How many earth sized planets could orbit within the goldielock zone without crashing into each other?

Question

Imagine in the far future, if we could easily create mass from energy and then used this to seed as many planets as we wanted, only we want them in the goldielock zone. How many earth sized planets could orbit within it without crashing into each other?

Answer 1

The Goldilocks zone can be extended in both directions.  By adding a green house atmosphere to Mars, it can be made comfortable.  By removing the greenhouse atmosphere from Venus, and perhaps by adding some shading - which can be done in orbit, it can also be made comfortable.  About at the orbit of Jupiter, you start not getting enough sun light for plants.  So you'd have to introduce artificial light.  But as long as you're willing to do that, you can extend the habitable zone to rogue planets that are free in space not orbiting stars at all.

The planets gravity affects each other, and they settle into resonances.  So once you put, say, five Earths between Venus and Mars, you'll have to keep nudging them to keep them where you want them.

You can put a small object at the Sun Earth L4 and L5 Lagrange points (60 degrees ahead and behind the Earth).  But this works for objects that are "insignificant" compared to the size of the Earth.  One idea is that an object formed at one of these points, but got large enough - the size of Mars - to become unstable, and it crashed into the Earth, forming the Moon.  Most of this planet is part of the Earth now.  Putting a planet on the exact opposite side of the Sun from the Earth is also unstable over long periods.

Answer 2

more if they all go the same speed...

50-100 probably

Answer 3

Planets in the same orbit necessarily have to have the same velocity.  EXACTLY.  So if you want (let's say) to have another earth on the opposite side of the sun, you'd have to set it at exactly the same orbital velocity, or the system would quickly become very unstable and you'd have the planets perturbing each other's orbits.  NOT GOOD.

But let's say you can set the velocity very finely. Well, what will it be?  Becuase the earth speeds up and slows down slightly as it goes around the sun.  It travels in an elliptical orbit, with the sun at one focus.  That mens it goes slightly faster as it gets to closest approach, slightly slower as it gets furthest away.  What that means is that it's not possible for two planets to be in the same orbit without that orbit becoming insanely erratic.  Again, not good.

But maybe you have gone too far.  Instead of allowing us to create matter from energy, why not just build a Dyson sphere are 1 AU?  That would give us millions of times the space of the earth.  All we need is the ability to manipulate matter on planetary levels, and also have the ability to create anti-gravity.