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Forum URL: http://www.eyrie-productions.com/Forum/dcboard.cgi
Forum Name: Symphony of the Sword/The Order of the Rose
Topic ID: 11
Message ID: 20
#20, RE: Wait... what?
Posted by BLUE on Jun-06-06 at 07:25 PM
In response to message #17
LAST EDITED ON Jun-06-06 AT 09:41 PM (EDT)
 
>To sum up all this wandering gibberish: Gravity don't work the way
>you think it works.

>

I'm going to be an asshole now. {EDIT: Well, people will probably think I am one, anyway.}

I made a couple of assumptions about the sphere, and you're right, Zeta Cygni WOULD exert a pull. The sphere, however, WOULD also exert a pull. Maybe an extremely weak one, like Phobos or Deimos, such that without gravity generators you could jump too hard (assuming your muscles are used to 1g) or throw something and leave the surface and therefore fall under the effects of Zeta Cygni, but there is a stupid amount of mass in the sphere, and it would have some influence.

If you want to think about why this is so, look in our own back yard, or rather in our orbit. The moon is tidally locked with the earth, so that one face of it always faces earth. If what you said was true, anything on the earthward side of the moon would automatically fall towards earth, since earth has a stronger gravitational pull than the moon. Since this doesn't, in fact, happen, then the mass of the moon must be able to keep stuff firmly attached to the surface.

You were right, all mass centers on ZC. From the OUTSIDE. Beyond that is where conventional thought gets a little screwy, both because of the sheer scale and because conventional thought was never intended to study or explain a dyson sphere. From the inside, I believe what I said above applies; think of it as a huge tidally locked lunar surface. Mars' moon Deimos, being shaped irregularly, is 9 miles at it's largest 'diameter' and 7 at its smaller, yet it generates enough gravity that you could walk on it. The sphere would be the same way, with the outer surface, the shielding, whatever 'stuff' is necessary to keep the access gates and such operational, and the pseudocontinent as well making up the sphere wall certain thickness, and the expanse of the surface compensating for the fact that it may only be a mile or two thick.

So, you were right about needing generators, at least to achieve 1g, unless the pseudo-continent and sphere were absurdly thick and/or the sphere spun extremely quickly. But stuff falling into ZC? Only if pushed.