Posts tagged geology
I have a colony of humans living underground in man-made catacombs on another planet. They are, essentially, digging/blasting as they go; they did not create a complete underground city first and ...
Would it be possible to raise a piece of land (say the size of Texas or France) from the bottom of an ocean (say, the middle of the South Pacific)? More specifically, would it be possible (given th...
In my answer to my own question, Physical laws for a matter-filled universe, I detail the gross physical laws that would shape my four-spatial-dimensional matter filled universe. Given a slowly ex...
I want to create an inland forest on the western side of a large continent that features cenotes instead of rivers. Is this possible, and if so, how can I make it work? Any requirements for altitud...
I gave this a quick test on sandbox, and agreed with the comment that I should steer away from the physics part and focus on the geology, etc. Assuming Europa's ice crust is 10km thick as some spe...
In the near future, the last of the human race has been forced to retreat underground due to extreme global warming or some solar flare event. Vertical hydroponic farms provide the food for the s...
The world of Baros (b'a:rəs) has low gravity (around 0.5g), thick, moist atmosphere (2-3 bar), and lots of volcanoes. Humans mostly inhabit sunny elevated areas, separated by relatively dark and C...
I'm building a world that I would like to be quite realistic. One of the plot lines I've considered is plate tectonics that move at a rate of anywhere from 0.8 to 2.0 kilometers per year. This is i...
I'm doing some planning for a fantasy comic and I was just wondering how the rest of the world would look if sea levels rose enough to completely submerge the U.K. Specifically I'm interested in ma...
Can the oceans freeze (at least several feet below sea level)? I know that the temperature for salt water to freeze is lower/colder than fresh water, and when it does freeze, the ice is mostly salt...
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...
On a world where Vanadium was the most abundant metal in the crust, with levels similar to Aluminium or Iron on Earth, would you expect to see unusual minerals and rock formations? Massive overab...
This question focuses on the initial creation of landmasses. What are the processes that causes land-masses to form, and continents and islands to rise up from the sea and sink back into it? How...
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 ...
I would like to create a civilisation that develops near active volcanos. In ancient times, they would make good use of volcanoes like: Use lava as heat resource. Use lava as material to make bri...
I am working on a survival suspense story, where a sizeable group of surivors is trapped in a tropical island (somewhere in the Ring of Fire) by a volcanic eruption. They find shelter from the erpu...
One of the theories behind the extinction of the dinosaurs is the eruption of one or a series of volcanoes. Supposedly the ash expelled by these eruptions blocked out the sun, killing plants and th...
Continuing my line of thought from here: Could you cool the earth's mantle and then bore into it? You cannot bore into the mantle by cooling it as you go because the pressure would crush your littl...
Picture this...the sun sets over an orangish red desert, in the distance you see a town rising from three hills, a river snaking between them. The buildings rise from the hills and spread between ...
Hanorane (han-or-a-ney) is a moon with a dynamic surface covered in charged sand particles that drift in massive rivers suspended by electrostatic levitation. The only solid ground is the worn an...
Are there any valuable deposits (gold ore, iron ore, silver, copper, gemstones) which are likely to be found in or around excavation sites for building materials like limestone, sandstone, slate or...
I have a fictional map for an Earth-like planet, with Renaissance-era humanoid populations. Also, Luna, that is, the exact same moon that we had, pre-Space-Race, is orbiting the planet. My map jus...
The Gobi Desert is what ecologists call an "interior desert" because it's too far away for water to reach. Now imagine that the Caspian Drainage Basin to the west has experienced a 75-meter rise i...
The highest point in the Ethiopian Highlands is 14,928 feet above sea level. It is here that the Nile River begins its journey to the Mediterranean. If the highlands were instead 21,737 feet abov...
On earth our continents move...real...real slow. This is of course a good thing for sentient life. I am trying to imagine/develop a world where...things move a bit faster...ok a lot faster, but i...
At 29,029 feet above sea level, Mount Everest has been credited as the tallest mountain on Earth. The only problem is that Mauna Kea, Hawaii's highest point, is 33,500 feet tall from its peak at 4...
Today's Mediterranean Sea is just a shadow of its former self, the Tethys. In an alternate scenario, I have rearranged the African mainland to an angle that turns Gibraltar from a strait into an i...
In my very lengthy story in the near future, there are some great 'Modern Marvels'. The next one I'm going to introduce might not be feasible, but if it is, I'd like to attach some numbers to it. ...
For a civilization like this, firstly, I would like to know what dangers there are, e.g: radiation, cave-ins, temperature. I also want to know about the sustainability of this colony, power I'd ima...
What minerals can we find in martian soil? Or what rare minerals can we find on our planet and can be placed beneath Mars? How deep, how much, and most important: how precious. I really appreciate ...
I'd like to construct a planet where the rivers all run east to west, but I need a plausible reason for them to do so. Rivers run from high altitude to low, but also I suppose there is the corioli...
Is there a way to split a tectonic plate into two plates? or a way to alter their motion? -What would the impact of a such a change up here on the surface? I know that plate tectonics is run by gi...
Sorry for any errors; I'm Italian. I'm working on a story where the Earth is devastated by a great geological cataclysm (strong earthquakes worldwide, volcanism bursting everywhere, large tsunami ...
Ok, so I have this planet that I am still building. It is a desert planet, its surfice is almost completely arid with a few exceptions such as snow deserts in the poles. There is sentient life in ...
I am creating a fantasy world where a given race is mystically tied to the planet. Predominately this race will be earth-dwellers, quite happy and content to burrow underground, but I'd like some o...
Imagine a world covered in a shallow sea (usually only 4 metres or less) that has little land, where there is land its in the form of fairly small islands (less than 1sq KM) This will be populated...
Imagine we have a machine that can consume celestial bodies, breaking them down into component elements and storing them in big bins somewhere. If we fed that machine a moon, what would wind up in ...
