[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Omnicron1:
ecosystems are directly dependent on the one way flow of energy into them from the sun to support life...there are a few instances of life without sun near heat vents and such but still a one way flow of energy and the earths core would cool if it were too much farther from the sun....sooo i assumed that even the farthest planets in the game werent beyond jupiter and not beyond saturn at the most by this it would not be an accurate graphic but if the solar systems in the game, despite the fact that even the farthest planets can support life, can in fact encompass pluto's orbit im sorry about my rant about the inaccuracies of the graphic but i now have to rant about the inaccuracies of the star graphic which is now faaaaaaaaaarrrrrrr too large (1000s of times our suns own mass and volume and too large to support itself making it a blackhole or very near to it)so some graphic is wrong....

The heat of the earth's core is currently thought to come from heavy radioactive elements decaying. It's 'mostly' iron, but not all iron! This energy will probably Last many millions of years yet. Jupiter emits two and a half times as much energy as it receives from the sun. This is probably from the sheer pressure of its size causing a little bit of fusion -- just not enough for it to ignite as a star by itself. It could also be from heavy radioactive elements in its core as well. It is presumed to have a rocky core. Jupiter's moons are heated from the sheer tidal force of gravity as they orbit, and so it is thought that Europa could have liquid water oceans under its ice crust.

So you see, there are all sorts of sources of energy other than direct solar radiation and all life needs is a source of energy. We have seen right here on earth that sunlight is not the only way to operate a metabolism.

Originally posted by Omnicron1:

narf poit made good point about centriFugal force (someone said Centripetal and thats the opposite) not being a good artificial gravity...but he said that jumping would bring you back to the outside but Narf you were right to begin with because the rule about matter continuing in the same speed and direction would be negated by the jump if you had enough strength to jump from the centrifugal force then you turned the speed and direction around and you would float away from the "ground" which points out that this type of artificial gravity would not support a thick enough atmosphere because air is not dense enough to be significantly affected by centrifugal force..try spinning a balloon around really fast and see if it follows the same course as say a balloon of water...soo if this were the method of gravity it would be more than 1G if you wanted to breathe...

nother importante questione!! if you can move all the matter in many solar systems to cover a star why not sift out all those resources on the way... i can see getting lots of radiactives(energy from sun) or organics (grow real well if they can handle the constant sun) but minerals c'mon you built the place for god's sake!!!!

Air is matter just like any other matter. Other than the different viscosity, what you are seeing with the balloons is the relative proportional difference of friction to weight. The air inside a balloon weights very little compared toa similar volume of water, so the friction of the surface it is sitting on, or even the air outside of it, will stop it much more quickly than the water balloon. There is no reason that air moving in the right direction would not be held by centrifugal force as well as water or solid material. The problem is that air will be heated by the sunlight/radiation hitting it and tend to get 'knocked' out into space. This happens to planets too, and earth would have far less atmosphere if it didn'thave a strong magnetosphere to help contain the atmosphere. Mars has almost completely lost its atmosphere, which may have been almost like earth's a billion or more years ago. As with all other technical problems in SciFi engineering, you'd have to imagine a new technology (super-magnets that Last for millions of years?) to keep the atmosphere in yours Ringworld.