Questions tagged [earth]
For questions about planet Earth as we know it. Changed Earths (extra moon, closer solar orbit, etc) should use the [earth-like] tag.
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How quickly can a continent split and separate without an Extinction Level Event occuring
Consider an Earth-like planet. I want a large (Europe/Africa) continent to split in half, with the halves separating in a reasonably short time (by geological standards). The halves need to separate ...
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5km Portal above a Hot and Cold Climates, What happens to the weather of the area?
I'm writing a story where approximately ever 5 - 7 years, A 5km in radius portal opens up above 2 major metropolitan areas of the world. the height is about 750m - 1km up
This portal follows the rules ...
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What happens if everything is magnetic? [closed]
What would happen if everything in the Earth suddenly gained the magnetism of a standard fridge magnet? (Ignoring the fact that this would change atomic structures.) Things that were already magnetic ...
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Earth but without a "slice"
I'm writing a novel centered around this concept. Imagine that an ancient alien race created a 'slice of Earth' (meaning an area between two meridians) and isolated it from the rest of the planet. The ...
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Possibility of anachronistic fossils due to time travel
In my story, I have a character who travels back in time to Africa just after the Youngest Toba supereruption, about 74,000 years ago in order to collect genetic samples from the human survivors at ...
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When universes collide, how much of an emergency is it?
The world of Pandemonium is a world in another universe where humans may exist, that is gravitationally connected to Earth in our universe. Over the course of history since the big bang, these ...
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Consequences of an Ultra Deep Ocean [closed]
Edit:
Let’s say the Earth’s sea bottom, worldwide, became deeper by about 600 more meters. What effects would the added pressure have on the Earth’s crust, if any at all?
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Landmine detonation by air explosions?
In the story I am creating, there's a near-future Earth, where humanity is recovering from global conflict; only parts of the world have retained the science and technologies that have been widespread ...
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Will the oxygen content in atmosphere increase if we boil oceans? How much, and what's the max % increase?
From what I understand, Dissolved Oxygen is nothing but Molecular Oxygen (O2) loosely bonded with water -- and thus the bond is not chemical, and breaking it would not result to any changes in the ...
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What would happen to earth if atmospheric escape were completely stopped?
One day, the earth suddenly gets covered by a spherical barrier that allows waves (light from the sun, radio, etc.) to pass both ways, but not matter. Let's ignore the feasibility of that kind of ...
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What is the Nutritional Value of Earth?
This is Timmy. It’s a massive planetary eating monstrosity (don’t ask about Timmy), who likes to target inhabited planets. On this occasion, Timmy has chosen to feed on earth. What would the ...
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How old must The Moon be?
Some time ago, aliens placed the Moon around Earth with every intent to deceive us about its authenticity, except for the glaring synchronization that allows for total solar eclipses, as something ...
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What feature of Earth would be most likely attract the interest of aliens? [closed]
What feature of Earth would be most likely to attract the interest of a curious alien intelligence searching the Milky Way marking the Earth as an unusual world and how close would they have to be to ...
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Scooped up for military research: How realistic is it in this day and age?
Being 'scooped up' for military research - or being a creation of military research - has been a common trope of movies and TV for many years. However, in most western nations, if not most nations ...
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How would California Child Protective Services deal with a feral humantaur child?
For the last thirteen years, Kerner Syndrome children, known colloquially as humantaurs (as in the image below, having a fully functional second abdomen and second pair of legs, plus a horse-like tail ...
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What will the 2050's earth atmosphere will look like? [closed]
I'm currently developing a project where i have to design a pair of shoes that will resist all or most of the weather conditions in 2050. Due to climate change, shoes or materials used will change, i'...
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What happens if the temperature drops to -100 degrees Celsius for a short moment? [closed]
Since childhood, I have been haunted by the question: what if suddenly, for one second, the temperature drops to minus 100*С? Will my body feel it? Will it affect the environment? Maybe it will ...
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When dealing with a drought or a bushfire, is a million tons of water overkill?
The people of the Vorfall Panzer Werkstat gesellschaft build the largest aircraft in the galaxy. The pride of their fleet is currently the Gyre Explorer, which is an aircraft weighing in at 140,000 ...
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How would atmospheric pressure change in a giant hole through the earth?
A giant hole exists in the earth surrounded by a super material that can withstand the extreme temperatures and pressures from the crust to crust through the center core of the earth. It is perfectly ...
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Hiding a Continent
I've been doing quite a bit of research on how to hide an entire continent (that's located on Earth, mind you) and I've only found one even slightly possible solution which is the following: prior to ...
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Solution to Ozone depletion-Stratospheric injection?
In the mid-2020s scientists have realized that although the ozone layer is recovering, it is only doing so at an alarming slow rate. So they come up with an solution.
Many titanium tanks are put in a ...
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Under what conditions would a space battle involving a relatively large number of vessels be barely visible on the surface?
Imagine a space battle happening high above Earth (~25k miles, or ~40200 km). It's right above the observers who are standing on the planet's surface.
Both armies have the same amount of spacecraft, ...
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How would a lysosome based disease be defeated?
Essentially, in the human world of 2024 (current day tech, but no more COVID), how would humans find a way to prevent a disease that targets and destroys lysosomes, so that only animals are affected. ...
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Can climate change make humans require oxygen masks to breathe?
I'm making a story where criminals are exiled to an uninhabitable, dying, resourceless Earth.
The prisoners must wear oxygen masks/protective suits in order to breathe on Earth's now heavilly polluted ...
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How would the synodic period of Venus change if both Venus and Earth were moved equal distances away from the Sun? [closed]
Let us say that Earth and Venus are both moved 10 million additional miles from the sun. How would the synodic period of Venus appear to change for an observer on Earth? If 584 days is Venus' current ...
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What would something as hot as the sun do to its surroundings on Earth? [closed]
Introducing sun boy, he has the magical ability to maintain a constant body temperature equal to the surface of the sun. What would be his effect on his surroundings? Would he just vapourise ...
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Maximum size of an Earth-like planet that's as close to reality as possible
EDIT: by 'larger' I meant a larger radius
EDIT 2: Relaxed the elemental similarity criteria, as that is incompatible with the 1G criteria
I wanted to have my story take place on a huge, alternate ...
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What if a portal is opened from The Surface of Lake Superior to The Surface of Kraken Mare on Titan?
Both ends of the Portal are 60 meters in diameter, and are halfway submerged into the lakes at each end. Each end of the portal is located at the point of the lake farthest from shore.
Assume that the ...
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Virus extinction at the snap of a finger. Can life on Earth continue to exist normally? [closed]
An entity comes to me in my dream and says I now possess the power to exterminate any biological entity of my choice on Earth at the snap of a finger. Without giving too much thought, I decide to ...
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What geographic/climate changes does the Arabian Peninsula need to become a rainforest?
Despite being surrounded by waters on all sides, the Arabian Peninsula is mostly a massive desert. As a result, Arabia was generally a hinterland for most of early history and there aren't a lot of ...
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How can we maximize the speed of a bipedal digitigrade humanoid?
How fast can a digitigrade bipedal ape possibly run?
I've raked through any question I could find on here talking about speedy bipeds or digitigrade bipeds (that aren't robotic/synthetic), but none ...
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Why are there so many mosquitoes in the Arctic?
TL-DR: How to create a world with ecology similar to ours, that doesn't have such abominable plagues of mosquitoes in its Arctic summer?
It is tempting to think of mosquitoes as a pest of the tropics, ...
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Is there any feasible way for Antarctica have hidden oases?
Antarctica is a large barren wasteland. Located at the bottom of the world, it appears far away and forgotten. The Earth's largest desert and yet the coldest landmass. The age of exploration has come ...
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Humanity is gone. What's the timeline of vermin infestation in an abandoned wholesale supermarket club?
Due to an accident during a transdimensional handwavium experiment, every sentient being on Earth was whisked away into another dimension. Humans are gone in a fiat.
Somewhere, during temperate summer,...
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The Falling Tower of Babel
In Preventing a word from being spoken, I asked about how to prevent a word from being spoken, and the means I chose was to change humanity so that humans can no longer say the Word.
To that end, I am ...
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Sea Monster Hunting Crew Roster
I'm coming up with a crew of modern-day divers who hunt sea monsters such as the megalodon, and so far, I figure that the crew will require at least the following personnel:
Captain (commands the ...
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99.9% of the flight-capable birds died at once. How screwed is the rest of the world?
When a massive handwavium accident happened on Earth, 99.9% of all flight-capable birds worldwide, instead of dealing with it, answered with "Nope, gone to heaven."
Basically, they died ...
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What will exactly happen if a small amount of iron from the sun's core were teleported to the Earth's surface?
It is obvious that the surrounding area will become extremely hot, but I want to know other consequences if enough iron to make a sword were to be teleported to earth. Would it be possible to make a ...
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What defences did Camp David have circa 2017
The aliens whose kids sent Jormungandr, the Snakebot of Doom, have shown up at Earth, and have announced that they will be taking over administration of Earth for the foreseeable future. As part of ...
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The Secretary General of the UN is dead. Who acts in his place?
António Guterres, the Secretary General of the UN, and many other UN employees were killed when Jormungandr, the Snakebot of Doom steamrolled New York city in January 2017.
Now, in early February 2017,...
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Post-democratical political system
Question: how will this idea fail?
Preferably in a way that is fundamental, and can't be easily fixed with small changes. And politically based, being unable to respond to problems because of the ...
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Realistic Ocean Currents on a custom world
Hey I've been trying to map out some ocean currents for a planet I'm creating, called Kalmoren. I've been following an artifexian tutorial however he seems to split gyres based on the circulation ...
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Only 35 random people from disappeared Earth population are alive at any one time, how long before "new" babies are born?
Based on: If everyone in the world disappeared except 35 random people, how long would it take for one of them to realize they're not alone?
Everyone suddenly disappears from Earth except 35 ...
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How badly has the snakebot doomed the world?
First, on January 20th, 2017, the capitol cities of the Nuclear Club were destroyed by (very clean) 80 megaton nuclear blasts: Washington DC, Moscow, London, Paris, Beijing, New Delhi, Islamabad, ...
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How many people can be evacuated from Boston before it is flattened by the Snakebot of Doom?
Jormungandr, the Snakebot of Doom, has left the rubble of New York from where it has just finished destroying all the world's petroleum refineries and metal smelters, and has just made a right-hand ...
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What is a plausible reason for everyone to disappear/die except for one person?
Let's say that everyone on Earth disappears or dies spontaneously - except for one person. What would a plausible reason for this be?
Note that this isn't something gradual, like a disease wiping out ...
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An anthropomorphic personification of the new year [closed]
We humans have a long tradition of inventing personifications for otherwise impersonal events... such as Santa Claus, Krampus, the Easter Bunny, Jack Frost, the Tooth Fairy, Time, Death, Pestilence, ...
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What is the earliest that a time-traveling electric vehicle of current era could be recharged?
Taking modern gas engines into the past is hard because the fuel isn’t refined enough and damages the engines. But electricity has been the same since time began, limited by human capacity to produce ...
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Could one triple the moon’s mass without it colliding with earth if it was done slowly enough?
In my story, Earth is dead, and for religious reasons, humanity decides it needs to live on the Moon now. However, they want to triple the mass of the Moon to increase gravity to 5m/s or so. Assuming ...
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Could an alien learn human history from a time lapse of Earth?
If some alien or other organism placed a camera of some kind on the Moon’s surface and pointed it at Earth, and recorded video through all of human history, starting at the first evolution of Homo ...
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