Re: dyson sphere stability

From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Wed Dec 06 2000 - 23:39:24 MST


At 02:00 PM 7/12/00 +0930, Emlyn wrote:

>Maybe a lot of outer rings (3 place orthogonally to each other, plus more?)
>plus some attractive mechanism, could be used to stabilise the otherwise
>unstable sphere?

What makes you think a spinning ring is more stable than a sphere? The big
boo-boo in RINGWORLD was the thing's gravitational instability, which Niven
had to retrofix (somewhat shamefacedly) as the key plot element of the sequel.

Damien Broderick



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