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This sounds really stupid, but I'm trying to think of a way to make World Turtle work. And what I got after 5 minutes of careful deliberation, would be that the our earth would have to be 'flat' on the back of a giant turtle. And since I don't want mythical space turtles, I'm gonna presume that they live on a planet themselves.

Now disregarding the impracticality of there actually being a turtle who can carry the crust, the environmental changes that will happen from making the earth 'flat' and the general idiocy of this question.

If we took the crust of the Earth, made it like a giant pancake on the turtle's back, how big would the turtle[or is it tortoise?] have to be? And then how big would their planet be?

How it might look like on a smaller scale, since turtles can obviously navigate space.

Hello Turtle

What kind of tags can I even put on this?

Skye
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    What about the elephants? Tubul, Jerakeen, Berilia and Great T'Phon – Separatrix Aug 02 '16 at 12:45
  • @Separatrix Sorry but I can't think of any reason to put them in, maybe something like deities that govern the world of world turtles? XD – Skye Aug 02 '16 at 12:48
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    Turtles are domed and the world is flat, it's going to be a very unstable planet without the elephants to give it a base. – Separatrix Aug 02 '16 at 12:50
  • I'm pretty sure that the turtle-world would have to be so massive that the gravity on the world-turtle would be too strong for humans to survive – Annonymus Aug 02 '16 at 12:50
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    I don't mean that the world is literally flat and straight as a washing board. I mean that it at least bends a bit so it's like the turtles shell but at a certain pint the world stops if you know what I mean. . @Annonymus assume that humans don't live on it. – Skye Aug 02 '16 at 12:51
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    That's a tortoise by the way. – dunc123 Aug 02 '16 at 12:52
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    @Sky which means that the turtle's shell is large than the crust itself.... Which means that it's a astronomical sized being... – Planarian Aug 02 '16 at 13:00
  • Which means that the planet is at least the size of Jupiter, if not the Sun or Eta Carinae.... Which is kinda mind boggling – Planarian Aug 02 '16 at 13:07
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    The turtle doesn't live on a planet silly, it lives on another turtles; it's turtles all the way down. – iAdjunct Aug 02 '16 at 13:29
  • Gravity would be highly irregular - as you get to the edges, "down" is not normal to the surface any more. – iAdjunct Aug 02 '16 at 13:31
  • I'm fine with that. Just give me the size and it'll be enough, not all the unfeasibilities of this idea. – Skye Aug 02 '16 at 13:41
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    "I don't want mythical space turtles", I want a mythical super-giant tortoise the size of a planet walking along on a mythical super megastructure-sized rocky world. Hmm... Actually... Writing up an answer now. – Michael Richardson Aug 02 '16 at 13:42
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    How is it that, with all these comments, I still get to be the first to suggest that the turtles should not live on a planet, but instead it should be turtles all the way down! It's my lucky day! – Cort Ammon Aug 02 '16 at 13:46
  • Well iadjunct beat you. @MichaelRichardson Sry sometimes I'm a doozie – Skye Aug 02 '16 at 13:53
  • @sky - http://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/1359/how-do-i-prevent-my-turtle-from-collapsing-under-its-own-gravity - the how big can my world turtle be question. – Twelfth Aug 02 '16 at 22:35
  • @CortAmmon Actually, iAdjunct beat you to it. – Xandar The Zenon Aug 18 '16 at 01:51
  • If I recall the space turtle was actually a housing for gigantic space drives – pojo-guy Aug 13 '17 at 16:31

3 Answers3

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Your world is a Niven-style Ringworld.

This gives you plenty of space for a "world-tortoise" to wander around in while still allowing you to arbitrarily set your gravity to pretty much whatever you want by setting the spin rate.

To paraphrase Niven, you could lay out the Earth flat, set it down in the landscape, turn away, and never find it again. The Ringworld has a lot of space available.

I would assume the rotation rate is actually fairly slow to give the tortoise only enough "gravity" to keep it walking along the surface, but not crushing it. The "gravity" experienced on the tortoise's back would be actual gravity, since it is so massive.

Michael Richardson
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The world is still a sphere and it's on a 4 dimensional turtle. It’s analogous to a disk laying on a 3D turtle. Just as the flatlqnders can’t look up or down and so are only aware of their disk, if we could look in the 4th direction we would see that every part of the inside of the sphere is resting on the 3D surface of a 4D shell.

The turtle is normal sized. Our little 3D world is “small” in their world.

JDługosz
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First of all, we must agree on the species. Do you consider that the turtle is a little red-eared slider (40cm), an African spurred (80cm) or a big sea turltle (more than 1m) ?

If we choose a non-scientific average of 50cm and considering the mean diameter of the Earth (12 742 kilometers) we can find that our planet is 25 484 000 times bigger. If we swap the position, our super-turtle shall measure 324 717 128 000 km, 230 000 bigger than the sun ...

Landelin Delcoucq
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