From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Mon Feb 07 2000 - 22:01:31 MST
> [Jeff Davis doesnt] recall quite how it happened, but the other day a method of
> cooling
> Jupiter brains just popped into my head.
>
> "Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
> Ray Charles
I worked on the orbit mechanics and found that if the material were in
the same orbital plane as the planet, then all you need to do is figure
out how to stop the rotation of the planet, or rather, tide lock it with
the sun. The material could be rotating in the opposite direction as
the planet. The hole would be drilled on the equator from the dawn
side to the dusk side. The problem then is that any individual particle
would not be in the tunnel very long, so it would not pick up much
heat. For instance, assume an earth sized planet [I know you said Jupiter,
but assume earthlike planet in an circularized ~earthlike orbit] with
particles in a counterrotating circular orbit about a sunlike star with
no other planets to mess up the orbit. Each particle would be in the
tunnel only about 20 seconds. Assuming they went in 50 kelvin
cooler than the planet and heat transfer by radiation alone, would come
out only a fraction of a degree warmer than it went in.
There is another way to do it: get the planet rotating with the axis
of rotation parallel to the axis of orbit about the star, and the hole drilled
north pole to south. Then instead of a continuous stream of matter, have
discrete chunks of matter orbitting in a plane at some angle to the
orbital plane of the planet. Then it could be arranged for a particle
to be in the tunnel longer, but the amount of material available to
carry away heat would be greatly reduced. So, the problem is
not so much working out the orbit mechanics as its an ineffective
way to carry away heat. spike
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