Matrioshka Worlds

[@isaacarthurSFIA]

Just as an advance warning, this is a bit of a 'get a drink and a snack' week, this episode is long, next week's is long, and we have a bonus episode this weekend plus a livestream, so probably about 3 hours of me talking in the next 7 days :) Livestream is Sunday at 4pm EST, not sure about the Bonus ep, either Friday afternoon or Saturday morning so it's not to close to the other two.

[@MADSK_LLZ]

The more the merrier!

[@kevincrady2831]

Is there a way we can get more "warnings" like this in life? "Warning: that guy is about to hand you a stack of $100.00 bills." "Warning: the really attractive person you have a big crush on is about to ask you out on a date." "Warning: the weather is going to be freaking amazing for the next few days, and your boss wants to give you some paid time off." Off to get a drink and a snack...

[@noahjalbuena-cook6877]

literally no one is complaining my dude

[@mikelfunderburk5912]

Looking forward to all the great content. Thanks to all involved.

[@AnimeShinigami13]

also Illium in mass effect 2 is an ecumonopolis! pretty sparkley!

[@cannonfodder4376]

"And we'll replace them with something safer, like a black hole eventually." Man I don't even raise an eyebrow at such things anymore, just par for the course for SFIA. Changing my views of Sci-Fi and futurism since 2018 A great episode as always Isaac.

[@hellfrost333]

Just wanna know what these aliens are tripping on...my puny human brain can't compute.

[@mheermance]

"Something safer like a black hole.", another "Welcome to SFIA" moment!

[@Zarcondeegrissom]

yeah, lol. Up there with "Moving planets, is mundane", lol. ("The explanation is simple, the effort is literally astronomical" - SomeKindaSpy) "Something safer like a black hole." SFIA shirts available, when? if? Isaac and crew are epic. B)

[@thomas.02]

i can't get enough of these moments... hilarious and awe-inspiring at the same time!

[@danieldomeisen2632]

when your civilization considers black holes as safe, what the hell is their weapons systems like?!

[@danieldomeisen2632]

@GTCatFastCars - Literal Space/time wave compression weapons. We have Black holes. We can either make them or move them. Why not use them in a bomb? get 2 good sized ones produced and in a stable orbit around each other NEAR the system/target you want to wreck. Then speed up the rotation and contract the orbit. once you do this enough they will be producing massive gravitational waves that are compact enough that i have to wonder something. Would these waves tear apart a planet? Could they tear apart a solar system? Can we break our ye olde clark-tech surf boards and ride them like KKV (Kinetic-Kill Vehicles)? Everyone always forget the joys of using gravity to manipulate space/time as a weapon. What do you do when your enemy is literalyl using the very fundamental forces of the universe to tear your solar system apart and induce gravitational chaos? On a small scale? Black hole Bombs, time it jsut right and let the micro black holes explode near a target... all those exotic particles, elements, energies... so glorious...

[@danieldomeisen2632]

@GTCatFastCars - here is hoping never, weapons like that can be scaled up rather easily. Imagine galaxy massed black-hole weapons could be very... dangerous to space time as a whole. As the the small bombs, lets hope never because those are.... dangerous. Realistically i will say around the year 40k... For the God-Emperor!

[@PantsuMann]

Imagine a day were we discover an earth like planet and scientists say "it has a ring" and everyone is like "like saturn? cool" and the scientists answer "no.. an actual ring, like a structure". :O

[@MaxAuxen]

Halo XV plot: We parked four Halo's around earth. And Mars. Also, Europa.

[@iambiggus]

There would be very scientific poop happening, without a doubt.

[@tinkmarshino]

we do.. it's space junk

[@SomeKindaSpy]

HALOOOO! ITS DIVINE WIND WILL RUSH BETWEEN THE STARS; PROPELLING ALL WHO WALK THE PATH TO SALVATION!

[@rationalmartian]

Or the day after when NASA announces that there actually are more than one ring. And something appears very anomalous regarding the gravity, size and mass of the planet, that cannot be explained by a purely rock and metal based planet. That would be very exiting. LOL. At least then we will KNOW we are not alone in the universe. Though I somehow seriously doubt life, or intelligent life will be so abundant as to be so close to us we will be able to visually confirm it. Space is just too vast to make the probabilities remotely reasonable. Space is so big and things so distantly seperated it makes the incredibly swift speed of light appear decidedly pedestrian.

[@tamasmihaly7080]

This channel is so close to my heart. Isaac is a special person.

[@MrTrenttness]

tamas mihaly I feel the same way. Hearing all the possibility in our future is up lifting.

[@faust7756]

easily one of my best subscription if not the best

[@brianhutcherson4545]

I've pretty much never found anything this worthwhile on KZbin. Like, Isaac and the Primitive Technology guy are almost the only channels I care about.

[@billygames7107]

We are all “special” friend..✌🏼

[@Cyborous]

I know, LOVE this channel. Wonderful channel.

[@Verrisin]

nature: fractal trees to catch as much sunlight as possible SFIA: fractal trees to radiate as much heat as possible

[@snakeplissken3825]

Trees like ours you mean???hmmmm,this whole place is engineered I think .

[@darkblood626]

@@snakeplissken3825 no

[@snakeplissken3825]

@@darkblood626 dammit man!!!

[@shannonm.townsend1232]

@@darkblood626 couldn't it be called engineering? Self-engineering?

[@Apodeipnon]

@@snakeplissken3825 plants are only about 1% efficient at converting sunlight to energy.. pretty sloppy engineering if you ask me

[@JoelDowdell]

"And we'll replace them with something safer, like a black hole eventually..." One of the less fantastic ideas in this episode. I knew this episode was gonna be good, but man this episode is amazing.

[@fatetestarossa2774]

indeed

[@NucleAri]

SFIA: the channel that describes black holes as being safer than the current stuff at the center of the planet. It sounds so bad but makes so much sense when thought about logically. Great video as always!

[@timothymclean]

You wouldn't want to get too close to the black hole, but I'd think the same is true of magma.

[@useodyseeorbitchute9450]

Dunno. I'm afraid that black holes would end up in category: NIMBY.

[@timothymclean]

@@useodyseeorbitchute9450 Would you want _magma_ in your backyard?

[@useodyseeorbitchute9450]

​@@timothymclean Magma does not sound sinister enough. Moreover, someone may point that protest against building a planet out of molten rock is 4.5 billion years overdue.

[@timothymclean]

@@useodyseeorbitchute9450 I'm not protesting against building a planet out of molten rock, I'm protesting against holding black hole cores to a different standard than molten rock cores.

[@Rougepelt]

You say long episode like it’s a negative, this was 40 minutes of insight, joy, and sandwiches!

[@xl000]

sandwiches ?

[@aryantaneja2244]

@@xl000 like he says grab a snack in the start of the show that is why

[@harbl99]

I like all these things. Sounds like a good time right there.

[@irishspartanstudios]

"The order of the Imperium stretches to the edges of the galaxy. From the Arctic wastelands of Valhalla, to the towering hives of Armageddon, yet one is revered above all. A millennia of strife has dissolved it's oceans, it's soil is barren, and it's air, toxic. So revered is this planet however, that the millions of pilgrims who flock to it every year, the few who arrive will likely never leave. In ancient times, it was known as Earth, but in the 41st millennium, it is Holy Terra..." - The Templin Institute

[@JariDawnchild]

I found your comment 4y too late, but that is so bittersweet and profound I had to read it several times.

[@DrLongWang]

“We will replace it with something safer like a black hole” is probably my favorite quote of this episode

[@prakadox]

Flat worlds, hollow earths, Geo-centrism, stop encouraging them, Isaac! ;) Beautiful episode. I know we probably won't live to see Earth's population cross 1 quadrillion, but it's an awesome thought. I do want to mention the issue mentioned by another commentator that beyond a point, we just can't assume that we can continue building taller and maintain the crust's integrity. We may need surface level truss structure or orbital rings equivalent beyond a point in time, right?

[@Melinmingle]

Some say you make less babies as quality of life increases. Plenty of evidence but I'm curious as to what would happen in the future.

[@boring7823]

Indeed, the weight of everything in and on an Atlas tower doesn't go away. The active particles are effectively used to transfer all this weight to the base of the tower without going through the middle. This means that the foundation must be strong enough to support all that weight staticly. However, an orbital ring is different, the entire ring is, on average, in orbit so it doesn't press down on the ground; in fact it is probably more stable for the ring to be (on average) slightly above orbital velocity so that the tethers are under tension and are trying to lift the foundation.

[@georgf9279]

Next week Isaac will argue why it is a good idea to replace the entire moons mass by emmental cheese.

[@johnsmith-vn9cs]

@@georgf9279 "next time" ? what, you didn't watch last week's episode ? :D

[@kekvult3730]

@@Melinmingle You have less kids when you're smart enough to use protection. If money was no option, I would continue having kids for a house/clan.

[@whiskeySe7en]

Look, strange as it may be, these musings about the future possibilities of our species gives me hope. It reminds me that I'm not the only one that dreams of an everlasting human empire. Hearing you break down theories into "chewable" sizes addressing every pitfall or obstacle with modern-day solutions is like nitrus-oxide for my imagination. I don't have friends that are interested in these subjects so this channel is my imagination's weight training room. I'm thankful for your work Isaac, much respect from up here in the great white north

[@orlandovazquez8694]

Whiskey Jack I just jotted down sentiments similar to yours and I would love to see any one of these ideas become more than just"musings". Ideas by definition are very powerful and give birth to possibilities. We have some of our greatest minds pondering these ideas and like you, I hope to see some of them come to fruition.

[@starsilverinfinity]

See - everything gets better when you put a ring on it

[@timothymclean]

That's why, if you like something, then you should put a ring on it.

[@Life-tastic]

@@timothymclean Well we love earth. So let's put as many as we can!

[@rogercraven2667]

Seriously? Lol...seen the stats on divorce lately?

[@Fenix-zw2cs]

... you know. Why stop there? **Glances at the Sun** Let's go *ALL THE WAY.*

[@andrasbiro3007]

You are still thinking small. Let's start with a supermassive black hole with a few billion solar masses. Then disassemble a few galaxies for building material.

[@stefanr8232]

The Orion nebula has 2000 times the mass of the Sun. That is a small part of the Orion molecular cloud complex.

[@MrPOWHS]

You know it's going to be a LIT episode when Isaac tells us to get our drinks and snacks LOL. Side note I've been watching this channel for years and I want to let you know Isaac that you've single handedly regained my interest in science, and sci-fi. My guess is there are a lot of others out there in the same boat. We want to know whats coming next, not what's in the past! THANK YOU ISAAC!

[@xl000]

but what if you're watching it like around 11am, 1 hour before lunch.... Or binge watching several episodes. Or in the middle of the night.

[@ebbingtime]

"something safer, like a lovecraftian god-killing monstrosity" ftfy

[@transhumanistgamer8963]

It we ever do discover that Lovecraftian entities exist, Isaac Arthur would likely figure out a ridiculously unintuitive yet very practical use for them.

[@ebbingtime]

I mean, I'd say black holes are already past that point

[@wilmagregg3131]

@@transhumanistgamer8963 maybe find a way to cybernetically interface with azathoth and controll what his dreams aka our universe is like while also ensuring he never wakes up then we can just thanos delte all the lovecraftian gods

[@nullpoint3346]

@@wilmagregg3131 Or even create inherently beneficial ones to exploit without needing to go through the trouble of continuously editing reality.

[@wilmagregg3131]

@@nullpoint3346 if i could do that i totally create the worm in waiting the one nice lovecraftian god ive ever seen in videogames hes basically like a much nicer yet yandere version of yog sothoth

[@TheIxFa]

Fractal Obelisk Radiation- Emitting Super Towers Honestly, the FORESTs acronym is great, I love it. Who came up with it? Was it you? A patron? Something in a book?

[@tolep]

He was a member of american armed forces, acronyms is what U.S. military does for a living.

[@isaacarthurSFIA]

@@tolep True, themilitary loves its acronyms, but I don't remember which of us came up with it, it was in a brainstorm, we do those every other week to charge my brain up to write the next two scripts, and I had been discussing them as tree-like and I *think* I actually did suggest we come up with FOREST and suggetsed a couple of the letters like Radiating and Fractal, but one of the others came up with the complete set of words for it. Matt or Derek maybe? The brainstorms tend to be high-velocity idea lobbing events so I rarely remember the specifics if I didn't write them down.

[@BenPortermike]

We are spoiled in that the world is already mostly automated. To create layers we would have to micromanage everything. Even if its automated it seems like a hassle. I would actually prefer to find another earth like planet.

[@VainerCactus0]

If you're going to have quadrillions of people living there, i am sure you can find enough people to program the automated systems, if you don't already have AI's writing most of your code by that point.

[@SmartK8]

Matryoshka world around a black hole: At least if something goes catastrophically wrong, it will clean after itself by falling to said black hole. Thus saving us from a cosmic embarrassment.

[@hynjus001]

One upside of this approach is that the entire civilization could communicate with minimal latency. Contrasted with a multiplanetary or even dyson sphere. I realize there'd still be some latency between the inner layer and outer layers but it wouldn't be show stopping (unless time dilation got involved)

[@metholuscaedes6794]

yea, we could make about 120 of those layers, eatch 100 km appart, before distance surface to ground level would match one side of earth to the other! No idea about what manner of time dilation that would do thought

[@boring7823]

@@metholuscaedes6794 Nil, approximately. I expect you'd still be under twice the current mass of Earth and so only have enough time dilation to bother atomic clocks and GPS.

[@rdgk1se3019]

How about transportation?........ Like light speed mag-lev.

[@Brakiros]

@@rdgk1se3019 impractical as it would need enormous resources to generate a strong enough inertia bubble to protect you against the shredding G forces

[@SpaceWizardAzrid]

I watched this video while i was waiting to board my first flight by myself. The time just flew by and any nervousness i had had was completely evaporated. Thank you Isaac for creating such an incredible show.

[@exoplanets]

Love the originality of your videos!

[@keithedwards9953]

If we tried this... I'd suggest doing it on the moon. The gravity is much easier to deal with. There's hardly any rotation which might cause problems in the beginning of the project. It would increase the mass of the moon, which would slow and eventually stop the increasing distance between the moon and earth. The two civilizations can easily support each other in case of a disaster... The benefits are endless! And you shouldn't need any active support! You'd be able to build the shells much closer together because of the lower gravity.

[@tolep]

aaaand you have some spectacular tides on earth caused by larger and heavier moon

[@keithedwards9953]

@@tolep the moon would have heavier gravity, but it wouldn't increase by much with each shell. We would be able to calculate where to stop and seek other worlds like Mars to shell... Or Venus. By reflecting the heat from the sun, we could even eventually cool Venus enough for people to live on the surface.

[@stefanr8232]

The colonies at the Lagrange points can grow. They start out with even less of a gravity problem than the moon.

[@matthiasliszt8490]

well, why a moon ... there are tidal forces ... why not start at an asteroid ... even lower gravity .... there are plans of floating cities inside gravity balloons .... I agree with you that lower gravity is far better and safer

[@keithedwards9953]

@pyropulse I don't know how you came up with that, but the further away the moon is... the less the earth's gravity will hold on to it.

[@Epicuresfan]

I think you've become my favorite youtuber. I literally watch these videos to relax. It's kinda icing on the cake that it stimulates the brain.

[@johnsmith-vn9cs]

I am reminded of Mass Effect's weaponry "heat sinks". You concentrate the heat generated by whatever activity your tool is doing into a small mass and then physically eject that mass.

[@Life-tastic]

So we would be ejecting massive slugs of pure heat energy into space? That sounds like a pulse laser.

[@biglenin7306]

Honestly Isaac thank you. Having these interesting videos to listen to while working all day doing landscaping is just great. It's also kind of ironic in my view considering the topic discussed today!

[@dylanthompson8658]

You and John Michael godier are hands down the most informative/hypothetical/realistic "artists" in this "category". Honestly thank you for inflating my mind. A true diamond in the rough.

[@UNSCPILOT]

They are so good their basically a category all of their own, Realistic Hypothetical Futures

[@anxietywave8735]

I would just like to say that this episode was extremely helpful. I'm designing a fictional Matrioshka Ecumnopolis with 5,127 layers of cityscape and this helped me get a start on its very complicated design.

[@hammer_ttk]

Just for the purpose of seeing such massive waterfalls and eternal storms I am already 100% in on the concept

[@Jcewazhere]

Doctor Who should use you as a consultant. Just watched season 11 and I didn't think it sucked it surely could've been better. Maybe more hard scifi would help. Imagine an episode where the doctor needs to find one of the ancients at the center of one of these matroska planets but first they have to fly through the "forest" filled with out of control drones... you can probably come up with the rest far better than I.

[@frantabor7319]

A trip only a TARDIS could make!

[@M33f3r]

Reminds me of World enough and Time.

[@elephantsintheforest]

Great topic. Mega structure are some of your best episodes.

[@davemclean3899]

They're my favorites

[@MaxAuxen]

Very reminiscent of the dyson sphere-turned-Matrioshka world in the BLAME! manga. Definitely a fascinating concept and series!

[@random_idiot]

@Dan Nguyen Bullshit. Either you have bad eyes or bad scans.

[@random_idiot]

@Dan Nguyen files.catbox.moe/rvv2kb.png Subscribe to my 100$ Patreon tier and to my KZbin channel if you want more epic image responses, there could very well be a small chance that i'll muster the energy to load up any of the other pages you're talking about (only if you follow me on Twitter) Also, the first panel? You're obviously fucking seeing it from below because the part of the floor that was outside of the rest of the hangar was shown to be lit multiple times and you're seeing the "balcony" from below because it's completely dark, not even mentioning that you can see the roof of the hangar. If you're drunk and half-blind please say so. MORE edit: PRESUMABLY? PRESUMABLY THE TRANSPORT BOX? WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE SEEING? WHAT THE ABSOLUTE FUCK DO YOU MEAN PRESUMABLY? WHAT WWHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU LITERALLY SEE THE FUCKING THING FROM MULTIPLE ANGLES IN MULTIPLE PAGES LEADING UP TO THAT ONE AND IT LOOKS LIKE THE SAME OBJECT, ITS EVEN IN THE CONTEXT OF THE STORY THAT THE VEHICLE IS LEAVING WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CAN'T TELL WHAT IT IS?

[@hallamhal]

I wonder what the psychological effect would be of living inside a ring and waking up every morning with a black hole staring down at you

[@jintarokensei3308]

Man your presentation has improved since the 400 subs days. Great job!!

[@WizardJim]

For another example of a Matrioshka world in fiction, though one definately firmly in the crapsack mode, try Tsutomu Nihei's manga BLAME!

[@Life-tastic]

BLAME!?

[@CryingZombie666]

Great manga, though the story drags on for a bit.

[@has489]

It's the first thing I thought about. Is therefore anything similar?

[@Datan0de]

I love the image of a giant artificial outer shell with enormous radiator spikes. The planet would be metal AF! :-) More seriously, it seems like the active support medium could serve double duty as a heat pump to get waste heat from the lower levels out to the radiators.

[@boring7823]

Hmmm, the "active support medium" would presumably be moving in a vacuum that would mean that the only way to get heat to and from it would be radiation. That sounds rather slow.

[@Datan0de]

@@boring7823 My thinking was that it could be circulated as coolant at the lower levels, propelled up as active support, then circulated through radiators in the outermost shell before being allowed to flow back down.

[@NickPoeschek]

I wonder if science fiction lowballs population sizes because the readers would assume it was totally unrealistic? Before I watched this channel, if I would have read that a future earth had a population of, say, 20 trillion people, I would have naively thought that was physically impossible.

[@LoneEagle2061]

Mostly I think it's because author's don't do the maths. (e.g.: Dan Abnett was obviously told that he had to use meters and said to himself - I want Ibram Gaunt to be about six foot four, six foot is about two meters... with people, even in the first book, being "more than a head taller" either Tanith is a low gravity world where eight or nine feet is average, or the regiment should have been purged for mutation :-) ). When I did the maths on my own sector of the Imperium (around 250 worlds, mostly civilised or industrial at 7-12 billion pop.), even low-balling the most militarised society ever known to an equivalent of America for troop percentages... I ended up wondering why most of the "big" issues of the Imperium hadn't been solved by just throwing men at them. Ghazghkull "Mad Uruk" Thraka? billions of orks causing trouble on Armageddon? send half of this years levy and even if the numbers don't beat him, they'll bury him in bodies... literally. particularly if you levy the 500 (more metropolitan) worlds of the Ultramar sector. Talk of regiments in the Imperial Guard is about as significant as talk of individual bullets to the US armed forces - it's more a question of how you ship them than anything else.

[@seraphina985]

@@LoneEagle2061 True though shipping and logistics are a real problem, especially since every additional unit you deploy in the field means more of the next wave needs to be carrying food, water, equipment, spare parts and ordinance for the previous waves. This is why on Earth amphibious assaults are so hard to win, it takes a lot of resources invested into naval construction to overcome the transport bottleneck.

[@secondsein7749]

@Nick Poeschek pretty much. The thing about humanity is that they are bad with huge numbers. Yes, we can't be where we are now without dealing with huge numbers in logistic, math and science but most of the those are done by a handful of human that has to be good with numbers through great effort. The normies usually don't deal with huge numbers because they don't need to. As such, most of humanity would only use 'small' numbers that they are comfortable with. This is why a lot of space sci-fi's planet population tend to not be over our own earth's population. We also have a problem in that we, the audience and the writers tend to still stuck with 'Chained Earth' mentality in which a lot of our concepts are rather earth/planet centric that ultimately limits us. This is the reason why msot space Sci fi that has space fighters act and look like atmospheric fighters instead of proper 0-G vehicle. This is also the reason why most sci-fi depict people live in planets (which conveniently have the same conditions as earth) while treating those living in huge spaceships as oddity. In reality it should be the reverse as Isaac has pointed out many times, living in artificial habitats are much better than living on natural planets. Tl, dr; it's a cycle. Writer tend to not do research about what's possible, leading to low numbers, while the audience kept believing in them. And as writers tend to come from these audience, they'd then repeat the cycle again.

[@RaymondJerome]

read the cageworld series by colin kapp. i think there were a Mole of people in our solar system in that concentric series of dyson spheres.

[@geoffread2707]

I would absolutely be an early adopter of life in an O’Neill cylinder! I hope our life extension tech gets sufficiently advanced for me to do that, and also that I can supplement my education and knowledge to the point that I would be seen as an asset for the population! Another brilliant episode Isaac. Thank you.

[@numberjackfiutro7412]

Concentric shells around planets? Saturn appears to be a wonderful candidate for this type of project! In fact, almost any gas planet, except hot jupiters, would be wonderful places for such structures! Of course, concentric rings would be a better option though!

[@Titan360]

"An actual Disney WORLD." Oh god. Lines. Lines EVERYWHERE. Yeah, ha ha. But don't you fools see? It has to entertain *quadrillions* of people living on the other layers....

[@wearblackclothes]

I don't know why KZbin suddenly recommended your videos to me but this has been a great week I love this channel

[@infamousempire8302]

Isaac Arthur at 30:51: “Colonizing black holes this summer.” Me: *squeals with excitement* GIMME!

[@nmccw3245]

Infamous Empire - we’ll be running into the HeeChee.

[@DocWolph]

"Planets capable of sustaining life as we know it, as we are, are quite rare. Desperately so, in fact. As a result, even when we do find such an easy world to claim and occupy, we do not. We simply settle on a planet that fulfills our needs for material, gravity, and energy and build a world to our specifications. It radically increases our options and equally reduces the likelihood of conflict with some other power in the universe. This is how our Empire was founded in the stars."

[@TheApplecyder]

Love the videos man, keep em coming lmao. Starting this one in two minutes when my tea is ready. Would be stoked if you could do one on, or mention in one, a "compendium" of different types of hypothetical biochemistry's? You definitely touch on the subject many times in videos, but one big shout out or video could be pretty informative and interesting. Anyways, cheers!

[@isaacarthurSFIA]

I've been trying to avoid the compendium approach just because those always turn out so long I end up wishing I'd cut it into multiple episodes, but we might go to that topic, I'm not a biochemist though we do have a few on the team who could help.

[@GreenspudTrades]

Orbital ring failure would make quite a thrilling disaster film

[@lenin972]

Most of us would rather be living on a sphere and not in a can, but some of us are willing to give up their intellectual integrity in order to believe we live on a giant tortilla

[@rationalmartian]

Ha ha ha. Tortilla indeed. I have not heard that one before. I shall have to remember that one. Nice one. TIA.

[@lenin972]

@@rationalmartian It was actually a translation of the same joke in Hebrew, well, actually in Arab. A Lafa is the Arabic version of a flat pan bread

[@Lukegear]

Imagine a giant SFIA world where each layer is modeled after Isaac's head.

[@isaacarthurSFIA]

Saturated with caffeine and prone to wondering off on tangents?

[@kevincrady2831]

A matrioshka world containing a matrioshka brain, naturally. :D

[@madhijz6846]

continents named after cats and sci-fi authors.

[@jastermereel4946]

planet orth

[@karelysparada6510]

jaster mereel lol!

[@theStormWeaver]

To Asimov's credit, Trantor doesn't seem to be using it's space very efficiently. Many of the Domes appear to have large green spaces and lots of open areas. The Streeling dome sounds like a typical University today, with sparse buildings surrounded by walkways and green spaces, for instance.

[@Sjilaj]

Earth in the Robot series on the other hand...

[@isaacarthurSFIA]

Well that's a revised version decades later in Prelude/Forward, but yeah he seems to have gotten the whole 'oops, scale' issue in there.

[@mesmerwolf0]

Another wonderful Video Issac! It always seems to boil down to one thing, "How in the world do we get rid of all our waste heat?" I like the ideas you provide as possible solutions to the problem.

[@andrewsallans589]

Ogers are like onions, we have layers. Nobody like onions, you know what else has layers, matrioshka worlds, everybody likes matrioshka worlds!

[@dylanthompson8658]

Hah. But ogres definitely arent like cake?

[@silent_stalker3687]

First: they had the iron curtain. Now: they have the iron world.

[@MaxAuxen]

Next we'll have Iron Stars ;)

[@beastmaster0934]

And then an Iron Galaxy.

[@brainwashedbyevidence948]

Iron universe anyone?

[@tariqahmad1371]

The Iron multiverse

[@StudioArrayMusic]

"(Volcanoes) They're just not tidy." 🤣

[@robertwatkins3602]

Damn I read that as titty. Which is correct, more like a zit.

[@Bluecho4]

Pele would like to know your location.

[@altha-rf1et]

On the O'Neail Cylinder you show forest and farm land most of the top side, Could there be lower levels for living areas, factories and people will have access to the top level to enjoy the open area so a Cylinder 5 miles in diameter 20 miles in length could be 3 times as big by adding more levels instead of just 1 on

[@boring7823]

Yes, Babylon 5 is a variation on an O'Neill cylinder design with about 30 layers outside the open space. However, the 5 mile diameter limit will need to be reduced if you add layers. You should still get more living space though.

[@animistchannel2983]

I did a sample calculation in my comment thread on the "Generation Ships" episode, using an O'Neill "12-pack" where each cylinder was "only" 2-4 kilometers in diameter and 8km long. Even with just 10 levels spaced out high enough to grow redwoods or fly personal planes on each level (100-200 meter ceilings) you would have about 6600 square kilometers of floor space to play with. That's like having an open stretch of land 60 miles on a side, a whole county's worth of countryside. Even with a couple hundred thousand people on board, your housing would take a tiny fraction of even one level. Also, roads and utilities would be under ground in tubes/tunnels, or you'd fly around. Seen at the scale as it is in these videos, the whole thing would look like a huge nature park with some scattered country manors sticking up here and there. Not bad for "a tin can" huh? Once we have those ships making more of themselves, I don't see any reason to mess around with anything that's less efficient or more cumbersome.

[@BenPortermike]

using a black hole, mind implodes [ ] [ ] [] o .

[@CepheusTalks]

"and dump a black hole into the center of our planet" and there's the usual insanity we've come to expect

[@raidellcorps]

40 minutes for a coffee and donuts....and I did read Blame!

[@AnkhAnanku]

Been thinking of this ref this whole episode, but there’s been too many _see also_ links for me to see if he ever makes it himself

[@chrisgaming9567]

Loving this channel as always

[@curvy4655]

Very inspiring concept! I'm imagining a fantasy setting inside one of these, where the inhabitants of a layer chose to seperate from the rest and live simple low tech lives. Now after unknown eons of forgetting the outside, their descendants must send people to find the source of a new threat - rediscovering the many worlds around them, and what is going on out there...

[@colettekerr279]

A close approximation of heat superconductivity is second sound in superfluids, though it is not quite the same

[@vahangood5999]

As I'm getting older, there are less and less things and people that I care about... Isaac Arthur and his content are rare exceptions. Like before listening. ✌️

[@rationalmartian]

Yeah. Isaac is one of the few that get instantly clicked as it is starting. I have yet had to go back and remove one after changing my mind. Isaac Arthur is quality content, consistently great quality.

[@IHateGoogle6969]

Phew, I thought it was just me. Maybe that's not a good thing though.

[@devonrusinek5807]

What are some things you lose interest in over time?

[@williamsjm100]

Being a heathen outcast, my favourite Iain M. Banks book is “Matter” (followed by Surface Detail, I know, I have problems...). So looking forward to this episode as it serves to give some details on the possibilities of these types of planets, in the book the planet Sursamen is a shell world of massive size administered by many civilisations and goes through many many evolutionary and colonising epochs. Anyways, just to say that blew most of my mind, this just finished it off. Great video!!

[@dominiquelyons7746]

What happens to animal life in a world like this?

[@avishalom2000lm]

@ 9:41- " by default, most of us would rather live on top of a sphere then inside a can"- who says? If you are able to get out into space, why would you put yourself back down at the bottom of yet another gravity well? Presumably surrounded by a atmosphere and climate you have less control over?

[@animistchannel2983]

"Gravity wells are for suckers!" -- Fraser Cain I agree. I'd much rather live in an O'Neill cylinder-pack than an orbital ring. Cylinders will have less crowding, more freedom, environmental control, plenty of nature space, that small-town appeal like your vote matters and have your own garden, etc.

[@Zaphod7835]

Looking forward to a future where the descendants of flat-earthers argue that there's no such thing as mass attracting mass, and only centripetal force can cause gravity.

[@-dennis3755]

There's always a chance the flat earthers will breed with those who deny medicine, And then with what their children are taught, they'll die off.

[@ferdinand7467]

@@-dennis3755 Stupidness never goes extinct

[@carbon2459]

Man, I love listening to these while running. Sometimes I just can't wait to go home, hop on the treadmill, and immerse myself in the many possibilities of the future for the next half an hour.

[@zylaaeria2627]

So basically, we can build The City from the BLAME! manga in real life if we wanted to? Sweet!

[@Baalur]

Several of the Megastructures Isaac described in his videos remind me of that nightmare-world. BLAME is hard-sci-fi it seems ;)

[@rdgk1se3019]

"Like keeping radioactive wastes and explosives in your basement"........... So I guess I should clean out my basement then.

[@UNSCPILOT]

Sounds like something Cody's Lab would say XD

[@jimmyshrimbe9361]

Awesome!!! I'm 100% caught up on all videos!!

[@JulianDanzerHAL9001]

37:12 - I think the easiest wayto explain it is that relativistic time dilation does at least dimensionally depend on speed - gravitational time dilation does not depend on the amount of gravity you feel but on the escape velocity - which from inside a hollow sphere is the same as from it's surface since you feel no net gravity inside you would go on at the same speed until breaking the surface and at that point you need the same escape velocity you'd need from a solid sphere

[@dff1286]

1:56 - I am already way ahead of you buddy, I prepped my snack and drink before hitting play.

[@wynnschaible]

Two necessary things? YOU FORGOT WATER! I refer you to the crisis in our southwest. and the beyond=alarming depletion of groundwater in India (some scientists have even connected it to the shift of the pole)!

[@noddwyd]

So how much would this make engineers and logistics just go cry in the corner? And how many maintenance people, roughly, would there be?

[@OspreyKnight]

Automated logistics and maintenance. then also consider these civilizations would look at a trillion people the same way a New Yorker might look at a town of a hundred people as unimaginably small.

[@joshuamills2136]

Adding layers and mass to earth would no doubt affect the moon. I didn’t hear that taken into account. The moon crashing into earth seems like a bit of an oversight. Either way, love the channel and keep up the good work Isaac.

[@DigGil3]

Make Earth Great Again. Where's my MEGA hat?

[@xl000]

as long as there is a wall between Earth and Mars..

[@aseal5424]

@Michael Adams ok? and?

[@thomaseubank1503]

Can you build one of these around a Lagrange point?

[@isaacarthurSFIA]

It would probably shift the lagrange point :)

[@tassadar101r]

A weird question, could a matrioshka brain be powerful enough to simulate the history of earth prior to it's creation with enough accuracy to recreate the mind of creatures/people of the past? It would be really cool if we could bring them back. God i miss my dog.

[@ahumanbeingamnayplaceholde1746]

According to Nick Bostrom, we may be actually living within an ancestor simulation

[@dymaxion3988]

I don’t think it’s possible. In chaos theory, the butterfly effect shows that complex systems are so sensitive to initial conditions that predicting behaviour becomes impossible pretty quickly. I’ll try to explain what I mean: Simulating a complex system is like finding a needle in a haystack for each time step. As each step passes, and you need to run all the calculations again, it’s like the needle you found contains another tiny haystack and another tinier needle to find. Simulating earth with the goal of recreating history exactly would be like pointing out the final needle in a recursive fractal of haystacks about 10^60 layers deep (the number of planck times in a few billion years). This analogy works because in order to do that, you would need to be more accurate than a planck length, which you cannot be.

[@sulljoh1]

Have you ever been to Singapore or Dubai? Nice places, but a lot of people dislike the feeling of living there specifically because they are artificial (especially Westerners who often seem obsessed with getting out for hikes or camping trips.) Perhaps we should be preserving Earth 1.0 as the only alternative to a designed enrolment - even designed "nature preserves" won't be the same.

[@devonrusinek5807]

Never been to Singapore or Dubai, but both cities look awesome from my perspective (as a Westerner). It's got a very modern approach, and I feel that Singapore in particular does a good job of combining nature with modern architecture and technology (based on pictures I've seen).

[@mikelfunderburk5912]

Good ol Arthursday... JMG, Joe Scott and SFIA!

[@isaacarthurSFIA]

If we get two more, we'll form Voltron :)

[@mikelfunderburk5912]

Isaac Arthur Frasier Cain and Codyslab!

[@orlandovazquez8694]

I started with IA's interstellar travel challenges ep and got hooked. The part where he breaks down FTL travel with Kai Engels"endless story about sun and moon"playing in the background blew my mind. Although I would love to bear witness inter-planetary exploration and colonization,terraforming, FTL travel etc., I doubt mankind will make it that far. Forgive my pessimism, but we're destroying Earth. Still and all, I hope some solutions for climate change are adhered to and societal ills are corrected. It won't take a day,but we must improve as a whole. These videos are a breath of fresh air and the possibilities give me hope. Thanks Isaac keep up the great work dude!

[@Auirtozz]

I'm curious if you know about the manga Blame! it has a matrioshka type world in it, I found so incredible

[@cadegates]

The entire setting of BLAME! is a runaway matrioshka world, or am I mistaken?

[@MaxAuxen]

@@cadegates It's more of a dyson sphere that is also a runaway Matrioshka world.

[@cadegates]

@@MaxAuxen the crazy part is how the Dyson sphere is almost certainly surrounded by the overarching megastructure

[@MaxAuxen]

@@cadegates IIRC, at least the whole solar system (and the solar system of at least one parallel universe) was mined for the resources. It has a radius of *at least* 5.2 AU, meaning it reaches the planetary orbit of where Jupiter *was*. Don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure Jupiter was broken down simply to make *a garden*. (Image for reference: i.imgur.com/arQwwm4.png)

[@cadegates]

@@MaxAuxen Oh yes, I remember that part. Killy and co. travel for some untold number of years, exploring the big open expanse until they run into a 'person' that tells them the approximate size of the space - which corresponded to the size of Jupiter. Great manga.

[@Jegbonto]

I think Isaac got the heat dissipation part wrong. I realized it at the part where he showed a planet with dimples as heatsinks. Increasing the surface area like that only helps when you have an atmosphere to conduct the heat into. In the planet's case the only option is radiation if you have two radiator plates facing eachother they just won't work. The heat that one dissipates will be absorbed by the next. The only way is to increase the surface area facing deep space which means you will need a massive flat plate 1000 times bigger than the planet itself.

[@xehpuk]

Correct! Only the part of the radiator that faces something colder than itself will actually radiate heat away. Otherwise it will receive heat also. So those spikes would not help. Need large wings with circulating fluids or something. Loved the video anyway.

[@sminkycorp]

Sounds like one of the better recent sciency Anime: BLAME!

[@LOUDMOUTHTYRONE]

Ahhh... The anime with an introverted protagonist running around with a gun trying to find a wifi connection.

[@MaxAuxen]

​ @LOUDMOUTHTYRONE Correction: The *sickest* gun to ever gun while he looks for *bio* wifi.

[@kazaddum2448]

Recent? The manga is out for over a decade now.

[@simpletongeek]

If you're thinking of recent anime with multi layered land construction, try "girls last tour", both manga and anime. Spoiler alert: food production stops. People get engaged in wars. Everybody dies.

[@sminkycorp]

@@MaxAuxen A high-freq graviton laser like in Sidonia/BLAME should be basic defense against home-invasion

[@RaymondJerome]

not a violation of thermodynamics. active re-radiation. collect the waste heat (somehow) and beam it out by laser through say a polar opening in all the layers

[@CopingsCorner]

It would probably require a lot of energy (and more waste heat) to convert such low-level energy into dense laseres,, I guess somewhat similar to the active carbon capture- approach, which in addition to needing energy, would produce emissions in the process if used by fossil fuels. I think it would be better to use gases, or liquids to transfer/beam the heat, in the same way as liquids from geothermal are good for heat, but not power-production, this could be dissipated in the outer shells with a higher surface area this way

[@kevincrady2831]

I keep wondering what kind of governance structures would exist in a civilization capable of doing things on this scale. It would have to be a strong centralized government in order to decide "Let's build on another layer" or "let's hollow out the Earth's core and put a black hole in" and have its verdict be accepted. Democracy as we know it wouldn't seem to work very well, given the amount of money (or other form of high-powered influence in a post-money society) one would have to raise to run a campaign for President/Prime Minister/Whatever when the electorate consists of trillions or quadrillions of people. The entire present population of Earth, voting in lockstep as a bloc, might be able to elect their equivalent of a dog catcher. :) A Monarchy or Imperial regime wouldn't be likely to do any better since the ruler wouldn't be able to even try to know what was going on in their civilization, much less steer it effectively. That would leave it to the Imperial bureaucracy, which would undoubtedly become a Kafkaesque nightmare of unimaginable proportions. A pantheon of vastly superhuman A.I.'s perhaps? Merely human rulers, politicians, and bureaucrats would not seem likely to be up to the task. Of course all the "regular people" would probably be intelligence-enhanced to levels we would consider godlike, and there would still be the problem of getting them all to agree to accept the judgment of the A.I. pantheon. At present, "the latest technology" seems to be eroding our ability to agree on things en masse, and this will probably only get worse as AR/VR tech gets better, and we don't even have to live together in the same reality anymore. Aside: in a matrioshka world, Chicken Little could actually be *right* someday!

[@Archanfel]

Humans are too bad at governance even at small scale. Sooner or later all important decisions will be transferred to Strong AI.

[@hilsanka6621]

Communism. The answer is communism

[@p_serdiuk]

You think small. Money doesn't really exist in a post-scarcity society, and human labor is not a hard requirement. Also, I don't think one government will be responsible for the entire world anyway.

[@kevincrady2831]

@@p_serdiuk Money and labor aren't the issue. If someone wants to build a shell (or an additional shell) over the. whole. world., they're going to have to have a way to gain the assent of the people living under it. Who or what is in charge of regulating the safety of construction and operation? I think even the most hardcore libertarian would be in no hurry to just let a company (or whatever sort of organization) hollow out the continent under their feet and use the material to build a sky-covering shell overhead. "In other news, a construction mishap at Shell Corporation caused Australia to collapse into the Earth's mantle. Earthquakes of varying intensity were felt around the world, with the largest being in St. Petersburg, where the temblors overwhelmed the active support systems of Fyodorov Arcology, causing its collapse and the deaths of 200 million people." Oops. Even without the possibility of a disaster like that (and who assesses the risk and gives/denies approval of the project?), there are going to be lots of people who don't want to be looking up at artificial lights instead of the stars, or who think the rotation speed of the Earth is just fine, thank you (if you remove mass from the interior and build it into shells expanding outward, the Earth's rotation will slow due to conservation of angular momentum; if you just add mass from asteroids to build the shell, that will affect the orbits of the Earth-Moon system, along with whatever satellites, O'Neill settlements, etc. are there). There is going to have to be some way--appropriate to the scale of the project--for the people involved to say "Let's do this!" or "As you wish, God-Emperor." Even in a post-scarcity civilization, not just anybody is going to have the wherewithal to build a shell around the Earth, or even something comparatively modest like an Orbital Ring. Who would? Are they a corporation, a government, a religious body, non-profit organization, or something else? Etc.. Compare with how our world is currently trying to deal with the issue of climate change. Should we use geoengineering, and if so which techniques? Should we focus on reducing emissions and switching to renewables, or should we go nuclear instead? Or is the whole thing a conspiracy by China and Al Gore to wreck our economy, so we should just continue business as usual? Building a shell around the Earth (especially the first one, when the engineering is new and all the devils in the details haven't all been found and slain yet) is going to be an even more difficult issue to gather agreement on the realities and consent on the course of action. Then there would be issues of who gets to colonize the shell, can nations (if there are nations) expand their territory onto it or should colonies all be independent from the start, who makes sure that a new Chandelier City won't over-stress the local Active Support systems and fall down on whatever's below, etc. So, I do think there would need to be governance structures or something equivalent of a scale commensurate to the project and its potential effects. The same goes for Stellasers of world-wrecking power, proposals to disassemble Venus, etc..

[@p_serdiuk]

@@kevincrady2831 What I mean is that first, we don't know how human societies would behave under post-scarcity, and second, practically unlimited energy and production radically changes human communication. For example, who says you can't just ask _everyone on Earth_ their opinion on such projects? You have a super Internet, everyone has a communicator of some sort, and there are AIs to sift through the answers, why would you even bother with elections and representatives? Ditto for safety concerns. Just ask all Earth engineers to review the project and submit their criticisms. Or design an AI that has a perfect understanding of material science and can model such stuff for you (aerospace companies already use machine learning to significantly enhance aeroplane designs). The possibilities are wider than we usually think.

[@Michiganmayor420]

Best video ever, this is so detailed and you can spend years pausing this and following up on outside resources

[@littlegravitas9898]

"This is going to be a long episode" *grins happily*

[@Gott1337able]

Been sick all day so late out of work, finally have feeling better and ready to focus my mind on another amazing episode.

[@Voidsworn]

Those chandelier cities always trigger my acrophobia a bit...

[@JulianDanzerHAL9001]

25:30 that is pretty important to keep in mind I think - for futuristic orbital projects in general - that is if you move around a planet at escape velocity - square root of 2 or roughly 1.4 times orbital velocity - you will drift outwards by centrifugal force twice as much and the net drift including gravity would be equal to gravity - that means if an insanely fast hypersonic airplane were to fly around the world at 11.3km/s - 1.4 times faster than the space station - it would have to fly upside down, it's wings would have to produce exactly 1G of lift to keep it from drifting up into space and it's passengers would experience 1G and equally if you have an orbital ring where the inner and outer ring are of hte same mass then you could have the outer ring stationary and the inner ring spinning at escape velocity - both would drift off their sltitude with 1G, cancelling out and people on both rings would experience 1G - for a low earth orbit ring that is of course if you put your ring far around a planet that gives you less gravity but not necessarily microgravity - at 3 earth radii distance you would have 1/9 G gravity, build a gigantic orbital ring there with it's shell stationary and it's inside moving at the escape velocity of that distance - 6.5km/s instead of 11.3 - and you experience 1/9G on both rings with 0 structural load along the rings circumference, the only stress being the force between the outer and inner ring which only has to be transmitted over a few hundred meters perhaps even if the overall ring has a diameter of 37000km

[@Skyblade22]

Earth: Isaac: We can do better

[@Verrisin]

Most human history: We need to keep ourselves warm, so we all survive! SFIA: This will let you squeeze out as much heat as possible from your planet, so more people can live there.

[@maan7715]

Oh damn, I wish I had the time watching this now. This is a great-previously mentioned topic, and a pretty long video this time! I have to get some snack for tonight

[@veejayroth]

I love the FOREST idea. Seem just right at some level.

[@UNSCPILOT]

And would look awesome in sci-fi or reality in equal measure

[@veejayroth]

@@UNSCPILOT You're right. It almost rivals my wish to find a sci-fi (of any format) set in true dyson swarm.

[@Tehom1]

Loved the spiral surface idea. Kind of like Riverworld on steroids.

[@altha-rf1et]

Thanks for the video and glad I suggested it. Here is a thought another though I been working on.. Build a Dyson Sphere around the moon, make the inside breathable, The out side can be used of docking space ships

[@tolep]

the moon is a useless piece of mass. TBH, everything that is natural besides us humans is just a material to build some efficient and useful structure or convert to energy.

[@klausgartenstiel4586]

never make more than one ring. that's the first law of warfare.

[@DoctorMandible]

Great video. Any chance you can list the books you reference in the description?

[@christopher_graffam]

I personally am still looking forward to the Void Ecology episode.

[@winterramos4527]

Issac is the type of guy that makes youtube worth seeing and listening to.