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supersampled β Radius
by-nc-nd
Published: 2010-12-15 04:30:38 +0000 UTC; Views: 36512; Favourites: 949; Downloads: 1744
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Description
Within this wall beats the heart of an empire, within this radius lays the mind of Sol's youngest child.This is The Ark; cornerstone of Arkaedian civilisation. It's continuing construction has consumed thousands of worlds over tens of thousands of years in a project that will one day see it's host star encapsulated by a sphere of Iron and Graphite.
The Ark's primary purpose is the generation of "white holes" from which quantities of energy many times more than the output of it's star can be harvested. It's secondary role is the physical and virtual habitat of thirty one trillion personalities.
Many speculate that in the event of an extremely unlikely catastrophe, inhabitants within the Virtuality would experience the remaining minutes as billions of years worth of run-time; a relativistic slumber that would see it's citizens subjectively outliving the life-time of the universe in defiance.
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edit: Lighting effects and colour modified. Description edited.
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Comments: 126
Interesting! [nerd-mode] The Ark has to be rotating around the host star, as, if it isn't, the vastly larger left-part will be stronger gravitationally attracted than the rest making a (unassisted) static equilibrium impossible. That is the left-part orbits the star like a planet and depending on radius/mass/etc you get a stable system and a centripetal force acting as gravity! Also, if you put another rotation on the (perpendicular to the orbit) axis left-part/star you can even get (natural) seasons. [/nerd-mode]
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Great art and concepts. Such a structure could be built by harvesting the matter of a handful of gas giants like Jupiter.
Those two plumes of particles at the bottom of the piece are billions of little space ships aren't they, traveling to and fro?
Why is one side larger, like a scoop (left side of screen)? What is the physical reason for that? If anything I would imagine that with so much mass on one side it would create a centrifugal spin that would destabilize the entire structure. There are better ways for this to create gravity.
And yes, I find it interesting as others have mentioned, that the space clouds in the background look like either South America or Africa on Earth. I don't know if it was intentional but its a nice touch.
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Information and bandwidth was the reason for the budge.
FTL communication exists, but it is lossy, and especially over longer distances, low bandwidth.
Meanwhile light speed communication comes with the obvious limitations of lag.
Now imagine a virtuality, as important (or perhaps more so) to society as reality, one where high bandwidth STL and FTL has huge value, then economically it begins to make sense concentrating within and expanding upon valuable real-estate.Β
In this case, it's the Ark's Golden Minute. A region of space 30 light seconds in radius from the heart of the virtuality's bubble universe processors, and related "white holes"
Mass wise, the structure of the Ark is made out of materials that are "over kill" from our perspective. (think modified strong force exotic materials) However, history (seeΒ
Diorama of a Perfect Burn(See comments below for more information)
Twenty thousand years ago, a sphere of Iron a kilometre in diameter fell into a star.
Surrounding this star lived a trillion humans on a ring shaped world made out of silica and graphite. It was not unlike the Ark, which surrounded Halcyon and it's companion star. It plummeted through the photosphere, onion skins of computational substrate, atoms thick, boiled away; processing an algorithm only this particular machine, at this particular star and at this particular moment, could solve. Smaller and hotter the machine became, feeding on the energy and chaos from within the tumultuous solar atmosphere. As the last layers of substrate evaporated, quantum fluctuations unseen since the beginning of time realigned one of the broken symmetries that defined the universe.
For a moment lasting less than a second, gravity no longer existed within the star ending 3 billion years of nuclear equilibrium. Fusion ceased as the escaping plasma created concurrent) has taught some that a over-engineering will often beat faluires of imagination and thus the longer term, more costly endeavour.
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So you'reΒ saying that the scoop (larger part of the structure on the left side) is a physical real-space reservoir forΒ a virtual reality on a galactic level?
Interesting, but still unnecessary. The amount of physical space needed for such an endeavor could be transferred to an energy level, no physical space needed. It could be put into wave energy which would be free to exist anywhere, it could be put into hyperspace which is unlimited, it could be put into a bubble dimension, or it could be put into multiple cloned mass server across multiple sources across the universe. With super-science like this anything could be created that would be better than creating a physical space that would destabilize a massive physical structure like this one.
The weightΒ of the scoop/bulge would create a swing in that direction that would cause everything on that structure to move in that direction, thus inevitably causing its destruction. That structure could create its own centrifugal spin just by orbiting that sun at its center, no scoop/bulge needed.
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The virtuality is a bubble dimension, with one port. In the 'Scoop' (nice term, mind if I steal it? 
And wildΒ barycenter wouldn't really be a problem if
Β - Beyond the ring (which is a roughly 15,000km thick) none-equatorial regions of the scoop weren't just tens/hundreds of meters thick (ie millions fold reduction in mass)
Β - The ring wasn't strong enough to withstand sheer forces in excess of the wobble created by two binary g type stars orbiting at .1 au (ie also millions of fold the amount of stress created by the actual structure)
I guess it's my fault for not really explaining in the above, but most of these ideas came up during the design process, "what if's" that gave the structure it's own identity.
Anyway, I'm working/thinking about the Kacylis, the homeworld to the Arkaedians antagonist - maybe an old, thin, ring encapsulating a matrioshka brain within a blue-hypergiant system? - patiently awaiting a supernova for some long speculated, civilisational transformation...
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Could the ring survive intact from supernova detonation of the encapsulated star?Β
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Β "Scoop" is all yours! Good conversation. Anytime, my friend...
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The scale on this is amazing! Fantastick job!
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the story behind this is really cool
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reminds me of the Ringworld series, by Larry Niven, far predating halo
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Very eye catching. It has elements familiar enough to pull in yet differs enough to want to know the story behind it. Which is written below it. Wonderful use of colors with a great lighting effect.
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makes me think Halo Array 2nt prototype. fascinating!
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This is a truly inspiring piece of artwork. Mind-boggling.
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This is simply breathtaking!
An astounding piece of work!
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This TOTALLY AWESOMELY INSPIRING!!!
did you write the story yourself or is it from a book?
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When your not sure how big you want to go..... go even bigger
Love it!
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I'm not sure if you've ever read any Ian M. Banks, but you'd get some fantastic ideas from his books.
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absolutely amazing, you truly have tapped into imaginative soul haven't you?
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Huh, Reminds me of Halo, But with a Hint of Mass Effects.
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Is there a walkthrough about this or any art in your gallery? I must learn from you.
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An awesome renedering. The detail is both exoctic and exquisite. An inspiration.
M
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What imagination, its people like you that allow the galaxy to grow...
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Always wondered how a Dyson Sphere would be built.
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Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine. Sir Arthur Eddington
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Reminds me of Halo.
Amazing, love the light and the colors!
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This reminds me of a game named Freelancer - some aliens had build their world in a shape of sphere around a star. This makes me feel so tiny and insignificant ..
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"Chief, I have a feeling we're not on Halo anymore..."
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you mean similar to ringworld, the book bungie copied the idea from.
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The Halo ring would be all but a dot in comparison to the scale of the Ark.
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yea i can see what appears to be a full sized star in the center, which makes this pretty big.
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