I'm on vacation and I'm bored. So I have nothing better to do than write this post. You naysayers can take your snooty judgmentalism elsewhere.
Anyone who's interested in using this idea can freely do so. I'd love to read a story that weaves in this sci-fi device.
OK, here it is. The Earth's core is a magnetohydrodynamic drive (same as the Sun's core, same as all stars and all electrically active planets or planetoids, that is, heavenly bodies surrounded by a magnetic field.) The Earth itself is actually a gigantic electric motor/electric generator. It spins because the Sun's magnetic field sets up an electrical current through its electrically conductive core. Conversely, the Sun receives energy from the Planets (mostly Jupiter) as they convert the potential energy of their rotation into a magnetic field that interacts with the Sun's magnetic field and causes the Sun's core to rotate, thus reducing their distance from the Sun (the opposite process pushes the Planets further from the Sun).
This then scales. The Sun is attached to whatever star(s) it is rotating around on this arm of the Milky Way and the entire arm is attached to the core of the Milky Way and there is a process of electrical energy being given back and forth between the central core and the arms which convert electrical energy to mechanical energy (orbit and rotation) and vice-versa.
Up to this point, I'm regurgitating a bastardized version of Plasma Cosmology.
Now, I'm going to go all David Icke on you. The Earth was not created by Nature, that is, it did not come about by random chance. Yes, there were accretion disks and these formed the Sun and the Earth and so on but this process happened as a result of the intentional design of a "Stage III" civilization, an alien race that is, in fact, human.
The process of constructing new planets, stars and even entire galaxies works by resonance. If we took a fairly small mass and set it in orbit around the Earth in resonance with the Moon, we could alter the Moon's orbit... pushing it further away from teh Earth or moving it closer. The key is that the object must be in perfect resonance so that each time it goes around the Earth it gives a "kick" to the Moon at just the right time. As the Moon moves closer to the Earth, the small object will be pushed into larger and larger orbit around the Earth until it eventually falls into the influence of one of the other planets or the Sun. We can reverse the process, as well, by putting the object in the correct resonant orbit, we can impart momentum to the Moon causing its orbit to increase as the object moves closer to the Earth and orbits faster.
But this is just exchange of angular momentum which, in the case of anything we can launch with a rocket, is too small to have a measurable influence on the Moon's orbit. We could maybe move it a couple wavelengths of light and that would be it. However, the Moon also has a magnetic field and this field interacts with the Earth's magnetic field. If we alter the Earth's magnetic field at just the right resonance, we could induce electrical current in the Moon's core, influencing the rotation and orbit of the Moon. But we could do the same to the Sun, if we get just the right resonance, would could suck the Earth closer to the Sun or propel it further from the Sun.
But why stop there? If we can alter the Sun's resonance with the stars it rotates around in this arm of the Milky Way, we can move the Sun or move the entire galaxy arm or, ultimately, the entire Milky Way itself.
(If you're wondering how we can set up a resonance in the Earth's magnetic field, consult Tesla's work on the tower at Wardenclyffe, basically, you just need a really good electrical coupling to the Earth and then you begin pulsing currents into the Earth at the resonant frequencies).
Now, why would you ever want to do such a thing? Well, if you can send energy out from your planet using this method, clearly, you can receive energy into it. And as we can see from the evolution of mankind out of brute Nature, energy is everything. With enough energy, you can do anything, even reconfigure matter. Without energy, you're a frozen corpse.
So, here's the mind-bender: Not only were the Sun, the Earth and the Planets created by an alien civilization, the entire Milky Way galaxy was (and likely all other galaxies we can see from here). Why? Well, because they needed more energy. The whole thing's just a gigantic power generator. Every planet and star rotating around every arm of the galaxy, which is rotating about its core, is generating electrical power and they are all chained together by the forces of electromagnetism into a truly cosmic, organic system of interchange between electrical and mechanical energy. Our planet is somebody's electrical generator.
How did they build it? Well, this is the secret of being Stage III. It probably has something to do with Gamma Ray Bursts... huge jets of energy ejected out into space. Space is not empty, even the space between galaxies is not empty. If you can generate enough electrical power, you can project electromagnetic fields deep into empty space. These fields will cause the plasma that permeates space to begin rotating. This is how accretion disks are formed. Knowing how to control that kind of power to do useful things on such a grand scale is the secret of the alien civilization that built our planet.
This alien civilization is actually DNA-based, just like us, but we are evolved (like everything else on Earth) from a small number of "seed microorganisms" which were planted here by this alien civilization, a process termed "panspermia".
How did they get here? Remember when I said that, if you have enough power, you can do anything? Well, contrary to popular belief, you can in fact travel faster than light. It just takes a lot of energy to do so, like cosmic scale energy. One of the uses of having so much energy at your disposal is so you can transport matter across vast stretches of space at velocities high enough to reach your destination in a reasonable time.
The Earth was designed as a waystation. Someone, somewhere out there has our coordinates and can blast themselves here. But, more importantly, they can blast themselves back... if we knew the secret to harnessing the requisite energy from our local system, we could do it too. The trip here and back has only ever been made twice, however.
The first time was a "terra-forming" trip where the alien race brought a "Noah's ark" of bacterial life forms and seeded the oceans with them. Several billion years later (if you have enough energy to do anything, you can also stay alive for a really, really long time), they returned. This was about 10,000 years ago, around the time the Egyptian pyramids were built.
Humans now existed on Earth. The problem with life forms like humans is that once they get intelligent enough, they can start climbing the "ladder" to higher Stage II and Stage III civilizations. If they do so, they begin mucking up the works... energy you had budgeted for interstellar travel and life-restoration now starts getting diverted to the adolescent experiments of some random life-form that grew out of your waystation.
Hence, you need a way to keep them from gumming up the works. The process is fairly simple. Kind of like the movie Stargate, they landed and they confronted the leaders of human civilization who were terrified and instantly submitted. With weapons that can utilize the energy tapped directly from the Earth-Sun syste itself (more powerful than nuclear weapons), they can vaporize an entire settlement with a single lightning bolt.
However, they came here the second time not to tediously rule over humanity which would be boring, pointless work (and would ultimately result in death without access to the Source energy in their home system, required for life-extension). Instead, they wanted to leave behind a puzzle. That puzzle is the pyramids at Giza.
They got the leaders of the fairly primitive Egyptian civilization to start building. It took several generations for the Egyptians to work up the basic skills required to build a pyramid to the exacting standards of Giza's pyramids but they eventually got it. Once they were ready, the aliens directly laid out how the pyramids were to be built and supervised their construction until they were finished. Once the pyramids were finished, they departed (blasted back to their home system).
Now, you will have two questions. First of all, why didn't they build the pyramids themselves... with limitless energy, surely they could have managed one way or another. The answer is simply that the pyramids are a puzzle and it is simpler and easier to wait a couple generations until the primitive human beings could build the pyramids themselves than to go to all the bother of trying to counterfeit the shoddy construction methods of primitive human beings.
Second, why create the puzzle and then leave? What is the purpose of the puzzle? Well, the answer is that when we figure out the puzzle of the pyramids, it will enable us to send a pulse or signal at higher than light speeds but the configuration of the coordinates that are encoded into the pyramids is going to cause us to (unwittingly) send that pulse right back to the alien race that built the Earth and seeded life on the planet to begin with.
But this story doesn't have a happy ending (for us). That pulse is our death warrant. Once we are capable of sending a pulse back to the alien civilization, they will know that it's time for this waystation to be destroyed before we start reconfiguring bigger things like galaxy arms. We will then receive a third visit and that will be the end of the planet.
But wait! This is where you could insert a hero character who has become suspicious of the fact that primitive human beings built these pyramids that apparently encode a method for transmitting energy and matter at supraluminal speeds through space. How the hell could they have figured out how to do that? It doesn't add up. He begins applying a praxeological thought process to the whole matter and concludes that it makes more sense that there is just such an alien civilization would has constructed all of this than that some ancient civilization existed which had the power to transmit supraluminal information and matter and then disappeared without a trace.
So, the story could be told in kind of a suspense novel form - starting at the final decoding of the pyramid and the realization that it encodes the process to send signals at supraluminal velocities and then the frantic efforts of a scientist who's "outside the mainstream" trying to convince everyone not to do it, at least, not to send the signal in the manner encoded by the pyramids precisely because it could be a trap.
But I'm no story-teller in case you haven't noticed. :)
Clayton -
What an imagination, man! This stuff is screaming to be made into a game
I am a terrible gamer who doesn't pay much attention to the actual plot, but a game slightly resembling this could be Mass Effect.
Aside from the physics absurdity, the plot of 2001: A Space Oddessy was basically this. Although the alien's intention wasn't so clearly hostile. The monolith on the moon and the one in orbit around Jupiter were triggers to inform the aliens that humans had achieved complex space flight.
Wolynzki had a theory come out a few months ago that planets are actually old stars.
Why anarchy fails
the plot of 2001: A Space Oddessy was basically this.
Well, I make no claims to absolute originality... most of this is rehashed ideas from others. I just like this particular combination for some reason.
Although the alien's intention wasn't so clearly hostile. The monolith on the moon and the one in orbit around Jupiter were triggers to inform the aliens that humans had achieved complex space flight.
I just watched this a couple days back... I found it fascinating and I think the guy is dead on:
(You can skip directly to 0:45)
By the way, I may have found a 9/11 in Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut... look at the following frame grab:
http://jaysanalysis.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/untitled.jpg
You will see above the "Rainbow" sign is one of those "We Will Return At" signs... the time is set to 9, which is slightly odd because it could only be 9am or 9pm, both of which are strange hours to return at. In any case, what is interesting is the juxtaposition of that sign with the daily store-hours sign below, which forms two white vertical columns... squint, and it's clearly the number 11.
Coincidence? I think not, it's a Kubrick film!
Also the white columns look like towers