"Real" ringworlds

[Aloofi]

Originally posted by Primogenitor:

As a species, nothing hunts us, we dont have to struggle for food, we change our eviroment to suit us rahter than us changing to suit our enviroment, virtually everyone has children.

Nothing hunt us?
We hunt ourselves, and waste our lives and resources in civil wars, from an species perspective.
And some of us do have to struggle for food, and all of us have to adapt to the enviroment that we have changed.

.

[Primogenitor]

Ok then, point accepted

No other species hunts us. We are plagued by simian tribalism and teritoriality from our ancient genetic heritage that has little relevance to our "sentient" minds. Our selfish genes that once drove us to band together with others who were likely to hold other copies of those genes in order for those genes to prosper and spread now propell humanity on a hopeless course towards essesive resource accumulation and short term gains at the expense of long term survival. Unless our minds can surpass our genetic makeup, we are doomed to destroy ourselves in overpowering greed and guttony. Evolution had no design, no forsight, no plan, no morals, no order, no direction, no skill, no predictability, no rules, no fairness, in humanities creation. It simply is, because it could not be otherwise. Do we have the will to plan, to survive the evolutionary forces that would destroy us? Can our society evolve fast enough that we can survive without destroyed all the resources we need? Could the earth ever support a species like us again? Evolution may have given birth to us, and the earth may be our cradle, but you cannot stay in the cradle forever.

[/End Rant]

[Narrew]

I thought that Dyson Spheres were inhabited on the inside like a Ring World, but completely encompass the sun to trap all energy and possiably hide from the rest of the universe (wasnt it a Star Trek movie that found a bunch of Dyson Spheres?).

*sigh* too bad we have to mess around on this rock of a world instead of going out to the "Last frontier"

[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by Dingocat85:
The only thing physicists see as a use for black holes (besides a big trash can ) is going forward in time, in a sense.

Actually, there is the theoretical possibility of using one to get energy - Microscopic black holes produce Hawking Radiation - the smaller the black hole, the more radiation produced. However, you can't readily control the rate of production (it is a function of the black hole's mass, which can be difficult to change). You could also capture energy by feeding the black hole matter - gas dropped into a black hole heats up to compensate for the gravitational potential energy loss, and hot gas produces light, some of which can escape the gravity well from the black hole.

Mind you, to get this energy, you have to be able to manipulate a small black hole, which is probably very difficult (if possible) and very dangerous.

[ May 14, 2003, 22:33: Message edited by: Jack Simth ]

[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by Narrew:
I thought that Dyson Spheres were inhabited on the inside like a Ring World, but completely encompass the sun to trap all energy and possiably hide from the rest of the universe (wasnt it a Star Trek movie that found a bunch of Dyson Spheres?).

That was the original idea, but the mass of the Dyson Sphere is useless for producing gravity inside the sphere, as the gravitation produced by the mass "below" you is cancelled out exactly by the rest of the sphere (assuming an even distribution, that is) leaving only the mass of the star to pull on you - which means things tend to drop into the star if they aren't anchored down. Some form of artifical gravity, or anti-gravity would be required.
Likewise, the star isn't affected by the gravity of the sphere, and can wander around, probably impacting on the sphere's inner surface, unless some controlled force is applied.

In other words, to get a Dyson Sphere to work, you need artifical gravity and the ability to move stars around at will - in addition to the matter needed to build the sphere, the materials technology so that the sphere maintains its shape, and possibly a few other things.

If you plan on living on the outside, you can drop the artifical gravity, but not the rest.

[ May 14, 2003, 22:34: Message edited by: Jack Simth ]

[Narrew]

Originally posted by Jack Simth:
Mind you, to get this energy, you have to be able to manipulate a small black hole, which is probably very difficult (if possible) and very dangerous.

Wife: Honey!!! YOUR son is doing it again...
Husband: *chuckles* what is my son doing this time?
Wife: Well *hands on hips* he took that Science kit you got him for Christmas out back and just opened a tiny black hole!!! And now all the cloths I have drying on the line are getting sucked into it. So you go out there and FIX it now!
Husband: Yes dear *smiling* *under his breath* Thats my boy!

[narf poit chez BOOM]

evelution has no explanation for intelligence and rules it out. why? chemicals aren't intelligent. chemicals have gravity. lots of chemicals have lots of gravity. lots of chemicals don't have intelligence. unless everything is intelligent, in which case, i may not win, but you will lose.

[Dingocat85]

Originally posted by Gwaihir:
[Responding to why an empire would build a ringworld in real life:] If you can, why not? Having mastered the universe, sounds like a fun project to keep you busy for a while.

Your empire would never get the chance...there would always be some sort of problem or another facing the empire, and unless you had a "purpose" to building a Ringworld, you'd ***never*** get it built.
Every single living organism on this planet (so naturally, every single living organism in the universe aswell) wants to do only one thing: Find and fix problems. Evolution long ago realized that the universe was very, very far from perfect conditions for any living organism...so, the only way to have an organism maintain (and maybe even proliferate) its species' survival, would be to have it endlessly looking for, and fixing problems.
So, no matter how happy your population got in real life, there would always be someone that was unhappy, wanting their problem to be fixed. If you stifled their unhappiness, feelings of discontent would build up, until - you guessed it - Revolution time.
Look at it this way: Your ears are designed to hear, so if there's no sound, they won't work. Your tastebuds are designed to taste, so if there's nothing to taste, they won't work. Organisms are designed to fix problems - so if there are no problems to fix, the organism won't work.

Here's a quote from The Matrix, that backs me up:

Agent Smith: "Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program...Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from."

Originally posted by Gwaihir:
or better yet, neworks of black holes - i bet you could get a lot of energy (or *something*) out of an orchestrated system of black holes, somehow."

The only thing physicists see as a use for black holes (besides a big trash can ) is going forward in time, in a sense. Assuming you have enough fuel to do this, if you approach a black hole at a specific angle (and at a fast enough speed that you avoid getting sucked in), you'll get whipped around the black hole (very fast, since the gravitational pull of a black hole is so high), and get slung away from it, traveling at incredible speeds.
The faster you're traveling in space, the slower time moves for you - in other words, 1 second for you on your fast ship, would be longer than 1 second on Earth - in this example, 1 second on your ship would result in a good deal of time passing on earth.
When your ship finally slows down and starts moving at more reasonable speeds, you will have hardly aged, while the rest of the everyone & everything else will have aged considerably.

[ May 14, 2003, 12:19: Message edited by: Dingocat85 ]

[dogscoff]

OK, so apparently a Niven-esque ringworld is technically impossible since the materials required cannot physically exist.

How about an Orbital from the Culture novels? They look like ringworlds, except that they don't encircle the star, they just orbit it in the same way a planet does. They are much smaller (only a few hundred thousand or million miles across, if memory serves, although that still offers many multiples Earth's surface area) and because the star isn't at the centre of the ring, all the night/day problems are avoided straight off.

[Krsqk]

Mind you, to get this energy, you have to be able to manipulate a small black hole, which is probably very difficult (if possible) and very dangerous.

Dangerous? Is that where all the neighborhood cats have gone? Dear me, what a terrible accident.

Like Mom always said, "It's all fun and games until someone gets radiation poisoning." Or was it "until someone gets knocked past an event horizon"?