The Flat Earth
Imagine the world was flat, surrounded by an “ice wall” around Antarctica.
When the talking monkeys on this world learned how to farm, they began to develop complex societies with kings, generals, and intellectuals who devoted their lives to thinking about the “big questions.” They asked what was beyond the edges of their primitive maps. Some imagined a giant cliff where water cascaded off and fell onto the back of a giant tortoise, who stood on the backs of a still larger tortoise, and so on. Others, more rational, thought the null hypothesis was that their world, with plants and animals and oceans and mountains and deserts, extended forever. Some hypothesized that the world was finite and round and would eventually curve back in on itself, but as more and more measurements were made, the amount of curvature, if it existed, had to be ever smaller and smaller. It seemed strange that it should be so close to 0 without being 0.
As ships ventured further and further outward, the theory of mediocrity, that the portions of the Earth inhabited by humans were “normal,” began to fall. Surrounding the known world was a giant, global ocean, and as one went further and further in the “Southern” direction, it got darker and darker and colder and colder. Icebergs made the trip perilous, but eventually, a ship landed in the frozen “ice wall” of Antarctica. Explorers slowly went further into it, finding that it got darker and colder until the sun faded into nothingness and the temperature flatlined at 200 Kelvin, kept warm, it was discovered, by geothermal heat.* The new lands discovered acquired the name “the world beyond,” while the world inside the ice wall became known as the world-island.
Humanity also began exploring the sky. It was discovered that air becomes thinner and thinner until, eventually, it disappears altogether. Gravity, though, does not diminish; it is always 1 g. You can never escape the gravity well; what goes up must come down. Rockets reached the sun, the moon, and the stars, but found that these bizarre objects are made of a substance called quintessence, which does not interact with normal matter except by absorbing or emitting electromagnetic radiation. The rocket to the moon went through one side and out the other, while the one that hit the sun was fried inside of it. Quintessence is seemingly immune to gravity; its natural direction of movement is circular, moving around the North pole. The downward direction is less interesting. Scientists have drilled as much as 7.6 miles into the Earth, finding hotter and denser molten rock. What exists further down is debated by scientists, with some positing that temperature and density will increase infinitely and that such intense temperatures and pressures will create exotic forms of matter. Regardless, it’s known that whatever is down there will not be an environment conducive to human life.
The drama, then, is focused on the world beyond. At first, the explorers were men and dogs. Later, they were men in aircraft. 787s can go far and fast but must carry their own fuel. The most efficient method of exploration uses robotic blimps that are freely pushed around by air; thrusters are used only sparingly. These blimps have gone many thousands of times the diameter of the ice wall. They discovered that the world beyond is full of continents and (frozen) oceans, plains and mountain ranges. Some have hypothesized that there are other “suns” warming up other temperate world islands, perhaps with intelligent alien inhabitants. So far, though, the blimps have found the world beyond to be dark, frozen, and desolate, inhabited by only some extremophile bacteria.
While the world beyond may seem like a frozen wasteland, it is theoretically habitable by humans. The atmospheric pressure is close to 1 atm, the air is filled with breathable oxygen, and beneath the ice are deposits of iron, copper, coal, oil, and uranium. People envision huge cities under domes, with artificial “suns” providing light to nourish humans and grow crops. At first, the domes will rely on fossil fuels, geothermal, and nuclear fission for power. If humanity can perfect fusion, the ice will provide power for billions of years.
The world beyond is a common setting for science fiction. Much of it unrealistically understates the harshness of the world beyond, portraying it as if it is as cold as the average winter day in Minnesota and as dark as twilight. Other science fiction more accurately portrays the continual struggle to survive in a place not meant for human beings. How harsh a life people live depends on the forecasted technological level. It could be a utopian world of leisure and bliss if there are enough robots to shovel the snow and dig the tunnels into the rock. If not, it will be a hardscrabble life, very hand-to-mouth, comparable in many ways to humanity’s agrarian ancestors. Scifi commonly portrays this through famines, rigid caste systems, and life or death wars for resources.
There are many suggestions for immediate colonization of the world beyond, but they flounder on the problem of economics. While the world beyond has plenty of minerals, many times more than the world island, the cost of digging up the ice and rock and then transporting the haul in airplanes or snowmobiles is prohibitive. The other historical motive for colonization, overpopulation in the metropole, does not apply to the underpopulated world island. Some suggest colonization of the world beyond for groups that want to get away from mainstream society, as the Puritans wanted to get away from England. But why go to the world beyond rather than Belize?
Despite this present fact, underpopulation is, on the scale of a thousand years, a self-correcting problem. As breeders are bred, the world island will become crowded and many will leave it. Once the initial colonies are established and people are born fully acclimated to the world beyond, it will be comparatively easy to expand and establish more colonies. Humanity will expand further and further until eventually, human children grow up learning about the legend of an ancient, luscious, green world, a world they can never get to, even in an airplane that never needed refueling.
Scientists disagree about the ultimate fate of the world beyond. Some think the Earth’s crust will slowly lose its heat. Human colonies will slowly freeze out, until, eventually, the air will freeze into oxygen and nitrogen snow, which will rain down onto the surface. Others think that heat will always rise up from the infinitely deep crust to radiate away into the infinitely high sky, allowing an energy gradient to provide free energy to humanity forever. Or at least until all matter quantum tunnels into iron.
*I know the actual temperature would be around 8 degrees Kelvin. But 200 K makes for a more entertaining story.