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A clear balloon containing an ecosystem would heat up due to the greenhouse effect. If it's sufficiently large and allowed to slightly expand it could float fre
by murbard2 12y ago
A clear balloon containing an ecosystem would heat up due to the greenhouse effect. If it's sufficiently large and allowed to slightly expand it could float freely in the air. Imagine closed gardens flying freely around the world.
- wmil 12y agoI don't think you could get them to be consistently warm on Earth. But the atmosphere on Venus is so thick you could have a bunch of these floating above the clouds.
- mikeash 12y agoMaybe you could replace some of the nitrogen with helium to achieve positive buoyancy without a temperature difference.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- pas 12y agoWouldn't that leak out from .. basically anything solid?
- murbard2 12y agoWe're not talking superfluidic Helium here... Glass or BPA should be fine... In that case the envelop is rigid and we might at well just suck out enough air to get buoyancy.
- andrewflnr 12y agoWhen I was reading about Sterling engines, people talked about H2 leaking straight through the steel walls of the container. I can't find a similar reference for helium, but it's conceivable, to a non-expert anyway. No superfluidity required.
- maaku 12y agoBig difference between H2 and He. Leakage is a problem, but not so nasty a problem. (Hydrogen leaks through solid metal. Yes you read that right.)
- Ma8ee 12y agoHelium doesn't need to be superfluid to leak through a lot of materials. If you are designing a ultra high vacuum system you better make sure the type of glass you use doesn't leak He. Or if you get the chance to play with a mass spectrometer you can inhale helium and observe how it leaks through your chest.
- murbard2 12y agoIt really depends how big you are. A 5C difference in temperature in a sphere 5m in radius will easily hold a weight of 10kg. Or like mikeash replied, you can replace most of the nitrogen with helium.
- Someone 12y agoWhether it would float would depend on the equilibrium that the ecosystem gets in. For example, carbon dioxide is heavier than air, so if the ecosystem has lots of it, a balloon would have to expand quite a bit to compensate for that before it floats. And of course, any balloon must overcome its own weight before getting airborne.