaped- charges, [19thly].
// Or maybe tow Jupiter to Earth orbit? //
That one's already been Halfbaked. I think it's even called something like 'Tow Jupiter to Earth'.-- Alterother, May 07 2012 I think that this would just make the atmosphere spin around faster... maybe create two giant permanent hurricanes at the poles?-- EdisonEnvy, May 07 2012 // // Or maybe tow Jupiter to Earth orbit? //
That one's already been Halfbaked //
Yes, it was mine. The relevance here is twofold: a mass that big could be used to change the speed of Earth's rotation, for instance by placing Earth in an orbit round Jupiter which takes much less than a day, and the hydrogen in the Jovian atmosphere could be used to make hydrogen bombs.-- nineteenthly, May 08 2012 //hydrogen in the jovian atmosphere//
You could use it to power hugenormous electric turbines!
edit: hugenourmous-- erenjay, May 08 2012 Except that hugenormous isn't a word, and electric turbines that could withstand the blast effects of hydrogen bombs are going to be a little tricky.-- UnaBubba, May 08 2012 random, halfbakery