Questions tagged [gas-giants]
For questions relating to gas giants: large planets composed of gases (usually mostly hydrogen and helium).
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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(theta))^2, where theta is incident angle. I have a gas giant with a ...
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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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2answers
390 views
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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Could a habitable gas giant with an electropshere exist?
So, there are several questions on this site about gas giants. In particular, I am mostly building off of this one:
Could a gas giant with layer similar to Earth atmosphere exist?
This question seems ...
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Tropical Moon Orbiting Gas Giant [duplicate]
I am asking this question, “How would it be possible for the moon of a gas giant to naturally be habitable for human life?” Specifically, I’m looking at these criteria:
Has a tropical climate with ...
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2answers
213 views
Plausibility of a habitable gas giant atmosphere
So I was watching Issac Arthur videos recently, about colonizing the other planets of our solar system. And it was pointed out that Neptune and Venus have atmospheres and gravity such that an airship ...
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2answers
391 views
Is my binary planet realistic?
I had this idea for a terrestrial planet-ice giant binary system. Both planets had their origin inside the outer solar system but were moved into the habitable zone by a passers-by black hole.
The ...
8
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2answers
330 views
Gaseous moons: Are they possible?
Our solar system has 4 gas giants(Uranus and Neptune are technically ice giants, but who cares), which share nearly 200 moons amongst them. Yet all of these moons, even the giant ones like Ganymede, ...
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Would a laser relay work better on the surface of an airless body or in orbit?
Background:
In the early 22nd century, a laser station has been established on Uranus' moon, Cordelia to shoot chunks of frozen deuterium into the inner solar system for fusion fuel. However, the ...
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How could a station on Cordelia be designed in order to extract helium-3 and deuterium from Uranus? [closed]
Some details:
At the end of the 21st century, the first expedition to Uranus launches to mine helium-3 and deuterium from its atmosphere. The plan involves a tether dangled into the upper atmosphere ...
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2answers
181 views
What conditions to make this habitable moon plausible?
I'm trying to figure out how to make this gas giant moon habitable.
Here are the factors involved:
Moon is sub-temperate, mountainous with a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, with the planet being mainly ...
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6answers
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How could a breathable ultra-high pressure atmosphere form?
Some background: I'm developing a world that could, theoretically, be inhabitable by humans (with a high enough recruitment success to at least keep a stable population), randomly determining ...
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1answer
208 views
Properties of an Argon based gas giant
I am writing a novel where a habitable moon orbits a purple gas giant. In looking here and elsewhere I'm finding it incredibly hard to get a sense of the elements-breakdown of elements that would be ...
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3answers
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Is it possible for a moon to stay on the same side of its planet relative to the sun?
I'm building an earthlike world that has a moon orbiting a gas giant. Is it possible for the moon to always be between the planet and the sun? Also, is it possible for a moon to rotate around its own ...
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2answers
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General characteristics of an “aircraft” for gas-planet atmospheres?
In the future gas giants, ice giants, mini neptunes and gas dwarfs have been colonised. The colonisers use either hot hydrogen or vacuum in rigid ballons to keep their cloud cities up in the endless ...
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1answer
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How changing planetary ring affects the migration of terrestrial fauna?
Imagine a gas giant as massive as Jupiter has a enormous planetary ring which will expand and contract throughout its orbit around a main sequence star.
Then there is a moon as massive as Mars and ...
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3answers
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How to get a habitable moon without too long day-night cycle?
It appears that there are gas giants in habitable zones of stars, and likely some of them should have moons that are big enough to have an Earth-like world, so that part should be plausible enough.
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Can a Jupiter-Like Gas Giant Have Deep, Dark Storms?
For this question, I was inspired by the following image of the "Jupiter Abyss":
What I want to know is, can a Jupiter-like gas giant have thousands of giant black storms, kind of like what I've ...
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2answers
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Harvesting Energy from Gas Giants
In my world, humans live on a moon of a gas giant that has extreme weather conditions. They also:
have crystals that can store energy.
possess the ability to make floating islands (on which they can ...
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1answer
181 views
Is it possible to calculate how long a moon takes to orbit a gas giant?
if it takes the moon 6 months to pass through the gas giants shadow? Assume it is distant enough to not be tidally locked. The gas giant is 112.5 AU from the star. The star is 55 solar masses. It ...
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3answers
363 views
Gas Giant with solid surface
I have the feeling the answer to this will come down to ''impossible'' but let's ask anyway to be sure.
We know gas Giants have no solid surface and if you tried to land on one you would fall into ...
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1answer
226 views
Heating a gas giant's moons in a red dwarf system
Being new, this is my first question. I've read some other posts that gave me valuable insight, but I still have some questions.
First, some specifics:
Star: red dwarf. 80 x jupiter mass. 3 billion ...
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1answer
188 views
Can liquid water exist on the moons of this gas giant?
This is an edited hopefully more focused version of a question I asked a while ago. I made the mistake of asking too many questions the first time so I’ll try and be a bit more focused here.
I drew ...
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1answer
439 views
Brown Dwarf Star vs Gas Giant as parent for habitable moon
I seek to build a habitable moon of a giant planet, thus I looked at the Rouche Limit Equation to figure out how to get the biggest possible Hill Sphere for my moon to exist in.
$r_H = a(1-e)\sqrt[3]{...
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1answer
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How to explain planetary rings pulsating?
A spacecraft enters an unnamed system and spotted a gas giant with a pulsating planetary ring, it glows bright intermittently. What natural phenomenon could be responsible for such brilliant display? ...
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The Mighty Generation Ship Jupiter
"The planet moves."
Inspired by this link in a comment from Gryphon here, I also see the concept in this question.
We've colonized the moons of Jupiter adjusted their orbits to our satisfaction (to ...
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2answers
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Temperature and climate “under” the gas giant in a tidally locked moon
I've begun the laborious (but fun!) process of putting another world together.
Known constraints include:
Habitable, (super-)Earth-sized, tidally-locked moon to a gas giant; the giant, where visible,...
5
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1answer
399 views
Mining Metallic Hydrogen
The Hegemony is in need of superconductors for their fleets of stratospheric craft (stratocraft for short) as well as many, many, many other applications. I recently read metallic hydrogen is a ...
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3answers
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Life on a gas giant?
I know of the conceptualized "Sinkers", "Floaters" and "Hunters" that Carl Sagan and Edwin Salpeter of Cornell conceived of - as possible life forms that might inhabit a gas giant. At the time they ...
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12answers
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Would gas giants work as waste disposal sites?
In my novel, the many moons of Jupiter and Saturn have been colonized, but I'm running into some logistical problems - namely, waste disposal. My first instinct was to dump it on-moon; while this is ...
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1answer
183 views
Could this moon of a gas giant orbiting a neutron star support life?
Making the following assumptions:
1. The three moons of the Gas Giant are safe enough distances from and massive enough not to pull each other apart or send themselves careening into the void.
2. ...
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2answers
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What are some plausible formation explanations of a non-hot “Fluffy” Gas Giant planet?
So, in my research and preparation for the question I asked immediately before this one, I was introduced to the concept of "fluffy" gas giants, gas giants with significantly lower density than would ...
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1answer
498 views
Feasible star + planet + moon combo? Did I miss anything that makes this system wildly unstable or otherwise impossible?
Here's what I've come up with:
The star:
A main sequence star, roughly a sol analogue
Younger than Sol (say 3-3.5 billion years old)
roughly the same starting mass as Sol, but has had less time to ...
10
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3answers
631 views
What is the maximum orbital time for my moon around my planet?
I fear the math involved is beyond my capabilities on this one. I have what I consider to be more than a Layman's understanding of the physics involved, and I believe I can follow the math well ...
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3answers
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Are there any plausible 'alternative' methods of planetary formation?
The selected answer on this question provides an extremely good, and detailed, description of what is generally accepted to be the main (only?) way a terrestrial planet can form, i.e. through ...
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2answers
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What kind of Gas Giant has a “safe zone” between the radiation from a star and the radiation from a gas giant planet?
This is a progression from my first question, here
(if this is too similar to my original question, please let me know of a better way to address this, as I am not getting the answers I need on that ...
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1answer
943 views
Can a habitable moon rely on the magnetosphere of its parent planet for radiation protection?
Science-based answers, please.
Key points:
the main concern is radiation protection for sustainability of human life (and accompanying plant and animal life ecosystems, whether earth-like or not). ...
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1answer
78 views
Which side of a tidally locked moon experiences higher radiation?
Looking most specifically regarding the moons around Saturn, Jupiter, and Uranus. I've been unable to get a concrete answer on this through various sources. I've actually read several articles briefly ...
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Added Difficulties of Space Flight on Gas Giant Moons?
What additional difficulties might the inhabitants of a gas giant moon face when attempting to launch spacecraft beyond their moon's orbit, especially beyond the planetary system? I presume that they'...
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1answer
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What would be the composition of a habitable gas giant
Lets imagine a gas giant called Eurus.
It would have a diameter a bit smaller than saturn, but a gravity weaker than earth (92% earth's gravity). It would also be located 15 000 000 km away from its ...
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1answer
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Calculating Radiation Zones of Gas Giants and the Effects on Its Moons? [closed]
How would I determine the radiation fields, if any, of a gas giant planet? What effect would this have on its moons if they have magnetic fields like the Earth does, and are inhabited?
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Calculating The Albedo of a Gas Giant With Earth-Like Moon(s) [closed]
How can you determine how bright a gas giant would be, especially if it has inhabited moons with an Earth-like atmosphere?
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2answers
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How Large Would A Gas Giant Appear To Be To The Inhabitants Of An Earth-like Moon Orbiting it? [duplicate]
How large would a gas giant realistically appear to be on an Earth-like moon? I think a movie or two has portrayed them as very large, but that's an exaggeration, right? Depending on the size and ...
