Questions tagged [ocean]
For questions about bodies of salt water large enough to sustain their own internal currents and do not drain to any larger body of water. Covers both currents, navigation, and ecology.
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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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Help with ocean current details on my terrestrial planet
I'm re-visiting the surface ocean currents on my world and was wondering about a few things. I know Ocean circulation is very complex and hard to say definitively what would happen but I think it's ...
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Behavior of narrow straits between oceans
I am trying to build a world that would have two oceans separated by a narrow sea/strait/passage.
Think of Drake's Passage, but bordered by large land masses from both north and south, like the ...
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What's the search area for a meteorite that lands in the ocean and sinks to the ocean floor?
A meteorite survives entry and lands in the ocean. For various reasons, people would like to recover the core of this meteorite.
Observers of the landing are able to narrow down the location of its ...
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How deep under water could a vessel go?
The Trieste submarine reached the bottom of the Mariana trench using some clever techniques like gasoline ballast, but let's assume the ocean just kept going to the core of the earth (or maybe the ...
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Consequences of an Ultra Deep Ocean [closed]
Edit:
Let’s say the Earth’s sea bottom, worldwide, became deeper by about 600 more meters. What effects would the added pressure have on the Earth’s crust, if any at all?
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The Finer Details Of A Global Ocean Planet
Some statistics (forgive the redundancy):
Radius - 5,400 mi or 8,690.458 km
Diameter - 10,800 mi or 17,380.915 km
Circumference - 33,929.2 mi or 54,603.754 km
Mass - 7.33x10^24 kg or approximately 1....
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An earth-like society with popular submarine travel [closed]
So I have recently been reading the new issue of "Just like us" from Feb 2245, the one that features the plane Aurora on its frontpage. I know that we've made a contact with these guys a ...
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Social and Technological Constraints in an Aquatic Society [closed]
If humans had evolved as aquatic mammals, as opposed to terrestrial mammals, what aquatic resources would be available which were not available to terrestrial societies.
Some foundational technologies ...
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How Would A Liquid Water Ocean Behave When Interacting With A Supercritial CO2 Ocean?
Assume an exoplanet like a colder (roughly habitable temperatures throughout) Venus with liquid water and a layer of supercritical carbon dioxide at the bottom of it's ocean basins. What would happen ...
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If you hypothetically drained the ocean, would the crust remain thick enough to have violent volcanic activity?
Suppose you drained the ocean without any repercussions caused by the transport and allocation of that much water. Looking at land like the ring of fire or deep sea thermal sites, would the crust ...
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What is the climate of an otherwise ocean planet with a huge landmass along the equator? [closed]
I am coming up with a new planet idea inspired by One Piece. I'm imagining a planet with the same mass, volume, and sunshine as Earth. The difference is that it is mainly an ocean planet. There are no ...
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Would merpeople be able to survive in relatively still water?
So merfolk are obviously fantasy creatures, and their biology depends entirely on the designs of the writer. For my merfolk, I am leaning less into the accuracy territory, and simply looking for ...
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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 would the ocean currents of these inland/shelf seas work?
Outlined in ink are the relevant coastlines/continental shelves, as you can see there are two inland shelves that are inland/shelf seas. As the major ocean current ends at the southernmost shelf, I'm ...
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City planning underwater
In my world, there is a race of fish people and merfolk. For a brief description: They are a mix of the Creature from the Black Lagoon and Luca. For pictures and extra description: What conditions ...
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Would Liquid CO2 form a Separate Layer Beneath the Ocean?
In the series of stories that I'm writing, I have a star system with one of its outer planets being a world with a thick carbon dioxide atmosphere, similar to venus, but it's far enough out to be room ...
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What biomes would Atlantis (mythical land in the Atlantic Ocean) have? [closed]
Atlantis is a mythical continent from Plato's writings. It was an advanced island that rivaled Athens. It lost favor with the Greek gods and as a result it fell beneath the waves.
Neat story but I'm ...
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What would cause glass to replace calcium carbonate in shells?
Sea creatures have some very pretty shells. Unfortunately, these shells are quite opaque, and much more boring to look at than they could be.
So what if they were made of glass. It’s not unheard of, ...
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What climate would Mu, a lost continent in the Pacific Ocean, have?
Mu was a mythical continent that was believed to exist in the Pacific Ocean. It was part of pseudohistory back in the 19th Century. Hawaii and other Polynesian islands were believed to be the remnants ...
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What would be the climate of a planet with very frequent hurricanes?
I'm writing a planet where the weather is always stormy. This planet has hurricanes and monsoons and huge thunderstorms and tornadoes on a weekly basis. The good news is that there are very few ...
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Is a planet with a chlorinated atmosphere and water/ammonia oceans possable?
Ok, so I have an inhabited planet that has a moderately chlorinated atmosphere (7% chorine), and with oceans that are composed of a water/ammonia mix. the temperature is very cold, -50 C. I am ...
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A natural light source on Europa
In our solar system, Europa, a moon of Jupiter, has a large and warm ocean under the icy crust. However, due to it having a rocky core and the icy crust, there is no light in the ocean. I want to make ...
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Could a planet have ocean basins if it did not have an ocean?
If a planet, lets call her Shiloh, had no oceans or liquid water on the surface; Could it still have deep, vast ocean basins? Or would a dry ocean basin level out over time?
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Would merfolk gain any real advantage from mounts (and beasts of burden)?
In writing my merfolk centric fantasy novel, I've largely ignored any creatures of burden used within their society. Animals of burden were very important in the growth of human civilization, and the ...
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Precipitation on a world where the entire ocean is covered by plants?
My very fancy planet, has a green blotch approximately the size of Africa on its surface, which looks like a forest from space but is actually the planet's ocean. A sea, which, over millions of years, ...
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How could an underwater society industrialize? [duplicate]
In my world, there is a species of underwater people. They are a mix of the creatures from Luca, and the creature from the Black Lagoon. At some point, when their technology progresses, they learn ...
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Is it biologically plausible for a land animal to drink saltwater and not drink freshwater?
I'm trying to come up with a land animal that can drink saltwater but for some reason cannot drink freshwater. The advantage of drinking saltwater would be that they can get drinking water straight ...
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Which large marine animals could live in an ocean 60 m deep? [closed]
The setting I'm currently working on, has a sea that is large in area, but even the deep ocean, far from land, is only sixty meters deep. (It's a Banks Orbital, but I don't think that matters in and ...
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What are the advantages and disadvantages an underwater civilization has over a terrestial one?
In my world, mankind isn't the only intelligent species around. Merfolk are present in all of the oceans. The Merfolks look like a cross between humans and dugongs. The Merfolk also have long hair ...
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Acidic oceans on geologic timescales?
Lots of biochemical processes are sensitive to pH, and most (all?) organisms maintain close-to-neutral internal pH, except for specific localized excursions for specific purposes (like producing acids ...
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How would Earth's land be different climatically if it was 50% land and 50% water?
I'm coming up with an alternate world that is far more balanced when it comes to the surface area. Real life Earth is 71% ocean and 29% land. Astronomers speculate that Earth got its big oceans by ...
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Would merfolk have pale skin?
Quite simply question. In my story I am depicting merfolk as having lighter skin than even Caucasian people, contrasting to my human society which bears resemblance skin tone wise to Hispanics.
I've ...
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When and how do winds and currents form?
I'm trying to design a map for my new planet, but I'm realising I know very little of how planets come to be the way they are, especially when it comes to currents and climates.
To make things simple ...
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How would electric weapons used by mermaids function, if feasible? [closed]
Electric eels are animals that eat by stunning their prey with electricity before eating them. The amperage and voltage isn't usually high enough to kill humans but it can still hurt them.
Assuming ...
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Weather in a tidally locked planet's crepuscular zone
I'm currently designing a world for a project I am working on. It's supposed to be a grounded and comparatively realistic setting. The setting is a tidally locked planet in its star's habitable zone, ...
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What challenges must oceanic plant life overcome in order to create a mat on top of the ocean?
The ocean of my very earth-like planet is covered in its entirety by vegetation, forming a kind of carpet on top of the water's surface. This free-floating halophyte is a superorganism formed by ...
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What would the rest of the oceans look like in this scenario?
The scenario being this:
The red band extending 15 degrees from the equator is a dead zone, too hot for complex, multicellular life to thrive. How hot are we talking? The equator in this scenario ...
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How long would it take to build an artificial island above the Kerguelen Plateau? [closed]
Without thinking about the costs, how long would it take to build an artificial island the size of New Zealand on the shallow waters above the Kerguelen Plateau? This means using one million boats ...
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How can I make this squid dive all the way to the bottom and live?
I have created for my novel a planet with extremely deep oceans. The ocean water itself is fairly similar to the ocean water of earth (phytoplankton, zooplankton, saline content, aquatic microbes, etc....
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How can I force humanity to retreat to the ocean floor
I'm looking for an mass-extinction level event that would cause most life on the surface of Earth to be forced back to the oceans, one that is not feasibly reversible for humanity, before societal ...
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How does ocean productivity vary with depth?
I'm trying to figure out the optimal sea depth on an artificial world (a Banks Orbital as it happens, though I think this would also be an important parameter for many other kinds of megastructure). ...
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Sea Monster Hunting Crew Roster
I'm coming up with a crew of modern-day divers who hunt sea monsters such as the megalodon, and so far, I figure that the crew will require at least the following personnel:
Captain (commands the ...
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Plausibility of an Ecosystem Based on Giant Diatoms?
In this wildly divergent Earth timeline, a group of diatoms evolved to be up to a few inches across (rather than 2mm or less). With this group presumably developing some similar traits to organisms ...
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How to Cause a Hydrosphere Apocalypse III: Erosion and a Shallow Sea
This is a bit of an addendum to a previous question, shown here. (How to Cause a Hydrosphere Apocalypse Part II The Great Flood).
I like the rain of ice from a dying moon, answer and I have decided to ...
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A scientifically plausible explanation for an "explosion of shark evolution"
It's virtually a platitude among scientific studies that sharks have changed little over their 400 million year+ evolutionary heritage. On the one hand, sizes span from tiny varieties to leviathans ...
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On Ocean Planets and their traits [closed]
I am working on an ocean planet, and I am wondering what conditions would be expected of a planet whose surface is entirely water.
Or more accurately, how accurate is my exact idea.
My current idea is ...
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How would the ocean currents of a tidally locked super-Earth work? [closed]
Suppose for a moment that a large planet orbits an M0 red dwarf star (51% as wide, 60% as massive and only 7% as bright as our sun). It itself is 230% as wide and 700% as massive as Earth. There is ...
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A continent sized land formation on a water planet with impassable mountains all around the edges and a salty sea in the middle
In order for the plot and character development I have planned to work the people need to be living on an island continent about 200,000km (England/New Zealand/Japan size, but oval/round shaped) with ...
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How would geothermal heating affect ocean currents on a rogue planet?
On earth, the ocean's surface currents are influenced somewhat by the tides, but more by wind, and we have wind because the air at the equator heats up more than the air at the poles, causing low- and ...
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