Rassilon wrote:Extending science fiction beyond what we take to be a standard of science....it could be possible for a planet such as mesklin depending on its material composition. Relying on known physics however...no it probably would tear itself apart...but then our knowledge is limited to a small portion of the universe...so small in fact we actually know nothing....
Er, no. We know quite a lot, actually. "Known physics" - at least in the case how well rotating objects can hold together - is very well understood.
I do notice that you have a habit of chronically underestimating our knowledge of the universe. I won't claim we know
everything, but I think we know a lot more than you give us credit for.
Generally though as we have seen thus far most fast rotationg objects are neutron stars....Thier mass is what makes them spin so fast I believe is the reason...
It's mostly down to the conservation of angular momentum in a rapidly collapsing object (going from a supergiant about 5 AU in radius to a neutron star about 10 km in raidius). While most of the mass is blasted out in the supernova that creates the neutron star, there's still 1.4 to 3 solar masses compacted down into that object. That makes for a VERY rapidly spinning object.
And also depending on the actual material composition of these objects also depends on weither or not they are oblate....
Even the Earth is rotationally oblate though. What matters is the rigidity of the material. Jupiter and Saturn are somewhat oblate because their outer layers are gaseous. Earth is very slightly oblate because it's made of solid rock and metal. If its rotation was as fast as Saturn or Jupiter's, it'd be a little more oblate, but still less so than the gas planets since it's made of rock. To fly apart, Earth would have to be spinning once every two hours at least (this was, at one point, one of the theories for the origin of the moon - that earth had 'spun it off' due to rapid rotation. But that theory couldn't be supported by the facts).