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Does anyone know an equation or something along those lines for calculating how many and the locations of atmospheric circulation cells for a planet? Also, does the planet's radius and atmospheric...
In the story Wang's Carpets (and part of the novel Diaspora), Greg Egan sketchily describes a high-dimensional universe which contains no analog for light, such that the aliens who inhabit this uni...
For the sake of fixing some image in your mind, imagine you want to practice some sport in a rotating cylinder world: whether it be launching a javelin, strike a tee at the golf club or scoring a 3...
On May 18, 1980, Mount Saint Helens made American history with an eruption that took 57 human lives and killed thousands of animals. It has released only a quarter of a cubic mile of ash, but it i...
I have a planet orbiting a red dwarf and, as expected, it is tidally locked to its star. I know that these planets will have a very significant temperature difference between the diurnal and noctur...
I was curious: Suppose we built an O'Neill cylinder with an air mixture similar to Earth's (not pure oxygen). Does the air also get "thrown" down towards the floor of an O'Neill cylinder? If I sta...
I'm working with the idea of creating a sun made out of pure gold. Of course, this would be completely man-made. Why would anyone want to do this? Because I want a cool concept like that in my stor...
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...
Since voting on this discussion is currently unclear, I'm separating out each proposal from the question for voting, each in its own answer: Proposal 1 Posts that were imported, not claimed, an...
One of the cool things about the Moon is that the far side has a thicker crust that the near side.1 One theory explaining this is that the Moon was hit by an object, possibly a moonlet created by t...
Inspired by this question, and my own answer to it: Avoiding galactic pandemics. World ending pandemics are a common disaster/after-the-end story trope, I'm trying to determine if plausible, and h...
I have a story where a species of the very first (literally first) carbon-based humanoid life (surprise!) that happen to emerge roughly seven billion years ago (their home system were formed twelve...
On topic for the community name only The question could be assumed to be on topic for the name of this community: "Scientific Speculation". It is indeed a speculative question about science that h...
I've been searching for hours, and most formulas I can find use complex/imaginary numbers or variables that I don't know or can't find out (such as the imaginary part of the planet's love number, w...
So, assume that you have 1m$^3$ of normal Terran seawater you can adiabatically raise to an arbitrarily high pressure/temperature in situ (say, by compressing it with nuclear shockwaves from all di...
For the purpose of this post, full spectrum means a non-trivial number of frequencies within a non-trivial band. So human eyes aren't full spectrum within the visual range (each cone is wide band, ...
In my earlier question, regarding airships, I mentioned fictional gas, as light as hydrogen but non-flammable. Is it possible to make chemical element, with atoms made not from nucleons, but with s...
In 2015 we can rewind the TV, our CCTV footage and, if we wear an action cam, our latest adventure. However if we walk down the street and something happens we didn't quite catch, the annoying fact...
I'm currently exploring a setting where humans have managed to create traversable wormholes with one critical flaw - something in the wormhole both kills multi-cellular life and destroys electronic...
I'm seeking a hard science setting for a piece of xenofiction with a decidedly non-sciencey feel. That said, there is no magic or magic technology. The idea is as follows: A red dwarf star has a...
So we have had multiple questions on having multiple moons and this is another. I did check and didn't find questions that covered this specific setup. I have an earth-like world I am working on, ...
I have an engine with unlimited $\Delta v$. Don't ask how I got it, it's probably one of my earth changing inventions. Either way: I no longer like Earth and want to get off (I'm headed for a reti...
For the purpose of this questions, let's assume my crew has solved all those nasty problems of survivability inside the field, not unleashing a devastating blast of particles at their destination, ...
I've mentioned in earlier posts that it will be much cheaper to build immense space-based observatory instruments than to even come close to launching an interstellar expedition. There are several...
I am writing a setting for a role-playing game. In it an alchemist has finally found a way to create gold from lesser metals. Like his former historical models the alchemist is so jubilant over hi...
