Questions tagged [alternate-earth]
For questions relating to radically changed Earth. This alternate Earth could be a post-apocalyptic Earth, or Earth with major changes in the current social/political/economical schemes.
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If Earth's Core had ALL Of the Heavy Metals
Back home, Earth had gone through an impact-coalesce cycle only once. Since then, its core has been 84% iron, 6% nickel and the rest being labeled by The Encyclopedia of Earth: A Complete Visual ...
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Nocturnal Photosynthesis
It's a basic fact that most plants need sunlight to generate growth. Sure, they also need water and nutrients, but their reliance on sunlight is the one sole thing that separates them from animals.
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Is there a way to have coal but not oil?
Reading this answer I realized that for my purposes I don't really want a fully steampunk world. All I want is lack of cars and planes as we know them, and lack of oil, or inaccessible deposits of oil,...
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Could deliberately induced Kessler Syndrome stop ICBMs?
In a previous question I asked how Mutually Assured Destruction could be made not assured. Most of the highly rated answers focused on political methods, but one answer raised the possibility that ...
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What aspect of planet Earth must be changed to prevent the industrial revolution?
I am thinking of a planet (I suppose one would call it a parallel earth) where the industrial revolution never happens, and people live with 1700s technology forever. What differences in resources/...
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The World's a Jungle Again. Would Doldrums Blow the Global Air?
From 56 to 34 million years ago, Earth was so warm that we have found evidence of jungle plants inside the Arctic Circle. Nowadays, jungles are confined in or near the equator, and those latitudes ...
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An Inverse Great Dying
252 million years ago, the worst event in the history of life on Earth occurred. 70% of all terrestrial species and 96% of all marine species became extinct through, according to geological records, ...
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In a world of groovy super spies, how would a spy cross a ravine?
I'm developing an alternate Earth where super spies exist. Men and women of extraordinary skill with extraordinary gadgets who act in extraordinary ways to protect the proverbial "King and ...
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Avian Crocodylomorph
Today, dinosaurs, alligators, crocodiles, gharials and caimen are all that remains of a special group of reptiles called the archosaurs. Recently, it has been accepted by the public that birds did ...
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Moved into further orbits to protect them, how much damage do Earth and Moon take when the Sun expands?
Short version A far future catastrophe burns/melts away large chunks of the Earth and Moon. For reasons related to my story's fantasy elements, the remains of the Moon have about one fifth their ...
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How could mankind of ancient times cause significant climate change?
They don't posses any advanced knowledge, their knowledge is in fact irrelevant, just their possible actions (it doesn't matter how irrational those actions might be) that would cause significant ...
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How dangerous are animals with no history of human contact?
Wild animals like wolves, lions and bears rarely attack people. They behave as though they know humans are dangerous and generally best avoided.
Imagine a group of people traveling sideways in time, ...
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How To Make Earth's Oceans as Brackish as Lyr's
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 half ...
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How to slow and limit the scope of the internal combustion engine in powering an airship
I need to limit the development of the internal combustion engine so that it is only available in small numbers to few individuals and does not progress technically, or at least only progresses slowly....
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What geological and chemical changes to the earth's makeup could effectively limit technological advancement
Basically, I want to freeze the technology of earth at a level reminiscent of pre-Industrial Revolution Europe. I'm trying to figure out what substance or material would have to be absent from the ...
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How far could you see the Andes from the Pacific on a flat Earth?
Several questions on related subtopics of vision distance on a flat world have been asked before, but this one remains unaddressed. Specifically:
The answer from Euclidean geometry would be infinite (...
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Is there dense, non flammable gas that I can cover the Earth in?
This question is related to Deadly, Heavier than Air Gas, and Is a world with two different types of air possible? but has several different criteria. I've also looked at https://chemistry....
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Possible height and size of a giant tree on an Earth-like planet?
I'm working on a story about another dimension of this same Earth but without the same human development and history. The land and natural conditions would be the same except for the ones directly ...
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What Will My Alternate Earth's Climate Be Like? (Basically Speaking, Not Asking Much)
Ultimately, this scenario will depend on whether or not this alternate Earth would orbit one G-type star or two, and whether dawn would still be in the east, like back home, or in the west, like in ...
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How can my fictional race of humans extend the area of their world they can explore?
This world is an alternate Earth similar size, mass and distance from its star to our Earth. The atmosphere is similar in composition to Earth except at 5000m altitude the pressure is two bar and the ...
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Climate conditions and/or atmospheric changes required for the Everboom
Relating to this question: Ensuring an endless war, and an endless stalemate
In a planet such as our Earth, what climate conditions and/or atmospheric changes would be required for the formation and ...
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All the Radioactive Metals Inside Earth's Core--How Would They Affect Convection?
In relation to a recent question of mine, this alternate Earth still has its core consisting of 84% iron, but the other 16% contains the greatest concentrations of all known species of heavy metals (...
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Building a full-sized Lego Earth - what would it look like at various levels?
Lego representations of Earth have been made at various scales, for example this one:
Suppose Slartibartfast made a full-size Earth from Lego (including the oceans being represented as solid blocks. ...
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Could a hypothetical planet composed of a neon-oxygen or argon-oxygen atmosphere with Earth-like pressure levels sustain life?
I'm trying to create a hypothetical planet scenario, where there is a planet that has a similar atmospheric pressure to that of Earth, but in this case, it has a gas different than that of nitrogen. ...
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Earth Has Four Seasons Lasting Years. Is This Too Much?
In this alternate Earth, the axial tilt is still leaning to the extent of the temperate and polar zones having four seasons--spring, summer, autumn and winter. The one key difference is that each ...
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Super hot tropical forest
Consider an Earth like world except much hotter with extremely hot and wet tropical rain forests.
Assuming 100% humidity, how hot might the alternate Earth tropics get and still support tree like ...
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If Earth Were a Gas Giant's Moon
Here is what we know of Earth:
Mass: 5.972 sextillion metric tons
Diameter: 7,917.5 miles
Density: 5.51 grams per cubic centimeter
Rotation: 24 hours
Revolution: 365 days
Core: 760 miles wide, ...
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Can A Theia-Like Object Make Earth Richer?
Let's start with a little backstory--our planet underwent an impact-coalescence cycle only once, 4.5 billion years ago, when a Mars-sized object named Theia destroyed the infant Earth in a glancing ...
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Megamangrove Roots--Which Kind of Aerial Roots Would Best Support Their Large Size?
In an alternate Earth, early or midway in the Eocene Epoch, there debuted a family of angiosperm trees whose roots need to be completely submerged. As a result, the limit is that they can't germinate ...
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If the Earth would break apart, how likely would the large debris stay in orbit?
In the story I'm writing, Earth gets destroyed and the few million humans that survive go to live on another Earth-like planet.
Since the destruction of the planet, the humans do visit their star ...
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The 42-Hour Day: Instant Extinction?
The information presented in the previous episode is out of date.
In an alternate universe, there is still an Earth in geochemistry only. This one, Alternate Earth 600, is a "backwards Earth"...
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The 42-Hour Day: Episode I: Ocean Currents
Presented here is a map of an alternate Earth from 542 million years ago.
It is 5% narrower in diameter and 20% lighter in mass than our Earth. A single day lasts 42 hours, a cycle that it must ...
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After evacuation to a new planet, how would a population switch from a barter system to a monetary system with banks?
Okay, context. There's a modern human sub-species (about 9,000) that needs to evacuate earth to avoid genocide from their human counter-parts. They have access to a portal to take them to a new viable ...
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What would the equator be like if Modern-Day Earth were as hot as the Cambrian?
This is a map of Earth's climate today:
This is how the Koppen classification colors the particular climates, so I don't know why the lower latitudes were dominated by several shades of the color ...
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Can Pinnipeds Fit in a Worm Forest?
In an alternate Earth, coral has been extinct for over 400 million years. In their place were the following:
Bivalvia (clams, oysters, mussels)
Cirripedia (barnacles)
Canalipalpata (bristle-foot or ...
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The 372-Day Calendar
There seems to be a connection between orbital revolution (one year) and distance from the star the body orbits. For example, Earth orbits the sun at a distance of 93 million miles and completes one ...
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