Strange new research suggests life inside asteroids

Scientists have proposed what may be the strangest concept for space colonization – living inside asteroids.

In a new paper, experts from the University of Rochester suggest hollowing out the asteroid, increasing its spin to create artificial gravity, and filling it with buildings.

Encasing the chosen asteroid in a flexible, mesh bag made of carbon nanofibers will prevent the debris from breaking off as it spins, they say.

The team admits that their concept is “wildly theoretical” and would require “engineering capabilities that don’t currently exist.”

In a wildly theoretical paper, Rochester researchers envision encasing an asteroid in a flexible, mesh bag made of ultralight and high-strength carbon nanofibers as the key to creating human cities in space.

Illustration of a cylindrical, rotating habitat covered with solar panels. Inside is a thick layer of asteroid debris and regolith that acts as a radiation shield. Just below the solar panels is a strong, rigid container that keeps debris from flying apart. The housing rotates around its longitudinal axis to create traction on the inner surface

How would that work?

The asteroid would somehow rotate to create artificial gravity. This process will inevitably cause the asteroid to break up.

Pieces of asteroid debris would be ejected, expanding the bag of carbon nanofibers surrounding the asteroid.

When the bag reached its maximum limit, the carbon nanofibers would stretch, trapping the expanding debris.

As the debris settled on the bag, it would form a layer thick enough to shield anyone inside from radiation. The rotation of the cylinder would cause artificial gravity on the inner surface.

“Our paper lives on the edge of science and science fiction,” said study author Adam Frank at the University of Rochester.

“We’re taking a science fiction idea that’s been very popular recently in TV shows like Amazon’s The Expanse and proposing a new way to use an asteroid to build a city in space.

“According to our calculations, an asteroid with a diameter of 300 meters could become a cylindrical space habitat about the size of Manhattan, about the size of several football fields, with a habitable area of about 22 square miles.”

The team was inspired by the O’Neill cylinder, a space settlement concept proposed by American physicist Gerard K. O’Neill in 1976.

Rotating space metropolises consist of two connected cylinders rotating in opposite directions.

The cylinders rotate fast enough on their inner surface to provide artificial gravity, but so slowly that the people living in them would not experience motion sickness.

Billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, owners of Blue Origin and SpaceX, respectively, cited O’Neill cylinders in their vision for future space habitats.

But Rochester’s team says that getting the necessary building materials to build them from Earth into space would be very difficult and expensive.

“Our proposal may be less costly and less engineering complex than building a classic O’Neill habitat,” they said.

The team was inspired by ‘O’Neill cylinders’, a concept of regulation in space proposed by US physicist Gerard K. O’Neill in 1976 (pictured).

The O’Neill cylinder will consist of two counter-rotating cylinders rotating in opposite directions, both providing artificial gravity.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF SPACE TRAVEL

Moment asteroid a large piece of rock left over from collisions or the early solar system. Most are located between Mars and Jupiter in the Main Belt.

A commit is rock covered with ice, methane, and other compounds. Their orbits take them far beyond the Solar System.

A meteor Astronomers call the flash of light in the atmosphere when the debris flashes.

This is known as destruction itself meteoroid. Most of them are so small that they evaporate in the atmosphere.

If any of these meteoroids reach Earth, they are called a meteorite.

Meteors, meteoroids and meteorites are usually formed from asteroids and comets.

So they turned to asteroids—rocky bodies orbiting the sun left over from the formation of the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago.

Scientists estimate that there are about 1,000 asteroids larger than a mile in diameter in our solar system alone.

A 2019 education Scientists led by Thomas Maindl at the University of Vienna had already proposed that a hollow asteroid with a central cylindrical cavity could spin on its axis to achieve artificial gravity similar to Earth’s.

But the paper didn’t address a potential problem: the asteroid’s hollow rock wouldn’t be strong enough, so it would break and shatter as it spins.

Most asteroids aren’t even solid rock, but “debris piles”—clusters of loose rocks, stones, and sand held together by the weak mutual gravity of space.

So the new research proposes encasing the asteroid in a flexible, mesh bag made of very light, high-strength carbon nanofibers — tubes of carbon, each a few atoms in diameter.

The bag will contain and support the entire rotating mass of the asteroid debris and habitat inside, while also supporting its own weight as it rotates.

There will be solar panels encased in carbon nanofibers, which will power the habitat.

Experts say the asteroid’s outer layer will provide a natural shield against deadly cosmic radiation from the sun.

Moreover, an asteroid-based habitat affects interplanetary transport, meaning that a colonized asteroid can act as a spaceport.

Frank told MailOnline that the asteroid would be rotated using rockets to create artificial gravity.

“An asteroid can be launched by anchoring the rocket engines to the bulk of the debris pile and shooting them perpendicular to the surface,” he said.

Asteroids are rocky bodies orbiting the sun left over from the formation of the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago (artist’s impression)

Although the project is named “Habitat Bennu” after the asteroid, which is about a third of a mile across, the team has not identified a suitable asteroid.

Colonizing parts of space and making them habitable may be the only way to save humans from eventual extinction on our planet.

In the future, humans may irreparably damage the Earth by completely plundering its resources or burning it through greenhouse gas emissions.

“If humanity is truly going to become a spacefaring species, it will need places to live and work,” the experts say in their paper. Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences.

“Although our research is clearly based on engineering capabilities that do not currently exist, our results show that the basic physics of making small asteroids habitable is possible.”

SpaceX, led by Elon Musk, is working on the Starship transporter, which will one day take humans to the Moon and Mars and colonize them.

Musk’s fun 2017 research caseTitled ‘Turning Humans into a Multiplanetary Species’, it describes his company’s vision for living on Mars.

“History will split in two directions,” Musk said in the paper.

“One way is that we stay on Earth forever and then an extinction event happens.

“The alternative is to become a spacefaring civilization and a multiplanetary species. I hope that’s the right way to go.”

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INDIVIDUALS: OUR SUN WILL BE A RED DISH BEFORE COLLAPSING TO A COMPACT WHITE DWARF IN ABOUT 5 BILLION YEARS

The Sun is only 4.6 billion years old in its approximately 10 billion year lifetime.

When the hydrogen fuel at the center of a star runs out, nuclear reactions will begin to move into its atmosphere, burning the hydrogen in the shell surrounding the core.

As a result, the outside of the star becomes redder, expands and cools.

Over time, the star will become a red giant, expanding to 400 times its original size.

As they expand, the red giants encompass some of the planets in close orbit. In the case of the Sun, this will mean the fiery end of all the inner planets of our Solar System, which could include Earth.

But don’t worry – it won’t happen for another 5,000,000,000 years.

After becoming a red giant, engulfing the inner planets and browning the Earth’s surface, it will then shed its outer layers and the Sun’s open core will remain as a slowly cooling white dwarf.

This stellar source will be incredibly dense, packing a large fraction of the Sun’s mass into a sphere about the size of Earth.

Source: ESA/National Schools Observatory