How would it be possible for an island to sink into the sea?
In the novel I'm writing, there is an island that sinks below sea level and rises up again at a later date. How is it possible to do this, while both keeping the surface of the island dry when it rises above the sea, and also to keep it connected to the mines beneath?
The island must sink and rise via a man-made method. The island raising and falling must be mechanical, with pistons or some kind of mechanical elevation or something, since it's activated by someone. It cannot be natural.
(Note: Quantum forcefield technology exists in the universe of my novel, which is essentially a barrier that prevents matter from passing through it, but it cannot lift or push anything since it has no force behind it. )
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/73453. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
So having a man made island that can sink and float isn't hard by having buyancy chambers like a submarine, and having force fields to keep the water at bay could keep it dry and habitable even when submerged.
But then the whole "island" would just be a big ship/sub. Being connected to the mines below the city wouldn't be easily done unless they were connected with flexible tubing or you went up and down in bathyspheres.
Alternately the whole island could be connected to the sea floor with something like hydraulics, so that it could be raised and lowered at will, and the stairways and passages to get down to the mines on the sea floor would just expand when the island is raised and contract when the island lowers.
Making it water tight would be very hard, so the force fields to keep the water out of the structure would be very helpful.
Another thought is that the island could be natural, like a giant pillar of stone, and be raised and lowered by pressure in geothermal vents.
The pressure could be vented to lower the island, and bottled up to raise the island. It wouldn't really be connected to the mines that way though, but you could have an airlock/force field to go from the base of the tower to the mines.
0 comment threads
0 comment threads