{"id":774247,"date":"2023-11-21T10:18:57","date_gmt":"2023-11-21T15:18:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=774247"},"modified":"2023-11-21T10:18:57","modified_gmt":"2023-11-21T15:18:57","slug":"what-would-life-on-earth-be-like-if-our-planet-were-cube-shaped","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=774247","title":{"rendered":"What would life on Earth be like if our planet were cube-shaped?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: none; overflow: hidden;\" title=\"Embed Player\" src=\"https:\/\/embed.acast.com\/61850ae845b6e300132557e2\/655bc622a08cd9001223da18\" width=\"100%\" height=\"188px\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s coming home. In the season one finale of Dead Planets Society, our hosts Leah Crane and Chelsea Whyte are taking on everyone\u2019s favourite planet: Earth. But fear not \u2013 they\u2019re not destroying it entirely, just reshaping it a bit. Gravity naturally encourages objects in space to form spheres, but in this episode, Earth is getting cubified.<\/p>\n<p>Transforming Earth into a cube is difficult, so our hosts have turned to geophysicist and disaster researcher Mika McKinnon for help. No matter how you do it, Earth\u2019s going to be uninhabitable for a while. But once things settle down, life on our home planet would be drastically different.<\/p>\n<p>For one thing, if Earth were molded into a cube but kept the same mass and the same amount of water, the oceans would pool up into six seas, one on each face of Cube Earth protruding from the surface like a huge lens. The atmosphere would behave similarly, not reaching the edges or corners. This would leave a narrow inhabitable zone around each of the six seas with bleak mountains beyond the atmosphere.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"js-content-prompt-opportunity\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Space exploration would, in some ways, be simplified \u2013 all you\u2019d have to do to get into the vacuum of space would be to build a shielded rover and trundle off towards the edges of the world. Those edges would be perfect for space launches and telescopes, with no air to hamper things, but the constant earthquakes as gravity tries to make the planet a sphere again might make things tough.<\/p>\n<p>Then, in the second part of the finale episode, coming out on 22 November, our hosts and McKinnon take on what life will be like on Cube Earth. Days will seem different, as each sunrise and sunset would happen suddenly across each face of the planet. The world\u2019s new shape and the six bubbles of atmosphere would encourage something like island evolution, potentially producing strange wildlife and enormous sea monsters.<\/p>\n<p>Dead Planets Society is a podcast that takes outlandish ideas about how to tinker with the cosmos \u2013 from putting out the sun to causing a gravitational wave apocalypse \u2013 and subjects them to the laws of physics to see how they fare.<\/p>\n<p>To listen, subscribe to New Scientist Weekly or visit our podcast page here. Dead Planets Society will be back with season two in 2024.<\/p>\n<h2>Transcript, part one<\/h2>\n<p>Mika McKinnon: So, think about if you want to go outside the magnetic field you have to be in your little fish bowl.<\/p>\n<p>Leah Crane: Yeah, I want to cruise around in my all-terrain fish bowl.<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Whyte: Why are we outside Earth\u2019s magnetic field? Because we\u2019re making the planet a cube. Welcome to Dead Planets Society, everybody.<\/p>\n<p>Leah Crane: This is a podcast where we imagine what it might be like if we were given cosmic powers to rearrange the universe.<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Whyte: I\u2019m Chelsea Whyte, US editor at New Scientist.<\/p>\n<p>Leah Crane: And I\u2019m Leah Crane, physics and space reporter at New Scientist.<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Whyte: And welcome to the first episode of our two-part season one finale. This one is a doozy, folks.<\/p>\n<p>Leah Crane: This week it\u2019s time for the most dangerous game. We\u2019re taking down Earth.<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Whyte: And in true Dead Planets Society fashion we\u2019re doing it in glorious style.<\/p>\n<p>Leah Crane: Glorious, geometric style. We\u2019re making it a cube.<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Whyte: Cube Earth, Cube Earth, Cube Earth.<\/p>\n<p>Leah Crane: Cube Earth, Cube Earth.<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Whyte: I truly love this idea and I can\u2019t wait to find out how we could slice the planet\u2019s faces off.<\/p>\n<p>Leah Crane: Thanks, Hannibal.<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Whyte: You\u2019re welcome. But also I\u2019m curious what will it do to gravity, or time, what would it be like to live on Cube Earth?<\/p>\n<p>Leah Crane: Well, I\u2019ve done a little bit of research so one thing I do know is that it would be absolutely wild. Or should I say, it will be absolutely wild? We\u2019ve also got geophysicist and disaster researcher Mika McKinnon to help us out, and we started by asking her what\u2019s the best way to make Earth a cube?<\/p>\n<p>Mika McKinnon: I think that\u2019s actually the most challenging part, is trying to get the cube, and then once you have the cube just, kind of, assuming that it stays that way, because when left to its own devices, anything big enough is going to go in the spherical and\/or lumpy potato direction. Just that\u2019s how gravity works. So first you have to get it into a cube, then you have to keep it into a cube. So I thought that we would start and keep the same mass, because if you start screwing with the mass of the Earth then really you don\u2019t have the Earth at all anymore. So I figured you need to, like, shave down the sides and stick them up in the corners, kind of like a big ball of clay going on. And if you really think about the Earth, it\u2019s not exactly solid, you just have, like, a solid shell, so if you had enough force it is a giant lump of really warm clay, really warm green and blue clay at that. So I\u2019m just going to be like, \u2018Look, let\u2019s just have, like, giant cosmic hands doing this. Like, I don\u2019t know, maybe we\u2019re using specially shaped primordial black holes? Why not? Giant chisels?\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Whyte: Or it sounds like, like my first instinct was we need a cosmic chisel to slice off the faces of this cube but it sounds like it might be better to have, like, a mold, like a Playdough mold.<\/p>\n<p>Mika McKinnon: Yes, and just smash it in.<\/p>\n<p>Leah Crane: You know how they grow those, like, fancy watermelons?<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Whyte: Oh, yeah, the cube watermelon.<\/p>\n<p>Mika McKinnon: Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>Leah Crane: Could you just put a mold that\u2019s gently squishing and wait? Because there is a lot of liquid.<\/p>\n<p>Mika McKinnon: Yes, we can take the toddler approach and be like, round peg, square hole, we\u2019re set. Just squish that nice, round planet into a square mold and push it down enough, then good enough.<\/p>\n<p>Leah Crane: Oh great.<\/p>\n<p>Mika McKinnon: So we\u2019re going to take the same mass that we had before and if something kind of goes squishing out, that\u2019s okay. It helps that the mantle of the Earth \u2013 so the Earth has the solid inner core, liquid outer core, then the big, gooey mantle and the tiny, thin little crust. And the tiny, thin, little crust is we\u2019re just going to, like, shatter it like an egg shell on a freaking hard boiled egg, whatever, it doesn\u2019t matter. We squish it then it will reform, it\u2019s no big deal, we do that all the time. \u00a0The mantle-y bit, you\u2019re probably thinking of it being like an ocean of lava because that\u2019s how we draw it in text books but it\u2019s not, it\u2019s blue, and green, and gooey. So it\u2019s more like oatmeal.<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Whyte: Literally blue and green?<\/p>\n<p>Mika McKinnon: Yes, yes, yes, the inside of the Earth is blue and green. I mean, it\u2019s really, really hot so it\u2019s probably glowing red, but the rocks themselves are blue and green, if you had colour when completely surrounded by a solid which is like this whole philosophical problem of, like, what is the colour of the inside of a human, right? Like, are the insides of humans actually red or is it only red because you rip them open and take a peek? In this case we\u2019re going to rip the planet open and take a peek so deep blue and green aside from the fact it\u2019s glowing red hot. So, like, the whole concept of colour just kind of falls apart a bit. But, so blue and green squishy inside of the planet and we\u2019ll just kind of squish it out and, like, the core will probably not get re-shaped during this.<\/p>\n<p>Leah Crane: Once we cube it, it sounds like we\u2019re going to probably have to wait a while for the crust to reform because every method we\u2019ve thought of makes Earth, like, super unpleasant to be on for a bit. Like, you don\u2019t want to be on the surface while we\u2019re putting it in the mold.<\/p>\n<p>Mika McKinnon: It\u2019s okay because the earth is going to be super unpleasant no matter what for a while. So if we\u2019re starting off and we\u2019re going to try and keep things to be the same mass, then we end up with, like, a little cubical Earth with everything the same size in every direction, which it is not right now, like, you think Earth is a sphere, hey, we have a consistent radius. No, we don\u2019t, we\u2019re like a squished sphere that is actually really lumpy so it\u2019s more like a potato. So we\u2019re already going in to the realm of, like, hey, this is a more perfect planet than we have. But even if we squish everything, the gravity is still going to be pointing to the centre, so everything inside is still going to be all circular, so we\u2019re still going to have, like, the magnetic field of the Earth, hot metal moving fast, it\u2019s that our core is going to still generate a doughnut-shaped magnetic field. So you\u2019re still going to get your northern and southern lights only above those parts of the cube. Oh, by the way, do we want to have the Earth rotating through a flat part? A face? Or do we want it rotating through a corner?<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Whyte: So, this was a good question that we were talking about. Like, yes, I think it\u2019s interesting in both ways but I prefer, for some reason, aesthetically to be spinning through a corner. Like a little-<\/p>\n<p>Leah Crane: I\u2019m the exact opposite.<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Whyte: Yeah?<\/p>\n<p>Leah Crane: I think that it\u2019s a funner if it\u2019s spinning like a cube because then you\u2019ve got a whole edge that\u2019s on the edge moving instead of just one little corner. You\u2019ve got-<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Whyte: Also days would be really weird, right? Like all of a sudden the sun would hit an entire face if it was spinning with a-<\/p>\n<p>Mika McKinnon: Oh yeah. Light and time are just going to be all over the place, but also magnetic fields are going to be all over the place because they\u2019re still going to be doughnut-shaped, and that\u2019s going to impact things like you still have your cosmic rays moving fast every time they hit the field, they light up, it\u2019s like effectively northern and southern lights are this, like, \u2018Hey, how you doing on hardening your electrical grid? It\u2019s really beautiful and pretty up here, we\u2019re ready to zap you all.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>So anything poking out of the magnetic field is not protected from the zappage, which is- we\u2019ve talked about this in terms of concerns for when the Apollo missions happened we were like, \u2018Hey, you know, just so everyone\u2019s aware, if there\u2019s, like, a coronal mass ejection towards the moon during the Apollo missions we\u2019re just going to have a bunch of fried astronauts up there.\u2019 And they had, like, the emergency speech set aside and everything. So that\u2019s everything outside the magnetic field is just, kind of, death land.<\/p>\n<p>Leah Crane: Screwed.<\/p>\n<p>Mika McKinnon: Yes, well, I mean, it\u2019s, you know, you can come up with ways to protect yourself from cosmic rays, like, you can wander around in giant tanks of water, would be one way of doing it. Or lead encasements.<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Whyte: I wish you could have seen our faces. That was incredible. I want to be in a giant tank of water.<\/p>\n<p>Leah Crane: Fish tank, fish tank, fish tank!<\/p>\n<p>Mika McKinnon: Yes, exactly.<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Whyte: One of my deep wishes is to live in the ocean, in the deep sea, and I could just take it with me.<\/p>\n<p>Mika McKinnon: Exactly, and we talk about this in terms of, like, how would we do deep space exploration of humans, well, one of the things we have to talk about is how do we keep people protected when we\u2019re going outside our magnetic field to somewhere else. And one of the concepts is, well, maybe you could just put all the water that you need anyway, put it on the outside of the spaceship, and store it on the outside to be a beautiful shield to absorb all the ways the universe is just trying to casually kill you as you explore deep space. So, we can do that. So, think about if you want to go outside the magnetic field you have to be in your little fish bowl or, like, giant lead aprons and X-ray machine style like, \u2018Hey, let\u2019s just put on the dentist robes and go for a stroll.\u2019 But that\u2019s not the only problem.<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Whyte: I prefer the fish bowl.<\/p>\n<p>Leah Crane: Yeah, I want to cruise around in my all-terrain fish bowl.<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Whyte: So, let\u2019s talk about what this would look like from afar. So that means we\u2019d have this cubed planet but each face would have like a, like a half sphere, like a little contact lens of water on it. Is that right?<\/p>\n<p>Mika McKinnon: Yes.<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Whyte: And then where would the atmosphere- would the atmosphere be also in that weird dome on each face?<\/p>\n<p>Mika McKinnon: Yeah, so-<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Whyte: We\u2019re living in the dome, we\u2019re living in the dome in our fish bowls.<\/p>\n<p>Leah Crane: We would have, like, six domes but they would not be connected.<\/p>\n<p>Mika McKinnon: Yeah, there\u2019d be six little domes on six little faces and each one would be surrounding a little sea, and if you look at the size of the ocean and you look at the size of the atmosphere and how much water and how much gas we\u2019re working with here on Earth, we\u2019re talking about all of humanity living in a little ten kilometre fringe around each of these lakes.<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Whyte: Incredible.<\/p>\n<p>Mika McKinnon: So, space is defined by how much atmosphere you have, right? Like at some point you go high enough up that you\u2019re like, \u2018There\u2019s not enough air, I\u2019m in space.\u2019 It\u2019s not very high, it\u2019s like 200 kilometres, right? And the edges of the cube are going to be, like, 1000 kilometres outside the atmosphere. So the edges of the cube will be in space by how we currently define things.<\/p>\n<p>Leah Crane: We going to have to redefine space.<\/p>\n<p>Mika McKinnon: Or we redefine spaceships so they have wheels, so you have a fish tank on wheels as your new spaceship because you can leave the atmosphere of your face, go up to the edge of the world, then go across the edge of the world to go explore the next isolated little bubble, right?<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Whyte: Imagine the tourism. Imagine it. I want to go on a trek to The Edge. Capital T, capital E, in my little fish bowl rover.<\/p>\n<p>Leah Crane: I can picture it perfectly.<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Whyte: But gravity wouldn\u2019t be that strong out there, would it?<\/p>\n<p>Mika McKinnon: Well, you\u2019d be dealing with mountaineering problems. So, going to space would also be mountaineering. It\u2019d effectively be like Everest on extreme ends because gravity\u2019s going to keep pointing towards the centre, but the centre when you\u2019ve got a square is at an angle. So, when you\u2019re at the- like, if you\u2019re in the centre of the ocean, gravity\u2019s pointing straight down. But by the time you get to the edges of the lake or of the sea, it\u2019s going to be at a bit of an angle and you\u2019re going to be, kind of, constantly walking uphill or downhill. Even though the surface is flat, your gravity is not. Your gravity is at an angle and the further you get from the centre, the bigger that angle gets.<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019ve only got, like- it\u2019s a ten kilometre fringe so you can cross the entire width of your available coastline, breathable area, in, like, a two hour stroll. I mean, walking around the lake would take longer but you\u2019ve got a very short distance before you\u2019re going to need your fish bowl to keep going. Your, like, little oxygen bubble inside of a fish bowl on wheels to go to space. And the further you go towards the edge, the steeper your angle is going to be. We\u2019re going to know that the edges exist because the horizon, if you\u2019re in the middle of the ocean, the first thing you\u2019re going to see is going to be the corners of the cube. And you\u2019re going to be able to see them from, like, I think the fish bowl, or the little ocean lenses are, I think about 300 kilometres across. And if you\u2019re in them, as long as you\u2019re within 150 kilometres of the edge, or of the coastline, so as long as you\u2019re not in the dead centre, if you\u2019re, like, halfway to shore, you will be able to see a corner. But it\u2019s not until you\u2019re within, like, ten kilometres of shore, maybe fifteen kilometres of shore, that you\u2019ll be able to see the flat areas actually nearby. So you won\u2019t be able to see the human-inhabited portion unless you\u2019re almost at the coast. You\u2019ll only be able to see these corners jagging off, that are way out there, and have no air and no inhabitation, they\u2019re just rock. So you see, like, these mountains off to the sides.<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Whyte: Would this look like a very large mountain or would it take up more of the sky?<\/p>\n<p>Mika McKinnon: So, I\u2019ve been trying to decide on that one and I think to some extent we\u2019re going to have to play around with some optical effects here because right, like, you could tell things were flat, one of the first places you can tell that we have a round planet is in the ocean where you\u2019ve got these beautiful horizons going on, and you can tell what\u2019s going on with, like, sunsets and sunrises, why we have blue skies and red skies, from how much atmosphere you\u2019re looking through. But that all gets muddled up when you\u2019re dealing with, like, this tiny little bubble happening. And I think that you would end up still getting your red sunsets, but they\u2019d be really close.<\/p>\n<p>Leah Crane: It seems like it would be easier to do rocket launches from cube Earth, right? Because you have all those nice corners with no atmosphere.<\/p>\n<p>Mika McKinnon: Instead of having all of our space ports at the equator like we do now where we can use the earth\u2019s rotation to, like, fling things in to space, we\u2019d instead probably have a two-stage spacecraft where stage one would be wheels and go to the corner of the earth, and stage two would be launch from the corner into orbit. And if you\u2019re really lucky you can also do it with the rotations happening \u2013 depending where you have the axis of the Earth, you could shape it to be able to get that little gravitational assist anyway.<\/p>\n<p>Leah Crane: I wonder if we got someone with mad hops, if they could jump off the corner of the earth in to space.<\/p>\n<p>Mika McKinnon: If we could do, like trampolining?<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Whyte: Yeah, I want to pogo-stick into space.<\/p>\n<p>Leah Crane: Oh my god.<\/p>\n<p>Mika McKinnon: And we\u2019re still dealing with the- it\u2019s not that much lower, unfortunately.<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Whyte: Okay.<\/p>\n<p>Leah Crane: Dang.<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Whyte: But these edges would also be, like, incredible places to do a whole lot of science. Like, I\u2019m just thinking, put all the telescopes out there, right? Outside of the atmosphere.<\/p>\n<p>Mika McKinnon: Oh, yeah, you have no atmosphere going on, you could actually walk out and repair them instead of having to deal with, like, the poor Hubble space telescope just slowly disintegrating as its stabilisers- you don\u2019t have to worry about stabilisers. You have less gravity so you don\u2019t have to deal with the mirrors warping as much. You have really predictable light cycles happening.<\/p>\n<p>Leah Crane: Super- with a sharp edge.<\/p>\n<p>Mika McKinnon: Yes, and you could do things like pick a corner and have a telescope on each side of the corner to have full coverage. And they could even share, like, a little processing centre just like we do in Antarctica right now. So yeah, you could do some really cool science with that.<\/p>\n<p>Leah Crane: That seems pretty rad. I will say that it seems to me, and this might not be true, Mika, we\u2019ll need your input, but it seems like if we\u2019re cubing Earth and then we\u2019re going to put some telescopes and stuff on there, it does seem like earthquakes might be a problem because of how much we\u2019ve screwed up the planet.<\/p>\n<p>Mika McKinnon: Yeah, I would say there\u2019d definitely be a lot of, like, surface level earthquakes going on during the time where everything was cooling. All the bits that we destroyed would be cooling down and crunching, and as they cooled and crunched they would contract and you\u2019d get some earthquakes from that but they\u2019d be, you know, relatively surface-level earthquakes. But the whole planet would be trying to relax from a cube back into a sphere so it would always be trying to have, like, the corners crumble in and the flat bits bulge out unless we\u2019re keeping it in our mold. So you\u2019d definitely have some fairly large earthquakes from that as it\u2019s all just trying to sag out. So I\u2019d recommend we come up with, like, an Earth sized pair of Spanx to shove it in. Keep it, like, forcefielded into place. Because after you go through all the effort of building a cubical planet you, kind of, want to keep it.<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Whyte: Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>Leah Crane: I like the idea of shapewear but the shape is a cube.<\/p>\n<p>Mika McKinnon: Look, everyone has their own aesthetic preferences, we do no shaming here.<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Whyte: Okay, we\u2019re going to have to end it there, but we\u2019re not done at all. We had so much more conversation with Mika that we\u2019re coming back tomorrow with Cube Earth, Part II, the last episode of season one.<\/p>\n<p>Leah Crane: We\u2019ll get into how Cube Earth is just mega-Australia, the absolutely wild climate that\u2019ll happen there, and the inevitable sea monsters that cubing the earth would create.<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea Whyte: Thanks again to Mika McKinnon for joining us, and to all of you for listening. If you have any questions or ideas for destroying the universe, get in touch at deadplanets@newscientist.com.<\/p>\n<p>Leah Crane: Or if you just want to chat about what Cube Earth would be like, you can find us on X \u2013 I\u2019m @downhereonearth and Chelsea is @chelswhyte. Bye!<\/p>\n<section class=\"ArticleTopics\">\n<p class=\"ArticleTopics__Heading\">Topics:<\/p>\n<\/section><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/2403635-what-would-life-on-earth-be-like-if-our-planet-were-cube-shaped\/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&#038;utm_source=NSNS&#038;utm_medium=RSS&#038;utm_content=space&#038;rand=772163\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s coming home. In the season one finale of Dead Planets Society, our hosts Leah Crane and Chelsea Whyte are taking on everyone\u2019s favourite planet: Earth. But fear not \u2013&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":774248,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-774247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-scientist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=774247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/774248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=774247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=774247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=774247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}