Questions tagged [gas-giants]
For questions relating to gas giants: large planets composed of gases (usually mostly hydrogen and helium).
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Could a planet realistically share an orbit with Jupiter?
So I've been working on a project where I modify the Solar System, and I originally had a small gas planet(like 5-10 earth massses) named Juno orbiting between Jupiter and Saturn. However, as it turns ...
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Would a Gas Giant be a feasible option for in-atmosphere fighting?
Could it be possible that a large portion (80%+) of a gas giant has thin enough atmosphere that the ships don’t suffer from re-entry effects, but thick enough that conventional dogfighting tactics ...
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How to increase Jupiter’s reflectivity?
The idea of turning Jupiter into a sun to terraform the Galilean moons is a popular one. This concept goes by the alluring name of “stellification,” but has a few important drawbacks when prodded with ...
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Gas giant ecologies with more realistic weather. Sky anchors
I've always enjoyed stories that explore ideas about life in the clouds of gas giants. The Algebraist by Banks is my favorite. Though one thing that never quite rang true to me about stories like The ...
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How large should my supermassive planet's core be to prevent it from becoming a star?
My planet is a gas giant, it is called Klarloth (Inspired by a character from "Star Mouse" by Fredric Brown).
Klarloth is a strange planet. For one thing, the planet is large in size, more ...
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Calculating distance of the frost- and ice line
To begin, my star is a K type star with 0.65 solar masses.
I've inserted my star's mass in two different templates to calculate the frost line, yielding different results (2 AU and 2.68 AU).
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How many giant planets could form in a hierarchical triple star system?
The system in question has a very close binary pair of 2 G-type stars, a G9V and a G7V, orbiting at about 0.2 AU, with a K2V star in a far orbit about 300 AU out around the both of them. There is a ...
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Orbit of an earth-sized moon around a gas giant planet
I'm working on a world that is the habitable moon of a gas giant planet. For simplicity's sake, assume that the moon is about exactly Earth-size, and the gas giant planet is roughly Jupiter-sized, ...
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Size of a gas giant with an Earth-sized moon
I am working on a world that is an Earth-sized planet that was captured by a gas giant planet moving inward in the solar system, then becoming a moon. Through magic and hand-waving mechanisms, the ...
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Cloud formations on an ocean-covered moon
Vimala is a Luna-mass moon, orbiting a large gas giant in a yellow star system. Though it is two AU from its star, (and therefore outside the habitable zone) tidal heating helps it to support liquid ...
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How close could a gas giant be to my planet without it becoming a moon?
This is an M-type system. Let's take Trappist 1 as an example star (0.0898 Mass of the Sun) and Trappist 1e as an example planet (0.772 mass of the earth, approx 0.029 AU from the star). Assume for ...
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Aeroponic farming in a gas giant
In the setting of my projects there is a gas giant (with a mass of about 3 jupiters) that migrated within the habitable zone, as such it's outer atmosphere would feature plenty of water wapor and have ...
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What would be the size of the outer asteroid belt in this system?
I am following the Artifexia-like system building with the calculator. Per the calculator, my system looks like this:
I am having trouble calculating the inner and outer limits of the second asteroid ...
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Can Integral Trees be Sailed?
In the book The Integral Trees by Larry Niven, he presents people living in a novel environment. There is a neutron star (quite old and so cooled off mostly) around a more ordinary star. And orbiting ...
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Can a rocky planet form between gas giants?
The Question
I am working on filling in the planets of the Ilus system. I am setting up a strange, huge, low density, sort of habitable world in the gap between two gas giants. Is there a way for a ...
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What compounds could be used to dye a gas giant the colour of a rainbow?
So, we have an incredibly advanced clarkean civilisation who, having achieved godlike technology, have taken to transforming whole planets and solar systems into works of art. One of these is Rainbow, ...
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Making a moon habitable through tidal heating
Let’s say we have a Star system with a gas giant about 30 AU from the local sun. This is way too far for this particular sun to warm any moons to habitability (unless life inhabits subsurface oceans) ...
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If a gas giant became a star, what type would it be?
The concept of gas giant stellification has always interested me. I would however like to know: if a gas giant, (let’s say Neptune) was stellified by increasing its mass to trigger a temporary fusion ...
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Is my gas giant possible?
I'm designing a gas giant for my solar system with a mass close to that of Jupiter (around 315 Earth masses). Now I wanted my gas giant to be mostly brown but also with purple colored stripes and ...
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Saturnian Cloud-Cities Pt. 6 :- Geothermal Cables Vs Stupendously Large Airships
In my previous questions, I discussed the possibility of cloud cities on Saturn
And there were a few technologies which could be useful for the colony. The cloud-cities in question are giant airships,...
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Terraforming a gas giant by freezing the "gas" and "liquid" and removing it by huge impacts
In my setting, humans want to colonize Jupiter, so as to establish an outpost in the outer Solar System, but cannot due to a barrage of reasons.
Jupiter's gravity is really high and would prove to be ...
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Could dark matter be used to change a star's position in the main sequence?
Helioforming is the ignition of gas giants of various sizes, or black dwarves, to create protostellar or even stellar celestial bodies. This can be achieved in two ways: compression or mass increase, ...
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Thorne Zytkow Planets $-$ Can a Gas Giant have a Neutron Star core?
Said gas giant is about 5 times the mass of Jupiter, hence a Super-Jupiter. This gas giant is rogue and has no parent star. Its composition is the same as regular gas giant, i.e. it is composed of ...
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Should we use Saturn as a future base for colonization?
Despite being a gas giant, and being chilly cold, there are a few reasons I believe Saturn would be an ideal habitat for future colonisation, and here are a few justifications:
Saturn actually has a ...
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Could harvesting antimatter from a Gas giant's van Allen Belts be feasible?
Could a sufficiently advanced civilization feasibly harvest antimatter from the van allen belts of a gas giant and use it for fast interplanetary travel.
The main idea stemmed from this video, among ...
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How would the landscape of a gas giant's core-mantle boundary look like? [closed]
In my setting, the characters live at the bottom of a gas giant's metallic hydrogen ocean, just above the rocky core. There the dense metallic hydrogen acts as the ‘air’ and the core as the ‘ground’ ...
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Plausibility check : an habitable exomoon
Is this moon plausible
this moon is a little bit smaller than our moon
it has thick atmosphere. so much so that floating algae thrive in the wind.
the moon is not too close to its planet nor it's ...
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Where can lithium be found in the Solar System?
My question is pretty straightforward, beside earth, what celestial bodies could hold exploitable quantities of lithium-7 and lithium-6?
I understand that lithium is a scarce element in our universe. ...
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Would Moons of a gas giant appear to phase when looking at them from another, tidally-locked Moon?
I'm designing a fantasy world on a tidally-locked moon of a gas giant. Because it's primarily a medieval fantasy set on the outward-facing side of the home moon, I'd like to keep units of time similar ...
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Conditions for tilted gas giants [closed]
I have been working on further refining the solar system that would serve as the setting for my narrative project and in particular I'd like to settle one issue that's been on my mind.
I have been ...
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Would my gas giant have rings?
The gas giant in question is about 3 times the mass of jupiter with a density of 3.58 grams per cubic centimeter. It formed naturally beyond the system's forstline and then migrated into the habitable ...
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How to make tides on my world less destructive?
I am currently developing an habitable moon oribiting a gas giant in a resonant orbit, however at the current time I am concerned about the effect of the gas giant on my world when it comes to tidal ...
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Could a space faring civilization extract valuable resources from a gas giant?
I have been developing an advanced civilization inhabiting a world orbiting a gas giant about 3 times the mass of jupiter, the conditions have already been tuned to allow life to develop over its ...
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How big would my habitable moon's primary planet appear in the nightsky in these two situations?
How much bigger than earth's moon would my habitable moon's primary appear in the nightsky? And is there a way to calculate how bright it would be in lux when it is illuminated in full?
Here is the ...
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Is this habitable moon formation scenario plausible?
My and my teams' works take place on a moon orbiting as giant about 3 times the mass of jupiter (possessing also a massive moon system) in a solar system with an F-star and be either the first, third ...
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How bad would tides be on an habitable moon orbiting a gas giant in a 5:2 resonance (meaning not actual tidal locking)?
I have been working on an habitable moon (roughly 0.7 to 0.9 times the mass of the earth) orbiting a gas giant about 3 times the mass of jupiter and I have been thinking about a scenario in which I'd ...
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What are the conditions required for a tidally locked world to be in orbital resonance?
I have been looking into the orbital mechanics of tidally locked worlds lately and saw some interesting things. Namely that would-be tidally locked moons/planets can have rotation periods that differ ...
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How can a gas giant's magnetosphere affect a supposedly habitable tidally locked moon orbiting it?
I have been working on an habitable moon orbiting a gas giant about 3 times the mass of jupiter and lately I have been having issues assessing how the giant's magnetosphere may affect it. To give you ...
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Habitability of my world
For a big narrative project of mine I and my team developed an habitable moon that revolves around a gas giant in a star system with an F-star. I wanted to know what you think about it and if you ...
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Life in a Neptune atmosphere?
https://phys.org/news/2021-06-life-atmosphere-sub-neptune-planet.html This article suggests that if extremaphiles were transported by meteorite to a neptune-like planet they might be able to establish ...
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Floating islands in a gas giant
A highly improbable mini-Neptune develops (naturally or artificially) an atmospheric layer perfectly suited for carbon-based air-breathers like us: a livable ratio of oxygen to helium/nitrogen/argon/...
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How long should a Life-Harboring Mega-Moon's orbit around its Mother Planet be?
Damarian, the world I'm building, is the largest moon of its gas giant planet, Checuti. Damarian's diameter is 19,113 km, but its gravity is nearly the same as Earth's (It' largely made out of a ...
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how would a semi-permanent colony orbiting Jupiter protect itself from radiation?
It seems like the Jupiter system is especially attractive in terms of natural resources, and while I assume the majority of any extraction labor will be performed by machines, I also figure there will ...
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What kind of ecosystem would naturally develop on a relatively large outer moon of a gas giant?
As far as I know, moons that orbit a gas planet from a greater distance are less likely to be tidally locked, more likely to have a retrograde rotation but tend to have unstable orbits and axial tilts....
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Light reflecting off a gas giant onto its moon
Okay, thanks to Ash, I know how to calculate the percent power of light hitting a planet at various angles. It is equal to cos(θ)2, where θ is the incident angle. I have a gas giant with a radius of ...
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Is the following plausible: a moon at an L1 point orbits a gas giant, which orbits a sun. the moon is submerged in half daylight half moonlight
I'm writing a sci-fi & fantasy novel, I won't get into details, but in essence it's set on a fantasy moon that orbits a gas giant, which orbits a sun. The moon is at an L1 (Lagrange 1) point, and ...
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What would a carbon-based organism encounter deep in Saturn?
Saturn's predominant lifeform begins with allotropes of elemental carbon: graphene, diamond, nanotubes and geodesic shapes. These are doped in places with nitrogen, phosphorus, and germanium. (...
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How bright is night on a moon orbiting a gas giant?
I have an Earth-like moon tidally-locked to a gas giant that is Saturn-like but without rings. On the side facing the gas giant, how much brighter would nights appear when the gas giant is fully ...
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What Kinds of Gas Giants Would Work Best in Orbiting an Orange-Dwarf Binary?
The term "gas giant" is, surprisingly, not uniform. It turns out that there are far more to the gas giants than Jovian or Saturnian. I won't list you all of them, just those that I find ...
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What would happen on the surface of a terrestrial planet captured by a gas giant?
So, from what I've read of Porter & Grundy (2011), most gas giant planets orbiting within their star's habitable zones are thought to have migrated there from further out in the solar system, with ...
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