[TML] "Dies the Fire"

[shadow at shadowgard.com]

On 10 Dec 2007 at 3:59, Jerry W Barrington wrote:

> Interesting scenario.  Of course, assuming they escape, you now have an
> Alderson disk in YTU.  :)
> 
> Personally, I'd say escape would be easiest from the rim.  Any pointers to
> the math on the gravity?

The gravity at the rim is *worse*, because you have *millions* of KM 
of rock pulling at you...

> And why 10 AU with a 1 AU hole?  Seems excessive, even for a broad
> interpretation of the habitable zone.

Well, I wanted to have the available areas range as far into "you've 
got to be kidding" climate ranges as wasn't going to be impossible to 
survive, and then go a bit beyond.

If I use part of it for a D&D campaign, well, it gives "interesting 
places for the Frost Giants and Fire Giants and other such critters 
to come from.

Besides, who says humans are the only species living there?

The outer and inner portions may be prime real estate for some other 
species. So you'd get rings of "preffered" climates for different 
species, possibly with considerable overlap.

Just consider the sort of stuff that might get traded across millions 
of miles of climate zones.

> Of course one problem with such a disk is the perpetual twilight... 

If you bob the sun, you get real daylight.
 
> And plate tectonics sounds... Improbable.  But then, as you said, it's
> magitech to make it work anyway. 

Well, if you are doing some sort of handwave that lets you ignore the 
gravity in the starward plane, then plate tectonics isn't that 
unreasonable. And offers a lot more possibilities for geology and 
other things.

After all, there's no way that such a world *wasn't* built. But 
having it built to "newly formed planet" stage and allowed to evolve 
"naturally" with occasional transplants of species (or even whole 
ecosystems) from elsewhere gives you really interesting 
possibilities.


--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com