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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Could a Greater Number and Diversity of Marine Plant Species be Possible?
As landlubbers, we often let ourselves think that if salty seawater is undrinkable for us, it could be even worse for plants. However, certain types of angiosperms have found ways to not only thrive ...
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Will the Dinosaur Empire Still Stand Strong If Chicxulub Hit Earth at the End of the Jurassic?
66 million years ago, the dinosaur empire was in its death throes when its final nail in the coffin came hurtling down from the sky. A clump of rock the size of Mount Everest smashed into the Gulf of ...
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How can I alter the human reproductive cycle in order to compete on a hostile planet?
This is a follow up question to one that I made earlier. Basically, after God wiped out all life after the flood, earth has changed into a lush but dangerous environment. Every living thing, from ...
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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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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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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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Humanity with the Ears of a Fox--What Differs as a Result?
In this question, we're looking at a humanity that has adapted one of the most conspicuous ways of keeping cool--larger ears. Desert animals usually have larger ears to have more room for blood ...
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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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Could a planet have a naturally occuring moon at one of its Lagrange points?
Would it be possible for a planet to naturally have a moon or large natural satellite at one of its Lagrange points?
If so would it then also be able to have a second moon that would be orbiting this ...
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Can Apes (Including Humans) Be Naturally Patterned Like Felids?
For visual reference:
Apes are visual species who rely more on their eyesight than any of the other senses. As a result, they see the world in three shades of color, whereas other mammals see in one ...
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Is a partial civil war possible? [closed]
I have a fictional world, consisting of a federation of 17 provinces (in blue on the map extract). Currently, it is in the late 1920's. The Dzevogurski and Quidthovitse provinces are on the brink of ...
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Complications of displaced core material?
If there were an absolutely terrible accident, and part of Earth's core was displaced toward the surface, making a bubble of liquid nickel and iron, what would be the major problems with this?
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How Would Plate Tectonics on an Inverted World Work?
Recently, I came across an inverted world map on the MapPorn Reddit made by MChainsaw. "Inverted" as in, the "continents" are now below sea level and the "ocean floors" are high and dry. (...
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Is this state of Earth possible, after humans left for a million years?
It is the year 4056 (or probably later). The rocket with the last residents of Earth just took off, because global warming and pollution couldn't be stopped nor reverted and Earth became uninhabitable....
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Do any of the things happening on this world actually have a chance of happening? And if they do, how long would humankind survive? [closed]
In this world, global warming has reached a tipping point. The equator has reached temperatures well over 212 degrees Fahrenheit (100 Celsius, 373 Kelvin), resulting in the "Boiling Sea". Global ...
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Which Modern Mammals Would Die Out in an Alternate Extinction Event 5 Million Years Ago? [closed]
Five million years ago, a progressive downward slope in the global climate put an end to the Miocene Epoch and brought on the Pliocene Epoch. To get a visual idea, since we humans are a visual ...
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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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Would it be possible for an analog of humans to evolve in the oceans - Specifically Octopoids? [duplicate]
Humans are tool users and through their ingenuity were able to hunt much larger animals than themselves.
Specifically, I would like to have a race of sentient beings based on octopuses. They use ...
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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 would an Earth-like world that is packed solid work?
By packed solid, I mean it has very fast growing vines and bushes everywhere like on non-desert living land plus lead crud and hidden small holes so movement is severely restricted. Similar on ...
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Would a More Extreme Icing of Antarctica Create an Extinction Event?
55 million years ago, the world was literally a jungle. It was so warm that plants like the bald cypress and the dawn redwood have been found at Ellesmere Island, right inside the Arctic Circle. ...
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Government power in an Ice Age [closed]
The setting of my story takes place during a future Ice Age, where the equator and parts of the southern hemisphere are a safe haven for humans. Which countries or regions would most likely be the '...
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Only changing the mass of the moon, how much can lunar mass increase before the Earth becomes uninhabitable?
Bonus: How much would the increase in lunar mass increase average tides? & which factors would cause the Earth to become uninhabitable?
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What Else Could Create Jeffrey Linn's Coastlines BESIDES The Influence of Ice? [closed]
Who?
Unfortunately, I could not find any background information about Jeffrey Linn, but he is better known for his sea level maps. Specifically, what a particular city would look like if sea levels ...
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How to make my shadowrealms respected [closed]
My world is collaborative post between me and my friend.
So, There is one nation that I'm fleshing out and it was overall a fun but I got writer's block.
Most of the evil shadow empire have ...
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How Can the Coastlines Look Similar In Spite of the Cooler Temperature
The established fact is that the shape of a planet's continental coastlines is determined by the planet's climate. Higher temperatures mean less ice, which ultimately means higher sea levels. (Case ...
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How would floating islands work? [duplicate]
Soaring among the clouds over an earth-like planet, islands... on which fortresses are built for strategic advantage, on which stations for the dragon air force are built, and which can be relatively ...
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Is it plausible that a world could develop that focused on the hard sciences and not the soft sciences? [closed]
I am new to this so I may ask this question wrong or without enough detail.
The world I am creating goes like this: Humans developed to the point that robots run basically everything via A. I.s. As a ...
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Electric muscles
There is a popular belief that the muscles of our body are controlled only by electrical impulses. This is not entirely a lie, but ... From what little I have researched, the nerves send a command for ...
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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 Multicellular Life Evolve Sans Cryogenian?
Prior to the Cambrian, there have been three separate ice ages--the Huronian, from 2.4 to 2.1 billion years ago; and the two Cryogenian ice ages, from 720 to 635 million years ago, split in such by a ...
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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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Is this a plausible timeline if the United States legalized prior restraint following the Pentagon Papers?
In actual history, the Supreme Court ruled in 1971 in New York Times v. US that prior restraint is illegal, upholding its earlier decision in 1931 in Near v. Minnesota.
In my alternate history, the ...
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Humans without fire?
Suppose anatomically modern, but technologically primitive, humans (say, early Paleolithic) were magically transported to a world broadly similar to our own, but where open flames are impossible. (I ...
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How to make a floating islands on future earth?
So my current book set in distant future on earth where earth surface only covered with oceans with no more land mass ( kinda like a water world ) and the only lands are floating islands that made ...
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Can magnetism be what causes my flat Earth to accelerate?
It has been determined by observation of the stars that the gravity on Flat Earth is due to it accelerating upwards at 1G. This is what holds people and objects to the surface. It has also been ...
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Can Mollusks Develop Bone Independently?
When one thinks of a shelled cephalopod, odds are high that the first thing to come to mind are the ammonites. They were one of evolution's success stories, thriving from 400 to 66 million years ago. ...
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Astral Doubles (Avatar)
This might be entirely opinion based which is frowned upon in world building but I really do need help on this.
I’m writing a story of an alternative version of Earth where almost 80% of its ...
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How long would it take for Earth to be eaten to its core? [closed]
If the Earth was edible, and was the sole source of food for its inhabitents, how long would it take for people to eat themselves off the planet?
Assuming a biblical creation story (a man and a woman)...
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Finding real world historic examples of cultures/organizations/tribes to represent Orcs
I plan to make this a series of questions to avoid being overly broad. Each question will address a particular fantasy species ("race" in RPG terms).
The traits will be based on the content included ...
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If modern civilization collapsed, what impact would a lack of trade and industrial base have on the next civilization centuries later? [closed]
Let's say that civilization ends due to non-globally destructive means. For instance, a rising tide that destroys ports and trade wouldn't scar the landscape of Denver the way nuclear war would. ...
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Building my Flat Earth, how to make my Ice walls last for eternity [closed]
In a world where
Earth does NOT have gravity (Gravity does not exist).
Our oceans are created by Ice walls.
Ice walls? How can they exist so long?
In the Flat Earth model, the Ice walls are situated ...
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Flora and fauna from a darker, foggy planet [closed]
In a previous post, I consulted about the characteristics that a earth-like planet could have, if it's covered by a permanent mega-fog, with a chemical composition similar to water vapor, which ...
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In This Alternate Europe, Where Does Mediterranean End and Cold North Begin?
So, in this alternate Europe, there are some obvious differences. First off, the Baltic Sea is no longer a sea, but now the Baltic Plain. Also, the Low Countries are absent entirely. There are only ...
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If Earth's Moon Were Ganymede-Like, Part I: Rotation
I know that in the past I posted questions on if specific bodies larger than the moon--Mars in one and Titan in another--but this series deals with questions regarding Earth's effects by a natural ...
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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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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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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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In a world without Magic or Gods, what is the source of people's supernatural abilities? [closed]
I want to build a world, probably modern, basing most of the built world on Earth, just with different countries, history, etc.
What I would like is to find a way to give people their powers, but ...
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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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