Significance of the solar wind

In article <41364C2F.F6C18A40 DeleteThis @alcyone.com>, max DeleteThis @alcyone.com (Erik Max
Francis) wrote:

 > It's because your "production of numbers" is totally immaterial to what
 > anyone's been saying. Who cares what the total flux is, what counts is
 > what the areic flux density is. And by definition, that's exactly the
 > same for the Ringworld as it is for the Earth.

True, but....

 >
 > Yes, the Ringworld is bigger and so captures more particles. But it
 > doesn't capture any more particles per unit area than the Earth does,
 > and since the heights of the atmospheres are the same in both cases,
 > that changes nothing.

.... the ringworld intercepts 0.25% of the solar wind and the Earth
intercepts only 0.002% of the solar wind. A factor of 120 difference does
mean that what you originally considered insubstantial, now is significant
enough to be factored into your calculations. It is simply because the
Ringworld is so vast that this becomes necessary. To ignore it is to
condemn your decendants to death, hardly what the Pak would do.

 >
 > Making up numbers and multiplying them together to say, "Wow, that's a
 > big number" doesn't really tell you anything here. When quantitative
 > calculations show you're wrong, you ignore them; when you're stuck in a
 > corner, you multiply random numbers together and demand praise.

I must have really hit a raw nerve with you, do you realise that you
haven't actually pointed out if I have gone wrong anywhere. You either
miss the point completely or ridicule crucial numbers, saying they are
meaningless ( you would be right if we were talking about the Earth, but
we are not! ).

Stephen

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 >> Stay informed about: Significance of the solar wind 

In article <8b42afac.0409011937.b083b5.TakeThisOut@posting.google.com>,
kuyper.TakeThisOut@wizard.net (James Kuyper) wrote:

 > An how, exactly, did you conclude significance? All you've done is
 > compare the density of the solar wind relative to the density of the
 > solar flares, without calculating the actual density of either one.

The significance is in the catchment area. Where a single solar flare is
sufficient to encompass Earth, the equivalent of 300,000 solar flares is
always hitting the Ringworld's upper atmosphere. Even a tiny effect mounts
up when dealing with a Ringworld

 > You're assuming, I believe, that the gas from a solar flare carries
 > significant mass and momentum.

No, but a single solar flare is enough to knock a Ringworld off centre so
small effects can and do build up to high significance.

 > Compared to the mass of the Ringworld's
 > atmosphere, that's simply not the case. A solar flare has a pretty
 > respectable density at the surface of the Sun, but by the time it
 > impacts the Earth it's density is extremely low.

Remember, 0.25% of the solar wind is hitting the Ringworld. Even an
extremely low density for the wind becomes significant. Remember the
butterfly effect.

Stephen

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 >> Stay informed about: Significance of the solar wind 

Stephen Forbes wrote:

 > ... the ringworld intercepts 0.25% of the solar wind and the Earth
 > intercepts only 0.002% of the solar wind. A factor of 120 difference
 > does
 > mean that what you originally considered insubstantial, now is
 > significant
 > enough to be factored into your calculations.

You obviously did not even bother reading what I said. That difference
(which doesn't look accurate anyway) would make a difference if the size
of Ringworld's atmosphere and Earth's atmosphere were the same. Since
they're not, the _areic_ solar wind flux intercepting the Earth and
Ringworld are the same.

 > I must have really hit a raw nerve with you, do you realise that you
 > haven't actually pointed out if I have gone wrong anywhere.

Confirmed: You cannot read.

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 >> Stay informed about: Significance of the solar wind 

steve RemoveThis @antispam.sforbesa.cix.co.uk (Stephen Forbes) wrote in message news:<memo.20040902190512.16461B RemoveThis @sforbesa.compulink.co.uk>...
 > In article <8b42afac.0409011937.b083b5 RemoveThis @posting.google.com>,
 > kuyper RemoveThis @wizard.net (James Kuyper) wrote:
 >
  > > An how, exactly, did you conclude significance? All you've done is
  > > compare the density of the solar wind relative to the density of the
  > > solar flares, without calculating the actual density of either one.
 >
 > The significance is in the catchment area. Where a single solar flare is
 > sufficient to encompass Earth, the equivalent of 300,000 solar flares is
 > always hitting the Ringworld's upper atmosphere. Even a tiny effect mounts
 > up when dealing with a Ringworld

It doesn't matter that it "mounts up". The total amount of material
coming in from solar winds and solar flares combined is much larger
for the Ringworld than for the earth, but it's much larger by
precisely that same factor that the Ringworld's atmosphere is larger
than the Earth's. The relative effect of the the incoming material on
the atmosphere is therefore going to be of the same entirely
negligible order of magnitude as the effects it has on the Earth.

  > > You're assuming, I believe, that the gas from a solar flare carries
  > > significant mass and momentum.
 >
 > No, but a single solar flare is enough to knock a Ringworld off centre so
 > small effects can and do build up to high significance.

That's because the Ringworld's position relative to the star is in an
unstable equilibrium in the plane of rotation. It's like balancing a
tennis ball on top of a basketball. All the forces are in balance, but
even the smallest disturbance puts the forces out of balance. Further
motion of the balls is driven by the dynamics of the unbalanced
forces, and not by the initial force. Any small disturbance tends to
grow exponentially in time. The small ball could never be perfectly
balanced on top of the big one; quantum uncertainty rules it out, but
the uncertainty is an incredibly tiny fraction of the size of a
proton. However, a standard graduate physics exam question asks you
how long it takes for an imbalance of that size to cause the small
ball to roll completely off the large one. It's an amazingly small
amount of time, on the order of a thousand seconds.

The Ringworld's atmosphere is in the same kind of near-equilibrium
state with respect to the Ringworld's centrifugal forces, that Earth's
atmosphere is with respect to it's gravitational forces. Both
equilibria are stable, not unstable, which means that small
perturbations tend to produce reactions which counter the
perturbations, rather than reinforcing them. Instead of exponentially
growing, perturbations are exponentially damped.

  > > Compared to the mass of the Ringworld's
  > > atmosphere, that's simply not the case. A solar flare has a pretty
  > > respectable density at the surface of the Sun, but by the time it
  > > impacts the Earth it's density is extremely low.
 >
 > Remember, 0.25% of the solar wind is hitting the Ringworld. Even an
 > extremely low density for the wind becomes significant. Remember the
 > butterfly effect.

The butterfly effect involves what is typically a different kind of
exponential growth. For some dynamical systems, a small change in
initial conditions can cause an exponentially growing change in the
state of the system.

However, such dynamical systems often (always? I don't remember) have
what is called an attractor. It is a set of states that the system
tends to fall into. Once the system has entered one of these states,
it continues changing to one the other states in the attractor. For
instance, in a simple case of a system described by two variables, x
and y, the attractor could be a circle x^2+y^2=1. If you start the
system far away from the attractor, it will move toward the circle. As
it approaches the circle, it will start tending to move around the
circle. An unstable system is described as having an attractor at
infinity

The butterfly effect stops growing exponentially as soon as the
difference between the original and perturbed versions of the system
is comparable to the size of the attractor. The butterfly changes what
part of the circle the system is on at any given time, but it can't
bump the system off the circle. In the case of the Earth's atmosphere,
the attractor is the set of all the near-typical atmospheric states.
In one state, there's a hurricane in Cuba; in another state the
hurricane is in Virginia. The butterfly can change the timing of the
hurricane so it's in the first state rather than the second at 7:00 on
Septermber 9th. It could even prevent the hurricane from forming. But
during the hurricane season, there will always be another hurricane
coming along. It can't turn all of the hurricanes off, and it can't
make the hurricane have more than a certain maximum amount of force.

Solar winds and solar flares are perfectly capable of having
butterfly-like effects on the weather, that's equally true for the
Earth and the Ringworld. However, those butterfly wings aren't strong
enough to knock the atmosphere off of the Ringworld, because gaseous
equilibrium returns the system to a different part of the attractor.
That's good to know, because if there were an unstable equilibrium
that could be excited by these mechanisms to knock the atmosphere off
of the Ringworld, then that same mechanism would be proportionately
weaker on Earth, and therefore equally capable (since the Earth's
atmosphere is so much smaller) of stripping away the Earth's
atmosphere.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Significance of the solar wind 

On 9/1/2004 3:00 PM Stephen Forbes cranked up the brainbox and said:
 > I find it interesting that Eric, James and JesusX have not made any kind
 > of comment to this message.

Because your numbers aren't real numbers, they're your conjecture based on vague
references in the book.

But, you want a reply? Ok.

The solar wind is comprised of about 907,184,740 kilograms of mass ejected from
the entire surface of the sun per second. The sun has a surface area of about
6.09 × 10^18 square meters, or 6,090,000,000,000,000,000. That means there's
about one kilogram of matter ejected per 6.71307588 × 10^9 square meters
(6,713,075,880 square meters).

Now, that's a really tiny amount of mass over a huge area. (It's comprised of
about 95% hydrogen, 4% helium, and the other 1% is a mix of Carbon, Iron,
Magnesium, Neon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, and Silicon, btw.) Now, let's look at that
one second's worth of ejecta. It's moving away from the sun at about 300-600
km/sec. So, that one second's worth is expanding like a bubble, which means that
the further away from it you are, the less of it will be in each cubic meter. At
earth's orbit, the solar wind's density is about 6,000,000 ions per cubic meter,
or about 9.96 * 10^-21 kilograms. The earth's atmosphere at sealevel is about a
1.2 kilograms per cubic meter (comprised of essentially 78% Nitrogen, 21%
Oxygen, and the rest being Argon, CO2, Helium, Hydrogen, Methane, Neon, Krypton).

So, at earth's orbit, the solar wind is 9.96*10^-21 kg/m^3, and the atmosphere
at sea level is 1.2kg/m^3. the solar wind is almost NOTHING compared to a stiff
breeze on earth.

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 >> Stay informed about: Significance of the solar wind 

JRS: In article <8b42afac.0409021805.390d6189.TakeThisOut@posting.google.com>,
dated Thu, 2 Sep 2004 19:05:37, seen in news:alt.books.larry-niven,
James Kuyper <kuyper.TakeThisOut@wizard.net> posted :

 > The total amount of material
 >coming in from solar winds and solar flares combined is much larger
 >for the Ringworld than for the earth, but it's much larger by
 >precisely that same factor that the Ringworld's atmosphere is larger
 >than the Earth's.

Not precisely.

For every square metre of the Ringworld solar wind intercepted, there is
a square metre of atmosphere; but for every square metre of Sol's wind
intercepted, Earth has four square metres of atmosphere.

The Ring atmosphere intercepts, per unit area, four times the wind.

Insignificant corrections for the Ring having lower gravity, hence more
atmosphere for the same pressure; and for whatever the pressure actually
is. Correction for the difference in wind strengths.

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 >> Stay informed about: Significance of the solar wind 

jesus X <jesus_x RemoveThis @mozillanews.org> writes:
 >The solar wind is comprised of about 907,184,740 kilograms of mass ejected from
 >the entire surface of the sun per second. The sun has a surface area of about
 >6.09 × 10^18 square meters, or 6,090,000,000,000,000,000. That means there's
 >about one kilogram of matter ejected per 6.71307588 × 10^9 square meters
 >(6,713,075,880 square meters).

Every once in a while, something smacks me hard in the face to remind me
that the universe is a DAMN big place. The sun is losing a billion
kilograms of mass to the solar wind per second, but it can keep doing that
for another 5-10 billion years. I think I need to sit in a corner and rock for
a while. *
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 >> Stay informed about: Significance of the solar wind 

In article <dJUZc.3311$A63.813@trnddc09>, jesus_x.TakeThisOut@mozillanews.org (jesus
X) wrote:

 > So, at earth's orbit, the solar wind is 9.96*10^-21 kg/m^3, and the
 > atmosphere
 > at sea level is 1.2kg/m^3. the solar wind is almost NOTHING compared to
 > a stiff
 > breeze on earth.

Except that I have never compared the solar wind to a stiff breeze on
earth. I know its no contest.

Now that you have a figure for the solar wind see what happens when you
apply it to the Ringworld's upper, rarified atmosphere.

eg. if one proton hits one air molecule per cubic metre in the upper
atmosphere, how long will it take, on the Ringworld NOT EARTH, to disrupt
say one kilogram of air?

Stephen

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 >> Stay informed about: Significance of the solar wind 

steve RemoveThis @antispam.sforbesa.cix.co.uk (Stephen Forbes) wrote in message news:<memo.20040903185121.41409C RemoveThis @sforbesa.compulink.co.uk>...
....
 > eg. if one proton hits one air molecule per cubic metre in the upper
 > atmosphere, how long will it take, on the Ringworld NOT EARTH, to disrupt
 > say one kilogram of air?

I can't figure out what it means to "disrupt" a kilogram of air.
However, I can assure you that, whatever it means, it doesn't happen a
lot faster on the Ringworld than on Earth. That's because the basic
mechanics and most of the relevant numbers are close enough to being
the same in both cases.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Significance of the solar wind 

In article <10jh8mlr06jib55 DeleteThis @news.supernews.com>,
pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) wrote:

 > jesus X <jesus_x DeleteThis @mozillanews.org> writes:

  >> The solar wind is comprised of about 907,184,740 kilograms of mass
  >> ejected from the entire surface of the sun per second. The sun has
  >> a surface area of about 6.09 × 10^18 square meters, or
  >> 6,090,000,000,000,000,000. That means there's about one kilogram of
  >> matter ejected per 6.71307588 × 10^9 square meters (6,713,075,880
  >> square meters).

Wow!


 > Every once in a while, something smacks me hard in the face to remind
 > me that the universe is a DAMN big place. The sun is losing a billion
 > kilograms of mass to the solar wind per second, but it can keep doing
 > that for another 5-10 billion years. I think I need to sit in a corner
 > and rock for a while. *

There was an article in a recent issue of New Scientist magazine, where
some scientists calculated the odds against another Big Bang occurring
in our universe - at 10^(10^56)) to 1. They point out that this is such
a gigantic number, there is no need to assign any units of measure.

It could be the chance of a Big Bang in the galaxy over the next billion
years, or of one happening on the space bar of this keyboard while typing
this sentence - the two numbers are virtually equal by comparison.


Tennant Stuart

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 >> Stay informed about: Significance of the solar wind 

On 9/3/2004 1:51 PM Stephen Forbes cranked up the brainbox and said:
 > Except that I have never compared the solar wind to a stiff breeze on
 > earth. I know its no contest.

I didn't say you did. _I_ did for comparison's sake.

 > Now that you have a figure for the solar wind see what happens when you
 > apply it to the Ringworld's upper, rarified atmosphere.

The exact same thing that happens here on Earth, at exactly the same areal density.

 > eg. if one proton hits one air molecule per cubic metre in the upper
 > atmosphere, how long will it take, on the Ringworld NOT EARTH, to disrupt
 > say one kilogram of air?

A long time, since the motion of the interacting molecules is still randomized
(Brownian motion of fluids and all), and many will have a path that intersects
other air molecules. Plus, they're all still trying to move at a tangent to the
Ringworld's orbit, and thus, smack into the Ringworld + atmosphere. PLUS there's
the fact that this interaction is happening at a couple hundred miles up, with
several hundred more miles of rimwall to get over. See, the collision would need
to send the molecule in a direction angled more towards the sun than the
Ringworld and rim walls (hard, since that's the direction the solar wind will
come FROM), AND be energetic enough to compensate the that molecule's 770m/sec
tangental velocity. Now, of course occasionally it'll happen, but it's not
common. And given the sheer volume of atmosphere in the Ringworld, it's not
going to reach a significant fraction until long after everything but protons
(and maybe Scrith) have decayed.

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 >> Stay informed about: Significance of the solar wind 

In article <R%b_c.680$BQ4.370@trnddc06>, jesus_x.DeleteThis@mozillanews.org (jesus X)
wrote:

  > > eg. if one proton hits one air molecule per cubic metre in the upper
  > > atmosphere, how long will it take, on the Ringworld NOT EARTH, to
  > > disrupt say one kilogram of air?
 >
 > A long time, since the motion of the interacting molecules is still
 > randomized
 > (Brownian motion of fluids and all), and many will have a path that
 > intersects
 > other air molecules. Plus, they're all still trying to move at a
 > tangent to the
 > Ringworld's orbit, and thus, smack into the Ringworld + atmosphere.
 > PLUS there's
 > the fact that this interaction is happening at a couple hundred miles
 > up, with
 > several hundred more miles of rimwall to get over. See, the collision
 > would need
 > to send the molecule in a direction angled more towards the sun than the
 > Ringworld and rim walls (hard, since that's the direction the solar
 > wind will
 > come FROM), AND be energetic enough to compensate the that molecule's
 > 770m/sec
 > tangental velocity. Now, of course occasionally it'll happen, but it's
 > not
 > common. And given the sheer volume of atmosphere in the Ringworld, it's
 > not
 > going to reach a significant fraction until long after everything but
 > protons
 > (and maybe Scrith) have decayed.

I make it 2 x 10^12 years for the solar wind to seriously affect the
entire atmosphere, if it was the only contribution. Luckily for me it
isn't, its just the catalyst!
I have calculated that each second 220,000Kg of air is slowed down by the
solar wind by about 1 to 3% of its tangential velocity, say 10 miles/sec
or 36,000 miles/hour. This is what happens when an air molecule bounces
off a proton from the solar wind, the loss of tangential velocity is a
fixed quantity that cannot be averaged out over the whole atmosphere.

This will cause pressure variations in the upper atmosphere that will look
like the equivalent of a choppy sea. Such speeds will reduce the pressure
contribution of the upper atmosphere on the lower atmosphere, and the
lower atmosphere will expand dynamically into the upper atmosphere. Not by
a lot, but a tiny expansion of the lower atmosphere where the density is
high will have a large effect on the upper atmosphere where the density is
low. This is what powers the choppiness of the upper atmosphere and the
solar wind will continue to power this pressure change.

Waves 10 to 100 miles tall will slosh around the upper atmosphere,
bouncing off the rim walls and the denser lower atmosphere. Interference
in these waves can cause significant increases in wave size and quite
literally throw air over the rim wall.

The only mechanism I know of which will stop this is a wall linking both
rim walls.

Stephen

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 >> Stay informed about: Significance of the solar wind 

steve.RemoveThis@antispam.sforbesa.cix.co.uk (Stephen Forbes) wrote in message news:<memo.20040904181753.59941A.RemoveThis@sforbesa.compulink.co.uk>...
....
 > I make it 2 x 10^12 years for the solar wind to seriously affect the
 > entire atmosphere, if it was the only contribution. Luckily for me it
 > isn't, its just the catalyst!
 > I have calculated that each second 220,000Kg of air is slowed down by the
 > solar wind by about 1 to 3% of its tangential velocity, say 10 miles/sec
 > or 36,000 miles/hour. This is what happens when an air molecule bounces
 > off a proton from the solar wind, the loss of tangential velocity is a
 > fixed quantity that cannot be averaged out over the whole atmosphere.

Why can't it be averaged? Do the molecules that have been hit that way
suddenly become incapable of colliding with other air molecules? If
that were the case, then your argument would be perfectly valid, and
both the Earth and the Ringworld would lose all of their atmosphere on
a remarkably short time scale.

In real life, those molecules transfer their momentum to the other air
molecules they bump into, and in a very short period of time that
momentum is spread out, and thus averaged, over over the entire
Ringworld atmosphere. From there, it gets transferred to the Ringworld
itself. This is, validly, a source of drag that tends to slow down the
Ringworld. It is not, however, a mechanism powerful enough to strip
the Ringworld of it's atmosphere, at least not until it's caused the
Ringworld to slow down enough that the atmosphere puffs up above the
top of the Rimwalls.

 > This will cause pressure variations in the upper atmosphere that will look
 > like the equivalent of a choppy sea. Such speeds will reduce the pressure

Nope, you've got the wrong picture entirely. The entire solar wind
exerts a tangential drag on on the Ringworld's upper atmosphere. A
simplistic model would be that the wind drops smoothly from 770 mi/se
anti-spinward at the top of the atmosphere to 0 mi/sec at the bottom.
Because density of the solar wind is so slow, the vast majority of the
velocity drop will occur in the very top-most layers of the
atmosphere. However, the Ringworld's atmosphere is too thin to allow a
simple wind pattern like this to apply smoothly over the entire ring.

Fluid dynamics is a very complicated subject, and I'm not an expert in
it. The main thing I've learned about Fluid dynamics is that the
results are often quite surprising. With that disclaimer, let me
describe what I'd expect. If the Ringworld were perfectly smooth and
had no day-night cycles, I'd expect the atmosphere to form long
counter-rotating vortices with an axis of rotation parallel to the
Ringworld's. In the vertical dimension they would have roughly the
same size as the bulk of the atmosphere itself. They would extend
quite a bit farther in the spinward-antispinward direction than in the
vertical direction, and quite a bit further in the port-starboard
direction than in the spinward-antispinward direction. However, I
don't know enough to estimate how fast they would be rotating, nor how
big they would be. My intuition suggests that the net effect would be
too small to notice, compared to the normal weather patterns of the
Ringworld.


 > Waves 10 to 100 miles tall will slosh around the upper atmosphere,
 > bouncing off the rim walls and the denser lower atmosphere. Interference
 > in these waves can cause significant increases in wave size and quite
 > literally throw air over the rim wall.
 >
 > The only mechanism I know of which will stop this is a wall linking both
 > rim walls.

I don't think you have an accurate method for estimating the sizes of
those waves. I sure don't know how, and you haven't indicated where
your numbers come from. One thing I'm sure of, however. The part of
the atmosphere where you have 100 mile-high waves is going to have an
extraordinarily low density; the amount of gas flowing over the sides
is going to be correspondingly negligible. At lower altitudes there
will be much higher densities, but also correspondingly lower wave
amplitudes because the driving forces it miniscule compared to the
mass of atmosphere to be disturbed.

This is complicated fluid-dynamical situation, and I don't have the
scientific skills to analyse it in as much detail as I'd like. But
you've said nothing to suggest that you have those skills, either. A
graduate degree in physics, specializing in fluid dynamics, seems to
me to be the minimum credentials required to put together a good model
of this situation.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Significance of the solar wind