Wasn't it Alain who wrote:
>As a side tough, when you get close to the edges, you should have the impression 
>of climbing. You 
>get a gravitational pull toward the midplane of the ring. As you move away from 
>the middle, there is 
>more and more mass behind you, and less before you.

Bit the scrith has very low mass, so the gravity caused by the mass of
the ring material is low.

I did some calculations based on the Ringworld parameters given here:
http://www.alcyone.com/max/reference/scifi/ringworld.html

If you treat the Ringworld as an infinite plane, then the gravitational
force from its mass works out at about 1.4*10^-9 g.

I guess that the gravity inside a hollow cylinder may well be much lower
than that, in the same way that the gravity inside a hollow sphere is
zero, due to the pull of lots of mass far away above you cancelling out
the pull from relatively small amounts of mass nearby. So 1.4*10^-9 g
would be an upper bound to the gravity that would be felt by someone in
the midplane if the Ringworld were not spinning.

For comparison, if you stand on the Earth in a location close to where
there's a salt dome or a basalt inclusion, a typical gravitational
anomaly would be about 10^-6 g and you need a sensitive gravimeter to
detect the effect.  

-- 
Mike Williams
Gentleman of Leisure

Post a reply to this message