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<blockquote data-quote="Systole" data-source="post: 5825742" data-attributes="member: 93930">Actually, you can make a naturally flat world &quot;where orbits actually happen more or less as they do in ours.&quot;&nbsp; Emphasis on &quot;more or less.&quot;&nbsp;In the real world, gravity is spherically symmetric, and diminishes as the square of the distance.&nbsp; However, one can imagine a universe where the gravitational constants are different in the x, y, and z directions.&nbsp; In the case where the constants for x and y are much smaller than z, a planet would naturally assume a disc shape with only a slight curvature across the face.&nbsp;In this case, the sun would also be disc-shaped, so if the sun was revolving around the planet and rotating on one its long axes, the amount of light the planet saw would vary (i.e. whether it seeing the edge or the face of the sun).&nbsp; Additionally, it would also cause some super-strange seasons if the sun's orbit was precessing around the planet -- the sun would orbit much closer when it was directly overhead.&nbsp; If it was orbiting the edge, where the gravitational constant was weaker, it would orbit farther out.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Systole, post: 5825742, member: 93930"] Actually, you can make a naturally flat world "where orbits actually happen more or less as they do in ours." Emphasis on "more or less." In the real world, gravity is spherically symmetric, and diminishes as the square of the distance. However, one can imagine a universe where the gravitational constants are different in the x, y, and z directions. In the case where the constants for x and y are much smaller than z, a planet would naturally assume a disc shape with only a slight curvature across the face. In this case, the sun would also be disc-shaped, so if the sun was revolving around the planet and rotating on one its long axes, the amount of light the planet saw would vary (i.e. whether it seeing the edge or the face of the sun). Additionally, it would also cause some super-strange seasons if the sun's orbit was precessing around the planet -- the sun would orbit much closer when it was directly overhead. If it was orbiting the edge, where the gravitational constant was weaker, it would orbit farther out. [/QUOTE]

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