Surprising Shapes For Rapidly Spinning Planets

So, you think you know what a planet looks like? A sphere, perhaps flattened at the poles? But if you've been following recent discoveries of dwarf planets, you may know that rapidly spinning dwarf planets like Haumea typically are rugby ball shaped (triaxial spheroids), rather surprisingly perhaps. So, what other shapes can a planet have? Theory, and experiment with droplets in simulated zero g suggest several exotic possibilities.In Hal Clement's classic hard science fiction novel Mission of Gravity his explorers discover a rapidly spinning planet, and naturally enough he imagines it as flattened at the poles, in the same way as the Earth but more so read more

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