A cosmic structure so big it could house a trillion people, a giant ring spinning three
million miles per hour….a world of eternal sunshine… could we, should we?
Hello and welcome back to Life’s Biggest questions – I am your host Rebecca Felgate
and today I am asking WHAT IF WE BUILT A RING WORLD IN SPACE?
Blimey.
High drama!
Before we get deep into this spinathon I want to ask you guys – if you could build a space
ship…what would it look like and what would you call it?
Let me know in the comments section down below.
Also do stay tuned to the end of the video where I will be replying to comments from
a previous one!
If you like this ring….you should have put a thumb on it…
Okay I promise never to say that again….
I was just trying something new and hoping you would like my video!
Good.
Check out the links in the description box to the video sources and to the socials of
the people who went into to creating this…
I am going to say it… this masterpiece.
SO a ring world, what on earth even is a ring world?
A ring world is the brain child of mathematician turned author Larry Niven, who detailed a
large space structure, a ring, which orbits around a sun, in his Ringworld Sci Fi novel
series of the 1970s.
The concept has also been picked up in various other works of science fiction and more recently
in popular video game, Halo.
The concept is loosely based on the Dyson Sphere – a hypothetical structure that encompasses
a star allowing us to capture maximum energy from it thought up by mathematician Freeman
Dyson.
In the Ringworld series, this structure is a simple thick, world like ring spinning around
a central sun at the diameter of earths current orbit.
A quick Q&A to clear up some concerns - with no iron core and dense earth mass, what is
the deal with gravity in the ring world?
Well, the gravity comes from a centrifugal force, which in understandable terms refers
to the pseudo force that acts on objects rotating super fast…you can observe this yourself
by spinning a bucket of water fast in a circle around your head….
You’ll stay dry because the centrifugal force is keeping in in… see… the more
you know.
Next question…
What about light and dark… in a ring world the sun would always appear to be at high
noon… how do people sleep..or more importantly not get frazzled… ah, well… the ring world
has a series of intricate shadow squares that create a false night …sure, sure.
Kaaaay but how the absolute heck does one go about building a giant megastructure with
a 600 million mile circumference?!
Urm,… something about machines dismantling all the planets in the solar system and…err…reformatting
them into disc shaped plates that are then pulled together to form a ring…yeah but
Rebecca how exactly…
You know what enough questions.
To be fair – a Ringworld would need a thickness of a few thousand feet, and require raw materials
with a mass equal to that of Jupiter…or..many jupiters….
And there is not enough money or mass in this world to get that even slightly on the go
so… lol joke… we absolutely cant make a ring world happen… now anyway… maybe
in some distant future humans can get this on the go.
Whatever, let’s use our imagination….or suspend our disbelief…or better…both..
there is a ring world in SPACE!!!
Sooo the thing about Ringworld is that it would need to be massive to orbit in the habitable
zone of the sun.
How massive, well in the book I believe that it contains the surface area of three million
Earths – so there really wouldn’t be a space problem.
Right now we have 7.5 billion people on planet earth, but Ringworld has space for a trillion…sooo
if we were to build it right now humans would need to get busy to fill the space…or live
really sparse lives in the literal middles of nowhere.
A superstructure planet is a bit much for my planet earth dwelling mind – presumably
we would have super fast travel systems to visit various other segments of the world…
because like… world wide delivery would take centuries…or more….
Also… ahh…halllp my mind cant deal with this many people…
I guess we would divide up into nations according to segments, hopefully all the inhabitants
of ring world would get along because if not… well….
war seems like it might cause some structural damage and that
would be a legit nightmare.
I want to talk more about the spinning…. to get near earth gravity, the Ringworld would
need to spin around three million miles per hour.
This sounds insane to me buuut according to scientists this is doable…
The problem is though, if something messed up our spinathon ….well we would slam into
the nearest wall, building or tree at 770 miles a second…and..well… that would be
messy and an immediate life ender.
Blergh.
Let’s try and get this image out of our head by talking about sunshine!
It seems you can get more done in a day on a ring world as there are 30 hours to each
day… sort of… it takes 7.5 ringworld says to fully rotate around the sun…so…a year
is like 9 days?!
This…this sort of makes my little earth brain hurt.
Night is simulated by big sun blocking shades as discussed, but if these broke….woooo….
that would be tragic.
We would all fry…we would all die!
The ring earth would get just too much sun exposure that it would heat up to unlivable
climes.
Oh.
Also….. blinds?!!!!!
Sure we need them or we die fry on the ring world… but I’m not sure I want to live
in a world with no stars at night?
A fake oppressive black?!
Boo..hiss…. also…
I love our earth moon!
Bit the ring would wouldn’t be able to hold a moon in its orbit.
That sucks.
Do you know what would also suck?
Meteors!
The ring world would be a biiiiiiiig thin target and, as it is travelling so fast, if
it was hit by a high speed meteor or asteroid it could punch a hole in the shell of the
world, which a) could mean the atmosphere would leak out an we would all choke to death,
or b) would mean the world could easily be knocked out of orbit and you do noooootttt
want a rogue ring.
Our mate Larry Niven kind of tried to solve this issue with lazers and rockets – it
had the ability to fire at asteroids with big guns around the ring, obliterating them
before they got close.
Ultimately building a ring world Is beyond the realms of possibility for us – it takes
more raw material that we have access to, to put it waaay lightly, and more money than
is physically spendable on earth….
And also building one in our own solar system would mean that we need to deconstruct our
own planet…which…
how..why…so we would need to travel to another solar system to do it, and that again just
isn’t possible…annddd even if we did it the whole structure would be super vulnerable
and unstable and the slightest issue could kill a trillion people, so, yah, ring world
is off the menu.
Sorry bout it….
It IS fun to dream though!
And perhaps we COULD create giant livable space stations one day, but locking something
in an artificial orbit is messing with the universe in a way that simply wouldn’t work.
There is a reason planets are nice cheeky little dense balls… that’s just how it
works best!
Hurrah.
So that is that for you.
Did you like the sound of a ring world?
If you were building a space ship what shape would it be, what would happen there annnnddd
what would you name it.
Mine would be a nice aerodynamicish star shape with conrtollers at each point and I would
call it Felship Gatelactica … or…George.
LIKE SHARE COMMENTS …. Comments from what if Mauna Loa Erupted ….
Darth Vegeta said: What if Tsar Nicholas & Vladimir Lenin had switched bodies?
– oooh…a classic switcheroo… interesting!
Kim Jong Un, thanks for joing us, said: What if Mount Paektu erupted.
It’s the equivalent of Mecca for the Korean people.
It’s a sacred volcano in North Korea and the highest peak in Korea
Der Waffelritter : I live at home and the nearest active volcano is my mother when she
is angry.
So yeah.
I'm pretty screwed.
……OOOF….
Sounds nasty!
Watch out for the falling ash.
My mothercano lives far away in England and I am in Canada…I am safe…FOR NOW…
But she is coming to visit next week!
Thanks for watching – I am your host Rebecca Felgate – I’ll catch you in the next video,
but until then please do stay curious, stay alert and never ever stop questioning!