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Larry Niven posited that a ring-shaped world would be roughly equivalent to a partial Dyson sphere. Although I seem to recall that his were only habitable on th
by TehCorwiz 13y ago
Larry Niven posited that a ring-shaped world would be roughly equivalent to a partial Dyson sphere. Although I seem to recall that his were only habitable on the inner surface.
Suddenly I'm wondering how much of this applies to toroidal space stations.
- arethuza 13y agoI think Culture Orbitals are more elegant than Niven Rings as you don't need the shadow squares and wouldn't have the stability problems that a Ring has: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_%28The_Culture%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_%28The_Culture%29 For another take on mega-scale artificial worlds there is Alderson disk: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alderson_disk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alderson_disk
- utoku 13y agoUnfortunately they are not roughly equivalent. A solid shell or a ring around a star is not a Dyson sphere. The correct Dyson sphere is composed of many separate orbiting elements. A solid shell or semi-shell is unstable and is bound to collide with the star or just wander away. Yes, the Ringworld is unstable. This was one of Niven's mistakes and misunderstanding of Dyson spheres.
- anon4 13y agoLooking at the orbit of the moon which does figure-8s through the hole in the middle, isn't it conceivable that a sun can orbit that same way? Or rather, the two will orbit each other in a strange non-trivial way.
- iliis 13y agoIt would have to be a very small sun tough in order to fit trough the hole and not burn the planet to a crisp. So we arrived at the Discworld, where the elephants carrying the world sometimes have to lift their legs to let the sun pass. Such a small star would probably have to be kept burning artificially, as the smallest mass still allowing nuclear fusion is around 80 times the mass of Jupiter.
- tgb 13y agoThe ringworld has a radius approximately that of the radius of the orbit of earth. A quite large sun could fit easily through such a 'toroidal planet.'
- tutuca 13y agoI wouldn't say a "mistake" he explores that inestability in "Return to Ringworld"...
- jessaustin 13y agohttp://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Retcon http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Retcon
- AlanSE 13y agoNone of this (in the link here) applies to toroidal space stations. The torus shape referred to in the link is maintained by its spin and its self-gravity. People live on the outside of it, and atmosphere is held in the same way that Earth holds atmosphere, by gravity. A space station that rotates for artificial gravity is completely different. In fact, its gravity is so little that it doesn't matter for any of the structural engineering. It can be completely neglected. The difference in mass between the two proposals is huge, by a factor of like 10^12.