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.
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If the Earth had 48 hour days, how much would the temperature drop at night and raise in the day?
I'm building a world that's essentially identical to Earth, except that it spins slower, making the days about 48 hours long. I'd like to know what the average temperature drop at night would be, and ...
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Spacecraft Design of a Cold-Blooded Humanoid Race
I was talking with a friend recently and he reasoned that a cold-blooded race would take longer to get to space, but survive more easily once the technology progressed enough. The rationale was that a ...
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If Titan was suddenly raised to an earth-like temperature, how long before it melts?
After terraforming Mars, humans are now attempting to terraform Saturn’s moon Titan. Having removed much of its dense atmosphere, (reducing the pressure to just 0.7 bars) the colonists have now built ...
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Calculating the total thermal energy contained within an object [closed]
A character in my world has a superpower that allows them to convert all (or at least 99.99...%) of the thermal energy contained by the particles within a volume into directed kinetic energy, causing ...
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Would a habitable moon orbiting a Gas Giant experience a runaway cooling effect? (on the side that faces the giant)
Assuming the Moon in question is tidally locked to its parent, then on the facing-side of the moon a significant portion of the day time would be spent in eclipse behind the gas giant, essentially ...
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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 ...
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How can I heat my buildings without fire in a low-fantasy setting?
In my low-fantasy setting there is a civilization of blind people living in a very safe and isolated region of the world. Thinking about how this civilization could have developed throughout the ...
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White-hot tungsten moon emitting heat and light to make my world habitable
Never mind how the tungsten sphere formed. That's part of my pet projects, and I will deal with the question of how a nearly pure sphere of tungsten the diameter of the moon formed in space later.
So, ...
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What global warming level would be needed to keep the dew point of some place above the temperature of the lungs for at least 1 month per year?
Title might be a bit hard to understand but let me explain : when the dew point is above humans temperature (37℃) the water condenses in the lungs which are at a lower temperature than the air which ...
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What happens if the temperature drops to -100 degrees Celsius for a short moment? [closed]
Since childhood, I have been haunted by the question: what if suddenly, for one second, the temperature drops to minus 100*С? Will my body feel it? Will it affect the environment? Maybe it will ...
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What would the climate be like on highly volcanic planet?
I'm writing about a planet that is harsh but livable. This planet is covered with mountains and active volcanoes. Far more volcanoes than what exists on Earth. It is more like Venus but is much ...
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How can intelligent insects defend themselves from the cold?
The world is an icy wasteland, populated only with dark fungi burrowing through the irradiated earth. The last plant life in this desert is cultivated in great cities of ants and honeybees. A few ...
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Can my Planet Have Liquid Water at the Poles -- But Only During the Winter?
I have a planet about the size of earth. It is a desert planet with an atmosphere at 0.1 atm, made of 90% co2 and 10% n2. Water at this pressure should freeze at 35℉ and boil at 125℉. The planet has a ...
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Would a permanent, but semi opaque, planet wide cloud coverage cause an ice age/dramatic temperature drop?
On Earth over the course of time, a permanent cloud envelops the planet due to various reasons. However, unlike a nuclear winter or permanent ash cloud situation that completely blots out the sun, ...
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What is the plausibility of people living on a planet with two suns? [closed]
Some of my characters travel to a planet orbiting two suns. They don't spend long there and it's implied some other species lived there before but don't anymore.
Is this possible? Would two suns ...
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Can my planet be gradually eroded by solar wind over 6 billion years?
The planet is a barren rocky dwarf planet which orbits at 0.05 AU from its star of 0.9 solar masses, at 6 billion years old. Because of this, it’s surface is melting and evaporating, forming a thin ...
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Will the Violet-hot Flaming Torch Annihilate Everything Around Him?
I have an OC. His body can combust and become coated in flames, but when he gets really ticked off, his fire becomes hotter and becomes violet in color.
From what I've read, violet fire is extremely f*...
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What key invention allows the exploration of my hot humid world?
I want to know what key invention would allow my civilization to travel down to and explore its world at sea level. This is similar to my previous question* but this time does not assume metals are in ...
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How would a planet with three suns, orbiting only one work?
Okay, I am planning to make a planet that has three suns, and orbits one of them. Each of the suns has its own orbital path, so it's possible for the planet to have one sun, two suns, or three suns in ...
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My planet's atmosphere
The planet I am making is a super Earth,a celestial body slightly larger than Earth, but not big enough to be considered a gas or ice giant.>
The atmosphere is the most important so here it is:
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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 ...
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How to calculate temperatures on my world given different pressures and altitudes
The fictional world is Earth-like with 1g gravity and similar solar radiation to Earth but the inhabitants only live on very high plateaus at around 5000m where the pressure is already 3bar. How do I ...
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How to estimate the average surface temperature of a planet? [closed]
If given:
Planet mass
Planet radius
Planet orbital distance (perihelion and aphelion)
Planet albedo
Planet atmospheric composition
Planet atmospheric pressure
Star mass
Star luminosity
Is there any ...
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What is mathematical formula for finding the mean surface temperature on a planet in our solar system?
This question is to assume the common solar luminosity of approx $4 \times 10^{26}$ Watts.
The mean flux of Earth at, for example, 1.1 AU would be about 1176 watts--but how can I calculate mean ...
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What would something as hot as the sun do to its surroundings on Earth? [closed]
Introducing sun boy, he has the magical ability to maintain a constant body temperature equal to the surface of the sun. What would be his effect on his surroundings? Would he just vapourise ...
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Is it possible for water-based organisms to survive in a small crevice?
Situation
In my story there are complex organisms that are essentially sacks of water with organs and are the size of a basketball. They have so advanced technology that they built a city in a large ...
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How to calculate greenhouse effect for planet as well as for the atmosphere?
I recently found a calculation on how to calculate the greenhouse effect for Earth from another question here, but I couldn't make heads or tails of the calculations that were provided in one of the ...
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How would you show battles that take place in temperatures of between -120 to -150 Degrees Celsius? [closed]
So basically what I'm talking about here are my Enslaver Aliens. This brings this back to my previous post. Such Aliens, when they appear, have an area wide effect. Whilst their main ability is to ...
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Is this planet's climate map realistic?
Here are three different maps of the planet that's going to be the main setting of a comic book I'm working on, each one showing something different:
As you can see in the first image, I mapped out ...
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Can we locally change the climate of a region?
I am currently creating a country located in a place which experiences only subarctic/arctic climates in the real world. I would like to know how the region's climate could be artificially changed ...
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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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If a small marble reached Planck temperature, would the heat spread and ignite the atmosphere? [closed]
It can be set to any temperature at the command of the wielder, be it as high as the Planck temperature or as low as absolute zero.
I want to see whether or not it could be used to end the planet it ...
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How might a lower gravity planet sustain a warm, earth-like atmosphere?
I've already posted something similar recently, but I don't think I was really asking the right question. I'm designing a hypothetical lower-gravity planet with 0.47M, 0.79r and 0.76g, with a similar ...
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Metallurgy at different gravity strengths
Does the strength of gravity on a planet limit a species ability to create temperatures high enough to melt metals?
I read that at low gravity fire burns at cooler temperatures and reduced convection ...
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What atmospheric pressure and temperature are reasonable to maintain water on a low gravity planet?
I'm designing a low gravity planet, and I want it to be as realistic as possible. I've calculated the lowest mass and radius it could have while maintaining a similar density to Earth and while still ...
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Keeping the global average temperature at current levels if the Earth moves away from the Sun. What is the limit?
Suppose that due to an encounter with a rogue planet, the Earth is propelled out of the Solar system. It will then get gradually colder on Earth. We can try to restore the global temperature to the ...
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How would a massive permanent updraft affect a rainforest?
This world has these massive tunnels in which large quantities of heat and air travel from one point to another, being permanently pushed by magic.
Their exits are basically massive updrafts coming ...
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A tidally-locked planet's dry ice caps
An exactly Earth-sized tidally-locked planet orbits its host star, which is functionally identical to our Sun, at an average distance of 1 AU, the same distance that the Earth orbits the Sun. The ...
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Help in determining the features of a fictional planet
I'm writing a sci-fi novel about a planet outside of the Solar System. The planet can support human life and is similar to Earth in many ways (1G gravity, Nitrogen-Oxygen-Carbon atmosphere, soil and ...
user44644
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What does being completely encased in rock feel like after a few hours?
The stone magician has defeated several crooks, and lacking handcuffs he simply encases them in individual round boulders which can then be rolled to the appropriate destination. What does that feel ...
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I am building an isolated indoor temperate rain-forest. What will the temperature be at the forest level?
I have been building an extra-dimensional space which I can connect to with portals. With these portals, I can cut down on the shipping rates and times. So I have made a global trading company of &...
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What would the climate and ecosystems be like if instead of water, land would be 71% of Earth's surface?
According to the Bureau of Reclamation, water covers about 71% of the Earth's surface. Everything from microbes in the ocean releasing greenhouse gases into the air, to the immense amount of water ...
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Cooling the Indian subcontinent using tibet [closed]
The Indian subcontinent is at the same latitude as the Sahara desert, and if not for the Tibetan Plateau reversing the Haileys cell, would have the same enviornment. The plateau causes rain in the ...
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What temperatures can be tolerated by a ''small'' human?
Temperature resistance is linked to size and bodily composition.
An easy example is the small obesity rate in cities like Singapore, regardless of the modernized diet fat people don't hang around in a ...
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Cooling Question: How can I integrate a low tech freezing system into my world?
I'm trying to design a culture that has access to cooling as a primary source of food preservation.
This culture is set in the desert. They will have access to a magical stone that has the ability to ...
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Would the temperatures in the troposphere and stratosphere change if oxygen levels increased significantly?
I need a way to make life possible in the troposphere and lower stratosphere for my scenario set in a distant future. My excuse to move life to these altitudes is to increase the oxygen levels in the ...
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What substance would make a good lava ocean?
I'm starting work on some fictional star systems, and I want to create a planet that has lava oceans. I found an excel spreadsheet a while back that does calculations for stars and planets, and based ...
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How Would Someone Who's Lived on a Climate-Controlled Planet Their Whole Life Acclimate to Extreme Climates?
One of the main characters in my book series is from an ecumenopolis (planet-city, similar to Coruscant from Star Wars) that is climate controlled to be wet and temperate all year round. Rainfall is ...
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How to model an earth-like planet with extreme winters in the northern hemisphere?
I want to create a planet where there are extreme winters (3 months with temperatures up to -40°C) at around 50° latitude.
The summers are just slightly hotter (a day of 30°C in the summer would not ...
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Laser cooling a person
So in my story, I'm trying to develop a plausible freeze ray. Now many people suggest liquid helium, but it seems to have a number of practical setbacks, such as being hard to obtain, needing vast ...
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