Questions tagged [gas]
For questions about chemical substances in gaseous form, and their interactions with other elements of a world. Consider also [atmosphere].
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Adaptations for a planet with high atmospheric pressure, to avoid nitrogen narcosis?
I'm building a some hypothetical habitable planets for a book, and one of these planets has a thick atmosphere (around 10 bar). I'm not sure if it's even possible, but I want to figure out how the ...
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Could Mages which can control London Dispersion Meaningfully Control the Air [closed]
Alright, so I've been trying to figure out my magic system for my story, and I'm trying to figure out how I could have water mages that were actually powerful. My fundamental idea behind the magic ...
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Gas or Electric for a Zombie Apocalypse [closed]
This question is referring to tools, like chainsaws and weedwhackers.
Gas would be easier to get, being a liquid form that can be stockpiled, but gas tools are loud and leave fumes.
Meanwhile, ...
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How Would A Liquid Water Ocean Behave When Interacting With A Supercritial CO2 Ocean?
Assume an exoplanet like a colder (roughly habitable temperatures throughout) Venus with liquid water and a layer of supercritical carbon dioxide at the bottom of it's ocean basins. What would happen ...
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Methods of releasing nitrogen from martian regolith
One important step in the proposed terraforming Mars would be to give the planet a nitrogen atmosphere.
Now, most assume that nitrogen, (along with water and other luxuries of the sort) would have to ...
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How do I calculate air pressure at various altitudes within a planet-sized pressurized container?
I'm building a world consisting of floating landmasses located entirely within an indestructible rectangular prism that is 10,000km wide, 10,000km long, and 4,000km tall. If I want air pressures to be ...
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Would Liquid CO2 form a Separate Layer Beneath the Ocean?
In the series of stories that I'm writing, I have a star system with one of its outer planets being a world with a thick carbon dioxide atmosphere, similar to venus, but it's far enough out to be room ...
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Red mist: what could create such a phenomenon?
In my science fiction story,there is a phenomenon happening on the moon that looks like a red mist (or nebula, if you will). This mist can slowly move around, because it is controlled by an advanced ...
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Properties of a Radon balloon [closed]
I have a regular-old rubber balloon and I want to fill it up with Radon. As luck may have it, I recently stumbled across a magical Radon-generator at a military-surplus sale. What would happen if I ...
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Can a gas grenade contain microbots that can grow inside a person's lungs?
In a war, can grenades spew out gas that contains nanobots that if breathed in, clings to human lung cells, then expands up to 100x their size? This gas is absolutely packed with these bots, and they ...
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Is an atmosphere's oxygen partial pressure or concentration more biologically significant?
I'm confused about the relationship between partial pressure and concentration of a gas, in relation to the biology of respiration. If I have a planet with high atmospheric pressure - maybe like 10 ...
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Could a planet much larger than earth have the same gravity if it were hollow?
Now- this is probably a stupid question but hear me out.
If the planet I want to imagine were much larger than earth, would it have to have a massive difference in gravity?
It sounds extremely ...
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Death in a computer room
Years ago, computer rooms used Halon gas to extinguish fires in computer rooms by depriving the room swiftly of oxygen, killing the fire, but keeping expensive equipment safe (vs. sprinkler systems). ...
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Could a planet with lower atmospheric nitrogen be habitable?
I'm designing a lower gravity planet that I want to stay relatively warm despite having less atmosphere. My solution to this is to increase relative the amount of greenhouse gas, so this planet's ...
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How much gasoline does there need to be to ignite and cause a fire in a small shed? [closed]
I'm trying to write a story where a gas leak causes an explosion. How much minimum gas would there need to be for a small shed/small room to ignite when a match is lit in there?
The doors and windows ...
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Gas behavior in geosynchronous orbit
I am trying my hand at worldbuilding a sci-fi setting, specifically a partial/broken ringworld. Specifically I have trouble wrapping my head around gases. I have 3 scenarios, solutions of which will ...
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How can we make a dense atmosphere allowing floaters, that would be toxic for humans to breathe?
I think that balloon aliens are an interesting alien body plan. It is something practically never seen on earth and the only lifeforms I’m aware of that do anything similar are kelp that have tiny ...
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Keeping the global average temperature at current levels if the Earth moves away from the Sun. What is the limit?
Suppose that due to an encounter with a rogue planet, the Earth is propelled out of the Solar system. It will then get gradually colder on Earth. We can try to restore the global temperature to the ...
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Are there any heavier-than-air gases that could be made using medieval tech and have military applications?
I am trying to find a gas that would be used as a weapon, which could also be made by someone in a medieval setting. The gas doesn’t have to be explicitly deadly, but anything that would incapacitate ...
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Gas lighter than air
I'm in the process of creating flying creatures big enough to be mounted, but there's a problem: the bigger the size, the heavier the weight, the heavier the weight, the more difficult (or even ...
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What could a weakness be for a gaseous species?
I am currently working on a space opera setting, and I wanted to include a gaseous species of sapient aliens that hail from a gas-giant reminiscent of Jupiter.
Before I ask my question, I wanted to ...
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What kind of substance that existed in the Middle Ages could, when ignited, potentially destroy everything within several miles?
I am a DM for a homebrew D&D 5e game. In terms of technology, the time period loosely takes place somewhere between 1100 and 1400 CE (so High Middle Ages to Late Middle Ages).
The villain of my ...
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How could fluoride salts occur naturally?
I've been looking around the internet but I can't seem to find out how fluoride salts would form naturally. My end goal is for my planet to have a mildly high concentration of hydrofluoric acid pools, ...
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Calculating the Atmospheric Properties of an Exoplanet
I am developing a double-star system filled with several planets, a few of which will be habitable. I also have a spreadsheet file full of all the planets information, from Semi-Major Axis, orbital ...
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How strong would the wind have to be to strip away flesh?
How fast would air have to move for the gas molecules to strip away at a person's body until nothing is left? I would prefer that actual formulas are used and that it takes less than a few seconds for ...
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Vacuum airships
Airships fly thanks to their weight. The m3 you occupy should be lighter than the m3 of whatever you want to float around in (bit of a simplification). To achieve this they make a big balloon and fill ...
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Could the vaporization of all the oceans push away most of the air in the atmostphere?
You may remember my question here, part of which assumed that all humans would die in one way very quickly, with minimal destruction to the planet.
This question will ask about the way humans would ...
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What would be the effects of changing the composition of air in order to increase its density?
In another question, I asked how airships could be made more viable. The first (and so far only) promising solution I came up with is to increase the density of air.
In the real world, air (on Earth) ...
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How can a monster infested dungeon keep out hazardous gases?
There is a newly discovered dungeon believed to be made up of a series of interconnected tunnels and caverns that runs deep beneath the ground, the place is thriving with all kind of terrifying ...
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If an astronaut could remove their helmet in space, would Flight Control hear any sound during depressurization?
I assume it all comes down to how long would it take for the oxygen in an astronaut's helmet to evacuate.
I figured it would happen in less than a second, and no sound would be picked up by the ...
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Effects of Tear Gas on Miniature Drones
In this setting, most if not everyone has one or more personal drones. Think robotic hummingbird: same mode of flight, same speed and maneuverability, but no lungs. Instead of internal organs, they ...
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Shaped Wind Charges
I have a character that can create compressed air spheres. If you were to create just a normal sphere of compressed air, it would expand in all directions equally at a speed and force that would ...
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Is a human body more dense (higher mass/volume) if acclimated to a higher ambient pressure (like in saturation diving)?
Say we are a person sitting in a diving bell and have saturated (acclimated) to an ambient pressure of 5 MPa = 5,000,000 $kg/m/s^2$, breathing a mixture of 99% helium, 0.8% oxygen, and 0.2% impurities ...
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How much neon would need to be in an Earth-like atmosphere to tint it considerably orange/red?
I'm creating a planet for a game I'm making that has orange-red skies. My explanation that I've currently come up with is that the atmosphere has a much higher neon content than Earth does. At the ...
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Where could you obtain neon/argon in 1931 Las Vegas?
First question ever asked, so apologies if I've done this incorrectly!
My current predicament: characters in 1931 Las Vegas are looking to get their hands on some neon/argon (for use in neon signs). ...
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Resources to justify the use of musical instruments in an alien planet?
Well, basically I was thinking on a planet where humans live above clouds/a certain atmosphere level, because down there is (darker and colder? hotter and harder to breath? full of creatures?) ...
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Calculating average sea-level air pressure
Right now I'm currently trying to calculate the average surface pressure at sea level of an atmosphere, but I'm having a struggle finding the relevant formulae with which to determine this number. ...
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Navigating a sea of sulfur hexafluoride
Sulfur hexafluoride is pretty awesome. It is a gas six times denser than regular air, and thus you can actually make tinfoil "boats" float on it. It also makes your voice deep when you breathe it in.
...
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How does composition change if you extend an Earthlike atmosphere 50km below sea level?
I'm working to design the atmosphere of a fictional planet inspired by Venus (let's call it Cael).
Cael's atmosphere at an altitude of 50 km is essentially identical to Earth's atmosphere at sea ...
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What could cause Fluorocarbons to be present in an Earth-like atmosphere?
Pretty simple (in theory that is) question for one of my worlds. I heard carbon fluorides are intense greenhouse gases but otherwise harmless and didn't lead to large issues (atleast none that I could ...
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Imagine a well functioning atmosphere on the terraformed moon
Just assume we are long into the future, all other parameters have been met and we have the technology, will and money to terraform our moon and keep it so.
Atmosphere, as commonly agreed on, would ...
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Nonflammable flight gas
What would be a lighter-than-air gas that is also not flammable, and would be fairly easy to produce in a modern-style world?
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How could an animal "smell" carbon monoxide?
Carbon monoxide (CO) is a colorless, odorless, and tasteless flammable
gas that is slightly less dense than air.
So begins Wikipedia's article on carbon monoxide (CO). To the best of my internet ...
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Can you make a star from other gases, and how long would they last?
In my Conworld, the inhabitants have discovered a type of star they cannot identify. I would like it to be a star made not from just hydrogen and helium, like our sun and countless others. But my ...
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Hot air balloons lifting bridges in volcanic areas are possible?
In this world, there is a land isolated by a lava line, and the only way to get in there, is across a bridge levitated by hot air balloons.
I had the idea of making a wooden bridge being supported by ...
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Separating light gases from heavy without chemistry
How do steampunk civilizations get lifting gas?
Inspired by the above question I was tempted to suggest collecting the gases rising from public toilets.
I know that human gaseous emissions contain ...
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What gas can I use to incapacitate pesky heroes?
Supposing I have a room currently occupied by Jedi Knights, or some other force that I can't defeat with battle droids and brute strength. I wish to incapacitate the occupants of this room with a gas, ...
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Fantastic gas, part 2: what would be the source of a subterranean gas that's not organic in origin?
Natural gas comes can be found in the underground, but its origin are the organic rests of a long time ago. However, my gas doesn't come from dead trees or anything like that. So what's an alternative ...
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Fantastic gas, part 1: could a gas be 'polluted', 'rarified', or otherwise react negatively to electricity, excluding methane-like explosions?
I previously asked a broad enough question about designing a fictional gas but it was advised by two users to split it into smaller questions. So here I am.
The main property I want this gas to have ...
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Can you have reduced visibility (due to fog) but an atmosphere that is still breathable?
Is it possible to have an atmosphere that is essentially fog, but still be breathable by humans?
I'm basically looking to have an environment where visibility is very low (for suspense reasons) even ...
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