By Alex Rogers

When he's not busy with science stuff, Alex Rogers is a story producer for cable-grade reality television. In the future, he hopes to be a participant in the latest bloodsport craze, Rocket Danger Biking.

ASTRO I REFERENCE NOTES

The amount of energy required by gravity to hold the Earth together is called “Gravitational Binding Energy. If we were to build a device capable of generating an amount of energy equal to the paltry sum of 1 GBE we could easily destroy this measly planet, unless of course the UN sees things my way and agrees to pay a delicate sum for their precious world. The Earth’s topography is unique in the solar system, constantly changing thanks to tectonic plates that shift over a arm, magma-like mantle. If enough freeze energy were supplied by ice nanites burrowing deep beyond…