Posts tagged planets
Good day everyone. I've recently finally gotten around to writing a sci fi novel but need help on some of the science of a few concepts I would like to incorporate in the novel. I'll start with ...
Lets say an alien trickster wants to trick a group of human astronauts into thinking they've been transported to another world far away. But in reality, he wants them to stay on good old Earth, thr...
Background A large star makes a relatively close approach to a solar system like our own and the orbits of many of the planets are badly perturbed. A planet similar to Earth is in the wrong place a...
Fairly straightforward question. Imagine a gas giant planet, like the size of Jupiter, in orbit around a massive star. The star goes supernova. What happens to the planet? Is the energy of the su...
Imagine a generation ship heading for a distant star. Humanity had means to observe that star up to a point, that it is 99.9% sure the star has a colonizable Earth-like planet (with water and atmos...
In your space journey your ship systems have spotted an unusual source of gamma rays: it's the size and the mass of a planet and it has a pulsating behaviour. Further observations shows that you ...
(This is the third in a series of questions, starting with Moved into further orbits to protect them, how much damage do Earth and Moon take when the Sun expands? and How soon does the Earth's surf...
So I have a concept for a habitable alien planet that has 7 suns. This planet is supposed to have a surface similar to Earth, it doesn't have to be habitable to humans but should be capable of ho...
The story takes place in Alpha Centauri, with this binary orbiting just over 1 AU from Rigil Kentaurus. The star system will tightly packed, but following the 10 Mutual Hill Radii separation setup....
I'm interested about whether or not and how gravity would be affected on deformed planets. You could think of this as whether or not mega-asteroids would be able to sustain life? If so, would diffe...
How do I calculate the thickness of the upper ice layer on cold ocean worlds like Europa, Enceladus, and Ganymede? I'm asking this for a programm I'm currently writing. The given/known quantities ...
I've been trying to create a Earth-like planet but I'm not sure if my planet's atmosphere is breathable. (It's mostly the amount of helium I'm worried about). I've tried to make it Earth-like whil...
Say we have a planet, similar to Earth, which has deposits of a naturally occuring superconductor. Perhaps have it about as common as deposits of gold - Moderately rare, but occurs in veins as oppo...
I once read a novel about a prison-planet which was chosen to make the prisoners suffer. One of the different "tortures" was a gravity three times higher than that on Earth. Would the human body s...
Now, I know that planets can't be disc-shaped. However, if a relatively small planet had a very strong magnetical pull, could it have a ring system that could make the planet from afar seem disc-sh...
So I'm working on a fictional planet which would experience a daytime sky similar to this. This particular picture is from the movie Valerian: City of a Thousand Planets. Fictional alien atmosph...
My question is as follows - let's assume our objective function is to have as many humans as possible living outside the confines of the Earth as soon as possible. For this, we need to provide thos...
"The Dark Knight" is a nickname given by astronomers to the exoplanet TrES-2b, a gas giant with an albedo of one percent, blacker than paint, blacker than coal"”in fact, blacker than anything on Ea...
I want to be able to graph the change in daylight hours across the year for a given latitude, to get an idea of what kind of cycle in available daylight people at that latitude would live through a...
I have a planet where I want all plants to be blue and glowing. I was thinking that they could use something other than light for energy. I want the plants to always glow. The atmosphere is basical...
Can a world exist where the atmosphere is actually thicker at some altitude than at sea level? If so, what mechanisms would be involved?
Imagine an Earth-like planet orbiting a Sun-like star in the inner halo of the Milky Way. As a halo star, it will likely be somewhat metal-poor, having formed early in the life of the galaxy, but o...
I am designing a planet that humans can live on for a few tens of thousands of years, while they are hiding from some sort of inter-galactic police force (or whatever). Therefore, it's important th...
In my military sci fi story in which a squad of private contractors have to contend with hostile creatures reliant on scent and mechanoreception to hunt, I wanted to keep the sci-fi 'hard' and plau...
I remember reading this thing somewhere about how humans born in zero gravity environments would likely be taller than Earth-bound humans but also more fragile and unable to handle Earth's gravity ...
Is it possible for there to be a planet where no animals, only plants existed? What evolutionary reasons would cause this, if possible?
The planet I'm developing has iron in low supply but a high concentration of silver. The planet is habitable for humans and for story reasons the sentient race must be humanoid. Is it feasible for ...
(Note: This is a follow-up question to my previous one: Moved into further orbits to protect them, how much damage do Earth and Moon take when the Sun expands?) Thanks to clever stellar engineerin...
Before anyone points the finger saying this is a tasteless joke, there are some actual good reasons to pick that specific planet for exploration among the giants in our solar system: Smallest mas...
I know the orbital period of my planet and the rotational period of my planet. Now how do I calculate the solar day? It would only be a small difference to be sure, but do remember that if we didn'...
A cleaner, narrower-focused improvement of How This Alternate Solar System Influences the Milankovitch Cycle, so not a duplicate. For further clarification, eccentricity is the shape of a planet's...
An entrepreneur has a dream. He wants to create the most amazing and magical amusement park in the solar system. He goes to investors with the blue prints of the park, and they think it's a good id...
When I say all-metal airships, I'm referring to something like the above from Jakub Rozalski's artwork - the design is more akin to a naval destroyer or battleship and less like a zeppelin. We'v...
Short version A far future catastrophe burns/melts away large chunks of the Earth and Moon. For reasons related to my story's fantasy elements, the remains of the Moon have about one fifth their or...
An Earth mass terran planet is orbiting a sun-like star at 2AU. I understand the limit for CO2 greenhouse effects is 1.67AU for whatever reason (giving a conventional habitable zone limit), but per...
I am attempting to construct a world that is primarily lit by light filtered through and reflected off of a crystalline moon so that, at its brightest, the planet receives about the same amount of ...
In my setting, there's a gas giant orbiting in the habitable zone of a red dwarf (for specificity, its radius is about half Jupiter's, and it's 0.35 AU from 61 Cygni B. Ignore the effect of the oth...
In the event of our sun suddenly becoming a black hole or wormhole of sorts. It transports the earth to another solar system similar to ours. Would it be possible for our planet to start circling...
This is my first world and I want to build in a way that is physically possible (if this is possible, otherwise make the necessary changes) for my civilization (which is mostly fleshed out) but I d...
I am wondering how will it affect earth or none at all. Seeing that Jupiter by far is a gas giant and has really strong gravitational pull while Mars is mostly dormant, weak gravity and a terrestr...
Missing magnetosphere on Mars keeps popping up. Most likely caused by Mars core being cold, mantle not bubbly enough. Mars mantle is dormant, core does not move. What would be good way to get it g...
I want to create a tidally locked world with a habitable (broadly Earth like atmosphere and biome that humans could breathe and live in) band stretching around the terminator pole to pole. There wo...
I am developing a fictional planetary system in which a large gas giant planet (slightly less than the mass of Saturn), has migrated into the habitable zone during the formational years of the syst...
I was thinking of creating an alien planet that orbits a star slightly past the habitable zone, but is kept warm by an extremely dense atmosphere, made primarily of a black gas, but still contains ...
Assume planetary-scale cables are easily constructed, and subsequently ignored. I am assuming these cables would run just under the surface of the planet from one side to the other for minimal mai...
Suppose a species has limitless resources and the ability to construct megastructures of an astronomical scale. Would it be possible, given antigravitational technology (hypothetical), to create a...
A certain imaginary stellar system had once a water world. But instead of evaporating away under the stellar wind, this lucky (or unlucky?) water world (made of only water and a gaseous atmosphere)...
Take a torus planet: It has the structure of a normal planet (ours): The diagram is not to scale. Assume similar proportions of Crust:Mantle:Cores as the Earth. Is has a similar volume (close...
At the moment it seems we have two different types of planet We have Rocky planets with a solid core that occupies most of the mass of the planet We have Gas Giants that contain a solid core but ...
If orbiting in the L2 lagrange point of a large planet (doesn't actually have to be a hot Jupiter, just large enough to fully shadow the smaller planet), how close could you get to the host star be...