Dear
343 Studios, or
Bungie? I mean, I'm talking about stuff that Bungie came up with-
*unintelligible rage* Damn it! This is the exact same problem I had last time, ARGH
Hi, it's me,
AUSTIN
You know, I'm having a little bit of trouble deciding between which pre topic rant to go on
There's the obvious choice of pointing out that the fun I had researching the first Halo video over a year ago
was what made me decide to do science full-time,
BUT as hot as talking about gamma-ray bursts get me,
I have to say that my heart
carries a heavy burden this week. On average, in the first year of its life, a baby gets sick at least six times.
But it can get sick as many as 12. TURNS out, my baby is an overachiever and has managed to catch not one
Not two, but three
Separate illnesses in the past five weeks, of which I've also been blessed because each time I have also gotten sick as well
Awesome!
Turns out being Mr. Mom has its drawbacks, but still here. Here we are,
magically, with a video being made. And on top of it,
I finally collected the horrifying poop story merit badge that seems to be a requirement for every parent
I'll spare you the details and leave it up to your imagination
how the stuffed animals Zero we picked up from Disneyland during VidCon momentarily
resembled Harvey Dent more than an adorably pristine white ghost
Anyway, over a year has passed; YouTube has smote in
profanity wielders with content rating chokeholds; PewDiePie continues to be PewDiePie; and
finally. After all this time, I have decided to break down the
unbelievably cool SCIENCE of halo rings, and the science? The science makes
Ok wait a minute hold on hey hey, hey youtube hi. It's me, Austin!
Okay, nevermind. Can just look the other way for a sec? Just-Just over there. Yeah. Yeah, just do okay
I'm gonna put these on real quick. Just just for a second you got you got it. Okay good
*clears throat* The science
makes NO
GOD
Dam
SENSE
*sigh* That felt so good to say
This has been covered before by a few people including an essay in the novel about halo that covers almost every single
Detail but got quite a few things
Frickin wrong, but I'm here to set the record straight first
Let's talk about the bases
Halos are giant rings that float out in space that come complete with rocks trees grass snow and most importantly
Gravity we'll get to the gravity thing in a bit
But I have to just loop back to how utterly gigantic these things are they have a diameter of
10,000 kilometers
Which is just two thousand kilometers shorter than the Earth's meaning if Earth decided to go on a diet
It makes the ideal lap-band size just enough to curb that massive appetite
but not enough to starve it to death with a width of
318 kilometers this gives halo rings a surface area just shy of 10
million
kilometers or
3.8. Million square miles for context that's enough space to fit the United States Iraq Rwanda
Barbados and
Paris with just enough space left over to I don't know have a tiny National Park or something
That means there's enough room to contain the war on terror and a couple of good vacation spot
Which is all you really need in life aside from being large though. They produce gravity in an utterly
fascinating way
rotation
specifically
Centrifugal force now wait just hold it stop it stop it
I know the sound of furious keyboard clacking followed by nasally, but don't you need said trip a telephone? Oh?
No
I don't
I don't have time to get into the difference between the reference frames just to satiate your pedantry since we're gonna be talking about
Objects on a spinning ring centrifugal force is enough for now now go go
Whine about it to me on Twitter along with your feelings about photons having mass? Where was I know right artificial gravity long time?
Scientists may recall that gravity is a bit weird and that yeah, it's definitely a thing
But Einstein proved that there's literally Oh difference between acceleration and gravity
TLDR if you're in a box accelerating through space at 1g of acceleration or 9.8 meters per second squared there's no
Experiment you could run that would be able to prove that you were in a box flying through space instead of in a box
Sitting on the surface of the earth objects fall light bends all things are literally
Exactly the same. This is called the principle of
Equivalence there are some problems with this as a long-term solution for gravity in space however first
There's the energy
requirements the fuel
Requirements in order to maintain this rate of acceleration would be somewhere near the order of having a fuel tank the size of a star
secondly
accelerating at 9.8 meters per second for a long enough time has
Disastrous space-time complications in just under a year you'll have reached speeds at such a high fraction of the speed of light
Relative to the rest of the universe that
Effectively you're running a risk of time travelling directly to the point in time that the entire
universe dies in a couple of days in order to get around the relativity problems associated with this constant straight-line acceleration
problem
enterprising engineers and physicists came up with a secret life hack way of providing constant acceleration without
moving in a straight line
Rotating rings and here's how it works good old Isaac Newton told us that an object in motion will stay in motion
until acted on by an outside force that outside force is
Acceleration and that stay in motion thingy is called inertia
So you're standing on a rotating ring, right?
How let's just stop it right there at this exact moment your body isn't actually rotating. It's moving this direction
90 degrees in the direction of the rotation in that exact moment this is called the tangential vector, okay?
But let's okay. Let's start it up again as the ring rotates
It's pulling you away from that tangential vector at a constant rate as a result
You constantly feel a change of direct over time delta v over t AKA
Acceleration you feel this force this tangential force as gravity and in almost always
It is you can control the amount of gravity something on the surface of your ring
Experiences by changing the rotational speed spin faster more acceleration more gravity slower less
Etcetera etc, and this is the cool way that halo rings work
However since this is a dark attempt to hack the laws of physics according to Sir Isaac Newton and my buddy
Einstein it has some serious
Drawbacks as is prone to happen when you flirt with the cosmic Kraken
But we'll get to that
First we have to know how fast this thing is spinning you see most of the math done on halo rings to date has been
assuming a gravitational constant of
9.8. The same as Earth, but if there's something I've learned in my time over analyzing game science
It's to never trust gravity. I love game developers, but I can't recall the last game
I play that actually had a gravitational acceleration of 9.8
Meters per second and halo is no exception through a clever combination of frame by frame
analysis pixel measurements and abuse of government-issued equipment
I was able to determine that the rate of gravity on a halo ring is a whopping
fifteen point one
Seven meters per second squared over one and a half G's which I'm pretty sure you could spend some time on and be
Mostly, okay, but it would kind of suck
I'd normally weigh about a hundred forty pounds or more
Depending upon how recently and how many times I've caved and gorged myself on the local central, Illinois
Delicacy known as the horseshoe, but on a halo I feel like I weighed
210 freaking pounds, that's a huge difference?
Running on this thing would absolutely
Suck thankfully Master Chief is a super soldier with super soldier size glutes the gravity however is
the least of the bad news
They get so much worse and in order to illustrate
Exactly we're gonna have to talk about guns
Hashtag don't flag me YouTube hashtag. It's just for the science
The good thing about halo rings is the larger your ring the less noticeable the negative drawbacks of tangential acceleration
Gravity you experience, but they never ever fully go away in order to pull
1.5. G's our ring has to rotate slightly slower than one rotation per hour
23.9 five rotations per day and what this seems really slow your
Tangential velocity is absurdly fast
8711 meters per second or over
19,000 miles per hour this isn't a huge deal if you're already on the ring
But it makes actually getting on the ring next to impossible remember. There's no actual gravity here
You're just experiencing a constant change in direction and speed that means if say you wanted to land on this ring
you'd have to match the rotational speed you have to get a spaceship rotating at
19,000 miles per freakin hour without managing to crash into the darn thing with a normal planet with normal gravity
You can just kind of skim the surface using the atmosphere to slow you down
If you're trying to do that with a halo ring though. You'd be getting slammed by an atmosphere moving at Mach
25 it shred even the most well armored ship to freaking pieces
We'd be tempted to approach this thing from the side, but I do not
Recommend this the best chance you have is starting somewhere near the center and trying to match the spin working your way
slowly inward still this would take forever and be
incredibly difficult to pull off no wonder all the Marines died on impact at the start of halo 1 a high-speed crash combined with a
1000 kilogram masterchief pinballing around the interior of the ship because like some sort of douche bag he decided not to wear a seat belt
Those Marines had no chance, but fine. You're on the ring
Oh good now
Right wrong the nightmare has just begun because this spinning rings worst
characteristic for the modern super soldier is its effect on
gunfights which you'll be
Experiencing a lot of running sanctioned ballistic tests on the halo ring I discovered that the muzzle velocity of the assault rifle is exactly
1,000 meters per second awesome that is gonna make my math so much easier
And it's gonna need to be because I have some complicated
trigonometry to do things in freefall from the surface of the halo ring experience the worst effects of this tangential acceleration
centrifugal force stuff the instant you fire a gun for example
And the bullet leaves the barrel it is no longer tied to the surface of the ring its inertial reference frame a term for
Well the frame of its the frame of reference you use to measure
Physics its inertial reference frame leaves a surface of the ring where your inertial frame is and enters the wider
Galaxy you see remember
the gravity is caused by your feet being on the ground in your
Direction being changed by the rotation of the ring your body is wanting to move in the tangential direction
But it stopped by the ring, but as soon as you're not touching it. You immediately start traveling in a straight line at
8711 meters per second if you're just jumping you'll hit the ground pretty soon especially under 1.5 G
But if you're moving faster say if you were a bullet well, you'll see
The easiest way to see this effect is to fire a round straight up into the air
It's traveling straight up at 1,000 meters per second, but it's also moving at
8711 meters per second to the left in the direction of the rings' rotation as a result for every
second the bullet travels 1,000 meters up and
8711 meters to the left
Ignoring the effects of atmospheric drag. Oh god the atmosphere you know that oh, just wait. We don't get to that
It's not the time yet. What happens if you're looking at the bullet from outside
The ring as it travels in a pretty normal ballistic arc not exactly mind-blowing
But let's snap to your perspective on the ring a gun fired straight up in the air will barring
Windfall straight back down if you're on planet earth well mostly the Coriolis effect does exist on earth
But it's nowhere near as bad as it is on rotating rings while on earth the rotation of a planet can affect the trajectory of
a ballistic object by a few inches or feet on a halo ring these bullets end up landing a full 22
kilometers away in the direction of the Rings
Rotation this happens for a few different reasons for one thing as the bullet travels further
Away from the ring and closer to the center it travels further per second in
relation to the ground in the direction of the Rings
rotation kind of like how figure skater can spin faster by pulling in their arms
but also
There's just the general problem with the ring moving so fast itself this means that any bullet fired any direction is gonna
Be affected by this, but as you start firing in directions other than straight up things get even
Weirder I actually had the model ease on my computer because the math was far, too
Complicated for me to visualize with just numbers if you fire your gun at a 45 degree angle
In the opposite direction of the Rings rotation weird stuff happens, I don't have time to get into the complicated math of ballistics
But just like here's the math if you're curious since a certain amount of the
8711 per second speed is getting cancelled out combined with the ring curving away from the bullets
tangential path a bullet fired in this direction actually
experiences less gravity than a bullet fired in the other direction a bullet fired at 45 degrees in the same direction
As a rotation as a result
Experiences more gravity and falls faster since the tangential speed is getting added to the bullets
Horizontal velocity and the ring is curving toward it
However since the speed of the ring is so absurdly fast over eight times
faster than a bullet even though the round fired in the opposite direction of the rotation
Experiences less gravity travels higher and stays in the air longer it actually travels less
distance since so much of its horizontal
Velocity is robbed by the ring by contrast the bullet fired up the ring hits the ground faster
But travels 21 kilometers further and a bullet fired
perpendicularly to the Rings rotation would curve to the left and right respectively this isn't just a problem for sniping this problem creates a
30% difference in accuracy depending upon which direction you're firing you'd basically have to be
Directly in front of someone to have any hope of hitting
Anything you're aiming at and if you fire in the wrong direction at the wrong angle
You risk a bullet meant for somebody else turning around and just straight up smacking you in the face
And then there's the weather
Well it's possible to contain in an atmosphere without a roof these angular velocity problems would create the weirdest weather ever
Storms would be pretty frequent since the Coriolis effect would be much more exaggerated on this ring than on earth
But since the rotation is actually perpendicular to earth so with the storms be perpendicular to earth this means
thunderstorms and tornadoes that rotate horizontally
Imagine getting sucked up by a tornado that doesn't even touch the ground
the only good thing about this the only thing is that bullets could be rendered completely irrelevant because
masterchief weighing one thousand pounds earth and over
1500 pounds on a halo ring wouldn't have to bother with guns at all
He gonna sneak up on the Covenant and jump on their heads like a brutal space bro version of Mario
To hell with shooting your enemies with that jump height Master Chief is a living weapon of mass destruction
Landing on elites and grunts with the force of a European smart car dropped from a building
This is not a place you would want to live you feel fatter
You wouldn't be able to pour water without spilling it and just for sheer horror factor. You're also sitting on a WMD capable of releasing
599 Quintus iliyan joules of gamma radiation over 100 times the energy released by the most powerful explosion ever
Recorded in our universe which was a supernova caused by the merging of two white dwarves and as a result
concentrated too much awesome into one place and had to explode to spread it out again, so
Yeah
Screw these things I wanted to live on one when I was a teenager
But I've totally changed my mind gun fights are impossible
And you risk getting eaten alive by space herpes, just by opening the wrong door screw that
This I'm going back to my cartoon shooting game that has adorable girls with death rays quantum mechanical
teleportation and sound guns capable of destroying cities
sincerely Austin
PS. Oh hey, did you know that I came up with the name for those of you who like my show?
Scientists are you a
scientist then join my discord channel, just follow this link and you can converse with other people who like to show or like
Try to tell me I'm wrong
about today
I'm not though I
Did the math?
Thank you. Everyone's watching my video on halo. I hope it does well
I was really excited Evan want to do this one for a while
it's been kind of in my back pocket because I
Lost still love the halo franchise even after all these years. Even nobody makes the better games than other ones okay?
oh, yeah, you should subscribe to the game theorist if you haven't already and
Watch my other videos watch the map head videos watch them catching koopa videos
Oh, I don't remember what my next topic is for next week, so i'm not gonna. Tell you what it is. Yeah?
