Ringworld exists - Found by Hubble!

Dracul writes: "Niven was a prophet, clearly this object is not a giant hamburger, but rather evidence that Homo Habilis really was Pak!"

I prefer real burgers

[infonography]

This looks like a garden burger. But seriously, it looks like the early stages of the dust cloud being blow out by solar winds. it's just natural that it would follow the gravity/spin of the star. lucky us to be at the right angle to see it. Yay Hubble!

Re:I prefer real burgers

[infonography]

On further contemplation it occurs to me that at some point the shape of the clouds will come to resemble a pair of cones (arrows seen from the side) pointing at the magnetic poles of the star. Can you say X marks the spot. I plan to wait around till that happens.

llooks like

[thewheeze]

legs to me...on a fine lady, yeah that's right.

ok
i need to get out more.

Re:llooks like

[macdaddy357]

Looks like the thing between her legs, dimly lit by candlelight. I'm getting wood!

Not really a ringwold

[inio]

For those that didn't read the article, its a ring of matter expelled by a dying star.

Oh, and if I remember the series right, the Pak didn't build the Ringworld, they just found it. (Fawn built it).

Ringworld sequels

[dpilot]

I read "Ringworld" and "Ringworld Engineers" but wasn't aware that there was a third. So it's not worth the money, but if I see it in the library is it worth the life-span?

Re:Ringworld sequels

[some guy I know]

The third book is "The Ringworld Throne".
It's not as "science-fictiony" as the other two (e.g., no spaceships, etc.).
IIRC, it's just Louis Wu wandering around Ringworld, the story having no real beginning or end, but it's been a while since I read it.
I think that Niven has gotten away from hard scince fiction, and more toward so-called "science fantasy", in his later works, but even his earliest stories contain some elements of fantasy (e.g., the luck of Teela Brown in the original "Ringworld").

Re:Not really a ringwold

[satanami69]

You fucking idiot. Her name is Molly Ringwald, not ringwold. Notice the 'A' that clearly makes it different.

Re:Not really a ringwold

[Snaller]

Thats not even funny.

Re:Not really a ringwold

[Dracul]

Nope, they built it as an alternative to protect themselves from the core explosion (check out the two sequels to Ringworld).

And as for the other comment, yes Pak are the ancestors of humans according to Brennan (who may or may not have been right - the Kzinti thought he was)

And no, I didn't think Niven was that obscure...

Hamburger?

[tswinzig]

The thing looks more like a yo-yo. Clearly god's way of telling us the universe continuously expands and then contracts... clearly.

Re:whoa

[devphil]

Hardly obscure. Larry Niven's "Known Space" future history is one of the most well-known story universes in SF -- and assuming you've at least heard of it is an understandable assumption for a geek site to make.

Ringworld won Nebula and Hugo awards when it was published. Ten years later the massive continuing flow of fan letters and mathematical papers forced Niven to write a sequel, The Ringworld Engineers, also very good. He followed it up some 12-16 years later by publishing The Ringworld Throne which was mostly crap.

The "Ringworld" is a gigantic artifical ring of solid matter constructed around a star, one million miles wide, six hundred million miles long, and several hundred feet thick. The inner surface is habitable (and, of course, fucking gigantic in surface area).

Re:whoa

[thefensk]

A radius of one million would be far too close to the star. The radius was 93 million miles. The *width* of the plane of the ring was 1 million miles. The rotation of the ring generated about 1G. A radius of 93 million miles would give it a length of almost 600 million miles. The original guy was right.

Encyclopedia of Known Space

[Caduceus1]

For a complete (and I mean complete - it took over a year to create) Encyclopedia to Larry Niven's Known Space, head over to http://www.oinc.net/knownspace/ [oinc.net]

Re:whoa

[flonker]

Larry Niven [google.com], author of the Ringworld books, among others is hardly obscure [google.com]. He also coined the term flash crowd [tuxedo.org]. Google [google.com], as always, turns up a wealth of information.

On a related note, due to the inherent instabilities of a ringworld [alcyone.com], I would suggest looking for signs of jets (or other methods of in-space propulsion) around the peripherary of the disk. That should provide significant evidence as to whether it's really a ringworld, or "just" a belt of dust, as the article indicates.

Re:whoa

[Louis_Wu]

Never heard of Niven?!?!? I'm crushed. Why don't you like me?

... Psst. Look at my nick again.

Louis Wu is a recuring character in Niven's books. He plays a major role in the Ringworld series, he's seen in various Kzin stories, and he just crops up every now-and-then.

Louis Wu

[dpilot]

Not to mention in Steely Dan's "Katy Lied", either. Of course there he goes by his more formal "Doctor" title.

Re:whoa

[Moxon]

His fathers are a lot cooler, though. Discovering the core explosion and destroying a GP hull beats current addiction and fscking around on the Ringworld any day.

OK, he's probably cooler than his genetic father, come to think of it.

Re:whoa

[J. Random Software]

A short story called "Flatlander". It's collected in Crashlander (rather than Flatlander) because it's about Beowulf Shaeffer, along with a rich Earth native who goes by "Elephant" gaining a healthy sense of fear.

Re:whoa

[Suidae]

I don't recall the story name, but didn't they go look at some antimater system/galaxy or something? The GP hull was destroyed in a series of mater/antimater collisions with free particles in the area. The contents of the hull, drive system, controls & etc, hung together long enough for them to get home.

Re:whoa

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok....you're reading a website clearly labeled "News for Nerds" and you aren't familiar with one of the most famous sci-fi authors (Larry Niven). Methinks you're in the wrong place.

Also...

[Shade1001]

Check it out on APOD [nasa.gov]

Not found by Hubble!

[beat.bolli]

If any of you had read the explanation [nasa.gov] on the excellent APOD site, you'd have seen that this thing had already been found in 1985 by Arturo Gomez [stsci.edu]. This is hust a new Hubble picture of it.

ad server

[drDugan]

the server space.com uses to store their images is a1484.g.akamaitech.net -- which is a known ad source and sits in my hosts file as 127.0.0.1

too bad. space.com is no longer any use to me because of excessive ads.

Re:ad server

[PhxBlue]

Come to think of it, that's probably why the .mil proxy server I sit behind eight hours a day blocks it, too.

Sigh...

[SpiffyMarc]

You do, of course, realize what Akami is... they do not, themselves, serve up any of that content to you. They are a hosting outsourcing and web caching service. Check it out [akamai.com].

Would you refuse to go into a grocery store, just because it was physically located right next to a telemarketing office?

Check out "Astronomy Picture of the Day"

[Dammital]

Gomez's Hamburger is featured today (August 7, 2002). I check this site out daily; they frequently post some really tasty pics. http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html [nasa.gov]

Excuse me!

[Izanagi]

We've know about Ringworm a long time!!

UH...WAIT A SECOND??

No, it's

[shadowbearer]

two flying saucers mating, of course :)

SB