For my good futurist friend Bronwyn Williams. Merry Christmas Bronwyn!
APPLIED STEIN THEORY
Stein Theory is a new Theory of Everything, which unifies all the forces with a single particle, the Stein. It agrees with all known physics and can explain many things that other physics can’t. Importantly, it tells us what is inside quarks and even more importantly, how we could use them. One of its uses is making steerable gravity drives for space ships. We will be able to colonise other star systems by 2100, reaching not far short of light speed. But the beauty of Stein Theory gravity control isn’t just in launching colony ships to the stars – it lets us dream bigger. Much bigger. Like “building an entire flat world carried by elephants riding a space turtle” bigger. One of the things I have always loved about science and technology is that art is always one of the first users. Terry Pratchett was a superb writer, an excellent scientist thinker, and really, a great artist too – the Discworld is a fantastic piece of literary art, now cinematic too.
Bronwyn is a great fan of Pratchett too and an excellent fellow futurist. This blog is for her. Let’s talk about how we could actually build Discworld:
THE DISC ITSELF
The gravity drives use steerable gravity as propulsion. They are also capable of lifting and carrying millions of tons from moons to anywhere we want them. Initial analysis says we can terraform Mars in a decade or so (not yet sadly), Venus in 200 years. We could easily make a discworld and fill it with a full atmosphere, soil, animals and plants, and invite wizards there for holidays.
Using our gravity control technology that provides 6x force multiplication, we can create a uniform 1g field across the entire disc’s surface. More impressively, we can shape gravity vectors to:
Hold the atmosphere in place gravitationally, without a dome
Have rivers flowing across the landscape, with magnificent waterfalls
Create the famous Rimfall, where water cascades over the edge into space
We can easily catch and recycle that water by using precisely controlled gravity fields to guide it back up to the disc’s reservoirs
The disc’s structure would use our carbethium – huge sheets of perfectly aligned carbon giving us unprecedented strength-to-weight ratios, and folded carbon, to fill it full of decor extremely quickly. This lets us build something vast yet manageable.
POWER AND LIFE
I designed a 20GW Fusion Reactor that can be built by 2035, and only costs £500M, but in addition, it will eventually be feasible to make far greater quantities of energy by using stein theory to design quark deconstruction tech, providing essentially unlimited clean power. It’ll take longer to figure out, but there is no hurry. The gravity, waterfall, rimfall recycling and powering cities needs a fair bit of power, even though running the gravity is extremely low cost. Fusion could provide all we need easily but quark deconstruction could make it even better.
CREATING AN ECOSYSTEM
The same terraforming technology we’re developing for Mars and Venus applies here. We can:
Generate a proper atmosphere with the right mix of gases
Establish water cycles including seas and rivers
Create soil and introduce Earth flora and fauna
Build mountains, forests, and plains
Support complete weather systems
None of that costs any fuel, the gravity system doesn’t use fuel. All of the lifting and propulsion is simply gravity. You just point it in a direction and it sucks you that way, with whatever cargo you want (up to 60N per kg of engine).
THE ELEPHANTS AND A’TUIN
Here’s where it gets really fun. The four elephants and Great A’Tuin would be more than just aesthetic – they’d be working parts of the system:
The elephants house our main gravity drive arrays
A’Tuin contains the primary power systems to run the whole Discworld
All are built from carbethium, making them incredibly strong yet light enough to maneuver
Their movement through space is controlled by the same gravity drive technology that powers our colony ships
NAVIGATION AND PROPULSION
Remember our gravity drives that can lift millions of tons? They also form a propulsion system capable of moving an entire world through space. A’Tuin wouldn’t just look like it’s swimming through space – it would actually be “swimming” using gravity fields to push against the fabric of spacetime. Its own mass would be the propulsion system, able to provide 60N per kg.
Is this crazy? Absolutely. But it’s crazy with actual physics backing it up. Every major system – the gravity control, the power generation, the materials science, the terraforming – is based on technologies we’re already developing for more practical applications.
The amazing thing isn’t that we could build Discworld – it’s that by the 2060s, we’ll have all the core technologies needed to even consider such a project. Sir Terry would probably appreciate that the magic in his world could be recreated with sufficiently advanced science.
Now, who’s up for sailing to the edge of the world? Don’t worry about falling off – our gravity fields will catch you. Probably.