Posts tagged planets
If Mars was vaporized by aliens, how would it affect us? Assume that the core of Mars exploded, sending the debris flying in all directions, and that some would pass close by, but not hit, Earth. H...
How long can a river be? Are there any physical limits on its length, coming from the necessary altitude drop, the triple point of water, or other factors? You can alter whatever parameters you f...
In this question I asked about temperatures on a planet where a day last 30 days. The data are the same: stellar flux of 1.118 albedo between Earth's and Mars's atmospheric composition of 18% oxy...
Imagine a dwarf star and a gas giant orbiting each other around their barycenter. The gas giant does not have enough mass to ignite (but may be close to igniting). Over time, the sun loses mass du...
Specifically, I was wondering if a core of magnitite or some such other magnetic metal could be a planet's core. This is in relation to my other question, found here: Can airborne floating/flying...
Would it be possible for a planet with surface conditions suitable for humans landing on it to have a very strong magnetic field, with field strengths on the planet's surface similar to the surface...
This is a followup to my previous question concerning the potential orbits. I've decided on a barycenter with each body in its own orbit--the primary planet having the center orbit, the first moon ...
You are an intelligent species whose sun is very near expiring. When your sun expires your world will be engulfed by it. You are evacuating your planet as fast as possible but you don't yet have en...
You have a planet about the size of Earth. It needs to be continually dark, with just the slightest bit of light. Or no light at all. It makes little difference to the aliens that live there. But, ...
I am seeking to temporarily trap my protagonists on a wasteland. The kind I wanted to create was an icy planet that doesn't experience day or night, just a constant state of moonlight. I suppose th...
Is there any way to make a planet with a corkscrew orbit (like this) that could host a sci-fi civilisation? It'd be amazing if there was a way to make life arise naturally, but colonize-able works...
A boundless AI brain could survive on any planet that has some basic metals and power sources, because it could invent new types of transistors from any kinds of chemicals to increase it's knowledg...
I'm not sure if this question belongs here or over on Physics Stack Exchange. The Earth and Moon are unique in the Solar System in that the Moon is a significant size compared to the Earth, at 1/4...
For my current purposes, assume we have two planets identical to earth. So, could two of these planets form a stable binary system, and still be close enough to see the green foliage on the surface...
So, after multiple users informed me that my previous question was a little to broad, I decided to narrow my focus a little bit. Using only hard science, could there be a planet composed, with the...
The size of a planet affects its gravity, its climate, and its likelihood of developing life. Earth is large enough for an advanced civilization to develop. A smaller body such as Europa, while a...
I have a few questions related to a crazy setting I'm working for my novel. Let's say we have a planet with a thin atmosphere and low gravity. It's volcanic activity is so intense that the planet ...
I'm thinking on the colonizing of another planet by humans. The conditions of this planet are quite different from Earth, and particularly the day-night cycle is much larger. In my fictional plane...
Picture, if you will, four planets sharing the exact same orbit and orbital speed, and separated by exactly same distance from each other. Each planet is the same size and roughly the same gravitat...
A world I am developing requires that only approximately one quadrasphere or quadrant (1/2 a hemisphere) of the planet be occupied. I would like the north and south extremes to be outside anything...
Let's imagine we have an algorithm that produce an elevation-map for a sphere. I wonder if the ratio between the planet radius and the delta between the highest and lowest altitude is a constant or...
I'm making a world with magic and most if not all tech will run on mana. I have airships in this world but I'm having a hard time deciding how large across the world should be. I want - even with a...
I want to have planet with as deep an ocean as plausibly possible. How deep can I go given these restrictions? Planet must be in habitable zone of a star Generally, planet should support life Siz...
In the near future, we've decided to send a permanent colony to Planet W. In my story, this planet has ankle-deep freshwater covering the surface. The 'surface' underneath this ankle-deep water var...
Follow up to my previous question, after botched registration. We have an Earth-like planet tidally locked to a star similar to Sirius A. The star does not belong to a binary system. The planet it...
Supposing a roughly mars sized planet, how little surface water would need to exist to sustain a population of a size similar to pre-industrial earth (say 750 million?) The situation is somewhat u...
In this scenario, the sun is a binary star, sharing orbit with an F-type main-sequence star. The first planet from that binary star is a Jupiter-like gas giant, orbiting one-third of an AU from th...
Carbon-based life planet with a plenitude of infinite energy crystals. Could it exist? Somehow, when my planet cooled down, there were crystals that output a fixed amount of electromagnetic radiat...
In this hypothetical solar system the one habitable planet in question would be at center of two sun stars, one similar to our sun and the other a red dwarf. What kind of effect would this have on ...
Given ideal circumstances and a type 4 or 5 Kardashev scale level of technology to set the system in motion (but not to maintain the motion over time): How many planets 1/4 of the Earth's mass co...
Would it be in ANY way possible to have 3 or more stars within a few light-hours (up to several light-days between the most distant stars) of each other, and for the resulting orbital mash-up to al...
Suppose we have a binary star system and a planet at the L4 or L5 point of the orbit of one of the stars around the other. The planet is thus illuminated by the two stars from the same distance and...
Are there realistic circumstances that a planet would be accelerated (either artificially or naturally) to the speed at which relic radiation becomes so blue-shifted that the planet is illuminated ...
There is a cold planet (maybe a moon of a gas giant) far out in a solar system. It has a solid core and the surface is a thick layer of ice. Because of nuclear fission in the planet's core it is w...
Let's say my terrestrial planet has a stable circumbinary orbit around two suns similar to the Kepler-47 system, in the habitable zone, with an orbit similar to Kepler-47c. The challenge here is th...
So I have a planet that the size of our solar system(magic/white hole/whatever keeps the planet on 1G despite having the weight of a neutron star). So the planet is very earthlike in terms of soil,...
For my Science-Fantasy WIP I am considering using a single artificial planet (roughly the size of a Dyson Sphere) and its moons (of which only three are large enough to exert any real influence) as...
I have to make a map for two planets. For booth two I already have an idea about what they look like, but I don't know how to draw them. They don't need to be really clear, however they should make...
I'd like to be able to see from my Earth-like planet, a very bright nebula that can even be seen during the daytime. I question, however, whether that is possible, because in order for it to be co...
I've wanted to work out a world where summers are extremely hot except for two weeks in the middle of summer. Winters would be extremely cold except in the dead of winter when there would be two we...
Earth has an iron-nickel core which gives us a magnetosphere. Based on this question that replaces our iron core with a mercury core, would we be likely get a magnetosphere? Mercury is highly cond...
Ok, so the Earth is filling up, finite resources, and as we all know, there are no plans for us to reduce our resource hungry ways,...and Mars has no magnetosphere apparently which means we couldn'...
I know water is required for life on a planet so I got to thinking, is it possible for a world to be a functional planet (plants animals etc.) without polar ice caps and if so, how would it work wi...
I have a planet with homogeneous core and mantle, but a thick crust separated in two parts: the north half is composed of water and the south part is an alloy of heavy metals, making the north ligh...
My moon is the basis for a fantasy setting, but I just can't bring myself to abandon science and say "a wizard did it." I want to make the months and seasons realistic, and I want to find a way to ...
An alien race, for reasons of their own, have decided that it's important to make the third and fourth planets in our solar system about the same size and mass. Since they have a strict moratorium...
The trope here is a world with 3-4 X earth atmosphere with high oxygen content (30%). Nice things about this are it enables heavy beasts to fly, and the high pressure smoothes out the negative effe...
While world building, I came up with a planet that had the combined traits of very rough and rugged terrain and small seas. The planets surface is covered with mountains and hills are common place...
Island planets are common in science-fiction, and we've even got a few questions about them in worldbuilding. However, I cannot help but wonder how, or if, they could form. On Earth, at least, our ...
Assuming such a stellar body is even possible, could human or animal life (also assuming they have a way to avoid being pulled toward the planet's core) breathe its outer atmosphere? Would such lif...
