It's Okay To Be Smart If you are going to take it that literally then you can argue that the explosions can unbalance the ring making crash into the earth
The gravitational force from the Moon would cause the ring to accelerate at a rate of 0.0332milimeter/second^2 So it would wobble (gravitational constant x moon mass)/moon distance from earth ^2 = 0.03318mm/s^2
Nope. We made the ring out of our Moon. Thanks Martin of Sweden! And a shame Henry embraced his one minute format- I'd have enjoyed a longer video discussion.
LuappleSnapples If this thing is 8-10' off the ground, I think we're all missing the very obvious point that, if the wind or animals didn't disturb its equilibrium, people drawing graffiti on it would. 😋
Today I learned not to blow up planetary rings with explosives. Thanks science! On a more serious note, would you not have to create an oddly shaped ring, in order to account for the slight asymmetry within the earth?
an oddly shaped ring would have less strength than a perfectly circular ring, since there'd be places where more stress would build up than in other places
+StalQend, If that was the case then satellites like GRACE wouldn't be able to do their job though? Due to the motion of massive amounts of water from e.g. melting glaciers, general ocean circulation, etc. the gravitational field varies regionally and changes ever-so slightly with time in order to be measurable. Hence, the ring could eventually be displaced in an unstable manner.
60 Second Success as long as you build the ring the same height off the ground all around the earth it should work, that is, assuming earth has no terrain changes
No it wouldn't. The Gravitation of earth is not completely equal on all sides/directions. Therer are very small variations everywhere. They're very small, but they're there. So if you put a perfect ring around the gravitational center of the earth, it would still be affected differently at different places on the ring because the gravity slitghtly varies.
Dennis Px with the mass of the ring, even if there are slight variations, it would be infinitesimal and negligible, so still an equilibrium. nothing is exact or perfect in life- just close enough
Tea Biscuit Considering how unstable the ring would be those small differences in gravitational pull could be enough to move it slightly which would cause bigger differences in the gravitational pull between different parts of the ring and it could end up in a positive feedback loop that causes it to break/collide with earth.
It wouldn't stay up because of the moons gravitational influence, similar to how the tide is produced. the moon would pull on one side causing the other to pull in closer to the earth and then its just a runaway effect until that side hits the earth.
everyone is saying what your saying but I'm pretty sure the strength of the explosion matters in calculating the end result. If its too strong an explosion the Moon's Tidal forces won't matter IMO.
It does slightly bulge out at the equator due to "centrifugal force", but on the scale of the earth, it's negligible. Think of it this way. If you shrunk the earth down to the size of a billiards ball it would be much smoother than a real one. My source is a Klutz Geography book I read as a kid.
Good idea! With the momentum it had when it was spinning with the earth before, it would probably keep spinning. However once disconnected, I think friction could cause it to slow down maybe depending on how close the ring was to earth?
i always pictured it outside of our atmosphere so i would think of it still spinning with us but i guess if even part of it, like the connections broke off under it i guess yea it would stop spinning then fall i guess
while it was connected, yes. After the supports are broken off, if nothing affected it we could still probably set a stationary point for it because it has te same momentum as the earth.
WOW! I've been wondering about the same exact question for at least 4 years, starting in my 5th grade astronomy class and seemed like nobody could answer my question with a scientific explanation! Thanks minutephysics!!
Nice vídeo Henry... I'm from Brazil and I love your videos, you was one of my main inspirations for creating my UA-cam channel!! So... Uh... Thank you, and sorry for my English, it's not my first language xD
If gravity weakens over distance, could you reduce the buckling issue by simply ("simply...") making the ring larger, and thus further away from the center of gravity? Feel like that might make sense, given a huge reasourcepool.
I asked my Physics teacher this (which is why I clicked on the video as soon as I got a notification), and it just killed her self esteem. Thanks for explaining.
Dr.StickFigure that doesn't mean its gravitational force isn't evenly distributed in such a way to allow the placement of a perfect symmetrical circle which can reach an equilibrium with the pull of the gravitational forces. (used a bunch of technical words to make it sound sciencey. maybe it is sciencey. idk)
there was someone who answered a similar question except it was a bridge around the globe/earth kinda the same thing in a way, but he answered differently anyhow keep up the great work mate
Question I have since a long time: what's the calculation for figuring out how far the horizon is? Several scenarios can be imagined: -sea level, looking at the horizon which is at the sea level -on an elevation you know the altitude of (like a mountain or plane), looking at the sea level -etc..
The pencil example is wrong for two reasons: 1. movement because of temperature would create torque and the pencil would fall out of balance 2. even if you cool it down to absolute 0, there is quantum mechanics moving the particles, and torque would topple it over again. You can calculate this, it falls over quicker than you might have thought.
Sir, Please make videos a BIT more frequently cause you are my favorite and i love your videos. Also I had a few questions about your collab video with veritasium called Special relativity and magnets. So how can I send my doubts to you. Thanks
Well, assuming perfect rigidity and structural integrity of the ring is held, the extreme volatility of this system means that even if a breeze on one side is not balanced out exactly on the other side, the whole ring would likely "fall" somewhere and lift off on the other side.
Its true that if you place any ring above the earth it would stay as it is. Well, to avoid air resistance you need to build it at least 100 km above sea surface. Also the idea of blew up pillars are significant as if initially ring was hinged with earth by pillars, after pillars blown up, ring will stay above the same places where it was, and as earth rotates will rotate too with same angular velocity.
Because of the not-exactly placed explosives, some of the pole pieces will be longer than others, and therefore it will fall on the earth in that space
1:30 Duder MAY be referring to this, but that just silly. You would clearly build this thing around the equator. And probably have it rotating faster than the Earth, as a launch-assist mechanism.
the ring would be in an inverse pendulum sort of state. any disturbance would cause it to veer closer to the earth on one side than another, which is then accelerated by it being closer and having more gravity, causing it to fall and hit the earth on that side
but what if you dangled something on a crazy long rope from a geo-sync satellite? would it just hover there? would the rope stay straight? what would happen if you pushed/pulled it in any direction? these are the questions that keep me up at night...
My guess would be that it would buckle or impact the surface at some point because of differences in the earth's gravitational field. One area with more gravity would cause the ring to fall or collapse there with more structural stress occurring in other parts of the ring (especially if you include natural flaws in manufacturing).
HOLY SHIT GUYS I HAVE DISCOVERED SOMETHING AMAZING. I now listen to minutephysics videos at .5 speed exclusively, it is the funniest shit you guys will ever hear, within the 15 seconds of this video i has dead laughing no joke. It gives these videos a whole new dimension.
Did you delete the comment who made fun of you for having promotions or did the user delete it? I think the promotions are fine. No one wants you to starve.
I think the user must have deleted it, because I was about to comment a really good reply but it failed to post... ...And I don't want to waste the 5 minutes it took to make that good reply so I'm just going to... "By definition a "minutephysics video" is a video that has been uploaded to minutephysics. Also this includes a paid promotion as much as a television show might have a break for adverts; completely non intrusive with the actual content."
The altitude of the ring matters. If the ring is within the atmosphere, it's either indestructible or will buckle or break, but there is a stable point at a high enough orbit where the ring will break up, but as long as the ring gained enough angular inertia before breaking, the fragments will stay in place. Beyond that, they will drift away from the Earth, like the moon does
Did you forget the shell theorem? A ring will not have any net gravitational attraction to anything inside of it along the plane of symmetry. There is no net stabilizing force to keep it from drifting.
A ring is not a spherical shell, so that theorem doesn't apply. It turns out that there actually is a net gravitational force on an object inside the ring within the plane of the ring, and it's directed radially outward, so the force is destabilizing. The ring would actively try to push itself away from earth.
Only one problem with this called the avalanche effect. It is impossible for a ring to be perfectly balanced among all positions simultaneously.....and even if so, you still have random effects such as wind or solar flare. This simple "nudge" (even as small as a piece of dust) in the wrong spot can give just the right amount of acceleration towards the ground. As that part gets closer, the gravity becomes stronger for it, and the opposing side gets further from the gravity well, increasing acceleration faster. The ring will crash, regardless. You would need stabilizers to retain "orbit" (if you can call it that)
At 1:22 it would be a lot more than a few meters however, because 2*pi*h is 6.28*h. but the drawing in scale would have made h several kilometers. Then you still have to double that to find how many meters you would need to remove.
If the ring is initially attached to supports on the ground, then the earth is not spinning underneath it. When you blow up the supports, the ring still has all of that angular momentum, so it won't suddenly start spinning relative to the ground.
Either way, its pretty much impossible to blow up ALL the explosives at the EXACT SAME time. Which would make some parts fall before others and causing an inbalance in the ring, which at this point could do serious damage to Earth.
Hey I love your videos! I'm an audio engineer and the audio in this video is really bothering me >. < There is too much sibilance, but it is a very easy problem to fix!! I suggest looking into using a de-esser on your vocal track. It will cut out all of the hissing and S's from your voice. Keep up the awesome work!!
Hey there, you said equal forces would be applied on all parts of the right. Although that won't be true as the ring is perfectly round no highs and lows but the earth isn't and hence the force applied by earth on the ring isn't equal everywhere. So what I think is that the ring will be imbalanced and will start to move around slowly, also the force applied by the explosives will help.
Cool riddle! Now consider, if the explosives slice an assumed equatorial ring along the horizontal into equal halves, then wouldn't the strength of the thrust of the synchronized explosions relative to force of earth's gravitational field determine whether each ring would lift upward in the direction of it's perspective pole and either have enough momentum to break free of earth's gravity or conversely come crashing back down to center and crush the arsonist? I can't help but worry a T-spin will evolve and wipe out earth. Perhaps due to the resistance in series wired detonations causing tiny delays in detonation? Also, how do these dynamics relate to astrophysics with regards to big bang and expanding universe theories?
Note I accept it as a condition that the explosives only sever the contact beams and so it is given that the material composing the ring remains intact but is merely sliced in two.
If the ring was held up by poles in the first place, that means it was geostationary (same rotational velocity as earth), so if the poles were to break (and assuming the ring didn't fall\break) then it would continue spinning as it were, and still stay geostationary (aka it will not spin/move from the viewpoint of a person on earth). If the ring was put right above the equator, and with a radius of ~42,15 [KM], then all of its parts would be in geostationary orbit, meaning that they would be in zero-g, in that case, even if the ring was structurally very weak, it would still stay up (like geostationary satellites that have the same rotational velocity as earth)
I've seen a stationary ring like this talked about before, but nobody talks about an orbital ring. One that orbits (or holds material that orbits) faster than the orbital speed at that height. The only source i've found talking about that in depth are the original papers by Paul Birch, and i don't understand them fully, nor do i know if there's any good critiques of them.
ToDoPit GT Surface or whole moon? Half would Freeze and half would evaporate depending where sun shines. I think it will keep rotating as it does do to inertia and gravity keeping it together.
You're forgetting that the gravity reaching that ring would not be spread equally around it as you say, due to the rest of the planet covering up the center that's generating the gravity, however unevenly. My point is that, the place in the ring that would be, let's say, parallel to Australia, wouldn't be affected by the same gravitational pull as one that's parallel to most/some other point on Earth. So naturally, the one parallel to the strongest gravitational pull out of all of them (or a point that acts as a combination of all the influential gravitational pulls) would smash into Earth. Potentially smashing into Earth numerous times afterwards on different points, if the gravitational pull wasn't one sided enough to keep it there.
What about the centripetal force acting on the center poles? If the center poles explode, there isn't a centripetal force holding the ring so it will move upwards. As a result, the ring in the north and South Pole will get closer to the earth.
This idea is called an orbital ring and its a potential way we could build a space elevator with just modern tech. Itd just cost alot to get all the material up there for ring.
What would happen if you would be in a cave exactly in center of mass of the earth? Would you float in the middle (because you center of mass is attracted to the center of mass of earth = stable) or would you "fall" to the wand of the cave (radial out = unstable) because if you get closer to one side, this side attracts you more. But the there is more mass pulling you into the other direction...
But wait, wouldn't Earth's uneven mass and uneven gravity cause chaotic cycles of tugging that would tear the whole thing apart no matter what?
It's Okay To Be Smart if it's strong and perfect it probably won't fall
It's Okay To Be Smart Don't question minute physics
Mastermode You should NEVER stop thinking and start following someone blind. Keep thinking.
When my other favorite UA-cam Science channel comes over to troll a fellow UA-cam science channel.
It's Okay To Be Smart If you are going to take it that literally then you can argue that the explosions can unbalance the ring making crash into the earth
Would tidal forces from the moon cause this ring to become unbalanced and hit the earth?
The gravitational force from the Moon would cause the ring to accelerate at a rate of 0.0332milimeter/second^2
So it would wobble
(gravitational constant x moon mass)/moon distance from earth ^2 = 0.03318mm/s^2
Nope. We made the ring out of our Moon. Thanks Martin of Sweden! And a shame Henry embraced his one minute format- I'd have enjoyed a longer video discussion.
LuappleSnapples If this thing is 8-10' off the ground, I think we're all missing the very obvious point that, if the wind or animals didn't disturb its equilibrium, people drawing graffiti on it would. 😋
But the wobble would mean more gravity where it is closer to earth, wouldn't it?
LuappleSnapples sure, then it would vibrate until the entire thing shatters
Today I learned not to blow up planetary rings with explosives. Thanks science! On a more serious note, would you not have to create an oddly shaped ring, in order to account for the slight asymmetry within the earth?
an oddly shaped ring would have less strength than a perfectly circular ring, since there'd be places where more stress would build up than in other places
+StalQend, If that was the case then satellites like GRACE wouldn't be able to do their job though? Due to the motion of massive amounts of water from e.g. melting glaciers, general ocean circulation, etc. the gravitational field varies regionally and changes ever-so slightly with time in order to be measurable. Hence, the ring could eventually be displaced in an unstable manner.
60 Second Success as long as you build the ring the same height off the ground all around the earth it should work, that is, assuming earth has no terrain changes
60 Second Success k
60 Second Success
the earth shape change due to our 4-7 plates (pick ur number I say 7)
Notch once asked the same thing to Michael of Vsauc
I remember seeing this in some of the vsauce vids, didnt know Notch asked him, or I simply forgot
Rogelio Bustos
Notch is just his username, his actual name is Markus.
Wow, really?
vsucc
Maestrul no, the vsucc is correct. Spelling succ with 2 c's is a very popular meme right now.
Ring around the earth?
We can make a religion out of this...
Or a fetish, depending on what you mean by "ring".
No, don't
Gravity isn't actually exactly the same everywhere on earth.
No it wouldn't. The Gravitation of earth is not completely equal on all sides/directions. Therer are very small variations everywhere. They're very small, but they're there.
So if you put a perfect ring around the gravitational center of the earth, it would still be affected differently at different places on the ring because the gravity slitghtly varies.
Dennis Px with the mass of the ring, even if there are slight variations, it would be infinitesimal and negligible, so still an equilibrium. nothing is exact or perfect in life- just close enough
Tea Biscuit Considering how unstable the ring would be those small differences in gravitational pull could be enough to move it slightly which would cause bigger differences in the gravitational pull between different parts of the ring and it could end up in a positive feedback loop that causes it to break/collide with earth.
Random Guy yeah you're right. Didn't think of it in that aspect
your comment is on the next video lol
Make Earth Saturn Again! #MESA
Ze Toad that was the most nonsense thing ı ever seen, means it is gud
table??????????
I think you should do a regular what-if series with Randall. Like, an episode each month or two with about 4 questions each. That would be awesome
HA! We've got something better than a ring around our planet! We've got space crap all around it!
what if the earth doesn't want to be engaged? what will you do then?
wait.. she doesn't think i'm a nice guy?
c'mon Earth.. I even got ya a lil' white rocky bud!
It wouldn't stay up because of the moons gravitational influence, similar to how the tide is produced. the moon would pull on one side causing the other to pull in closer to the earth and then its just a runaway effect until that side hits the earth.
everyone is saying what your saying but I'm pretty sure the strength of the explosion matters in calculating the end result. If its too strong an explosion the Moon's Tidal forces won't matter IMO.
joe miskell Then kick the moon out of orbit! We've got rings to build, here!
hahahah, I discovered your videos by a UA-camr, since I was looking for channels that were not Brazilian, I loved it!
Wait the earth is not round its oval and the ring around it is round. Wouldn't that cause an unequal gravitational pull?
i think you need to pick up a physics book
no
plus the moons gravitational influence on the ring
It does slightly bulge out at the equator due to "centrifugal force", but on the scale of the earth, it's negligible.
Think of it this way. If you shrunk the earth down to the size of a billiards ball it would be much smoother than a real one.
My source is a Klutz Geography book I read as a kid.
An oblong spheroid I think is the technical term as oval implies a much more extreme lengthening
If was connected to the earth it would already have spin so would continue to do so tho right?
Good idea! With the momentum it had when it was spinning with the earth before, it would probably keep spinning. However once disconnected, I think friction could cause it to slow down maybe depending on how close the ring was to earth?
Of course if it continued to spin at the speed of the earth, we would see it as being still because we are spinning too.
i always pictured it outside of our atmosphere so i would think of it still spinning with us but i guess if even part of it, like the connections broke off under it i guess yea it would stop spinning then fall i guess
exactly my thoughts, couldnt we put it at a geostationary point?
while it was connected, yes. After the supports are broken off, if nothing affected it we could still probably set a stationary point for it because it has te same momentum as the earth.
Another fantastically illustrated video by Minute Physics. Well done, thank you.
WOW! I've been wondering about the same exact question for at least 4 years, starting in my 5th grade astronomy class and seemed like nobody could answer my question with a scientific explanation! Thanks minutephysics!!
Nice vídeo Henry...
I'm from Brazil and I love your videos, you was one of my main inspirations for creating my UA-cam channel!!
So... Uh... Thank you, and sorry for my English, it's not my first language xD
The xkcd-MinutePhysics singularity comes ever closer.
I like how he laughs when he gets to the first "explosives"
It's an orbital ring! All it needs is a bit of momentum and it'll hold itself up!
What a relief, I had this question when I was kid (but without explosive) and didn't know where to ask.
Do more of these faq videos. They're really cool
I keep on adding this guy’s videos to my “Watch Later”, but I never have gotten to them because there’s always more.
Now what if the ring was initially spinning rather?
thanks Henry!
I sure enjoy the 'rewind' feature for learning Physics! :)
Great Science videos! But what would happen if the sun was smaller?
"You can make religion outta this"
Hey minutephysics, Henry here!
If gravity weakens over distance, could you reduce the buckling issue by simply ("simply...") making the ring larger, and thus further away from the center of gravity? Feel like that might make sense, given a huge reasourcepool.
Need more minute Physics!!!
I asked my Physics teacher this (which is why I clicked on the video as soon as I got a notification), and it just killed her self esteem. Thanks for explaining.
This reminded me of What If? xkcd, just with somewhat less (planet) destruction.
Same here, though, a giant metal ring crashing down all around the planet _would_ cause some pretty widespread damage.
Nice to see you returning to the one minute videos even if just very occasionally.
The Earth is not a perfect sphere, its an oblate spheroid. bulges at the equator and flattens at the poles
is a top an extreme version of an oblate spheroid? JW
Yeah by about 42km
So technically speaking, the Earth is about 99.733% of being a Perfect sphere.
Dr.StickFigure that doesn't mean its gravitational force isn't evenly distributed in such a way to allow the placement of a perfect symmetrical circle which can reach an equilibrium with the pull of the gravitational forces. (used a bunch of technical words to make it sound sciencey. maybe it is sciencey. idk)
YOU AGAIN ?
>.<
HOW ARE YOU EVERYWHERE ?
Who?
I wondered this for so long, thank you for this
there was someone who answered a similar question
except it was a bridge around the globe/earth
kinda the same thing in a way, but he answered differently
anyhow
keep up the great work mate
Question I have since a long time: what's the calculation for figuring out how far the horizon is?
Several scenarios can be imagined:
-sea level, looking at the horizon which is at the sea level
-on an elevation you know the altitude of (like a mountain or plane), looking at the sea level
-etc..
This sounds like a question that should be posted on what-if by Randall.
The pencil example is wrong for two reasons:
1. movement because of temperature would create torque and the pencil would fall out of balance
2. even if you cool it down to absolute 0, there is quantum mechanics moving the particles, and torque would topple it over again. You can calculate this, it falls over quicker than you might have thought.
If someone put a ring on the Earth than everyone here (and maybe elsewhere) should get ready for a planetary sized wedding.
A ring around the earth means we're all married to some big rock in space.
Sir, Please make videos a BIT more frequently cause you are my favorite and i love your videos. Also I had a few questions about your collab video with veritasium called Special relativity and magnets. So how can I send my doubts to you. Thanks
this a thought experiment I've heard a few times now but you summed it up so neatly :-)
Great video as always! Best regards from Palestine!
Are you Randall Munroe now? Stick figures + hypothetical science Q&A
these videos are so entertaining even though I don't understand them
Well, assuming perfect rigidity and structural integrity of the ring is held, the extreme volatility of this system means that even if a breeze on one side is not balanced out exactly on the other side, the whole ring would likely "fall" somewhere and lift off on the other side.
The more important question is where are the Puppeteers and when are they giving us a super fast ship?
Its true that if you place any ring above the earth it would stay as it is. Well, to avoid air resistance you need to build it at least 100 km above sea surface. Also the idea of blew up pillars are significant as if initially ring was hinged with earth by pillars, after pillars blown up, ring will stay above the same places where it was, and as earth rotates will rotate too with same angular velocity.
Because of the not-exactly placed explosives, some of the pole pieces will be longer than others, and therefore it will fall on the earth in that space
how will you build a ring around earth when the earth is just one big fidget spinner?
This was word for word a question notch posted on twitter that vsauce vaguely covered in an episode
Henry, loved your cameo on No Dumb Questions
earth gravity varies greatly in different locations so it would crash and go crazy spinning and smashing
Woah, 2 views only and i haven't even received the notification on my phone yet haha
9 views here. 63 likes.
UA-cam might be screwing with us
1:30 Duder MAY be referring to this, but that just silly. You would clearly build this thing around the equator. And probably have it rotating faster than the Earth, as a launch-assist mechanism.
the ring would be in an inverse pendulum sort of state. any disturbance would cause it to veer closer to the earth on one side than another, which is then accelerated by it being closer and having more gravity, causing it to fall and hit the earth on that side
but what if you dangled something on a crazy long rope from a geo-sync satellite? would it just hover there? would the rope stay straight? what would happen if you pushed/pulled it in any direction? these are the questions that keep me up at night...
It's an unstable equilibrium. As soon as it's a little bit off center it will get more and more off center quickly.
CHEESEBURGER FREEDOM MAN SHALL SUPPLY YOUR EXPLOSIVES
*_OOHHHHH YYYYYYEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSS_*
My guess would be that it would buckle or impact the surface at some point because of differences in the earth's gravitational field. One area with more gravity would cause the ring to fall or collapse there with more structural stress occurring in other parts of the ring (especially if you include natural flaws in manufacturing).
HOLY SHIT GUYS I HAVE DISCOVERED SOMETHING AMAZING. I now listen to minutephysics videos at .5 speed exclusively, it is the funniest shit you guys will ever hear, within the 15 seconds of this video i has dead laughing no joke. It gives these videos a whole new dimension.
Even if it were unbreakable, shouldn't the tug of the moon's gravity make it fall?
Did you delete the comment who made fun of you for having promotions or did the user delete it?
I think the promotions are fine. No one wants you to starve.
I think the user must have deleted it, because I was about to comment a really good reply but it failed to post...
...And I don't want to waste the 5 minutes it took to make that good reply so I'm just going to...
"By definition a "minutephysics video" is a video that has been uploaded to minutephysics. Also this includes a paid promotion as much as a television show might have a break for adverts; completely non intrusive with the actual content."
Wow that was a great question........pretty insightful
The altitude of the ring matters. If the ring is within the atmosphere, it's either indestructible or will buckle or break, but there is a stable point at a high enough orbit where the ring will break up, but as long as the ring gained enough angular inertia before breaking, the fragments will stay in place. Beyond that, they will drift away from the Earth, like the moon does
Why can't my roommate be more compassionate?
Him: *is smart af*
Also him: *uses crayola marker*
Did you forget the shell theorem? A ring will not have any net gravitational attraction to anything inside of it along the plane of symmetry. There is no net stabilizing force to keep it from drifting.
A ring is not a spherical shell, so that theorem doesn't apply. It turns out that there actually is a net gravitational force on an object inside the ring within the plane of the ring, and it's directed radially outward, so the force is destabilizing. The ring would actively try to push itself away from earth.
I thought this was going to be about an actual ring made of dust particles and ice and shit.
Only one problem with this called the avalanche effect. It is impossible for a ring to be perfectly balanced among all positions simultaneously.....and even if so, you still have random effects such as wind or solar flare. This simple "nudge" (even as small as a piece of dust) in the wrong spot can give just the right amount of acceleration towards the ground. As that part gets closer, the gravity becomes stronger for it, and the opposing side gets further from the gravity well, increasing acceleration faster.
The ring will crash, regardless. You would need stabilizers to retain "orbit" (if you can call it that)
At 1:22 it would be a lot more than a few meters however, because 2*pi*h is 6.28*h. but the drawing in scale would have made h several kilometers. Then you still have to double that to find how many meters you would need to remove.
Vsauce did it.
a really silly question and it didn't require a whole episode
If the ring is initially attached to supports on the ground, then the earth is not spinning underneath it. When you blow up the supports, the ring still has all of that angular momentum, so it won't suddenly start spinning relative to the ground.
Either way, its pretty much impossible to blow up ALL the explosives at the EXACT SAME time. Which would make some parts fall before others and causing an inbalance in the ring, which at this point could do serious damage to Earth.
Isn't this *technically* MinuteEarth material?
Hey I love your videos! I'm an audio engineer and the audio in this video is really bothering me >. < There is too much sibilance, but it is a very easy problem to fix!! I suggest looking into using a de-esser on your vocal track. It will cut out all of the hissing and S's from your voice. Keep up the awesome work!!
Oh my.. Noone here had read the Ringworld? The Ring is UNSTABLE!
Hey there, you said equal forces would be applied on all parts of the right. Although that won't be true as the ring is perfectly round no highs and lows but the earth isn't and hence the force applied by earth on the ring isn't equal everywhere. So what I think is that the ring will be imbalanced and will start to move around slowly, also the force applied by the explosives will help.
0:13 I can tell someone likes explosions.
HENRY.... ADMIT IT. You like explosions don't you?
Vsauce got a question about this a long time ago and said it would collapse because gravity isn’t even in every location.
If the ring is spinning fast enough, it would not buckle because it would act like Saturn's rings.
Cool riddle! Now consider, if the explosives slice an assumed equatorial ring along the horizontal into equal halves, then wouldn't the strength of the thrust of the synchronized explosions relative to force of earth's gravitational field determine whether each ring would lift upward in the direction of it's perspective pole and either have enough momentum to break free of earth's gravity or conversely come crashing back down to center and crush the arsonist? I can't help but worry a T-spin will evolve and wipe out earth. Perhaps due to the resistance in series wired detonations causing tiny delays in detonation? Also, how do these dynamics relate to astrophysics with regards to big bang and expanding universe theories?
Note I accept it as a condition that the explosives only sever the contact beams and so it is given that the material composing the ring remains intact but is merely sliced in two.
Pocket full of mirth,
Ashes ashes,
we all fall down.
If the ring was held up by poles in the first place, that means it was geostationary (same rotational velocity as earth), so if the poles were to break (and assuming the ring didn't fall\break) then it would continue spinning as it were, and still stay geostationary (aka it will not spin/move from the viewpoint of a person on earth).
If the ring was put right above the equator, and with a radius of ~42,15 [KM], then all of its parts would be in geostationary orbit, meaning that they would be in zero-g, in that case, even if the ring was structurally very weak, it would still stay up (like geostationary satellites that have the same rotational velocity as earth)
Martin, Sweden, circles? Do you know what this means? WINTERGATAN!
To construct one we'll have to make pillars above oceans !!! 😃😃
I've seen a stationary ring like this talked about before, but nobody talks about an orbital ring. One that orbits (or holds material that orbits) faster than the orbital speed at that height. The only source i've found talking about that in depth are the original papers by Paul Birch, and i don't understand them fully, nor do i know if there's any good critiques of them.
I've always wondered why the earth doesn't have a ring. Which brings me to my question: why doesn't the earth have a ring around it?
about 1/3 of this video is a commerical
you should do more of these
How about if the moon magically became changed its surface with water? would it flow into space or just stay there cause of gravity?
ToDoPit GT Surface or whole moon? Half would Freeze and half would evaporate depending where sun shines. I think it will keep rotating as it does do to inertia and gravity keeping it together.
You're forgetting that the gravity reaching that ring would not be spread equally around it as you say, due to the rest of the planet covering up the center that's generating the gravity, however unevenly.
My point is that, the place in the ring that would be, let's say, parallel to Australia, wouldn't be affected by the same gravitational pull as one that's parallel to most/some other point on Earth. So naturally, the one parallel to the strongest gravitational pull out of all of them (or a point that acts as a combination of all the influential gravitational pulls) would smash into Earth. Potentially smashing into Earth numerous times afterwards on different points, if the gravitational pull wasn't one sided enough to keep it there.
What about the centripetal force acting on the center poles? If the center poles explode, there isn't a centripetal force holding the ring so it will move upwards. As a result, the ring in the north and South Pole will get closer to the earth.
>Running out of ideas.
>Just do what Vsauce did years ago.
>Aight fam.
I'm surprised you didn't mention Vsauce. Michael covered this question a while back as well
Oh my gosh I've been wondering this for years
This idea is called an orbital ring and its a potential way we could build a space elevator with just modern tech. Itd just cost alot to get all the material up there for ring.
What would happen if you would be in a cave exactly in center of mass of the earth?
Would you float in the middle (because you center of mass is attracted to the center of mass of earth = stable) or would you "fall" to the wand of the cave (radial out = unstable) because if you get closer to one side, this side attracts you more.
But the there is more mass pulling you into the other direction...