Whether you go to the Wandering Earth 2 movie or not, Half Cat suggests that you learn about the concept of planetary engines and will surely take your breath away.
In this issue, half a cat will comprehensively interpret the "planetary engine" from the following aspects
1. Why build a planetary engine?
2. How does the engine generate thrust?
3. What are the parameters and structure of the engine?
4. What impact on the earth?
5. Can a planetary engine be built in reality?
It mainly refers to official materials such as novels, movies, official Weibo, and film production manuals, and organizes and integrates them as much as possible.
#Movie The Wandering Earth 2##The Wandering Earth##Liu Cixin##Planetary Engine##电影流浪地球 #
First, why build a planetary engine?
Humans predict that the sun will flash helium in hundreds of years and become a red giant, and the earth will be engulfed and vaporized by the sun in the process.
Therefore, humans launched the "Wandering Earth" project, spending 2500 years traveling to Proxima Centauri, 4.22 light-years away.
The planetary engine is the key to the whole plan.
Schematic diagram of galaxies
The journey of human self-help is divided into five steps:
The first stage [Brake Era] spent 50 years to develop and manufacture planetary engines, so that the engine nozzle was fixed in the opposite direction of the earth's operation; In 2039, the first set of planetary engines will be built, in 2060 the last set will be built, and in 2065 the Earth will stop rotating.
The second stage [Escape Era] starts the planetary engine at full power, accelerating the earth to escape speed and flying out of the solar system;
However, the thrust of the planetary engine is not as strong as we think, it can only give the earth a small acceleration, can not push the earth out of the solar orbit at once, before the earth leaves the sun, but also around the sun 15 times, slowly accelerated, escape the solar system.
The third stage [Wandering Age I. (Acceleration)] The Earth continues to accelerate in outer space and fly towards Proxima Centauri; At this stage, the Earth leaves the orbit of the solar system, flies towards its target, accelerates non-stop for 500 years, accelerating to five thousandths of the speed of light, during which the engine will burn half of the mountains on the Asian continent. Then the Earth glides at five thousandths of the speed of light for 1300 years, covering two-thirds of the voyage,
The fourth stage [Wandering Age II (Deceleration)] The earth reversed direction and began a deceleration that lasted for more than 500 years with a planetary engine; It took another 100 years to anchor in the orbit of Proxima Centauri.
The fifth stage [New Solar Era] The earth becomes a new planet in the target star system, and mankind arrives at a new home.
One will see the three golden suns of Centaurus rise sequentially on the horizon, bathing everything in its warm light. The solid air melts and turns into a turquoise sky. More than 2,000 years ago, seeds were revived from the thawed soil and the earth returned to green.
The three suns of Centauri
This is what building a planetary engine is all about
Second, how does a planetary engine generate thrust?
The engine uses vacuum rock refusion technology as a power source, and the silicon atom refusion chain reaction is excited by helium triple, so as to obtain a high-energy and high-pressure plasma flow. This plasma stream is ejected in the specified direction along the engine nozzle, pushing the Earth forward by a reaction force. At full power, a planetary engine produces an average of 150 trillion tons of thrust per second.
This is not the limit of the engine's operating power, and if a specific catalytic material and stone are mixed into the reactor, the engine can produce 200 trillion tons of thrust.
However, if it is operated like this for a long time, the engine will fail due to insufficient heat dissipation capacity. Due to the limited heat dissipation capacity of the inner wall, the engine operates by pulse injection, and the usual operating cycle is full power injection every 60 seconds, which lasts for 10 seconds and is spaced 50 seconds apart to dissipate heat.
Of course, this injection cycle can be adjusted in the engine control center, for example, the twelve rings of the Spring Festival, for example, seven babies in one.
Here half a cat explains what "refusion" is, first breaking the word apart.
"Heavy" refers to heavy elements, that is, elements with a relatively large atomic number in the periodic table. The atomic number, which is the number of protons in the nucleus, the heavier it is. The atomic number of hydrogen is 1, silicon is 14, iron is 26,
"Fusion" is a kind of nuclear reaction, at extremely high temperature and pressure, let the extranuclear electrons get rid of the shackles of the nucleus, so that the two nuclei can attract each other and collide together, and the nuclei polymerize each other to generate new heavier nuclei, which will produce huge energy.
The process of fusing 1 kg of hydrogen into helium produces an energy equivalent of about 150,573.6 tons of TNT.
But even so, even if all the hydrogen on Earth is burned, it is not enough to support humans to reach the distant Proxima Centauri, so it is necessary to burn the stones that can be found everywhere on the earth, which is essentially the nuclear fusion of silicon elements in the stones.
However, the larger the atomic number, the harsher the conditions, hydrogen nuclear fusion requires 10 million degrees Celsius, helium nuclear fusion requires 200 million degrees, to silicon elements need at least 1 billion degrees, or even higher, the sun can not reach such a high temperature.
So how exactly did humans achieve refusion? In reality, it may be difficult to see in our lifetimes, and it is not mentioned at all in the novel, and the setting of "flint" is added in the movie, making it one of the necessary conditions for the start of the planetary engine. Once the engine stops running, new flint needs to be installed to start.
flint
Each flint can only be used once, and it can instantly generate a high temperature of millions of degrees, start the refusion chain reaction, and step by step achieve the harsh conditions required for heavy element nuclear fusion.
Flint itself is a very dangerous thing, so flint is not stored near the planetary engine, but has to be transported thousands of miles.
Flint robotic arm
But flint can be damaged by guns, this plot is a little embarrassing, we temporarily understand that it is a fuse device to break flint.
Third, the parameters and structure of the planetary engine
Planetary engines, also called Earth engines, English name Earth engines, people also call them "God's blowtorch"
God's blowtorch concept painting
There are a total of 12,000 planetary engines, which are divided into two categories: propulsion engines and steering engines. The former has 10,000 units, responsible for providing forward power for the earth, installed on the plains of Eurasia and the Americas above 30° north latitude, because only the complete and solid plate structure of these two continents can withstand the huge thrust of the engine on the earth
There are 2,000 steering engines, installed on the equator, do not directly push the earth, the function is to stop the earth's rotation, keep the earth's orbit stable, usually run at lower power, when the earth needs to change direction, will turn on part of it according to the demand for high power.
Steering the engine
External structure
Planetary engines are built on a mountain, ranging in height from 8 km to 11 km, placed in a matrix.
In order to prevent the engine from sagging when starting, the bottom is made of the latest composite material with a support surface with a diameter of more than 100 kilometers to reduce the pressure on the surface, and there are 7 support arms in the middle.
Dungeons were built directly below, and humans used the energy generated by the engines to survive underground.
7 support arms
The outermost perimeter of the engine is a tall levee with an average height of 600 meters and a thickness of about 300 meters, where the vehicles that carry fuel for the engine are parked.
At the front is the dike
The elevator exit of the underground city is also at the top of the levee. The levee is connected to the ice field outside the engine and the main engine structure by bridges.
The propulsion engine has 3,000 large engines with a diameter of about 33 km and 7,000 small engines with a diameter of about 10 km. The steering engine is comparable in size and construction to large propulsion engines
People call the big ones "mountains" and the small ones "peaks". For example, in the novel, an engine is called "North China No. 794 Mountain".
To climb the "peak" is by a giant elevator, and to climb the "mountain", you must take a car to go up the Pan"mountain" road.
The feed port of the large engine is at 6000 meters ~ 7000 meters, and the carrier vehicle will transport stones here to feed the engine as fuel.
Inlet
Internal structure
Taking the Sulawesi engine on the equator in the movie as an example, let's specifically introduce the structure of the engine.
The engine command center is located 3 km from the outer wall of the engine, with a direct main elevator to the underground city and a backup elevator.
The upper level of the command center facilities include: the central computer and circuit room, which is the main program control area, where Li Yiyi and Lao He crack the program of the engine. The lower level of the command center is the linkage device that controls the engine injection port, which is where Captain Wang Lei and others push the "striker".
Sulawesi engine
Here is a digression, in fact, the production team itself feels that the striker needs to be operated manually is not very reasonable, but in the plot, it needs a scene where everyone collects firewood and the flame is high, so there is a plot of a group of people "pushing the needle".
The Wandering Earth director Guo Fan
Around the main body of the engine, there is a highway bridge hundreds of meters high, and Liu Qi drives the carrier vehicle from here into the inside of the engine - the engine ignition core.
Access to the ignition gate
The indoor temperature of the engine ignition core can reach 120 degrees, and it is necessary to wear a cooling suit to enter.
Walking all the way to the center, there is a vehicular passage to the reactor ignition gate, which is where the hero places the flint
Reactor ignition gate
The ignition brake extends upwards to the main body of the planetary engine, the refusion reactor, the core device of the engine, and the area where the stone reacts to produce energy.
Heavy fusion reactors
Further up, there is the plasma injection port, the direction of the engine's injection can be adjusted in the command center, the limit of the adjustment angle is 15 degrees.
Jet port details
Each engine has not just one nozzle, but an array of hundreds of nozzles. This is to make the energy of the jet more uniform rather than concentrated at one point. But why does Li Yiyi say that there are 7 launch ports in the movie, you can understand it as seven groups of nozzles, each group has 14 small nozzles.
PS, there is a description of the internal structure of the planetary engine in Baidu Encyclopedia, but I did not find an official source. The biggest problem with this description is that 100 million degrees is not enough for silicon fusion.
Screenshot on Baidu
Fourth, the impact of planetary engines on the earth?
The planetary engine's plasma beam illuminates the entire Northern Hemisphere. And bring extreme heat, the surrounding outdoor temperature is as high as 70 or 80 degrees Celsius, you must wear cooling clothing to go out, in such temperatures there will often be heavy rain.
The tides caused by the acceleration of planetary engines engulfed two-thirds of the large cities in the northern hemisphere, and the global heat brought by the engines melted the polar glaciers, fueling the flood and spreading to the southern hemisphere. The accelerated 100-meter waves roared and rolled up every continent, and the scorching hurricane caught the scalding water droplets, roaring madly among the plasma pillars of light that stood at the top of the sky, uprooting all the big trees on the land
In addition, due to the acceleration generated by the planetary engine and the change of orbit, the balance of the iron-nickel core in the core is disturbed, and its effects pass through the Gutenberg discontinuous surface and affect the mantle. Geothermal escapes from various continents, volcanoes run rampant, which is a deadly threat to human underground cities, and magma infiltration disasters occur frequently.
Fifth, can a planetary engine be built in reality?
Some netizens once estimated that if you want to build the Beijing No. 3 engine in the movie, the total weight of the frame structure alone will reach more than 1400 trillion tons, and at a price of 4000 yuan per ton, it will exceed 50 billion yuan.
According to the 2021 World Steel Association, global crude steel production is only 1.951 billion tons, and even a support arm for building a planetary engine is far from enough.
Not to mention the "heavy fusion reactor", we still have many problems with even the lightest elemental fusion technology. Heavy element fusion, that may be a few lifetimes later
Of course, some people say that even if it is built, the earth's crust structure cannot withstand it, or the power is far from enough, and letting the earth fly to Proxima Centauri is simply empty talk.
But science fiction, isn't that it?
Once upon a time, how much of the "unreality" in science fiction works has entered "reality". If humans don't even dare to think about it, what is the difference between being blocked by the Chiko of the Trisolaran and technology?
Let's look forward to more "daring" science fiction works together. Those who like to dig deep into movies remember to give half a cat a like, and come to urge it in the comment area