What is a Ringworld?
Ringworld is a Nebula and Hugo-award winning 1970 science fiction novel by Larry Niven. It is considered a classic novel of the genre. In the years since the publication of the novel, the term “ringworld” has come to refer to its namesake in the novel: a huge ring-shaped colony equal in length to the entirety of Earth’s orbit. Its width was 1 million miles, 125 times wider than the Earth’s diameter. Its circumference is stated as 6×108 miles, for a surface area was about 300 million times greater than the Earth. Artificial gravity was provided by rotating the ring quickly. In the story, every planet in the solar system had been disassembled and used to construct the ringworld. A ringworld is a perfect example of a megastructure in science fiction; informally, a artificial construct exceeding a hundred kilometers in at least one dimension. Megastructures are not completely science fiction — at least two already exist on early 21st century Earth — the Great Wall of China, at 3,947 mi (6,
Ringworld is a Nebula and Hugo-award winning 1970 science fiction novel by Larry Niven. It is considered a classic novel of the genre. In the years since the publication of the novel, the term “ringworld” has come to refer to its namesake in the novel: a huge ring-shaped colony equal in length to the entirety of Earth’s orbit. Its width was 1 million miles, 125 times wider than the Earth’s diameter. Its circumference is stated as 6×108 miles, for a surface area was about 300 million times greater than the Earth. Artificial gravity was provided by rotating the ring quickly. In the story, every planet in the solar system had been disassembled and used to construct the ringworld. A ringworld is a perfect example of a megastructure in science fiction; informally, a artificial construct exceeding a hundred kilometers in at least one dimension. Megastructures are not completely science fiction — at least two already exist on early 21st century Earth — the Great Wall of China, at 3,947 mi (6
The Ringworld was created in a 2-book story by Larry Niven. The Ringworld was built a human-type race called the Pak. All the material in that solar system (and possibly other systems) was used to create a ribbon. Consider a ribbon joined so that it makes a loop. This loop is approximately a million miles wide and several miles thick, and is constructed out of a supermetal able to hold together as the loop spins fast enough to generate 1G on the inside of the loop. Mountainns one thousand miles tall form walls at the inside edges of the loop. These mountain walls prevent the loop’s atmosphere from spilling off the edge. Consider this huge ribbon, a million miles wide, and long enough to make a loop with a radius of 93 million miles. The inside of the loop has an atmosphere, and a surface area many, many, many, MANY times that of Earth. In fact, there is an ocean somewhere on the Ringworld where there is a 1:1 copy of the Earth (continents) right next to copies of Mars and several other
