Posts tagged environment
Ecologically, when you're within the latitudes of 23.5 degrees, you'd find yourself in rainforests rich in diversity but poor in nutrition. The forest floor is a barren mess simply because the can...
I'm trying to work out the kinks of an ecosystem on a planet that is rather similar to Earth, but with some species of animal (both carnivores and herbivores) we aren't familiar with in our world. ...
First, for scale, this map is about the size of the continental US. Assume that the mountains are about the size of the Rockies. These mountains are jagged on the outer edge, and more sloping on th...
In my fantasy world I want fantastically large trees, particularly in the height category. The tallest trees on earth grow just over 100 meters tall. Why can't they get taller? What circumstances w...
For this scenario Satellite means an object that orbits the planet, and my satellite is going to be a moon and the structure would be a giant tube going to another planet. What would the people on ...
In populating a fenland region similar to the Somerset Levels in England, I'm finding a need for an aquatic ambush predator to haunt the region and snack on the occasional disrespectful traveler wh...
Alternate question title: From Fungi to a Fun Guy So, I asked a previous question about which non-animal would be the likeliest to evolve sentience. The answer turned out to be fungus, since mycel...
I had the idea to make an artificially constructed planet which is terrestrial, but has the diameter of Jupiter. Instead of being a solid sphere, it would be five spherical layers, with land on the...
If the ozone layer of planet Earth was completely depleted (to near-zero concentrations), what would the average summer UV-index rise to in New York City? If relevant, other changes anticipated ar...
How can I make it so that an otherwise colonizable planet (or moon) can (entirely naturally) seem uninhabitable from a certain point on its surface? Background: There are a series of immovable gat...
Knowledge has come to me recently that mussels can suck up pollutants, making them crucial cleanup crews in the New York filth. This knowledge is the inspiration for this alternate scenario, in wh...
No matter which mammal you are talking about, be it a rodent or a bat or a cat or an elephant or a whale, all have the same lung size--7% of the entire body volume. In this alternate scenario, the...
I have an idea for a story in a post-apocalyptic setting where guns and other explosive devices unusable or otherwise impractical. Is it possible to do this by changing the atmosphere (either by a...
Is it possible to have a world that meets the following conditions? "¢ There are two types of air (in term of its gas mixture) "¢ Each type of air has its own creatures which cannot survive i...
In an Earth-like world with a moon as large as this: Would the larger tides discourage oceanic shipping?
In the future, AI systems sanitize humans as they walk through doorways. Home surfaces self-sanitize. Food is mostly 3D printed from cleaned particles, including Vitamin K and possibly some probiot...
In the overly sterile environment my characters live in, the AIs supplement probiotics with food servings for the humans. Let's say one type of gut flora went extinct. The AIs are trying to fix t...
I am imagining a temperate forested area with freshwater lakes, rivers, small mountains, and rolling grassy hills. This environment is situated within a very large explosion crater. Outside this cr...
The conclusion of my question Is it possible to have a planet unsuitable for agriculture? was that the most plausible reason for preventing agriculture from developing (beside nomadic herding) was ...
I have a world that has unexpected lifeforms detected. There are to-be-revealed reasons for it, but the way the ecosystem is set up is: Microbial life is abundant everywhere There is a single sp...
My premise involves a habitable planet with a dual core: it has two masses similar in composition to Earth's core, which revolve around each other over the course of hundreds of thousands of years...
There are three different species of pine collectively called "bristlecones", all of whom can grow in weather too harsh and soil too poor for any other tree to take root. They are renowned for the...
Had a random thought. I was wondering if a uranium deposits underwater could result in radiotrophic plants or bacteria to sustain an ecosystem. One issue with this, is radiation has very short att...
Would it be possible to recreate planet Earth and it's ecosystem on a desolate planet that has with similar basic properties? This planet has a similar temperature range to Earth, has no soil, onl...
Gargantuan carnivorous worms with layers and layers of flesh rending teeth are a pretty common sight in some science-fiction stories. They tunnel through earth and sand as fast as a car, sensing th...
What are the effects of introducing 2600 sharks of the primitive Edestus Gigantus specie* in modern waters in different places on earth? Will they survive, how ? for how long? can they destroy the...
My setting is a habitable moon with freestanding water orbiting a gas giant. Originally I thought the gravity of the jovian world would tend to draw water toward the tidal bulge of the moon itsel...
Consider a billionaire living on earth today. What would be the most effective way to deploy sensors to a vast area of the earth's sea depths? (Sea depths referring to the sea floor, and slightly a...
The Idea is to move large amounts of water vapor high into the Troposphere, thereby blocking some of the sun's intensity. Factors that contribute the Earth's solar heat gain include reflectivity/e...
I am currently at the end of my wits. No matter what change I do to the North American geography, northeastern Nebraska (42.4649° North, 96.4131° West), is still in the danger zone called Tornad...
I'm trying to construct a most realistic desert possible. I've made a continent with my little knowledge and may ask further questions about climate and similar stuff, but now I want to center on a...
I'm beginning to build a world for a story I want to write. The world consists of a planet, roughly earthsized, with a couple of natural satellites (moons), and roughly same orbit and a similar sta...
What would the weather conditions be like if earth was covered in a layer of clouds and pollution for 300+ years? there is still light in the day but it is minimal and the nights are pitch black. ...
(First time posting on worldbuilding, be gentle!) For reasons currently unimportant, Earth has been encased in a solid shell which is for all intents and purposes completely invulnerable. The shel...
Given the chance to bring back from the jurassic any plant, which one would be the most adapted to survive and spread in our actual environment?
Some people created synthetic bacterial life forms to use them as fuel producers back then; it's called synthia I believe... and I don't know how it ended up. So creating life is already possible...
Short question, what events would induce the evolution from hands of 4 fingers and 1 thumb into hands of 2 fingers and 1 thumb like the hands of Yoda in Start wars?Would be 2 thumbs and 1 finger be...
A not widely accepted psycho-social phenomenon but one our descendents might sometime face, the Three Generation Rule states: that the degree of social discipline needed for a space habitat to ...
You see this little planet? Is a planet roughly the size of earth, just slightly smaller circumference by 50 kilometers and a smaller gravity of 0.8g with little variations around the world, just l...
Terraforming would not strictly be the appropriate term for the type of planetary modifications I am asking about. Say humanity develops advanced AI robots, who are then left alone in space (as hu...
I'm developing a semi-realistic game involving stereotypical dwarves digging into mountainsides and carving out grand caverns for themselves, similar to those in Moria or the Lonely Mountain from T...
In this alternate scenario, only the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians stand firm in the United States. Even so, some differences apply. The Appalachian Mountains (right) have grown to as tall...
I'm currently working on an idea for a ring world. Thus far I've worked out the following things: Radius of 1 AU Width of half the circumference of Earth 2000km high walls across the rims to keep...
The obvious hitch with a superdense atmosphere is that, even without being super deep as well, it absorbs light. Just as the bottom of the ocean is dark even just miles deep, an atmosphere as dense...
In this alternate scenario, five million years ago, a mass extinction hit Earth. Not a massive volcanic eruption or a devastating bolide impact, but a sudden cold snap, a transition from Miocene h...
After reading The Ellimist Chronicles by K.A. Applegate, I wondered what conditions would have led to the environment found on the planet "Ket" featured in the story. Ket has the following properti...
Note: This question is a follow up to this question, and hence forms part of a bigger complex of questions about geology and biology in this certain scenario. Meta: The planet consists of two en...
If an earth-like planet was slowed down to very nearly match its orbital period, so that instead of being tidally-locked to its star, the planet effectively had an immensely long day. Akin to Mercu...
Adhering to natural laws and physics as much as possible[1], what could cause Venus to go from a habitable planet to its current state, and how long would it take from the apocalyptic event to achi...
I'm looking for various factors; Atmosphere Composition, Type of Sun, etc, whatever would work. That is, of course, if this is even likely/possible. I believe that yellow is generally not an ideal ...
