Science fair Project Environmental Science

Life on a CUBE
NANDITA GUPTA VII-Z AECS-2, ANUSHAKTINAGAR, MUMBAI-94

ABSTRACT
This is a study of life on a cubical world where the Earth is hypothesized to be a cube and we have all the features of a spherical world except the changes necessitated by the cubical shape. I have tried to address the following questions How would the weather on Earth be different if it were a cube? How will it affect our lives? Is it really possible to have a cubical planet?

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
PURPOSE HYPOTHESIS MATERIAL METHOD OBSERVATION

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4 4 4 5 7

ANALYSIS OF RESULT
EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS MATHEMATICAL ANALYSIS ANALYTICAL DEDUCTION

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7 7 9

CONCLUSION REFERENCES ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

13 14 14

INTRODUCTION

"The Heaven is Round and the Earth is a Square". Texts of the Tao Is this a science fiction or a fact? We do not know, whether there is a planet which is cubic in shape and has life on it. Back in 1884, a Swiss astronomer by the name of Arndt made headlines when he claimed to have discovered a very curious planet in an orbit beyond Neptune -- a surprisingly cubical planet. Of course even in 1884, everyone knew this was bunk. The New York Times even ran a piece titled "The Cubical Planet" in their Nov. 16 edition. One question that has enamored the generations is What if the Earth was a Cube.

Scientists, Mathematicians, Sociologists have done numerous studies to acknowledge/debunk this question.

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PURPOSE

Present experimental study will highlight following aspects of such a cubical world Theoretical Size of a cubical Earth Climate on cubical Earth Effect of axis of rotation Position of oceans/seas and mountains Height of mountains vis-a-vis present world Animal life on the cubical planet
HYPOTHESIS

The assumption of this study is that the cubical Earth will also be inclined (as the present spherical Earth is) and the axis of inclination passes through the opposite vertices. It also assumes that the volume of the cubical Earth shall be same as the spherical Earth. A flatter world will not be better place to live. It is better to walk on a spherical world then a cubical world. The climatic conditions on a cubical world will be more equatorial and there would not be any poles. We will have limited space to live and oceans will not be covering the Earth as they cover up now rather they will be in the center and there will be very little land mass for us to use and live on. Intercontinental travel (across the faces of the cube) shall be almost impossible.

MATERIAL

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Two Globes Cardboard Torch with batteries A Wire Mesh Clips Sticking Tape/Glue Hangers

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METHOD

Calculation of Dimension:
First let us calculate the dimensions of the cubical Earth. Let the side of the cube be h km. Radius of the Earth is 6378 km.

Equating both and substituting r = 6378 We get Thus each side of the cubical Earth shall be 10281.23 km long, as shown below

17807.61 km 10281.23 km 14539.85 km

The spherical Earth has larger diameter compared to the sides of the cubical Earth. But, cubical Earth would have universal diagonal almost 1.7 times more than the spherical Earth. This means that if we transpose spherical Earth on the cubical Earth, eight corners of the cube shall be

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projecting out of the sphere like mountains and the center of the cube shall have a spherical mound. This is likely to be the inhabitable area as we shall see later.

Now take card board pieces and stick them around one of the Globes as shown above. Put it back on the Globe stand as shown below

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The Cube shall now rotate on its universal diagonal. Place a light source in front of both the globes. Put a mesh infront of the light source in such a way that it forms an image on the globe (cube). We shall see the effect of Sun rays on both types of Earth this way.

OBSERRVATION

1. There will be six oceans and six continents on Cubic Earth in contrast to Four oceans and Seven continents on spherical Earth. 2. We shall see that suns exposure to the cubical surface is more than on the spherical Earth. This means that cubical Earth will have more area covered under equatorial environment. 3. The day and night will be the same as the spherical Earth i.e. 24 hours cycle. 4. The weather pattern shall be different as explained in the analysis below. 5. The corner mountains shall be as high as 7526.38 km from the flat surface (Think of Mount Everest is only 8.648 km high!) 6. The atmosphere does not cover whole of the cube surface. 7. The force of gravity shall be different at different points on the Flat surface.

ANALYSIS OF RESULTS A. EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS

1. From the Exposure of the light on the surface area of the sphere and the cube it is evident that the cubical Earth receives more sun light evenly then the spherical Earth. This means there shall not be any temperate or polar zones on a cubical Earth and most of it will face equatorial climate with dense rain forests in the central region. 2. The vertex regions of the cubical Earth shall be devoid of any atmosphere and thus will have uninhabitable conditions.
B. MATHEMATACAL ANALYSIS

Force of Gravity on any object on the Earths surface can be represented as

Where G = Universal Gravitational Constant (6.67384 x 10-11 m3 kg-1 s-2) R = Radius of Earth (= 6400 km = 6.378X106 meter)) H = Height of the object from the surface of the Earth M = Mass of Earth (5.9722 X 1024 kg) m = mass of the object (kg) Considering that the height of object in comparison to the radius of Earth is negligible, we can write the equation-1 as

We can write equation -2 as

where

Thus weight we can compute g at various places as follows g on a spherical Earth surface = 9.81m/sec2 g at the center plane of the Cubical Earth = 15.1 m/sec2 g at the vertices of the Cubical Earth = 3.766 m/sec2 This means that any thing that weighs 50 kgs on spherical Earth shall weigh about 77 kgs at the center plane of the cubical Earth but the same thing would weigh only 19 kgs at the corner of the Earth.

To think of it, If one participates in the Heavy weight boxing championship at the central region, he/she will participate in the feather weight category at the corner region.

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ANALYTICAL DEDUCTION Life on a cubic Earth would be pretty different. Although gravity on the surface wouldnt generally point toward the exact center of the Earth anymore (that a symptom of being a sphere), it will still point roughly in toward the center. So, the closer you are to an edge, the more gravity will make it feel as though youre on a slope. So, although it wont look like it, it will feel like each of the six sides forms a bowl. This has some very profound effects.

If you walk around the Earth's equator (left) your altitude says almost perfectly even. If you walk around the cube-Earth's equator, cutting four of the faces in half, you'd experience "altitudes" as high as 2,600km (Everest is 8.8km). The 8 corners of the cube would be 4,700km higher than the centers of each face. The seas and atmosphere would flow to the lowest point they can find and as such would puddle in a small region in the center of each face, no more than a thousand miles or so across. However, both the seas and atmosphere would be several times deeper which doesnt count for as much as you might think. Here on Earth (sphere-Earth), if youre around 5km above sea level most of the air is below you. The vast majority of the Earth would take the form of vast, barren expanses of rock, directly exposed to space. If you were standing on the edge of a face, and looked back toward the center, youd be able to clearly see the round bubble of air and water extending above the flat surface. I strongly suspect that it would be pretty. All life (land based life anyway) would be relegated to a thin ring around the shore of those bubble seas a couple dozen miles across.

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Assuming that the cube was oriented in the way most people are probably imagining it right now, with the poles in the center of two of the faces, then two of those bubble seas would take the form of solid ice cap blocks. It is basically a lunar-sized world with eight three-sided hollow pyramids spaced at equal intervals around the sphere. The mountains and the ridges between them isolate the six faces of cube world. Because the ridge lines are well above the level at which the atmosphere becomes transparent to infrared radiation (circa 0.1 bar), each face has its own effective temperature. Each face could have its own sea level as well, and its own surface pressure. The small area would also affect (end) large-scale air and water movement. One wouldnt have to worry about hurricanes, but the cube-Earth would also have a really hard time equalizing temperature. If youve jumped into the Pacific Ocean on the west coast (of the United States) youre familiar with the teeth-chattering horror of the Arctic currents, and if youve been in the Atlantic Ocean on the east coast (USA again) youre no doubt familiar with the surprisingly pleasant equatorial currents. Point is: theres a lot of thermal energy being carried around by the air and water. On cube-Earth youd have to deal with huge seasonal temperature fluctuations.

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The mountain peaks jut above the exobase and their 30 K shaded faces provide a large are to "get" any volatile compounds in the atmosphere. Above a millibar or so, Cube World's atmosphere is mainly dry molecular nitrogen, mixed with a small amount of hydrogen flowing in from its star. Water, ammonia, and methane condense and return in this cold trap long before they are exposed to ultraviolet or solar wind.

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A slightly weirder effect is that, standing on the flat surface of a cube-shaped planet, the force of gravity is not always down. That is, as you walk in a straight line from the center of a face toward a corner, gravity causes the flat face of the cube to seem to get steeper and

steeper, so that you are eventually climbing instead of walking . This also makes
sense, since the force of gravity is directed approximately toward the center of the cube, which is only straight down at the center of each face The sunrise should be violent luminous flash because there is no gradual appearance of the Sun rise in the atmosphere of a cube square side that goes out from a total dark night. Man will be awake 18 hours against sleeping during a 6 hour night. Thus in one year the springs season and

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the summer one should be a real Earth barbecue and the winter should be a pole weather always under a 50 celcius freezer. Only the cube upper and bottom sides know temperate seasons.

One last question: Is it possible to have a cubical planet of the size of Earth? Let us explain it this way: Rocks may seem solid, but on a planetary scale theyre squishier than soup. A two hundred kilometer column of stone is quite heavy, and the rocks at the bottom are going to break due to the weight of the rocks above. Part of what keeps mountains short is erosion, but a bigger component is that the taller a mountain is the more it tends to sink under its own weight. So as a planet gets bigger, and gets more gravity, the weight of the material begins to overwhelm the strength of that material, and the planet is pulled into a sphere.

Phobos (left), a very small moon, isn't big enough to generate the gravity necessary to crush itself into a sphere. Unlike its host planet Mars (right).

So a tiny planet could be cube shaped (its not likely to form that way, but whatever). Something the size of the Earth, however, is doomed to be spherical.

CONCLUSION

To begin with we hypothesized that A flatter world will not be better place to live. It is better to walk on a spherical world then a cubical world. The climatic conditions on a cubical world

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will be more equatorial and there would not be any poles. We will have limited space to live and oceans will not be covering the Earth as they cover up now rather they will be in the center and there will be very little land mass for us to use and live on. Intercontinental travel (across the faces of the cube) shall be almost impossible. Last but not the least, it is almost impossible to have a cubical shaped planet of the size of earth. By Experimental, Mathematical and Analytical reasoning our hypothesis has proven correct.

If I had to guess; its unlikely that complex life would evolve on a cube Earth. However! If it did, then their space program would be as easy as a long walk, and their handsomest physicists would spend their time pondering what a round Earth would be like.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

i. ii. iii. iv. v.

The cube Earth photo is by Altered Realities. Images from Google CBSE Text book on Physics, Std-XI Earth, Sea and Sky; Banners Press, NewYork. Conversations on www.askmathematician.com

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I gratefully acknowledge the contribution of all those who helped me in carrying out this project work successfully. My father for generating the idea, my mother for perpetual encouragement, my brother for reminding me of Newtons first law of motion (not gravitation) and most of all the faculty and staff of my school (Atomic Energy Central School-2) for constant encouragement and creating a congenial environment to further the ideas and nurturing the talent.

Nandita Gupta VII-Z April, 2012

AECS-2, Anushaktinagar, Mumbai India 94