Fist-of-God

[zaxxon]

My attempt at an approximation of the 'Fist-of-God' from Larry Niven's Ringwold. The dimensions are 'solar' in scale, orders of magnitude beyond 'planetary'. For some info on Niven's Ringworld:

http://www.dennisantinori.com/Resources/Ringworld/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld
http://larryniven.net/physics.shtml

From the novel, describing 'Fist-of-God'

He saw the, system of the Ringworld, sterile, tidily clean, empty of ramships, empty but for a G2 star and a daisy chain of shadow squares and the Ringworld.

He saw a foreign body passing near, too near. He watched its hyperbolic fall from interstellar space, and he saw its path interrupted—by the underside of the Ringworld. In his vision the foreign body was about the size of the Earth's Moon.

It must have been ionized plasma in the first seconds. A meteorite can be cooled by ablation, by the boiling away of its own skin. But here the vaporized gas could not expand; it had forced its way into a deforming pocket of the Ringworld floor. The landscape had deformed upward, its carefully planned ecology and rainfall patterns shot to hell over a region greater than the surface of the Earth. All that desert ... and Fist-of-God itself, raised a full thousand miles upward before the incredibly tough Ring floor ripped to let the fireball through.

Fist-Of-God? Tanj, yes! Watching from a Ringworld prison cell, Louis Wu had seen it clear in his mind's eye. It must have been visible clear to both rims: a ball of hellfire the size of the Earth's Moon ripping up through the floor of the Ringworld like a strong man's fist through a cardboard box.

The natives could be thankful that the Ring floor had deformed as much as it did. The hole was easily big enough to let all the air out of the Ringworld; but it was a thousand miles too high ...

[Mahnmut]

Very interesting concept and good start on it, but until now I don´t see the scale, you still have to mention it.
If the hole is moon- sized, so are your clouds, more or less. You need something to give the whole thing a sense of scale, and i know that is no easy task in these dimensions.
My best regards,
J

[Kadri]

Very nice start zaxxon.
Maybe some lakes ,oceans, different landscapes etc.

[zaxxon]

The scale is truly enormous and may not be realistically achieved with the tools at hand (certainly not from me and my skill set with T2 at this point!). I have yet to see any illustrations, digital or illustrated that come close to being able to convey the full magnitude; as I said this is my 'approximation'. According to the book, the impacted landscape is 'millions of square miles of desolation' and a 'lunar-like' vista. In large part because of the disruption of the programmed (by the Ringworld Engineers)weather patterns, the area around the F.O.G. is arid with no appreciable precipitation. I truly would have loved to add some lakes, rivers, and vegetative areas to gain some scale, but that would not have been true to the original concept. As to how wide the diameter of the exit point is, who knows? Remember the 'moon' was vaporized at initial contact and forced itself thru the incredibly dense Ringworld base material ('Scrith' whose tensile properties have been an ongoing discussion in Physics and Engineering circles for some time now). The elevation of the artifact is about a 1,000 miles (whoa!), and the object is described as roughly 'conical', so what would the circumference of the base be? I'd attempt to stick it on a planetary surface to scale it up, but to defeat the curvature I'd have to have a planet with a radius that would extend a flat horizon for almost 1,000,000 miles (double-whoa!!), as the distance from rim wall to rim wall across the Ringworld floor is 997,000 miles (and 'flat', with the 'curvature' extending along the Ring inner surface for almost 600 million miles! Appearing to the human eye as 'flat' - the Ring being viewed as a gigantic 'arc' over the world) . A flat plain with that dimension might work, but is such an object (F.O.G.) even doable in T2, or any current software? As to the clouds: I'm hoping that the FrankB magic in the upcoming webinars might help me get a better grasp of that! If any one wants to have a go at this, I'll give you what I've started. At this point I'm undecided whether to continue the project or not.

[Kadri]

Did you see this thread zaxxon ?

http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=10980.0

[zaxxon]

Yes! I did see that thread and in my burrowings thru the archives here was astounded at how beautiful those images were, in fact those pieces rank at the top of T2 images I've seen (tied with a select few others  ). The scale works for those, maybe closer to the Ringworlds in Halo? At any rate, T2 definately affords the kind of tempting possibilities to try out a challenging concept, I never felt that way with the other Natural Landscape Software in my toolkit (known as Brand X in this locale  ). Also, lest it slip my mind - the starfield was generated from Dandelo's procedural starfield, thanks Dandelo!