Weizsacker Objects

[SadGeezer]

Hi there,

It’s me. As I ramble on through existence
I occasionally squirrel away little notes and asides for a book that may never see the light. Anyway, I’m curious, in the episode White Trash there’s a planet shaped like donut with a whole in the center. I just assumed it was surreal and nonsensical. But then, someone posted something about Weizsacker Objects and the possibility that
a planetary body really could form with a ring shaped center of gravity. I remain dubious, the name ‘Weizsacker’ ‘Wise acher’ seems to be a tip off. But if there is such a concept, then I assume someone could give me the references to verify?

[DalekTek790]

I read somewhere that a planet in the shape of a torus would be as gravitationally sound as a sphere, if such a thing were to form. I think one of the theoretical methods for the formation of a toroidal planet was if a small yet dense object were to pass through it, stealing away part of its mass and shift its center of gravity from a point to a ring. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the title or the author of that piece.

Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker was a German astrophysicist who, among other things, formulated a theory for the formation of the Solar System that is essentially the same model that is believed in and taught today. He said that, given the vast amount of planetary systems that probably exist in our galaxy, toroidal planetoids are a distinct possibility. If his theory is accurate then they could form through coalescence of dust and planetesimals in the same manner as spherical planetoids, without requiring the intervention of something like a neutron star. Anyway, that was in Asimov’s New Guide to Science by Isaac Asimov (I think the 80s edition, I don’t have the book with me to check). I’m inclined to believe the object seen in White Trash is a possible one.

I wish I could refer you to a good site, but I haven’t been able to find much of any webpages on Weizsäcker (in English, that is; I don’t know if you read German but I don’t, so I can’t tell if any of the German websites contain information relevant to this topic). It’s possible some of my details may be misremembered, and I really don’t want to give you inaccurate information. But I’m afraid I don’t know where I can tell you to check up on this.

I don’t know if the term “Weizsäcker object” is actually used in scientific circles, that’s just what I used in my pervious posts because it seemed as good a name as any.

I believe that if White Trash were an episode of a Star Trek series there would have been lines explaining and describing the object. But Lexx usually does not take the time to deal with such things, and tends to present science fiction elements with just enough explanatory dialog that’s necessary. It’s a matter of style, and I don’t think it means that the sci-fi concepts in Lexx are implausible, or not well thought out.

[ 27-03-2002: Message edited by: DalekTek790 ]

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