Posts tagged planets
Part of my story will be set on a planet where a culture similar to that of the Old West has arisen - cowboys, frontier towns, homesteaders, etc. In order to make this development more plausible, I...
Let's assume that for whatever strange -- probably magical -- reason, the Moon was suddenly and instantaneously replaced by a planet identical to Earth in terms of mass and size. Its orbital path i...
Hello! I've put together my first planetary system, but as I'm not a scientist (and bad at maths) I'm reaching the limits of my brainbox and would really appreciate some fact checking! I have quest...
As far as I know, summer and winter are governed by the amount of sunlight absorbed per unit area, where longer days would increase the temperature along with a higher sun angle. To elaborate on ...
I am writing a short story about an overworked planet whose civilization has achieved space elevators and orbital rings. The planet, which is earth-sized, has three complete orbital rings in stabl...
I am currently creating a world for a series of fantasy short stories (and hopefully movies one day), and I need some help with the science. Ideally, I would like the story to take place on a moon ...
I have a Gas Giant with 13x the mass of Jupiter. How many satellites of Earth size and mass can it hold safely in its orbit? Edit: This gas giant lies smack dab in the middle of its parent star's ...
I have a planetary system with a yellow dwarf similar to our own Sun and three habitable planets. I want to hide this system from sight and long range scans in a nebula, a giant cloud of dust and ...
So what I'm looking for is some plausible idea of two human planets, orbiting each other closely, that despite having regressed to a medieval homage, were capable in this old era of powering solar ...
So I have a super-Earth that has 2 moons. Moon 1 is a bit smaller than our moon, and has an orbital period of 19.25 earth days. Moon 2 is larger than our moon and has an orbital period of 147.15 da...
Some background In the movie The Wandering Earth, the rotation of Earth is slowed to a stop, and then 10000 engines are strapped to one side of the planet and used to accelerate it out of the sola...
I want to build a habitable desert gas-giant moon and I´m not sure how little water I can give it and still get plate-tectonics instead of an Io-like lid-tectonic setup. I want plate tectonics bec...
The setting: A planet with two main landmasses, each one's center located more or less at each pole of the planet. Liquid water ocean in between them, wrapping fully, if not directly (due to the ...
An Earth analog had been modified by an advanced species to have saltwater seas in an interconnected grid across the planet's surface. The planet has no true oceans and only the large grid network ...
The Question of the Tunnel through a Planet grinds my mind. How could you dig a Hole through the fluid mantle of a planet? Would your walls not constantly break and collapse on you after the 15-...
Premise I want to explore the possibility of a planet that is extremely misshapen. If we were to extrapolate what we have observed from our solar system and the extra-solar planets discovered so f...
I seek to build a habitable moon of a giant planet, thus I looked at the Rouche Limit Equation to figure out how to get the biggest possible Hill Sphere for my moon to exist in. $r_H = a(1-e)\sqrt...
Say another Earth orbited the Earth, instead of the Moon. What effects would that have? Would gravity change in relation to the planets slightly during their orbits? I am world building and am tryi...
On a planet where it is Earth-like, the orbit around the sun is a bit longer than 1 Earth year, and the orbit is on 2/3 eccentricity, but where only the "2" part is inside the Goldilocks zone. In ...
Let's say I have a terrestrial planet superficially like earth, except that it rotates much slower (about 10-15 days per rotation) and its atmosphere is ideally several times thicker. If I want thi...
The Sun has nowhere near enough mass to enter the branch of stellar evolution that would lead to a supernova, fortunately for us. However, there are planets that orbit stars that are destined to go...
What would the consequences be of a high number of solar systems being within close proximity to one another? I'm mainly interested in the consequences for life on multiple planets. When I say 'clo...
For a moon orbiting a gas giant which is in turn orbiting a star, I want to know how long the eclipse would last for an observer standing on the moon when the planet passes between the moon and the...
This is Yeola~Camay. A double planet orbiting Sharro, an ordinaryish star somewhere in the universe of Far Far Away. As you can plainly see, Yeola is the planet on the left & Camay is the p...
There are a lot of answers on Worldbuilding about how to destroy planets - just as an example - and they seem to be the method of choice for many people intent on destroying the world. My objection...
Is it possible for a planet to be much further away from its star than earth is from the sun (because for example the star is much brighter/Hotter) yet still have a comparable (as in not tens if no...
For a story I am writing, I need a planet covered in a shallow ocean. What I mean is that I want the majority of the planet's surface (=> 60%) to be in the photic zone of the ocean. This planet...
Wouldn't it be cool if giant monsters were on giant planets? Of course it would be, but unfortunately physics doesn't really like that idea. Big planets make things on them need more support, so be...
In a sci-fi RPG I eventually intend to run for a couple of friends, I had the idea of them visiting ancient ruins on a planet orbiting a shedding red giant. Now, ignoring the problem of intelligen...
If I wanted to image an Earth-like planet at a resolution where one could read the lips of a human speaking on the surface 1, 10, and 1000 light years away, how large would the telescope reflector ...
Due to the moon's gravitational pull, objects at Earth's surface directly under the moon are slightly lighter. This tiny lessening of gravity would also take effect if the moon were on the exact op...
Could two planets be tidally locked to each other at such a small distance from one another that they share their atmosphere, and material is floating around between the two?
From an answer to a previous question of mine: A planet spinning fast enough to allow geostationary orbit near the surface would result in odd side effects. Any object at rest on the equator w...
I'm thinking of a planet in a Goldilocks zone similar to Earth's, with a similar atmosphere, and similar atmospheric pressure and temperature at the surface. Gravity would be variable, based on the...
I've just come here for some help drawing a map for this fictional planet where two roughly similar planets have been smushed into kind of pear shape like this: So this planet spins on an axis w...
I'm thinking of having a world that has a moon that's been partially split (so not fully halved) with the debris slowly separating from it. At night you'd see the split moon mainly and lots of var...
A moon is just a natural satellite - something orbiting a planet - so I'm interested in what kind of factors influence how many moons a planet can have, and how many moons a planet will actually ha...
If you look at this list of potentially habitable exoplanets, very few of them actually come close to having the same size as Earth, this means most of them would have surfaces gravities significan...
I want to start with the fact that I am by no means an astronomer, or even a hobbyist in the field. I am attempting to build a fantasy world which still reflects accepted physical laws. My problem...
What is the largest planet I can get, while still remaining within Earth-like parameters? My concern is with gravity, water pressure and atmospheric pressure. Escape velocity is less of a concern. ...
I'm working on a setting for an RPG, and I'm trying to build my planet so it's unique and interesting, but also semi-plausible. My question is, could you have a planet in stable orbit around a mag...
Is it possible to have a planet that is both bigger than Earth and weaker in terms of gravity? I've got an idea about it being less dense, but I don't know what to do about its magnetic field. I ne...
Planet of hats is the name of a trope where all inhabitants of a planet share a defining characteristic, of which there are many sub-tropes like environment or economy. I'd like to focus on the cul...
I have a hypothetical world in the works and I have a rough idea of what it might be like. My idea is that the planet was life-supporting with a widely varied biosphere. The magnetosphere failed a...
Our planet has a surface full of silicates and a core made of iron. It's due to this that Earth is the way it mostly is - most rocks and many minerals contain some form of silica. But what about a ...
I am creating a speculative evolution project for school (and partially for leisure) and I need a planet for my organisms to live on. I have a rough idea of what it may be like but I'm no expert in...
Are there models, problems, and or engines for building life-sustaining worlds? I believe that my approach is backwards. I have written a lot on my world and have been slowly working at making th...
If I terraformed a moon to have enough artificial gravity/atmosphere to support life, would they end up just crashing into each other? Is there a way to not have this happen, e.g., increasing dista...
As title suggests, what is the size limit by volume for a rocky planet, if any? Some ideas are discussed here, but I'm wondering if there is more concrete, expert evidence to point either way. If p...
Let's say there's a planet with 18 times the radius of Earth, but has the same density as Earth. If so, how would it be possible for a big planet to such a density of Earth? Would it have the same ...
