Posts tagged geology
I currently have a character whose fields are destroyed as they are at the base of a valley, and the rain has completely killed the seeds and waterlogged the dirt. Thus, main character needs to dig...
The current worldbuilding project I have is going to be detailed - very detailed. It's about the life of an alien planet called Nemo 4, and I want to chronicle the evolutionary history of that lif...
This is as much a question as it is a thought that I've had. You see, folding mountains (as in made by tectonic plates movement) are very poor in heavy minerals like metals, and they seem to be the...
If a planet has a core of super-dense material, how might that effect the geological composition of that planet? Specifically: imagine a lunar-sized planet, with earth-like geology and density. If...
I'm imagining an Earth-like world with a single large continent centered on the north pole, and not reaching entirely to the equator. As ocean currents play a large role in shaping weather, I'm cur...
In my world, there would be a tropical region very similar to real life rain forests, though underground there's still jungle. At a point underground, there are huge caverns that are populated by ...
While constructing a planet, with the same mass, volume and overall composition as Earth, how do I know how many tectonic plates should it have? And what does having more or fewer tectonic plates c...
A caldera is usually the remnant of a volcanic eruption powerful enough to collapse the structure surrounding the magma chamber. Many of our examples, like Yellowstone, Crater Lake, Toba and even ...
I've read the other answers relating to this area (and discovered to my disappointment that my great ideas have been done before... hey ho). But I'd like to get the science right. I have a nation ...
I want to have an Earth-sized planet (with similar gravity) with an extremely low-density atmosphere (comparable to Mars) at most of its surface. Complex life, including an information-age civiliza...
In my world, Southern Europe, Northern Africa and all the territories surrounding the Mediterranean belong to a single empire. The Emperor and his Council have decided that they are going to drain...
The Black Sea is a brackish body of water, that used to be separate from the Mediterranean. Further back, it was likely part of the Mediterranean before the last ice age. How long would it, or for ...
Here is a map I just produced of the plate tectonics of a world I'm working on. Does anyone familiar with the subject see anything wrong with it? If you can differentiate between the penciled and...
A volcanic eruption is measured in two constants--gas and viscosity. For clearance, low viscosity is like squirting water off a nozzle, whereas high viscosity is like squirting caramel off a nozzl...
There is a lot of information on drying up a Mediterranean sized depression. However, there is not a lot of information on drowning such a large area or what sort of habitats could exist before the...
One of the ways to create a major mountain range is a process called subduction. Here, heavy oceanic rock sinks beneath the lighter continental rock. The result--coastal mountain ranges like th...
So in many a fantasy world mountains, or in some cases a particular mountain that play an important role in the story. Maybe it's the seat of the gods or hosts a hidden Shangri La, you get the i...
Here is a link to the water canopy theory. My question is: how this water could end up there, high above the surface? I was thinking about two possibilities: a comet spreading ice/water as it pa...
I'm currently working on a conworld that has never had any contact with Earth, and I'd like to create words for iconic gemstones, such as rubies, emeralds and sapphires. However, I can't help but ...
How could the amount (total mass) of oxygen be increased on a planet like Earth (with a similar atmospheric composition), preferably by natural processes? For the sake of having a ballpark number...
Essentially, what would be the most efficient way of causing the Earth's core to cool as much as possible without damaging human civilization in any other way (the outcome can damage it, but not th...
What could cause the continents to drift much faster than is today. I mean, much faster. Let's say it should take about 1-2 million years from this to this
I want to create a convincing world where gunpowder is a rare and expensive commodity, allowing swords and plate armour to still be used effectively despite the world having current level of scient...
If I were to use handwavium to raise a volcano in the middle of the sea, would it contain metals or ores large enough to be extracted by normal means, like mining with a pickaxe? Everything apart ...
So here's the picture, an island about the size of Sicily is on its own tectonic plate, it borders three other tectonic plates, it's separating from all of them at the exact same time. This is a f...
For my world, I would like a coastal mountain range that partway along its length is offset by a few (say, 100) kilometres, forming a pass through the mountains, like so: (N.B. I've drawn this ...
I'm still fiddling with my map, and I got to thinking about continental drift. My world has two large large continents and a couple of other notable landmasses between the size of Iceland and Austr...
Far south-west of the main continent exists an island in a shape of crescent moon with dense jungles and slender mountain peaks and a single city named Kalt stands in a place where the islands' ce...
During the Permian and Triassic periods, all the continents had joined together to become the supercontinent Pangaea. Its size means that the majority of terrestrial life might have been confined ...
I'm building a world with almost weekly extreme windstorms, driving the residents to either live underground or in the 'wind shadow' of sealed-off valleys. To sum up the windstorms' power, "You kno...
A friend of mine was telling me about a story where a man clear cut a diverse ecosystem of plants in an area similar to size and shape of a small caldera (not necessarily a caldera itself). Eventu...
I thought that a large, close moon might help generate enough heat and stress to raise the average temperature on my world and stave off a Snowball Earth scenario. According to this article and thi...
I'm building a very small homeworld (0.602 M$_e$) with a very large moon (0.0711 M$_e$) that orbit each other at a barycenter about 7.12 planetary radii (1 R = 0.870 R$_e$) from the primary's cente...
I'm continuing to work on my map, and one thing that's giving me difficulty is figuring out the geology of a region that I wanted to be similar to the Ethiopian highlands and African rift valley. T...
BACKGROUND So I was working on a map, when I suddenly realized that despite the many helpful tutorials on this site I have very little idea what I'm doing. I thought it might be a good idea to put...
While the reasons for it's existence do not matter as it is part of an artificially created planet, I am curious if a lapis lazuli island would be able to survive erosion and support Earth-like lif...
The planet in question is this one. Approximately three quarters the size and half the gravity of Earth, an atmosphere 25% as dense as the Terran one which mainly consists of Nitrogen with small pe...
The first portal is placed at bottom-most point of the Mariana trench (the deepest part of any ocean, located in the western Pacific Ocean) and the second is placed in the Sahara desert in Africa a...
The year is 2089. The political shenanigans of the day have gotten more out of hand than usual and violent zealots have detonated the Earth's largest deposit of plotium devicide, an extremely versa...
BACKGROUND I'd like my earth-like world to have a naturally formed narrow strip of land that bridges a major sea. Now, before anyone rushes off to comment about island chains and land bridges, I'l...
What could be the effects of erosion on a rocky Earth-sized planet on a universal time scale (in the order of $10^{40}$ years)? Let's assume that: The source of sunlight is endless and almost con...
Premise I would like to create a world that is rendered nearly impossible to navigate by natural circumstances. In my particular world, a thick jungle covers the whole planet from pole to pole; th...
What circumstances must be met in order to destroy a planet with just a single laser beam hit? If this is possible at all then, please, try to provide some possible details: an approximate energ...
So I am working on a concept for a location, wherein a sort of oracle will exist. This oracle will in no way be super natural rather the strange behavior of the oracle (a human for the sake of the...
This concerns a habitable, earthlike moon orbiting a gas giant, which is not tidal locked, and has an elliptical orbit eccentric enough to avoid frequent deep winter freezes (the freezes do happen,...
My friend is writing a book, and I volunteered to create a planet for him, one with an epic mountain extending far above the clouds. The planet features lush jungles in the lower elevations and e...
I am writing a science fiction novel where dead humans are turned into diamonds by compacting cremated remains. What size of diamond would the amount of carbon in a human body form? I know that the...
For a long, long, long time I have had a concept of a world that exists on the inside of a hallowed-out sphere. The basic construction of the world is like this: It is a large world, at the cent...
I am trying to figure out the geological effects that would happen if earths upper mantle was drained of heat. I am sure there are many ways that this could happen but the method that I am asking ...
On a giant 50 mile high volcano, created and sustained by magic, there is extreme weather. Storms, high winds, snow, everything you'd find at the flanks of exceedingly high mountain. Explorers have...
