The Brain Bender

[benrob0329]

In this game, someone posts a brain bending situation and everyone discusses it for a little bit. Then someone else posts another.

I'll start.

What if the earth was square?

​If you walked of, what would happen?

[robsoles]

Walking on this cuboid planet would be as troubling as walking off (an edge of) it for not only our species but for any species from our Universe imho.

A Universe in which planets form as cuboids would have (however improbably) some very different physics to our Universe - any'body' born in that Universe (if any species can survive in the seriously odd physics going on in it) would become used to whatever it takes, and whatever the risks are, to go from face to face of the cuboid they are standing on.

[benrob0329]

Hmm, you mean like gravity pulls flat faces instead of smooth ones?

[robsoles]

'flat' and 'smooth' may as well ambiguously be each other.

I'm no physicist but I have done a little reading; the way gravity works in our Universe is a huge contributor to the shape of our planets and other bodies formed by gasses, dust and debris, to the best of my understanding.

As mass increases the gravitational effect of the mass increases, the gravitational effect just attracts from a periphery distance to the center of the mass in all directions reasonably evenly with exceptions made by other significant masses in (not too) near proximity - if the Earth stopped travelling at a right angle to the Sun quite so rapidly it would simply fall into the sun. If nothing more cataclysmic happens beforehand the Earth will eventually fall into the Sun imho, but I am digressing.

Due to the reasonably uniformly 'spherical' effect of gravity; colliding dust, debris and gas, which happen to form a mass of any significance has a tendency of settling into a spherical shape - note tho, movement and interaction with other significant bodies (even without colliding) can make odd shapes, even a cuboid - to anybody on the cuboid crossing from one face to another face will just be a matter of stepping past the crest of a mountain.

[benrob0329]

Ok, what if Google broke?

[portalhavoc]

That would be chaos! How would everyone search on the Internet?! Oh well, Time to go to the library. (There is NO way that I'm using DDG, Yahoo or Bing to search. I have standards.)

[benrob0329]

DDG is an awsome search engine! I get better results.

[Kpenguin]

I use DuckDuckGo. I like my privacy.

[benrob0329]

Ok , what would happen if someone else posted a question?

[Kpenguin]

What would happen if this forum went down?