Questions tagged [temperature]

For questions about heat and temperature. For example, such questions could ask about the temperature of astronomical objects, living beings, or space.

Filter by
Sorted by
Tagged with
50 votes
23 answers
14k views

What would be best way to re-melt Mars' mantle and core to revive its magnetosphere

Missing magnetosphere on Mars keeps popping up. Most likely caused by Mars core being cold, mantle not bubbly enough. Mars mantle is dormant, core does not move. What would be good way to get it ...
Peter M. - stands for Monica's user avatar
11 votes
8 answers
2k views

Desert poles but arctic equators; trying to find out if specific way is possible

I'm trying to create a planet with a hot desert north and south pole but a cold equator. Is this possible? and if so how? And if it's heavily related to space how would night and day work on this ...
Rugiewit's user avatar
  • 111
15 votes
5 answers
3k views

How can I make a black dwarf star?

In response to a question about an asteroid filled with degenerate matter, Ender Look suggested that using matter from a black dwarf would be better than using matter from a white dwarf since black ...
HDE 226868's user avatar
  • 99.8k
5 votes
1 answer
770 views

How hot can I make the insides of my spaceship before damaging crew too much?

Spaceships are a peculiar thing; as are the things inside them. Humans... Humids... Humies - the colloquial term for those crazy enough to make a living by crewing these hulks of metal. A special ...
dot_Sp0T's user avatar
  • 12.1k
4 votes
2 answers
193 views

What is a plausible way to fuel highly active volcanism and seismic activity on my planet?

I thought that a large, close moon might help generate enough heat and stress to raise the average temperature on my world and stave off a Snowball Earth scenario. According to this article and this ...
Rúnatál Davino's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
284 views

Using temperature to contain an atmosphere?

So, I was looking at the temperature variations in Earth's atmosphere and noticed that it gets extremely cold in some of the upper portions. So I was wondering, could a low gravity world hold onto an ...
rclev's user avatar
  • 787
21 votes
9 answers
3k views

Polar Heat, Equatorial Cold - Climatic Effects of Inverted Global Temperatures

How does inverting global temperatures affect climate? Here exists a fantasy world similar to earth in all important ways. Except, however, that global temperatures have been flipped; it is coldest ...
user avatar
13 votes
2 answers
2k views

Day and night temperature on an Earth-like planet with longer rotational period

DISCLAIMER: This question was closed on Astronomy Stack Exchange as off topic, so I'll try my luck here. I'm trying to understand the climatic effects of the far future scenario of an Earth-like ...
sum1stolemyname's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
390 views

Where to find equations to calculate tidal heating in a binary planet/planetesimal system?

I'm building a very small homeworld (0.602 M$_e$) with a very large moon (0.0711 M$_e$) that orbit each other at a barycenter about 7.12 planetary radii (1 R = 0.870 R$_e$) from the primary's center; ...
Rúnatál Davino's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
551 views

Temperatures on a planet with long days

I have a planet with a stellar flux of 1.118, an albedo between Earth's and Mars's, an atmosphere composition of 18% oxygen, 13% argon and 69% nitrogen with a sea-land pressure of 0.87 atmospheres and ...
Eithne's user avatar
  • 610
5 votes
2 answers
434 views

Reducing atmospheric pressure on Snowball Earth

A Snowball Earth is a global condition (which may have occurred many times) in which the temperature everywhere on the surface was, for extended periods (up to tens of millions of years), below the ...
Escaped dental patient.'s user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
404 views

How to Determine Planetary Extremes of Temperature from Average Global Temperature?

I have determined the average global temperature of my world based on the luminosity of the star, distance to the star, and the bond albedo and greenhouse factor of the world. What I'm having a devil ...
Matt Selznick's user avatar
4 votes
4 answers
320 views

How Effectively Could You Use Magical Darkness As A Compact Heatsink?

In this setting materials science is decades ahead, so answers should be limited by technology that isn't too speculative and don't presume anything supernatural beyond what I describe in this ...
Vakus Drake's user avatar
  • 2,398
4 votes
4 answers
8k views

Is it possible for the oceans to freeze solid (at least on the surface)?

Can the oceans freeze (at least several feet below sea level)? I know that the temperature for salt water to freeze is lower/colder than fresh water, and when it does freeze, the ice is mostly salt-...
Matt Woodspirit's user avatar
4 votes
6 answers
772 views

Is there a way for a creature from earth to survive the vacuum of space for ten minutes?

I was wondering if there was a way for a creature to survive the vacuum of space for ten minutes with only a tank of oxygen and a mask to breathe the oxygen with. The creature comes from an Earth-like ...
OneSurvivor's user avatar
  • 3,092
0 votes
5 answers
373 views

Why would anyone want a freezing weapon? [closed]

I have a hobby of writing video game item descriptions, usually trying to justify game mechanics within the flavor text. Elemental weapons are especially fun to explain in-universe. Lightning spears ...
Pinion Minion's user avatar
34 votes
12 answers
7k views

Is it possible for a substance to be thermally inert?

Heat is energy. Temperature is an indication of the level of heat in a substance. But the normal way to measure temperature is to observe how the substance interacts with its surroundings - most ...
rosuav's user avatar
  • 460
22 votes
10 answers
8k views

Medieval method of measuring temperature

What methods could a medieval society (technology level around 1475-1500 AD) use to measure the temperature of a liquid? The world is similar to medieval Britain/Europe, but with more trade so ...
Korthalion's user avatar
  • 1,374
17 votes
12 answers
6k views

How devastating is a weapon that can internally and rapidly cool down a section of a human body?

Let's say in a magical world, there exists a basic cooling spell which slightly cools down an area by reducing the heat energy of everything inside it. In said world there also exists a particularly ...
votbear's user avatar
  • 463
16 votes
1 answer
848 views

Stabilizing the Temperature On a Planet With a (Very) Long Day

Let's say my terrestrial planet has a stable circumbinary orbit around two suns similar to the Kepler-47 system, in the habitable zone, with an orbit similar to Kepler-47c. The challenge here is that ...
Midwinter Sun's user avatar
14 votes
7 answers
4k views

How would merfolk insulate an underwater house?

If you tried to insulate your underwater home, making it water tight... wouldn't you suffocate yourself? Water does get stale, and run low on oxygen, creating a dead-zone, so wouldn't you want some ...
Johnny's user avatar
  • 4,168
12 votes
5 answers
4k views

What effect could drop the freezing temperature of water globally to −40 Celsius?

This question comes up from Is there a man-made or natural event that can cause an abrupt climate change within hours/a day? – trying to get KaguraRap a functional answer to an abrupt temperature drop ...
Twelfth's user avatar
  • 24.2k
10 votes
3 answers
756 views

On a frozen world, what would be the thinnest, warmest materials to make clothing from?

I have a world I've been developing whereby the entire world is locked in a cycle of perpetual winter. The "seasons" still exist but are merely a spectrum of mild cold ranging toward horrific winters....
VerasVitas's user avatar
10 votes
4 answers
333 views

Switching between poikilothermic and homeothermic metabolism

I am designing a mammal living in a warm environment (like a warm desert) which has developed a switchable metabolism, so that during the day it is cold blooded and during the night (when it is colder)...
L.Dutch's user avatar
  • 275k
10 votes
4 answers
433 views

How would a permanently cold tower affect its environment?

In my world, physics works exactly like on Earth, except that there is a narrow, 400 foot tall magical column sticking vertically out of the ground, which is magically always extremely cold -- I'm ...
Nathan Hinchey's user avatar
9 votes
3 answers
453 views

Flash-heating humans

I'm working on a version of wormhole-based FTL travel, and one of the side effects of passing through the wormhole is going to be instantaneous heating of every molecule of the thing passing through. ...
Gryphon's user avatar
  • 10.9k
9 votes
2 answers
787 views

Temperature and climate "under" the gas giant in a tidally locked moon

I've begun the laborious (but fun!) process of putting another world together. Known constraints include: Habitable, (super-)Earth-sized, tidally-locked moon to a gas giant; the giant, where visible,...
Lumos's user avatar
  • 193
8 votes
3 answers
271 views

Could a life form evolve an organ for generating temperatures less than a degree Kelvin above absolute zero?

I was thinking of a life form with a similar surface temperature to Earth, as well as a similar temperature variation to that of Earth. Could such a life form evolve an organ for generating ...
Anders Gustafson's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
233 views

Maintain atmosphere on moon using global warming

So, a neat thing, depending on how you look at it, about greenhouse gases is that while it's causing a raise in temperature near the surface it actually makes the upper parts of the atmosphere ...
rclev's user avatar
  • 787
7 votes
5 answers
1k views

How can my fictional race of humans extend the area of their world they can explore?

This world is an alternate Earth similar size, mass and distance from its star to our Earth. The atmosphere is similar in composition to Earth except at 5000m altitude the pressure is two bar and the ...
Slarty's user avatar
  • 36.9k
7 votes
1 answer
736 views

Hot rods into space!

Based on this question about an impossible barbell planet, how hot would the bar be if it extended from halfway in the Earth's mantle to an altitude of 2r of Earth's radius? The diameter of the bar ...
Green's user avatar
  • 52.7k
6 votes
4 answers
211 views

Habitable planet with extreme hot and cold regions that is not tidally locked

I would like to create a world with a temperate habitable zone as well as very hot and very cold zones. The hotter and the colder the better, but I don’t want it to be tidally locked. How can I do ...
Slarty's user avatar
  • 36.9k
6 votes
1 answer
468 views

How cold can a planet actually get?

The coldest place in the universe that we have observed is in the Boomerang Nebula. Similarly to a refrigerator, heat is carried away through a fluid, resulting in a space colder than the surrounding ...
Zxyrra's user avatar
  • 20.5k
5 votes
3 answers
1k views

Surface temperature of a icy rogue planet

A certain imaginary stellar system had once a water world. But instead of evaporating away under the stellar wind, this lucky (or unlucky?) water world (made of only water and a gaseous atmosphere) ...
Jorge Aldo's user avatar
  • 5,842
3 votes
2 answers
8k views

If Absolute Hot and Absolute Zero, collided what would happen?

If a substance at Absolute Hot and a substance at Absolute Zero collided, what would happen to the resulting mixture?? Assume this was done on Earth in a sort of collision facility. I'm working on ...
Anoplexian's user avatar
  • 4,571
3 votes
3 answers
386 views

Possible thermoregulation temperatures

There are a wide range of environmental temperatures located all around the world, from the low -90° C to high 60° C at the extremes. When looking at the core body temperature however the range is ...
Ferret Civilization's user avatar
2 votes
6 answers
432 views

How can I expand the definition and some specifics of pyrokinesis?

I'm writing a sci-fi world where, if you put it in simple words, a small percentage of population can manipulate the matter. I'm not going to dive into specifics, because I'm still working on WHY and ...
quarterEpsilon's user avatar
1 vote
3 answers
482 views

What are the practicalities and impracticalities of ultraheated forearm-mounted blades utilized by a robot? [duplicate]

I have a series of humanoid combat robot dubbed the Atlanta-Types created specially to fight someone (codenamed Heracles) with the powers of electrokinesis and Low-Mid regeneration on equal footing. ...
user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
257 views

What is the maximum equilibrium temperature that a mammal could evolve to tolerate?

Mammals live in some fairly extreme environments, but the most heat-tolerant ones all seem to cheat: e.g., they dig burrows to stay cool during the day and come out at night, avoiding the heat, or ...
Logan R. Kearsley's user avatar