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The closest thing to a statement on the cross-section of the sphere from the script I could find is this:
WORF
No, sir. The exterior shell is
composed of carbon-neutronium.
Our weapons would be ineffective.
Which actually makes it sounds like, yes, there is a differentiation of material throughout the sphere.
I'm judging from the visual appearance when the Enterprise went through the portal. It seemed that the thickness was several times the length on the Enterprise-D's 642m. This thickness would be needed for such things as a soil base and terrain variations, including the seas seen in the Sphere, as well as artificial gravity generators, et cetera Remember, inside a sphere, all true gravity would cancel out, putting the space inside the structure in zero-gee. Also, neutronium would in physics theory need a gravity field to keep it from coming apart. A skin of a few klicks thick would, of course, be a mere gossamer=thin wall on this scale. I did some postulating for my Relics campaign: http://www.coldnorth.com/owen/game/s...lic/sphere.htm
I think the portal isn't necessarily a good determinator of the internal structure for the same reason you can't check out a house's insulation and wall framing walking through the front door.
I'm not necessarily sold on the idea of the spaces between the plates being 'empty'—I mean, this planet is a bunch of solidish plates floating on liquids, so I think that might be a good basis for the internal structure of the Sphere. That also gives you a vast network of 'oceans' made of whatever weird meta-water they produce with harvesting all that energy.
There's also the question of whether the mountains and lakes we see on the inside were actually the intended geography of the interior, or whether it's been around long enough—and abandoned long enough—for those mountains and oceans to be the result of the equivalent of natural geological forces. Or if, say, something impacts on the interior shell of the sphere, can you have million-mile-wide tsunamis? What if the gravity fails in particular sections, and you can literally walk from vacuum to atmosphere to vacuum? Hell, if you have the command codes for the gravity system, you could wipe out whole civilisations at the push of a button.
they did seem to take some liberties with the bottom pic, but most likely to show the detail.
from the episode Relics
http://i1008.photobucket.com/albums/...son_sphere.jpg
http://i1008.photobucket.com/albums/...ash-landed.jpg
What liberties do you mean?
the external lighting that would not be present unless there was another star in the solar system (I was referring to the bottom pic in post #13).
it's funny Dyson originally calculated that a shell only 3m thick would need all the matter in the solar system to be used in construction.
here are few more pics
this version of Ringword looks very interesting
http://i1008.photobucket.com/albums/...10/rendell.jpg
and another ringworld version
http://i1008.photobucket.com/albums/...download_1.jpg
a swarm verion, or a sphere only partially finished.
http://i1008.photobucket.com/albums/...re-artist.jpeg
http://i1008.photobucket.com/albums/...ram-en.svg.png
Yeah, well, this is Star Trek - never confuse it with hard SF. Dyson's original concept was the swarm type, and was not a habitat, but merely energy collectors. All the shell-type spheres are later, derivative concepts. In your latest post, the first image is not a true Ringworld - note the obviously artificial and relatively small small light source in the centre. It's probably only a planet-sized construct.
yeah I was wondering why the "star" in that ringworld version looked strange, you are probably correct. Though even building a planet sized construction would be a massive undertaking.