OT: Ceres more interesting than previously thought

[inigma]

I believe spinning up the astroid would do more harm than good.

At the very least it would do nothing, and at most, it would cause centripetal force to the point that weakens its integrity.

I happen to believe that the 9 hour spin is natural, since gravity is created by the mass of an object, its speed relative to space-time, and the initial alignment of the first atom. I say this because even for Ceres to exist in the first place, it would have had to "settle" into its natural space-time spin, and such a settlement is the lowest-energy result. It would take more energy for it to spin slower, and more mass for it to spin faster.

The best example of this would be to hop on a merry-go-round and have someone toss you a sandbag and for you to bring it to the center of the merry-go-round. As you do, the increased mass equalizes and you spin around much much faster. This is what would happen if you put a large rocket on Ceres to spin it up. But once you remove the rocket, its like throwing the sandbag off the merry-go-round - the mass decreases, and so does the spin. Eventually, as your body returns to the center of the merry-go-round, equilibrium is reached and all that energy you poured into spinning faster was lost to the sandbag you threw off.

If the rocket was ever turned on, though, assuming you could invent the impossible and ensure that the mass you are using to power the rocket wasn't depleted into space as a result (and thus cancel out the effect of the rocket, in a sense, wasting your time), the stability of the merry-go-round would be called into question, and Ceres would fly apart - the natural concequence of adding energy to any object that is already at equilibrium.

So in short: spinning up Ceres would be a physical impossibility because mass is the key ingredient to the gravitational equation.

The best that could be hoped for is some campaign of accreting astroids into it and so increase its mass, but in a controlled manner so as not to obliterate the mass of Ceres that already is stable.

Hollowing out Ceres would more than likely cause Ceres to spin down much slower, to the point that it might even break up entirely. Spinning it up faster to a 1G centriptal force inside a hollowed out band in the core, would probably tear Ceres apart.

The answer would most likely be to find a way to add more mass to Ceres so that 1G centripital could be attained. But then again, if 1G centripital could be obtained, by that point you have enough mass to hold a decent atmosphere and live on the surface.

Except the surface gravity of such a mass would be enough to probably crush you several times over.