Exploring the Dyson Ring: Parameters, Stability and Helical Orbit
Teerth Raval, Dhruv Srikanth
TL;DR
The paper investigates a Dyson ring around the Sun as a habitable megastructure, deriving parameterized gravity from a toroidal ring and assessing stability under radial and axial perturbations. It introduces a multi-purpose, non-Earth-like orbit concept called the God Orbit, combining Revolution around the Sun and Rotation around the ring to produce a helical Coiling trajectory, demonstrated via Cowell’s method and numerical force visualization. Key contributions include explicit ring parameters ($R=1\ \mathrm{AU}$, $R_c=6.371\times10^6$ m, $\rho=2267\ \mathrm{kg\,m^{-3}}$, $m=2.725\times10^{29}$ kg), a semi-analytic gravity framework with $F_{tan}$ vanishing and non-elementary $F_{rad}$ and $F_z$, and a validated coiling orbit with period close to one year. The work highlights the potential feasibility and methods for habitability studies of megastructures and offers a general orbit-estimation approach for complex gravitational fields that go beyond analytic solutions.
Abstract
A Dyson ring is a hypothetical megastructure, that a very advanced civilization would build around a star to harness more of its energy. Satellite propagation is of high priority in such a vast world where distances could very well be measured in astronomical units. We analyze the ring's parameters and stability and propose a stable helical orbit around the Dyson ring influenced by the gravity of the Dyson ring and the Sun. Taking theoretically explainable values for all parameters, we describe our approach to finding this orbit and present the successful simulation of a satellite's flight in this path.