Posts tagged geology
I've sketched out an island, and then threw some tectonic plate boundaries on top hoping it would help me plot mountains. But the more I look at geological diagrams of plate boundaries, and read u...
Is it plausible to assume that the total amount of water (edit: water molecules) on planet earth was, in different periods of earth's history, significantly lower or significantly higher, or rather...
Many alien worlds will most likely be water worlds. I was wondering what the deepest possible global ocean dept is where land is still possible. I think that volcanic islands will still have a chan...
I have a mountain in a story that basically needs to be taken down (inadvertently) by human action in a world with premodern (so mediëval/ early renaissance at best) tech levels. I have been thin...
I once before asked a question on how to quickly submerge a large landmass/continent. The answers there basically concluded that literally ''Sinking'' (a la Atlantis) is pretty much impossible to...
I am creating an RPG and came across an image that I wanted to base my landscape on. It is shown above. Is it possible for terrain like that to form on Earth (ignore the wildlife)? If it is, how ...
I am creating an RPG and I created a continent in which it is set on. I want to make sure that the climate types in it are realistic as well as the continent. This island is called Lartess. Lar...
From what I understand, Mount Everest grows about 2.4 inches per year. I am trying to create an area of land that grows very often, often around 1 inch per day. As I'm not very good with plate tect...
An area of my planet is very saturated with lava. Being quite similar to the Siberian Lava Traps, it is essentially a lava sea. This lava "sea" area isn't necessarily all lava however, as there are...
In my story an area was formerly beneath an ocean or lake. Some form of life leeched the soil of a specific mineral or substance. Technology level is that of ~1700 Spain. Now that the water has ...
My temple was built near a kaolin surface mine, which is itself topping an old deep mine (where they used to mine radioactive metals, rare earths and possibly other miscellaneous, if need be). This...
Background This planet, located somewhere in the Andromeda galaxy, orbits a M5V star about 0.682764 AU away from its star. The planet is volcanically active due to the gravitational field of the ...
While the intended end state is that this planet can support space-faring lifeforms, the solution under question needs a sanity check. I cannot commit to many numbers with how speculative this all ...
Atlantis is real. It's just that there's more than one of them, and none of them are actually called "Atlantis". Instead, they consist from the Kerguelen Plateau in the Indian Ocean to Zealandia,...
Earth rocks are largely silicates, combinations of silicon, oxygen, and various other trace elements. What would a planets geography look like if the crust was primarily composed of ceramics like...
I am designing a fictitious continent, and as part of this I am also designing the prehistoric development of the continent up to the present day. A particular tricky part of this has been that, i...
So there is an Antarctic like continent in my setting; and just like Antarctica it is the largest and most inhospitable desert in the planet due to how absolutely cold it is. But what if there wa...
Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, and copper is a significantly more abundant metal in the Earth's Crust, at about 70 PPM compared to tin at 2 PPM. Because tin was the limiting factor in bro...
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 ...
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 have a city which will be completely submerged in water due to a catastrophic earthquake. It is placed on a cliff side, so that it will drop directly into the ocean. Technology is similar to the ...
Imagine a huge salt flat like Bonneville or Salar de Uyuni. Due to other logistical concerns, commerce between the economic powers on either side of the flat is forced travel across it. This has re...
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...
Anyone who has studied ice ages would know that during the last two-and-a-half million years of Earth's history, there have been periods where there was enough ice to suck up a lot of water. As a ...
Could people with Iron Age technology possibly dig large holes in volcanic rock on the edges of a lave tube system. Would this be an effective way to run a trade business or to live in an undergro...
Is possible to have a geothermal plant (not necessary a very powerful one) to work for several millennia without the place where it is built over running out of heat? I found a page (don't remembe...
Context: In a near-future version of our solar system, humans have established multiple underwater colonies on Jupiter's moon Europa. Many of these outposts are situated next to hydrothermal vents ...
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...
Conventionally, there are two ways to build mountains--direct collision (as is the case with the Himalayas) and one side sinking beneath the other (which explains why the Pacific Ring of Fire is vo...
I've been working on a procedural map generator for a strategy game (if I ever get to gameplay). My general development philosophy is "believable but not necessarily realistic", in other words I do...
Is it possible for a large enough structure built near a small enough subduction zone to become lodged in it or buried very slowly as opposed to taken underground? If so, how big would the structu...
First question: if you melted Europa's ice, would there be any land? Second question (assuming the answer to the first question is no), how much water would you have to remove after that in order ...
Have a creature from a dream. It's a carbon based humanoid creature partly made of the mineral olivine. Could there be any reason it might contain this mineral? Perhaps a show of health - the more ...
Rather than creating an entire world for my worldbuilding project, I was planning on adding an additional continent to Earth. Since the largest "empty spot" is in the South Pacific and one of my go...
The planet needs to be able to support life but initially ve devoid of it. Which I would think would make it's Soil like that of a desert. The regolith may be important for early agriculture. It ca...
Rivers of lava are a staple of fantasy. But in the real world, lava flows are usually very short-lived phenomenons caused by volcanic eruptions. Is there some plausible way on an otherwise earth-l...
As we know, the Earth had one super continent at one point in the history of our planet, which eventually broke apart to become what we have today. Assuming we're talking about a planet near iden...
How long will a 400 km wide 30 km deep pit (trench or crater) with a relatively shallow (for stability) gradient of slope of 20 degrees from the edge to the surface of the planets crust be expected...
Our world is surrounded by a metaphysical barrier that separates us from other dimensions and the things which inhabit them. This barrier is made up of 7 layers, with the last one being the closest...
I need to wipe out a city. Not a huge one (I won't let them grow beyond a certain limit), but big enough to need to do some pretty serious damage. Let's say something similar in size to Pompeii. (y...
Allow me to present Lyr, one of a handful of worlds crafted by artist Chris Wayan: The one detail among a vast many that is important to this question is that its salinity is about 1.5%, roughly...
Thanks in advance for any input you can provide! I have a moon called Vieneo http://www.risetvp.com/Vieneo which has some geological modelling of faults and epicenters over some range of time: ...
So in my world, the main Antagonist has the ability to drain the life from things around her, turning them to stone in the process. That made me wonder how organic material would erode if it were p...
So diamonds are the hardest natural substance, but can be broken/shattered by impacts. If a planet had a large mountain range made of diamond (maybe the size of the Rocky Mountains on Earth), wou...
Some islands can survive for very long. Madagascar, for example, has been around for 80-100 million years and is likely to remain isolated for hundreds of millions of years more. Volcanic islands,...
I know we generally operate - or religiously operate - on the principle that fundamental things don't change over time. It's the bedrock of geology - Uniformitarianism. I also believe it is unprova...
With the potential for an impact event to trigger volcanic activity on the opposite side of the planet, what is the largest plateau of flood basalt physically capable of forming on Earth, post-impa...
When building a city, one must consider why one is building a city. It's all very well imagining a city perched on top of an inaccessible mountain peak, but a believable world requires that we cons...
Start: Normal planet, very similar to Earth. The main difference is that the continents are placed differently. Magic could play a role in the formation of mountains but I prefer a scientific ex...
I'm looking for a rock from which my island is constructed. It needs to be: Either created from the sea or via intense pressure/heat Capable of trapping layers of gas beneath it White(ish) I wa...
