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The Integral Trees; Life in Zero-G
Topic Started: May 31 2011, 11:38 AM (1,575 Views)
Ddraig Goch
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Integral_Trees

I found this idea quite interesting. The description of the world from "The Smoke Ring" goes as follows;

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The story is set at the fictional neutron star Levoy's Star. The gas giant Goldblatt's World (abbreviated "Gold") orbits the star just outside its Roche limit. While Gold's gravity is enough to keep it from being pulled apart by Levoy's tidal forces, it is insufficient to hold its atmosphere, which has been pulled loose into an independent orbit around Levoy. This orbiting air forms a ring known as the Gas Torus. The Gas Torus is huge—one million kilometers thick—but most of it is too thin to be habitable. The central part of the Gas Torus, where the air is thicker, is known as the Smoke Ring. The Smoke Ring supports a wide variety of life. There is no "ground" in the Smoke Ring; it is a world consisting entirely of sky. Furthermore, since the Smoke Ring is in orbit, it is in free fall. There is no "up" or "down", only "in" or "out" from Levoy.


Could such a Torus form in real life? I am considering using this for my extended-Vabmojer universe, so I was wondering what would be needed for it to form. I forsee several problems, including the distribution of heat, the lifespan of the air-ring, and how life would actually evolve there in the first place.
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Are you plausible?

So we're talking about an protoplanetary accretion disk here?

This is a very turbulent time in the development of a planet, and not very life-friendly. Also, if there hasn't been enough time for the much denser elements of the cloud to form large planetoids then the odds of having a consistently breathable atmosphere in a ring around the entirety of the star are very, very slim. My diagnosis is highly implausible.
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Ànraich
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That doesn't make any sense. The gas giant retains enough gravity to keep from being torn apart, but it gets torn apart and orbits the star as a ring of gas? So... How is it a gas planet again?
We should all aspire to die surrounded by our dearest friends. Just like Julius Caesar.

"The Lord Universe said: 'The same fate I have given to all things from stones to stars, that one day they shall become naught but memories aloft upon the winds of time. From dust all was born, and to dust all shall return.' He then looked upon His greatest creation, life, and pitied them, for unlike stars and stones they would soon learn of this fate and despair in the futility of their own existence. And so the Lord Universe decided to give life two gifts to save them from this despair. The first of these gifts was the soul, that life might more readily accept their fate, and the second was fear, that they might in time learn to avoid it altogether." - Excerpt from a Chanagwan creation myth, Legends and Folklore of the Planet Ghar, collected and published by Yieju Bai'an, explorer from the Celestial Commonwealth of Qonming

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Holben
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The gas wouldn't stay around for long i think- the friction within it would make it fall inwards, like a ring system.
Also, neutron stars put out all kinds of nasty radiation.
What life could live in this space-temperature gas, without any surfaces? How would the essential parts arise?
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

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T.Neo
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I doubt something like this could form naturally. It'd likely either disperse or coalesce into/around distinct objects. In addition, it'll mostly be made out of hydrogen and helium, not a chemistry conducive to habitability even when modified by naturally occuring photoautotrophs.

But an enclosed, artificial structure filled with air is possible, and these could be quite large. A sphere with a diameter of 1400 km (roughly similar to that of Saturn's moon, Iapetus) would have roughly the volume of all of Earth's oceans, and a sphere with a diameter of 1000 km (a little more than the diameter of the planetoid Ceres) would have 40% the volume of Earth's oceans (the volume of the ocean's euphotic zone would be much smaller than both values, which makes these structures- ecologically- absolutely gigantic).

Of course through hundreds to thousands of kilometers of air, you're gonna get dimming, visibility issues. The opaque support structure for the transparent shell won't help. But maybe enough light could penetrate to sustain photosynthesis on the far side of the sphere. On the other hand, the sphere could be made to rotate, slowly at least, to expose its entire contents to varying degrees of sunlight (and to stimulate different kinds of convection currents within the sphere).

Even a few tens of kilometers of air would provide good shielding against radiation, but for organisms living on or near the shell, a little extra might be needed. Fortunately water provides good shielding against particle radiation, and 5-10 meters of it might be sufficient in most cases.

Debris shielding is also a good idea, a thin pane (or series of panes) arranged in what is basically a Whipple shield will protect against most hypervelocity impacts, though of course a sufficiently sized object would punch its way through the sphere and lead to a gradual depressurisation (unless there was perhaps some sort of self-sealing mechanism in place). It should be noted however that without replacement the panes will become increasingly 'sandblasted' and eventually eroded, limiting the amount of light that enters the sphere.

The density of air is around 1.2 kg/m^3; for a 1000 km diameter sphere, this equates to ~6e17 kilograms of air; Earth's atmosphere has a mass of 5e18 kg. A 10 meter thick water shield would mass roughly 3e16 kilograms. The transparent shell might mass another 8e15-1e16 kilograms (based on density values of glass and Aluminium oxynitride, calculated over volume of two ~50cm thick shells), and the support structure (something like carbon nanotubes, perhaps) another ~4e16 kg.

This equates to an all-up mass of around 6.8e17 kilograms. Phobos is roughly 1e16 kg, 253 Mathilde is roughly 1e17 kg, 2060 Chiron is assumed to be ~1e19 kg, and Phoebe, a moon of Saturn, is ~0.83e19 kg.

This is just the bare basics, not including any extra structures, whipple shields, airlocks, stabilisation structures, internal biomass, computation and control systems, etc.
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Spugpow
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Man, that space terrarium idea is one of my favorites in sci fi. Have you seen this?http://www.alexries.com/Gallerypages/gal-fly.htm
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T.Neo
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Seconded. I have an affinity of space terrariums myself; it offers an oppurtunity to see microgravity ecologies; organisms floating weightless in a sea of air, something that we probably won't see at all in any sort of natural environment. In addition, an orbital terrarium would be a pretty sweet engineering project...

I like Alex Ries (known on DeviantArt as Abiogenesis, btw)'s depiction of those microgravity... things, though I'm not sure about the symmetricality of the creatures to the right of the frame.
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Ànraich
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T.Neo
Jun 1 2011, 05:48 AM
I doubt something like this could form naturally. It'd likely either disperse or coalesce into/around distinct objects. In addition, it'll mostly be made out of hydrogen and helium, not a chemistry conducive to habitability even when modified by naturally occuring photoautotrophs.

But an enclosed, artificial structure filled with air is possible, and these could be quite large. A sphere with a diameter of 1400 km (roughly similar to that of Saturn's moon, Iapetus) would have roughly the volume of all of Earth's oceans, and a sphere with a diameter of 1000 km (a little more than the diameter of the planetoid Ceres) would have 40% the volume of Earth's oceans (the volume of the ocean's euphotic zone would be much smaller than both values, which makes these structures- ecologically- absolutely gigantic).

Of course through hundreds to thousands of kilometers of air, you're gonna get dimming, visibility issues. The opaque support structure for the transparent shell won't help. But maybe enough light could penetrate to sustain photosynthesis on the far side of the sphere. On the other hand, the sphere could be made to rotate, slowly at least, to expose its entire contents to varying degrees of sunlight (and to stimulate different kinds of convection currents within the sphere).

Even a few tens of kilometers of air would provide good shielding against radiation, but for organisms living on or near the shell, a little extra might be needed. Fortunately water provides good shielding against particle radiation, and 5-10 meters of it might be sufficient in most cases.

Debris shielding is also a good idea, a thin pane (or series of panes) arranged in what is basically a Whipple shield will protect against most hypervelocity impacts, though of course a sufficiently sized object would punch its way through the sphere and lead to a gradual depressurisation (unless there was perhaps some sort of self-sealing mechanism in place). It should be noted however that without replacement the panes will become increasingly 'sandblasted' and eventually eroded, limiting the amount of light that enters the sphere.

The density of air is around 1.2 kg/m^3; for a 1000 km diameter sphere, this equates to ~6e17 kilograms of air; Earth's atmosphere has a mass of 5e18 kg. A 10 meter thick water shield would mass roughly 3e16 kilograms. The transparent shell might mass another 8e15-1e16 kilograms (based on density values of glass and Aluminium oxynitride, calculated over volume of two ~50cm thick shells), and the support structure (something like carbon nanotubes, perhaps) another ~4e16 kg.

This equates to an all-up mass of around 6.8e17 kilograms. Phobos is roughly 1e16 kg, 253 Mathilde is roughly 1e17 kg, 2060 Chiron is assumed to be ~1e19 kg, and Phoebe, a moon of Saturn, is ~0.83e19 kg.

This is just the bare basics, not including any extra structures, whipple shields, airlocks, stabilisation structures, internal biomass, computation and control systems, etc.
Maybe a giant torus built around the star extending out to the habitable zone? It could be filled with atmosphere and asteroids and be a ring filled with floating islands. Somewhat like the Nexus from Darkspore. But with a less cool history and not orbiting a black hole.
We should all aspire to die surrounded by our dearest friends. Just like Julius Caesar.

"The Lord Universe said: 'The same fate I have given to all things from stones to stars, that one day they shall become naught but memories aloft upon the winds of time. From dust all was born, and to dust all shall return.' He then looked upon His greatest creation, life, and pitied them, for unlike stars and stones they would soon learn of this fate and despair in the futility of their own existence. And so the Lord Universe decided to give life two gifts to save them from this despair. The first of these gifts was the soul, that life might more readily accept their fate, and the second was fear, that they might in time learn to avoid it altogether." - Excerpt from a Chanagwan creation myth, Legends and Folklore of the Planet Ghar, collected and published by Yieju Bai'an, explorer from the Celestial Commonwealth of Qonming

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Are you plausible?

The thing I wonder is whether the artificial torus, massive as it is, would generate an appreciable gravity field. That would certainly ruin a zero-G environment.
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Ànraich
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I doubt it, it's not going to be that massive. I mean, don't get me wrong, it is massive in the sense it is large, but if it stretches around the entire star's habitable zone then the mass will be distributed enough that I think the gravity generated by it would be negligible. And really it depends on what it's made of.
We should all aspire to die surrounded by our dearest friends. Just like Julius Caesar.

"The Lord Universe said: 'The same fate I have given to all things from stones to stars, that one day they shall become naught but memories aloft upon the winds of time. From dust all was born, and to dust all shall return.' He then looked upon His greatest creation, life, and pitied them, for unlike stars and stones they would soon learn of this fate and despair in the futility of their own existence. And so the Lord Universe decided to give life two gifts to save them from this despair. The first of these gifts was the soul, that life might more readily accept their fate, and the second was fear, that they might in time learn to avoid it altogether." - Excerpt from a Chanagwan creation myth, Legends and Folklore of the Planet Ghar, collected and published by Yieju Bai'an, explorer from the Celestial Commonwealth of Qonming

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T.Neo
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Gravity depends on mass and density. Fortunately a space-terrarium is extremely un-dense by planetary standards (since it's mostly air). My space-terrarium example is bigger than Ceres (the largest asteroid) but has roughly the same mass as 253 Mathilde.

253 Mathilde has a surface gravity of 0.00993 m/s^2 and a mean density of around 1.3 g/cm^3. The space terrarium has a far, far lower density. Suffice to say, a microgravity environment would persist within it.

On 253 Mathilde an 80 kg person would weigh roughly 80 grams. On the surface of the space terrarium, an 80 kg person might weigh roughly just under 1.5 grams. And I would call that pretty much microgravity; forces from wind currents and even centrifugal forces will likely predomiante within the terrarium.

The problem is though that as you get larger and larger two things will happen; one is that the air will tend to self-gravitate (more pressure at the center than at the shell), and that forces on the shell itself (from supporting the shell, containing the pressure, or even tidal forces) will increase. Eventually, the shell just can't support itself anymore. And with a torus surrounding a star, the forces would presumably be very large, and could easily be large enough to make the torus collapse into distinct objects.

Add to that the fact that such a torus will, like a ringworld, not be orbiting a star, but instead be in an unstable position around it (liable to collide with the star), requiring artifical stabilisation.
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Ànraich
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It really depends on what the torus is made of, like I said. It could be an enormous ring of thick transparent aluminum, or it could be several concentric rings emitting some kind of electromagnetic stasis field to hold ionized air (sound implausible, but really isn't if you had the technology to build it). Or it could be made of awesomenium, it's just an interesting plot device for the project really; it doesn't matter how implausible the torus is so long as the organisms in it are not.

And I don't see why it wouldn't stabilize it's position around the star to avoid collisions. It has to have some kind of computer system to keep the internal environment stable anyways. It would probably also have to be somewhat self-aware and capable of repairing itself.

EDIT: Maybe the torus itself has a genetic computer and is in a sense a living part of the environment itself.
Edited by Ànraich, Jun 2 2011, 04:14 PM.
We should all aspire to die surrounded by our dearest friends. Just like Julius Caesar.

"The Lord Universe said: 'The same fate I have given to all things from stones to stars, that one day they shall become naught but memories aloft upon the winds of time. From dust all was born, and to dust all shall return.' He then looked upon His greatest creation, life, and pitied them, for unlike stars and stones they would soon learn of this fate and despair in the futility of their own existence. And so the Lord Universe decided to give life two gifts to save them from this despair. The first of these gifts was the soul, that life might more readily accept their fate, and the second was fear, that they might in time learn to avoid it altogether." - Excerpt from a Chanagwan creation myth, Legends and Folklore of the Planet Ghar, collected and published by Yieju Bai'an, explorer from the Celestial Commonwealth of Qonming

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T.Neo
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Awesomium, yeah, I wish I had some of that. :P

Electromagnetic stasis field? I doubt it; reality is not Star Trek.

You could create some sort of electromagnetic field but I doubt you could do much with it, it'd need electromagnets and power thingies and stuff, and to redirect stuff it'd need to be ionised and air isn't ionised, etc.

Aluminium oxynitride is probably the closest you're gonna get to "transparent aluminium", and it probably isn't strong enough for the job. Heck, regular aluminium probably isn't strong enough for the job.

A control system is one thing, a stabilisation system for the control system to control is another. Mind you a particular elegant solution would be to have a self-sustaining biosphere, though that might not be possible.

Why the hell does it have to be self aware though? That's silly. Just program it with good adaptive software and means of dealing with damage and it'll do fine.

Without getting bored an deciding to ram relativistic stars into your civilisation. :rolleyes:
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Ànraich
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First of all, they use inexplicable force fields in Star Trek. They are generated by rerouting power through the EPS conduits to the deflector shield, which sends a burst of tachyons into the plasma junctions to produce harmonic subspace vibratatrons which energy and matter cannot pass through.

I meant something more like using giant ring-shaped electromagnets to hold a large amount of artificially ionized atmospheric particles in a torus shape. And transparent aluminum is already a thing.

Oh and I said self-aware, not conscious. We already have computer systems that are self-aware; computer viruses with "cockroach intelligence," servers capable of realizing when they are under attack (and retaliating, which is kind of scary in itself), robots that seek out power sources when their batteries run low, etc. It's aware of itself but not aware that it is aware.
We should all aspire to die surrounded by our dearest friends. Just like Julius Caesar.

"The Lord Universe said: 'The same fate I have given to all things from stones to stars, that one day they shall become naught but memories aloft upon the winds of time. From dust all was born, and to dust all shall return.' He then looked upon His greatest creation, life, and pitied them, for unlike stars and stones they would soon learn of this fate and despair in the futility of their own existence. And so the Lord Universe decided to give life two gifts to save them from this despair. The first of these gifts was the soul, that life might more readily accept their fate, and the second was fear, that they might in time learn to avoid it altogether." - Excerpt from a Chanagwan creation myth, Legends and Folklore of the Planet Ghar, collected and published by Yieju Bai'an, explorer from the Celestial Commonwealth of Qonming

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T.Neo
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Transparent aluminium when bombarded with X-rays, Parasky.

Completely impractical for actually, y'know, making a window. And still not strong enough.

A robot that seeks out a power source when its batteries run low isn't self-aware. For that matter a calculator reacting to having numbers being pushed into it isn't self-aware either.

And "cockroach intelligence" does not mean self-awareness. It means it has a level of intelligence, it can do things and adapt to things in certain ways. My computer can render graphics. That doesn't mean it is self aware or is anything like me or any other organism for that matter.

Animals are aware, roombas are not. Roombas don't approach that kind of level; unless you side with Descartes and claim that anything that isn't a human is an unfeeling automaton, screaming in pain only because its clock-springs are being unwound... :rolleyes:
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