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"perhaps due to an advanced civilization with more aesthetics than sanity" :)

vidarh 13y ago
Iain M. Banks last Culture book has a "advanced civilization with more aesthetics than sanity" that had polished a moon much like a marble, that'd then been lowered down towards the planet it orbited while adjusting the orbital speed accordingly. They'd cut a trench around the entire planet, so that said moon were eventually orbiting below the surrounding planet surface.... One of the main civilizations in the book had then "inherited it" and used the moon as the headquarters of one of their military branches. It's fun to speculate just how bizarre results you could get if you had a civilization with enough resources to do planetary scale arts projects just for the heck of it...
- nitrogen 13y ago
  Wouldn't the planet's atmosphere and oceans fall into the trench?
  - CanSpice 13y ago
    Yes, which is why you dig the trench deep enough to cover it over again, make it airtight, and pump out all of the atmosphere to make a vacuum torus inside the planet.
  - drakeandrews 13y ago
    There were either walls on either side of the trench, or the planet was a barren rock to begin with.
throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago
Of course. An advanced civilization with engineering sense wouldn't waste precious building materials on thousands of kilometers of planetary bedrock. (And that's to say nothing of that area/volume ratio, what that implies for radiative heat rejection!)
- sharpneli 13y ago
  And a termite might think that an advanced civilization would never spend tons of valuable vegetable matter for purely aesthetic reasons. It's all about the relative abilities. It's not completely unconcievable that some might transform planets the way we build funny houses, even if they are 'waste of precious building materials'.
- arethuza 13y ago
  I seem to recall that the Culture does regard planets as being rather wasteful of mass - much more efficient to build an O. NB I'm sure some Culture ships have probably built planets in idle moments - just for the hell of it.
josh-wrale 13y ago
“Welcome to Magrathea, where we construct planets made to order.” (Source: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)

Iain M. Banks last Culture book has a "advanced civilization with more aesthetics than sanity" that had polished a moon much like a marble, that'd then been lowered down towards the planet it orbited while adjusting the orbital speed accordingly. They'd cut a trench around the entire planet, so that said moon were eventually orbiting below the surrounding planet surface.... One of the main civilizations in the book had then "inherited it" and used the moon as the headquarters of one of their military branches. It's fun to speculate just how bizarre results you could get if you had a civilization with enough resources to do planetary scale arts projects just for the heck of it...

nitrogen 13y ago
Wouldn't the planet's atmosphere and oceans fall into the trench?
- CanSpice 13y ago
  Yes, which is why you dig the trench deep enough to cover it over again, make it airtight, and pump out all of the atmosphere to make a vacuum torus inside the planet.
- drakeandrews 13y ago
  There were either walls on either side of the trench, or the planet was a barren rock to begin with.

throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago

Of course. An advanced civilization with engineering sense wouldn't waste precious building materials on thousands of kilometers of planetary bedrock. (And that's to say nothing of that area/volume ratio, what that implies for radiative heat rejection!)

sharpneli 13y ago
And a termite might think that an advanced civilization would never spend tons of valuable vegetable matter for purely aesthetic reasons. It's all about the relative abilities. It's not completely unconcievable that some might transform planets the way we build funny houses, even if they are 'waste of precious building materials'.
arethuza 13y ago
I seem to recall that the Culture does regard planets as being rather wasteful of mass - much more efficient to build an O. NB I'm sure some Culture ships have probably built planets in idle moments - just for the hell of it.

josh-wrale 13y ago

“Welcome to Magrathea, where we construct planets made to order.” (Source: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)