[TML] "Dies the Fire"

[shadow at shadowgard.com]

On 11 Dec 2007 at 19:49, Timothy Little wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 10, 2007 at 02:54:04PM -0800, shadow at shadowgard.com wrote:
> > It gets really difficult to avoid gravity levels that'd make Mesklin
> > (cf Hal Clement's "Mission of Gravity") look like a low gee world at
> > the edges of the disk.
> 
> It's not that bad.  Gravity near the edge of an infinitely long
> "ribbon" scales only logarithmically with the width of the ribbon, and
> a disk will have countering effects from the matter on the other side.
> The gravity inside the inner rim's surface would be very strong, but
> more on the order of 4 gees rather than 400.

How about on the *outer* edge?
 
> > I don't want to try figuring the pressure at midpoint.
> 
> It's easier to work out a back-of-the-envelope figure than you might
> think.  The ideal gas law stops being even vaguely useful before you
> reach 100 km depth, but after that you can do a decent approximation
> by considering the "gas" to become effectively incompressible with a
> density probably somewhat higher than water but less than rock.
> 
> So the pressure is likely to be on the order of 15 GPa (150,000
> atmospheres) near the centre.  Maybe a factor of 1.5 either way.

And anything flowing thru *that* is damned unlikely.


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