Life on a Cube World

Interesting concept for a debate. I think that we need a few ground rules stated instead of implied first. I propose the following stipulations:

• This is not just a habitable world but an inhabited world. The nature of the inhabitants are open for discussion.
• The atmosphere of this planet extends beyond the edges of the planet.
• The tensile strength of the crust of this planet exceeds any tectonic, centripetal or other smoothing forces. (It has to stay a cube.)
• The planet (Boxy?) need not be a perfect cube. The Earth is not a perfect sphere.
• The edges while certainly inhospitable to many inhabitants will not be sterile regions.

I agree, some mental gymnastics.

Where along the history line would this be for this discussion? Using my longtime home as a reference, there was once Pangea, and with continental drift there became the Earth we know today. Would only one face of Boxy be land mass? Hardly seems plausible... Two opposing faces? Seems all edges and vertices would need to be land mass. Water puddled up in the centers of the faces? Doesn't sound like a lot of water.

The edges are not sterile... okay, I can see that. Mount Everest has an atmospheric pressure about 1/3 of that at sea level, and has neither flora nor fauna. I would expect the vertices of Boxy to be sterile.

Life on Mount Everest is certainly harsh but it is far from sterile.

I misspoke a bit. At the top of Everest, the pressure is about 1/3 that of sea level and supports neither flora nor fauna.

True, flora and fauna exist and survive on the mountain, but nowhere near the top. The known plant species that lives at the highest elevation (the lichen discussed in your link) is not known to grow above 6480 meters, well short of the 8848 meter summit of Everest.

[edit] There I go, containing this within a frame of reference. Just because it is that way here on Earth doesn't mean it has to be that way on Boxy. I'm with ya, defined as hostile but not sterile.

And yet humans do walk up to this summit without the use of oxygen. Many primitive life must go dormant due to the cold temperatures and lack of oxygen at these elevations. I agree that at the edges of Boxy, life cannot thrive but all life need not die by just transiting this natural, permanent boundary. In contrast a volcanic lava pool is sterile. Any seeds, birds, bacteria, people, puma, etc. that lands in a lava pool dies.

Let's just say inhospitable edges. Cold, windswept, barren. Making inter-facial migration difficult.

Pretty hard to do without the accompanying physics to make it possible....

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited.

Imagination en-squares the world"

The sides would all have to be stepped, as the center of each of the six sides is where everything would tend to want to slide.

All homes would need to be built at an angle corresponding to the center of the cube. This would probably make land closer to the edges "the cheap side".

Could you imagine how cool it would be in terms of the view to stand on one of the points ?

Homes would need to be built at an angle only if the size of the inhabitants were a significant fraction of the planet size. On Earth people use to think that the Earth was a flat plane and most of our terrestrial navigation assumes a plane surface until we get close to the destination. I see no need for tilted structures.

The center of gravity of the cube would be the center of the cube.

Therefore a home built near the edge of the cube would be the equivalent (gravity wise) as a home resting on one corner of the foundation with it's floor sloped at 45 degrees.

Walking in such a home would be impossible.

The people would adapt, in the same way that we adapt to living in highly mountainous areas, on the sides of the mountains. Architecture would be interesting. Lots of steps, ramps and handrails. People would walk with walking sticks, just like those that live in the Alps.

Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials has beautiful color illustrations of hundreds of aliens from many decades of science fiction. From Ring World, and Riverworld... the Overlords, the Heechee... from books written by Clark, Heinlein, Asimov, Farmer, van Vogt, etc.

It's really cool to see if you had imagined them the same way, while reading the book.

Our Boxlings would have evolved to a slanted world in some way. The apex species, as well as all the flora and fauna.

Integral Trees By Larry Niven I thought was a great book. Niven the Ring World author. Both give imagination a spin on life developing in some unconceivable environment.

Absolutely!

For those that scoff at our cube world, take a read through Niven's Ring World. A ribbon encircling a sun that is 1,000,000 miles wide and the circumference of earth's orbit. The entire inside face of that ribbon is inhabited or habitable, with it's own weather, mountains, oceans, civilizations, etc. Talk about fantastical! I think Niven may have bent a few laws or theories to produce this world, but it's as believable as any world.

I have to believe that many of you must've read this classic.

Here is a great site about the physics of the worlds of Ringworld and Integral Trees and others.

Science Fiction Physics

Good points. GA

The feet of our people would need to be large, flat, or lizard like for traction. Or spiky for digging in.

Yes, I guess I did have my blinders on here. "We" would probably look a lot different than "we" do.

I was thinking more that the intelligent life forms on Boxy would probably be more like Centaurs or Centaur like mountain goats to handle the steep terrain.

Possibly. But I don't know how steep it would actually be, except in the actual mountainous areas. I'm envisioning terrain that is more perpetually sloped in one direction (away from center). Although it won't actually be physically sloped, just that gravity will cause you to lean, in order for you to be stable. It will be a relative sensation.

So if you were to use a telescope to view someone on the opposite side of the central sea, you would see that they are leaning away from you in the opposite direction, despite the fact that the land is flat between the two of you. And if you view someone that is much closer to the edge than you are, again the land may be flat, but they will be leaning further than you are. It would be an attack on the senses, if you weren't born there.

Same as it was last time this question was posed!
Del

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_{Philip Absolon, Wikipedia}

Yeah, and here are the cat's owners

Am I correct in thinking that every building would need be built at an angle? The further from a face center, the steeper the angle? And everyone would naturally walk while tilted, but nonetheless stable?

We still have topography on Boxy... mountains, etc. So the far side of hills (from center) would be the most desirable. Or would it be the near side?

The whole thing falls apart when you get to gravity...

On a geological time scale it would soon become roughly spherical.
Del

But our civilization exists before that happened. In fact, they have scientists that predict that very thing. But the people are more worried about the national debts, than some theoretical absurd "rounding of the plant" some eons, hence.

The Rounders were generally scoffed at

Borg!

Okay, so inhospitable edges. Civilizations must need to develop independently on each face with little contact. Since it isn't a perfect cube, and still has topography, some of the faces may have mountains in the center. So it won't necessarily be a central ocean on each face.

I noticed that the earlier discussion assumed that the axis of rotation of Boxy would be perpendicular to two of the sides. What if the rotational axis was from opposing vertexes. Trade winds would certainly wiggle around the six other vertexes as they spun above and below the equatorial plane.

Yeah, corner to corner axis. Otherwise we'd have two perpetually twilight faces.

Preposterous.

The relief on earth from highest mountain to deepest ocean is about 10 miles compared to a 4000 mile radius; ~0.25%. The relief on Boxy is √3-1 ≈ 73%. Quite a difference.

Masu's illustrations on the earlier thread are good.

I'm rethinking the full atmosphere on the entire planet. It's more likely that the corners would be in space. And if in fact the edges were also in space, we would have the bizarre situation of 6 entirely separated potential worlds, who wouldn't be able to discover each other until they'd reached a certain level of advanced technology.

Space, on land. A far greater divider than merely oceans. But yet the same planet. I wonder if they would even know of each other's existence.

Like Minecraft?

MineCraft was exactly what I was thinking when I read the topic header.

Our children (mostly) are already experiencing life on a world of made of cubes.

As it spun on its axis (depending on the orientation), it would probably wear to a round or spherical shape like our planet. Status quo achieved - we can stop wondering now.

No we can't...

There is an no case for a spinning/ rotating cube. Even if it did, against what would it 'wear' ? Gravity is independent of motion, so the atmosphere spins at the same speed.

Also, assuming that this 'box' does rotate, why wouldn't it just tumble around the centre of gravity ?

Because the cube would ultimately settle and collapse into its most efficient shape over time, which is going to be an oblate sphere (if rotating).

If the cube is large enough and massive enough it would do this over time as gravity forced rock, soil, and water (assuming this world had it) downward toward the center. In our own case, the atmospheric winds and rains further wear down the surface over time.

Our own planet has a surface variation of less than .25% of its radius if you removed the water in the oceans and less than .15% if you include the seas.

Lastly, planet formation usually begins with a hot and molten mass of material (if it is not a gas planet), which will by its nature seek a spherical shape by gravity's force.

Although the combining principle is different, water droplets in space will form a perfect sphere (due to surface tension), which again, is the most efficient shape it can take on. It would be no different as a molten planet, so the idea of a planet taking on the shape of a cube is not even possible at the onset.

Nicely put, but based in this reality, where the 'box' cannot exist.

In this thread it does exist, so it (planet Cuba?) is perhaps not in process of becoming an oblate sphere....yet So why should it spin and not tumble ? Perhaps tumbling causes it to remain cubed...I liked 'Borg' better!

Okay. Here are my points:

1. For a planet to start out as a cube would be a problem given the laws of physics.

2. Even if a planet gets "cubed" by some astronomical event, it would not remain so for long because of the forces and processes described in my last post. In the interim it would spin or tumble about its center of gravity.

3. If you want to create your own reality with your own set of rules and physical laws, then fine. Describing it in terms of our reality and laws is then pointless because it could spin, tumble, or even do the Rumba if that is your imaginary wish.

You already made your point, Hero; that you don't want to be included in our discussion. You continuously trying to proclaim that it's too ridiculous to ponder is simply pretentious. Obviously we don't agree with you, or I'd be talking to myself on this thread.

There is some ingenious brainstorming going on here. Unfortunate that you can't adapt to the ground rules that we set up for this exercise. For one, our civilization is taking place at a point in this planet's history before it reverts to a sphere. Is that okay with you? You often have some intelligent input on things. Unfortunately, clearly you don't want to play with this one. I got it. But we're setting up a scenario, and using known laws, not creating our own.

And... I don't believe that "everything in the universe has to be round" is one of the indisputable laws of the universe. I don't believe you have first hand knowledge to that extent. We ignored your first protests. But you're very persistent, and now annoying. So....

Thank you for your thoughts. I'll just get out of your way, then.

Your constructive input is welcome. You're an intelligent man.

But not your continual scoffing at my idea and scenario. That's not the spirit of the exercise.

Now you're getting it...however, a tumbling cube in orbit is more likely to do the Quickstep.

And now, the news:

Surface 5, anticipated to face the sun soon..."we anticipate orders for solar energy from Surfaces 1 and 3..please note that we have transmission problems due to extreme icing"

Warning to Surface 4...the ocean is coming your way ...

See how inter-dependent the Cubits have become? No more war, and a Great Flood to remind them every second lifetime or so...

The Rounders appear to be gaining support.

doesn't matter what type of world you live in........... the news remain the same.

Breaking news at Surface 5..High Reverence Cartman live...

!@#Inquisition!@#! !$* bring me their heads..world is sixed and that's that! It took one day to flatten each side it is written.... do they want war ???

Breaking News Special report,

In a few minutes The Pope is about to speak and condemn these renegade faction Heretics by having a Spanish Cubic Inqusition.

^{No relation to Monty Python}

This is News Channel 6³ and We will bring you farther reports .....before they actually happen.

Meanwhile, on Surface 5...

This is your Rounder-in-Chief....we'll show Surface 6....dump all that tea into the bay, now!

The Pope wants YOU

He is calling on all boys ages 6-15 years of age to form a new special ops commando unit called the ............ "Alter Boy Brigade"

Recuitment offices are now open.

The Pope ordered that the State be initiated to be at DEFCON 4

^{The pope likes his tea damn-it}

Mean while on Surface 7:

Lets not tell them square heads that we are actually a sphere. Push them over the edge!

G.K.: If you have put 'just the right' amount of water on all sides, I guess it could have looked like you pictured. As you 'pour' more water onto all flat sides, the water's surface would follow the gravitational equipotential surface of the cube. Exactly what that looks like for a cube I'm not sure, but I doubt if it will be (partial) sections of a spherical surface, as you seem to indicate.

Reply #84's picture may be close if there's a lot of water, but I also doubt the spherical distribution around the corners...

-J

Thanks, Jorrie. A little more help, please: Is my upper figure correct??? I mean, do all gravitational force vectors (from around the surface) end up to the center of the cube??? (This must be its mass center, assuming that the cube has a uniform mass density.)

Good Stuff, Jorrie. Thanks. That certainly makes sense. All of the opinions thus far have been using the gravitational effects that would be present on a sphere. Clearly (now that you've pointed it out, of course) the considerable mass of the corners must be accounted for, as well. That does change some things.

I guess we just had to think Outside the Sphere!

"I think the rather huge excess mass at the corners would give a slight deviation from the direction of the center, in the direction of the corners - except exactly at the corners and centers of flat sides."

It would also be through the center to the middle of an edge, but working with center of a flat and the middle of an edge, the force vectors are 45 degrees apart; I find it hard to imagine that the transformation from one to the other would be anything other than gradual and through the center of mass.

There is a cool fallout from these positions. If we set the force at 1 for the center of a flat, the force at the middle of an edge is 1/2, and it is 1/3 at the corner( done in my head at close to midnight, I'll check it in the morning).

Thanks for the help, Jorrie... ...

Like this?

Here's another idea about Boxy.

Many of the nay sayers insist that Boxy could not retain this cubic shape naturally. Nobody said that this shape had to be maintained in perpetuity without intervention. What if the inhabitants desired a cubic shape for their world and studiously maintained it. Why would they do this? Might these edges be global scale border walls like the Great Wall of China?

So, is this what the shovel ready jobs really are?

What if these corners are actually vast metropolitan centers that approximately cube the sphere of this planet? Urban sprawl into mythical proportions!

True. If they keep building and building... creating a hive world...

In twelve thousand years of civilization on our planet we've gone from structures of only four meters tall to over 800 meters. If we succeed in solving any and all apparent resource limitations for the far future of several million years might humanity cube the Earth. Structural engineers like to build boxy shapes to maximize the usable space inside the structure.

Assuming the alpha inhabitants of Boxy have a need or desire for structures.

Bees, termites, birds and humans build structures. Dolphin, dogs, monkeys and pigs don't. True, they may or may not need to build. But I'm thinking they are technological, so probably need to keep their computers out of the rain.

By the way... what would cloud formations and movement on boxy look like?

I would expect that the trade winds that confront any corner or edge will cause cloud and localized storm formation quite regularly. Depending on the average temperature on this planet the precipitation maybe snow or rain. If the corner location and axis of rotation is as I proposed earlier with the axis being from corner to corner then I would expect frequent low intensity equatorial storms.

Imagine the center of gravity on the edge or even near the edge. Buildings would no longer be perpendicular to the ground. Sort of like building on the sides of mountains.

It's a small world. Actually so small that gravity is felt along x, y,z axis only. A sphere will eventually collapse to a cube. Water is kept parallel to the faces. Navigating over a corner is tricky. A moon is not needed to stabilize axis orientation. But every so many aeons a switch of the axis, say from y to z, will cause mass extinctions.

that planet would be really, really small. After it become a larger mass it would become sperical.............But lets ask our resident Doctor......

Oh Doctor Suess...What would it be like if we lived on a cube?

Dr. Suess:

If we lived on a cube?

Who is this boob that that says we don't already live on a cube.

Of course we do, I say to you.

I'll try to explian and I'll do my best.

On half the corners, north meets south, and the other half, east meets west

Before you travel, so you don't get lost, let me tell you tale, Buy a cubic compass, I hear Kris/Del has a half price sale.

Phoenix, you've missed your calling

A strange but interesting concept. Conventional planets larger than 500 miles diameter will become spherical due to gravity and the resistance to fracture that the normal composition has.

So in order to form naturally, the cube would need to be something like a single crystal of some compound that forms in that way. Even if it could form, gravity would eventually win the battle.

But gravity would be the strongest in 8 places and weakest in 6 places. The field would vary in a 6 sided saddle shape and transition from day to night or night to day would occur very rapidly at dusk and dawn.

Questions to ponder:

Would the 8 points of highest gravity be wet or dry? Why? Same question for the lowest points of gravity? Would the atmosphere follow the same constraints?

Would a moon be able to remain in orbit or would instabilities due to variation in gravity dispose of it?

I imagined it was formed by the shattering of an even larger, but irregular, crystalline body that grew in a normal fashion. It shattered along its natural facet planes and fault lines and one of the largest pieces happened to be a cube. It then got pounded by eons of smaller softer bodies, which in time deposited enough matter to become soil and topography, and enough chemicals to form organics and water.

Perhaps?

There are a few Cubic Crystaline Structures. , it may be possible........until gravity over powers it

well they do have square cottonwood trees in panama.

http://atlasobscura.com/place/valley-of-square-trees

may be its "the shape of things to come" reference from a Trumph TR7 commercial

If the atmosphere is only a few miles thick, as on earth, it will form a spherical layer above the oceans. The habitable zones of the planet will consist of rings a few miles or tens of miles wide around the oceans. The edges and corners will be in a space-like environment.

You imply that the oceans are spherical but in this universe the physical laws are different and the wet and dry proportions must be different from Earth or the water would form some of the peaks as well as the flat sides!

Each world in this universe would need eight attractors to hold the wet peaks in place.

I still say it is preposterous.

Preposterous, you say??

Why... that's rubbish!

It's VERY posterous, I say!

And furthermore, my good man... who implied that the physical laws are different? On the contrary... the challenge is to use what laws we know, and to improvise and imagine on the rest, like every scientific imaginateur, who's worth his weight in salt!

And furtherfurthermore.... we haven't actually established how much water exists. It may be lakes in the center. Some sides may have no water. There may be rivers running to lakes or seas from the edges, continually circulating through the rain cycle.

And furtherfurtherfurthermore... you do know that we aren't talking about a real place, right? We're making a what-if scenario. Feel free to terra-formagin along with us.

Do you ever read science fiction?

Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso would paint round stuff instead of boxy!

I was just thinking, a cubic world may be created if there was enough water, the world may appear a sphere, with the exception of (4) Mountain tops being visual.

And then due to a colossal cosmic incident all the water was blown away, and for a very short time, we do have a cubic world, before it is gravitized into a sphere.............................................thinking....................................................................nope, no way in geometric hell..............gravity is still in effect as the land mass is still being formed.

sorry GK, I missed your posted #34

Actually I think GK has it wrong in that the gravity gradient would control where the water accumulated. I'm trying to figure if it would be strongest or weakest from the point furthest from the centroid. I tend to think in only 2 dimentions but this would be a 3 dimentional problem and may therefore have a very different effect.

Anyway, from one view the gravitational effect would look like this:

that's right.......... ocean surface does follow the contour of the sea floor.

that's what happens when I reply with a blank mind.

But depending on the water level, if its low enough you would have 8 peaks sticking out, but even at that, gravity is still in effect, that the crust and the seabed will still gravitize to a sphere like. object, way before it even slightly resembles a cube.

But never the less, its still a stretch,

At this point, my main interest is that I'm just waiting to see how the conflict is going to turn out. I think before it reaches DEFCON 2, someone is going oi initiate a nuclear first strike, probably from the holy crusaders. Heck, They probably even crack their eggs open on the large end.

But Admin will probably close it down way before then, they don't have very much of a tolerance for this type mayhem.

"They probably even crack their eggs open on the large end"

Nope, their eggs are cubes of course.

Remember Unca Scroogie and the "square" Inca eggs?

OBE, Look what you started.

I hope your happy,

I knew that I should have checked out the comic book world earlier.

The world of Htrae is pictured here. For those who don't want a Wikipedia reference for a cubic world there, try Htrae. The picture also links to its origins.

Thats what we need here,.........

a super hero.............a hot, busty, female super hero in a spandex!

You mean something like an android girlfriend. I wonder if her name is Iris?

There may be some people that like that,

you can call me weird but,.....as for me........not busty enough.

oh, oh, this thread is taking on a life of its own.......

Let's not forget the android boyfriend.

Oh great, we can't even agree on what type of world we live in, and now we have to pick on a super hero.

Life sure is complicated.

SPECIAL REPORT

late breaking news.

Due to some type of scandal with papal recruitment handlers trainers, alter boy recruitment has drop to '0'.

The Pope closed all borders on all (6) sections on cube world

And just initiated that our security status be changed to DEFCON 3

News at 11