• Question: What would happen if the world was flat? From Orla :-)

    Asked by Orla Graham :-) to Arthur, Clare, Daniel, David, Tora on 18 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Clare Harding

      Clare Harding answered on 18 Nov 2014:


      Thats a really interesting question! So assuming that the world is being carried through space on the back of four elephants standing on a turtle (which may or may not be standing on more turtles), my worries would be: where is gravity? – we get gravity from the earths core, if it is flat then there is no core and so would we stay on? – perhaps the turtle provides the gravity?
      Assuming there is gravity, what happens round the edge? Presumably there is some kind of wall to keep all the water in otherwise if could fall off (onto the turtle)
      Also, what happens about the sun and moon? Currently, we orbit the sun and the moon orbits us. But perhaps they both orbit the turtle?
      Im not sure, there are a lot of questions here!

    • Photo: David Wilson

      David Wilson answered on 18 Nov 2014:


      It wouldn’t stay flat- unless it was spinning really fast, gravity would pull it back into a sphere.

    • Photo: Tora Smulders-Srinivasan

      Tora Smulders-Srinivasan answered on 18 Nov 2014:


      Hmmmm… maybe it’d be like Flatland! But I don’t know how it’d work…

    • Photo: Daniel Parsons

      Daniel Parsons answered on 18 Nov 2014:


      hi there,
      the earth is close to a sphere because gravity to everything in and a sphere is the shape that allows the forces to balance best – astronomers say that it’s in hydrostatic equilibrium. But the Earth isn’t perfectly round….because its axis approximately once every 24 hours the middle (Earth’s equator) bulges outwards a bit (like a car going around a corner feels like you slide outwards)…..so if the earth span about 2 million times faster then it would flatten out!

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