I’m going to assume, as a classic gamer frequenting an Atari website, that you, the reader, has some familiarity with Asteroids. If you don’t then you need to source the game and play it. Fast.The thing that is perplexing about this very old game is the amount of truth it holds; it’s realistic not in it’s representation but in it’s working. It adheres to the laws of inertia: that a body will continue at a uniform velocity unless another force is applied to it to oppose the motion. On earth we are constantly opposed in our direction of motion, yet in space, where friction is negligible due to its vacuous nature, the laws appear more apparent.The modelling of these laws is what gives Asteroids its clever control system, yet moreover, it goes further to model our universe, with the doughnut. The ring torus is how many have prophesised the construct of our galaxy, and no clearer is this proposal stated than in Asteroids. Let me explain.If you imagine the Asteroid playfield as a square, okay? All objects falling off the left of screen will reappear on the right, and right on to the left. The same principle works on the top-to-bottom. Now if you were to imagine that the very top of the playfield is in fact the very bottom, which is a logical assumption, then out of the square you can make a cylinder. Now if you were to combine the left to the right, bending the tube around, you’d have the doughnut, or torus, shape.What relevance does this have? Well, by bending two-dimensional space around like this you’ve actually created the illusion of infinite space, that no matter which direction you travel you’ll never run in to nothingness!Although the game may have been a little distraction in 1979, today it’s a great source of wonder for this geek!More reading on this subject can be found at: http://www.cs.appstate.edu/~sjg/class/1010...verseshort.html