September has knocked on our doors, bringing with it the delight of the fallen leaves, golden hued skies, cool wind; and prepares us for so much more. And September isn't just a month or a season, but it shows us that inspite of losing everything, it takes courage to stand alone and move ahead--self-assured in our own.

With this in mind, we are ready to touch on this month's theme. With keyboard blazing, is there anyone who's ready to guess? (Hint... it's related to our July and August sub-genre) 😉

With a ring in the hand, we propose and raise a toast to the RingWorld! Welcome to the third installment of the A Different Earth series.

In simple terms, we'd define Ringworld(also known as Niven Ring) as "an artificial megastructure in space, consisting of a rotating ring encircling a star and having an inhabitable inner surface with gravity produced through centripetal force."

For the uninitiated, Ringworld is a 1970 science fiction novel by Larry Niven, set in his Known Space universe and is considered one of the classics of science fiction genre. It tells the story of Louis Wu and his companions on a mission to the Ringworld, a rotating wheel artificial world, an alien construct in space 186 million miles (299 million kilometres) in diameter.

He later added three sequel novels and later co-wrote with Edward M. Lerner, four prequels and a final sequel; the five latter novels which constitute the Fleet of Worlds series. All the novels of the Ringworld series tie into the multiple books based in the Known Space.

Ringworld won the Nebula Award in 1970 and the Hugo Award and Locus Award in 1971.

Larry Niven conceptualised a ring with a 93 million miles radius, the area would encompass all the distance between the sun and earth and have the sun placed at the center. Dimensions of this ring would reach 600 million miles across and a million miles high, and the added benefit of this massive landscape is that it could easily sustain trillions of humans probably (or perhaps any ambitious, technologically advanced race).

In a 1974 essay titled "Bigger Than Worlds", Niven wrote:

"The thing is roomy enough: three million times the area of the Earth. It will be some time before anyone complains about the crowding,"

Well, with a megastructure like this, no-one's going to be complaining about space for a long long long time 😉 Now, the question on hand is--could a Ringworld ever be created? Looks easy in the fictionverse, but reality is really a very different, very difficult picture. Let's see.

Even if the notion does not bend physics to the point of breaking, it would require the greatest possible engineering marvel and a total, unequivocal control of all the forces of nature. In the words of Anders Sandberg(a research fellow at Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute) research of megastructure concepts, a Ringworld "is an amazingly large structure that's way beyond what we can normally imagine, but it's also deeply problematic."

A decade after the release of Dyson's article by physicist Freeman Dyson, Niven resolved to use the equatorial ring of a Dyson Sphere as the setting for his novel Ringworld.

For our interested scifi'ers, Dyson's Sphere can be defined as a big super-duper megastructure visualised as a gigantic shell surrounding the sun, lined with mirrors or solar panels—is designed to collect every iota of a star's energetic output. Only in this case, the star is our sun and the colossal figure is 384.6 septillion watts per second, or 3.846×1026 watts, which is on the order of a trillion times our current worldwide energy usage. And in theory, the interior of the Dyson Sphere could provide far more livable real estate than some inconsequential planet.

Physicist Freeman Dyson hypothesized that a technologically, highly-developed, advanced race, who have stretched out the limit of their civilization's expansion because of dwindling matter and energy supplies, would seek to utilise their sun for everything it can do and use every bit of energy.

In his science paper article(1960) he said, "One should expect that, within a few thousand years of its entering the stage of industrial development, any intelligent species should be found occupying an artificial biosphere which completely surrounds its parent star,"

Moving back to our Ringworld topic, even though this Ring can be considered as a haven of environment-friendly section of a Dyson Sphere. For it to reach the earth-like gravity, the Ringworld would need to spin unusually fast at nearly three million miles per hour, which could be achievable in a completely non-friction space environment. It could work up to that speed over time and then maintain it with some additional propel.

Nonetheless, even if the Ringworld would be at the same distance apart from its central star at all points, it could never be gravitationally stable. Any disturbing force from a meteorite strike or a close encounter with another star or a comet shower could throw the Ringworld out of its amazing balance and onto on a catastrophic collision course. To counter the possibility, large rockets placed along the edge of Ringworld would have to fire at regular intervals to keep the megastructure properly situated away from its sun.

We cite Sandberg,"A Ringworld will tend to drift off whenever it gets a chance".

A Ring World Planet is a country, a world, in the shape of a concave cylinder--one of the commonly used shapes and easily recognisable in the scifi universes. The horizon arches up, in one direction but just in a single dimension, meaning that the ground in that direction would be ascending which means that unless the ring is large enough, the curve would be impossible to notice over small distances. The sides of the cylinder could be walls- with or without a ceiling. These can range in size from the equivalent of a true Dyson Sphere to a cylindrical space station in planetary orbit. Giving a wee bit of homage to the laws of physics, these variant spinning Ringworlds worlds generate a centrifugal force that could be used instead of gravity.

The Ringworlds to exist in reality, especially the large ones over a few dozen kilometers, they'd have to be made of Unobtainium.

A Ringworld would have a perennial day in such a cylindrical world unless steps are taken to simulate day and night, either through sun shades, mirrors, or some combination of everything. An alternative would be to choose an orbit where the ring periodically gets shadowed by something to stimulate night. Orbits that use the Earth for this would produce night about every 90 minutes (ISS altitude) or a few minutes every few months (a typical geostationary orbit, about the same frequency as a lunar eclipse).

It's fascinating to learn Ringworlds can be broadly classified into two categories:

- Known as the Stanford toruses(after a study at Stanford university in 1975) the smallest are toroidal space stations, consisting of a fully enclosed circle around a central spindle or hub area, with the habitable area within the volume of the outer ring-shaped tube. The theory of rotating space habitats of this kind has been delved since 1903 under an uncommonly used name--the "von Braun wheel" which refers to a presentation by the aerospace engineer Wernher von Braun in 1952. These are usually the size of regular space stations, just large enough to hold a city's worth of people at most, and orbit larger celestial bodies such as planets.

- The hoop-shaped larger worlds are depicted as ribbon-like in their structure, and are usually "roofless" due to rotating fast enough that centrifugal force keeps their air in. Popularised vastly in Ringworld by Larry Niven, this version was thought as a mid-point between a Dyson Sphere and a planet, which showcases this category as wide around as the orbit of the Earth and with an absolutely massive habitable area. Gigantic rings of this sort, with a star in their center, are still referred to as "Niven rings". Since this is absolutely impossible in real life as there are infinite parameters involved, hardcore science fiction leans towards using smaller hoops, big enough to host more than a world's worth of land but which orbit stars like regular planets do. These are usually called "Banks orbitals" or "Bishop rings".

By utilising the power of stars, these massive floating forms could easily become humanity's next newest home. But as Peter Ray Allison states, "building them will be a colossal challenge."

FWIW(for what it's worth), there is sufficient matter in the Kuiper Belt to build anything out there.

Immense floating structures could become humanity's home, harnessing the power of stars. But, Peter Ray Allison writes, building them will be a colossal challenge.

Huge ring-shaped worlds orbiting distant stars have become an iconic image of science fiction. Their pristine landscape, contained within a thin, ring-like structure, has tantalised our imagination. The ringworld has become a common motif, a future base for humanity...

"This is all a lot of nonsense of course," says retired professor Freeman Dyson. It is Dyson who popularised the idea of these megastructures; they would eventually become known as Dyson Spheres. Dyson "borrowed the idea" from science fiction writer Olaf Stapledon's 1937 novel Star Maker, in which a travelling Earthman encounters megastructures built to harness the power of nearby stars. While Dyson envisioned these spheres as a shell of orbiting structures, used for the collection of maximum possible energy from a star, science fiction authors assumed them to be a habitable sphere enclosing the star.

Here are a couple of Ringworld recommendations on Wattpad:

Day's End by JaneQuill28

Summary: Anela (Ringworld 7-CR} circles the GV2 star Anelon in the Hermes Cluster. The endless day this makes is alleviated by a Nightshade, a half-ring that orbits within the orbit of Anelon. The Nightshade blocks the sun to make artificial night, where stars never shine.

Solon abandoned Anela 125 years ago in the third year of the Grolon War. In RingYear 4 (RY4), the Nightshade failed. The architects and engineers were gone, leaving no one to repair the damage, and no space equipment to work with. The Nightshade broke up with some chunks the size of continents. Some parts disappeared, perhaps into the sun or wandering anywhere in the galaxy, but a few still orbit, casting sporadic, brief night shadows on the Ring.

In RY125, Joss Anders lives in Hemmler City, managing the City's Recycling center. His Second-Class Degree in Mathematics, Astrophysics, and Celestial Navigation does not come with the near-automatic opportunity for marriage and child licenses. He lives the singleton life, common to most adult Anelons under 40. He and his best friend, Renny, enjoy the opportunities Hemmler City offers and find short or long-term Nightmates, known as friends with benefits.

Joss's life takes an unexpected turn for the better, and over the next few months, he lives a future lost after college. Many anomalies begin to puzzle and worry him. Nightshades cast their shadows more often. Standard weather patterns change for the worse. Crop shortages raise food and drink prices. The birthrate is twenty-seven percent lower than twenty years ago.

- Utopia War by CharlesSmith9 

Summary: Humanity emerges from the aftermath of the technological singularity having conquered scarcity, disease, poverty, aging, death, and, or so they thought, even war. With the aid of artificial intelligence and uplifted animals they have founded a virtual Utopia among the stars where people work only for personal development, satisfaction, or selflessly for the benefit of others.

An attempt to help another space-faring species has unexpected consequences that threatens to engulf a whole region of space, and the Human Consensus is forced to intervene. When the small conflict grows into an existential threat to their entire civilization, humanity is forced for the first time to ask the question: can Utopia survive total war?

With this, we conclude our article. I really enjoyed researching and writing it. Tell me your thoughts and feedback. I'd love to hear from each one of you! ❤️

Till we meet in October with another smashing issue, this is me, Nab, saying goodbye and take care =]

Nablai