What if the Earth was as big as Jupiter?

To Syzygys:

Dwayne's "facts," I have concluded, usually come from his imagination (or perhaps a random number generator ?) so I do not bother to correct him anymore. He is interesting to read, especially when he is explaining something. In this case, he did say "should have" physcial diameter of 24,000 miles. Perhaps he knows of some solid interior sphere whose diameter he has computed?

 

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This is an interesting hypothetical question!

For one, it will affect the society daily basis activities, because if the earth is
as big as jupiter, it will only rotate 10 hours per day (one day is 10 hours
instead of 24 hours).

Jupiter equatorial radius = 71,492 km (as mentioned in post #20)
Therefore its circumference = 2 x 3.14 x 71492 = 448,970 km
Its equatorial rotation velocity = 45,300 km/h
Therefore its daily rotation ~ 10 h

If the dark hours is 5 hours per day, activities will not be so efficient, as people
sleep 3-4 hrs per day, then go to work 5 hrs per day.. unless people sleep
once per three days, that is 10 hrs (1 day) sleep, 20 hours (next day) do
activities..

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Such a large land mass would allow a far greather bio diversity.
The massive surface area would lessen most natural catastrophes like asteroid impact, changing atmosphere composition.
This would have given some extinct species some extra time to adapt, not to mention create more escape paths to better grounds. This could have potentially saved a lot of the smarter homonids, that could have allowed room for multiple (+5) sentient species to room the planet at the same time.
(There where more that qaulified as sentient then sapiens and neanderthals)

 

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Then (s)he shouldn't have posted it in Earth Science.

 

It would be a rather oppressing environment. But given that this is a socialogical question, I would have to question our level of technological development under these circumstances. Key to technology is communication. And given the vast differences, if population levels remain comparable to earth, we would be much less technologically advanced at this point in time...as we would not have achieved critical mass.

 

Man you guys really trounced all over my Jupiter-Earth.

I invisioned most of society living in one section of Earth, while the other majority being open unexplored and unclaimed wilderness (we don't have that anymore here on regular Earth.) You almost cannot go anywhere on this Earth and be far far away from urbanity. There is no connection to wilderness. It's all "territories/boundries/districts/state parks/etc."

The Earth feels big when you're young, but as you get older and travel, the Earth seems much smaller. I can only think of what could have been!

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Well Michael83,
If you walked all that distance around the earth it would seem a lot bigger, in fact humans use less than 1% of the habital surface area on earth.

The reason that it seems so crowded is because goverments and big buissness made deals to force the populations in to cities, the failure of goverment management after bring the populations into concentration is the reason that so many hardships exsit, social imbalances ect..... so there is actually,factually more open untouched land that the average person would think. in some places they can not even find people to settle the open land.

In The USA there is 1 Square mile for each 72 people.


DwayneD.L.Rabon

 

Anyway- couldn't you just make Jupiter spin 14 times(or whatever) faster? to make up for the increased gravity...

 

wouldn't that make the planet, oval? :bugeye:

 

I don't know, i'm asking you smartypants types. I did horrible in Physics.

 

well you are saying here is that somehow spinning an object will make it have less gravity? am I correct? If such is it than...than according to current physics you are wrong. Perhaps of course maybe spinning of magnetic particles does indeed cause some sort of gravitaty effect but currently such effect is not known.

Robert Heim talks of this effect so that is why I mention it.

 

Spining the planet will not change the gravity of it (except due to some slight effects due to the shape changest that will induce). Gravity is a fundamental attraction between mass particles, not possible to change - only a function of their mass and separation.

On the spin equator there will be the maximium net reduction in the force acting on you (and no reduction at the poles, except as prior noted the effect of the induced shape changes.)

 

Jupiter itself cannot be used for this thought experiment as a gaseous planet. So -- we need to construct a solid-surfaced object that is the size Jupiter but has the same key characteristics as does the Earth (1g acceleration, 24 hour rotation period). Our constructed planet would need to be a fairly thin shell if it is made of normal solid matter. One problem: Gravitational attraction will tend to make the shell collapse in on itself. The planet will need some kind of interior framework to prevent this collapse. The strusses will need to be very, very strong. We will need some new material. This stuff needs to be very, very strong. I will call this material scrith for lack of a better name.

... Hmm. Seems somebody has beat me to the punch on this material ... Dang.

Humanity will overflow even a Jupiter-sized planet in short order. Given lots of space and good health care, a couple can easily produce enough offspring to double or even quadruple the population every generation. Following Niven's lead, why stop at a Jupiter-sized body?
The material needed to support our Jupiter-sized Earth is not too far from what is needed to build a Ringworld.

 

war is also a good solution.

 

over-population should bring misery, shouldn't it?

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China and Tibet....:bugeye:

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and China isn't as big as USA and USSR...in order to maintain the land as large as that.

Anyways, this thread is about Jupiter...lets stay on topic.