[TML] Alderson disk

[Richard Aiken]

On Dec 11, 2007 7:27 PM, Jerry W Barrington <jursamaj at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Makes me wonder if this would need active help, or would the tectonic cells
> automatically tend to break up at that scale.  I think the continental
> plates would, based on my understanding of tectonics.  Not sure about
> oceanic plates.

How about my idea of hexagonal pans made of the same unobtainium used
for the spine of the disk?  Within each pan, plate tectonics work
normally.  But the plates can't cross between pans.

> Air pressure rises & drops over the diurnal period.  Since yours is 192
> hours...  :)  (the tidal effect of the sun would be trivial)

Huge air pump?

> Of course, if they were
> planetary-scale, the edge effect gravity would complicate things!  You could
> actually walk from one side to the other.  I think this would change the air
> pressure calculations too.

Ah!  My Long Stairs are back!  Well, not stairs actually.  Hmmmm.
Wouldn't the sunward sides of planetary scale holes be in perpetual
darkness?  With the sun only peeking in toward the top of its arc on
either side, the middle parts of each hole ready would be The Darkling
Realms, home of the Drow (or rather several different races of Drow).
:-)

> > Maybe instead of a single disk we could have a series of nested rings,
> > each riding on a center layer of impossibly-stiff unobtainium?  Each
> > ring would be seperated from the next by a megasea bordered by a
> > megarange of mountains?  Alternate disks rotating in opposite
> > directions at one revolution per year (along the 1 AU latitude,
> > anyway)?
>
> At 1 AU, if you cross the megaseaa, stay 1 day, then cross back, you're over
> 3.2 million miles away.  It'd take a lifetime to get home.  In just 1 hours,
> it's 133,000 miles.

Ah.  But if you stay six months - recall that the two rings are
rotating in opposite directions - you'll come right back around to
opposite your home.  A one-year roundtrip time - given a sea as wide
as the Earth - sounds about right.

> > There are seven gods, but these are - at least according to one of the
> > reviewers - more akin to monsters which must be appeased than deities to be
> > respected and emulated.
>
> I'd argue that that is true of most deities in history...

Perhaps.  But in this case it could be literally true.  The deities
could be immigrants from regions where the natives need to use magic
just to stay alive.  Essentially, they'd be Kryptonians to the rest of
the disk inhabitants.

-- 
Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident."  Robert A. Heinlein