Re: The Planet

Chris L Peterson <clp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Wed, 26 Nov 2008 12:53:52 -0500, Dave Typinski <nospam@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Why add anything at all? Drill holes, lots of holes, and turn the
Earth into a Menger sponge. Infinite surface area in a finite volume,
plenty of room for everyone! 8^)

Interesting idea, but to make that work, wouldn't humans need to be 2D
beings? Seems like we're volume limited, not area limited.

Yep. Which means "all" we need to do is create the 4D equivalent of a
Sierpinski gasket or Menger sponge. Does such a fractal hyper-object
have a fancy name yet?

(BTW, since I know you're interested in mathematical analysis, have you
ever worked out what happens if you pack every human into a minimum
sized sphere or cube? Pretty interesting.)

Actually, no. I'll wager a cube about a mile or two on an edge.

Lessee... 6 cubic feet per person, 6 bn people, cube root of
36,000,000,000 gives a flesh colored cube about 5/8 of a mile on each
edge. Huh, pretty small! A sphere would be ballpark the same size,
i.e., less than a mile in diameter.

I've heard that by net mass and/or volume, bacteria are by far the
largest inhabitants of this planet. Sounds reasonable, but I don't
have any numbers on that.
--
Dave
.