Am I the only one who doesn't want ringworlds to be buildable?

[BlackUmbrellas]

No, you're incorrect. Inside a hollow sphere you feel no gravity no matter where you are, the forces all balance out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_theorem

I stand corrected.

Presuming the sphere is perfectly symmetrical and uniform, apparently. Which, you know, doesn't seem terribly likely a scenario.

(I also definitely don't think that that same principle would apply to a ring, as was suggested.)

 

[Person012345]

I stand corrected.

Presuming the sphere is perfectly symmetrical and uniform, apparently. Which, you know, doesn't seem terribly likely a scenario.

(I also definitely don't think that that same principle would apply to a ring, as was suggested.)

Well, I was wondering if it does apply to a ring or not. I am not sure.

And yes, it's a fair point that it probably wouldn't be perfectly made, but who knows. If not then it wouldn't simply be exerting an outward force attempting to tear the star apart. It could result in weird things, but I doubt it'd be the weird things precisely discussed before.

 

[Otto of england]

Except the ringworld they suggested had the mass of a thousand earths remember? Not to mention they placed it all at 1 au, which is considerably closer than most of the mass of the solar system, and remember distance is even more important than mass.
And you could make the same argument for the crunch on any single particle inside of the star, but the difference does matter. And I'm not talking about the gravity of the ringworld overcoming the gravity of the star on it's own just weakening it enough so that the outwards push of the fusion wins out.
And to know the force is there we actually don't need to count, for every action there is an equal an opposite reaction remember? The star pulls on the ringworld and subsequently the ringworld also pulls on the star.


With that logic there should be no pressure at the centre of the earth because it all cancels out unfortunately that only applies if you're looking at displacement. It won't move you but it will deform you.

I fully agree, however, my assertion has always been the ringworld doesn't apply more force, and thus outward pull than the regular solar system. Additionally I'm not using the many thousand kilometer approximation for the ringworld in my abstracted calculation as I agree, it unrealistic. I used 500 m for ecological reasons not structural reasons, as 500m allows for an ocean to exist.

Now I don't really want to calculate the rough gravitational pull of every object in the solar system, given that Uranus at a Fg on the sun of is approximately 1.39382 *10^21 N and my original approximation is about 10^16 N we still see a 10,000x smaller force from the ringworld. Furthermore since Uranus applies a force large than the ringworld and it is the furthest planetary body, we can presume that all planetary bodies closer than that also pull with greater than 10^16 N force. This means the ringworld probably applies less force than a star system.

No, you're incorrect. Inside a hollow sphere you feel no gravity no matter where you are, the forces all balance out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_theorem

I don't know about the last paragraph, the ringworld would still feel gravitational effects from the star, but the star would not feel gravitational effects from the ringworld (gravity wouldn't exert an "outward force" on the particles inside it, including the star) - assuming the effect holds true within a ring.

This shouldn't hold true for a ring as the ring will exert a large force at the bodies equates and less at its poles by virtuemail of the polar force being cancelled to 0 and the equatorial force being greater than zero. In my previous calculations I showed the equatorial force of the ringworld to be ~0.00011m N, where my is the mass of the ringworld section, on the surface. Additionally through deduction we can assume that any particle along the center of bodies axis experiences 0 additionally force.

 

[Dragon]

I would not mind being able to build a ringworld of my own. In 2 billion years' time, I want new civilizations to come across a ringworld built by the ancient Earth Empire, just like we are currently going around exploring the galaxy and researching all the wonders of advanced civilizations of the ancient past. Why should we not aspire to become such a civilization ourselves? I understand the argument of ringworlds being rare and awe-inspiring, maybe buildable ringworlds can be limited to one per empire to preserve this uniqueness?

It is the year 2.1205427e7 AD.

The U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Celestial Works....

By the year 2.1205427e7 AD, the world will either be united and exceptionalism dealt with, or humankind won't even reach 2050 AD...

 

[TheDungen]

I fully agree, however, my assertion has always been the ringworld doesn't apply more force, and thus outward pull than the regular solar system. Additionally I'm not using the many thousand kilometer approximation for the ringworld in my abstracted calculation as I agree, it unrealistic. I used 500 m for ecological reasons not structural reasons, as 500m allows for an ocean to exist.

Now I don't really want to calculate the rough gravitational pull of every object in the solar system, given that Uranus at a Fg on the sun of is approximately 1.39382 *10^21 N and my original approximation is about 10^16 N we still see a 10,000x smaller force from the ringworld. Furthermore since Uranus applies a force large than the ringworld and it is the furthest planetary body, we can presume that all planetary bodies closer than that also pull with greater than 10^16 N force. This means the ringworld probably applies less force than a star system.



This shouldn't hold true for a ring as the ring will exert a large force at the bodies equates and less at its poles by virtuemail of the polar force being cancelled to 0 and the equatorial force being greater than zero. In my previous calculations I showed the equatorial force of the ringworld to be ~0.00011m N, where my is the mass of the ringworld section, on the surface. Additionally through deduction we can assume that any particle along the center of bodies axis experiences 0 additionally force.

We would also start to need to take relativity into consideration wouldn't we? Things the size of suns don't really behave according to newtonian mechanics.

Let just leave it at that it's a complex question. Maybe when I am finished with my education I might be able to figure it out but right now it's beyond me.

 

[Kat Tsun]

By the year 2.1205427e7 AD, the world will either be united and exceptionalism dealt with, or humankind won't even reach 2050 AD...

That's what they said in 1950 except they were talking about 2000. Still here.

 

[Shatterfury]

That's what they said in 1950 except they were talking about 2000. Still here.

The world is heading towards unity...maybe global unity is quite far into the future but we are heading there.

 

[TheDungen]

That's what they said in 1950 except they were talking about 2000. Still here.

Are we not united though? In some ways we definitely already are.

The world is heading towards unity...maybe global unity is quite far into the future but we are heading there.

Further of than I would have guessed a few years ago. But hey maybe we'll see it in my lifetime.

 

[Kat Tsun]

The world is heading towards unity...maybe global unity is quite far into the future but we are heading there.

The most reasonable hypothesis is that it was never headed towards unity and that is merely a Euro/Amerocentric viewpoint that ignores the realities of other regions. It's been heading towards disunity since the 1980s in the Western world anyway. Though I was mostly just saying Stuart Chase was wrong I guess. Traditional nationalism hasn't just survived the atom, it's thrived, multiplied, and spread to other regions of the world outside the West.

It's not like the UNE in Stellaris is united though, at least not anymore than the Systems Alliance in Mass Effect. That said, Mass Effect is a thinly veiled Eurofederalist tract (not a bad thing), so that has to be taken into account. The game description even says it's only "united in purpose" but "disparate". Sounds dysfunctional and excessively localist.

Are we not united though? In some ways we definitely already are.

Superficially, maybe.

The entire current world order is very much a power structure owned and operated by the United States and, to a lesser extent, the European Union. The conflict of tomorrow is who, if anyone, can usurp the United States from its melancholic state as world policeman.

The League of Nations was more egalitarian than the current world order. Instead of giving a select few nations ultimate power, it gave everyone equal power, so it was useless.

For true supernational unity you'd need to have some sort of UN world police. The USA and its allies are the closest but the world is no more "united" than it was when the British Empire ruled it. There's no real extant global identity either and there probably never will be, people are just too different. You can compare Americans, Swedes, and Russians, and find huge differences in this relatively narrow band of "white Westerners" alone. Even narrower, you can find differences in "European" groups like British, French, and German that divides them almost as much. Or English, Scottish, and Welsh.

The real obstacle is building that global identity. At the moment, the only options for "global identity" are either a Western identity or nothing, which isn't exactly appealing to people who have worldviews different from Westerners. Much better to fight about who will be the current fad identity than try to do something supremely difficult and probably impossible like build a global identity.

For a global identity to work, you'd at least need someone outside who is scary. Maybe more.

 

[Shatterfury]

The most reasonable hypothesis is that it was never headed towards unity and that is merely a Euro/Amerocentric viewpoint that ignores the realities of other regions. It's been heading towards disunity since the 1980s in the Western world, though I was mostly just saying Stuart Chase was wrong I guess. Traditional nationalism hasn't just survived the atom, it's thrived, multiplied, and spread to other regions of the world outside the West.

It's not like the UNE in Stellaris is united though, at least not anymore than the Systems Alliance in Mass Effect. That said, Mass Effect is a thinly veiled Eurofederalist tract (not a bad thing), so that has to be taken into account. The game description even says it's only "united in purpose" but "disparate".

Traditional nationalism received a fist to the mouth.

Well Europe almost always sets the tone for what is to come.

It is almost an utopy to think that we will not unite under some kind of federal entity once we meet other intelligent beings.

State sponsored nationalism will keep us divided as long as we let it.

 

[Kat Tsun]

Traditional nationalism received a fist to the mouth.

It's more accurate to say that the West successfully exported traditional nationalism to developing regions of the world. Traditional nationalism is rearing its head again throughout the Western world anyway, and especially in Eastern Europe and the UK where nationalist parties have been subverting internationalist ones for years or decades.

The PRC's current nationalism, and pseudo-revolutionary movements like ISIS, are more or less products of Western intellectual enlightenment. They recycled the concept of Western nationalism, replacing their old systems with it.

In that sense, they certainly were influenced by Europe, but it's not clear that the only course of action is greater unity. Nor is it clear why they would move towards greater unity in the first place: The United States invented the United Nations, after all, not Europe. It may be that the UN is simply a cultural artifact of the United States' inherent pacifism and fairly alien within the context of European development. We can't really say what "Europe" would do, since European intellectual development stalled more or less completely after WW1 and has since then been lead by or taking cues from the United States.

Not coincidentally, this was more or less at the same time as the death of European thalassocracies like the UK, Netherlands, and France, and replacement of the British Empire by the United States as the preeminent maritime power of the world.

Even the EU is more American than "traditionally" European. A supranational democratic federation? That's America in a nutshell. Such a system would be near unrecognizable to Queen Victoria or the Kaiser except as an alien influence which came from across the Atlantic. People saw the United States for what it was back then, though, so they would also likely not be surprised. What might surprise them is the rapidity of decline of European naval dominance and the rapidity of rise of the United States as the largest military in the world. Sounds familiar but I suspect, people being people, they will be equally surprised when the USA ceases to be relevant as well.

That said, it may be that they would move towards greater unity simply because 1) it's a norm and 2) because unity appears to afford the unifiers greater power. The former because there isn't much precedent among living statesmen for any real alternatives and the latter because power is the ultimate goal of international politics. The United States presides over the most pacifistic yet the most powerful empire the world has ever known. It's one of the few empires to never be involved in a massive world war (the American Empire only came into existence after WW2) and it's never attempted to outright conquer/enslave its neighbours in the history of its existence like Rome, the British Empire, or Italo-German Fascism.

It is almost an utopy to think that we will not unite under some kind of federal entity once we meet other intelligent being.

I agree with this statement. I think that people will find enough scary and fearful things to say about something completely alien (but somewhat understandable) to band together. That's how identities work, after all.

State sponsored nationalism will keep us divided as long as we let it.

You have it backwards. Nationalism derives states, not the other way around.

 

[Shatterfury]

It's more accurate to say that the West successfully exported traditional nationalism to developing regions of the world. Traditional nationalism is rearing its head again throughout the Western world anyway, and especially in Eastern Europe and the UK where nationalist parties have been subverting internationalist ones for years or decades.

The PRC's current nationalism, and pseudo-revolutionary movements like ISIS, are more or less products of Western intellectual enlightenment. They recycled the concept of Western nationalism, replacing their old systems with it.

Nationalism is just a hiccup in Europe, once the economy goes back on track the Europhile forces will get back up...as a matter of fact with the notable exception of UK, Hungary and Poland EU is well.

In that sense, they certainly were influenced by Europe, but it's not clear that the only course of action is greater unity. Nor is it clear why they would move towards greater unity in the first place: The United States invented the United Nations, after all, not Europe. It may be that the UN is simply a cultural artifact of the United States' inherent pacifism and fairly alien within the context of European development. We can't really say what "Europe" would do, since European intellectual development stalled more or less completely after WW1 and has since then been lead by or taking cues from the United States.

Prior to the United Nations we had the League of Nations, invented by Europeans.
USA pacifist ? 45% of the world military spending is a hint of USA`s pacifism ?
European intellect didn`t stall at all, after WW2 USA begun growing faster than any other European country.
Germany is still the world`s third pole of development in the world behind USA and Japan.

EU, as a hole, can give USA a run for their money.

Even the EU is more American than "traditionally" European. A supranational democratic federation? That's America in a nutshell. Such a system would be near unrecognizable to Queen Victoria or the Kaiser except as an alien influence which came from across the Atlantic.

The Germanic tribes have a monopoly of the concept of federation and confederation by hmm...two thousand years.
The German Empire was a fully working federation of kingdoms and duchies, just like today`s Federal Republic of Germany.
The Holy Roman Empire was also a confederation/federation of kingdoms, free cities, bishoprics.

It`s the Germanic traditions of federalisation that influenced USA not the other way around.

What is next ? You are going to say that USA invented democracy ?

That said, it may be that they would move towards greater unity simply because it's a norm and because unity appears to afford the unifiers greater power. The United States presides over one of the most pacifistic yet powerful empires the world has ever known. It's one of the few empires to never be involved in a massive world war and it's never attempted to outright conquer/enslave its neighbours in the history of its existence like Rome, the British Empire, or Italo-German Fascism.

Pacifist my arse, they are as bloodthirsty as the morality of the day will allow them. With 45% of the world spending being USA`s alone you can`t claim to be a pacifist country.

The only notable pacifist country of note is today`s Germany.

You have it backwards. Nationalism derives states, not the other way around.

And nationalism is just an excuse of us vs them.
In some cases...like UK for example states derives nationalism, in others, like Germany or Italy it was nationalism that brought the birth of nation states.
On the other hand the concept of Germany as a statal entity dates back to like 11 century when the German Kingdom become the Holy Roman Empire and the title of German King was the foundation of the Empire.

---

Let`s end it here and agree to disagree....we are off topic big time.

 

[TheDungen]

Superficially, maybe.

The entire current world order is very much a power structure owned and operated by the United States and, to a lesser extent, the European Union. The conflict of tomorrow is who, if anyone, can usurp the United States from its melancholic state as world policeman.

The League of Nations was more egalitarian than the current world order. Instead of giving a select few nations ultimate power, it gave everyone equal power, so it was useless.

For true supernational unity you'd need to have some sort of UN world police. The USA and its allies are the closest but the world is no more "united" than it was when the British Empire ruled it. There's no real extant global identity either and there probably never will be, people are just too different. You can compare Americans, Swedes, and Russians, and find huge differences in this relatively narrow band of "white Westerners" alone. Even narrower, you can find differences in "European" groups like British, French, and German that divides them almost as much. Or English, Scottish, and Welsh.

The real obstacle is building that global identity. At the moment, the only options for "global identity" are either a Western identity or nothing, which isn't exactly appealing to people who have worldviews different from Westerners. Much better to fight about who will be the current fad identity than try to do something supremely difficult and probably impossible like build a global identity.

For a global identity to work, you'd at least need someone outside who is scary. Maybe more.

You missunderstand me, I did not mean superficially, we are united economically, all else is just holdouts. I can reach a dozen objects from where I sit that have parts from all inhabited continents.
We are also united in in that we can communicate with one another over vast distances, and that many of the problems we face are common to us all. I would say that we are united in the ways that matter and only divided in the formal things like borders and laws and such. Heck even laws have been standardized to a great degree.

 

[Kat Tsun]

You missunderstand me, I did not mean superficially, we are united economically, all else is just holdouts. I can reach a dozen objects from where I sit that have parts from all inhabited continents.
We are also united in in that we can communicate with one another over vast distances, and that many of the problems we face are common to us all. I would say that we are united in the ways that matter and only divided in the formal things like borders and laws and such. Heck even laws have been standardized to a great degree.

Yeah, this is definitely true. However, we're also divided by worldviews, cultures, and mindsets, which are sometimes wholly unintelligible or more often misunderstood by other people. These are more fundamental, basic barriers that probably prevent any sort of true international (or national) unification.

I like to think, perhaps optimistically, that globalization is more or less irreversible and unstoppable, but stuff like TTIP and TTP seem to be going away fast. Perhaps not irreversible, but definitely can be allowed to stagnate.

I hope Paradox adds a Free Trade Area diplomacy options that incur a percentage reduction in consumer goods cost in exchange for an increase in mineral output. Perhaps it could be tied to the living standards of the population. Higher living standards means you get a greater reduction in CG cost while lower living standards gives you a boost in mineral production, with either being mutually exclusive. The idea is that a big country spending lots of money to keep its people happy can spend less if it trades with a country that has lower living standards who get a commensurate boost in minerals production.

You'd need to granulate it a bit so it makes sense for two rich or two poor countries to have free trade, too.

 

[TheDungen]

Yeah, this is definitely true. However, we're also divided by worldviews, cultures, and mindsets, which are sometimes wholly unintelligible or more often misunderstood by other people. These are more fundamental, basic barriers that probably prevent any sort of true international (or national) unification.

I like to think, perhaps optimistically, that globalization is more or less irreversible and unstoppable, but stuff like TTIP and TTP seem to be going away fast. Perhaps not irreversible, but definitely can be allowed to stagnate.

I hope Paradox adds a Free Trade Area diplomacy options that incur a percentage reduction in consumer goods cost in exchange for an increase in mineral output. Perhaps it could be tied to the living standards of the population. Higher living standards means you get a greater reduction in CG cost while lower living standards gives you a boost in mineral production, with either being mutually exclusive. The idea is that a big country spending lots of money to keep its people happy can spend less if it trades with a country that has lower living standards who get a commensurate boost in minerals production.

You'd need to granulate it a bit so it makes sense for two rich or two poor countries to have free trade, too.

Ah but behaviour change these things these things do not change behaviour.
If you took a dictatorship and wanted to turn it into a democracy from within your first order of business would be to change how people act, not the values they believe in. People are perfectly willing to adopt new values if those values fit the way they act. But if you go after their values directly they'll resist.

The US may be opting out of free trade deals but global trade won't be killed totally by that, also some of their old trading partners may simply start trading with one another as the US get left behind.
Remember the US is just one country. Even if many western countries seems to go more isolationist many developing countries crave what we had in the last decades and will keep pushing towards that.

 

[dskod1]

Guys please get back on topic, you have gone off on a tangent on nationalism for some reason when the topic is about ring worlds.

Topic: "Am I the only one who doesn't want ringworlds to be buildable?"

Thanks,
Dylan

 

[Phoenix32]

There is at the end of Consider Phlebas:

Statistics. Length of war: forty-eight years, one month.
Total casualties, including machines (reckoned on logarithmic sentience scale), medjel and non-combatants: 851.4 billion (± .3%).
Losses: ships (all classes above interplanetary) - 91,215,660 (± 200);
Orbitals - 14,334;
planets and major moons - 53;
Rings - 1;
Spheres - 3;
stars (undergoing significant induced mass-loss or sequence-position alteration) - 6.

Thus either the Culture or the Iridar possess the capabilities to forge ringworlds and dyson shells.



Orbitals are not ringworlds. RIngworld, as per definition, span around a star, prefferably in the habitable zone to also allow it to house a massive population. The Culture's orbitals fail to do so for an G-class star (although they possibly could do so on faint Red Dwarves, but I don't know if you wanna live around those, the plants would be blue) with a diamater of a mere 3 million kilometers, exactly 1% of the diamater of a proper ringworld around a G2V-class star like the Sun. Orbitals are tiny.

Where do you find the definition that a ringworld has to circle a star? That would disqualify the installations from Halo from being ringworld aswell. They are also sometimes called small rings in the culture series.

 

[Phoenix32]

Orbitals are described as rings that orbit a star, not as ringworlds like the ones we see in Stellaris. Culture orbitals are more like the orbital habitats from the last DD than FE ringworlds.

The last guy, the one you also quoted, stated the exact opposite and said the orbitals don't orbit stars and therefor isn't ringworld. Which is it?

The way I see if it's a ring designed for people to live on then it's a world and a ring and therefor a ringworld.

 

[Peko?]

The last guy, the one you also quoted, stated the exact opposite and said the orbitals don't orbit stars and therefor isn't ringworld. Which is it?

No, he didn't. Read it again.

The way I see if it's a ring designed for people to live on then it's a world and a ring and therefor a ringworld.

Very well, but that's not what ringworlds are in Stellaris. It certainly isn't what comes to mind when I hear ringworld.

 

[Phoenix32]

No, he didn't. Read it again.

Very well, but that's not what ringworlds are in Stellaris. It certainly isn't what comes to mind when I hear ringworld.

"Orbitals are not ringworlds. RIngworld, as per definition, span around a star, prefferably in the habitable zone to also allow it to house a massive population. The Culture's orbitals fail to do so for an G-class star (although they possibly could do so on faint Red Dwarves, but I don't know if you wanna live around those, the plants would be blue) with a diamater of a mere 3 million kilometers, exactly 1% of the diamater of a proper ringworld around a G2V-class star like the Sun. Orbitals are tiny."

That's the opposite of what you told me isn't it?