Questions tagged [habitability]
For questions asking about the conditions which are required for the development of life as we know it.
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Through natural means, what could protect a rocky planet from intense x-rays from a black hole WITHOUT the expense of creating life?
I thought I had it.
I thought I had finally found the solar system with enough light to produce hundreds if not thousands of Earths. I thought that a black hole 12 billion times more massive than our ...
8
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2answers
167 views
Habitability zone around a Supermassive Black Hole
I have just found perhaps the biggest thing in the universe: A black hole named SDSS J010013.02+280225.8. It itself is 12 billion times more massive than our sun, and its accretion disk is 439 ...
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Would my revised gas giant moon be habitable?
I have recently reworked the parameters of my habitable moon and I would really appreciate if you could tell me wether or not it would be hospitable to life for a sufficiently long period of time, ...
3
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2answers
116 views
How habitable and different would an habitable stagnant-lid (no tectonics) world be?
Recently I was informed of the possibility of having an habitable world lacking tectonic plates, specifically of something called heat-pipe tectonics. Which is essentially the same tectonic system ...
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3answers
71 views
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 ...
4
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2answers
81 views
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 ...
3
votes
1answer
149 views
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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1answer
93 views
The plausibility of this atmosphere? and what the problems that it case?
The atmosphere have ~1 atm pressure at sea level, It does have water ocean maybe 10-30% of the surface, also it supports tectonic plates so the carbon cycle does work, and the Ocean is made mainly of ...
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1answer
107 views
Could any Earth-based species survive on a supermassive terrestrial planet?
In the far future, a fleet of human settlers arrives in a star system containing an unusual planet; 90 times the mass of Earth, with only 3 times the radius. Rocky planets with similar mass are known ...
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1answer
62 views
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 ...
3
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1answer
118 views
How Habitable are these Planets?
For the book I'm writing for my world, Damarian, the villains of the series (The NUSA, America's descendant) are banished off Damarian (Spoilers). The banished are shipped off, but 3 groups formed, ...
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2answers
121 views
How would a person live on a gas giant?
I had an idea of a character in my story living on the bottom of the upper atmosphere in some sort of space station or ship. Would living like this in a gas giant be possible like on Bespin from Star ...
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4answers
154 views
Why is this planet such a bad place to live? [closed]
Admiral Edwin Witt was obsessed with discovering a habitable world so future generations would remember his name. After decades of searching, he found a world that challenges the very definition of ...
3
votes
2answers
116 views
Fake, Heatless Sun-like object hovering over a person on Earth, how deadly it would be?
Above the Crimson King in my story is a sun-like paetheon-sized asteroid (5.8 km in diameter) that follows him and never sets.
This is not an asteroid actually but i call it false sun and it appears ...
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2answers
123 views
Would this planet be habitable for intelligent lifeforms
I am trying to make a universe using math and this is a planet from the first solar system I am making. Firstly the star. This star, which I don't have a name for, has a mass of 1.3 solar masses, a ...
6
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2answers
103 views
Reef World 4 - Flora
Piggybacking on the previous “Reef World” questions.
Let’s talk Flora and how it adds to life and the environment on Reef World.
The entire planet is mostly covered in shallow ocean, but not ...
3
votes
1answer
103 views
Can a water world be turned into a dryer habitable planet by an early runaway greenhouse effect?
Consider an Earth clone with oceans several hundred kilometers deep, potentially deep enough to solidify into exotic ices. Such a planet would lose its initial hydrogen and helium atmosphere when the ...
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3answers
622 views
Placing a planet on the famous Escape Velocity Graph
If I'm understanding the chart correctly, in order for a planet with lower gravity than Earth (smaller than Earth), but with decent magnetosphere, to hold on to an atmosphere with oxygen, and water on ...
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2answers
178 views
Is My Moon Realistic?
Okay, I have this tropical moon that orbits a gas giant, and is suitable for human life. It has a radius of .9 Earth radii, a mass of .8704 Earth masses, a density of 6585 kg/m3, and a surface gravity ...
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2answers
145 views
Habitability of a Low Axial Tilt Planet with a Planetary Ring
So, I'm creating a world for a science fantasy setting. It has magic and such, but since it's mainly taboo to use it, I want the world's climate to be based on hard scientific facts.
My world has an ...
5
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2answers
248 views
If Thorne–Żytkow Objects Exist, How Far/Wide Would Their Habitable Zones Be?
First proposed in 1977 by physicist Kim Thorne and astronomer Anna Żytkow, a...you know what? Let's just call it a TZO, sounds easier that way. Anyway, a TZO is supposedly a giant or even a ...
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3answers
322 views
Could there be a star where humans could survive for a short time?
This honestly sounds like it's basically impossible, but here we go anyway.
We've picked up a strange reading from a spot orbiting a star in a system elsewhere in the Milky Way galaxy. We've come into ...
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1answer
99 views
Conditions for intelligent and diverse life at high altitudes
I'm making a planet which hosts three distinct layers of floating islands, each higher than the last one. The islands should be reasonably thick, ranging from a couple hundred metres to three or four ...
3
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5answers
276 views
Binary planets system day/night cycle
My story has two planets separated by ~35,000 miles of empty space- tidally locked through a magic "planetary anchor" light rope that connects the two planets and keeps them at that exact ...
7
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2answers
725 views
How would I make a natural, long-lived red giant star?
I have a system in which the main habitable planets are on the many moons of a super-neptune. The ice giant has not migrated inwards, but rather the habitable zone has expanded outwards due to the red ...
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3answers
189 views
What if a moon orbits far away and extremely fast?
Imagine an Earth-massed moon orbiting around a Saturn-massed planet in a period of 28 days. This calculation tells me that is possible if the moon is 1.8 million km away. If so, the moon must be ...
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A Habitable Zone Within a Habitable Zone--Would that Make any Difference?
Presented here is a quaternary solar system consisting of two binary orbits. One consists of two red giants, each one 100 times as wide, one-third as massive and 100 times as bright as our sun. Both ...
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3answers
298 views
Is This Realistic Physical Geography for my World?
One of the planets in my science-fantasy series is small (around the size of Earth's moon). The gravity implications of this are the one part of this the magical origins of my universe are able to ...
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0answers
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Geology and climate etc on a earth size habitable moon of a gas giant [closed]
A bit of background:
I'm in the beginning stages of creating a habitable moon orbiting a gas giant. The conditions I have so far for this are:
The moon itself is more or less Earth-size, and the gas ...
3
votes
2answers
114 views
How would a human body behave if the atmosphere pressure were 2Atm at the sea level?
I am wondering if on an otherwise Earth-like planet the atmosphere pressure were constantly 2Atm at the sea level, how would a human body behave if we landed there? Suppose the air composition would ...
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3answers
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How long will life exist on earth, and what life forms are likely to be the last? [closed]
Scientists predict that in around 5 billion years, the sun's hydrogen will be exhausted, and the beginning of helium burning will result in the expansion of the sun to the point where the Earth will ...
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3answers
244 views
What are good lower and upper bounds on year length for habitable planets?
In science fiction dealing with multiple intelligent species, "year" is still often used as a unit of time - like when describing a character's age - even when dealing with species that ...
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2answers
229 views
Can a rogue planet have a habitable surface due to geothermal heat?
I am making a rogue planet. Right now it is a super-earth with a lot of radioactive materials in its core. It rotates very quickly as well. However, it needs to be habitable. And not just the deep ...
3
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1answer
112 views
What (if anything) can cause a substantial and stable shift of the magnetic poles of a habitable planet away from its geographical ones?
Most planets have magnetic poles that align pretty well with their geographical ones. On earth, for example, the magnetic dipole field is tilted about 11 degrees from the rotational axis. As far as I ...
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4answers
456 views
Hosting Life Near an Anti-Star
An anti-star is a star that produces energy via antimatter annihilation. As annihilation is 100% efficient at turning matter into energy, an anti-star the mass of the Sun produces 100 times as much ...
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0answers
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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 ...
4
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1answer
146 views
Tidally Locked Planet with no Oceans
Picture an earth-mass, breathable atmosphere planet; tidally locked to a red dwarf; orbiting far enough out that the dayside is not scorching; and with no planet-wide liquid oceans (but probably local ...
3
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1answer
117 views
How Big Can the Habitable Zone Be in a G-Type Binary System?
Here's the basic setup:
There is a binary solar system somewhere in an elliptical galaxy (said to be more suitable for habitability than spiral galaxies like our Milky Way.) The first star is a G-...
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2answers
193 views
Living on a planet years before a supernova
A planet is orbiting an old star that is on the verge of going supernova. The planet is colonized, so there's no need to worry about the habitability of the planet or evolution of life during the ...
3
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2answers
159 views
Habitable low mass super earth and its habitable high mass moon feasability
So, I've got a fantasy world where there is a super-earth with Earth-like gravity (aim is approximately half-again the diameter of Earth) that is the homeworld of non-native humans(introduced to the ...
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2answers
407 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 ...
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2answers
96 views
Life and Galactic Age: What galactic ages make a planet habitable?
How old does a galaxy need to be to harbor life for prolonged periods of time? Our galaxy was 8 or 9 billion years old by the time life emerged on Earth, so the lower boundary must be younger than ...
3
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1answer
101 views
Distance required for a Red Giant Star to have an apparent magnitude of -13
Assume this Red Giant has the properties of Aldebaran (α Tauri in constellation Taurus) with an absolute visual magnitude of −0.641M. How far would it have to be from Earth in order to possess an ...
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5answers
265 views
How could we (modern humans) colonize a hot planet?
Consider a planet similar to Mustafar (of the Star Wars franchise). Ambient temperatures and pressures are nearly 400 Celsius and 80 ATM. A surviving crew of normal humans is running out of resources ...
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1answer
91 views
How could a rocky planet be tilted on it's side?
I want to experiment with a rocky planet that's tilted on its side like Uranus. But first I of course need some way for this to happen without destroying any chances of the planet being habitable. ...
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3answers
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Plausible way to make it seem like the surface is uninhabitable?
In my world, right before WW3 went down, a few influential government members, well trained scientists and engineers built an impressive technologically advanced bunker for themselves to survive in.
...
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3answers
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How do oceans in an O'Neill Cylinder replenish dissolved oxygen?
I am concerned that the centrifugal force will draw out all the dissolved gases from the ocean in a colossal O'Neill Cylinder in the same way blood centrifuges do in lab. Fishes and most marine life ...
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9answers
3k views
Could a world with a extremely bright night sky exist?
How could an Earth-like tidally locked planet with no Moon have a bright and livable night sky?
The bluish night sky should look like this:
But it should be 1% as bright as Earth's day sky and ...
11
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5answers
3k views
Earth loses its sun as is sent hurtling through space in darkness. How do humans survive for the next 1,000 years? [duplicate]
Let's say, whether for magical or scientific reasons, Earth and the moon are separated from their star, the Sun, and are sent hurtling through space.
Ignoring the reasons for such an event, how could ...
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2answers
205 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 ...
