September 13, 2011 • 26 mins
Imagine life on a cubed Earth. How would this alter our experience of gravity? How would it affect global climate? In this episode, Robert and Julie step foot on the impossibly square planet to better understand our world's shape and properties.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglass. Julie,
what do you think it would be? Like, we'll live
on a square planet? Like you think you've listened to
a lot of like Lawrence Welk eat a lot of
cheese steak. Yes to Lawrence Welk, No to cheese steak.
(00:29):
Cheesteak is kind of a squares food that you gotta admit.
I don't know. I mean, cheese steak is quite prized
in some cities are and um and it's really been
elevated to an art if I can say that as
a vegetarian, I guess yeah. I mean you turn into
the food shows and it's like, uh, they just go
(00:49):
on and on about like every city has their grotesque
um and too in my opinion, square meet sandwich and
uh and the people got got for Well you're saying
a square not hip? Right? Yeah? Like not hip? You know,
like what are the squares doing? Like what the cool
kids are all going to the midnight puppet show and
and then the one of the squares are going to
(01:09):
their football game. I don't know. Anytime you say squares,
I just feel like I should be dressed in all
black and nothing anytime I agree with something that you say,
which is what I'm going to do. But but now
we're not We're actually not talking about that kind of
a square. We're talking about literal square, literal square planet
like um David cross as is bit which Matt Frederick
(01:30):
just reminded us of about the Squaggle, where it's a
it's a product that was apparently officially marketed, like produced marketed,
and he talked about it in a stand up bit.
But it's a bagel. It's a real square. Yeah, it's
a real thing. It's a square bagel, so that it's
not like rolling. What's the opposite of snapping your fingers
to disagree? I don't know. That doesn't make sense. I
(01:54):
don't know I'm saying that that's not going to be
transmitted by my voice. I guess like lengthy discussions over
some freestyle jazz. I don't know. But basically, imagine a
square planet. If you're into comics, then you may know
that the bizarro world where Bizarrow hails. Okay, and we're
not talking about a square planet made out of bagels.
We're talking about a square planet. Like the idea that
(02:15):
we're gonna talking about today is what if our what
if our earthwork square? Which is, like I said, Bizarro
Bizarro Superman familiar with this, right, yes, Sam, he's like Superman,
except he's like an albino or something. Um and he's
not really well but he's white. He's like really white
really and uh and uh and and kind of dumb.
(02:36):
And it's like you might be familiar with the concept
with Bizarro Seinfeld to right, right, Yeah, yeah, they they may.
They referenced this particular comic creation. So, yeah, imagine the
world that we live on seeing it from space and
seeing not a sphere but a square, a cube, which
would be pretty cool. Right. Yeah, It's not possible, but
(02:57):
that doesn't mean that we can't talk about it because
lots of let's people have talked about this or dreamed
what would it be like if our Earth was squared?
And and actually it gets down to the question of
why why do we have spheroid like planets and moons? Anyway? Right,
what's the whole deal with that? To be sun filed
in about it? What's the deal with the actual formation
(03:17):
of planets. No, no, no, Like, hey man, why do
we why don't we have a square for a planet? Yeah,
well I'll tell you why. Gravity, my friend. Yes, gravity
is the key to it all, because at heart we
have this thing called accretion. Like this is the way
everything forms. Right. So you know, if you if you
go back in time before there's a planet, and even
(03:38):
planet or star, you have a whole lot of little
bits of dust floating around, and each of those little
bits of dust, no matter how small, has mass and
exerts gravity. Okay, so everyone with me. So you have
dust dust mote number one meets the cosmic dust mote
number two and they attract to each other. Suddenly they
have more mass. Then surrounding they have more gravitational pull.
(04:01):
They begin to pull in other little bits of of dust,
and so you end up with this kind of cosmic
snowball effect where the gravity builds, it accrues more mass,
and it eventually it gets bigger and bigger and becomes
a you know, it in literally becomes like a star
or a planet or some other kind of astral bodies.
And these are all spherical for a reason because it's
(04:24):
because at the center that you have a center of mass,
and it is when we're standing on a planet, the
mass is more or less the same. No matter where
you go on the globe. It does differ. There areas
on the earthware where the the where where gravity is
stronger but for the or weaker. But for the most
part you have more or less uniform gravity. So a
(04:47):
square would not form because a square or a cube
would not have uniform gravity. Yeah, and it's sort of
but still I still sort of wonder, like why not
the shape of a banana or well, I think because
the square is a very um it's it's the opposite,
you know, it's uh, it's the squiggle versus the bagel idea.
It's like the square is very uniform. There's an episode
(05:10):
of Look Around You season two where they have a
soccer ball um um or you know in football in
in Britain and you push a button on it and
it transforms into a cube so that you can store
it on a shelf without it rolling off. There's you know,
it's just something on a very like mathematical basis, like
the cube is a very ordered what they're both very
ordered shapes, but but but they're very opposite, you know.
(05:33):
And uh, and so we can't help but but but
think of things in terms of their ridiculous opposites, you know,
like you know, we would look in the mirror. It's like, well,
what if what if I was a woman instead of
a man? You know, what if? What if? What if
that horse flew instead of walked? What if the world
were a cube instead of a sphere? And uh and
and when you when you look back at some of
(05:54):
the things that have been written about this, I mean,
there have been times where people have made some surprising
arguments for the existence of cubes in nature. Now, now, granted,
cubes do can form in nature. Rough cubes conform in nature. Obviously.
We've all seen blocks of stone that have fallen off
of something that may be roughly cubicle. You've seen tricksters
(06:15):
using bubbles to you know, tricks tricks. Well, I guess
they're bubble artists or something, blowing bubbles and then piecing
them together in forming that square, that cube at the center.
So it's not like a natural impossibility. But you see
fewer of these in nature than you do spheres. Well, geographically, right,
you tend to see more of the spheres right, certainly
(06:37):
in the universe. So yeah, I found it really really interesting.
Looking back to four, there was a Swiss astronomer by
the name of Aren't a r N d T. And uh,
this is like the only name he was attributed in
this particular chair. But Aren't Yeah, and he made the
headlines back in the day when he claimed to have
discovered a very curious planet in the orbit beyond Neptune,
(06:57):
a cubicle planet. Even in eighteen a four astronomers knew
better there was. There was a New York Times article
titled the Cubicle Planet, November sixte edition. The the author
talked to a physicist by the name of Dr Theodore
Van Kirk. It's it's a great article because it's this
is the Gilded Age of newspapers, so it's extremely long,
and it's like it's written in the style of like
(07:19):
and then the writer asked, and then he's like, oh,
good boy, let me explain it to you, and and
and and so like the first debt is the professor
just saying this is complete whuie, this this is just
I'm not yeah, he says who he and he's He's like,
I'm not even gonna dignify such an idea. But then
he goes on to say, oh, but this is what
it would be like, you know, because because at the heart,
(07:39):
that's the cool thing about thinking about a cubicle planet
is that, um it it illustrates some of the things
that we take for granted about life on an actual
spherical world. Yeah, so what would a cube shape Earth
look like? You know, would it? Would it? Is this
some sort of like parallel universe where Picasso just exist
and well for and then this cubical form. Well, the
(08:02):
important thing to realize is the way center of gravity
affects everything. Again, um gravity more or less uniform across
the planet because the center of the Earth is always
directly beneath your feet. No matter where you're standing. You
can point down at the space between your feet and say,
if I were to go straight down from you know,
straight down towards the center of gravity, I would hit
(08:24):
the core of the No matter where you were, gravitation
is um it's always going to point roughly towards the center,
right right. So imagine you're facing once one square one
side of the six sides of the queue. If you
were standing the exact center of that it would be
like on Earth because the center is directly below you.
You're standing standing straight up, You're standing straight up on
the Okay, So let's say you're out near an edge.
(08:45):
If you're out here an edge, you would be technically
you may be standing straight up on that particular side,
on that particular plane, but it would feel like you
were standing on a hill because the exact center, the
center of the planet's mass, is not directly beneath your feet. Okay, Yeah,
I'm trying to get the idea of this. So you've
(09:07):
got the you've got these six sides, and it's almost
it would almost feel like it's forming a bowl right right,
Like like, let's say again, you're standing at the center
of one of the six sides, okay, and then you're
gonna walk towards the edge. The closer you came to
the edge, the more it would feel like you were
walking up the side of a mountain. Only if you
(09:28):
were to actually reach the very edge and stand on
the edge, would it feel like Earth would Only then
would the center of the planet's gravity be directly beneath you. Okay,
I think it's fascinating. There's some This question was posed
to ask mathematician slash physicists. These are the guys that
show up at Burning Man, So take this for what
(09:49):
you will. But they had some very interesting thoughts about this,
and they said that Earth would take the form of
a vast barren expanse of rock directly exposed to space.
And if you were standing on the edge of a
face and look back toward the center, you'd be able
to clearly see the round bubble of air and water
extending above the flat surface with the poles in the
center of the two faces. Then then two of those
(10:10):
bubble seas that were created. Right, wait, are these the
cornels as physicist? No, this is different. This is why
I say these are These are the guys that show
up at Burning Man. And they have a tent. Actually
it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool, and it says ask uh.
Mathematicians are asking a physicist, right, they're one of each.
So guys are wandering up to be a burning man
and going like, dude, what if? What if? Like a cube?
(10:33):
It was cube and it was completely pupiled by a
bunch of Picasso's and they were fragmented faces, and one
of the areolas was on his ear. That's that's what
they're asking. So that's why I say take it, take
it what you will out of this. But I do
think it's really you're standing on the edge, you're looking down,
and you're seeing the seeing the bubble of the atmosphere,
(10:55):
right Okay, So that in and of itself is pretty
cool to imagine, and that you're you're on this the
face of the square and you're seeing this atmosphere because
right now we can't we don't perceive that right well,
and we wouldn't be able to perceive it. And then uh,
these bubble seas would create solid ice cot ice cap blocks, yeah,
(11:17):
and that this would be an entirely weird area that
that life probably wouldn't be supported in um but if
it were, it would it would be in this ring
around the shore of those bubbles bubble seas that were created,
and the leaning tower of piece would be straight. And
actually a Dr Karen L. Masters, who was coming in
on Cornel's Aaska Physicist page, she pretty much backs this up. Yeah,
(11:40):
she's got some good mouth. Yeah, and I'm not going
to bore everybody with the numbers, but she conscious the
numbers and says, yeah, based on the way the atmosphere
works on the Earth we actually live on. If the
Earth were impossibly a cube, the edges of the cube
would be Titanic mountains just jutting far above the atmosphere.
They would be space mountains in a very atmosphere. Yeah yeah.
And the oceans would be uh, would be pooled at
(12:03):
the center of the six square planes. So each side.
If you think of this cubical planet as a dice,
each face of the die would be like a one
when that one would be an ocean. Yeah. Um. And
then and then you have to also take into account
how weather and seasons work. What is a pretty complex system,
(12:25):
and gravity is one of the key players. And gravity
holds the atmosphere to the Earth, and again it holds
it uniformly, so in the shape of this cube. That's
when you have the mountainous edges piercing above the atmosphere.
But then rotation also plays a role because you have
alternating periods of night and day of heat and cool
that end up stirring the atmosphere into motion. And then
(12:46):
a number of other geological and gravitational factors complicated even
more untill you have this vast and largely unpredictable system.
But climates would basically depend on exactly how it's rotating,
because there's you know, a sphere is only going to
rotate pretty much. I mean, it's it's a it's a sphere.
Everything is is more or less uniform. So if it's
rotating up and down side the side, it doesn't matter.
This position is still gonna look the same shape wise.
(13:08):
Whereas a cube, how is that going to rotate? Is
it gonna be like if I were to lay a
dice down on the table and just rotated it around.
Is one of the six sides gonna face face down
or yeah? Or is it gonna be on edge? Is
if I were to take a die and spin it
like a top on the table. Now if I were
just if it we're gonna rotate like like you spin
it on the top of the table, you would have
(13:30):
more or less uniform coverage from the sun. But if
it were like a die setting on the table, you
would have like an entire the entire top and bottom
uh squares, The entire top and bottom planes would be
like our north and south pole, and then everything else
would be like like the equator, So it would be similar.
Then in terms of our weather, Yeah, except weirder because
(13:55):
you would have like you'd have six six sides six sections.
Four be equator land and two would be um Arctic
or antarctic land. So it'd be like you're rolling. If
you were to then roll it on the table, you're like, well,
I have a two and six chance that I'll roll
snow and a four and six chance that I'll roll
the crazy vacation. Well, and that's what I was just
(14:16):
thinking too. All of a sudden, your wind patterns are
going to be completely different because what feels like wind
coming out us right now across our localized area, if
if you are at an extreme point, I would imagine
that the wind would act in a very different way
because it's one of the things about the way that
the wind works on Earth is you have a global
(14:39):
system where what's happening on one side of the globe
affects the other because you have you have heat here,
cool here. It's all one system. But in this scenario,
we have the space mountains the edges of the cube,
so each face will have its own atmosphere basically, I
mean it's it's cut off from the other atmospheres. So
it would have its own isolated weather So each side
(14:59):
of the die would have its own weather system, would
have its own biosquare too, right, because you would have
completely if you did have some sort of life form
in there, that's rightly different from one. That's another thing
that factor, because the emergence of life on Earth had
a huge role in the amount of oxygen. So what
would that be like for the north and south section?
We would you even have life emerged there? If they
(15:20):
were lifeless planes of extreme cold? You know, what would
the atmosphere be like? Maybe they wouldn't have breathable atmosphere.
You might have different, vastly or slightly different atmospheres depending
on which side of the die you were visiting. And
that's what what these burning man, the physicism mathematician actually
brought that up. They said, if the biospheres are bio squares,
took different routes in terms of these isolated regions, you
(15:43):
could have a nitrogen oxygen atmosphere on some faces like
we have, and a hydrogen nitrogen carbon dioxide atmosphere on others,
kind of like our old atmosphere for a billion years ago, right,
So that's crazy, And then what would cheesteaks be like
in each of these zones vastly different. What would what
would warfare be like between the six zones? I mean
(16:05):
there's I'm surely somebody has written a book about politics
of a of a cubicle world. That would be yea
like who who becomes the master of that world? Right?
And why how long does it take you to even
discover other faces of the cube? Because you've got to
be capable of climbing a space mountain or drilling through it, right,
unless there are naturally occurring tunnels that can be taken.
(16:25):
I like the I like the tunnel route. Yeah, but
what does that do to your perception too? Right, especially
if you can see the bubble of the atmosphere? Yeah,
I mean the interesting thing is we're talking about this earlier.
Even though we live like everyone, I doubt we have
any flat landers out there listening to this who think
that we live on a flat world and the ocean's
empty off and uh and drip off into the void,
(16:46):
or that we live in a discworld. If you're up there,
tell us of your time traveling secrets. Do do tell
us if if you do, you do hold that opinion.
But now we we all know that the Earth is
spherical and that we're standing on a plane that wraps
around on itself, but we still have the experience. We
still more or less feel like we're on a flat
world because we can't we we can't see the curvature
(17:07):
of the Earth. We can't poke our head out above
the atmosphere or anything like that, so we would still
experience the cube world more or less the same. Uh.
And and even as we approach those mountains, they would
feel like mountains. So I can easily imagine like a
map of a cubicle planet made by inhabitants of a
cubical planet, like they well, you know, if they didn't
(17:27):
know about the other sides, they would just see the
world as, oh, well, we live in the valley and
the mountains rise up on either side of us, and
beyond the mountains is who knows. Well, instead of having
a flat or of theory, perhaps it would be like
the triangular earth theory, right, because you can't quite wrap
your head around it. Alright, We're gonna take a quick
(17:48):
break and then we're gonna get back to all this,
So hanging there for one second. This podcast is brought
to you by Intel the sponsors of Tomorrow and the
Discovery Channel at Intel. We believe Curiosity is the spark
which drives innovation. Join us at curiosity dot com and
explore the answers to life's questions. And we're back. So
(18:13):
let's get that to gravity and why why the Earth
will never be a cube or it could never have
become a cube? Well particular Earth. Well, it comes down
to a creatum starts Earth. You know again, like is
all these particles come in, there's gonna be one to another.
That's gonna be You're gonna have the center of gravity
pulling things in and applying and pulling things in more
(18:34):
or less uniformly. So like a cube just wouldn't form.
I mean, you could conceivably a significantly advanced civilization could
build a giant planet sized cube. But still it's going
to warp. Right still, it's gonna warp because you're going
to have that uniform of gravity pulling in. It's gonna
like things are gonna conform. That's this is what I
(18:55):
thought was interesting that the weight of the material begins
to overwhelm the strength of that material and then the
planet is pulled into a sphere. So you can't help
that the force from rotation actually like squashing it into
a sphere alike or spheroid nature is going to abhor
a giant cube because the sphere is the uniform forces
(19:16):
at work. Yeah, And just an example of this, one
of the two moons of Mars Phobos. It's not large
enough to produce enough gravity to become a proper sphere.
So you look at that and you see that it's
kind of it's sort of like egg shaped, but then
it has this gigantic crater on one side. It's called
the Stickney crater, and it kind of looks like a
fish that's been punched in the mouth and you just
can see you like, oh, this mean that's just never
(19:38):
going to quite become like a billiard ball here. Yeah,
Like think of this all right, Say here at the park,
right and say let's say, I don't know, Lady Gaga
shows up too, and she just starts performing in the
center of the park and everybody's interested in so they're
going to gather around to see her. Only so many
people can fit in any given space. So and as
the crowd gathers around her, which shape do you think
(19:59):
they're going to take? Do you think it's gonna roughly
be spherical or roughly be a big square. It's gonna
be spherical or at least roughly. So it's gonna because
people are gonna be drawn in towards the center of attention,
and in our universe, the center of attention is always gravity.
I feel like you have a secret agenda to insert
Lady Gaga in as many podcasts as possible. I don't know,
(20:19):
it's a good reference. I mean, it's one of those
things you get Lady Gaga is performing in the park.
I mean, i'd go see what it was about. I'm
just I'm just clocking it. Lamb. Okay, well, we we've
shown that she showed up in studies before. There's that
Psychology Today paper that made some arguments about decision making
and Lady Gaga. So yeah, yeah, about motivational forces and
how you should probably align yourself with Lady Gaga. Rather,
(20:41):
I really need to do some searches and find out
how many peer of view papers have been Lady gagat paced.
I think we should just do a podcast on Lady Gaga.
Let's just get that out of the way. So anyway,
I hope the Gaga explanation here work. I mean that
because that's basically you know why nobody would would stand
at the edge of that cube if they could be
closer to the actions by standing a little more to
(21:03):
the left of the right, Like, why would they? Why
would they form it? They wouldn't because they want to
see what's happening. We want to be closer to the action.
They're being pulled towards her right, so she wants them
to be pulled toward her. Yeah, so that's basically why
we we can't have a cubicle planet. But it's it's
fascinating to think about it, and and we may it
may be overlooking some some key ramifications here. So by
(21:25):
all means, for sure we are. Yeah. So by all means,
if we missed anything, or if you have any crazy
thoughts about how anything would work on a cubicle planet,
you should let us know, just as some other people
have let us know about things via listener mail. And
I have a whole stack of them here. Let me
go through and read a couple of them. Jackie writes
in and says, Hey, they're listening to the Bees Versus
Wasts episode and listening to your comments on how bees
(21:48):
would make a bad and non aggressive mascot. Um. I
can go one better when it comes to unthreatening mascots,
the Pretzels. My high school in Freeport, Illinois is the
proud home of the Freeport Pretzels, apparently named after a
beer and pretzel making company that used to be located
in town. I just thought you might be amused by this.
Thanks for the brilliant podcast. I just can only hope
(22:08):
that those are the big, soft, puffy pretzels instead of
a little crunchy wan. Yeah, doesn't make it even better. Well,
It's what I love about that too, is that the
company is not even there. They're no longer tied. It's
not like it's a major sponsor or a major economic
force in the area. They just remember the pretzel factory
that was, so they're still the fighting press and that's
what they do. I'm going to remember the Pretzels, public
(22:30):
their work, and how does that mascot costume work. You'd
have to be super twisted to say I'm thinking like
to slay retiree. We also heard from a listener by
the name of Carlo and Carlo Retzin and says, greetings
from sunny Dominican Republic. It's pretty awesome. I am relatively
new to your podcast just a few months now and
want to congratulate you on your excellent work, very interesting
and diverse subject matter, approach, creative. But I find myself
(22:53):
not listening to my radio on driving to and from
work now as I'm usually glued to your show as
well as stuff you should know, I must admit regarding
this podcast, I believe an interesting example of socially accepted
liars and lying are actors. When you think about it,
they might just be the most admired professional liars around.
Would love to hear your thoughts on this. Well, that's
that's that's interesting because you know, we we talked about
lying liars and how lying is in a way like
(23:16):
reshaping reality and creating a false reality in which the
participant and the listener is is a part of. And yeah,
to a certain extent that the theater, somebody gets up
on the stage and they just start lying their butt off. Well,
and I remember when we were talking to Dr Ellen Arkin,
professor at George Tech and Robotics, and he was talking
about his decepticonic Believes. I don't know if that's like
(23:39):
the real name for the bo I think that was
the ternament ended up being on their own arm by
the media, you know, science journalists, but you know they're
they're trying to figure out how to program lying and deception.
And he was talking about how we are constantly self
deceiving and how and I was thinking about the actors.
He was saying, why do we pay good Funny to
go to a theater and see these pixels projected on
a screen just so that it moves us in somewhere
(24:01):
brings up some sort of emotions. So yeah, absolutely, the
actor's biggest players out there and we pay them to be. Yeah.
We heard from a listener by the name of Jim
who wrote in with a Higgers guy to the Galaxy
reference on the whole I Don't Eat the Panda episode
about our relationship between animals and food. They pointed out
that there is a quadruped in the books that basically
it's a cow that's been genetically engineered to want to
(24:24):
be eaten and to verbalize this desire. Because therefore the
cow wants to be eaten, we're just giving into its
wishes by eating it. In therefore it's moral, which ends
the whole problem right there. Boom. Yeah, I love an
elegant but ridiculous answer, you know, to a to a
quandrit And certainly that's that's kind of like that's what
his Checkers guy is all about. We also heard from
a list of my Name with John John writes and
(24:46):
says and your Don't Eat the Panda podcast today, you
found it hard to grasp that people could raise monkeys
as pets and still eat monkeys as food. It is
really not much different than having fish in your fish
tank or birds in your bird cage and still eating
fish or chicken without giving it much or maybe for
Julie the vegetarian, having a chia pet but still eating
chia seeds. How do you what do you have to
say to that man? I gave this up at his
(25:07):
only timing out. It was so hard for me etho
seeds and then look over and see the innocent chia
pet sprouting forth. Yeah, I just at first I started
turning it to the window so it couldn't see me
eating its seeds, and eventually I just had to take
it out of my diet. Yeah, well you don't see
as men anymore because said like the chia pet has
been hunted near to the point of extinction, so except
(25:28):
for in variety stores. Yeah near you. Yeah, and I
think that Turner has a big reserve of them up
the north. But it's but it's only a matter of
time until he opens that new chain. It's like a
chia pet salad store. It's gonna be like super Crackers
or something. Super Salad. Now, super Salad is the real one.
Super Crackers is the one from Party Gap. Yes, it's
(25:49):
gonna be that. Um so hey. We also received a
lot of other emails, and we seem to be getting
more and more of them, to the point where I
can't really keep up with uh. I mean, we tried
to respond to a lot of these, but are we
are getting a lot of them these days. But bear
in mind that that we definitely read them all, even
if we don't get to read them on the air,
or if we don't if we don't, actually we'll get there.
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Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglass. Julie,
what do you think it would be? Like, we'll live
on a square planet? Like you think you've listened to
a lot of like Lawrence Welk eat a lot of
cheese steak. Yes to Lawrence Welk, No to cheese steak.
(00:29):
Cheesteak is kind of a squares food that you gotta admit.
I don't know. I mean, cheese steak is quite prized
in some cities are and um and it's really been
elevated to an art if I can say that as
a vegetarian, I guess yeah. I mean you turn into
the food shows and it's like, uh, they just go
(00:49):
on and on about like every city has their grotesque
um and too in my opinion, square meet sandwich and
uh and the people got got for Well you're saying
a square not hip? Right? Yeah? Like not hip? You know,
like what are the squares doing? Like what the cool
kids are all going to the midnight puppet show and
and then the one of the squares are going to
(01:09):
their football game. I don't know. Anytime you say squares,
I just feel like I should be dressed in all
black and nothing anytime I agree with something that you say,
which is what I'm going to do. But but now
we're not We're actually not talking about that kind of
a square. We're talking about literal square, literal square planet
like um David cross as is bit which Matt Frederick
(01:30):
just reminded us of about the Squaggle, where it's a
it's a product that was apparently officially marketed, like produced marketed,
and he talked about it in a stand up bit.
But it's a bagel. It's a real square. Yeah, it's
a real thing. It's a square bagel, so that it's
not like rolling. What's the opposite of snapping your fingers
to disagree? I don't know. That doesn't make sense. I
(01:54):
don't know I'm saying that that's not going to be
transmitted by my voice. I guess like lengthy discussions over
some freestyle jazz. I don't know. But basically, imagine a
square planet. If you're into comics, then you may know
that the bizarro world where Bizarrow hails. Okay, and we're
not talking about a square planet made out of bagels.
We're talking about a square planet. Like the idea that
(02:15):
we're gonna talking about today is what if our what
if our earthwork square? Which is, like I said, Bizarro
Bizarro Superman familiar with this, right, yes, Sam, he's like Superman,
except he's like an albino or something. Um and he's
not really well but he's white. He's like really white
really and uh and uh and and kind of dumb.
(02:36):
And it's like you might be familiar with the concept
with Bizarro Seinfeld to right, right, Yeah, yeah, they they may.
They referenced this particular comic creation. So, yeah, imagine the
world that we live on seeing it from space and
seeing not a sphere but a square, a cube, which
would be pretty cool. Right. Yeah, It's not possible, but
(02:57):
that doesn't mean that we can't talk about it because
lots of let's people have talked about this or dreamed
what would it be like if our Earth was squared?
And and actually it gets down to the question of
why why do we have spheroid like planets and moons? Anyway? Right,
what's the whole deal with that? To be sun filed
in about it? What's the deal with the actual formation
(03:17):
of planets. No, no, no, Like, hey man, why do
we why don't we have a square for a planet? Yeah,
well I'll tell you why. Gravity, my friend. Yes, gravity
is the key to it all, because at heart we
have this thing called accretion. Like this is the way
everything forms. Right. So you know, if you if you
go back in time before there's a planet, and even
(03:38):
planet or star, you have a whole lot of little
bits of dust floating around, and each of those little
bits of dust, no matter how small, has mass and
exerts gravity. Okay, so everyone with me. So you have
dust dust mote number one meets the cosmic dust mote
number two and they attract to each other. Suddenly they
have more mass. Then surrounding they have more gravitational pull.
(04:01):
They begin to pull in other little bits of of dust,
and so you end up with this kind of cosmic
snowball effect where the gravity builds, it accrues more mass,
and it eventually it gets bigger and bigger and becomes
a you know, it in literally becomes like a star
or a planet or some other kind of astral bodies.
And these are all spherical for a reason because it's
(04:24):
because at the center that you have a center of mass,
and it is when we're standing on a planet, the
mass is more or less the same. No matter where
you go on the globe. It does differ. There areas
on the earthware where the the where where gravity is
stronger but for the or weaker. But for the most
part you have more or less uniform gravity. So a
(04:47):
square would not form because a square or a cube
would not have uniform gravity. Yeah, and it's sort of
but still I still sort of wonder, like why not
the shape of a banana or well, I think because
the square is a very um it's it's the opposite,
you know, it's uh, it's the squiggle versus the bagel idea.
It's like the square is very uniform. There's an episode
(05:10):
of Look Around You season two where they have a
soccer ball um um or you know in football in
in Britain and you push a button on it and
it transforms into a cube so that you can store
it on a shelf without it rolling off. There's you know,
it's just something on a very like mathematical basis, like
the cube is a very ordered what they're both very
ordered shapes, but but but they're very opposite, you know.
(05:33):
And uh, and so we can't help but but but
think of things in terms of their ridiculous opposites, you know,
like you know, we would look in the mirror. It's like, well,
what if what if I was a woman instead of
a man? You know, what if? What if? What if
that horse flew instead of walked? What if the world
were a cube instead of a sphere? And uh and
and when you when you look back at some of
(05:54):
the things that have been written about this, I mean,
there have been times where people have made some surprising
arguments for the existence of cubes in nature. Now, now, granted,
cubes do can form in nature. Rough cubes conform in nature. Obviously.
We've all seen blocks of stone that have fallen off
of something that may be roughly cubicle. You've seen tricksters
(06:15):
using bubbles to you know, tricks tricks. Well, I guess
they're bubble artists or something, blowing bubbles and then piecing
them together in forming that square, that cube at the center.
So it's not like a natural impossibility. But you see
fewer of these in nature than you do spheres. Well, geographically, right,
you tend to see more of the spheres right, certainly
(06:37):
in the universe. So yeah, I found it really really interesting.
Looking back to four, there was a Swiss astronomer by
the name of Aren't a r N d T. And uh,
this is like the only name he was attributed in
this particular chair. But Aren't Yeah, and he made the
headlines back in the day when he claimed to have
discovered a very curious planet in the orbit beyond Neptune,
(06:57):
a cubicle planet. Even in eighteen a four astronomers knew
better there was. There was a New York Times article
titled the Cubicle Planet, November sixte edition. The the author
talked to a physicist by the name of Dr Theodore
Van Kirk. It's it's a great article because it's this
is the Gilded Age of newspapers, so it's extremely long,
and it's like it's written in the style of like
(07:19):
and then the writer asked, and then he's like, oh,
good boy, let me explain it to you, and and
and and so like the first debt is the professor
just saying this is complete whuie, this this is just
I'm not yeah, he says who he and he's He's like,
I'm not even gonna dignify such an idea. But then
he goes on to say, oh, but this is what
it would be like, you know, because because at the heart,
(07:39):
that's the cool thing about thinking about a cubicle planet
is that, um it it illustrates some of the things
that we take for granted about life on an actual
spherical world. Yeah, so what would a cube shape Earth
look like? You know, would it? Would it? Is this
some sort of like parallel universe where Picasso just exist
and well for and then this cubical form. Well, the
(08:02):
important thing to realize is the way center of gravity
affects everything. Again, um gravity more or less uniform across
the planet because the center of the Earth is always
directly beneath your feet. No matter where you're standing. You
can point down at the space between your feet and say,
if I were to go straight down from you know,
straight down towards the center of gravity, I would hit
(08:24):
the core of the No matter where you were, gravitation
is um it's always going to point roughly towards the center,
right right. So imagine you're facing once one square one
side of the six sides of the queue. If you
were standing the exact center of that it would be
like on Earth because the center is directly below you.
You're standing standing straight up, You're standing straight up on
the Okay, So let's say you're out near an edge.
(08:45):
If you're out here an edge, you would be technically
you may be standing straight up on that particular side,
on that particular plane, but it would feel like you
were standing on a hill because the exact center, the
center of the planet's mass, is not directly beneath your feet. Okay, Yeah,
I'm trying to get the idea of this. So you've
(09:07):
got the you've got these six sides, and it's almost
it would almost feel like it's forming a bowl right right,
Like like, let's say again, you're standing at the center
of one of the six sides, okay, and then you're
gonna walk towards the edge. The closer you came to
the edge, the more it would feel like you were
walking up the side of a mountain. Only if you
(09:28):
were to actually reach the very edge and stand on
the edge, would it feel like Earth would Only then
would the center of the planet's gravity be directly beneath you. Okay,
I think it's fascinating. There's some This question was posed
to ask mathematician slash physicists. These are the guys that
show up at Burning Man, So take this for what
(09:49):
you will. But they had some very interesting thoughts about this,
and they said that Earth would take the form of
a vast barren expanse of rock directly exposed to space.
And if you were standing on the edge of a
face and look back toward the center, you'd be able
to clearly see the round bubble of air and water
extending above the flat surface with the poles in the
center of the two faces. Then then two of those
(10:10):
bubble seas that were created. Right, wait, are these the
cornels as physicist? No, this is different. This is why
I say these are These are the guys that show
up at Burning Man. And they have a tent. Actually
it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool, and it says ask uh.
Mathematicians are asking a physicist, right, they're one of each.
So guys are wandering up to be a burning man
and going like, dude, what if? What if? Like a cube?
(10:33):
It was cube and it was completely pupiled by a
bunch of Picasso's and they were fragmented faces, and one
of the areolas was on his ear. That's that's what
they're asking. So that's why I say take it, take
it what you will out of this. But I do
think it's really you're standing on the edge, you're looking down,
and you're seeing the seeing the bubble of the atmosphere,
(10:55):
right Okay, So that in and of itself is pretty
cool to imagine, and that you're you're on this the
face of the square and you're seeing this atmosphere because
right now we can't we don't perceive that right well,
and we wouldn't be able to perceive it. And then uh,
these bubble seas would create solid ice cot ice cap blocks, yeah,
(11:17):
and that this would be an entirely weird area that
that life probably wouldn't be supported in um but if
it were, it would it would be in this ring
around the shore of those bubbles bubble seas that were created,
and the leaning tower of piece would be straight. And
actually a Dr Karen L. Masters, who was coming in
on Cornel's Aaska Physicist page, she pretty much backs this up. Yeah,
(11:40):
she's got some good mouth. Yeah, and I'm not going
to bore everybody with the numbers, but she conscious the
numbers and says, yeah, based on the way the atmosphere
works on the Earth we actually live on. If the
Earth were impossibly a cube, the edges of the cube
would be Titanic mountains just jutting far above the atmosphere.
They would be space mountains in a very atmosphere. Yeah yeah.
And the oceans would be uh, would be pooled at
(12:03):
the center of the six square planes. So each side.
If you think of this cubical planet as a dice,
each face of the die would be like a one
when that one would be an ocean. Yeah. Um. And
then and then you have to also take into account
how weather and seasons work. What is a pretty complex system,
(12:25):
and gravity is one of the key players. And gravity
holds the atmosphere to the Earth, and again it holds
it uniformly, so in the shape of this cube. That's
when you have the mountainous edges piercing above the atmosphere.
But then rotation also plays a role because you have
alternating periods of night and day of heat and cool
that end up stirring the atmosphere into motion. And then
(12:46):
a number of other geological and gravitational factors complicated even
more untill you have this vast and largely unpredictable system.
But climates would basically depend on exactly how it's rotating,
because there's you know, a sphere is only going to
rotate pretty much. I mean, it's it's a it's a sphere.
Everything is is more or less uniform. So if it's
rotating up and down side the side, it doesn't matter.
This position is still gonna look the same shape wise.
(13:08):
Whereas a cube, how is that going to rotate? Is
it gonna be like if I were to lay a
dice down on the table and just rotated it around.
Is one of the six sides gonna face face down
or yeah? Or is it gonna be on edge? Is
if I were to take a die and spin it
like a top on the table. Now if I were
just if it we're gonna rotate like like you spin
it on the top of the table, you would have
(13:30):
more or less uniform coverage from the sun. But if
it were like a die setting on the table, you
would have like an entire the entire top and bottom
uh squares, The entire top and bottom planes would be
like our north and south pole, and then everything else
would be like like the equator, So it would be similar.
Then in terms of our weather, Yeah, except weirder because
(13:55):
you would have like you'd have six six sides six sections.
Four be equator land and two would be um Arctic
or antarctic land. So it'd be like you're rolling. If
you were to then roll it on the table, you're like, well,
I have a two and six chance that I'll roll
snow and a four and six chance that I'll roll
the crazy vacation. Well, and that's what I was just
(14:16):
thinking too. All of a sudden, your wind patterns are
going to be completely different because what feels like wind
coming out us right now across our localized area, if
if you are at an extreme point, I would imagine
that the wind would act in a very different way
because it's one of the things about the way that
the wind works on Earth is you have a global
(14:39):
system where what's happening on one side of the globe
affects the other because you have you have heat here,
cool here. It's all one system. But in this scenario,
we have the space mountains the edges of the cube,
so each face will have its own atmosphere basically, I
mean it's it's cut off from the other atmospheres. So
it would have its own isolated weather So each side
(14:59):
of the die would have its own weather system, would
have its own biosquare too, right, because you would have
completely if you did have some sort of life form
in there, that's rightly different from one. That's another thing
that factor, because the emergence of life on Earth had
a huge role in the amount of oxygen. So what
would that be like for the north and south section?
We would you even have life emerged there? If they
(15:20):
were lifeless planes of extreme cold? You know, what would
the atmosphere be like? Maybe they wouldn't have breathable atmosphere.
You might have different, vastly or slightly different atmospheres depending
on which side of the die you were visiting. And
that's what what these burning man, the physicism mathematician actually
brought that up. They said, if the biospheres are bio squares,
took different routes in terms of these isolated regions, you
(15:43):
could have a nitrogen oxygen atmosphere on some faces like
we have, and a hydrogen nitrogen carbon dioxide atmosphere on others,
kind of like our old atmosphere for a billion years ago, right,
So that's crazy, And then what would cheesteaks be like
in each of these zones vastly different. What would what
would warfare be like between the six zones? I mean
(16:05):
there's I'm surely somebody has written a book about politics
of a of a cubicle world. That would be yea
like who who becomes the master of that world? Right?
And why how long does it take you to even
discover other faces of the cube? Because you've got to
be capable of climbing a space mountain or drilling through it, right,
unless there are naturally occurring tunnels that can be taken.
(16:25):
I like the I like the tunnel route. Yeah, but
what does that do to your perception too? Right, especially
if you can see the bubble of the atmosphere? Yeah,
I mean the interesting thing is we're talking about this earlier.
Even though we live like everyone, I doubt we have
any flat landers out there listening to this who think
that we live on a flat world and the ocean's
empty off and uh and drip off into the void,
(16:46):
or that we live in a discworld. If you're up there,
tell us of your time traveling secrets. Do do tell
us if if you do, you do hold that opinion.
But now we we all know that the Earth is
spherical and that we're standing on a plane that wraps
around on itself, but we still have the experience. We
still more or less feel like we're on a flat
world because we can't we we can't see the curvature
(17:07):
of the Earth. We can't poke our head out above
the atmosphere or anything like that, so we would still
experience the cube world more or less the same. Uh.
And and even as we approach those mountains, they would
feel like mountains. So I can easily imagine like a
map of a cubicle planet made by inhabitants of a
cubical planet, like they well, you know, if they didn't
(17:27):
know about the other sides, they would just see the
world as, oh, well, we live in the valley and
the mountains rise up on either side of us, and
beyond the mountains is who knows. Well, instead of having
a flat or of theory, perhaps it would be like
the triangular earth theory, right, because you can't quite wrap
your head around it. Alright, We're gonna take a quick
(17:48):
break and then we're gonna get back to all this,
So hanging there for one second. This podcast is brought
to you by Intel the sponsors of Tomorrow and the
Discovery Channel at Intel. We believe Curiosity is the spark
which drives innovation. Join us at curiosity dot com and
explore the answers to life's questions. And we're back. So
(18:13):
let's get that to gravity and why why the Earth
will never be a cube or it could never have
become a cube? Well particular Earth. Well, it comes down
to a creatum starts Earth. You know again, like is
all these particles come in, there's gonna be one to another.
That's gonna be You're gonna have the center of gravity
pulling things in and applying and pulling things in more
(18:34):
or less uniformly. So like a cube just wouldn't form.
I mean, you could conceivably a significantly advanced civilization could
build a giant planet sized cube. But still it's going
to warp. Right still, it's gonna warp because you're going
to have that uniform of gravity pulling in. It's gonna
like things are gonna conform. That's this is what I
(18:55):
thought was interesting that the weight of the material begins
to overwhelm the strength of that material and then the
planet is pulled into a sphere. So you can't help
that the force from rotation actually like squashing it into
a sphere alike or spheroid nature is going to abhor
a giant cube because the sphere is the uniform forces
(19:16):
at work. Yeah, And just an example of this, one
of the two moons of Mars Phobos. It's not large
enough to produce enough gravity to become a proper sphere.
So you look at that and you see that it's
kind of it's sort of like egg shaped, but then
it has this gigantic crater on one side. It's called
the Stickney crater, and it kind of looks like a
fish that's been punched in the mouth and you just
can see you like, oh, this mean that's just never
(19:38):
going to quite become like a billiard ball here. Yeah,
Like think of this all right, Say here at the park,
right and say let's say, I don't know, Lady Gaga
shows up too, and she just starts performing in the
center of the park and everybody's interested in so they're
going to gather around to see her. Only so many
people can fit in any given space. So and as
the crowd gathers around her, which shape do you think
(19:59):
they're going to take? Do you think it's gonna roughly
be spherical or roughly be a big square. It's gonna
be spherical or at least roughly. So it's gonna because
people are gonna be drawn in towards the center of attention,
and in our universe, the center of attention is always gravity.
I feel like you have a secret agenda to insert
Lady Gaga in as many podcasts as possible. I don't know,
(20:19):
it's a good reference. I mean, it's one of those
things you get Lady Gaga is performing in the park.
I mean, i'd go see what it was about. I'm
just I'm just clocking it. Lamb. Okay, well, we we've
shown that she showed up in studies before. There's that
Psychology Today paper that made some arguments about decision making
and Lady Gaga. So yeah, yeah, about motivational forces and
how you should probably align yourself with Lady Gaga. Rather,
(20:41):
I really need to do some searches and find out
how many peer of view papers have been Lady gagat paced.
I think we should just do a podcast on Lady Gaga.
Let's just get that out of the way. So anyway,
I hope the Gaga explanation here work. I mean that
because that's basically you know why nobody would would stand
at the edge of that cube if they could be
closer to the actions by standing a little more to
(21:03):
the left of the right, Like, why would they? Why
would they form it? They wouldn't because they want to
see what's happening. We want to be closer to the action.
They're being pulled towards her right, so she wants them
to be pulled toward her. Yeah, so that's basically why
we we can't have a cubicle planet. But it's it's
fascinating to think about it, and and we may it
may be overlooking some some key ramifications here. So by
(21:25):
all means, for sure we are. Yeah. So by all means,
if we missed anything, or if you have any crazy
thoughts about how anything would work on a cubicle planet,
you should let us know, just as some other people
have let us know about things via listener mail. And
I have a whole stack of them here. Let me
go through and read a couple of them. Jackie writes
in and says, Hey, they're listening to the Bees Versus
Wasts episode and listening to your comments on how bees
(21:48):
would make a bad and non aggressive mascot. Um. I
can go one better when it comes to unthreatening mascots,
the Pretzels. My high school in Freeport, Illinois is the
proud home of the Freeport Pretzels, apparently named after a
beer and pretzel making company that used to be located
in town. I just thought you might be amused by this.
Thanks for the brilliant podcast. I just can only hope
(22:08):
that those are the big, soft, puffy pretzels instead of
a little crunchy wan. Yeah, doesn't make it even better. Well,
It's what I love about that too, is that the
company is not even there. They're no longer tied. It's
not like it's a major sponsor or a major economic
force in the area. They just remember the pretzel factory
that was, so they're still the fighting press and that's
what they do. I'm going to remember the Pretzels, public
(22:30):
their work, and how does that mascot costume work. You'd
have to be super twisted to say I'm thinking like
to slay retiree. We also heard from a listener by
the name of Carlo and Carlo Retzin and says, greetings
from sunny Dominican Republic. It's pretty awesome. I am relatively
new to your podcast just a few months now and
want to congratulate you on your excellent work, very interesting
and diverse subject matter, approach, creative. But I find myself
(22:53):
not listening to my radio on driving to and from
work now as I'm usually glued to your show as
well as stuff you should know, I must admit regarding
this podcast, I believe an interesting example of socially accepted
liars and lying are actors. When you think about it,
they might just be the most admired professional liars around.
Would love to hear your thoughts on this. Well, that's
that's that's interesting because you know, we we talked about
lying liars and how lying is in a way like
(23:16):
reshaping reality and creating a false reality in which the
participant and the listener is is a part of. And yeah,
to a certain extent that the theater, somebody gets up
on the stage and they just start lying their butt off. Well,
and I remember when we were talking to Dr Ellen Arkin,
professor at George Tech and Robotics, and he was talking
about his decepticonic Believes. I don't know if that's like
(23:39):
the real name for the bo I think that was
the ternament ended up being on their own arm by
the media, you know, science journalists, but you know they're
they're trying to figure out how to program lying and deception.
And he was talking about how we are constantly self
deceiving and how and I was thinking about the actors.
He was saying, why do we pay good Funny to
go to a theater and see these pixels projected on
a screen just so that it moves us in somewhere
(24:01):
brings up some sort of emotions. So yeah, absolutely, the
actor's biggest players out there and we pay them to be. Yeah.
We heard from a listener by the name of Jim
who wrote in with a Higgers guy to the Galaxy
reference on the whole I Don't Eat the Panda episode
about our relationship between animals and food. They pointed out
that there is a quadruped in the books that basically
it's a cow that's been genetically engineered to want to
(24:24):
be eaten and to verbalize this desire. Because therefore the
cow wants to be eaten, we're just giving into its
wishes by eating it. In therefore it's moral, which ends
the whole problem right there. Boom. Yeah, I love an
elegant but ridiculous answer, you know, to a to a
quandrit And certainly that's that's kind of like that's what
his Checkers guy is all about. We also heard from
a list of my Name with John John writes and
(24:46):
says and your Don't Eat the Panda podcast today, you
found it hard to grasp that people could raise monkeys
as pets and still eat monkeys as food. It is
really not much different than having fish in your fish
tank or birds in your bird cage and still eating
fish or chicken without giving it much or maybe for
Julie the vegetarian, having a chia pet but still eating
chia seeds. How do you what do you have to
say to that man? I gave this up at his
(25:07):
only timing out. It was so hard for me etho
seeds and then look over and see the innocent chia
pet sprouting forth. Yeah, I just at first I started
turning it to the window so it couldn't see me
eating its seeds, and eventually I just had to take
it out of my diet. Yeah, well you don't see
as men anymore because said like the chia pet has
been hunted near to the point of extinction, so except
(25:28):
for in variety stores. Yeah near you. Yeah, and I
think that Turner has a big reserve of them up
the north. But it's but it's only a matter of
time until he opens that new chain. It's like a
chia pet salad store. It's gonna be like super Crackers
or something. Super Salad. Now, super Salad is the real one.
Super Crackers is the one from Party Gap. Yes, it's
(25:49):
gonna be that. Um so hey. We also received a
lot of other emails, and we seem to be getting
more and more of them, to the point where I
can't really keep up with uh. I mean, we tried
to respond to a lot of these, but are we
are getting a lot of them these days. But bear
in mind that that we definitely read them all, even
if we don't get to read them on the air,
or if we don't if we don't, actually we'll get there.
(26:10):
I can touch with you. Yeah, yeah, but but they
are greatly appreciated. And the other way to interact with
us is of course to find us on Facebook and Twitter.
You can find us on both of those as blow
the mind, and we update those feeds all the time
with all sorts of cool stuff, so check it out.
It really do send us an email because we will
read it and it certainly helps us. Uh inform us
the sort of topics that we want to cover for you,
and we always love to hear what you guys want
(26:32):
to know about next, so send us an email at
Blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com. Be
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