How Big Is This Ring?

The concept was first developed in the 1980s by Phil Swan and his collaborators. The ring is designed to run for thousands of kilometers around the Pacific Ocean as a circle, with about half its mass in the ring and half in the tethers. It would have 2 times 10 to 17 joules running inside that hoop at any given moment - roughly the amount of energy that hits Earth every second from the Sun. If it did break, all the fast moving parts are either flying off in orbit or burning up the atmosphere like meteorites if it breaks.

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