Planetwide City

In the video I watched yesterday by Isaac Arthur the term "ecumenopolis" was used so I watched his video about that today. Besides being a great Scrabble game word it describes the hypothetical concept of a planetwide city. According to the video the word was coined by a Greek city planner in 1967.

This video goes further than the video I watched yesterday about a population of a trillion people on Earth. With nuclear fusion and robotic automation if all the land mass of Earth was paved over a quadrillion (1000 times a trillion people) could live on Earth with a comfortable living standard. The main catch as the video points out is how to deal with all the heat a planetwide city would generate. The body heat generated by a quadrillion people is roughly equal to the amount of thermal energy theEarth's surface gets from the sun. That doesn't include also the waste heat from technology and lighting that would be used for hydroponic gardening.

One of the interesting ideas I like is the thermal conductor in orbit encircling the planet. Some of the more energy intense processes that would generate tremendous waste heat can be is space above the Earth to radiate the waste heat as thermal energy.

Probably most importantly if the Earth's surface were to be paved over some areas could still be put aside for nature preserves. DNA could be read by computer and digitally stored to help preserve species from extinction.

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