If Planets Were Donuts 

I just realized how cool it would be to look up and see the other part of the planet.

The real question is: could you write a story that takes place on a toroidal world without inadvertently turning it into a treatise on toroidal world building?

I would love to look up at sky and see the ring of city lights water and mountains

my brain hurts now, this idea is epic, why has it not been done in a movie before ?

This is an interesting video, but it fails to address the most important question about life on a toroidal world: would their donuts be toroidal or spherical?

Tell us more about this planet Ert.

+Artifexian This is awesome, I'm loving the idea of a world where day and night fly by almost unnoticed, where the inner rim is towering mountains, the outer rim is sparse archipelagos with stark, shearing winds, where the nights are bitterly cold and the days unbearably hot, a no-man's-land of volcanic activity between the two extremes - but you hardly mentioned the most interesting thing about toroidal planets: their non-euclidian geometry, where distance is proportional and what would otherwise be parallel lines always become concentric rings. They may have a fundamentally different understanding of how mathematics work. The geography is all well and good, but the fun part is figuring out how it would affect culture.

Now I want to live on a torus

What if a species of Glactus-like organisms created planet sized rings of rocks, tossed them around suns, let complex life "ferment" on them and then later ate the entire planet, along with it's matured ecosystem, as a delicious afternoon snack?

im thinking of the cultural implications for hypothetical societies on a donut world. people living on the outer rim would be absolutely stunned their first time seeing the inner rim. also, people living on the inner rim would be greatly impacted on their ability to look out and see the other side of the inner rim. would early civilizations think they are literally looking at where the gods live, or would they understand their world curves up and that they're just looking at more of the same, leading to an earlier understanding of outside civilizations than they would have had earlier? great video either way!

what about the magnetic field?

I think that is would be such a good video if yeti dynamics made a simulation of each of the environments on a torus shaped planet.

Thank you so much for this video! As an astrophysics major, I've had no luck finding a thorough source for information and speculation about torus planets- especially one that is both reliable and so descriptive. Since you're pretty good with drawing, could you visit this concept again and perhaps make a plausible map of one, with overlaying maps of tectonic plates and biomes? Also, how big could one of these get (maybe having 1g somewhere) and still be relatively stable?

This is one of the most amazing concepts and videos I have ever seen. Also the most delicious planets ever.

Would sunset and sunrise colours differ from each other? In certain places, sunlight would have to go through more atmosphere than others, so maybe at sunrise it has less atmosphere to go through than at sunset and vice versa for the other side of the planet.

Interesting fact - the topography of the maps indicate that old final fantasy games take place on donut worlds. Specifically the north of the map attaches directly to the south and west attaches directly to the east. Those are donut shaped maps

Steven Hawking: "Your theory of a donut-shaped universe is intriguing, Homer. I may have to steal it."

the universe is huge. so there must be one of these planets out there

Could you do a video about the ways there could be an actual flat world, like a square, or a disc?

Hope a donut world is found in my lifetime :)

Mmm...donut planets... Also, when you mentioned the quick days and nights, I immediately thought of Minecraft days (which seem to fly by too fast).

Let's talk rings, toroidal planets with rings. How would that work?

Only just discovered your channel, but I love it! Linguistics and astronomy are my two favourite topics. Keep it up!

Could you please do one about a tilting water world? I've read articles about how such a celestial object could exist and be habitable, but they lacked visuals.

Although the laws of physics would allow for a celestial body of such a shape to exist, definition states that an object must be spherical to be called a planet.

would be a pain in the ass to make a map of that planet

ummmm donut world

Fascinating. I'd always thought that it would be impossible for a planet to form into a torus and be stable. 1:22 But there's no such thing as centrifugal force. It's an illusion due to being in a frame which is not inertial.

You're back!! A thing to note though "Centrifugal Force" doesn't actually exist.. There's a thing called the "Centripetal Force" which works in the opposite direction. An example: Say you have a rock tied to a rope, you now start swinging the rock in a big circle, faster and faster. You can feel the rock pulling harder on the rope the faster you go, as if there was a force dragging it out. This perceived force is what you call centrifugal. The reality is that there is no force acting outward, but rather one acting inward, one keeping the rock from flying away. If at any point during the swinging the rope were to snap, the rock would fly off in a direction perpendicular to the rope. What you feel in the rope is actually the rope pulling back on the rock, constantly resisting it flying away, changing its direction as it goes along. (I even provided an illustration: imgur.com/CgrtUB8 ) The centripetal force translates to everything having an orbit, in the case of solar system, rather than it being a rope holding a rock in place, it's gravity (and a bigger rock). This is also why the faster a planet spins, the more it bulges in the middle, the rotation is counteracting the gravity more in the place it spins the fastest: The equator So in fact, on your torus diagram, you could just have left off the blue arrows, as the gravity would be what would keep the torus from falling apart; but the rotation would also be what would keep the gravity from crushing it into a sphere.

"Polar Rings of Fire" sounds like the coolest album ever.

Would the atmosphere of the planet also be a torus?

Curiosity led me here from SciShow. I really appreciated how in-depth you went with, well, everything. Thanks for the extra mile-worth of effort!

Thanks SO MUCH for researching this topic for us! I was thinking about it recently, and maybe someday I'll be brave enough to build such a (delicious) toroidal world. For now, at least, I'll stick with spheroids. Final note: How awesome do you think it would be to find a toroid planet in real life? I think it would be a story for the ages! Thanks again!

I honestly thought this was gonna be a meme video, but it's not and I'm happily surprised.

I think it would be important to consider the lack of a molten spinning core, which would equate to a lack in a magnetic field. So, the solar wind would buffet away the atmosphere.

Wow. A satellite orbiting a torus-shaped planet would be a truly beautiful sight when sped up. Fascinating video and subject matter!

They need to add these planets in No Man's Sky.

In the part about centrifugal force and stuff, it really should've been mentioned that that's why the earth is not a perfect sphere and is "fatter" at the equator, and that there is a star which is two times wider than it is long or so because of spinning.

Am I the only one who wanted to just grab and eat those donuts?

I'm sold. I've been wanting to have an interesting feature of a fantasy world for D&D for quite some time, and this is by far the most interesting concept I've seen. GG!

Could there be such thing as a torus star? I'm thinking maybe no because it's made of gas and gas doesn't really stay together that well. Although i'm also thinking it could be artificially made by a super advanced race by quickly putting all the gas together quick enough to keep it gravitationally attracted, but there would be no point in them doing that. Also this makes me question if there could be such thing as a torus gas giant.

Imagine the amount of time travel you could do on this planet

what about the magnetic field... where would the liquid iron core be

I observe you put lots of hard work into your video, RESPECT! I don't understand how some people put crappy videos that have no work ethic into them and get hundreds of thousands of views, and you put so much work into a great video and get 23,000 views...this world is a fucked up place, only if the people that put in work actually got what they deserved, I have so much respect for you dude, keep up the great videos!

Our planet better be jelly filled

I am beyond glad this channel exists. Been needing sources for world building :)

I just found this channel because of /r/interestingasfuck and was not disappointed at all. You've earned another subscriber.

a friend linked me to your channel and i am absolutely hooked. i was honestly expecting much less detail than this, it's amazing to see the amount of work you put in to making this, so thanks for some quality content. onto the main question i have, tho - if there's an L0 at the centre of the toroid and a lower gravity in the surrounding realms, is a superstructure connecting both edges of the toroid even remotely viable? would the differences in rotational speed screw the system up..?

what if donut world had a ring? that would be awesome to see :D

Given the instability on geologic time scales, I'm curious about the end of a torus world: - Will it collapse into a sphere? - Or break apart into multiple worlds? - Does the nudge that breaks its metastability matter? - Timeline - here's the big one: what would it be like to live on a torus world that's ceasing to be a torus world? What sort of apocalyptic setting could I write?

We need a toroidal planet with an 8 ring through the middle o_o

Me: Clicks on this video Also me: Realizes that I want a donut because I just saw one

i would wanna live in that kind of world

love it.. took me a moment to figure out why hula hoops would be made of tin.. and i love the taurus eart.. but you also pronounce it earth sometimes..

What about Halo style ring world's?

What if the world was made of glazed donuts? You would be like: "Man, that's fuckin' sweet! I can't believe the world is made of donuts!"

Sooo, Halos are possible? (From the Halo games)

Found out about torus planets on scishow. I wanted to get more info so I googled toroid planet and this popped up. Thank you so much.

Good thing to know! xD I'm joking, this was an amazing vid actually, congrats..

This reminds me of the ringularity theory about black holes having a ring of infinite density at their core instead of a point.

DARN IT! Now I'm hungry again... :'(

This sounds like it would be an amazing concept to play with.

SciShow just made a video like yours, only worse.

I wonder if the inhabitants of such a world would enjoy desserts of fried balls of dough with frosting on top.

There are billions upon billions of planets in that universe. Do donut planets exist?

Artefexian has truly mastered the art of thumbnails

I only clicked this video because of the donut

2:51, Note that the Fluid roche limit for Earth around the sun is a distance of 1.08 million kilometers, compare the orbital distance of over 150 million kilometers. Since tidal forces scale with the inverse of the Cube of the distance, putting a Toroidal world around a sun like or slightly smaller star is fine;

It The Moon was a donut, I would steal a NASA spaceship and eat it and record of me eating moon. I probably encounter an alien eating moon.

This video was really well put together, kudos! I'm loving going through all these and making my world as real and well thought out as I can. But it got me thinking, what about an inverted Saturn? In other words, some sort of non terrestrial body at the center that's surrounded by a terrestrial torus or "donut" shape that's solid and inhabitable. Would that be theoretically possible? If not, what is preventing that from being the case? Judging from this video, I'd imagine this torus would have to be spinning incredibly quickly and the body at the certain would have to be unusual in some way. Perhaps a wormhole or some other kind of space-based anomaly.

centrifugal is not a force ((: centripetal is a force ((:

Just imagine if the likelihood of life emerging from its basic compounds and perfect habitable conditions is less likely than the formation of stable torus-shaped planets and we go to space to find a quiet, lifeless universe filled with an uncomfortable amount of donuts.

Anders Sandberg... There's a name I've not heard since... Anders Mage Page, which was fantastic. He's a true genius, very happy to hear that he's still contributing.

I feel like someone has succeed at doing the kind of crazy calculations and things I keep trying or planning to do for my worldbuilding and thinking it's a bit ridiculous that I'm trying to be so accurate.

Conjectural fantasy-universe stellar explorers upon discovering the doughnut world: "The local gods must have been smoking the *really* good stuff."

I think the best thing about toroidal planets is maps. More specifically how if you go to the top of a map you end up at the bottom and if you go to the right you end up at the left(obviously this works vice versa).

That was pretty cool! While you mentioned the high winds, high is a bit of an understatement by my understanding. Something spinning that fast would most likely have crazy powerful storms all the time, making habitability difficult by normal means.

Me then: has been watching world building videos, without having any inspiration to world build Me now: let's get cracking

Imagine watching a river flowing above your head.

Well, centrifugal force IS a force applied to a body, although it's inertia viewed from the outside the mass receives it as centrifugal force.

I hope I live to see donut land discovered, or built

Astronaut: I shall now go to space! *goes up* *hits the pacific ocean* Astronaut: Oh yeah, donut planet...

This is really intresting. I was wierded out by the title because I didnt know donut type planets existed. Hopefully when we meet ailens they would live on one of these.

You've convinced me. My planet is going to be a nice fat donut.

I need to watch this again because you speak so quickly that i cant follow this complicated stuff... But it sounds Amazing!!!

But what would the atmosphere of this planet be like? This came to mind because you said that there would be mountains several times higher than Mt. Everest on the inside of the torus, with Everest being low on Oxygen at the summit, would there be an even atmosphere across the inside of the torus? Would it be an atmosphere centered in a sphere around the middle of the torus which is weakest at the outside of the torus? I'm fascinated now!

This is the greatest question anyone has ever asked.

You should do a video about twin habitable planets. I'm curious as to how it would work.

Really interesting, never considered the exotic moon orbits before.

I chuckle every time he mentions... *"DONUT WORLD"*

What would be the smallest possible hole a stable donut planet could have?

Though there would be interesting refraction effects as tangental sunrays got bent by the atmosphere. The effect of light bouncing off the other inner surface of the Torus is best called reflection not refraction.

While watching this i imagined a donut planet that rains sugar with syrup-ish bodies of water. DELICIOUS

Besides the weather, a species of extremely heat - and lack of heat - resistant creatures would be amazing.

Exoconfectionry. Now there's a word I wasn't prepared for. XD

so this is the "and then some" part :)

Best "what if" video I've ever seen so far

Nobody: Artifexian: *WHAT IF ALL THE PLANETS WERE DONUTS*

I think this video hit the sweetspot on Interesting while having an engaging runtime.

I can't even explain how much I love this video