Posts tagged planets
I'm building a world which is 50% covered by the sea. For approximately half the year, the sea covers one hemisphere; for the other half it moves to the other hemisphere, leaving the first a dry se...
I was wondering what kind of planet would lead to aliens being significantly larger and stronger than humans. From my understanding, a planet with lighter gravity would lead to larger creatures, b...
I'm designing an ocean planet. I did a quick search with this question on the interwebs, but nothing that came up was helpful (I don't have any physics or scientific background). I was wondering wh...
If two planets (roughly Earth sized) in a binary planet system were tidal locked with one another what would be the necessary orbital angle and degree of axial tilt of each planet to satisfy the fo...
In the past we humans thought that our planet was the center of the universe and everything revolved around us, due to science/math/astronomy and any other means we now believe that to not be true....
Let's say that something horrible has happened and a Mars-sized planet is knocked out of orbit and is hurtling towards an Earth-sized planet. How much time will they have? How will this affect the ...
Obviously the greater a planet's gravity, the stronger the material of the space elevator's cable would need to be in order to support its own weight. However, doesn't greater rotation speed reduce...
Imagine a tidally locked planet that revolves around the star at just the right distance that a habitable zone can be formed in between the scorching desert side of the planet and an icy desert sid...
Okay so there's a project I've been thinking about for a long time wherein humans colonise a world where the climate appears warm and benign only to discover that the local climate oscillates from ...
On saturn's north pole there is a hexagonal cloud which does not move. My question is: is it possible to theoretically make a hexagonal cloud on an earth-like planet? And furthermore, is it possibl...
In Stephen Baxter's science fiction Novel Ultima humans discover mysterious "kernels" which allow high speed space propulsion units to be built. The problem is that these kernels are only to be fo...
I'm working on a story that has several worlds but I focus only two of them now. World A is our present, world B is a fantasy-ish one which is very similar to ours but evolution has been different ...
One of Alice's interstellar jaunts will take her to a Gold Planet. It's a planet that was recently covered in a meter deep layer of gold dust (for realism, it is mixed with silver, platinum, teensy...
I saw this video a while ago, and recently it's gotten me thinking. Towards the end of Artifexian's video on gas giants and habitable moons, he mentions the idea of having 2 habitable moons in a ho...
This planet I am proposing is approximately half the size and mass of earth and has two moons. The moons are respectively 1/8th and 1/10th of the size of the planet.The moons orbit the planet at di...
If a tidal locked terrestrial sized moon with 0 eccentricity, 0 incline, and was orbiting .01 AU away from a gas giant with 12 Jupiter masses (which would have approximately the same radius as Jupi...
Imagine a world like ours. Gravity, atmosphere, sky... just nothing solid down there. At least not anywhere close. Would it be possible? I know this is similar to this question. So to specify what...
I have an Earth-sized planet in a Milky Way-like galaxy with all the land located at the equator, in a 2000-km line around the planet. There are small islands near the landmass, but no land anywher...
Here I began exploring appearances of binary stars when standing on a planet. The planet orbits both stars. I've established through the help of this community that there are times that the two s...
A while back I saw this video talking about the habitability of double planets and Rocheworlds. I haven't seen any questions about the latter case here, so I decided to take a swing at it. For so...
I want to turn a planet fully covered in ocean into something Earth-like. The planet is completely submerged in water with no land above the sea level. The ocean itself is quite deep. The planet ...
Inspired by this article about the Kepler-enabled search for life-supporting moons, I came over here to learn more about the concept. I found this very complicated answer to a very complicated que...
A couple days ago, I posted this question about what it would feel like to walk on a Rocheworld. For some background, a Rocheworld is a double planet system where the two planets are so close toge...
If a flourishing planet was cracked into several parts by some external force like a weapon of mass destruction, would it be possible to put it back together again? What possible ways can be used t...
Towards the end of this article (https://io9.gizmodo.com/what-would-the-earth-be-like-if-it-was-the-shape-of-a-d-1515700296) there is mention of the different kinds of orbits the moon of a Torus wo...
Imagine a world in which you have all the creatures from the game franchise "Monster Hunter"... Screenshot from the upcoming Monster Hunter World game ...and when I say all the creatures I mea...
I'm trying to create a world that has a equator-like climate in the north pole and the same arctic south pole. I have done some research already but there are a lot of things I don't know but the h...
According to this list mercury only makes up 6.7×10-6 % of the Earth's crust (by mass, I believe; though even if it's by number of atoms it's still tiny). I'd like to make mercury sufficiently c...
I'm seeking a hard science setting for a piece of xenofiction with a decidedly non-sciencey feel. That said, there is no magic or magic technology. The idea is as follows: A red dwarf star has a...
What planetary parameters such as plate tectonics and volcanism etc would best encourage the most uneven planetary surface on an earth like planet? I want a world to be covered in very uneven terr...
"Glassing" a planet is a common ultimate tactic in Science Fiction, basically it consists in using high power energy weapons to destroy all life on the planet and reducing the soil and rock of the ...
I was trying to make an interesting moon of a gas giant similar to Jupiter with a liquid ocean of water. The moon orbits in the equivalent orbital space of Io and is about twice the size of Mars. T...
A large igneous province is a very large area that has been covered in igneous stone due to some catastrophically large volcanic even or something similar. In my story, a large, futuristic, city h...
Its a very wip idea: I have a star that's not very hot, and the planet is very close to it. Can the planet be so close to the star to be livable on the surface, but flying at cruise height(10 km) w...
This is a sequel to my previous question How big could a moon be before its orbit became too unstable or tidally locked to its planet OK, let's imagine that the thing everyone thought was a moon w...
You are native to a planet that falls between two suns, thus ensuring eternal sunshine. How would we be able to tell the time? Do you formulate some kind of system based on which sun is in the sky...
This question is connected to: Fire Resistant Flora I've been pondering a short story concept where a scientific expedition discovered a planet with a huge amount of both free hydrogen and oxygen ...
I have this planet that's 1.8 times the size of Earth on an eccentric orbit around a star that's 0.2 times the size of the sun. Its apses often change due to the influence of a neighboring gas gia...
My titled question was, can a planet without one or more moons be habitable? In more depth, how would that planet be affected overall, without the moon to affect the tides and without providing li...
I would like to better understand how often solar eclipses would happen on a planet that is tidally locked with its moon (and the moon is tidally locked with the planet). I understand that in this...
In a solar system much like ours, would there be the possibility of a planet of our size that would have lakes, rivers, oceans, etc. that would be composed of either a mixture of water and ammonia ...
So my story takes place on a moon orbiting a gas giant about the size of Jupiter and I was wondering if it was at all possible for a planetary ring to exist beyond the planets Roche limit. I get th...
I am looking at realistic options that could damage the Earth so severely that it would be impossible for mankind to survive there and that would also not allow us to just colonize other planets or...
Since we just had an eclipse, I began to think: what would it look like if a planet had rings and two moons? Now, there are two solar eclipses going on at the same time! What would the sky look l...
This one source is stating a desert planet the size of Earth could maintain habitability at 0.38 AU from a sun-like star, but I highly doubt this is possible. What are some factors that could make ...
I have the below snippet describing a planet in a (hard) sci-fi setting. This harsh planet has some human settlers, who can survive the climate in light weight environmental suits. The planet i...
I was lucky enough to witness the total solar eclipse crossing the US this past August, but while it was impressive, it was also fairly short - lasting just under two minutes at my location. I'd l...
I'm looking to have a few worlds that were relatively easy to terraform as a first wave of colonies. The first colonies in this setting were meant to be on worlds that were relatively easy to terr...
On a certain planet, the sole continent of land is a large circumspecting ring about the equatorial regions, with a width averaging 500 miles. Rotational north and south are entirely pelagic. Var...
Conquest and discovery has been an important part of developing the global political structure of today's Earth. After we expand and settle other planets, whether within the same solar system or n...
