This What Im Going Thru Rn. If Anyone Gaf

Beaver supermoon.

(November 15, 2024)

Zoozve, my beloved

Northern lights photographed from space

i can’t wait for THIS etymology lesson with the aliens

In the Future, Starships WILL be Spheres

In scifi, a lot of starships are spheres. The first person to ever have a sphere ship was probably E.E. Smith in the Skylark series (started around 1928), though he believed spaceships would have to be streamlined to get less resistance when traveling through space. In the 1920s, space was believed to be a lot “thicker” with H+ atoms (essentially, a loose proton). In reality, space only has a proton in 10^28 cubic centimeters, so streamlining in space is unnecessary. This was also why the Bussard Ramscoop, a particle collector at one point seen as the solution to the issue of energy in space travel in the 70s, was ultimately unworkable, as space is a lot “thinner” than we all thought.

The person most associated with popularizing spherical starships is Larry Niven, who made a pretty airtight argument for why spaceships would be spheres: if you remember your high school geometry, you know that a sphere is the shape with the lowest ratio of volume to minimal surface area. For this reason, hot air balloons are also spheres, to use the least amount of fabric possible. Because geometry is exactly the same all over the universe, Niven argued that any alien race we encounter would have spherical starships as well. 

Star trail. Old French fairy tales. c.1920. Spot illustration.

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northern lights photographed from space