Re: OT: The Geography Of A Discworld and the surrounding universe.

>Discworld? Do you mean a giant disk in space in orbit around a star? I
can't
>comment on the climate until I have a clearer image of what it is. Right
now,
>I'm imagining a giant round disk, with one side perpetually facing the
star,
>the other perpetually facing away. Please correct me.
Sort of....

You have a flat disk in space with a tiny sun orbiting it. (Optional: put
the disk on the back of a turtle, with or without interposed elephants.)
If you add the astrochelonian, you'd have all the gravity you'd need for
the little ball of flaming gas to stay in orbit. At a guess, the sun
would be between 1/100 and 1/6 the mass of the world, depending on
distance.

Joe, however, was talking about magnetism to keep the sun at the right
distance from the disk. As he has it, the sun would have to be balanced
very well on the central magnetic band in order to keep it from slamming
into the edges of the world. I'd just use gravity; it's simpler and
works. If necessary, you could have a great mass of something dense, like
osmium or me, at the hub (the astrochelonian's shell).

Have you thought of direction names, Joe? Did you get this idea from the
Discworld novels?

____
"Through not observing the thoughts of another a man is seldom unhappy,
but he who does not observe the movements of his own mind must of
necessity be unhappy."
--Marcus Aurelius

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