Hey everyone,

I just got to wondering how much material it would take to build Blame's megastructure if, as the artbook suggests, it is a Dyson sphere stretching between the orbits of Earth and Jupiter. So I figured the volume of the Earth's solar orbit plus the volume of the sun and subtracted that from the volume of Jupiter's orbit to get:

1.693 x 10^48 km cubed

That there's the volume of the Blame megastructure--1.693 _octillion_ cubic kilometers. I used Wikipedia figures for this and all subsequent calculations, and I used Earth and Jupiter's perihelions (the distance of their nearest approach to the sun) to figure the volumes for their orbits.

It seems to me like you would need to rip up a lot of Earth-like planets to get material for such a big structure. Of course, the megastructure is not all solid. We see in the series that there's a lot of empty space inside. The megastructure could be 60% empty space, or maybe even 98% empty space.

So how many earth-like planets would you need to consume to make the Blame megastructure? I came up with the following figures:

If the megastructure is 60% empty space:

624 trillion earth-like planets

If the megastructure is 98% empty space:

31.24 trillion earth-like planets

That last number is one of the most conservative possible estimates for the number of Earths it would take to build a megastructure. Keep in mind that it's hard to find solid masses bigger than Earth in the galaxy; Earth is the biggest solid planet in the solar system and the solid cores of gas giant planets aren't much bigger than Earth.

The Blame universe has interstellar travel, but I'm not sure enough material for the megastructure exists in the entire galaxy. Wikipedia says there are 100 billion stars in the Milky Way. Let's say that each of those stars has 20 Earths worth of solid material orbiting around it (I pulled that figure out of my ass, but let's say it's accurate because I'm not going to try and research it). If that is indeed the case, there are about 2 trillion Earths' worth of solid material in the Milky Way.

So the bottom line is: if you want to build a Blame megastructure, it will require all the solid material in 16 Milky Way-size galaxies. Happy gathering. Even if you could scour and process all the material from a solar system in one second, the time required would be almost 3 million years.

It seems that the Blame world as described in the art book is not quite scientifically feasible. I have an easier time believing that the megastructure is a shell several thousand kilometers thick surrounding the big empty space where Jupiter used to be. When Killy went up the elevator through the big empty spherical space, he crossed from one side of the shell to the other, and at the end of the series he emerged on the shell's outer surface.

Comments?

It's something of an impossible estimate to make given no clear picture of the megastructure's composition exists. If I remember correctly it is stated that the megastructure uses a power source 'like' a dyson sphere does but doesn't explicitly say so. It is clear that the megastructure has technology such as gravity based generators capable of warping time and space.

I believe it is meant to be a post-singularity event and by that very nature very difficult to say what is and is not possible. If taken in the canon of the story.

"Maybe on Earth. Maybe in the future."

Wow, thanks for all that calculating. It's true that the Megastructure isn't really feasible, but then again, it's science fiction.

I figured they must have gotten all the building materials firstly from cannibalizing the planets; maybe the matter from a gas giant could be transmuted into something else and used for building (thus Jupiter is missing). Other than that, I figured they used some kind of fusion powered by the sun (or maybe some imaginery cold-fusion). For instance, in volume 1 we see a builder creating a wall support out of thin air.

In SW KotOR there is a structure called "Star Forge" that uses the stars energy to create - forge - everyting that the user requires. It can build unlimited ammounts of starships and whatnot.

Found this in the artbook:

[Toha Heavy Industries' mystery/ Gravity driving force]
Toha Heavy Industries's main power source is the gravity furnace.
Its driving force has two types.
First is the short range force which give minute movements and is a gravity saver.
(The gravity blades spread out and catches the resistance of dark matter for use, much like a sail on a sailboat catching the wind.)
And then there are long range gravity operations.
The BLAME! world's axis causes the loss of matter through a worm hole and transfers things by warping.

I didn't understand it to well, but it looks like that the Megastructure could also use warping and a worm hole to get matter for the construction...

Of course, it makes it very interesting. Even if the story is just another "hero trip" like the greek ones and stuff.

Way too scientific... I think that all the megastructure "story" is a dream from the big guy over the hill in the end of Volume10. The trick is that the girl knows something about killy and his trip that the dreaming big guy doesn't know.
Well, I'm just supposing.

Well that girl is the one in the preservation pack Killy pick up on the way to the tower. But se did said that others data was overwritten on hers so i dont know who exactly she is, may be a combination of her, Cibo and Shana.


On other note, when i think about it, it may make more sense if the worls is a spherical shape, with the megastructure as the layers and the place near the end is the core. that way, the tower will be the spine of the world, that expalin why the best SG are here.

Firstly, any civilization capable of harnessing suns would also quite likely be able to convert energy to matter in large quantities.

Secondly, given time-travel or nth-dimension warping capability such a civilization could not only deconstruct solar systems for raw materials but could also gather multiple instances of said systems from within the timestream. Of course, they would have had to harvest said matter from all points in time in order to gain maximum benefit and avoid polluting the downstream of the timeline. Maybe there was a second gas giant within the Sol system that disappeared from all timepoints. Multiply volume of gas giant by picoseconds of existence from the beginning of the universe. All the matter you need.

I was thinking about some of problems of the Megastructure being so huge... First, with that amount of mass why it didn't have become a star (in 2010 style), a black hole or something like that? Second, the energy output of the Sun would be enough to sustain the Megastructure? And if it isn't why they didn't have a lot of blackouts and stuff like that? Or, if they have other means of generating energy why keep the Sun?

And al of those calculations were based in the assumption that the density of the Megastructure was the same as Earth's... but what could happen if ti was more or less dense?

I'm not good on physics, so if anyone could explain that to me it would be of great help!

Edit: wow, this post was sent exactly 8 months after the last one! =D