Posts tagged environment
On January 1, 2018 angry aliens decide to show humanity just who's boss. So they vaporize an area of land 1 mile deep and 10 wide, centered around the Panama Canal. Some preliminary facts that we...
A little while back, I went to see Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (honestly unsure of what reaction this is going to get), and there was a particular scene that showed a desert planet'...
I have this planet in my story that is similar to Earth in many ways. It is inhabited by humans, the flora and fauna are similar, the atmosphere is similar... except not quite. On Earth, the atmos...
Could a world with no animals whatsoever (not even insects, no humans, etc) still have plant life? These plants do not have to include all the plants in our world, or even any of the same plants. I...
Hybrid dirigible airplane with an extremely large surface area on the top and bottom. Talking at least 100 km2. It would likely be several modular pieces put together, given its size. It would n...
I need maps of climates and prevailing winds for my desert-dominant world. It has one continent stretching in a band around the tropics and into the subtropics, making up about half the planet's su...
If Humanity were to suddenly come to its senses and stop relying all together on fossil fuels and start relying on wind powered and solar energy sources, wouldn't this lead to some sort of climate ...
Suppose a highly tectonically active planet, slightly smaller than Earth, has attracted the human race's attention due to its mineral wealth. Its landscape primarily consists of mountain chains, vo...
It's my first time writing an original story and I have this idea, but I don't know if it could be scientifically feasible. My story would be medieval fantasy with magic, but I wanted to add a twis...
This might be a little difficult to explain, but basically: the concept of "atmospheric ocean" is a gas that is found pretty much everywhere on the planet. Probably very dense and sinks to the surf...
Subangea is a giantic cave that stretches below the surface through endless cavities. From oil oceans to volcanic sinkholes and even upside-down forests, the environment is ever changing from one c...
I need some help with the placement of the cities on a map of one of my continents. I'm not looking for opinions, but more for a reality check on how realistic it is in terms of where things are an...
Planet - habitable, tidally locked planet orbitting red dwarf. Aim: a realistic answer (neither involving handwavium nor aliens that used it all) why a virgin planet that already experienced a wh...
The ozone layer depleted beyond reasonable levels and life on the surface has become impossible and life migrated underground in giant caves connected together by tunnels. Some of those caves have...
This is a problem of my imaginary country Zeroth Reich. I imagined that this country is populated with literal eco-fascists. Both the people and the government care about Mother Nature a lot and de...
Linked What would the flora on a methane world be like? What would animal life on a methane world look like and how would it evolve? What would the conditions on a methane world be like? How wo...
Traditionally, a Cyclops has one eye, as well as some other aliens in fiction. My question is simple: Would there be any situations, Earth-like or otherwise, where a creature would benefit from h...
So, I understand that human skin color is based on the distance from the equator, but would it be possible to evolve skin to be a non-natural color such as green, pink, blue, purple, ect? Perhaps i...
2017, flying islands just appeared in the sky. Different places in the world, different sizes. The biggest one is about the size of the Corsica french island. They have similar ecosystem than Eart...
In film "The Day After Tomorrow", a giant snowstorm seizes the Earth for days and freezes nearly everything. What I want to know is, that is this possible in current Earth climate and geology? It d...
On the world I am building (Let's call it Bob for simplicity's sake), the days last 9 years. As a result of this, the living beings on Bob must migrate across the planet to avoid the encroaching ni...
Within my desert landscape--in which the climate is similar to the Sonora Desert--there are many canyons, one of which sports large, clustered growths of Elbaite Tourmaline crystals, averaging out ...
I'm quite afflicted with a specific set of conditions I'm trying to figure out. I'm trying to find a way (if there is one) that someone could be unconscious for roughly twelve hours under some con...
In my fantasy pre-industrial world pollen production and plant reproduction has been disabled by some sort of curse. The curse has a limited geographical span, but the region affected is very larg...
How would you form an extended stretch of coastline that is effectively useless for overwater trade -- i.e. there are no sheltered areas to serve as ports, or trade routes that can reach all the wa...
I am assuming that monkey like animals are more likely to develop some form of horn or antler than apes(feel free to correct me), the question is what would be the most plausible function of the ho...
If the force of gravity at the Earth's surface suddenly became 2 times stronger, how would the environment and humans cope? I'm guessing a lot of flying creatures would suffer, but what would happe...
It would preferably be something that will either last a fairly long time fifteen to twenty years perhaps, periodically and last at least some months between or last indefinitely. I do not require ...
How can a part of a continent (super or other) remain unexplored by the apparently civilized majority? The undiscovered part must be habitable but inaccessible, by land or sea, so that the rest of ...
I've looked around here a bit, but I haven't managed to find a post that really answers my question (though if there is one, please let me know). I'm trying to write a story where the two main cha...
In the world I'm building, there's a race of sapient, technologically advanced lizard people, most of whom live in an enormous, climate-controlled city. Based on the answers to this question, it se...
Preface With all technology discovered prior to this question, on today's planet, there are still some things we have not observed - which may be used to justify introducing new life forms, right h...
This is one of a series of questions centered around living on a giant tree. The setting/scenario is described below: In my fantasy world, elves live on a giant tree, very similar in structure...
I am building a science fiction universe, and I am currently thinking of many different unique sentient alien species that would populate the galaxy. I have thought of a rocky planet with Earth le...
I am writing a science fiction movie script and a planet idea came to me a few weeks ago: A planet with equatorial icecaps and polar jungles. As interesting and intriguing as this is to think about...
Could an alien underground macroscopic ecosystem including human sized plant-like organisms evolve around lava as an energy source? These organisms could use heat and/or light from the lava to synt...
Would it be realistic for a (relatively) small island nation to have these features: A Forest A lake A snowy mountaintop A desert A bustling modern city How large would this island have to be i...
In what ways could an island be protected from tsunamis, given the following constraints?: It lies in the middle of the ocean, at least several hundred kilometers from the nearest continent. It d...
Something I was working on in the past involved a species of sentient insectoids. The idea was the two sexes usually live in two very different environments and rarely come into contact with the ot...
How long would it take for the earth's crust to move in such a way that we, as a species, will be forced to migrate to other different lands than the ones we inhabit today? The result being that ou...
This question is not a duplicate of this question. They're similar, but this one has one very large difference: only a large area has permanent cloud cover, not the whole planet. If low clouds or...
I recently asked a question about how a world could have permanent cloud cover. The answer was to turn the world into venus. However, my purpose for cloud cover was to have the people living abov...
The inhabitants of my Earth-like planet live high up in the atmosphere at ~1500 meters. When they look down, I don't want them to be able to see the ground. I figure the best way to accomplish this...
How would this effect nature as a whole and our living conditions if it does? The color is not too far from blue so it should be more feasible and not change the Earth too much.
Suppose there's an Earth-like planet. In the middle of the desert, a wizard/sorcerer/etc has enchanted a 30-mile-long rectangular area, so that, for two hours a night, clouds form and gently rain i...
Since the geological history of the world's largest nation is as big as the nation itself, and since I don't have a master familiarity with Russia's formation over hundreds of millions of years, I'...
I have a colony of humans on Mars, living in enclosed cities to maintain breathable air. (If they need to leave, they suit up.) Assuming modern-day technology, how do I figure out how many people...
EDIT: I eventually managed to find the absorption spectra of SO2 online - it absorbs in the ultraviolet range only, not in the visible light range, so the only factor affecting light transmitting t...
In an effort to accurately map and predict earthquakes and tectonic plate movements, scientists wish to insert sensors through the earth's crust and into the upper mantle. Through some Excel wizar...
I'm building a small, naturally inhabited world where usable water is scarce or difficult to access. Is it possible to have a planet with groundwater, ice caps, temporary rivers and lakes, seasonal...
