What would happen if Earth was shaped like a donut where one day would last 2 hours and 50 minutes
Life would look very different
People have gone to great lengths to prove that Earth is a sphere.
Despite there being a passionate flat Earth community, science has shown over and over that we live on a round planet.
In 2018, one man even used a picture of his hometown, Google Maps and some maths to prove that the angle of the planet was slightly curved and not flat.
But what if we could just imagine what life would be like on a donut-shaped Earth?
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Well thanks to the YouTube channel What If, now we can.
Scientifically, this type of planet shape would be called a toroidal world or a torus planet.
Now, although planets don't actually form in the shape of donut, the laws of physics do allow such a thing to exist.
But life on the ring-shaped planet would certainly look a lot different.
For example, you would weigh up to three times less than you do here on this spherical Earth.
What If uses 1G of gravity on our Earth as a reference. This would mean gravity on a donut Earth along the poles would be 0.65G. And at the centre, gravity would go down to just 0.3G.
"It would be like walking on the surface of Mars," the channel described.
To fight the constant struggle of not collapsing in on itself or turning into a spherical Earth, the donut Earth would need to spin much faster than our Earth does now.
According to the channel: "That way, centrifugal forces would kick in and keep the donut hole intact."
With this fast spin, a day would last only about 2 hours and 50 minutes.
Across a 24-hour day, you would witness 8 sunsets and sunrises every day.
Daily life would definitely change. For example, our circadian rhythms, as we know them, would be out of the window you’d be working through the night and sleeping during the day.
That's if to say the same work schedule continued in this parallel universe.
Animals, too, would have a hard time adjusting since they depend on day and night patterns to breed, hunt and migrate.
If you’re wondering about the moon, it’d still be there. Slap bang in the centre of the donut planet or orbiting in a figure-eight pattern would be our moon.
But this setup would make water levels unstable, so coastal cities and towns might not exist as they do now.
Polar regions would be much colder and warmer at the equator.
Either way, donut-Earth wouldn't be an ideal place to live compared to the stable life we know today.
Nevertheless, unlike most What If scenarios, humans could still manage to survive and get by.
The video explained: "Humans of a donut Earth might never cross the ocean. They'd evolve separately on different continents.
"But at least there would be no mass extinction and no areas of the planet would become too extreme for us to survive."