If the earth were shaped like a doughnut, would we have life or just eat the damn thing?

[HopeHoops]

[MineralMan]

1. I doubt that it is possible for a torus-shaped planet to exist.

Without a center, it would be unlikely to survive long enough to generate life. So, I don't have an answer for you.

[HopeHoops]

2. (Eat it before it collapses)

[MineralMan]

3. I haven't eaten dirt since I was three years old.

But...

[HopeHoops]

4. Ah, but it could be ANYTHING then - pudding, cake, ice cream - ANYTHING - at least until MOM came.

[MineralMan]

5. I'm pretty sure my Mom just shrugged.

"All kids eat dirt sometimes," she'd say. "I don't know that it ever did them much harm."

[HopeHoops]

7. It didn't. Mine all did. Mine bathed in it. Dirt's dirt and that's that.

[MineralMan]

10. I'm pretty sure that's why I'm not allergic to anything.

I probably inoculated myself with every known thing very early in my life. I don't even react to poison oak or ivy. I probably ate that, too, at some point.

[HopeHoops]

11. Fuckin' barberry bushes - I'm alergic to THAT shit - small scrape and I swell.

[Warpy]

17. That's why you've got a decent immune system

Eating dirt exposes you to all sorts of nasties in concentrations too small to cause illness.

They're finding out that the oversanitized kiddies today don't have immune systems that are nearly as strong as those of immigrant kiddies who ate dirt, especially third world dirt.

[MineralMan]

19. That could well be. When I look at my great nieces and nephews,

it's amazing how many of them have allergies to all sorts of things. Why that is I can't say, but I know that they didn't play outdoors unsupervised when they were toddlers. That was certainly not the case when I was a toddler. We had a good fence and a dog. In good weather, my mom plopped me into a large fenced play area outside, then got on with her work in the house. If we didn't scream bloody murder, we were left to our own devices for long periods of time. Dog slobber, dirt, and assorted bugs and weeds were our environment. We rarely got sick. I and my siblings have no allergies.

[Ready4Change]

20. Yep the backyard used to be what TV is today.

.

[HopeHoops]

6. In theory, it really could exist. Do you know the simplest way to calculate the volume of a torus?

There's complicated shit you can throw at it equation wise, but there's an easier way. If you know the centroidal length, being the circle that constitutes the middle point of each most miniscule slice circle of the torus, then that becomes a length. As one of my professors said, "unfold it like a sausage into a log". You multiply the length (that inner circle) times the radius squared times pi and there you be. Volume of doughnut. Then you eat it.

The calculus works out the same way, but sometimes simple observation is superior.

Now as for a planet. That gets weird. The local gravitational forces would clearly keep it in shape, but the gravity would be strongest on the outside edges and weakest on the inner ones. There would be a center point of extreme gravity where anything that entered it would probably never escape and eventually produce a captive non-moving internal moon. I had to do a lot of calculations on this for one of my classes an the results were not always obvious. But yes, such a planet could exist - curiously without rotation!

[MineralMan]

8. Does anything in space not rotate?

I can't think of anything that is stationary. Any rotation would quickly destroy a torus-shaped planet. Unless, that is, there was a central gravity well, like a small black hole or something. The universe seems to favor rotation.

[HopeHoops]

9. It depends. Our moon doesn't rotate relative to the Earth, but it does relative to the Sun.

There's no "point of reference" to apply that question to.

[MineralMan]

12. The moon does rotate on its axis, though.

The time of rotation matches the orbital time, though, so we always see the same view of that body.

[HopeHoops]

14. You would THINK the Earth would ask for a backside view once in a while - just to be kinky.

[MineralMan]

15. Well, we've sent some eyes up there to orbit around the moon

so we could check out its ass. Men are like that, I guess. :rofl:

[HopeHoops]

16. I know I am.

[FSogol]

13. I had no idea Galactus posted here on DU. n/t

[hunter]

18. The earth is shaped like a doughnut.

But so is everything else so we can't see it.

It's all doughnuts, all the way in and all the way out.

I call this the Homer Simpson theory of Everything.

[Lithos]

21. It could not be a torus

Gravity would condense it to a sphere. The only possible exception would be something akin to a Dyson Sphere where there was an internal pressure which counteracted the force of gravity.

L-

[Fumesucker]

22. I don't know but it would probably look a bit like this..