Questions tagged [atmosphere]
For questions about the gases which surround a planet or some other celestial body.
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Mitigation of dust upkick in Martian terraforming? [closed]
For my fictional universe I want to terraform Mars, which involves raising the atmospheric pressure to 20kPa of oxygen. Now I realize that an atmosphere of that pressure is going to generate much more ...
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1answer
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Is a naturally forming matryoshka hoopworld possible? Can it have one contiguous atmosphere? [closed]
I am thinking something like a Rocheworld but with concentric hoops and a shared atmosphere and ocean. What is the probability of it forming and can life arise on it?
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What can I see on the flyers' world?
Planetary conditions: ~0.5x Earth gravity (guess: 0.9x Earth density, 0.777x Earth radius, so about 0.42 Earth masses... but that's probably not important). Atmosphere broadly similar to Earth but ~...
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2answers
198 views
Adaptation to high $\mathsf {CO}_2$ concentration
If humans were to live in an earth-like planet with an atmosphere with a significantly higher concentration of $\mathsf {CO}_2$ (Higher than what can be tolerated by normal human for a long period of ...
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8answers
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Of strange atmospheres - the survivable but unbreathable
Most gases that are toxic to breathe also do nasty things to the skin when they're in the atmosphere at dangerous concentrations - and one is walking around without sealed protective clothing; sulfur ...
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2answers
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Are these atmosphere compositions for habitation in space plausible/do they cause problems I don´t see?
On Earth, our atmosphere contains 78.09% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, on average around 1% water vapor at sea level, 0.93% argon, 0.04% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases. Looking through ...
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4answers
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With today's technology, could iron be smelted at La Rinconada?
La Rinconada, Peru is notable because it has an effective oxygen concentration of only 11%, leading to the need for special techniques just to keep a fire going, and preventing the use of combustion-...
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Would life always name the light from their sun “white” [closed]
I've heard it said that white light contains all the colors in it. Our sun produces white light and that the visible spectrum is just the range we evolved to see because our atmosphere is transparent ...
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1answer
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What's the useful range of atmospheric oxygen content for fire?
Fire is certainly high up on the top ten list of mankinds most useful inventions. It allows for a more efficient utilisation of nutriants, is the basis of chemistry and the material sciences, allowed ...
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3answers
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Effects of ~10atm pressure on engine design
Take a planet with an atmosphere similar to Earth's but, say, 9-10x as dense. What is this going to mean for the performance and design of the heat engines that are so familiar to us? Higher oxygen ...
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1answer
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Effect of slow rotation on winds
Given a rotation rate comparable to Venus & axial tilt like Uranus (about 90deg), what should I expect for atmospheric winds? I anticipate a stratospheric wind only, dropping to the surface at or ...
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1answer
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What sort of atmosphere would develop around an asteroid colony?
In the not too distant future, mankind has established several mining bases on Ceres. There are a lot of spaceships which come and go. Large mining machines are chewing up the interior for resources. ...
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2answers
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Snow on a low-gravity, high-pressure world
Disclaimer: I am not a meteorologist.
Snow forms when supercooled water droplets nucleate onto particles in the atmosphere. After forming, they grow further by both tumbling around within the cloud ...
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8answers
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How could a planet have most of its water in the atmosphere?
I am creating a speculative evolution project for school (and partially for leisure) and I need a planet for my organisms to live on. I have a rough idea of what it may be like but I'm no expert in ...
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2answers
159 views
Atmosphere of habitable world around K-type star
I'm trying to work out the parameters of my planet, using the spreadsheets that Artifexian has developed (particularly this Planet Calculator and this Atmosphere Calculator) as a guide. In order for ...
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3answers
134 views
Atmosphere that makes people wear masks for breathing
(I'm new here, so I apologize in advance if I do something wrong)
TL;DR of what I'm looking for:
A substance (natural or artificial) that...
can be suspended in an atmosphere
is harmful to breathe,...
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4answers
114 views
How to define operational altitude on other planets?
Since different planets have different gravity, atmospheric pressure, air density and composition, it's obvious that a definition of operational altitude based on earth sea level is inadequate for a ...
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2answers
191 views
Atmosphere of a terraformed 10 km planetoid with Earth gravity
Bernal spheres and other O'Neill cylinders are complicated, maintenance-high and fragile beasts. Someone started to make micro-black-holes and put them in asteroids, in order to have 1 to 10+km rock ...
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3answers
134 views
Infrared reality
Is it possible for an earth-like planet to be perceived (by human eyes) in real-time as an infrared photograph? If so, in what conditions?
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1answer
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Need some help in creating silicon life in cold temperatures
I am a new person to this but I have been looking at similar questions about silicon life.
I'm currently trying to create silicon-based lifeforms on a planet with a surface temperature of about, -36....
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4answers
2k views
Would a high gravity rocky planet be guaranteed to have an atmosphere?
I want to create a planet with a deep gravity well, say about 12G at the surface. At first I wanted the planet to have either no atmosphere or a very thin one. But I want this to be as close to ...
3
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1answer
126 views
Is an oxygen/nitrogen cycle possible, given a cold enough climate?
Suppose for whatever reason the sun's power has weakened. The Earth gets colder. All the water has frozen, and the temperature is getting to around the boiling point of oxygen.
Can an "oxygen cycle" ...
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1answer
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Sulphur dioxide planet
Trying to create a planet with sulphur dioxide (which is heavier than oxygen I think) on a lower level and oxygen above it. Is this possible? Need something that is horrible on the bottom and want ...
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6answers
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What light would my cloudy planet receive from a red dwarf star?
What light spectrum would hit the surface of a planet orbiting a red dwarf star?
The planet is a humid greenhouse with a cloudy atmosphere and a strong ozone layer. Over 80% of the surface is water. ...
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1answer
143 views
Would it be worthwhile to locate capital in high mountains on an exoplanet with higher atmospheric pressure?
Tech level: modern - like
Atmospheric pressure at local sea level:
Oxygen ~30 kPa
Nitrogen ~180 kPa
(So roughly counting 1.5 times more oxygen, 2.25 times more nitrogen)
Technically speaking such ...
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2answers
176 views
Will winds always be the same?
Around Earth's equator, there's a band of low pressure called the Doldrums. 30 degrees north and south are bands of high pressure called the horse latitudes. Finally, there are more low-pressure bands ...
9
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1answer
146 views
Determining Planet rotation period that would allow for global Wind Cell
I'm trying to figure out how quickly a planet could rotate while also having a single air flow cell, such as Hadley cells, that would circle from hot pole to cold pole, etc. as in the case of Tidally ...
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5answers
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Could flying insects re-enter the Earth's atmosphere from space without burning up?
Huge numbers of genetically modified flying insects (purpose not disclosed here but it relates to affecting the whole of humanity) are to be dropped into the Earth's atmosphere from space so that they ...
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4answers
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How does my spell ignite the sky?
For years, humanity and nephilim have battled (more or less) together to staunch the unending flow of demons and angels wrecking havoc on Earth in their unending wars.
Now, we are finally in ...
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2answers
170 views
Carbon cycle on planet with mainly CO2 atmosphere
What effect would having CO2 in your atmosphere in place of, on earth, Nitrogen have on the carbon cycle? would the carbon cycle even work? I'm engineering A theoretical tidally locked planet with an ...
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2answers
189 views
Properties of a planet roughly four times as big as Earth
I have some research I want to do about a planet for a novel I'm writing. It is a fiction/science fiction novel, but I do wish to actually have some parts of the world correct in the scenes I depict.
...
6
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2answers
183 views
Can enough CO2 be captured, in order to reduce global warming, to reduce oxygen levels to suffocating levels?
In a comment to a recent question, it was pointed out that Biosphere II failed in part because too much CO2 was absorbed by the concrete, leaving insufficient oxygen in available CO2 to be released by ...
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1answer
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Asteroids with an atmosphere
What would be the likelihood of an asteroid developing a thin layer of gas? If an asteroid is capable of having an "atmosphere", then how likely would be be for primitive plant life, such as a moss, ...
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5answers
264 views
How can this habitable planet have a moon with a naturally occurring atmosphere?
Assuming the planet is earth-like, with more surface water and atmospheric oxygen, and within the habitable zone of a sun-like star, how can a moon orbiting this planet retain a thick atmosphere?
The ...
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2answers
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What color should the snow be in this chlorine world?
This question is in the same context (the same world) proposed by Steven L. Gillett in his book: "World-building".
And actually there have been some other questions about this same chlorinated world. ...
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1answer
132 views
Carbon cycle in a sulphur-based biochemistry
I'm designing a world with advanced life forms that use a sulphur-based biochemistry (see this link for context). I would like to create a carbon cycle analogous to Earth, where:
Photosynthesis ...
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2answers
287 views
Reducing atmospheric pressure on Snowball Earth
A Snowball Earth is a global condition (which may have occurred many times) in which the temperature everywhere on the surface was, for extended periods (up to tens of millions of years), below the ...
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2answers
263 views
If a Mount Everest-sized mountain had Earth's sea level atmospheric pressure at the top, what would the atmospheric pressure be at sea level?
I'm designing a world with earthlike gravity where the human colonists are intended to live on top of a gigantic shield volcano as tall as Mount Everest. What would the pressure be at the bottom? ...
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1answer
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Seasonal pressure areas over continents located in both northern and southern hemispheres
On a real world Earth, the seasonal changes in temperature of continents create high-pressure areas during winter in that hemisphere, and low-pressure areas during summer in that hemisphere.
Should ...
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1answer
203 views
Possible sky colors compatible with life on earth
This question has been asked in similar forms on this site already with some good answers like here:
What Color Can the Sky Be?
How could the sky be orange in a breathable atmosphere?
What would ...
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5answers
635 views
If Earth's atmosphere were to be enclosed, what effects would what have?
A universe-destroying parasite is set loose, and basically earth is placed under magical quarantine. (Think of it like the world is wrapped in magical cellophane.) My question is, how would earth's ...
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2answers
156 views
Calculating an eccentric enough orbit to allow a dip into atmosphere and escape again
How would I calculate if it is possible to have an eccentric enough orbit around a gas giant to dip the periapsis some depth(how deep?) into the atmosphere of a gas giant like Jupiter or Saturn and ...
6
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3answers
143 views
Forging with geothermal heat: Possible alternative to fire in alien species' technological progression?
A world idea I'm playing with for a sci-fi idea I'm working on has an atmosphere similar to the composition of Earth's atmosphere during the Carboniferous Period: Lots of oxygen, so while a human or a ...
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2answers
118 views
Effects of long term exposure to a non-earth like rich atmosphere
Imagine that humanity found a rocky planet with earth like gravity, atmospheric pressure, and temperature, orbiting a sun-like star. The only problem is that the planets atmosphere is that it is ...
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4answers
147 views
Underground Atmosphere
I have a terrestrial planet that is similar to Mars in many ways, a desert-like surface, thin atmosphere, and inhospitable to large flora and fauna as we know it.
This planet has ceased tectonic ...
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votes
1answer
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What would be the atmospheric pressure gradient in an open pit reaching to the centre of the moon?
Inspired by this question, what would the pressure stabilize at over tens of thousands of years (at the moon's centre, surface, and any other interesting points) if you created a structurally stable ...
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5answers
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How deep must be a pit on the moon to hold atmosphere at 1ATM on the bottom
In my world I would like to create a pit on the Moon filled with air.
How deep would the pit need to be to get 1 ATM of pressure
Could the pit maintain the air or would it be lost to space?
If it ...
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4answers
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Putting oxygen on the Moon - the easy way
It would be nice if there were an atmosphere on the Moon with oxygen; in fact it could be just oxygen at 1/5 the Earth's pressure. People could live there. Now of course given the Moon's lower gravity ...
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2answers
329 views
Which unique features should have a habitable planet originating from atmosphere stripped waterworld?
Premises:
red dwarfs tend to have violent sun storms in their early years, thus are expected to strip atmosphere of planets that may be in their habitable zones;
water worlds (including planets with ...
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votes
1answer
120 views
What are materials that could give an atmosphere a deep blue color?
Here's some rough WIP pixel art of the planet I'm trying to create just to give you an idea of what I'm talking about color wise. I'm referencing the dark blue that you see at the poles of the planet.
...
