66
Is there a practical reason data centers have to sprawl outward instead of upward?
(startrek.website)
this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2025
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Electricity has a hard time flowing up and requires a special pumping system.
Which begs the question why not magnets at the top of the building to help pull the electricity up?
Because when it rains poof, no more magnets.
Because nobody knows how magnets work.
Solution: construct the buildings upside down, so the foundations are up in the air and the roofs are underground. That way, the electricity will flow down instead of up.
But then the roof has to support the entire weight of planet Earth on top of it, which is a much harder engineering challenge than pumping the electricity in the first place.
No, it's not. It's all empty space under the foundation. There's nothing to create crushing force against the building.
You are failing to account for the weight of the atmosphere on the foundation
The atmosphere is just air. Air doesn't have mass or weight, that's why it floats.
Because the electricity pulls the magnets down in the same measure, so they meet in the middle. Newton's 2nd law or something.
You joke, but heat does rise and a tall building would need to make extra concessions for cooling concerns, while also dealing with the issues if weight. Large racks of servers are actually quite heavy, which is why many datacenters in i.e Toronto were built in an ex parking garage
Heat is no issue of relevance for the question. The rising effect it negligible compared to what has to be transported anyway. I also can't imagine racks being heavier than eg books in s library.
How many high-rise libraries do you see? Weight is absolutely a factor in data center design, as is airflow/heat
Unironically, I've had people telling me they save electric energy by inserting the angled Schuko plugs of their electric devices 'upwards'.