Spinning Space Ships

Ideas about how a world with more than three spatial dimensions would work - what laws of physics would be needed, how things would be built, how people would do things and so on.

Spinning Space Ships

Postby anderscolingustafson » Sat Apr 26, 2014 3:45 am

One way to have artificial gravity in a space ship is to have it spin. In 3d if a sphere spins the points that are on the equator will move faster than the points on the poles so in 3d a spinning space ship couldn't be in the shape of a sphere because if it was the equator would have the most artificial gravity while the poles would have no artificial gravity. In 4d because a space ship can have a double rotation there would be no problem with a spinning space ship being a hypersphere in terms of artificial gravity as it would be possible for every point on the space ship to move at the same distance so that there would be no points that have no artificial gravity. How would a space ship that spins to produce artificial gravity work?
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Re: Spinning Space Ships

Postby ICN5D » Sun Apr 27, 2014 12:31 am

Sounds like what you're describing is some sort of Dysonglome, or Bernal glome. When the space program was in full swing, some neat paintings were made that depict the inside of huge space colonies. One design is called a Bernalsphere, different from a toroidal. This is what they look like:

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So, in using the extrapolation of two rotating ortho circles on a glome, I suppose there would be a homogeneous field of acceleration, given the Dyson-glome design. This property would allow for the entire inward-facing chorix to be habitable, a perfect 4D equivalent of the 3D Dysonsphere. Where in this design, it could be a much smaller spacecraft that rotates, compared to the classic planetary orbit-sized diameter.
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Re: Spinning Space Ships

Postby quickfur » Thu May 01, 2014 6:05 pm

If the spaceship is in the shape of a rotating glome, the rotation will inevitably settle into a Clifford double rotation where there are an infinite number of stationary plane. Or, put another way, if you trace each point of the glome as it rotates, it will trace out the Hopf fibration of the 3-sphere. Every point rotates in exactly the same way as every other point, so all points on the glome are equivalent, and will undergo the same centrifugal force. So the entire inside of the glome will have equal artificial gravity (under the centrifugal force), and will be completely habitable, unlike the 3D case where points close to the axis of rotation will have weaker artificial gravity.

The only problem with this kind of spaceship, though, is that every point of the glome is undergoing rotation, so there is no fixed facing direction! The bridge would not remain facing the same direction, and neither will the thrusters. The glome itself will, of course, travel in a fixed overall direction, but none of its points will remain facing in this direction. So it will be very confusing for a pilot to steer the ship (the view is constantly rotating away from the direction of travel!), and rather tricky for thrusters to fire in the right direction (they are constantly rotating away from the direction they need to fire in!).

So it seems that such an arrangement would be more suitable as a stationary bio-glome than a spaceship. (In fact, if such a thing could arise naturally, then it would serve as the perfect replacement for 4D planets. :P :lol: )
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Re: Spinning Space Ships

Postby ICN5D » Fri May 02, 2014 4:19 am

Cool, that's what I was thinking, too. What an incredible effect! All points on the surface have the same centripetal acceleration! Whoa, very cool. That's a great thought experiment, and layman's explanation of the property. I'll try that one on my friends later.
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