A Finnish scientist, Dr. Pekka Janhunen, has claimed that humans could live on huge globes floating in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter until 2026. According to a report published by the New York Post, Janhunen also predicted that millions of humans could inhabit the megacity in space for the next 15 years. Janhunen is an astrophysicist at the Finnish Institute of Metrology in Helsinki and even presented the plan for floating “mega-satellites” in a research paper published this month.
The Finnish scientist said the satellites will be around the dwarf planet Ceres, which is nearly 325 million miles from Earth, and added that “the motivation is to have a settlement with artificial gravity that allows it to grow beyond the living area of the Earth ”. Most hypotheses about future human settlements revolve around the moon or Mars due to its proximity to Earth. However, Janhunen’s proposal seems a little different than the usual approach.
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How would that be possible?
The Finnish scientist predicted a disk-shaped habitat with thousands of cylindrical structures, each hosting more than 50,000 people. Moreover, these pods would be bound to strong magnets and would generate artificial gravity by constant rotation. Residents, after 15 years, according to Janhunen will be able to extract resources from Ceres 600 miles below the settlement and can transport them back using “space elevators”. He also wrote: “Lifting materials from Ceres is energy-efficient compared to processing them in habitats if a space elevator is used.”
“Because Ceres is light and rotates relatively quickly, the space elevator is feasible,” he added, noting that Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt and is also the best destination for settlements. apart from the Earth, due to its nitrogen-rich atmosphere. .
This, according to the Finnish scientist, would allow humans to create more Earth-like conditions than the carbon-rich environment found on Mars. However, he acknowledged that a Ceres unit does not rule out threats posed by asteroids or space radiation. Thus, proposing cylindrical mirrors around the “mega-satellites” to protect themselves from bombing.
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