Questions tagged [atmosphere]
For questions about the gases which surround a planet or some other celestial body.
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Exoplanet sky with suspended ice crystals
I'm envisioning a planet around a sunlike star, with gravity and temperature similar to Mars, but covered with a thin shell of water ice (with CO2 ice at the poles). The atmosphere's pressure and ...
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Could a planetary disk create a shared atmosphere?
So essentially, we have a protoplanetary disk filled with asteroids ranging from boulders to 30km long. Could they sustain a breathable atmosphere for humans, or would there have to be oxygen tanks ...
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What would be the optimal atmosphere for Earth's life and humanity?
Question
Obviously Earth's atmosphere is just fine for life it, but is there a possibility of one composed of gases that would make life have an easier time living? If yes, what would it consist of?
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Is this an accurate environment for life on a super Earth speculatively?
My alien planet is a super Earth. It revolves around a K-type star in the habitable zone and has a lower gravity. The mass is that of 2 Earths(or how ever superearths mass normally are).The atmosphere ...
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What atmospheric pressure and temperature are reasonable to maintain water on a low gravity planet?
I'm designing a low gravity planet, and I want it to be as realistic as possible. I've calculated the lowest mass and radius it could have while maintaining a similar density to Earth and while still ...
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Is the following rogue planet's atmosphere setup possible?
This is part of a series of question.
Context: For a story, we would like a rogue planet to have certain characteristics. I hesitated to split the question by characteristics, but unfortunately they ...
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Can a forest provide enough oxygen to breathe on a low oxygen planet?
A person is placed into the middle of a forest on an alien planet. The planet is to be considered Earth equivalent in all respects (mass, size, atmospheric pressure, etc.) except atmospheric ...
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For a planet with a given equilibrium temperature, what is the maximum pressure possible?
I've been working on trying to calculate atmospheres for a given equilibrium temperature $T_{eq}$ planetary mass $M_{planet}$ and radius $r_{planet}$, how would you calculate the maximum possible ...
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How could a planet logically have green clouds but still be habitable?
I am working on a game currently with some predetermined assets, and one of the areas I am developing takes place on a mountainous, lush jungle planet with low-hanging green clouds and a general green ...
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What chemicals would an atmosphere unbreathable by humans (yet allowing alien life to thrive) contain?
(first question, hi!) At the moment, I am trying to bring a planet which contains an atmosphere that can barely be breathed by humans (14% oxygen to be precise), to life. This planet is abundant with ...
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Do we have a solution if oxygen runs out [closed]
I'm not a scientist but I know at the moment we don't have a huge amount of Oxygen in our atmosphere but what would happened if the Ozone layer was broken and all the oxygen escaped how could we ...
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How could I make an ion engine work within an atmosphere?
I’m trying to think of a way to explain how the ion engines in Star Wars ships are able to work within an atmosphere. Ion engines can only work in a vacuum, and don’t have the proper thrust to take ...
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Surviving a dark hycean world
A dark hycean world is supposed to be a hot water world with a thick atmosphere around a red dwarf star. This means it's tidally locked with one side forever facing the sun and the other forever ...
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Earth with a high concentration of atmospheric ethyl alcohol
Suppose you have an Earth-like planet which (for reasons completely unrelated to the question) spontaneously generates and maintains an atmosphere with an atmospheric ethyl alcohol concentration of 1%....
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Could this planet retain a thick enough atmosphere to avoid needing a pressure suit? [duplicate]
Astronauts land on a planet. The planet is almost like a super-mercury; around 40% more massive than Mars, and 10% denser than Earth. Mercury's iron core takes up around 3/4ths of its volume, and it ...
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How to make air more electrically conductive without making it unbreathable?
I need people to get zapped more often in my world.
Zapping others with electricity must be a more viable option than it is in our world.
Shooting cables at people to zap them? Nah....I prefer the ...
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How would plants obtain helium on an earth-like planet?
My question is how would plants obtain helium in land?, mainly for floating in a high surface pressure atmosphere (maybe around 1.5 atm?), or at least its seeds or tiny parts of them, also it is ...
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Could a planet with 0.9 Surface gravity retain this atmosphere?
I have a planet with a surface gravity of 0.9 times that of Earth, and an escape velocity of 11.3 km/s, and a temperature like Earth's. My question is if it could retain a breathable atmosphere (for ...
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How could a human habitable planet naturally have a Titan like haze?
Apparently the earth had a methane haze in its early history, but of course this would not have been habitable to us as the atmosphere would have been toxic. You would need enough of something to ...
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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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Weather processes on a flat world
I'm designing a flat world setting for a fantasy RPG, and I'm trying to figure out out how the climates and weather patterns would play out realistically (or at least semi-realistically) in such a ...
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The air is warmer at the top of the mountain. How?
I was thinking about a world where hot air rises to the extent that the top of the mountain is always warmer than the bottom. I guess this would be something like a permanent planet-wide inversion ...
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How can a planet's seasons be only controlled by either its land, sky or water?
I have a planet established (similar to Earth) which instead of countries has 3 main zones of habitation: land, water & sky. Each supernatural inhabitant looks after one natural part of this ...
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If Earth's atmosphere was 100% oxygen, which settlement would be the lowest habitable one? [duplicate]
If we replace all other gases of the Earth's atmosphere by oxygen so that we have 1 atm oxygen at sea level, which one would be the lowest (either permanently or for a certain amount of time) ...
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What are some conditions under which people would use self-contained breathing apparatuses as opposed to evacuating or using lesser equipment?
Exactly what it says on the tin: what are some conditions under which people would use self-contained breathing apparatuses as opposed to evacuating or using lesser equipment?
Background:
A self ...
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Possible real life applications for producing artificial aurora?
I'm writing a hard sci-fi novel and I am trying to create both metaphorical and literal scenic atmospheric ambiance by having artificial auroras being easy to produce in the night sky. Any clue as to ...
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If an entire orbit was a single ring shaped "planet" what would the view be like?
The setup
Let us start by imagining a solar system. It is exactly the same as ours with a slight difference. There is no Earth. Where Earth should be is a cylinder with a radius exactly the same as ...
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How would this atmosphere change the way weather works and therefor biomes
Is it possible to have a mostly jungle and swamp like planet with these characteristics:
The planet is a mostly water with high amounts of oxygen much like the Carboniferous period on earth.
2 suns ...
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How high would a mountain have to be to have no snow on its summit?
On Earth (or another planet with an identical atmosphere), how high above sea level would a mountain have to rise so that its summit would no longer have any snow on it, not even temporary?
The ...
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Can there be an ocean in a CO2 atmosphere?
See my first question here and other things about atmosphere: What would be the color of a CO2 atmosphere?
Hi so I have a planet with a CO2 atmosphere so can there be any ocean on this planet?
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What would be the color of a CO2 atmosphere
So I want to make a planet with an atmosphere made of
99% CO2
1% N2
It also has a pressure of 1 bar.
Its star is like our sun.
There is not that much dust.
Edit: New calculation it's 0.9 A.U from it'...
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Software for simulating a slice of an atmosphere?
For my world, I want to simulate a 2d vertical slice of an atmosphere, to test if my assumptions about it are correct. The software needs to support gas compression via gravity, different gasses used ...
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Is a fall into a high-pressure atmosphere survivable?
In my question What is the largest achievable oxygen-atmosphere world?, my answer suggests an atmosphere of standard terrestrial air with a sea-level pressure of 20 ATM and platforms at an altitude ...
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What is the largest achievable oxygen-atmosphere world?
I am trying to calculate the largest world that will meet the following criteria:
Exists within the Goldilocks zone of a G2V star similar to our sun.
Is survivable long-term by anatomically modern ...
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Can Advanced Matter-based Weapons Target Fast-moving Targets Deep in the Atmosphere Without Collateral Damage?
UFO's are real and fighting around the Earth!
I have an alien spacecraft in modern Earth's atmosphere, and rival alien spacecraft in Earth's Orbit. Both aliens are capable of maneuvering at great ...
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Too much oxygen and not enough carbon
If a planet has a lot of oxygen to support mega flora and fauna, how much would be too much?
My planet has the oxygen content about that of the carboniferous(as a starter example), which had a about ...
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How to cool Venusian atmosphere down?
Carbon dioxide dominates the Venusian atmosphere. While I think it is possible to use the thermal energy in the atmosphere to split carbon dioxide to carbon and oxygen, the process may be too slow to ...
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Is it possible for radon to exist at consistent levels in an atmosphere for 10,000 years?
On an alien planet, could it be possible for a foreign species of aliens to somehow convert the atmosphere to consist of a small amount of radon (10% or less) for a fairly long amount of time (around ...
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Feasibility of the Ascendia System?
Some of the events in a story I'm thinking of have occur on a planet called Ascendia. Due to the world's backstory, it has several unusual traits.
Despite orbiting around a hot (roughly large F/small ...
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Convection Cells in the Atmosphere of a Jupiter-Sized Planet
Background
The setting for a story I am creating is an earth-like planet near jovian surface area, existing in a universe where the force of gravity is appreciably weaker than in our own, such that a ...
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Exposure to Atmospheric Ammonia. How to not die
A follow up to the previous post question, one of the point's raised in the question was that the atmosphere that is presented has around 0.7% of it's atmosphere made up of Ammonia which is ...
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Breathing on high oxygen world. What can be done to stop humans from dying?
Sometime in the near future, a sizable population of humans has transported, through unspecified means, to a habitable super earth that has a much higher oxygen content than on Earth. Now, to the lay ...
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Walking to space
Is it possible to have any kind of natural celestial body where at some point on it it's capable of supporting human life without technological assistance (breathable air, survivable temperature with ...
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Plausibility of Low-Pressure Breathable Atmospheres?
My question is inspired by the fact that in the computer game Elite:Dangerous, the player's spacecraft is capable of landing on planets with "tenuous" atmospheres, measured as being 0.1 ...
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Consequences of a Super-Light Super-Earth?
In this scenario, there is a rocky planet that is 230% the width of our Earth, covering a total area of a billion square miles, 55% of which consists of three continents separated by a single ocean ...
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What are the requirements for a scenario like the one depicted here? (supertall skyscrapers)
I have been very appreciative of the Netflix series Altered Carbon especially thanks to scenes such as those taking place in the location called Aerium.
For those who aren't in the know, the Aerium ...
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What atmospheric conditions would be needed produce intense heat, weather and wind that could fry a human in less than 5 minutes at sea-level? [closed]
first time poster here.
The premise:
I’m trying to design a planet in where sea-level / lowlands are an uninhabitable wasteland with temperatures that would fry a human in less than 5 minutes. In my ...
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The plausibility of this atmosphere? and what the problems that it case?
The atmosphere have ~1 atm pressure at sea level, It does have water ocean maybe 10-30% of the surface, also it supports tectonic plates so the carbon cycle does work, and the Ocean is made mainly of ...
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How long could a human survive in a near-pure CO2 atmosphere?
Imagine Mars's atmosphere has been mostly terraformed. By that, I mean that the surface pressure and temperature have been brought up to at least survivable values. (The atmosphere is still 95% Carbon ...
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How plausible is this planetary system with binary stars?
In my world, I have a binary S-type Solar System of Star-A and Star-B with these properties:
Star-A:
Luminosity: 0.86822 Sol / Mass: 0.98097 Sol / Radius: 0.91958 Sol / Radius of Hill Sphere: ~37.218 ...