Posts tagged planets
I was wondering, if a planet in similar size and mass to earth would have, from its creation, been spinning at this hypothetical planet speed limit (with it somehow staying in once piece) could lif...
Would it be possible for life to evolve on a planet orbiting a blue giant? If so, what kinds of life forms? Could some sort of humans evolve there? How long would it take?
In an effort to gain inspiration for planetary formation and, at the same time, inspiration for governmental/territorial boundaries between residents of said formed planets, I've recently encounter...
In a certain star system, Star B orbits Star A. Planet C lies in between the two stars and also orbits Star A. Planet C and Star B share an orbital period, and are at roughly the same places in tha...
Planet: earth like, half the radius of earth, gravity is .7g. Assuming this is possible and humans live on this planet, would it be possible to have 90% of the planets surface area be under water?...
Is this physically possible? A non-technological phenomenon visible in the same position of the sky, for 18 hours of a day using the other 6 to do whatever, rise and set, just be impossible to see...
I want to describe a world where one doesn't know how long the day will be. It can be anywhere between 18 and 30 Earth-hours. Would such days be possible in our reality?
If a planet had such a large imbalance of protons and electrons that it possessed a net negative or positive charge what would happen to it and its solar system? First, could it be stable, or woul...
Over several hundred years, a tide-locked, but otherwise Earth-like, planet orbiting a red dwarf is terraformed. The terminator is a very habitable zone, in terms of temperature, atmosphere, etc. C...
Consider a planet $P$ of radius $r$ larger than Earth, whose mass is $r^3$. By the square"“cube law, this planet will have the same density as the Earth... assuming that the gravitational compressi...
While thinking about Starfish Prime's answer to the question Algae using UV light from auroras for photosynthesis, I considered the possibility of an alternate Earth which has a normal, Earth-like ...
On a planet with Earth-like attributes in every way, including physics and geography, what repercussions would there be for a relatively deep 'dent' in one quadrant of the spherical body? This is o...
I was going to sort this all out beforehand, and then write the book, but when the writing flows... you make hay. I am a perfectionist/details-oriented person, but you lose me on math/hard science....
In the climactic final battle Faction A engages Faction B on Faction B's planetary base, both in orbital and ground combat. Realizing they can't win, Faction A activates a device that transports an...
Consider a planet very similar to Earth, with the same radius and the same mass. In a very simplified model of its interior, 70 % of its mass is magnesium silicate and the remaining 30 % is iron. T...
I am creating a carbon planet with seas of methanol on its surface, but I am not sure that this is possible. It is predicted that carbon planets are depleted of water, since the available oxygen w...
My idea is a carbon planet 50 % larger than Earth and with 5 times its mass (approximately), but I set these values "‹"‹after investigating those of several discovered exoplanets and none of them i...
For story writing purposes I would like a realistic setup where there is a planet with close to earth conditions in terms of gravity, relative position to the sun etc. However I aim to have a much ...
Imagine a habitable, water covered, small earth-like orb in space. Let's call it P. From its surface, you see 2 large glowing masses, different sizes, in the sky, let's call them Bs. They are not s...
So I'm currently working on a fan project to redesign Superman's home planet of Krypton. This new Krypton is 1.6x the size of Earth and orbits the red dwarf star known to us as LHS-2520, 27.1 ligh...
I had a dream that on my alien planet, there was a large desert that had naturally occurring glass marbles in the sand. My dream logic was that the sand was melted into glass and natural weathering...
First of all, this website is a dream come true. I'm a total sucker for this stuff. Secondly, I love astronomy and worldbuilding, and lately, I've been thinking of a hypothetical situation, and wa...
The setting I'm interested in would involve a cold planet (cold enough for most bodies of water to be frozen - I'm thinking of an average global temperature of -20C or below). The simplest way woul...
A violent way of rendering a planet uninhabitable being the obvious: accelerate a large enough object to a sufficient velocity that everything on the planet goes the way of the dinosaurs. Put brie...
As I was thinking about space flight for my world, I thought about how they would need to know a planet's gravitational force before they could land, and found that humans figured out the moon's gr...
My previous question ruled out having a moon orbiting a gas giant. I've got an interesting ecosystem (my bad, biome was the wrong word) that evolved based upon the idea that the world is eclipsed ...
The black hole question reminded me of an idea I wanted to implement at some point in a space campaign, but didn't go forward with because I was unsure whether it's merely statistically very implau...
If a planet always faces the same side to the sun, so that it has a permanent night side and a permanent day side, it will have a twilight zone in between the two sides. This will be a band around ...
If a planet like Crait existed and was covered by (mostly) white sand, what would its average albedo be? Crait is a planet from Star Wars that has a thin layer of white salt on its surface.
Two Earth-like planets collide at a (relatively slow) speed of about 1,000 kph. For all questions regarding the size and composition of these planets, just think about Earth - and these two planet...
I'm making a world which is set on a planet with two smaller "bubbles" of atmosphere at the poles, and a more stereotypical atmosphere that surrounds them. Each of the three atmospheres has a diffe...
We occasionally get questions and answers that discuss how close to each other planets can be and still meet some criteria. For example, this answer to the question ''Habitable'' planet close to a ...
I have a civilization that lives on a planet located inside a nebula (and orbiting a normal, sun-like star). Would this nebula somehow interfere with/ obscure the sight of a rogue neutron star/ b...
Is it possible for a planet to be heated and illuminated by a black hole due to Hawking radiation at the same intensity as by a star? What mass and size should a black hole have to produce the sam...
Consider such a tidally locked planet: Many issues with tidally locked worlds have been discussed, but I'm not clear on how the water cycle for an otherwise Earth-like tidally locked world, woul...
What would be the specific conditions required for a planet to be a more ideal version of Earth? I want the world to have a much larger proportion of land covered by lush jungle and forest ecosys...
One way, I think, is if the gravity is exactly correct. However, while I think the water might be in a unstable equilibrium, I have been unable to work out the mathematics. Let's assume that such a...
Without going into unnecessary detail, one of the races of my world believe that the land itself is a dead god, and that by resurrecting it, it will ascend to the cosmos and carry the faithful upon...
Inspired by this answer: Suppose there is an enormous dragon sleeping underground (let's not worry about the biomechanics of how such a creature could exist). One day, it wakes up, shakes the eart...
On my world, the equivalent of the Cambrian/Avalon explosion happened 5 byr (2 byr after formation) ago as opposed to 0.5 byr ago on Earth. The planets rough parameters are: mass between 0.4 and...
Based on my reading on some science papers, large, wet terrestrial planets likely exist that are swathed in a thin atmosphere of nitrogen/hydrogen ($H_2$ & $N_2$). If life evolved on such world...
Fantasy and sci-fi works often are set in worlds of dramatic terrain, because, well... it's dramatic. A few examples of the kind of thing I'm talking about: I understand that Earth has som...
We lived through loads of questions regarding aquatic races, so buckle up, I am going to gather some ideas around insectoids. The homeworld and race This race lives on a planet which has lower g...
I'm designing a new planet, but I'm having some troubles figuring out the climate. The planet's rotation axis is at a 45° angle relative to its orbital plane, and each rotation takes 24h. The pl...
In the DC comic book universe, the Vega System is a solar system around the star Vega (Alpha Lyrae), which is depicted as having dozens of habitable planets. While it seems to be an implausibly lar...
I have the feeling the answer to this will come down to ''impossible'' but let's ask anyway to be sure. We know gas Giants have no solid surface and if you tried to land on one you would fall int...
Judging by our own planet we know what the effects of a moon on a terrestrial planet are. We also know that if a planet has two moons on the same side you would get insane tides and that two moons...
Imagine if you will a star comparable with our sun and a planet like earth orbiting at roughly the same distance around this star as our earth around the sun. Would it be possible to place a plan...
I'm trying to build a super Earth that's capable of sustaining human life for space exploration in a way that's close to reality. So far I'm lacking some understanding of planetary science and huma...
I wanna build a habitable desertworld which is a gas giant moon. The desired and already semi-fixed parameters are: mass between 0.4 and 0.25 Earth-masses only 10 to 30 percent global ocean cover...
