Artwork copyright © 2004 by R. Dennis Antinore. Used by permission, all rights reserved. Visit www.DennisAntinori.com for Ringworld animation and more.
Google
  SEARCH THIS SITE
 Intro & Use 
 What’s New 
 Bibliography 
 Known Space 
 Timeline 
 Story Summaries 
 Articles 
 Reading Order 
 Canonical Notes 
 Gallery 
 Fun Stuff 
 Links 
Canonical Notes: artificial gravity

Science — It is notable that in Known Space, as in other science fiction universes, artificial gravity appears to operate within sharply bounded areas or volumes. For example, when the Lying Bastard crashed on the Ringworld floor, there was a sharp boundary between the ship's cabin gravity and the exterior, Ringworld gravity: "Louis entered the lock... He remembered the tilt of the ship in time to grab at the jamb as the airlock opened. As the cabin gravity went off Louis swung around, hung by his hands for an instant, and dropped" (Ringworld ch. 10, p. 134). Normal gravity radiates out in all directions from a mass; gravitational force only drops off slowly with distance (except with black holes and neutronium). How can it be that artificial gravity works so differently?

Fanfix: Note that according to Relativity theory, gravity is only a side-effect of space being "curved" by a mass. If it were possible to somehow artificially curve space, without a large mass being present, this might have the effect described. We postulate that there are "positive" and "negative" artificial gravity emitters; tension between the two emitters curves space. Normally, for providing positive gravity, the positive emitter would be in the floor and the negative emitter in the ceiling. Reversing the polarity for negative gravity could be used to counteract a heavy gravity field; for instance, In the Camelot Hotel on Jinx, the gravity in each room can be individually set to a lighter gravity than is the norm for Jinx. Note that spaceships, to fully compensate for acceleration in any direction, would have three sets of emitters, one for each axis of direction: up/down, right/left, forward/back. ↵

Footnotes

Copyright notice: All characters, settings and situations relating to Known Space and the Man-Kzin Wars are copyright by Larry Niven, and are used here with his kind permission. The Known Space books and stories are copyright © 1964 through 2010 by Larry Niven (and where appropriate, also his collaborators). Fleet of Worlds, Juggler of Worlds, Destroyer of Worlds and Betrayer of Worlds copyright © 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 by Larry Niven & Edward M. Lerner.

Quotes and information from the Ringworld Roleplaying Game and the Ringworld Companion are copyright © 1984 by John Hewitt. "Telepath’s Dance" copyright © 1998 by Hal Colebatch. "The Niven Project" copyright © 2004, 2008 by Aerospace Imagineering & Aldo Spadoni.

Admin