Thoughts about sphere worlds

[Taz-in-Space]

Hmmm, never thought about what gravity would be like inside a Sphere World. My totally non-scientific guess would be that the local gravity of the Sphere-world structure would hold you against the pull from the sun. BUT I cannot see that that pull would be great enough to equal earth's gravity and so any atmosphere should be very thin.
Of Course, anyone advanced enough to build such a thing, might have some way to augment the local gravity.
MY QUESTION is where would the Solar Wind go?

[ November 24, 2003, 05:05: Message edited by: Taz-in-Space ]

[PvK]

Originally posted by Taz-in-Space:
...
MY QUESTION is where would the Solar Wind go?

Directly onto the bald spot on the top of your head, as long as you were standing up.

PvK

[gregebowman]

I think that it's misleading by calling it a sphere world. Sure, once you surround a star and maybe use it's planets as the raw material to make this sphere, then it might be called a sphere world. The only example I've seen in tv or movies was the TNG episode where they find Scotty on the outside of one. Unfortunately, they never really got to explore the "planet", but I would have loved to see them do it. I think there was a Star Trek novel dealing with such a world (called a Dyson's Sphere), but I can't remember now if it was TOS, TNG or Voyager.

[Parasite]

A Ring World can be spun for gravity. For a sphere world to work you must have some sort of artificial gravity. If spun so there was no gravity at the poles and not only you, but the air there would fall into the sun as well. Not to mention that the slope of that side would be 90 degrees. Think of the slides you could make! Lets slide down 12 Million miles (or KMs) Thick Pants needed.

[ November 24, 2003, 16:04: Message edited by: Parasite ]

[narf poit chez BOOM]

if you can build a sphereworld, it's either your (usefull) Version of the great pyramids, or you don't need it.

and by that time, you'd have personal space travel, so falling toward the sun wouldn't be a problem - just tell your 7585 model ferrari to pick you up while your clothes turn into a space suit.

[Omnicron1]

just drop this in there real quick... the size of the sphere world as suggested by its graphic would be too small. Lets assume that the species building this sphere world lives at the "hot edge of life" just below the point at which matter breaks up into energy- 1000s of degrees celsius. This is fairly generous since only a few of the strongest chemical bonds would exist at this point and they would not be varied enough to provide the kind of complexities that sentients require...anyway- gravity would be the least of your problems. As i said the graphic suggests that the interior surface of the sphere world is inside the orbit of mercury now granted the species i described might like this right up until the MASSIVE amount of energy produced by the sun is trapped in this small area (we worry about global warming and we only get 1% maybe less of the suns energy, a sphere gets and traps 100%) and compounds like no other greenhouse in the galaxy until not them or their beloved planet can with stand it and the matter they're made up of goes nuclear just like the matter in the sun. All matter can be used for nuclear reactions at a certain temperature...anyway- besides this even at half the orbital radius of Mercury (toooo close to the sun) it would take the planets of many solar systems to build the actual sphere itself so that the amount of resources required is actually unimaginably tooo small.

my solution to all this- far larger graphic! lol seriously though i refuse to build the things because of thes scientific impossibilities and build ringworlds- the problems with them are in my opinion small enough to overlooked LOL

well i lied when i said this was gonna be quick but ill try and cut it off now by not going into the other ten problems i can think of off the top of my head for the sphere world...

[Karibu]

Omnicron has good point. Sphereworld would only be the biggest atomic bomb ever made. Unless there would be the way to gather all that extra energy and lead it to some place else.

In addition Omnicron suspected that we get about 1% or less of sun's energy, we can check with simple math:

The amount of surface of earth to face us is equal to area of our planet when you cut it half in the middle (yes, the area actually having sunlight is bigger because earth is not flat and not always directed towards sun, but the effect is less on those "not directed towards sun" areas. Equator gets near 100% of the energy but north pole and south pole gets only fraction of that). The 100% effective area would be as follows:

pi~ 3,14159265359
r = radius of our planet (12756 km /2)
pi*r^2 = 511185932,523 km^2

Then we imagine a sphere which radius is same as is earths distance from sun.
r = radius from sun (149,6*10^6 km)

The area of the sphere would be then:

4*pi*r^2 ~ 2,812*10^17 km^2

Now we simply calculate how much is the amount of "earth 100% effective area" of "sphere world aea" which get the 100% of sun's radiation.

Earth sun facing area
--------------------------
sphereworld sun facing rea

~ 1,818 *10^-9 = 0,0000001818 % of sun energy.

On other words, there could be 550 million areas size of our "100% effective areas" in one sphere world. SEIV sphereworld seems to be utterly ineffective construction. Damn engineers!

That is the amount of the energy earth receives from the sun. The calculation is rough, but decimals are right. If I am not wrong, of course.

[ November 24, 2003, 19:36: Message edited by: Karibu ]