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Thread: Toroid world

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    Default Toroid world

    I've got a setting I've been tinkering with off and on for a decade or so. The world for the setting is a flattened toroid, with the inside edge being thicker than the outside edge. Light for the world is provided by a small "sun" that oscillates through the hole, and precesses about it.

    What sort of natural phenomenon would provide me with a reason one side is irradiated/otherwise unlivable?
    Last edited by RFLS; 2017-11-23 at 09:45 PM.

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    Default Re: Toroid world

    Maybe for some reason heavy elements accumulated on one side more than on the other.(the world is a Toroid so the rules of physics are not the same than in real life else the world would not be a Toroid)
    Maybe it is just that heavy elements go downwards in the toroid and that the downward is in a fixed direction independent of the position of the Toroid but the physic rule of Toroidness which says that enough big objects becomes toroids makes the toroid stay a toroid.
    Last edited by noob; 2017-11-24 at 03:43 AM.

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    Default Re: Toroid world

    Quote Originally Posted by RFLS View Post
    I've got a setting I've been tinkering with off and on for a decade or so. The world for the setting is a flattened toroid, with the inside edge being thicker than the outside edge. Light for the world is provided by a small "sun" that oscillates through the hole, and precesses about it.

    What sort of natural phenomenon would provide me with a reason one side is irradiated/otherwise unlivable?
    Which "side" do you want to be afflicted? Maybe say the center portion is irradiated because the Sun passes closer to the surface and fries the surface. Giant mountain ranges form a barrier that keeps the climate effects of the desert from stabilizing in a wider area.

    I am aware that this isn't how climate actually works, but we are dealing with toroids, so this passes the surface explanation in my opinion.

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    Default Re: Toroid world

    Perhaps below the toroid-world is a cosmic ocean. When the sun dips down and illuminates the lower half the light reflecting off of the ocean gives the bottom a double dose and raises the temperature to boiling, so only devils and elementals would live there. Perhaps above the world is a far less reflective blue-ish firmament with the celestials living in birdcage-cities suspended from it like chandeliers, at night the glow from these cities is visible from the world below in the form of stars.

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    Default Re: Toroid world

    Quote Originally Posted by noob View Post
    Maybe for some reason heavy elements accumulated on one side more than on the other.(the world is a Toroid so the rules of physics are not the same than in real life else the world would not be a Toroid).
    As far as the rules of physics go, if the toroid is spinning then there's an acceleration towards the center. This property has been used in real life to sort material mixes by density - by which I mean it's how centrifuges operate. This would put higher density materials towards the outside ring.

    From a physics perspective, that doesn't necessarily mean much for solids - a lot of them are going to be pretty well embedded in the structure. It's more relevant for fluids, particularly the atmosphere. This is where it gets weird, with those fluids being a mix of mostly liquid phase water and the atmosphere. Essentially you get an ocean pushed to the bottom of the outer ring, and an atmosphere that's much denser towards the outer ring than the inner ring out past the ocean layer. This then effectively creates altitude effects, and because of the toroid flattening they're even in an intuitive direction.

    This then gets really weird when bringing in gravitational effects, and keeping the fluids around at all necessitates a controlled range of spin velocities and gravitational strengths. This could likely be parameterized pretty easily (Reynolds number style) for a wide range of toroid sizes, but that's more math than I'm willing to put into this.

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    The best available conception of a toroid world is probably the Bank's Orbital from the Culture universe, which doesn't violate the laws of physics all that much actually (though obviously it's not naturally occurring, but the difference between being built by godlike AI Minds and fantasy gods is actually minimal). The reason for the outside to be uninhabitable is simply that there are no retaining walls on that side to hold the air in.

    That's more 'ribbon' than 'doughnut' in shape, but I don't see any reason why you couldn't make the edge thicker (aside from the fact that more the you concentrate your materials the more you have to do to prevent gravity from collapsing everything into a sphere) and tapering. The edge would probably still be hundreds of kilometers thick anyway - almost negligible compared to the scale of the overall structure but very much still a barrier.
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    Default Re: Toroid world

    (When I saw this in the forum, I thought the topic was "Torrid World". Oh well.)

    First, let me make sure I have the shape right. The cross section either triangular or trapezoidal, much thinner at the outer edge than the inner? How much thinner? And the top and bottom surfaces are more or less flat, or curved outward retaining a little bit of torus-ness?

    Anyway, how about this. The bottom side is not lethally irradiated or otherwise unlivable, but is inaccessible; too close to the center is too close to the sun. Moving inward, the climate grows hotter, and very close it is not survivable, as a result of both heat and other radiation effects. The inner face, i.e. the base of the triangular cross section, is a scorched, irradiated hell. To the outside, there is the result of centrifugal separation that occurred in the formation of the world. The world's rotation has slowed since, but the outside is full of toxic and radioactive heavy elements.

    In between there is a happy habitable zone that covers a good portion of the top surface. And the thing is, there is another happy habitable zone on the bottom, and the two are completely isolated by the impassible zones at the inner and outer edges.

    Unless, or course, you've got space ships. In that case, my suggestion is useless.
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    Default Re: Toroid world

    The 'bottom' is irradiated because the world is actually a spaceship, and the miniature 'sun' is the engine. The torroid scoops material from the interstellar medium, (whether hydrogen atoms or whatever material composes the aether through which it moves.) The material fuels the 'sun' which propells the world-sized ship. Its bobbing is controlled to create longer days for summer and shorter ones for winter, but due to the uneven distribution of interstellar material, the 'sun' flares or dims from time to time, producing days of irregular length and intensity.

    Although the 'bottom' of the world does receive too much radiation for long term survival, the biggest issue is that the sun is pushing the torroid at one gravity, and anything on the underside of the world will fall away with the highly radioactive plume of exhaust gasses Torroid World leaves in its wake.

    Where is this world going? Who knows? Perhaps it flees a galaxy overrun with Mind Flayers and their genetically engineered cattle/slaves, or perhaps a dying sun forced the evacuation of an entire world. Or they could just be victims of a mad God's cruel joke.

    This world does not spin, and therefore it does not produce centripetal acceleration at all. Its 'gravity' is produced by linear thrust. While the mass of the torroid is significant, its dispersed arrangement adds little to the artificial gravity caused by the engine's thrust, but if the 'sun' were to be extingiushed nothing would float away on its own. It steers by thrusting off center and it maintains its trim with magnetic fields/ley lines/whatever.
    Last edited by brian 333; 2017-11-27 at 04:25 PM.

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    People always want their doughnut shaped worlds to spin. This would result in the outer edge being down, and anything falling off would be shot into the void. Indeed, everything on this world would appear like cliff dwellings with one wall against the world and the other hanging out over nothing. I'm thinking a cliff-world would be an interesting setting, but it's not the setting the OP described.

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    Quote Originally Posted by brian 333 View Post
    People always want their doughnut shaped worlds to spin. This would result in the outer edge being down, and anything falling off would be shot into the void. Indeed, everything on this world would appear like cliff dwellings with one wall against the world and the other hanging out over nothing. I'm thinking a cliff-world would be an interesting setting, but it's not the setting the OP described.
    Gravity points generally towards the center, particularly on the outer edge. This isn't a space station where gravity due to mass can basically be neglected, and assuming that the same behavior holds doesn't work.

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    Default Re: Toroid world

    Quote Originally Posted by Knaight View Post
    Gravity points generally towards the center, particularly on the outer edge. This isn't a space station where gravity due to mass can basically be neglected, and assuming that the same behavior holds doesn't work.
    Indeed. If it did apply, people and stuff would be flung off Earth at or near the equator. (Above, I did note that the spin has to have slowed over the long geologic time since the lead, uranium, etc. settled to the outside edge.)

    Thinking on, gold and platinum are among the heaviest stable elements. So if my scenario were to be used, these metals should be even more rare and precious than they are in real life or typical fantasy settings. Silver would be the most important currency metal by far. Lead and mercury, also known to the ancients here in the good ol' real world, would also be very scarce, and perhaps little known.

    And then there are the prospectors who go as far as they dare into the toxic radioactive wastes in search of gold and other heavies, and who leave their families rich when they die painful deaths at young ages.

    I don't see any advantage in venturing too far hubward, unless you like a really dark tan, or there's knowledge of the light metals (magnesium, aluminum, titanium, etc.) that were not discovered IRL until much later than the tech level of most fantasy settings.
    Last edited by jqavins; 2017-11-27 at 06:59 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Knaight View Post
    Gravity points generally towards the center, particularly on the outer edge. This isn't a space station where gravity due to mass can basically be neglected, and assuming that the same behavior holds doesn't work.
    Correct. Assuming the object as a whole is as massive as a world. In which case the inclination of the upper plane, (thick in the center, thin at the edges,) counters the inward pull, allowing the observer to feel that 'down' is a horizontal plane beneath her feet. By far the biggest pull on an individual on its surface would be from the thickness of the plate beneath her and her distance from the center.

    On this world the inner wall required to prevent all of the air from pouring into the central sun would have to be at least 300 miles high, but it wouldn't need an outer wall because gravity slopes uphill more as the viewer approaches the outer rim. With no centripetal force one could stand on the rim and down would be in the direction of the sun. This region would be stripped of atmosphere on my spaceship-world, but even on an unmoving world, air here must be thin or else very thick at the hub because atmospheres make balls no matter the shape of the object that attracts it. (My spaceship world would need an outer rim wall because half its atmosphere was blown away when the massive bombs that got the world moving went off and the rest is being squished onto the surface by the sun-drive's thrust which gives the average observer the feeling of being on a planetary surface under normal gravity, so long as he remains topside.

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    Default Re: Toroid world

    I've got a couple of videos to share.

    First, one by Isaac Arthur. He's pretty much the gold standard for apparently-out-there hard sci-fi. He focuses on artificial toroidal planets, because humanity's future is the main focus on his channel (and because naturally-forming toroidal planets are highly unlikely), but still brings up some good points. He referenced this article by Anders Sandberg, which provides some good numbers.
    Artifexian isn't limited by things like "plausibility of natural formation," and instead looks into what it would take for such a planet to stay stable and what the effects would be. (A bit over two minutes in, there's a bit on gravity that's worth looking at...wait, it looks like these videos are drawing from the same sources. Well, they're focusing on different bits and presenting differently, so maybe each will make something different stick?)
    It looks like a torus planet is going to be a very heterogeneous world. Gravity, climate, terrain...it's all going to vary drastically by latitude. There should be plenty of dramatic possibilities there.

    Also, I found this while Googling for anything I'd forgotten. I'm not sure how relevant it is, but it's pretty neat.
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    I'm pretty sure that under realistic physics a toroid world could only exist if it was rapidly rotating.

    That said, it's pretty clear that we're not in the realm of realistic physics here.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bohandas View Post
    I'm pretty sure that under realistic physics a toroid world could only exist if it was rapidly rotating.

    That said, it's pretty clear that we're not in the realm of realistic physics here.
    Which is why I began with a supermassive starship as opposed to a ring shaped planet. If the ring shape is maintained through centripetal force, everything on the outside will be flung away. The result would be Ringworld rather than the world described by the OP.

    A planetary mass torus could be maintained through internal strength of the material, but that material would have to be much stronger than granite to resist gravity's preference to crush things into balls. I'm imagining a high carbon Jovian world with a very high spin being shoved into a star's photosphere, causing massive superheating that renders the world a blob of slag which spins out into a torus losing spin energy as it does. As the world wobbles into a more or less stable orbit within the star's habitable zone, the high carbon magma condenses into diamond which forms an exoskeleton beneath the slag crust which is both highly electrically conductive and highly resistant to compression forces. As this world accreted an atmosphere its moment of inertia increased, further slowing its rotation.

    The orientation of this object to the sun and its length of day are important. The length of day and night are highly dependent upon many factors, not the least of which is your location on its surface. The high G inner surface might be shadowed most or all of the time with permanent polar rings on the north and south, or it could wobble, be set at 90 degrees to the orbital plane, or even be stabilized at a awkward angle by one or moor moons locked into its rotational plane. It would very likely be geologically unstable as gravity continues to attempt to return the structure to a sphere.

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    Default Re: Toroid world

    Quote Originally Posted by brian 333 View Post
    Which is why I began with a supermassive starship as opposed to a ring shaped planet. If the ring shape is maintained through centripetal force, everything on the outside will be flung away.
    Nope!
    First of all, any planet spinning so fast things on the outside flew off would fall apart. After all, planets are held together by gravity, not the strength of their rocks. Logic dictates that there's a sweet spot between "boring oblate spheroid" and "everything falls apart" where neat shapes could form.
    Second, I'm pretty sure I've posted models of working toroidal worlds which have things sticking to the ground all around. Apparent gravity is significantly weaker on the outside, but it still works!
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