The "Light-Year City" Questions "” What would be the gravitational implications of a city in the far, far distant future, with an area spanning one square light year (3.456 × 10^25 mi² area)?

This question has been broken up into sub-topics, the other questions related to this idea are listed here:

Governmental Implications of a "Light Year City"

Technological Implications of a "Light Year City"

Premise: Imagine a city floating in space like a fabric, that is so vast and immense, it spans one square light year in size. For perspective, the Milky Way has a diameter of roughly 10^5 lightyears, so if we plug that into A = pi(d/2)^2, the Milk Way has an area of about 7.8 billion LY^2. So against a galaxy, the area of this city very small. The difference here is that in a galaxy, the matter is pretty spread out, but densely packed in small groups of solar systems. In a "Light-year City", the matter is much more densely focused in one square light year.

Question: How would a city of this proportion need to be organized, in order to deal with such gravitational concerns? What might be some technological developments that deal with gravitational issues? What would the epicenter of the city be like, having so much matter coalesced around it? Other gravitational thoughts?

posted about 8 years ago

Ian‭

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