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Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?
Posted By: Forrest of B.orgDate: 5/29/15 11:32 a.m.

In Response To: Re: What is that Pfhor Goo? (VikingBoyBilly)

: Okay... maybe they needed to import lava from earth for some reason. I mean
: there must've been a good reason, right? Lava must be a great energy
: source... especially at a time when harnessing solar power would be
: perfected to the point that no other energy source is needed. Actually, I
: just remembered that they had to travel for hundreds of years in void to
: Tau Ceti, so they would need something else for energy.

Lava is not an energy source; it's not like there's something special about what's in lava that makes it hot. Lava is just rock that got really really hot. The energy source that melts rock in the Earth, IIRC, is mostly nuclear fission from radioactive materials deep in the planet's core. That's why Mars is not geologically active; it doesn't have the same composition as Earth. That's also largely why Mars can't hold an atmosphere; without a ferromagnetic core spinning inside a molten mantle, Mars lacks the magnetic field necessary to deflect the solar wind, which just blows away most of what little atmosphere Mars' gravity could hold anyway.

Lava (or magma) can sometimes be an adequate way of transferring energy from one place to another; geothermal power stations generate power from it, of course, but again, that energy is actually coming from the Earth's core and just being conveyed to the surface by the molten mantle seeping up through the crust. But it would be terribly, terribly inefficient to convey power from the Earth's core into space by lifting lava up from Earth. I'm not going to do the actual math but I'm fairly certain that the fuel energy it would take to lift a given mass of lava into orbit, much less get it into Mars orbit, would vastly exceed any amount of thermal energy that that lava would carry with it.

So why is there lava on the Marathon? The industrial-use liquid metal explanation would seem most obvious to me, except that the lava in some place seems to be flowing around in ways that you really wouldn't expect a controlled industrial use to do. Maybe whatever controlled processes there once were got messed up in the invasion and now liquid metal is pouring around in places that it shouldn't be? There's still an awful lot of it flowing awfully far from any obvious industrial source though.

Maybe the Marathon is powered by nuclear fission and for some reason rather than any modern reactor designs they just stuck huge subcritical piles of reactants deep into the core of Deimos and draw power from the resultant molten rock that pools around them, basically building their own geothermal power? It still doesn't explain why there are hallways and rooms adjacent to the molten areas though.

Maybe the process by which Deimos was hollowed out and turned into a starship involves basically melting lava tubes through it (somehow) and then building structures into those? And that process is still ongoing even hundreds of years later?

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Pre-2004 Posts

Replies:

What is that Pfhor Goo?PerseusSpartacus 5/27/15 10:11 a.m.
     Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?HelviusRufus 5/27/15 10:51 a.m.
           Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?Godot 5/27/15 11:29 a.m.
     Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?Godot 5/27/15 11:30 a.m.
           Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?VikingBoyBilly 5/27/15 11:51 a.m.
                 Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?Lion O Cyborg 5/28/15 2:54 a.m.
                       Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?VikingBoyBilly 5/28/15 3:38 a.m.
                             Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?Lion O Cyborg 5/28/15 5:08 a.m.
                                   Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?Philtron 5/28/15 5:57 a.m.
                       Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?Philtron 5/28/15 6:03 a.m.
                             Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?Lion O Cyborg 5/28/15 8:49 a.m.
                                   Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?Philtron 5/28/15 8:53 a.m.
                                         Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?VikingBoyBilly 5/28/15 9:16 a.m.
                                               Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?Forrest of B.org 5/28/15 5:08 p.m.
                                                     Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?VikingBoyBilly 5/29/15 3:04 a.m.
                                                           Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?Forrest of B.org 5/29/15 11:32 a.m.
                                                                 Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?Lion O Cyborg 5/29/15 11:44 a.m.
                                                                 Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?treellama 5/29/15 11:56 a.m.
                                                                 Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?Dispatcher 5/30/15 5:50 a.m.
                                         Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?Bob-B-Q 5/28/15 9:17 a.m.
                                               Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?VikingBoyBilly 5/28/15 9:19 a.m.
                                         Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?Lion O Cyborg 5/28/15 11:25 a.m.
     Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?Lion O Cyborg 5/28/15 2:59 a.m.
           Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?Lion O Cyborg 5/28/15 3:05 a.m.
           Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?VikingBoyBilly 5/28/15 3:40 a.m.
                 Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?Lion O Cyborg 5/28/15 5:14 a.m.
                       Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?Philtron 5/28/15 5:50 a.m.
                             Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?Lion O Cyborg 5/28/15 8:40 a.m.
           Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?Philtron 5/28/15 6:10 a.m.
                 Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?PerseusSpartacus 5/28/15 7:14 a.m.
                       Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?Bob-B-Q 5/28/15 9:16 a.m.
                             Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?PerseusSpartacus 5/29/15 8:01 a.m.
                       Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?scratskinner 5/30/15 6:00 a.m.
                 Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?Lion O Cyborg 5/28/15 8:42 a.m.
                       Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?VikingBoyBilly 5/28/15 9:18 a.m.
                             Re: What is that Pfhor Goo?Lion O Cyborg 5/28/15 11:28 a.m.

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