Posts tagged astronomy
If an FTL experiment created a black hole or keugleblitz within 100 au or less of our sun, what would it's post creation statistics have to be to consume the majority of our solar system within 10 ...
Section 1: Non-Duplicate Proofs. Section 2: Background, THE QUESTION, and Useful Info. Section 3: Other cited ways of preventing. Section 4: Sources and Additional Resources. Section 5: TL;D...
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...
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...
Is there any feasible way for a satellite to have a long lasting higher spin orbit resonance than 1:1 (tidal locking) BESIDES having an eccentric orbit, having its own satellite, or being severely ...
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...
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...
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...
I was reading an article that said pulsars could be used in the far future, by travelers, by acting as "lighthouses" in space and aiding in interstellar travel. In a galaxy wide civilization, would...
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...
Saturnian moons Iapetus, Atlas, and Pan all have equatorial ridges. There's a few explanations as to why, but the theory behind why Iapetus has one is what intrigues me. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org...
The moon seems gigantic and is extremely bright. The planet BlinketyBlink has a mass of 1.6 Earth masses and a single large moon which orbits it at about 240 000 miles/386 242 km. The moon Toten...
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...
How big could a moon be before its orbit became too unstable or tidally locked to a planet about 1.6 times larger than Earth. Planet BlinketyBlink is on a similar orbit (to that of earth's) aroun...
Prima walked out to the observatory's main deck. There, as she had expected, Secunda was sitting in the grass, looking up at the stars. "Pretty, isn't it?" said Secunda, as she craned her n...
Imagine the following star system: The star is very much like ours. Orbiting this star is one planet, very much like Earth. Let's call it the Orb. Orbiting the Orb are two moons: a large one, Mon...
I am thinking about using Groombridge 1618 as a setting for my world. It is a main sequence star of spectral type K7.5 Ve, 67% of the Sun's mass. The habitable zone is at a radius of 0.26"“0.56 AU...
In my story, technologically advanced aliens create a "white hole" at the center of the sun that constantly spits out matter (hydrogen) from a parallel universe, increasing the star's mass quickly....
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...
In my setting I want to destroy the world in a way where people have: Plenty of notice of the impending demise No chance of stopping it They can't engineer a way to survive on earth The rest of t...
Meet Joe. Joe is generally an average person with one special trait: He loves astronomy and star gazing. However, Joe has a great paying job as a web developer. He earns 120 000 USD yearly and has...
Is it possible for an asteroid belt to form around a sun? Think of our asteroid belt, but instead of where it is now, it would be where Mercury is. Also, and I didn't have enough room to put th...
My source of inspiration and imagination... StarGate Atlantis Tv-Series: Wraith hive-ships were mainly biological. Genesis Rising Pc-game: The game itself, storyline, human technology, etc based ar...
Pretty much the title. I was thinking that it could have originated from a meteorite impact. I think that there are meteors that are made of frozen noble gases, so that would be the source of the "...
Stars generate their energy by fusing lighter elements into heavier elements. The most common reaction in Sun-like stars is the conversion of hydrogen to helium via the proton-proton chain, but hea...
Okay, so admittedly I was going for a title that was a bit more catchy than the actual question, but not by much. On a technical level, the real question is "Feasibility and challenges of why a la...
I have this race of space-dwarves and I need to make them homeless due to technological hubris of some kind: for plot reasons. I think that if they were to attempt to build some kind of Dyson sphe...
I'm not even sure if gas comets can exist naturally -- feel free to comment on that in the answers. But assume that somehow a large block of frozen hydrogen/helium/oxygen/nitrogen is tumbling throu...
In this universe, mass and gravity work differently so stable torus planets are possible (donut shaped). How would a torus world orbiting a single star have to rotate in order to have a stable da...
I am working on a solar system for a world where I intend to place my stories. This world should work by the laws of physics as we understand them so that, even though magic is a thing that exists ...
I need a planet where the day cycle is short, in particular 16 hours. I read What determines the length of a day on a planet? and Is it physically possible for a planet to have seasons of different...
I was looking at these two questions: Expanding Occupied Underground Habitations Safely Does Living without access to Sunlight have known Physical/Psychological effects? And in a story I'm writi...
A star system consisting of two stars forms, with one being more massive. As such, the larger star soon exhausts its fuel and ends up as a neutron star. The secondary star has a semi-major axis of ...
Let's say we have a planetary system that has somehow attracted an unusually high amount of dark matter and dark energy. We can hand-wave the physics and any impossibilities behind the method of th...
The DoomFleet returns! And this time, it's with a more "Conventional" weapon - That is, projectiles with an antimatter core. Ultra-simple explanation is they have a "small" amount of antimatter in...
I'm trying to think of ways that a habitable tidally locked planet could have something that resembles a day/night cycle. Shadows caused by any moons being out of the question. Hypothetically, cou...
This is a follow-up to an earlier question. My intent here is to work out the details, and explore the potential consequences, of one of the many excellent answers I received. Relevant questions ha...
Is there a scientifically plausible way for a habitable world to have a sun that undergoes a regular, dramatic, and easily observable change? One comparable in visual impact to an event like a sola...
This is the ideal set up for my solar system: EDIT It's been pointed out that this is not a stable set up, so I want to clarify that everything in this set up can be changed at will to fit my plan...
I have built a star that is loosely based on a real-world star. It has the following properties: Spectral class G Mass: 1.03 M$_\odot$ Radius: 1.02 r$_\odot$ Luminosity: 1.05 L$_\odot$ Surface te...
Say we're on a ship traveling between the Milky Way and Andromeda. We decide to stop and take a look out our space-windows. What do we see? I'm presuming that the Milky Way and Andromeda would bo...
Here's an intriguing thought - I think so anyway. Let's suppose for a minute that there's an Earth-like planet with sentient life orbiting a star near the edge of the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal G...
For story reasons I need a situation with a planet around red dwarf, which already has had the equivalent of a Great Oxygenation Event. Simultaneously I also like the planet to be mostly without ac...
Let's say Earth started rotation in the opposite direction without any catastrophic events, would a day on Earth be shorter or longer or just the same considering that speed of rotation and revolut...
Right, you are standing on Earth 100 million years in the future and observing the sky. What would you see during night and how would a day look like when you look up. Weather is not relevant (no c...
Recently, I've seen those pictures showing what Earth would be like if it had rings, and that made me wonder, what would the sky map be like? This ring would appear as a fixed object (pretty much a...
Someone made the Earth. They placed man on the surface and gave them plants, animals, the waters, and the mountains to make their life compete. The Earth exists within a spherical firmament upon ...
I could have sworn that there was a question that covered this, but I suppose I'm misremembering. If anyone finds one, let me know. Back in the early days of the Solar System, things were pretty b...
It seems like nothing can move faster than light and this is quite bothersome for interstellar travel. It takes decades in the best case to get anywhere interesting in our little Milkyway (Many tho...