Questions tagged [ice]
For questions about ice (the solid form of dihydrogen monoxide) in its many forms.
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How do I naturally keep potable, fresh water from freezing?
My planet is always very cold (I don't have an exaxt number). So cold, that most fresh water would freeze. How do I keep this from happening? Humans can't bring it about, and humans also have to be ...
2
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4answers
87 views
What are the architectural/design/etc implications of earthquakes on a snowball planet?
Thick, kilometer-wide ice sheets cover the vast majority of this planet. Snow is comparatively limited, because there are limited places where anything actually melts and re-enters the water cycle. ...
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3answers
295 views
Freezing the water in blood
Ice magic lowers the temperature of things. I was thinking of freezing the water in blood (specifically blood plasma) to kill. How would this work? Also, can it be used on non-mammals, like sea ...
10
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3answers
825 views
Seeing air trapped under ice while underwater [closed]
A scene am writing takes place in Summer in the Artic. The character is swimming underwater, under the ice (imagine a small iceberg).
Above her a large bubble of air has formed. Never mind what formed ...
2
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2answers
209 views
What Would the Arctic Ice Caps Look Like in This Current Map?
This is a map of my alternate Earth with a focus on ocean currents, courtesy of Mikael Asikainen:
As you can see here, Greenland looks smooshed, but that is because it is arranged to the extent that ...
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1answer
66 views
Physics Question: Time needed to melt vast blocks of ice in the desert? [closed]
Please consider a physics question that I am asking here because I have no ability to calculate the answer myself.
Given a large cubical mass of water ice is deposited on a desert location on Earth,
...
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3answers
194 views
What would a medieval village in an arctic area look like?
The setting is a fictitious continent set in a medieval world (1200-1400 A.D.). It resembles the shape and size of Greenland. The land is covered with glaciers, ruled by months of darkness in the ...
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2answers
52 views
Temperature and oxygen levels 1 mile below Antarctica's surface [closed]
If people were able to travel to a cave 1 mile below the surface in Antarctica, how long would it take before they suffocated (both if there was a hole at the surface and if that hole were to become ...
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2answers
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What would happen to a block of warm ice (made out of pure pressure) once the pressure is gone? [closed]
Imaginary situation where you could exert 10GPA worth of pressure on a floating cubic meter chunk of water. According to this graph, it'd turn into ice even if it's still around the room's temperature(...
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2answers
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Possibility of a “hot Mars”
Premise/question
Correct me if I'm wrong, or if humans have terraformed the planet by the time you're reading this, but Mars is mostly desert-like. It has large ice caps which contain most of its ...
2
votes
3answers
156 views
Floating Ice Homes
On an Earth fully covered in water, are floating homes made of ice a practical idea (in arctic latitudes). Ignoring how these houses could be made, would the ice provide enough bouyancy to keep the "...
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votes
8answers
337 views
Ice Construct Weapons
The Ice Mages of a world I'm crafting can create constructs made from ice. Now, a master Ice Mage might be able to do fun things with his construct like project them in showers of ice shards, but ...
6
votes
2answers
224 views
How to safely construct deep underground harbors on a Snowball Earth?
A radical shift in the Earth's orbit has made the Earth much colder, with all the oceans freezing over, and the atmosphere liquifying and falling as rain. Humans live deep underground in areas of high ...
4
votes
4answers
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Requirements for melting snow from orbit using EM radiation
My (your) goal is to melt several tons of snow and ice in a small area using electromagnetic radiation beamed down from a spacecraft in orbit. The atmosphere that's in the way is vaguely Earth-like ...
6
votes
2answers
189 views
Would an underground civilization be feasible on a frozen, sunless Earth? [closed]
If our Sun was teleported away by aliens, would it be possible for people to survive? I'm assuming that humans had prior warning of this ice age (the aliens warned us first) and could drill ...
0
votes
2answers
198 views
Can ice magic freeze blood?
In my story, one of my main characters has ice powers. She can turn water into ice, she can conjure ice (sucking moisture out of air and freezing it). She can also drop someone's body temperature, as ...
4
votes
3answers
148 views
Ice Dome Greenhouse
I have an icy planet with temperatures that average about -100 degrees Fahrenheit (-73,3 °C). The planet also has thousands if not millions of domes scattered across its completely icy surface heated ...
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votes
5answers
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Could the Missouri River be running while Lake Michigan was frozen several meters deep?
During an ice age, would it be possible for a great lake to be frozen while a relatively nearby river was still running? To help illustrate my point:
Would it be possible for Lake Michigan (or parts ...
4
votes
5answers
229 views
Living ice magic - what can I do with it?
I, the Grand Sorcerer Alazam of the Guild of Arcanists, have invented a remarkable new spell! Using unique magical artifacts, I can create what I call 'living ice' - chunks of ice that grow and ...
6
votes
5answers
630 views
Would it be possible for someone with ice powers to stop or “freeze” a wound to their heart?
I have characters with ice powers. I was planning that they could freeze an injury and prevent it from progressing. An arrow is shot at their heart, but I could possibly change the location to make ...
4
votes
2answers
294 views
Snow on a low-gravity, high-pressure world
Disclaimer: I am not a meteorologist.
Snow forms when supercooled water droplets nucleate onto particles in the atmosphere. After forming, they grow further by both tumbling around within the cloud ...
27
votes
9answers
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Would glacier 'trees' be plausible?
The setting is in a region of a planet comparable to Earth's California in regards to location. The soil is extremely rich in nutrients and subsurface water. But for the past three million years the ...
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3answers
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Is it possible to ice skate on an ice moon/world?
If you found out a way to produce a smooth icy surface on an ice moon like Ganymede, Enceladus, or Callisto, what kind of challenges would someone face if they tried to start ice skating? I figured ...
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5answers
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What could trigger powerful quakes on icy world?
Imagine a planet orbiting a star some billions of lightyears away from us, the planet is 4 times the mass of Earth and is covered with ice 100km thick on average. It is believed that liquid ocean ...
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19answers
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How to make ice magic work from a scientific point of view?
I've recently been imagining a world of magic with heavy influence from chinese wuxia and xianxia. In such worlds, there's often various fire and ice magic, among other different types. Now, fire ...
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2answers
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What color should the snow be in this chlorine world?
This question is in the same context (the same world) proposed by Steven L. Gillett in his book: "World-building".
And actually there have been some other questions about this same chlorinated world. ...
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8answers
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How can I turn ice into gold?
I have my eyes on this new Porsche but all I have is an unlimited supply of ice and a molecular distillery. How can I convert this ice into gold?
The molecular distillery can disassemble and ...
4
votes
9answers
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Building my Flat Earth, how to make my Ice walls last for eternity [closed]
In a world where
Earth does NOT have gravity (Gravity does not exist).
Our oceans are created by Ice walls.
Ice walls? How can they exist so long?
In the Flat Earth model, the Ice walls are situated ...
9
votes
9answers
2k views
How to ensure the safety of a surface base on Europa?
If I have a research & mining outpost established on the surface of Europa, in which there is a small complex of buildings, how do I claim to have them protected from potential breaks in the ice (...
7
votes
2answers
175 views
A snow sea: How to make water snow light/smooth enough to obtain fluid properties under 1 gravity
A roughly earth-size planet orbits a cool G-class star, but barely within its circumstellar habitable zone ("Goldilocks zone") allowing liquid water. It has a shallow inclination and and lackluster ...
6
votes
6answers
728 views
How Can I Build Ice On an Iceberg With Primitive Tech?
Let's say a group of people live on icebergs. They want to shape them - e.g., let's say they want to add a pier to their iceberg, how do they "grow" the ice.
Prefer a primitive answer, but if there ...
5
votes
3answers
148 views
Wheel-based vehicle vs Ground-gliders
In a mostly snowy world (snow deserts, snow jungles, etc) with a few underground cities built with magitek, most popular vehicles are rovers/gliders (think speeder bike from Star Wars). Would there be ...
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vote
4answers
273 views
Getting through the ice, to the ocean of Europa [closed]
Trying to figure out the practicalities of drilling through the ice on Europa's surface, to drop a sub into the water beneath.
From what I understand the three most viable methods would be
Wait for ...
27
votes
9answers
6k views
Value of ice during the Renaissance
This is set during the Renaissance, a mostly normal European setting.
Magic works through controlling the flux of energy. A mage can't simply create energy, but he can store and change it.
Most ...
4
votes
2answers
218 views
What types of challenging atmospheres might exist on an ice planet?
We know that Venus has a poisonous carbon dioxide and hydrochloric acid atmosphere at a temperate of over 800 °F, but what about an ice planet? Mars is mostly freezing with a trace atmosphere, we have ...
0
votes
2answers
186 views
Can ice asteroids cause an icy ship
Question
If a ship went through an asteroid belt where the asteroids are mostly ice, could the ice in any way transfer onto the ship and give it coatings of ice in various places, or would there be ...
5
votes
7answers
562 views
Aliens with freezing powers
So I have been doing some thinking and I now am trying to design some aliens who can exhale very cold gasses or cool the atmosphere around them as a side effect of their metabolism and also survive in ...
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vote
2answers
139 views
If ice was denser than water what plants could survive?
Are there any plants from our universe that would be able to live in this crazy alternate universe where ice is denser than water?
7
votes
3answers
282 views
How strong could a land of ice clouds be?
In my world, there is a forest of giant trees on both poles. The trees create a canopy that is perpetually covered in ice. This frozen canopy extends so high that it supports a "land" of frozen clouds....
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votes
3answers
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Could water be separated from a mixture by natural condensing/freezing?
Our colony has landed on a planet which is a complete barren desert wasteland, the surface as dead as the moon but also extremely cold, being quite far from the local star. They have settled at the ...
16
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5answers
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How would a microscopic organism create kilometre long fibre optic cables from ice
My story premise is that a human expedition to Europa has happened and the travellers have tunnelled through the ice and formed a colony in the ocean.
When they breached into the ocean, they ...
8
votes
2answers
267 views
Landships on a Snowball Earth?
I've been playing a lot of Deserts of Kharak lately, and I am wondering if landships depicted in game, which are essentially seagoing ships on tracks, would work in a Snowball Earth scenario. By ...
9
votes
4answers
317 views
How to efficiently protect a city from constant snowstorms?
Sort of an extension of
With minimal terraforming, what features/structures would need to be built to protect a 25mi radius city from wind?
but with some more items to consider.
For whatever ...
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votes
4answers
1k views
How to make ice magic possible? [closed]
My Writers SE question about an ice magic user reminded me to ask this question.
I'm writing a long (~1000 pages) hard fantasy story (in French, don't judge me on my English :p).
In this story, ...
4
votes
3answers
300 views
What are the effects of generating ice from water vapor on a large scale?
Let's take the most famous scene from Frozen where Elsa creates her ice palace up in the freezing mountains. Now imagine Elsa doing the same thing at sea level, in the summer, where the conditions are ...
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vote
4answers
172 views
Rocky core, internal ocean, ice crust, external ocean
So I writing a story where we terraform Titan using super heavy green house gases where the lower part of the atmosphere near the surface stays warmer. Because of this, a portion of the moon's icy ...
0
votes
2answers
498 views
Frozen inside an ice cube
You are a mad, demented evil scientist getting revenge on John Smith, a secret agent that has thwarted your plans one too many times. Intent on making Mr Smith suffer, you decide to capture his family ...
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votes
17answers
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Dropping ice in the ocean to stop global warming
In the TV show Futurama, an in-show infomercial mentions that Earthicans started dropping giant ice cubes in the ocean to slow down global warming. Now, Futurama is a show where science is a mixed bag:...
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5answers
2k views
How good would ice weapons be?
2700: To avoid apocalypse by global warming, a powerful nation (probably America) stops the Gulf Stream. This puts Europe into an ice age, and averts the impeding disaster. However, Europe was not ...
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votes
5answers
381 views
What could you mine from a city squashed by an ice sheet - in a new ice age?
Western civilisation fell over a few centuries ago, because the Earth shifted back into a full on ice age climate. Oh and Skynet kind of happened.
Ice sheets expanded, inexorably rolling over the ...
