Re: (TFT) Versions of hollow Cidri --> Weirder the better.

[Rick Smith <rsmith@lightspeed.ca>]

  When I was in high school, I worked out what
the density of a material would have to be to
give a constant gravity as the radius went to
infinity.

  I found that a constant density would not do
the job.  The density had to keep decreasing 
as the world got larger and larger.

  So if you want to have a world with a radius 
of (say) a million km, then the density has
to be pretty 'airy'.  Thus the idea that the
world is hollow begins to make sense.  


  Now I agree that the "giant gates to many
worlds" works most logically for a Cidri 
where you want to have effectively an 
infinite size to fit on every campaign of
any size an arbitrary number of fans can
build.  However I have always been fond of
Cidri being one giant place.


  It is obviously a construct on the size 
of a ring world.  Making it hollow is nice
as it doubles your surface area.  Also the
inside is DIFFERENT.  No stars, no horizon
and lots of cool effects.

  The Warlord comics from DC used this idea
which (I am told) they stole from E.R.
Burrows Pellinar (sp?) stories.

  To keep a million km radius planet from
having the equatorial speed throwing items
off into space, I suspect that the world 
would look more like a cylinder or very 
skinny football.  This is interesting as it 
means the horizon is a different distance
away depending if you are looking north or
east.

  It is correct that the inside of the 
sphere would be at zero gravity.  I 
assumed that some sort of gravity generator
in the rocky bit would fix that, but an
anti gravity sphere in the middle would do
the job just as well.  Also having a vast
ball forever above you suggests other 
possibilities.  It could be a featureless
orb but that is dull.  What if it had all 
sorts of markings and areas of bright and 
dark.  Perhaps some zones open and have 
cones of influence that allow hostile 
spirits, etc. to come down and touch the 
inner surface.

  Anyway, when discussing this, people need
to be clear on what assumptions they are 
using.  Some of the debate on the hollow 
Cidri seems to be coming from simple confusion
of which VERSION of the physics people are 
using for that letter.

  The vast majority of fantasy campaigns use
the "just like Earth but with Magic!!!" 
physics models.  I personally am very 
interested in what the physics would suggest
for these alien, very different models for
Cidri.

  Rick


On Sun, 2006-02-05 at 22:35, Scott Haley wrote:
> Yes, I think it would.  But if Cidri is as huge as they say in the  
> rulebooks, the "up" gravity at the core would have to be a lot more  
> than 1 gee.
> 
> -Scott
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