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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Is this ocean-planet stable?
I'm building a cold, water-based ocean-planet for my current setting, its temperature being below 0°c at all times and in all of its regions. Even despite the freezing temperatures, the planet's ...
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How possible is a habitable, liquid ocean-planet at temperatures below 0°C?
I plan on having an ocean-planet with a breathable atmosphere built into my current setting, orbiting its host-star (a K4v main-sequence star) a short distance beyond its frost-line, with oceans that ...
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Would an increase in star density affect the "Goldilocks Zone"?
Let's say that there's a solar system that matches the description of Sol exactly, save for the fact that it's 20,000 light years closer/farther to the galactic center.
Would the zone of one ...
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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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How far from a habitable planet must a red giant star be to not seriously affect it?
Can a habitable planet having complex life exist in a binary star system with a Red Giant? I am not talking about close binaries, but distant binaries (100 AU or more). Planets can orbit some smaller ...
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Could a planet in Alpha Circini system have developed carbon-based life?
For my story, I'm searching for a home star of one of the alien civilisations. Due to the desired region in space, I have now set my eyes on the Alpha Circini system (HIP 71908, HD 128898, GJ 560). I ...
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Do the parameters for this moon work? Will it be habitable?
I was wondering if the parameters for this world will work. It doesn’t need to be pleasant for humans but it will have at least multicellular life.
Object name: Adii-1
Mass: 0.33334x Earth’s
Mean ...
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How do I make an Earth-like habitable planet tidally locked to a red supergiant (class L or M)?
Assuming tidally locked planets have the potential to be inhabitable: Is there any way for a planet of Earth-like size to become tidally locked to a red supergiant of class L or M?
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Habitable moon and hycean world [closed]
A hycean world is a cross between a rocky planet and a gas giant. Think an ocean world with an atmosphere full of hydrogen.
Assuming it is in the habitable zone of its star, could a habitable moon, ...
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Could my planet be habitable (Or partially habitable) by humans?
Set up
I'm currently building a planet that I want to have both alien life forms and humans. It has the following traits:
Humans migrated from Earth a long time ago, but only landed on the planet 24 ...
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How deep would a canyon on this planet have to be to have an earth-like atmosphere?
I have, for a while now, been intrigued by the planet Canyon in Larry Niven’s Known Space universe:
Canyon was once an uninhabitable Mars-like world known as Warhead. It
is the second of seven ...
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Could humans survive inside the caldera of an extinct volcano on a very hot planet?
I was inspired by Dune, where the characters can't really go outside during the day (at least for long) because it's so hot, so they stay inside these massive buildings.
On a planet which is very hot (...
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Could humans possibly survive on a shallow ocean planet with scarce, but large, volcanic islands?
[edited after feedback in comments] I've had an idea for a story that takes place on a planet that is primarily shallow oceans (average depth of no more than 100m or so, max depth of no more than ...
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What is the maximum amount of land (percentage-wise) a habitable planet can have?
Earth is our only example of a habitable planet. The surface of Earth is 29% land and 71% ocean. I am wondering what other land ratios can create a habitable planet.
Half a billion years ago, Earth ...
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How long can a shattered Dyson Ring support life?
Now I recently had an idea for a setting and villain backstory and thought might as well get it vetted.
Once, there was a mighty Empire that had conquered its home system and converted most of the ...
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What effects would a Jupiter-like gas giant's magnetosphere have on a human civilization on its habitable exo-moon?
Background:
Like many others here, I'm building a world for a story I'm writing. I'd like it to be taken for granted that a moon roughly the size of Earth that is habitable for humans could exist in a ...
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Must a habitable planet's moon be tidally locked, and why?
Artifexian in his Worldsmith and other videos of his recommends a moon of a habitable planet must be a tidally locked moon. But why is that? I fail to understand how rotation of a moon about its axis ...
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In a world where gravity pass from 1 G to 5 G in a cycle of 365 days, can planes fly all the time?
I am writing a book and I have this cenario. There is a planet where gravity pass from 1 G to 5 G in a cycle of 365 days. I know that humans can survive till 3-5G, but what about airplanes capability ...
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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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How do I determine the habitable zone of a binary star system?
Suppose two stars orbit each other and the planets orbit around the two stars' barycenter. I'm thinking of having at least one as a main sequence G or K class. For the sake of argument, let the other ...
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An Earthlike World Placed Around a Blue White Dwarf
A star that is bright, gives off blue light, and can have a world that mimics conditions on Earth is tricky. I'm hoping I can get one around a blue-colored white dwarf star.
What does the arrangement ...
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Why would a near future society struggle to grow crops on a large level?
I have a world where its mostly in ruins. But its run practically by corporations and smaller factions. A large part of the world is recovering from ecological collapse, massive pollution that travels ...
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Can a habitable S-type planet and three habitable P-type planets exist in one binary star system?
In this solar system are two stars, named Genesis and Exodus. Currently, I don't know the types because the need of habitability on the planets might affect the requirements for these stars. They ...
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What is a reasonable day length for a planet with 4 times earth radius?
The fictional planet has a mass of 18 times Earth's and four times earth's equatorial radiusreference. This gives it a gravitational acceleration of 11.02m/s^2 (1.29G) and an escape velocity of 23....
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Planet Orbital Zone and Year Length
So I'm building a fantasy world that takes place on a planet with a circumference of about 18,500 miles (it's average temperature is 40℉), and it orbits a Blue-Giant.
How long would a year be, and how ...
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Daily eclipses for a moon orbiting a gas giant?
I've dug into the idea of a habitable moon getting daily eclipses due to its gas giant getting in the way of the sun; but most examples I've found specify a tidally locked moon. I'm no astrophysicist ...
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Is life feasible in an inhospitable binary system?
There is a planet orbiting a binary system inside the Goldilocks zone. The problem is that the binary system is of a violent kind. It either regularly explodes and sterilizes a portion of the planet's ...
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How much more mass does Mars need to have in order to still be habitable today?
In an alternate timeline where Mars is the second Earth-like planet in our Solar System, the drive for colonizing it would perhaps have been much stronger. There would've been more resources spent ...
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What would cause plants to survive on the ground while restricting animals to the air?
What would be the natural reason for the surface of a planet to be toxic or otherwise uninhabitable to animals but not plants? This planet is not Earth and life would have evolved this way from the ...
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What geographic changes need to occur to make Southern Australia fertile?
Currently, 90% of Australia's land is inhospitable desert. What geographic changes need to occur for its southern side to become fertile soil?
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What would happen on a binary planet if they captured a new moon into orbit?
I've been working on a world where the origin of the magic system is a catastrophic event that ripped the surface of the planet apart allowing magical energy from beneath the crust to escape to the ...
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How could large scale mining operations render an arid region unlivable?
A story I am working on sees the characters returning to a fairly arid planet that was mined heavily by an interplanetary corporation. This left most of the planet uninhabitable and forced the local ...
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Consequences of living on either of two habitable planets orbiting a super-Earth? [closed]
I'm working on a habitable planetary system just at the doorstep of the Solar System. I'd like it to be unique, so I'm thinking of using two habitable planets orbiting a super-Earth. The super-Earth ...
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Plausibility check : a planet with tropical poles
is this planet plausible?
the planet is the third planet from its star.
by size smaller than Earth.
the planet has no moons.
the only habitable areas are rings around the poles.
in the pole, there's ...
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How would griffins collect materials for their nests?
Seeing as griffins are much bigger creatures than birds, plenty more twigs and sticks would be required and so larger size too. So how would griffins go about collecting materials for their nest? One ...
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If Earth's atmosphere was 100% oxygen, which settlement would be the lowest habitable one? [duplicate]
If we replace all other gases of the Earth's atmosphere by oxygen so that we have 1 atm oxygen at sea level, which one would be the lowest (either permanently or for a certain amount of time) ...
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What would be the effects on climate on a Venus sized planet orbiting a K0V star in a similar manner to Mars?
The planet has the characteristics of Venus in terms of mass (0.815 Earths), density (5.243g/cm3), surface area (0.902 Earths) and gravity (8.87m/s). It has an Earth-like atmosphere,water covers about ...
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Verifying Habitability/ Feasibility of my Conworld
Right, lets try this again.
I'm making a planet for a book I'm writing. I want to know if the planet I outline here is scientifically probable, able to support life, and what the climate would ...
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How far away would you need to be to survive a jet of stellar plasma on the surface of a "planet" built around a sun?
So, I'm considering writing a story, and one of the settings is a world created by a powerful wizard millions of years ago, by opening a thousand portals to gate in a thousand Earth-like worlds that ...
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How Do I Make Trappist-1g Habitable (in a fantasy setting)
This question is not about terraforming! (or atleast not technological terraforming)
I am writing a fantasy story set in the (real) Trappist-1 system. I am trying to faithfully keep most of the ...
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Would life be possible on a planet whose poles each directly face the sun once a year?
There is a kind of planet that I'm curious about regarding its habitability. Basically it's a planet that's very earth-like as far as its mass and material and atmospheric content and rotational/...
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Can life exist on a moon orbiting binary planets?
The situation i am trying to describe is a binary planet system where both planets are similarly sized, but without flora or fauna (basically an planet-sized moon). The planets are in the goldilocks ...
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Climate on a slow spinning planet
I'm currently working on a story set in a planet whose rotation period lasts around 24 years (Earth years, or 8766 days). This planet orbits at more or less 0,75 AU from a K-type star, and the ...
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Concerning Earth plants on an alien world, how much "sunlight" would "too much" and "too little" be compared to our sunlight?
In a binary system of artificially immortal stars, each one orbited by a ring of mirrors, a whole line of Earthlike planets orbits the binary within its habitable zone, from 400 to 800 AUs. While ...
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Feasibility of the Ascendia System?
Some of the events in a story I'm thinking of have occur on a planet called Ascendia. Due to the world's backstory, it has several unusual traits.
Despite orbiting around a hot (roughly large F/small ...
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Is a Habitable Planet With Three Suns and a Moon Realistic?
On this planet, which is mostly arid and dominated by large deserts and expansive steppes and savannahs, the sun rises once, and then two more times in the morning, and throughout the night an ...
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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 ...
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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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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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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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