Ringworld Timeline

[Tom Kalbfus]

Alfonso Ciprianni looked up and down the beach, "I don't get it, said the mobster, I should have a vacation home around here, yet all the buildings are missing, like they never were here!"
"Its not the same island, said Kevin, this is an artificial World made to look natural."
"I don't know what material holds it together," said Professor Radcliff, "perhaps we can do some digging later, but it looks like this day is about to end," pointing to the sky which was quickly darkening. "Look over there!" George said pointing out to sea. All five of them looked out to see 2 half circular openings out to see where the daylight from the other side was shining through. "The day on the other side is longer than it is here!" Professor Radcliff explained," We should quickly go out to them before we lose the daylight on the otherside!' The five of them rushed back to the boat, George gunned the engine and they headed back to the Yacht.
As the last passenger, which happened to be Professor Radcliff climber over the rail, the three crew members winched the boat out of the water and onto the deck. Kevin started up the engine And the Yacht raced towards one of the openings as the fading twilight shined through.

The ship powered through the opening on its engines. The Arch disappeared in the sky to be replaced with a setting sun. George looked back where Bermuda should have been, instead there was a vast metropolis of high towers, and a number of vehicles moving silently through the sky. One of the sky vehicles altered course and headed toward the Yacht, it has red flashing lights. "I think someone noticed us," Kevin said, "and we went through the wrong gateway it looks like. Maybe they are the folks that run this place." The vehicle presently hovered in front of the Yacht about a meter or so above the waves, no jets, no helicopter blades, and a spotlight fell on the boat. "Just who are you folks?" asked a voice on the vehicle's loudspeakers. Kevin got up and walked to the rail. "My Name is Kevin McCready, may I ask, just where are we? We seem to be lost." "You are offshore of the Terra downport of Atlantis," said the voice from the loudspeaker. "Terra, that's another name for Earth isn't it?" asked Brittany. "That is correct," said the voice on the loudspeak, "Earth is the Archaic name for Terra, though its not used much anymore." "What year is it?" Kevin asked. "1102," was the reply. "The twelfth century?" Professor Radcliff asked, "but were from 2014! There's some strange phenominon out there that seems to involve time travel, but 2014 is not as advanced as this!" "Hmm," said the voice skeptically, "perhaps you are referring to the Solomani dating system, by which reckoning it is 5620 AD" The professor's jaw dropped, "The 57th century!" "Yes, 1102 is in the Imperial Dating system," the voice said as if lecturing a child." "Which Imperium?" asked Kevin. "Why the Third Imperium of course," said the voice. "How come were speaking the same language?" asked the professor. "That's a good question," said the voice, you seem to be speaking perfect Anglic to me." "You mean English?" asked the professor. "Yes, that is the root language of Anglic, that language was established as the standard during the Second Imperium of Course." "The Second Imperium?" asked the professor. "You know the rule of man?" explained the voice. "Actually I don't know," admitted the professor, "were from the past actually, and what I don't understand is why the language hasn't changed in 3600 years!" "Well it has," said the voice, " I head some ancient recording from the past, it was from a gold disk found on a space probe about a few hundred years ago, the Solomani Twentieth Century to be precise, I believe the probe was called Voyager II, if I'm not mistaken." "Would you be interested in seeing the Portals we came through?" Kevin asked.
"As a matter of fact I would," said the voice, " Just a minute, I'm coming aboard." A man open the door of the closed vehicle, an copilot was seen on the other side at the controls, as the silent hovering craft hovered above the boat's deck, and man with brown hair, a mustachem and blue eyes stepped out onto the deck, he was wearing a green uniform with a yellow starburst over a black stary back ground on his shoulder Above he left pocket was stenciled the name "William Jaren", over his right was the words "Imperial Marines"

Kevin piloted his boat towards the portal, a dark half circle rising halfway out of the water. "What is that?" asked William. "That is a portal to another world," said the Professor, a ringworld." The ship went through the portal, followed by the silently hovering vehicle. the vehicle dropped down to just a few meters above the wavetops. The checkered blue arch appeared in the sky near the horizon, the sky above was blotted out by a black rectangle, some stars shown to the north. "Wait a minute," said the copilot in the silently hovering vehicle, let me record these starpatterns, they might just reveal where in the Galaxy we happen to be." After a few moments, the computer gave him the answer, " we are in the Solomani sector, the date appears to be 28,000 Imperial, give or take a few centuries, roughly about 30,000 AD on the Solomani calendar if that helps."

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Imperial Marine, Captain William Jaren had a very thoughtful look on his face. "So we got a time machine here!" he said. "Perhaps we can exploit this," Captain Jaren continued, it can be very useful to know details of the future, we can anticipate upcoming threats and tailor the future to our whims. My guess is this ringworld was built by humans of the future." With that William Jaren pulled out a gun, and pointed it at the copilot. There was a flash of light, and an explosion, the flying vehicle caught on fire crashing into the ocean, and there was an explosion as the vehicle's hydrogen fuel cell caught on fire. Brittany screamed. George bull-rushed William, William Jaren fired his laser pistol again, George's chest exploded with charred flesh and gore, their was a loud bang as a smoking hole suddenly appeared in William Jaren's forehead, and he fell over face first onto the deck of the boat, his limbs twitching. Kevin McCready held the smoking body pistol in his hand that fired the lethal shot, he walked up, stepping on William's right arm, and pried the laser pistol from William's dead fingers. "God damn! He murdered George!" McCready said., he glanced over to the sinking wreckage of the flying craft, motioning to is other crew mate and the passengers, "lets see if there is anything from that we can salvage," with that he jumped into the water and began swimming, Brittany and the other crew member jumped in too followed by the professor.

Later on soaking wet, passengers examined the articles they managed to retrieve from the wreck. They found 2 suits of combat armor, which neither one of the marines was wearing at the time, two very large and deadly looking rifles of some kind with head up displays, what looked to be a 2 personal med-kits, with some items they could not identify, a 2 2-way radios, 2 belts containing 8 grenades each, and a cutlass. Kevin grabbed the cutlass and gave it an experimental swing, then tossed it to Brittany, "I believe you know how to use one of these," he said offhandedly. After rifling through the dead marine's uniform, they pulled out a wallet with some kind of military ID, some cards, and a few currency notes, totaling about 5,000 credits worth, whatever a credit was worth, they supposed. The body was then tossed unceremoniously overboard into the water.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

from
http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/48630634d2591

Magmatter Scale and Strength
The smallest magatoms have diameters of 3E-19 m, 300 million times smaller than an atom of conventional matter. As a typical magatom is 10,000 times heavier than a typical conventional atom, magmatter’s typical density is 1E33 kg/m3*. Since force is energy per unit distance, the force needed to break a magchemical bond is larger than that needed to break an electronic chemical bond by a factor of the energy scaling (300 GeV / 13.7 eV) divided by the length scaling, or 7 million trillion (7E18). The strength of a material is usually defined as the force per unit area required to make the material fail. Since each magchemical bond can withstand 7E18 times greater force, and there are (300 million)2 times more bonds per unit area, the strength of magmatter is about 8E35 times greater than that of its normal matter equivalent.

For applications where high strength materials are required, the relevant parameter is usually the strength per unit mass (if you have a weak but very light material, you can compensate for low strength by using a lot of the stuff, and maybe still end up with a lighter weight structure than if you used a strong but dense material). Strength per unit mass is usually measured by the free breaking length, or how tall a structure of the given material can be in a homogeneous gravity field of 1G before it collapses under its own weight. It is proportional to the binding energy ratio (300 GeV / 13.7 eV) and inversely proportional to the ratio of magatom masses (10,000). The free breaking length is therefore approximately 2 million times longer than that of an equivalent conventional mass. While typical magmatter materials have free breaking lengths of approximately 200 million kilometers, materials with free breaking lengths up to 20 billion kilometers are known. This means that magmatter has the tensile strength required to hold a Banks orbital or even a Ringworld together.

* The mass the Sun is 2*10^30 kg approximately, so a cubic meter of magmatter is 500 times the mass of our Sun! this means if you want to create a ribbon of this material to support a ringworld, it has to be very thin, subatomically thin in fact, with a total volume of less than one 500,000th of a cubic meter, but nevertheless 1,600,000 km wide and with a radius of 1.25 AU.

I like this ringworld video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJIwruvheLA