Halo Science - Ringworlds and Plasma Weapons

The book Halo Effect is an intriguing title that takes a look Bungie's best-selling Halo titles from a number of different angles. Each chapter includes coverage of specific elements; included are descriptions of pro events, a bit on the development process, and the making of the Red vs. Blue series. One of the most interesting chapters takes a look at the science behind the Halo world, talking about the physics and logic behind ringworlds and the hi-tech weaponry seen in the game. Thanks in part to a mini-review of the book on the GameSetWatch site, Gamasutra has been allowed to reprint the entire 'science of Halo' chapter on their website. "A 5,000 kilometer radius would yield a circumference of roughly 31,400 kilometers. If we assume a width-to-radius ratio similar to that of Niven's Ringworld, they would be approximately 5.37 kilometers wide. They are significantly wider, though, at 320 kilometers. The Halos, then, would have a surface area of 10 million square kilometers - slightly larger than the surface area of Canada, and approximately 2 percent of the surface area of Earth. Of course, since we know that there are lakes, seas, and rivers on the Halos, the livable surface area would be fractionally less." Update: 05/02 18:30 GMT by Z : The initial version of the article posted was from pre-production and contained some errors. They've been fixed in the article and now here in the post as well.

Comments

decimal point

[PresidentEnder]

I assume that there is a missing decimal point in the summary, since those figures give a much larger surface area.

Re:decimal point

[bhima]

From the back of Ringworld (1970 printing)

A ring 93 million miles in radius (on earth obit)
600 million miles long
One million miles wide
thickness of of about 1000 meters
walls on the edge 1000 miles high

Rotation on axis 770 miles per second

But I'm sure those or just generalities

Re:decimal point

[ATestR]

Niven's Ringworld was 1 million km wide (although the units may have been miles). Assuming that the units were in km, to have the same proportions as the Ringworld, the Halo world would have to be approximately 5/150 times this, or 33,333 km wide.

Re:decimal point

[gobbo]

Has to be, since I'm pretty sure Niven's ring didn't have a width/radius ratio of 10, since that would have made the ringworld 930 million miles wide, a veritable ringtube where the ends would be frozen and uninhabitable. I don't have the book handy, but I'm pretty sure the ring was actually fairly narrow, perhaps only a few thousand miles wide on a ring over five hundred million miles around.

Niven's Ringworld is one million miles across the ribbon, the rim walls holding in the atmosphere are 1000 miles high, and its circumference is 600 million miles around. For those who use a more sensible and thus cowardly* base 10 measurement system: 1,609,344 km wide, rim walls 1,609 km high, and 965,606,400 km in circumference. That yields a radius (AU) of 153,681,031 km. The radius/width ratio is thus about 154:1, so your instincts are correct, even if the calculation is a bit off.

Added bonus: the surface area works out to 1.6×10^15 sq.km--about 3 million Earths; wrap your head around that! Halo's 10,000 km diameter is relatively tiny.

(* Profuse apologies: impugning the valour of anything French, including metrics, on american-run sites is, seemingly, de rigueur.)

Bad Calculations

[rherbert]

"A 5,000 kilometer radius would yield a circumference of roughly 31,400 kilometers. If we assume a width-to-radius ratio similar to that of Niven's ringworld, we get a width of approximately 53,700 kilometers. The Halos, then, would have a surface area of 1.68 million square kilometers."

A width of 53k kilometers and a radius of 5k would be a very long cylinder. Given the other numbers, 1,680,000 km^2 / 31,400 km gives a width of 53.5 km, which is much more reasonable and ring-shaped.

Go to the original

[linzeal]

Why bother with the mediocre writing of game novel hacks when you can go straight to Niven?

Sorry Niven;

[B5_geek]

The Ringworld is unstable!

Sorry I just couldn't resist.

Ringworld is simply a must-read for anybody who considers themselves a geek. Thank God it won't ever be made into a movie.

Ringworlds have a lot of problems

[SirBruce]

Unfortunately, there are numerous technical problems that make Ringworlds problematic, as Niven tried to address in later books. The Ring requires active stabilization, day and night cycles can only be crudely simulated, etc. Perhaps the biggest problem is that the structural material itself would have to have the tensile strength of the strong nuclear force just to hold together...

Dyson Spheres actually make a lot more sense than Ringworlds. Any civilization capable of making a Ringworld would most likely be able to make a Dyson Sphere.

Walls

[argent]

There are walls all along the rim, high enough to keep the atmosphere in.