Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Could a cave-in or avalanche in low gravity be dangerous?

+0
−0

I have a character on the surface of Enceladus, one of the moons of Saturn. It has an icy surface on top of what is believed to be a liquid ocean. There is no atmosphere, though near its south polar region there are what appear to be canyons filled with long lines of geysers that eject mostly water vapor into space.

I need to have a way for this character to be trapped and buried on Enceladus (don't worry about his fate), either as a result of the ground caving in beneath him causing him to fall below the surface, or in something like an avalanche of ice down the side of the one of the canyons. The trouble is, the surface gravity on Enceladus is only 1.13% of Earth's. In that case, it seems to me most scenarios would be easily escapable, both because a cave-in or avalanche would occur very slowly and because the character could jump so high he should be able to simply leap away from the danger. I thought of having him hit by a large piece of ice and knocked out, thus preventing him from escaping; but could a person really be knocked out by a large mass that is slow-moving, or would he just be crushed?

So my question is: is there a realistic way for someone to get trapped an buried under these conditions?

History
Why does this post require moderator attention?
You might want to add some details to your flag.
Why should this post be closed?

This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/108967. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

0 comment threads

0 answers

Sign up to answer this question »