Number 2: Moving The Earth For You
The world is filling up. More and more people, less free land, less space to grow the food that all these people need. For hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, mankind has striven to reclaim land - from the sea, from the desert, from marsh and from jungle - to meet our increasing requirements. These feats, amazing though they seem, are not enough. But new proposals for land reclamation will put all previous attempts in the shade. Magnus Pyke's brain investigates these literally earth shattering plans further...
Al Ford is professor of astrogeophysics at the University of Smethwick, and a world renowned expert on tectonics (the study of the movements of sections of a planet's crust) on Mars. As the Martian crust has no continents to drift, Professor Ford has to use our own planet, Earth, to teach continental drift theory to his students. And it was whilst looking at continental drift on Earth that he had an idea.
The theory of continental drift suggests that the outer layer of the earth's surface, or the crust, comprises a number of separate chunks, or plates, which float on a fluid area of hot rock beneath called the mantle. Africa, both the Americas, Europe, Asia and India all sit on separate plates which float around independently, sometimes moving apart from one another, sometimes colliding and forming the world's great mountains. The movement is caused by convection currents in the hot mantle acting on the base of the plates. Our continents are effectively sailing on a great sea of hot rock. This theory is now widely accepted and explains much of the world's physical geography.
"I love the theory of continental drift," says Ford. "And it fascinates me the way that our continents have moved. Africa and South America were once joined, their shapes fit together like jigsaw pieces. And that got me thinking about Antarctica. Once it was a warm place, not the frozen waste it is now. But it moved south, and away from the warmer latitudes it once occupied. That's when I had my idea.
And so Professor Ford wondered: if Antarctica can move south, surely it can move north again? And if it did so, surely that would reveal a huge new area that is desperately needed by man?
Ford thought his idea through and assembled a team of colleagues from the Geology and Engineering departments, and within weeks a plan had emerged. Giant lasers would be sent into space together with powerful tugs anchored to the frozen continent by huge cables. The lasers would slice through the thinner crust around the continent, freeing it, and then the tugs would begin to pull the continent northwards. Slowly but surely, the vast wasteland of Antarctica would begin to be released from it's frozen slumber and towed to a more temperate location where it could be of use to mankind.
Greenland in a more suitable location.
The technical problems facing this project are huge. It will require bigger lasers than ever seen before, and massively long and strong cables to link the continent to the space based tugs. The rewards however are equally huge.
"Moving Antarctica would solve in one go all the problems of over population," Ford says. "And it needn't stop there. Should global warming become a problem, we could physically rearrange our entire planet so that no countries were left in the hot and dry areas. And imagine this - we could actually relocate disputed territories like the Falkland Islands away from other claimants."
As a first step, Ford is trying to get funding for a major feasibility study into the idea of moving a smaller area, possibly Jersey or Guernsey: "I think that one of the Channel Islands would be a good start. I'd like to see it towed further south which would improve the climate and boost the tourist industry. When that is a success we can move on to something bigger, and my next aim before tackling Antarctica would probably be Greenland. I'd like to see Greenland actually green in the coming years."
A pathetic artists impression of a satellite firing a laser at the English Channel, whilst a space tug pulls Jersey southwards.
So here perhaps is a solution to the World's food and space needs. But can scientists and engineers rise to the challenge? I'm Magnus Pyke's brain - thank you for reading this edition of... The World Tomorrow.