Thoughts about sphere worlds - Page 2

Karibu · #11 November 24th, 2003, 09:26 PM

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 ]

Fyron · #12 November 24th, 2003, 10:43 PM

Omnicron1, the "size" of the planet graphics are all relative. The sphereworld is not actually within the orbit of Mercury, but for Sol, would be at about the orbit of the Earth. That, and the "sectors" are not 1 AU or anything like that, they are again completely relative (and apparently different for different systems and different distances based on distance from the star).

[ November 24, 2003, 20:49: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

gregebowman · #13 November 24th, 2003, 10:43 PM

This is why I gave up my dream of being an astronomer. Too much math! I'll take your word for it. But it would seem to me that if you have enough material, you could build a big enough shell around what would be the distance of a solar system. Maybe not the size of our solar system, but it would have to be big enough to trap a sun and not fry everyone inside it.

Fyron · #14 November 24th, 2003, 10:49 PM

Keep in mind that channelling most of the solar radiation out of the sphereworld would be one of those many engineering problems to be solved before building the SW, so it is a null issue.

narf poit chez BOOM · #15 November 25th, 2003, 12:50 AM

channel the energy and use it for your little projects...like moving the sphereworld, destroying black holes, creating pocket universes...you know, the little things.

primitive · #16 November 25th, 2003, 02:27 AM

And for those really adventourus mathemathicans:
Try to calculate the actual strength the sphere material need to have to stop it from collapsing at the poles (earth orbit, spinning so it has 1 G at equator), using all available building materials in the solar system (except the sun) for the construction.

You would have to discard the Atom and find another way to connect Quarks to get a material strong enough.

narf poit chez BOOM · #17 November 25th, 2003, 02:40 AM

Quote:

You would have to discard the Atom and find another way to connect Quarks to get a material strong enough.

of course. get more articulate ducks.

i'm in a weird mood.

PvK · #18 November 25th, 2003, 03:55 AM

If the area is 550 million Earth-profiles, then I think you're probably going to want to import some material, or find away to make the sun pop you a bubble of matter to exactly the desired radius.

Good luck...

PvK

gregebowman · #19 November 25th, 2003, 04:40 AM

Heck, in the Star Trek universe, anything seems possible. But hey, that's supposed to be our future, so who knows. Anything could be possible. Maybe not in 10,000 lifetimes, but it could be possible.

Kamog · #20 November 25th, 2003, 07:53 AM

To get around the problem with artificial gravity not being uniform inside a sphere world, maybe we could build the world so that it is not a solid one-piece sphere, but a combination of ring worlds stacked one on top of each other. So at the equator, you have a large diameter ring world, rotating to produce 1G of artificial gravity. Above and below this ring world, you have two more ring worlds of slightly smaller diameter, rotating at a different speed as to also produce 1G. Then, above and below those, have slightly smaller-diameter ring worlds rotating at its own speed to produce 1G, and so on. So the sphere world will consist of hundreds of ring worlds arranged in the shape of a sphere, with the largest ring at the equator and the smallest rings at the poles. The smallest rings will have to rotate the fastest to produce the same gravity. All the ring worlds could be enclosed in a larger, solid sphere so that it looks like a solid sphere world from the outside, but would consist of separate ring segments with independent rotations inside. Hmm, I guess this really isn't a sphere world...