Questions tagged [geophysics]
For questions relating to geophysics: the study, behavior, consequences, and technologies involving the physical properties of the Earth.
49
questions
2
votes
1answer
56 views
perpetual music geo machine
while traveling the world merchants have noticed the sound of many melodies repeating through night and days, in some regions melodies shift tone or speed based on the time of the day, and each region ...
3
votes
1answer
67 views
How many tectonic plates should my moon have?
I have been wondering, what factors influence the number of tectonic plates a planet would have? Are there criteria to choose the number?
Case in point, for my habitable moon project, here is the ...
1
vote
2answers
241 views
If a lightspeed impactor "clipped" the Earth, would the resultant valley remain stable for geological timespans?
Let's say that some aliens fling a hyper-super-duper-lightspeed impactor at the Earth.
They barely hit it.
Instead of a direct hit through the center of mass, the impactor "clips" the Earth ,...
3
votes
2answers
91 views
What are some means of subjecting Earth to a constant magnetic field imbalance capable of damaging or shutting down unshielded electronics?
I'm trying to make an alt-history in which electronics are constantly effected by higher-than-normal background magnetic effects - think a constant geomagnetic storm, except not necessarily caused by ...
3
votes
3answers
197 views
Any advice on what is a realistic way to use plate tectonics to create landmasses and barriers?
Recently I've taken it upon myself to create a brand new fantasy world. I created fantasy settings in the past but this is the first one with such a strong emphasis on realism and staying true to our ...
2
votes
3answers
77 views
Would there be a point to windfarms in a country surrounding a bay and is also almost fully surrounded by mountain ranges?
To better demonstrate my question, here's a very shoddily made image I made in Photoshop in under five minutes.
Essentially this country is an almost full ring of land with a natural barrier of ...
3
votes
1answer
171 views
Mountain heights - theoretical limits
I have a country bounded on three sides by fold mountains. Due to a magical plot device, the force acting to drive the upward motion of the mountains persists indefinitely, acting on the plates ...
6
votes
1answer
81 views
Would an asteroid colliding with a terrestrial planet result in the creation of extensive caves nearby the crater?
I just did some research on the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, which is the crater from the asteroid responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Yucatán itself does have ...
2
votes
2answers
198 views
How long would it take for earth to dry up?
At current global warming rates, the sea levels are rising because the ice caps are melting. But once the ice caps are all melted, the sea would stay the same.
In my world, humanity's money revolves ...
4
votes
15answers
2k views
Is there any scientific way a ship could fall off the edge of the world? [closed]
I'm trying to write a story about falling off the edge of he earth during a sea voyage and would like to incorporate as much as detailed and accurate physics as possible.
For this to work, I know ...
10
votes
3answers
1k views
What pressure, temperature and atmospheric challenges exist for human habitation 1 mile beneath the surface of the earth?
Would air pressure be demonstrably greater in a subterranean city at a depth of 1 mile? Lava tubes leading into a dormant magma chamber -- this would have challenging gasses that would need to be ...
3
votes
2answers
4k views
Black hole at the center of the planet
Okay, picture a planet so massive, a black hole has formed in its center. The minimum mass of a black hole is 22 micrograms, or the Planck mass, and whatever the core is made of, it needs to be ...
2
votes
1answer
92 views
Planet covered in non-Newtonian fluid
Basically, I watched that horrible holiday special. The animated short that introduced our friend Boba Fett, and there’s a planet that’s apparently covered completely by a non-Newtonian fluid. What ...
2
votes
2answers
186 views
Could ants thrive on mars if they stayed underground? [closed]
Lets say humans would want to populate Mars with ants. Would it be possible for an ant colony to create a self sustaining ecosystem underground on Mars, by for example farming fungi, like some ants do?...
3
votes
1answer
82 views
How to get Rodinia/Pangaea to now in a year?
I was reading this article, and noticed this section:
At the opposite end of the plates, the presence of water underground changes how easy or hard it is for one plate to subduct beneath another in a ...
8
votes
4answers
2k views
How Would the Mountains Form in This Supercontinent?
Here is a supercontinent map generated randomly from the Donjon website:
Now, hold on just a minute. Something looks wrong. The mountains in brown and white are too far inland to be caused by ...
7
votes
2answers
269 views
Does extreme atmospheric pressure increase or decrease the power of weather?
The world I have imagined is much like Venus, with an atmosphere at "sea level" 70 times that of Earth, and temperatures at the same altitude approaching 377 degrees Celsius - with much more ...
10
votes
3answers
650 views
Inverted Everest world
I want to make a world with a great deal of variation in habitability in terms of temperature and pressure. Some areas would be habitable; others less so, some would require protective clothing and ...
23
votes
8answers
4k views
Can the Little Prince's planet actually exist in our universe?
This is a drawing by my daughter which inspired one of the elements in my story/world:
The perspective is a little bit mixed here (certainly I don't have a 15 meter-high volcano in this world), but ...
3
votes
7answers
610 views
I need a possible way to flood a man-made lake located higher than sea level
I have a scenario where I need a man-made lake to overflow. It’s located higher than sea-level. There are underground streams which could be feeding it. It could have a channel to drain it into the ...
1
vote
3answers
111 views
(Semi) Believable way to quickly submerge a large landmass
I once before asked a question on how to quickly submerge a large landmass/continent.
The answers there basically concluded that literally ''Sinking'' (a la Atlantis) is pretty much impossible to do ...
2
votes
2answers
265 views
Can Florida become an island?
I've been building a world set in the near future (decades/centuries) that includes Florida as an island. My intent was for a manmade or natural event to occur at or near the South Georgia Rift, but I ...
2
votes
3answers
186 views
Could an enormous structure be used to attract rain by acting as an artificial mountain?
If it were possible to build a giant geodesic dome tens of miles in diameter, what effect would it have on nearby weather?
If built in an arid climate like the Sahara or Australia, would it be ...
8
votes
2answers
2k views
Could a robot that can survive at the center of the Earth also survive a nuclear explosion?
The robot in question is a very large, worm-like mining robot with a huge drill on its front end, built to survive staggering levels of heat and pressure. It's so resiliant, in fact, that it can ...
8
votes
3answers
372 views
Impacts of a moon falling on an Earth-like planet?
In the world my friend and I are making, the dark lord makes one of the planets uninhabitable by causing a moon, about the size of our own, to fall on it. About 7000 years later, it is unnaturally ...
6
votes
5answers
685 views
Need method to eliminate all life on planet [duplicate]
Space faring advanced species needs to 'disinfect' planets in habitual zones around stars. That's all life. They can wait a few thousand years to come back and seed the planet with a new ecosystem.
...
9
votes
3answers
353 views
How could formamide lakes form on an exoplanet?
I've been recently looking into alternative biochemistries for life and the environments were these could be found. I already asked a question about how ammonia oceans might form a while back. Today I'...
9
votes
1answer
291 views
Geothermal gradients if Earth becomes a rogue planet?
Assume Earth has been wrenched out of the Sun's orbit and has become a rogue planet, with its surface equilibrium temperature falling to ~-240C.
At what depth will temperatures remain "comfortable" ...
3
votes
5answers
300 views
How to tackle one or multiple submerged continents
A part of the story I am writing involves two continents that centuries before the story takes place sunk into the sea.
I want to have a way to explain this that does not come down to just the sea ...
6
votes
1answer
385 views
How could you build an artificial planet-sized magnetic field?
I'm conceiving of a world where humans can readily terraform worlds that were once considered "dead" due to the planet's magnetic field being long gone. In such a situation, what could humans do to ...
5
votes
0answers
74 views
Relationship between Ocean Gases and Atmospheric Gases [closed]
A version of this question is posted in Chemistry SE but doesn't seem to be getting traction there. Perhaps this SE is a bette place for this question? If you think it belongs on a different SE please ...
11
votes
1answer
466 views
Defining a superfluid ocean
I'm working on a world where water acts as a high-temperature superfluid. Specifically, H2O's lambda point is above its boiling point. Thus, all liquid water on the planet behaves as a superfluid. It ...
3
votes
4answers
3k views
If a world had a massive single giant world tree could it stop an earthquake?
You know stuff like Yggdrasil tree but just a normal tree that is the biggest and tallest in the world. If the roots grow to surpass the continental and oceanic plate either it only cover some parts ...
4
votes
5answers
373 views
How could a very strong impact on a planet create deformations on the opposite side?
Update (6/20/19):
I have received some great answer here and they all mostly point to the fact that while effects on the opposite side of the planet are possible, the deformation may or may not ...
1
vote
0answers
81 views
what effect if the world have a single massive world giant tree? [closed]
you know stuff like ygdrasil tree but just a normal tree but the biggest and tallest in the world, i wonder what the effect to the world ? for an example if the root grow to surpass the continental ...
14
votes
4answers
536 views
Can a liquid sand ocean exist naturally?
I'm talking about this sort of liquid sand:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My4RA5I0FKs
"Desert-as-sea-analog" is present in many media, but often they lean heavily into fantasy, and it seems not ...
1
vote
3answers
153 views
What Else Could Create Jeffrey Linn's Coastlines BESIDES The Influence of Ice? [closed]
Who?
Unfortunately, I could not find any background information about Jeffrey Linn, but he is better known for his sea level maps. Specifically, what a particular city would look like if sea levels ...
0
votes
5answers
133 views
How Can the Coastlines Look Similar In Spite of the Cooler Temperature
The established fact is that the shape of a planet's continental coastlines is determined by the planet's climate. Higher temperatures mean less ice, which ultimately means higher sea levels. (Case ...
2
votes
1answer
131 views
Earth tilt changes due to space launches
How many rocket launches are needed to change the axial tilt of the Earth so much that it is noticeable with instruments available today?
We can assume that we are talking about the heaviest rocket ...
1
vote
1answer
73 views
How would constant rhythmic tsunamis affect the coast lines of the Atlantic Ocean?
Premise: a massive organic structure sits somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean giving of an intermittent telekinetic pulse. This would presumably create a constant chain of tsunamis.
What sort of abnormal ...
3
votes
7answers
1k views
Creating flying cities
Writing about suspended cities within a planet's atmosphere! The story itself focuses on the air forces that fight for each of the hundreds of floating city states living in the sky, but that's here ...
3
votes
1answer
280 views
Any potential problems with the density of a planet with a volume 8 times that of Earth but the same surface gravity as Earth?
Assuming that there is an Earth-like planet that has 8 times the volume, 2.83 times the radius, and has the same surface gravity as Earth, and has oceans; what are potential problems concerning the ...
4
votes
1answer
107 views
Oceanic crust formation
I'm working on a earth-like planet with a much lower sea level (like 3000m so the mid-ocean ridge would form many islands) but is that even possible? Will the emerged ridge make some weird stuff and ...
5
votes
2answers
156 views
How might the cooling of the Earth's core be accelerated?
Essentially, what would be the most efficient way of causing the Earth's core to cool as much as possible without damaging human civilization in any other way (the outcome can damage it, but not the ...
-1
votes
1answer
157 views
Could a natural satellite in geosynchronous orbit be used as a counterweight to a space elevator?
Could a natural satellite in geosynchronous orbit be used as a counterweight for a space elevator? Does the counterweight need to be of approximately the same weight as the anchor? If so, I suppose ...
1
vote
3answers
179 views
Lifting water from a subterranean lake by boiling it?
A medieval-tech desert city relies on a nearby subterranean lake for their water source. In lieu of employing thousands of slaves carrying pots up a long series of tunnels, could the intrepid desert ...
9
votes
3answers
796 views
Is an offset mountain range plausible?
For my world, I would like a coastal mountain range that partway along its length is offset by a few (say, 100) kilometres, forming a pass through the mountains, like so:
(N.B. I've drawn this very ...
0
votes
2answers
141 views
Could there be a plausible description for a kind of radioactive ore that can amplify the energy of a host or object, or potentially destroy it? [closed]
This kind of ore should be rare (maybe from meteorites?), dangerous (radioactive?), but potentially very useful in a world where people have augmented abilities, cybernetic attachments, that sort of ...
7
votes
4answers
831 views
Can a dual planet have an orbit around the Sun similar to Earth's?
This is a sequel to my previous question How big could a moon be before its orbit became too unstable or tidally locked to its planet
OK, let's imagine that the thing everyone thought was a moon was ...
