Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

During the recent Spring Festival season of Planetary engine, a sequel broke into everyone's eyes-not Avatar 2, but wandering Earth 2. After I walked out of the cinema, my thumb got cramped-Chinese science fiction movies really stood up! In this excellent film, one detail that is of particular interest to the author who came from the field of earth science is the planetary engine.

"Benben and Men" (source: Douban movie) can cause several levels of earthquake the setting of the planetary engine in the movie is the base of the base, the foundation of the foundation, without the planetary engine, it is not impossible to wander. The planetary engine covers an area of about 50km in diameter, as high as 10km. As a reference, the highest mountain today is Mount Qomolangma, with an elevation of about 8848.86m, so the planetary engine has become the highest peak of the earth!

According to the settings in the book and in the movie, the planetary engine is powered by heavy nuclear fusion and provides a continuous thrust of 15 billion tons, which we will analyze later. Many people have analyzed this data, and it must be very appropriate for the plot of the book and the movie. Liu himself must have calculated that we do not worry about whether the thrust is appropriate or not.

In the film, the space elevator and the Planet one engine are built in Libreville, the capital of Gabon. First of all, let's take a look at the geographical location. Gabon is a Central African country located on the west coast of Central Africa. The central longitude and latitude of Libreville, its capital, is 0 °23: 33 "N and 9 °27: 13 W, at the equator. Then in the film, UEG is headquartered in New York, the original seat of the United Nations, with longitude and latitude 73 °58 '3.393 "west and latitude 40 °45' 1.265" north. On the map, the distance of its great circle path is about 9370km.

These are the basic information, so let's get to the point: how many magnitude earthquakes can a planetary engine cause?

Planetary engine (Zhihu @ half cat) first of all, let's remember the assumption that the ground in which the planetary engine is located is sufficient to support such a large thrust, and it is also said in the book that the planetary engine must be built on a stable continent. According to geoscience terms, a stable continent should be a Craton, which refers to an ancient and stable continental block, which is mainly composed of ancient crystallization bases. The craton is the only one on earth that can withstand the agitation of planetary engines. China's cratons include North China Craton, Yangtze Craton, Tarim Craton and so on. As long as the engine is built on these stable continental blocks and then stay away from the fault, it should not be a big problem. The No. 1 engine is built on the African continent, and Libreville, the capital of Gabon, is on the Congolese craton, so it can also support the planetary engine. Based on these bases, we use a simple magnitude formula to calculate the magnitude of the earthquake that the Gabon-1 planetary engine can produce.

African Craton Distribution (Source: gold Science and Technology)

The craton distribution in China (source: Institute of Geology and Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences) takes the Richter scale as an example (although it is now basically expressed by moment magnitude), this is a relatively simple empirical formula for the conversion between energy and earthquake. The corresponding relationship between energy and magnitude is E = 104.8 * 101.5m (J). Where M is the magnitude and E is the energy released by the earthquake. If we convert the thrust into energy, we can deduce the magnitude. What kind of results can planetary engines produce? If the start-up of the planetary engine causes the settlement of 1m of the stratum, then according to the Niu's Law, then the work done by a single engine is W = F * s, which is 1.5E13 Joule. Let's do the reverse calculation, so the magnitude M is 8.4. Simple calculation, even if the ground subsidence is only 1m, the earthquake caused is more than the Wenchuan earthquake. If you think about the destructive power of the Wenchuan earthquake, you can think of what kind of damage the planetary engine can cause. Of course, this is only a theoretical calculation, and if the author remembers correctly, it is mentioned in the film that the shock was clearly felt at the headquarters of UEG after the engine in Gabon was started. If we look at the settlement of 1m and the earthquake of magnitude 8.4, combined with the geographical distance 9370km, basically the UEG headquarters should not feel the earthquake. Compared with the examples of "double earthquakes" in Turkey in the past two days, the 7.8 magnitude earthquake, more than 5000 km away from China on average, was almost unfelt. If I remember the plot of the movie correctly, this is a little Bug. Because the author majored in this area, I was a little confused when I looked at it at that time, and the little friends who wanted to see it could also pay a little attention to it. However, for the film itself is picky, the author thinks that this part of the film can be replaced by seismic data, that is, the computer interface has a strong waveform and so on.

The maps of New York and Libreville (1 is the location of the United Nations in New York) but from our current reality of the earth, the damage of planetary engines to continental blocks is very great, do not rule out the possibility that tens of thousands of engines start together, there will be a super earthquake, and then we will send it together, this is another story-wandering the earth: earthquake earth! (bushi)

This article is from the official account of Wechat: stone popular Science Studio (ID:Dr__Stone), author: Xingyu

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