Chewin in the Chung

If you are a geek, go play with the Ringworld Physics Simulation.

It has been 20 years since I read Larry Niven's Ringworld books, but I have been thinking about ringworlds recently, because I am reading The Golden Age By John C. Wright. I remember that you can not make a Ringworld out of any material we know of today (or knew of 20 years ago, anyway), becuase the force from the spin would be too great and it will fall apart. Now I am thinking, the new material would have to be awfully light. If it had the same mass as say, steel, then the ringworld would weigh about 5000 gadzillion tons, and require umptalbuquerquezillion joules of energy to get it spinning. Unless you built it spinning: i.e., move sections of your ringworld into orbit and connect them as they are brought into place. But now I'm wondering about the orbital velocity versus the velocity you finally want the ringworld to spin at to have 1G on the surface. If you have got the ringworld put together around the sun, but it is going too fast, you'll have to use another dodecahedrillion ultracalories to slow it down.

Anyway, that is what I am thinking about today. That and lesbians.