Seriously though, estimation game time: what is the genus of the earth?
Do we need to know the amounts of every:
Tunnel
Bridge
Underpass
Cave with two or more openings
Car???
Arches in Arches, the national park?
????
what about the space between atoms
Hmmmmm not counting it
Okay but
Like the Earth definitely isn’t a torus but,
I believe I remember learning in one of my astronomy courses that a torus is gravitationally stable so like,
Even though you’d need some pretty bizarre conditions for one to form and one or two asteroids could disrupt them and cause them to collapse into a sphere,
And so they’d be incredibly rare,
There could be toroidal planets out there.
And now I want to draw one instead of getting caught up on number theory. Crap.
I’ll need @transhumanish to weigh in on the fuckability implications of toroidal planets, but listen, I’ll accept this as a small step toward my agenda.
Oh wow, it’s an honor to be called on by you, Mr. Planets (or can I call you Fuck?). I’ll do my best. I’m going by the info found in this excellent blog post, which manages to cover in great technical depth nearly everything one would want to know about toroidal planets, except, of course, their fuckability. I really recommend reading it, especially as it ends with this:
Torus-worlds are unlikely to exist naturally. But if they did, they
would make awesome places for adventure. A large surface area. Regions
with very different climate, seasons, gravity and ecosystems. Awesome
skies on the interior surface. Dramatic weather. Moons in strange
orbits.
We better learn how to make them outside of simulations.
To start: you can’t fuck the hole. I know it’s what everyone’s thinking, but it just doesn’t work out: the gravitational pull of anything big enough to satisfyingly fuck the torus-hole will ruin the delicate balance of the planet, and a torus planet is too beautiful to destroy for a one-night stand. I won’t allow it.
That being said, toroidal planets are still incredibly sexy. Not only do you have the exotic allure of the rare shape, but they pretty much have to be formed by artificial planetary engineering, so most of them are probably young and exciting (maybe even barely legal by astronomical time – be careful!).
There’s a lot I could say about interesting weather patterns driven by strong Coriolis Effects, widely varying strength of surface gravity, nights in the hub lit bright by reflected sunlight from the other side, wild magnetic fields from the toroidal core, and much more. Sandberg says it all much better though, so I will merely add that all of these things are very, very hot.
I’d be wary of settling into a long-term relationship with a toroidal planet, given how unstable and variable pretty much everything about them is, but this isn’t about relationships. This is about fuckability, and while I’m not going to take any stance on being attracted to instability in people, I firmly endorse it for planets. Tori will blow your mind even before you fuck them, and afterward you may never be the same.
I’ve been saving the best for last: moons. When I talked about Earth in a previous post I mentioned the curves of the ocean and clouds in a frail attempt at analogy to humans, but there is no such analogy here – humans have nothing like moons, and that’s a good thing, because if we did nobody ever would have ever taken a break from fucking like rabbits to invent civilization. Toroidal planets’ moons are on a whole other level, though – just look at some of these simulated orbits:
It took me twice as long to write this post as it should have because every time I see these images I come instantly. Toroidal planets are so fuckable. 11/10.
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