Papers › The gravitational field of a cube
The gravitational field of a cube
James M. Chappell, Mark J. Chappell, Azhar Iqbal, Derek Abbott
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Large astronomical objects such as stars or planets, produce approximately spherical shapes due to the large gravitational forces, and if the object is rotating rapidly, it becomes an oblate spheroid. In juxtaposition to this, we conduct a thought experiment regarding the properties of a planet being in the form of a perfect cube. We firstly calculate the gravitational potential and from the equipotentials, we deduce the shape of the lakes that would form on the surface of such an object. We then consider the formation of orbits around such objects both with a static and a rotating cube. A possible practical application of these results is that, because cuboid objects can be easily stacked together, we can calculate the field of more complicated shapes, using the principle of superposition, by simply adding the field from a set of component shapes.
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