Time sychronization on Larry Nivan's Ringworld

[Lord Torath]

As I understand Larry Nivan's Ringworld, it's a ring of earth a couple thousand miles wide, a couple hundred thick, and with a diameter of about 2 astronomical units, with the sun at the center.

It thus takes roughly 16 minutes for light to cross the distance to the other side. How would you handle world-wide time on such a world?

Aotrs Commander's thread about a ring-station on a much smaller scale with a canopy that darkens for night got me thinking about it.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

As I understand Larry Nivan's Ringworld, it's a ring of earth a couple thousand miles wide, a couple hundred thick, and with a diameter of about 2 astronomical units, with the sun at the center.

It thus takes roughly 16 minutes for light to cross the distance to the other side. How would you handle world-wide time on such a world?

Aotrs Commander's thread about a ring-station on a much smaller scale with a canopy that darkens for night got me thinking about it.

I'd handle it by having a central location called, say, Greenwich that arbitrarily sets the time, and that everyone else references by setting their atomic clocks against.

We already deal with time synchronization through the Internet, that has to account for variable network latency. A big ring is just a scaling problem. Yes, events 16 light minutes apart might not be perfectly in sych, but that's due to physics, not the clocks themselves.

Grey Wolf

[factotum]

Your dimensions are a bit off--the Ringworld is actually a million miles wide; the walls at the edge to keep the air in are a thousand miles high, which might be where the confusion comes in.

As for the question, I agree with Grey Wolf. You just pick an arbitrary time and make that the central time for your system. We had the same situation in the real world when the railways came in--it might take a train hours or even days to cover the distance between its stations, but the timetable held regardless.

[Telok]

Ringworld also has a network of superconductors buried in the scrith. I recall that it was what the various levitation devices used to 'push' against.

Induce or introduce a modulated current from a single point to carry information. Since the distance to any other point is constant, the time delay from the lightspeed lag is constant. As long as you know your position on the ring you can calculate precisely when the signal was sent.

Do two signals from opposite points and you can use the difference between signals to calculate your distance from the signal origins. Then you don't even need to know where on the ring you are.