"You can't duck tape a megastructure with duck tape." Next thing we know, Flex Tape comes out with Megastructure grade tape for patching up to 10 km holes in any megastructure.
You wouldn't hit this megastructure with a mass driver..... BUT I WOUUUUULD!!! THAT"S A LOTTA DAMAGE and we'll just put some flex tape here, it even stops the radiation while it's leaking!!! I MADE AN INTERSTELLAR BOAT!!!! -phil swift, 3023, probably
An after a civilization destroying catastrophe maybe with people slowly trying to rebuild but occasionally some abandoned orbital structure crashes into the planet. Imagine a medivial like society sorrunded by relics of the ancients, forbidden zones where dangerous chemicals or radioactivity harm travelers or still active automated defense systems kill people. Add to this debris from space occasionally falling down creating local impact events capable of erasing cities or causing tsunami waves drowning costal communities. Yep room for a lot of stuff in such a setting.
@@JustinGladden The anime is done really well, but it's too short to do the manga justice. It's an extremely condensed version of a single story about a single village on a single floor of the megastructure. The full manga - one of the few that I've ever read more than once - covers dozens of floors, dozens of civilizations, and a dozen or so characters that manage to tag along/chase Killy throughout most of his journey. (In addition to the hundreds or thousands of floors inbetween the "interesting" floors that are covered by a montage if at all.)
Well, except that The City is anything but decaying. Last time I checked it was estimated that it outweighed the entire Milky Way and was still growing?
To add on to what IA said about the Interstate: think about the romanticization of Route 66, or The Orient Express. A particular habitat in a particular time might take on those same type of aspects. It might be the 1950s San Francisco of a future version of the Beats. People might talk about it nostalgically, and the actual place, if it survived, might become a tourist trap, living off its past glory. It might be one of a thousand identical habitats launched at the same time, but *that* was *the one* everyone thought of and remembered.
Here in Boston we can't even bring ourselves to tear down this incredibly garish and pointless sign, just because it became such an iconic city landmark. People and societies become attached to the weirdest things... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Citgo_sign
"If the factory making them closes down, or is shut down by having a mushroom cloud grow out of it" Such a light hearted way of describing something that would no doubt be a very bad situation 😂
speaking of megastructures, Blame! by Tsutomu Nihei was amazing. It really gave you a look at what the insides of a megastructure would be like and it was the first time I’d ever heard of the term
@Sami Kahila The manga is amazing and weird. You can go entire chapters without a word of dialog, and the author has no intention whatsoever of directly telling you what the plot is. You're forced to put it all together from fragments like an archaeologist, and you often have to guess at things along the way because many pieces are simply lost to time.
27:50 Just imagine you're growing up in a village near a forest and every once in a while an army of monsters comes out of the forest and tries to tear down your house and those of your neighbours. And then you have to conduct The Ritual in the Sacred Chamber that will open up the ground to let out another army of monsters which try to repair the houses faster then they are being torn down. And if you're lucky the foreign monsters retreat for no apparent reason after a few days and the domestic monsters finish rebuilding your homes and crawl back underground and you can continue to live in your village until the foreign monsters will eventually come back.
Happy Arthursday to the viewers residing in the Quantum Cheeseburger Reality. I'm glad my home Quantum Chimichanga Reality could join together with you again to enjoy this video.
Some backstory: Isaac did a video about the Quantum Cheeseburger years ago. He said he used a quantum random number generator to select his lunch that day, and it chose Cheeseburger. He then said that multiple universes branched off from that event. I typed Quantum Chimichanga Reality at some point in the comments that day, and now spell check always suggests Quantum Chimichanga Reality all these years later. Thus, I am convinced that Isaac Arthur's videos are being beamed interdimensionally from his Cheeseburger Reality to my Chimichanga Reality...
wasn't there also something about nuclear coffee, or was that antimatter coffee, lol. much celebrations and regards to world of the Quantum Cheeseburger Reality and the entire SFIA team. B)
When it's SFIA Friday in Australia and already the 17th and everyone else is enjoying Arthursday and waiting to celebrate the shows anniversary when they catch up. But you still won't be there. Stupid time travel planet.
Speaking of metal bands, the band Allegaeon has many songs influenced by science and futurism. "Dyson Sphere", "The God Particle", "The Phylogenesis Stretch", and of course "All Hail Science"
When you mention a space habitat getting cancer I am reminded one of my favorite stories from the old Heavy Metal Magazine days, Druuna by Morbus Gravis. If you haven't checked it out it's a fantastic story, well told and visually stunning. Admittedly it is a little on the 'Adult' side of visual storytelling; it is also a one of the most memorable stories and worlds from any graphic novel I've encountered.
Now I like the idea of an RPG adventure about raiding a rusting space station by trying to rip off a small section and tug it away before the security bots respond.
Interstate 90 (MA Turnpike) is also in my backyard! I can walk there. Hear it from my apartment. I feel more connected to Issac now. Six degrees of Issac Arthur??
"Orion's Arm" is the world building group that Isaac mentioned joining, but forgot to mention the name. It's a "world building project", sort of like how the SCP Foundation is, where lots of authors write in a shared universe, building it out as they go. Orion's Arm takes place 10,000 years in the future, and is built around Diamond-Hard science fiction, with a goal of exploring the most extreme "what if's" of science, technology, and physics, as we currently understand those limits, and while there are stories written in that setting, the purpose of those stories is that of a stage on which to build ideas; the narrative just provides a sandbox and excuse to do so. I've been following it for over ten years, and I hope you all look it up and enjoy it too.
My favorite example of planning ahead for maintenance was when an Oxbridge college needed to replace the support beams in one of its buildings. Much concern was raised about where said beams could be found and how much they would cost, until the Custodian of the building (meaning the head of maintenance, not a broom-pusher) reminded the college's committee that a grove of trees was planted when the building went up, and they should be about ready to convert into beams by now.
@@TraditionalAnglican photon torpedo's are measured in "isoton" - what that unit conversion rate to gigatons is unknown. In universe photon torpedo's are capable of destroying small moons implying yields of greater magnitude than gigaton.
@@WildEngineerGamer It really depends on which version we are talking about. There is a significant difference between Kirk's Enterprise and a class-9 warhead that Voyager carried.
At 05:15 the destruction of Babylon 5 is mentioned. In the show (and here) it is stated that the station is destroyed due to it being a navigation hazard and that no one wants to keep repairing it. I find this to b beyond my capacity for the suspension of disbelief. B5 was where the interstellar alliance was born. It was the HQ for the Shadow War. It was a vitally important part of history. There is no way I'm going to believe that there would be no historical society who wouldn't maintain the station. Look at the buildings, vehicles, even clothing that has been preserved by Earth cultures. With dozens of interstellar powers involved, I find it impossible to think that they couldn't get enough funding to keep the station going as a historical monument/museum/tourist site.
Given the sentement of the day when B5 was exploded it seemed humanity was being lead by those that were on the revisionist side of history trying to paint nuke 'em jonny as a villain. So I could see those coilitions making a concerted effort to wipe out the concrete bits of that era they... would rather people just conveniently not think about except what they tell them.
I thought the destruction of Babylon 5, as shown in the series, was a horrible way to eliminate a naviagation hazard. It would create thousands of navigation hazards. Pretty much Kessler syndrome.
@@johneid7291 Yes and no, it I want to be honest. The planet B5 orbited was, for the most part, uninhabited. So if the remains did go into orbit, there's nothing for them to hit. However, by the same token, the station wasn't in a major traffic lane. You would pretty much have to go out of your way for it to be a problem. So you really could have just left it to rot (so to speak) without endangering anyone or anything.
10:00 On a smaller scale: Credomar from Schlock Mercenary. It was intended to be a super weapon that could fire shots through hyperspace to anywhere in the galaxy, but was occupied and settled by the Swords to Plowshares Program. Eventually the purpose of the station was forgotten as people eventually factionalized and started bickering amongst themselves.
One of the arcs of Schlock Mercenary is about the "Long Gun" - an inhabited space station that also happens to have a fully sentient AI running the show. Politics and ethics get kinda weird when being a superweapon is part of a "persons" identity.
The space station in Shlock Mercenary is called Credomar, and the artificial intelligence in question has absolutely zero issues with literally being a weapon. LOTA originally stands for "Longshoreman of the apocalypse", as LOTA had the body of a repurposed hovertank. After assuming direct control of the hypergun, LOTA changes this to "Long Gunner Of The Apocalypse".
It does offer an interesting variation. They are well-maintained megastructures because they were MADE to cause and withstand the literal end of the galaxy, and were maintained by monitors... while also showing why letting a sapient being do nothing but maintain that megastructure would end up being driven to solitary insanity for 100,000 years. However, the moment one supersoldier disagrees on firing it, it's easily destroyed by a primitive ship self-nuking into oblivion. It does enter the territory of both having someone easily maintain it, as well as showing how fragile they can be with the sufficient amount of Brute Force. After all, the Master Chief is a firm believer of Isaac Arthur's first rule of warfare: If brute force doesn't work, you're not using enough of it.
Well, those megastructures are only 100,000 years old, and all the infrastructure to maintain the Halo Array is in immaculate condition, barring interference by interloping aliens. Most of their shield worlds are still habitable and well-maintained as well. Their sentinel units are an almost perfect self-replicating maintenance force.
Hey Isaac, nice video as always! About today's topic, I'd actually imagine that one man's trash is another man's treasure. Pure materials in space, not in planetary gravity well, that can be comparatively easily recycled only using energy. Those will always have some value
your intro and music painfully reminded me how little good scifi we've gotten in the vein of Blade Runner and such in recent decades. We're in a really bad scifi drought. lack of novels and movies in scifi with any real substance and deep thought provoking ideas.
Now I'm imagining a movie or video game where the protagonist is trying to escape a magastructure where one part is trying to kill all the inhabitants and the rest of the megastructure, possibly with a concerned AI, is trying to evacuate everyone while trying to fight off what has basically become megastructure cancer.
9:17 In future structures won't be demolished they'll be dismantled. The same methods that allow automated production will be reversed, run in play back as it were. Mega structures could take on the lifecycle of a ant colony build, un-builed, move on, repeat . 12:20 In fact I'll go one further. In the future dismantlement will be a chief form of combat. You won't blow things up but hit them with a canister of "Dismantlement Fog". De-foggers, I can hear them being called that.
The Gundam Animes and Mangas had multiple O'Neal cylinders destroyed. Although it wasn't a planned demolition in their cases but war. At least one was dropped on earth as a weapon. Unfortunately for Zeon, they missed their target and just obliterated Australia.
@@tristanbackup2536 in universe they(Principality of Zeon) was attempting a first strike on earth underground UN central government city in Brazil but the O'Neil cylinder broke up and deorbited faster than expected. I forget if it was a miscalculation or if Earth Defense forces triggered the breakup. Anyway excuse the meme music but here is the visuals from the various animes on how it should look. th-cam.com/video/cciO9eWtZ_A/w-d-xo.html In a later Gundam anime they state there is a 500km wide bay where Sidney used to be.
Always good. A rather belated comment - if an O'Neill cylinder might take years to drain of atmosphere (larger megastructures longer) if you poke a hole in it, it occurred to me that must say something about how long it would take to build one in the first place: -How many years or centuries would it take just to 'fill' a newly built megastructure with an atmosphere? -What about the timescales for gathering and building the more 'solid' materials? -What does that say about the practicality of sourcing the materials and building such structures in the first place as us humans have enough trouble organising the building of structures over just a few months? For the foreseeable future our individual and cultural interaction with time and it's consequences is unlikely to change very much regardless of advances in technology while moving a crap-ton of material and assembling it will always be moving a crap-ton of material and assembling it no matter how you do it. In other words are the timescales involved in creating such structures going to make them fundamentally beyond our ability to make them even if we have the knowhow and motivation? (A fundamental reason why I just don't see any kind of active terraforming ever happening)
"To all great things there comes an end, but it can be a spectacular end" I'm stealing this for the note I leave when I strap myself to a giant bottle rocket.
Metal grids and nets are really hard to destroy with shock waves. Dropping artillery on barbed wire does barely anything to it, except tangle it up even more.
@@ineednochannelyoutube5384 Of course. But if the explosion is caused by the warhead, then every hit would cause such a big explosion. Instead we always see hits just plink off harmlessly and only the one that destroys the target actually causes a massive explosion.
The worst thing that can happen to a mega structure habitat with self repair is a hacker. Not a AI hacker, but a human hacker with the skill and patience to pull off a hostile takeover. Just imagine the nightmare of trying to take back the factories with robots cannibalising the fallen robots to continue the assault and attack. Could be a horror movie.
As another year passes I would like thank you for all the work you put into the videos. Been following you from the first episode and it’s never been boring.
I facepalmed when I saw the finale of Babylon 5. "It's purpose had been served" . What about its function as a habitat supporting hundreds of thousands of people? You should get at least a 1000 years out of it even with only basic maintenance. "Navigational hazard". If I remember correctly B5 orbited a basically uninhibited, remote planet. So what does this even mean? And blasting it into trillions of fragments is only going to create a far, far worse "navigational hazard". If you want a rational explanation for this, I also vagely remember B5s planet actually housed some kind of ancient spiritual alien. Perhaps B5 was turned into an instant Kessler syndrome to protect it?
It was habitat only because people were needed to support vast infrastructure related to diplomatic relations. If need for that end, it wouldn't be hard to imagine station turning into giant squat. And on top of that quite dangerous when infrastructure break. It is why make sense that station was decommissioned. Though blowing it up, doesn't. I agree on that part.
YES! I NOTICED THIS TOO AND I AGREE!!! It would only be a "navigational hazzard" to anyone traveling in orbit around that Epsilon planet. And it's far out in a rarely visited solar system, around a rarely visited planet. (As long as word about *what* is down there on the planet and everyone wants to study the machine and decides to set up bases and orbital stations to study it.) But what WOULD create a REAL SERIOUS navigation hazzard would be tons of space station debris flying around the system! And yeah, that station is a valuable piece of real estate and it's a huge waste to just destroy it is tragic especially with peoples out there needing and seeking homes. Refugees, outcasts, the telepaths... That station probably was hella expensive to make ....crazy to just blow it up.
Thank you for sharing how this all started! I only came on board watching around the beginning of the 2nd year, but went back and watched a lot of the 1st year episodes, even if all the formulas went over my head. I really appreciate the topics you cover and differences between "sci-fi trope" vs. "what we expect under known science" vs. "theoretical maybe science?" and also that you make sure to not gloss over the moral aspects, which I think sometimes happens a lot in the sci-fi world. I hope you also keep making more videos another 7 years! Thank you again.
Happy anniversary Isaac! I discovered you fairly early on, somewhere in the first 6-18 months I guess, and was immediately hooked. Very impressed to see how far you've come, and looking forward to many more years!
Exploding a megastructure is unwise because of the sheer debriss it would create a more optimal idea would be either gradually recycling it or repurposing it
The sheer size of megastructures never ceases to amaze me. And the concept of derelict megastructures uninhabited for billions of years is as awe-inspiring as it is fascinating.
Syntaxes aside the premise is a staple sci-fi that like so many other topics on this channel are actually feasible. Ancient megastructures, alien or otherwise are reasonable providing the timeframe of techno active society in regards to the Drake equation and presumably would be some of the first instances of evidence that a newly space fairing culture might encounter.
@@Yora21 Rot? I didn't mean derelict as in rotting or rusting necessarily. Just abandoned and in poor condition. Also, the once habitable section of a megastructure would have been anything but a vacuum.
I always avoid looking at the next episode previews or schedule because it always is a great surprise to see what's up. This time the surprise was almost too much because the title almost made me jump out of my seat. I'm so damn excited, and 35 minutes? Sweet lord. This is going to be great for doing my dinner/breakfast (I only eat once a day to keep slim, it's called the OMAD diet... no idk why I elaborated) alongside with.
You elaborated because you're Unintentionally Dramatic! :D Does OMAD stand for anything. As I eat similar amounts to you be good to know what "diet" I might be on. Not on a diet, just not a fan of food. I look forward to SFIA's future video on full calorie/vitamin/etc 1 a day food pills!
If UAPs can cloak themselves and the DoD is taking them seriously, makes you wonder if dark matter is just abandoned megastructures where they were courteous enough to cloak their handiwork.
Been a fan from the beginning. I can never tell how much your speech has improved because I got so used to your voice, it's not different from anyone else to me now. It also really helped me understand a little boy I know who is struggling with a pronounced speech impediment. Always meant to thank you for training my ear to hear him better. So Thanks!
Soon as you mentioned holes and patching them, my mind went to Mobile Suit Gundams patch film. Turn handle, bubbles of the film flow to the hole..pop and patch it.
we need to get some hollywood directors watching this channel. from all the episodes theres probably thousands of good movie ideas and i would really love to see a "realistic" future scifi space movie. a movie about the defence systems on an oneil cylinder going haywire and people trying to combat it a movie about a war between earth and mars or between dyson swarms around solar systems. a movie or even better tv series that takes place in a dyson swarm with busy shipping lanes and humans that have become alien. (where the martians look different from the earthlings look different from the people in space habitats) and perhaps you follow the crew of a smugling or pirate ship (for the pirates perhaps you could have some kind of lasers or something and your pirate crew messages the target ship and says "stop your ship or we blow it up" or maybe the pirates just match the speed and "dock" with the target ship. the issue with realistic pirates is that you have to construct a worldspace that makes it possable.)
I'm using a damaged shell world + matrioshka brain in a Roche orbit as the setting for my short stories. So part of me is always glad to have Arthurs input and the other part is shouting "No to give them ideas! I need the novelty to make up for my hackney writing."
Ok. I need to correct Isaac on example of Ring World as that was in fact explained. There was technology on Ring World, but it wasn't designed for field repairs. Casings of equipment were so sturdy that locals couldn't melt them. It is because they were designed to be replaced by advanced civilization. And because land was artificial, it didn't have any conventional resources which make civilization incapable of rebuilding, after softer buildings collapsed. That was the irony of the story.
Thank you Isaac for 7 years of helping me think about the world and universe around me. Now and in the future. You are an awesome Human. Edit. Wanted to add that Sarah is awesome too! Im happy for both of you!
Happy Birthday Isaac! I am proud to be a patreon supporter- seeing that there are so many other people out there with an eye towards a better future, and to the risks involved, brings me hope. So thank you for what you have offered to us with your hard work and vision. Your speech impediment was and is hardly a problem in this format, especially because we can backtrack the videos for clarity, you do such a thorough job of explaining the topics, and of course the subtitles you fastidiously include. I can easily believe that, somewhere down the line, a history of early science education and the roots of human expansion will include this project. Here’s to 7 more years.
Imagine a megastructure that's built initially as a single rotating segment, but onto which a second segment is built, then a third on the far end of the second, and the structure is built out extending forward, and as each section corrodes/wears out it gets jetissonned off the "back" end of the megastructure and you run the facility in equilibrium so it's being built as fast as it's being discarded.
I noticed that your speech impediment disappeared for me, at least my ability to perceive it, about halfway through the first episode I watched. That was years ago, and although I don't notice it anymore, I'm glad you've gotten the chance to improve your speaking abilities, and have a personally rewarding experience doing so. Have a great birthday!
Yeah I'm not proud to say this but for awhile I put off watching videos on the channel because it was hard for me to understand, my brain already seems to have a hard enough time deciphering what people are saying. But after awhile I saw several episodes on subjects I just could not skip, and it ended up being that after like the second episode it was gone. Now I watch videos here all the time because it doesn't bother me - I do still notice it, particularly when playing videos that came out years apart, but it doesn't bother me.
@@physics_hacker at the end of the day, his brain is wicked smaht, and honestly I know many people with regional "accents" in the south who I absolutely cannot understand. Compare Isaac to rural Mississippi and you realize he's a lot closer to Morgan Freeman than billy from Beaumont
@@keatoncampbell820 Yeah, I agree. I also have difficulty with thick accents, so for me it's not really as much about the specific thing as the overall issue.
Hi Isaac It has truly been an amazing journey, to think I watched you almost from the start, with your voice impairments, all the way through your marriage, your voice fixing, and so much more, its been amazing, and how well your channel is doing is truly inspirational, I hope you have many more years where you teach me things I don't know, thank you mate, its been great, and hope it will remain so, once we have that life extension. Regards Atlancia
Holy heck man, 7 years?? I remember those first episodes, and tbh youve been an inspiration ever since then. Ive caught like 3 out of every 5 on the day of release, never more than 2 weeks late, and somehow it still feels like yesterday. Thank you isaac, youve quite literally changed my life, my whole outlook on things big and small.
I've been trying to have dead and dying structures play a role in my scifi setting. My main characters for the first stories are a trade and salvage crew. The trade part is pretty self explanatory, but the salvage part comes from dead structures. Habitats that died in one way or another, or are being actively recycled supply the salvage. This is then resold to recycled, or used to make repairs on the ship by being ground down to powder to feed the 3d printer.
I always watch videos a few months behind cause I tend to binge a channel for a month then binge the next and rotate back. But having watched you since nearly the beginning, it's been really amazing at how your channel and you have grown. Congratulations on 7 years!
Happy Anniversary! Just a quick note to say that I've been a supporter of your show for 6 years now, and yes, did go back to the first videos to catch up. Wouldn't be too hard on them as in the context of their time, they were still the best out there! Good luck for the next seven!
Having watched for almost the full 7 years and likely every episode i can honestly say i haven't regretted one minute of it. While you've gotten immensely out of it Arthur, we too have gained far more than just a good past time, you've given us knowledge and philosophical ideas that would take years of active study to get an equilevant familiarity with such concepts by other means. So Thank you and happy birthday 🎉
I just love your episodes. Even after almost a year of being subscribed, you still link to videos I have not yet even discovered. And I enjoy your connection to Orions Arm. One of the most complex ... stories/encyclopediae/scifi I have ever encountered. It is so much more than just one of these...
I thank Isaac & the whole crew for entertaining me (& so many other ppl) with a realistic way to see science & Sci-Fi for the last 5+ years I've been watching your content. Happy Anniversary, SFIA!
I'm just a grunt but I do a little modeling & animation on the side. A megastructure could be a fun project with a mix of hand modeling & procedural modeling. I'll be sure to put it on my to do list & shoot an e-mail if whenever I get around to it. Happy birthday, Isaac, thanks for all the great shows over the years!
Holy shit that scenario for a self-cannibalizing space station that's had its self-repair systems go haywire sounds like an absolutely AMAZING movie just waiting to happen.
My favorite series finale was the 2004 to 08 Battlestar Galactica which relates to a megastructure in space too. That was amazing end. That show was great.
Remember that the Shadows left behind their planet killer Tech (and other Tech) and some other civilization used it to their advantage. that thing was huge.
Spin does not affect air much at all. Because there is no hard coupling. An O'neil cylinder would have the same atmospheric pressure throughout, and a wind from the air interfacing with the inner surface. Niven's idea of an open-top ringworld is, quite simply, nonsense.
1:20 On this subject, if you are looking for a heavy metal album that is about a dying planet and a subsequent journey across the stars to find a new home, may I recommend the Ayreon album "The Source".
As someone who is beset by so much fear and doubt over such little things, I want to thank you for continuing to show us futures brighter than we imagined. Happy anniversary, and here's to seven years more.
Arthur, you are literally my favorite science educator in the world. And this is coming from a kid who grew up binge watching discovery channel. Thank you so much for the last 7 years, can't wait for another couple 7.
In ringworld engineer, the explanation is a superconductor plague combined with a lack of metals on the surface which causes the alians to regress, the survivors start removing the ringworld engines to make ships to leave and that causes the ringworld to become unstable. i'm also pretty sure this guy invented the Asari from mass effect 3 in his book.
23:00 - isn't the idea of a small hole being so dangerous based on what can happen when you get a pinhole leak in the hulls of a submarine? Rivets being forced out at such high speed that they can kill, improv hydro cutters made of water jets, stuff like that but in reverse?
Brother I’ve been watching you since the get-go and yes you’ve made progress with your speech impediment but I just thought you had a cool British accent in the beginning LOL. Just want to thank you for this channel I want to thank you for your service as a fellow vet myself you’re service is appreciated. I enjoy this channel is it tends to provide some over scape of all the bull crap that’s going on in our world right now and I tend to get caught up in it myself so having a channel like this is very much appreciate it again thanks happy birthday happy anniversary and keep on keeping on. Stay safe stay healthy and most of all stay strong🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸!
Was starting a (fictional) book with concepts on scale and technology similar to topics covered here and later down the line I was going to have something like this come up. Absolutely love the wealth of topics you cover here for that reason. That and it's just fascinating stuff you cover here! Thanks from a long time fan
A swarm of small megastructures is more durable than an equivalent super-megastructure. We can recycle an O'Neal cylinder or even a Bishop Ring by simply moving the population to a new habitat and then disassembling the old habitat to recycle the materials.
Oh, who else thinks that as much as it was a good finale, nobody believes that they would blow up B5. Some salvage company would buy it and salvage it.
Salvaged material needs sorting and refining, and you have to haul all that scrap around on a huge fleet of freighters. The costs of all that might make the final new building materials more expensive than using freshly mined metal.
Niven's Ringworld has enough metal ores and left over Pak advanced materials that civilizations do arise, one of which spread across more than 10 degrees of the ring, and had sublight ships (unfortunately built around the engines installed to keep the structure stable) that allowed them to spread to a number of nearby systems. The dominant civilization on the Ringworld did not fall as a result of any natural effect, but was instead covertly attacked by the Puppeteers with a medium-term plan that they would then arrive in the nick of time with the solution to the problem (the problem being an engineered organism that ate the dominant's civilization room temperature superconductor, and the solution being one of the other three room temperature superconductors the Puppeteer's knew of at the time). As Louis Wu noted, the City Builders should have been able to solve the problem on their own, but didn't for some reason. (The Puppeteers didn't come to the rescue because the governing faction changed from the less isolationist to the more isolationist after the attack was carried out but before they could swoop in to the rescue.)
"You can't duck tape a megastructure with duck tape."
Next thing we know, Flex Tape comes out with Megastructure grade tape for patching up to 10 km holes in any megastructure.
"Asteroid strike? Now that's a lot of damage!"
So how much Terahertz xrays are generated as you use that roll of tape?
Gaffa tape can fix anything.
You wouldn't hit this megastructure with a mass driver..... BUT I WOUUUUULD!!!
THAT"S A LOTTA DAMAGE
and we'll just put some flex tape here, it even stops the radiation while it's leaking!!!
I MADE AN INTERSTELLAR BOAT!!!!
-phil swift, 3023, probably
But wait! There's more!
Want sci-fi horror in decaying Megastructure setting? I recommend the manga "Blame!" The architecture in it is monumental and terrifying
and if you want something a lil bit more lively, then “ningyou no kuni”
An after a civilization destroying catastrophe maybe with people slowly trying to rebuild but occasionally some abandoned orbital structure crashes into the planet. Imagine a medivial like society sorrunded by relics of the ancients, forbidden zones where dangerous chemicals or radioactivity harm travelers or still active automated defense systems kill people. Add to this debris from space occasionally falling down creating local impact events capable of erasing cities or causing tsunami waves drowning costal communities. Yep room for a lot of stuff in such a setting.
DUDE I loved that anime. It's utter perfection and definitely a great decaying megastructure setting. The murderbots are also creepy as hell.
@@JustinGladden The anime is done really well, but it's too short to do the manga justice.
It's an extremely condensed version of a single story about a single village on a single floor of the megastructure. The full manga - one of the few that I've ever read more than once - covers dozens of floors, dozens of civilizations, and a dozen or so characters that manage to tag along/chase Killy throughout most of his journey. (In addition to the hundreds or thousands of floors inbetween the "interesting" floors that are covered by a montage if at all.)
Well, except that The City is anything but decaying. Last time I checked it was estimated that it outweighed the entire Milky Way and was still growing?
To add on to what IA said about the Interstate: think about the romanticization of Route 66, or The Orient Express. A particular habitat in a particular time might take on those same type of aspects. It might be the 1950s San Francisco of a future version of the Beats. People might talk about it nostalgically, and the actual place, if it survived, might become a tourist trap, living off its past glory. It might be one of a thousand identical habitats launched at the same time, but *that* was *the one* everyone thought of and remembered.
if collectibles are anything to go by, an object's history is a lot more valuable to people than the matter it's made of
That ONE that everyone remembers. Habitat McHabitatface.
See Kowloon Walled City...
@@r0cketplumber Everything I have heard of that place puts it as the closest thing to Hell.....
Here in Boston we can't even bring ourselves to tear down this incredibly garish and pointless sign, just because it became such an iconic city landmark. People and societies become attached to the weirdest things...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Citgo_sign
"If the factory making them closes down, or is shut down by having a mushroom cloud grow out of it"
Such a light hearted way of describing something that would no doubt be a very bad situation 😂
speaking of megastructures, Blame! by Tsutomu Nihei was amazing. It really gave you a look at what the insides of a megastructure would be like and it was the first time I’d ever heard of the term
It also goes haywire and has a kind of immune system like he mentions.
@Sami Kahila It just focuses entirely on side characters and tries to go for a different type of story that doesn't fit the setting as well.
@Sami Kahila The manga is amazing and weird. You can go entire chapters without a word of dialog, and the author has no intention whatsoever of directly telling you what the plot is. You're forced to put it all together from fragments like an archaeologist, and you often have to guess at things along the way because many pieces are simply lost to time.
27:50 Just imagine you're growing up in a village near a forest and every once in a while an army of monsters comes out of the forest and tries to tear down your house and those of your neighbours.
And then you have to conduct The Ritual in the Sacred Chamber that will open up the ground to let out another army of monsters which try to repair the houses faster then they are being torn down.
And if you're lucky the foreign monsters retreat for no apparent reason after a few days and the domestic monsters finish rebuilding your homes and crawl back underground and you can continue to live in your village until the foreign monsters will eventually come back.
Sounds like a free game out the App Store
"Heirs of Empire", by David Weber, (the third book in the Dahak Series) has essentially this Planeraty Defence by ancient ritual scenario.
Adeptus Mechanicus be like.
I thought the "ritual" was to flip the "Personal RoboPort" switch...
Reminds me of the Doctor Who 10 season finale
Happy Arthursday to the viewers residing in the Quantum Cheeseburger Reality. I'm glad my home Quantum Chimichanga Reality could join together with you again to enjoy this video.
Some backstory:
Isaac did a video about the Quantum Cheeseburger years ago. He said he used a quantum random number generator to select his lunch that day, and it chose Cheeseburger. He then said that multiple universes branched off from that event.
I typed Quantum Chimichanga Reality at some point in the comments that day, and now spell check always suggests Quantum Chimichanga Reality all these years later. Thus, I am convinced that Isaac Arthur's videos are being beamed interdimensionally from his Cheeseburger Reality to my Chimichanga Reality...
Tasty quantum cheeseburgers
wasn't there also something about nuclear coffee, or was that antimatter coffee, lol. much celebrations and regards to world of the Quantum Cheeseburger Reality and the entire SFIA team. B)
@@SpecialEDy love this backstory.
When it's SFIA Friday in Australia and already the 17th and everyone else is enjoying Arthursday and waiting to celebrate the shows anniversary when they catch up.
But you still won't be there.
Stupid time travel planet.
Speaking of metal bands, the band Allegaeon has many songs influenced by science and futurism. "Dyson Sphere", "The God Particle", "The Phylogenesis Stretch", and of course "All Hail Science"
Amogh symphony my dude
I love tech death
There's also Arcturus, Vintersorg and Darkspace.
My metal band just put out an album (Nebethet). The lyrics are entirely science fiction.
Pretty much half of tech death at this point is "TECHNOLOGY WILL DOOM US ALL!" It's quite funny.
When you mention a space habitat getting cancer I am reminded one of my favorite stories from the old Heavy Metal Magazine days, Druuna by Morbus Gravis. If you haven't checked it out it's a fantastic story, well told and visually stunning. Admittedly it is a little on the 'Adult' side of visual storytelling; it is also a one of the most memorable stories and worlds from any graphic novel I've encountered.
Now I like the idea of an RPG adventure about raiding a rusting space station by trying to rip off a small section and tug it away before the security bots respond.
Interstate 90 (MA Turnpike) is also in my backyard! I can walk there. Hear it from my apartment.
I feel more connected to Issac now.
Six degrees of Issac Arthur??
"Orion's Arm" is the world building group that Isaac mentioned joining, but forgot to mention the name. It's a "world building project", sort of like how the SCP Foundation is, where lots of authors write in a shared universe, building it out as they go. Orion's Arm takes place 10,000 years in the future, and is built around Diamond-Hard science fiction, with a goal of exploring the most extreme "what if's" of science, technology, and physics, as we currently understand those limits, and while there are stories written in that setting, the purpose of those stories is that of a stage on which to build ideas; the narrative just provides a sandbox and excuse to do so. I've been following it for over ten years, and I hope you all look it up and enjoy it too.
My favorite example of planning ahead for maintenance was when an Oxbridge college needed to replace the support beams in one of its buildings. Much concern was raised about where said beams could be found and how much they would cost, until the Custodian of the building (meaning the head of maintenance, not a broom-pusher) reminded the college's committee that a grove of trees was planted when the building went up, and they should be about ready to convert into beams by now.
"it takes several tons of TNT to vaporize a cubic meter of metal."
Star Trek: I'ma pretend I didn't see that.
Yields of Photon Torpedoes were assumed to be on the order of 100 Megatons - 1 Gigaton…
@@TraditionalAnglican photon torpedo's are measured in "isoton" - what that unit conversion rate to gigatons is unknown. In universe photon torpedo's are capable of destroying small moons implying yields of greater magnitude than gigaton.
@@grandotaku2501 I don't think that they're that powerful.
@@WildEngineerGamer It really depends on which version we are talking about. There is a significant difference between Kirk's Enterprise and a class-9 warhead that Voyager carried.
@@TraditionalAnglican The hand phasers are arguably more problematic in that regard than the torpedoes. :)
At 05:15 the destruction of Babylon 5 is mentioned. In the show (and here) it is stated that the station is destroyed due to it being a navigation hazard and that no one wants to keep repairing it. I find this to b beyond my capacity for the suspension of disbelief. B5 was where the interstellar alliance was born. It was the HQ for the Shadow War. It was a vitally important part of history. There is no way I'm going to believe that there would be no historical society who wouldn't maintain the station. Look at the buildings, vehicles, even clothing that has been preserved by Earth cultures. With dozens of interstellar powers involved, I find it impossible to think that they couldn't get enough funding to keep the station going as a historical monument/museum/tourist site.
Given the sentement of the day when B5 was exploded it seemed humanity was being lead by those that were on the revisionist side of history trying to paint nuke 'em jonny as a villain. So I could see those coilitions making a concerted effort to wipe out the concrete bits of that era they... would rather people just conveniently not think about except what they tell them.
I thought the destruction of Babylon 5, as shown in the series, was a horrible way to eliminate a naviagation hazard. It would create thousands of navigation hazards. Pretty much Kessler syndrome.
@@johneid7291 Yes and no, it I want to be honest. The planet B5 orbited was, for the most part, uninhabited. So if the remains did go into orbit, there's nothing for them to hit. However, by the same token, the station wasn't in a major traffic lane. You would pretty much have to go out of your way for it to be a problem. So you really could have just left it to rot (so to speak) without endangering anyone or anything.
10:00 On a smaller scale: Credomar from Schlock Mercenary. It was intended to be a super weapon that could fire shots through hyperspace to anywhere in the galaxy, but was occupied and settled by the Swords to Plowshares Program. Eventually the purpose of the station was forgotten as people eventually factionalized and started bickering amongst themselves.
Is that a book a people living on a decomissioned weapon? I'm going to use that in a scifi. RPG regardless. Love this idea.
I'm a writer. I'm stealing this. Will give full credit though.
One of the arcs of Schlock Mercenary is about the "Long Gun" - an inhabited space station that also happens to have a fully sentient AI running the show. Politics and ethics get kinda weird when being a superweapon is part of a "persons" identity.
The space station in Shlock Mercenary is called Credomar, and the artificial intelligence in question has absolutely zero issues with literally being a weapon. LOTA originally stands for "Longshoreman of the apocalypse", as LOTA had the body of a repurposed hovertank. After assuming direct control of the hypergun, LOTA changes this to "Long Gunner Of The Apocalypse".
One of the Star Wars books had something like that. People had settled in what turned out to be a fusion chamber and when the thing turned on...
@@Reddotzebra All Hail LOTA.
The Halo games are also an example of dead megastructures, at least in the early games.
I wouldn’t call the titular rings "dead" per se, as the monitors that keep them running are very much alive.
It does offer an interesting variation. They are well-maintained megastructures because they were MADE to cause and withstand the literal end of the galaxy, and were maintained by monitors... while also showing why letting a sapient being do nothing but maintain that megastructure would end up being driven to solitary insanity for 100,000 years.
However, the moment one supersoldier disagrees on firing it, it's easily destroyed by a primitive ship self-nuking into oblivion. It does enter the territory of both having someone easily maintain it, as well as showing how fragile they can be with the sufficient amount of Brute Force.
After all, the Master Chief is a firm believer of Isaac Arthur's first rule of warfare: If brute force doesn't work, you're not using enough of it.
Well, those megastructures are only 100,000 years old, and all the infrastructure to maintain the Halo Array is in immaculate condition, barring interference by interloping aliens. Most of their shield worlds are still habitable and well-maintained as well. Their sentinel units are an almost perfect self-replicating maintenance force.
Hey Isaac, nice video as always! About today's topic, I'd actually imagine that one man's trash is another man's treasure. Pure materials in space, not in planetary gravity well, that can be comparatively easily recycled only using energy. Those will always have some value
Also don't forget the silverfish. They will probably try to eat any space structure that has been left alone for too long.
one man's trash is... another man's trash (D:OG)
As usual, you never disappoint. Except in the realm of FTL, some of us sci fantasy fans like our own little warp bubbles 😁.
And happy birthday.
@@archapmangcmg lol thank you, my brain is everywhere today. Fixed it.
your intro and music painfully reminded me how little good scifi we've gotten in the vein of Blade Runner and such in recent decades. We're in a really bad scifi drought. lack of novels and movies in scifi with any real substance and deep thought provoking ideas.
Now I'm imagining a movie or video game where the protagonist is trying to escape a magastructure where one part is trying to kill all the inhabitants and the rest of the megastructure, possibly with a concerned AI, is trying to evacuate everyone while trying to fight off what has basically become megastructure cancer.
That sounds like the best setting for AI vs AI with Humans. Imagine all the sorts of things one would develop to counter another!
9:17 In future structures won't be demolished they'll be dismantled. The same methods that allow automated production will be reversed, run in play back as it were. Mega structures could take on the lifecycle of a ant colony build, un-builed, move on, repeat .
12:20 In fact I'll go one further. In the future dismantlement will be a chief form of combat. You won't blow things up but hit them with a canister of "Dismantlement Fog". De-foggers, I can hear them being called that.
I agree. An advanced civiliasation will inevitably learn how to dismantle, recycle and repurpose along the way.
The Gundam Animes and Mangas had multiple O'Neal cylinders destroyed. Although it wasn't a planned demolition in their cases but war.
At least one was dropped on earth as a weapon. Unfortunately for Zeon, they missed their target and just obliterated Australia.
Not my Country! 😅
@@tristanbackup2536 in universe they(Principality of Zeon) was attempting a first strike on earth underground UN central government city in Brazil but the O'Neil cylinder broke up and deorbited faster than expected. I forget if it was a miscalculation or if Earth Defense forces triggered the breakup.
Anyway excuse the meme music but here is the visuals from the various animes on how it should look.
th-cam.com/video/cciO9eWtZ_A/w-d-xo.html
In a later Gundam anime they state there is a 500km wide bay where Sidney used to be.
Always good.
A rather belated comment - if an O'Neill cylinder might take years to drain of atmosphere (larger megastructures longer) if you poke a hole in it, it occurred to me that must say something about how long it would take to build one in the first place:
-How many years or centuries would it take just to 'fill' a newly built megastructure with an atmosphere?
-What about the timescales for gathering and building the more 'solid' materials?
-What does that say about the practicality of sourcing the materials and building such structures in the first place as us humans have enough trouble organising the building of structures over just a few months?
For the foreseeable future our individual and cultural interaction with time and it's consequences is unlikely to change very much regardless of advances in technology while moving a crap-ton of material and assembling it will always be moving a crap-ton of material and assembling it no matter how you do it.
In other words are the timescales involved in creating such structures going to make them fundamentally beyond our ability to make them even if we have the knowhow and motivation? (A fundamental reason why I just don't see any kind of active terraforming ever happening)
"To all great things there comes an end, but it can be a spectacular end"
I'm stealing this for the note I leave when I strap myself to a giant bottle rocket.
Man, mentions Mass Effect and B5 in the first few minutes. Be still my heart. Also, I completely agree B5 had the best scifi finale.
"Nukes don't obliterate everything" Trinity didn't even obliterate the tower that it was suspend from, parts of it survived though very damaged.
Metal grids and nets are really hard to destroy with shock waves. Dropping artillery on barbed wire does barely anything to it, except tangle it up even more.
@@Yora21 Nukes especially at the epicentre are more than shockwaves. They are balls of million kelvin plasma.
@@ineednochannelyoutube5384 Of course. But if the explosion is caused by the warhead, then every hit would cause such a big explosion. Instead we always see hits just plink off harmlessly and only the one that destroys the target actually causes a massive explosion.
The worst thing that can happen to a mega structure habitat with self repair is a hacker. Not a AI hacker, but a human hacker with the skill and patience to pull off a hostile takeover. Just imagine the nightmare of trying to take back the factories with robots cannibalising the fallen robots to continue the assault and attack. Could be a horror movie.
Grats on seven years of hard work and dedication Mr. Arthur. Thanks for keeping us inspired and hopeful for the future.
As another year passes I would like thank you for all the work you put into the videos. Been following you from the first episode and it’s never been boring.
I facepalmed when I saw the finale of Babylon 5. "It's purpose had been served" . What about its function as a habitat supporting hundreds of thousands of people? You should get at least a 1000 years out of it even with only basic maintenance.
"Navigational hazard". If I remember correctly B5 orbited a basically uninhibited, remote planet. So what does this even mean? And blasting it into trillions of fragments is only going to create a far, far worse "navigational hazard".
If you want a rational explanation for this, I also vagely remember B5s planet actually housed some kind of ancient spiritual alien. Perhaps B5 was turned into an instant Kessler syndrome to protect it?
It was habitat only because people were needed to support vast infrastructure related to diplomatic relations. If need for that end, it wouldn't be hard to imagine station turning into giant squat. And on top of that quite dangerous when infrastructure break. It is why make sense that station was decommissioned. Though blowing it up, doesn't. I agree on that part.
YES! I NOTICED THIS TOO AND I AGREE!!!
It would only be a "navigational hazzard" to anyone traveling in orbit around that Epsilon planet. And it's far out in a rarely visited solar system, around a rarely visited planet. (As long as word about *what* is down there on the planet and everyone wants to study the machine and decides to set up bases and orbital stations to study it.)
But what WOULD create a REAL SERIOUS navigation hazzard would be tons of space station debris flying around the system!
And yeah, that station is a valuable piece of real estate and it's a huge waste to just destroy it is tragic especially with peoples out there needing and seeking homes.
Refugees, outcasts, the telepaths...
That station probably was hella expensive to make ....crazy to just blow it up.
„My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!“
Pardon, I don't think Mir was around in 1968. Pretty sure it was '86.
Thank you for sharing how this all started! I only came on board watching around the beginning of the 2nd year, but went back and watched a lot of the 1st year episodes, even if all the formulas went over my head.
I really appreciate the topics you cover and differences between "sci-fi trope" vs. "what we expect under known science" vs. "theoretical maybe science?" and also that you make sure to not gloss over the moral aspects, which I think sometimes happens a lot in the sci-fi world.
I hope you also keep making more videos another 7 years! Thank you again.
Happy anniversary Isaac! I discovered you fairly early on, somewhere in the first 6-18 months I guess, and was immediately hooked. Very impressed to see how far you've come, and looking forward to many more years!
Exploding a megastructure is unwise because of the sheer debriss it would create a more optimal idea would be either gradually recycling it or repurposing it
Oh man, I missed a week and have three whole episodes to binge! Thank Isaac for this project!!!
You always sound clear to me.
Been here for years
This comment right here.
Love you Isaac
The sheer size of megastructures never ceases to amaze me. And the concept of derelict megastructures uninhabited for billions of years is as awe-inspiring as it is fascinating.
Cease*
@@DividedWeFall Thanks random english speaker
Syntaxes aside the premise is a staple sci-fi that like so many other topics on this channel are actually feasible.
Ancient megastructures, alien or otherwise are reasonable providing the timeframe of techno active society in regards to the Drake equation and presumably would be some of the first instances of evidence that a newly space fairing culture might encounter.
No rot in vacuum. Only radiation erosion and micrometeor hits.
@@Yora21 Rot? I didn't mean derelict as in rotting or rusting necessarily. Just abandoned and in poor condition. Also, the once habitable section of a megastructure would have been anything but a vacuum.
I always avoid looking at the next episode previews or schedule because it always is a great surprise to see what's up.
This time the surprise was almost too much because the title almost made me jump out of my seat.
I'm so damn excited, and 35 minutes? Sweet lord. This is going to be great for doing my dinner/breakfast (I only eat once a day to keep slim, it's called the OMAD diet... no idk why I elaborated) alongside with.
You elaborated because you're Unintentionally Dramatic! :D
Does OMAD stand for anything. As I eat similar amounts to you be good to know what "diet" I might be on. Not on a diet, just not a fan of food. I look forward to SFIA's future video on full calorie/vitamin/etc 1 a day food pills!
@@TheEyez187
Pffff-
It stands for One Meal A Day!
Future food would be a great series!!
@@unintentionallydramatic yeah sorry about that "joke"!
It would be good yes!
If UAPs can cloak themselves and the DoD is taking them seriously, makes you wonder if dark matter is just abandoned megastructures where they were courteous enough to cloak their handiwork.
Why abandoned? Why not cloaked occupied megastructures.
Crazy how society is ignoring this subject. Should be our #1 concern.
Never been this early before! Thankyou Issac for all the quality content!! ❤❤❤
Same
Been a fan from the beginning. I can never tell how much your speech has improved because I got so used to your voice, it's not different from anyone else to me now. It also really helped me understand a little boy I know who is struggling with a pronounced speech impediment. Always meant to thank you for training my ear to hear him better. So Thanks!
Soon as you mentioned holes and patching them, my mind went to Mobile Suit Gundams patch film. Turn handle, bubbles of the film flow to the hole..pop and patch it.
we need to get some hollywood directors watching this channel. from all the episodes theres probably thousands of good movie ideas and i would really love to see a "realistic" future scifi space movie.
a movie about the defence systems on an oneil cylinder going haywire and people trying to combat it
a movie about a war between earth and mars or between dyson swarms around solar systems.
a movie or even better tv series that takes place in a dyson swarm with busy shipping lanes and humans that have become alien. (where the martians look different from the earthlings look different from the people in space habitats) and perhaps you follow the crew of a smugling or pirate ship (for the pirates perhaps you could have some kind of lasers or something and your pirate crew messages the target ship and says "stop your ship or we blow it up" or maybe the pirates just match the speed and "dock" with the target ship. the issue with realistic pirates is that you have to construct a worldspace that makes it possable.)
lol. i paused it to write that and when i unpaused there was like 2 lines before the episode ended
I feel like these blogs are for future scientific researchers. Like year 2500. People come back to these. I mean i hope they look back.
" can you believe they used to keep the radiation phone in the pocket closest to the crotch"
-year2500, scientist.
I'm using a damaged shell world + matrioshka brain in a Roche orbit as the setting for my short stories. So part of me is always glad to have Arthurs input and the other part is shouting "No to give them ideas! I need the novelty to make up for my hackney writing."
Ok. I need to correct Isaac on example of Ring World as that was in fact explained. There was technology on Ring World, but it wasn't designed for field repairs. Casings of equipment were so sturdy that locals couldn't melt them. It is because they were designed to be replaced by advanced civilization. And because land was artificial, it didn't have any conventional resources which make civilization incapable of rebuilding, after softer buildings collapsed. That was the irony of the story.
Thank you Isaac for 7 years of helping me think about the world and universe around me. Now and in the future. You are an awesome Human. Edit. Wanted to add that Sarah is awesome too! Im happy for both of you!
My cat wants you to know "Meow"
Happy Birthday Isaac! I am proud to be a patreon supporter- seeing that there are so many other people out there with an eye towards a better future, and to the risks involved, brings me hope.
So thank you for what you have offered to us with your hard work and vision. Your speech impediment was and is hardly a problem in this format, especially because we can backtrack the videos for clarity, you do such a thorough job of explaining the topics, and of course the subtitles you fastidiously include. I can easily believe that, somewhere down the line, a history of early science education and the roots of human expansion will include this project. Here’s to 7 more years.
Question: how do you get the simulations in your videos?
It a man in a high castle technique
I've actually missed a couple episodes. That never happens. Glad to be back. This one should be good. Thanks Isaac.
I prefer to read it "Megastructure Death", a megastructure known as Death.
Transformers - Unicron.
'We attempted to build God. Instead we created the Devil.'
Wow, I was scrolling and totally just read that as, "Megadeath Structure." I was all like, "Ha, he spelled 'Megadeth' wrong!"
Megastructure Death is my favorite heavy metal band!
Thank you!
Ringworld Decay got a similar sound, would recommend.
Isaac, keep doing what you’re doing. Haven’t watched the vid yet (don’t have time at the moment), but I’m definitely watching it later today ❤️
Nice.
Yeah nah, nice mate, I do the same, though I do leave a like once I've seen its been posted, regardless of whether I have watched it or not.
Imagine a megastructure that's built initially as a single rotating segment, but onto which a second segment is built, then a third on the far end of the second, and the structure is built out extending forward, and as each section corrodes/wears out it gets jetissonned off the "back" end of the megastructure and you run the facility in equilibrium so it's being built as fast as it's being discarded.
I noticed that your speech impediment disappeared for me, at least my ability to perceive it, about halfway through the first episode I watched. That was years ago, and although I don't notice it anymore, I'm glad you've gotten the chance to improve your speaking abilities, and have a personally rewarding experience doing so. Have a great birthday!
Yeah I'm not proud to say this but for awhile I put off watching videos on the channel because it was hard for me to understand, my brain already seems to have a hard enough time deciphering what people are saying. But after awhile I saw several episodes on subjects I just could not skip, and it ended up being that after like the second episode it was gone. Now I watch videos here all the time because it doesn't bother me - I do still notice it, particularly when playing videos that came out years apart, but it doesn't bother me.
I jus look over it. I speak a few languages, so it’s just a tad comical because the subject of the lecture ✌🏻😂🛸
@@physics_hacker at the end of the day, his brain is wicked smaht, and honestly I know many people with regional "accents" in the south who I absolutely cannot understand. Compare Isaac to rural Mississippi and you realize he's a lot closer to Morgan Freeman than billy from Beaumont
@@keatoncampbell820 Yeah, I agree. I also have difficulty with thick accents, so for me it's not really as much about the specific thing as the overall issue.
Ditto. I listen so often that I don't really hear it anymore either.
Congrats on 7 years! It has been one heck of a fun ride so far. :D
Congrats on seven years! I've enjoyed every episode, and looking forward to more. Happy Birthday!
Hi Isaac
It has truly been an amazing journey, to think I watched you almost from the start, with your voice impairments, all the way through your marriage, your voice fixing, and so much more, its been amazing, and how well your channel is doing is truly inspirational, I hope you have many more years where you teach me things I don't know, thank you mate, its been great, and hope it will remain so, once we have that life extension.
Regards
Atlancia
Rogue grey goo is the scenario I'd never want to have to dream about.
Holy heck man, 7 years?? I remember those first episodes, and tbh youve been an inspiration ever since then. Ive caught like 3 out of every 5 on the day of release, never more than 2 weeks late, and somehow it still feels like yesterday. Thank you isaac, youve quite literally changed my life, my whole outlook on things big and small.
Same - Isaac is an optimistic soul. There's too many futurists who concentrate on the negative. He's changed my outlook, that's for sure.
So... Basically just the plot of Blame! right?
Not really? Blame is about a megastructure that's at the exact opposite of dying.
Best 7 years ever.... hands down the best channel out there..... keep up the fantastic work!!!
I've been trying to have dead and dying structures play a role in my scifi setting. My main characters for the first stories are a trade and salvage crew. The trade part is pretty self explanatory, but the salvage part comes from dead structures. Habitats that died in one way or another, or are being actively recycled supply the salvage. This is then resold to recycled, or used to make repairs on the ship by being ground down to powder to feed the 3d printer.
Congratulations on 7 years! I've been watching a long time, and I love the show!
I always watch videos a few months behind cause I tend to binge a channel for a month then binge the next and rotate back. But having watched you since nearly the beginning, it's been really amazing at how your channel and you have grown. Congratulations on 7 years!
Suddenly, I feel the need to visit the Kar Selim. Looks like I'm going to be binge playing Homeworld again.
06:30 Wait WHAT -- the Soviets had MIR before Armstrong walked on the moon?
Happy Birthday. Arthur! Congrats on the seven years! I am almost done watching every episode twice. Your episodes are never outdated!
I-90 has the infamous distinction of being the only highway that sucks in literally every state you're in.
Happy Anniversary! Just a quick note to say that I've been a supporter of your show for 6 years now, and yes, did go back to the first videos to catch up. Wouldn't be too hard on them as in the context of their time, they were still the best out there!
Good luck for the next seven!
Having watched for almost the full 7 years and likely every episode i can honestly say i haven't regretted one minute of it. While you've gotten immensely out of it Arthur, we too have gained far more than just a good past time, you've given us knowledge and philosophical ideas that would take years of active study to get an equilevant familiarity with such concepts by other means. So Thank you and happy birthday 🎉
Blame! is another series that takes an incredible look at a megastructure in decay. Good stuff.
I just love your episodes. Even after almost a year of being subscribed, you still link to videos I have not yet even discovered. And I enjoy your connection to Orions Arm. One of the most complex ... stories/encyclopediae/scifi I have ever encountered. It is so much more than just one of these...
I thank Isaac & the whole crew for entertaining me (& so many other ppl) with a realistic way to see science & Sci-Fi for the last 5+ years I've been watching your content.
Happy Anniversary, SFIA!
I'm just a grunt but I do a little modeling & animation on the side. A megastructure could be a fun project with a mix of hand modeling & procedural modeling. I'll be sure to put it on my to do list & shoot an e-mail if whenever I get around to it. Happy birthday, Isaac, thanks for all the great shows over the years!
Holy shit that scenario for a self-cannibalizing space station that's had its self-repair systems go haywire sounds like an absolutely AMAZING movie just waiting to happen.
My favorite series finale was the 2004 to 08 Battlestar Galactica which relates to a megastructure in space too. That was amazing end. That show was great.
Remember that the Shadows left behind their planet killer Tech (and other Tech) and some other civilization used it to their advantage. that thing was huge.
How about a Dyson router, surround a star with flaps that can open and close and allow light out in any direction, effectively becoming a router
Spin does not affect air much at all. Because there is no hard coupling.
An O'neil cylinder would have the same atmospheric pressure throughout, and a wind from the air interfacing with the inner surface.
Niven's idea of an open-top ringworld is, quite simply, nonsense.
1:20 On this subject, if you are looking for a heavy metal album that is about a dying planet and a subsequent journey across the stars to find a new home, may I recommend the Ayreon album "The Source".
As someone who is beset by so much fear and doubt over such little things, I want to thank you for continuing to show us futures brighter than we imagined. Happy anniversary, and here's to seven years more.
Happy birthday, and thank you for another year!
Arthur, you are literally my favorite science educator in the world. And this is coming from a kid who grew up binge watching discovery channel. Thank you so much for the last 7 years, can't wait for another couple 7.
In ringworld engineer, the explanation is a superconductor plague combined with a lack of metals on the surface which causes the alians to regress, the survivors start removing the ringworld engines to make ships to leave and that causes the ringworld to become unstable. i'm also pretty sure this guy invented the Asari from mass effect 3 in his book.
I expect to be watching you do this show in a hundred trillion years time as I sit in my chair on a birch world somewhere
23:00 - isn't the idea of a small hole being so dangerous based on what can happen when you get a pinhole leak in the hulls of a submarine? Rivets being forced out at such high speed that they can kill, improv hydro cutters made of water jets, stuff like that but in reverse?
but there isnt the pressure to do that
"plotting a course around an exploding star...sure why not?"
I'm pretty sure ringworlds die when a ships fusion reactor is detonated.
Brother I’ve been watching you since the get-go and yes you’ve made progress with your speech impediment but I just thought you had a cool British accent in the beginning LOL. Just want to thank you for this channel I want to thank you for your service as a fellow vet myself you’re service is appreciated. I enjoy this channel is it tends to provide some over scape of all the bull crap that’s going on in our world right now and I tend to get caught up in it myself so having a channel like this is very much appreciate it again thanks happy birthday happy anniversary and keep on keeping on. Stay safe stay healthy and most of all stay strong🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸!
I can't believe we've been together 7 yrs already.....what a ride...you've come so far...and we your fans are so proud of you!!!!😁👋👋👋👏👏👏👏
Was starting a (fictional) book with concepts on scale and technology similar to topics covered here and later down the line I was going to have something like this come up. Absolutely love the wealth of topics you cover here for that reason. That and it's just fascinating stuff you cover here!
Thanks from a long time fan
A swarm of small megastructures is more durable than an equivalent super-megastructure.
We can recycle an O'Neal cylinder or even a Bishop Ring by simply moving the population to a new habitat and then disassembling the old habitat to recycle the materials.
Oh, who else thinks that as much as it was a good finale, nobody believes that they would blow up B5. Some salvage company would buy it and salvage it.
Salvaged material needs sorting and refining, and you have to haul all that scrap around on a huge fleet of freighters. The costs of all that might make the final new building materials more expensive than using freshly mined metal.
Niven's Ringworld has enough metal ores and left over Pak advanced materials that civilizations do arise, one of which spread across more than 10 degrees of the ring, and had sublight ships (unfortunately built around the engines installed to keep the structure stable) that allowed them to spread to a number of nearby systems. The dominant civilization on the Ringworld did not fall as a result of any natural effect, but was instead covertly attacked by the Puppeteers with a medium-term plan that they would then arrive in the nick of time with the solution to the problem (the problem being an engineered organism that ate the dominant's civilization room temperature superconductor, and the solution being one of the other three room temperature superconductors the Puppeteer's knew of at the time). As Louis Wu noted, the City Builders should have been able to solve the problem on their own, but didn't for some reason. (The Puppeteers didn't come to the rescue because the governing faction changed from the less isolationist to the more isolationist after the attack was carried out but before they could swoop in to the rescue.)
7 years, wow seems like yesterday. I still tell people to Check this out all the time.