Questions tagged [underwater]
For questions about events occurring below the surface of a body of water.
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How to keep a city floating beneath the surface of an exoplanet's ocean in place?
How would I be able to explain a city that is underwater, floating in place and such. Without it constantly moving. Basically, how can I explain how it stays in place and doesn't get pushed all across ...
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Is it possible for an artesian basin to go underneath a shallow sea while still being freswater?
An artesian basin is an aquifer in which water within permeable rock is kept under pressure between 2 layers of impermeable rock.
I don't know if any artesian basin exists like this in real life, but ...
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How big can my giant killer-eel grow?
In my fantasy world, Mainspring, the top of the oceans' food chain is the maculatum, a species of giant eel which originated on another plane/dimension. Maculatum reproduce asexually and wthout any ...
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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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Could a pre-industrial society make a heavy load neutrally buoyant?
I have a society of merfolk in fantasy novel (humans from the waist, fish tail from waist down, biology isn't important in this story, nothing complicated). While the humans are around 1850s tech, the ...
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Why would modern humans not use scuba gear for missions underwater? (But freedive instead)
I am writing the lore for a currently in-development open-world freediving adventure game and am stuck with trying to keep some things scientifically founded.
Overall the game style is closer to ...
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On a planet with larger gravity, would aquatic creatures be larger or smaller?
It is somewhat common knowledge in the worldbuilding community that larger planets leads to smaller land creatures, because larger planets means more gravity gets bigger and that makes it harder to ...
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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 merfolk need beds?
The merfolk are fully marine creatures with a mix of human and piscine traits. The culture in question is demersal, and constructs cities and towns upon the sea-floor. The merfolk all have a finned ...
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Would Merfolk Cheapen Sea-Silk?
Sea silk is an expensive textile derived from the byssus of pen shells. While it is evidently quite hard for land-dwellers to obtain, it seems uncertain if the same would be true with marine beings
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How to allow a sentient cephalopod to live a long lifespan?
In this alternate earth, during the Permian period, a sentient aquatic cephalopod species evolved intelligence equal if not superior to humans. Unfortunately, there's a big problem to a cephalopod ...
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Could the 'underwater glider' concept be applied to a 4000-tonne, 80m submarine?
Underwater gliders propel themselves through the water in an interesting way. They empty their tanks to float up, fill them to sink, repeat, going up and down rhythmically. But instead of just going ...
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Could a submarine 'sail' the ocean currents?
A sail generates propulsive force by the difference in pressure on the concave and convex sides. This principle of fluid dynamics should be true of seawater as it is of wind. And the seas do have ...
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What conditions could fish people evolve to be in their current humanoid form?
My fish people live in underwater nations. They look like a mix between the Creature from the Black Lagoon (left)
and the sea creatures from Luca:
with the exception of some minorities that resemble ...
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Violence in waterworlds -- How do you (gun)fight underwater?
In waterworlds where people live mostly under water or have access to bodies of water how is violence perpetuated in close quarters?
Projectiles lose their power really fast making them unviable. ...
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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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What natural ocean resources can be used to make into clothing?
I have a civilization that lives not exactly underwater, but completely surrounded by water in which their cities are both submerged underwater or built floating right on top of it. Almost all of ...
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What sort of music could octopi play?
It can be really hard to distinguish between sounds and find the source of a sound underwater. How could an octopus musician play music with defined notes that are not blurred (significantly) or ...
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Would Underwater Races be Near or Farsighted?
Light travels differently in water and air. Some of that is because of light's speed in a substance, and some is the light absorption that substance exhibits.
Is the difference in light scattering ...
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What's a reasonable environmental disaster that could be caused by a probe from Earth entering Europa's ocean?
I'm working on a story involving life on Europa (or at least a place just like it) being upturned dramatically by contact from a probe sent from Earth. Found this community while researching, and have ...
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Biology — A group of humans that magically became aquatic [closed]
In my setting, some humans hundreds of years ago became aquatic due to magic (the same setting has vampires pretty much like in the original Dracula novel, who descend from one guy who became a ...
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Why would hydrogen bubble up from the sea floor?
I am thinking of a world where bubbles of hydrogen emerge from the seafloor, and are trapped by people for use as fuel.
But what is the source of the hydrogen? In other words, what geological or maybe ...
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The believability of flesh eating plankton
Context
I am disigning a place called the Poisoned Sea, see this question for description, there are clouds of purple plankton that eat the tough flesh of the dead God-Eaters and anything that enters ...
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Underwater life on a 3G world [closed]
I'm creating a 3G ocean world and am wondering how the heavier gravity would affect life under this ocean?
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Is a Nuclear Thermal Propelled Submarine Possible?
So I've recently read about NTR's and how they can be applied in space. Here is a link to the website that I've looked at: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist2.php#ntrsolidcore
It ...
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How safe would deep-sea investigation of a nuclear battleground be?
Jormungandr, the snakebot of doom, is no more. Its remains are lying on the bottom of the sea in the Aleutian Trench to the south of the Rat Islands, where it was nuked to pieces by three hundred ...
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Weapon design for underwater hand-to-hand combat
Most hand-to-hand weapons are already streamlined for the obvious reason of minimizing air resistance. But would the same design work for underwater warfare?
My story has a character who is ...
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Merfolk Beauty Products (part 1: makeup)
What could an underwater civilization use to produce makeup and cosmetics? Considering that:
The merfolk's tech level is the same as ours (they have fire and metallurgy thanks to magic)
Makeup ...
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What could be ethical reasons for deep sea mining? [closed]
Unfortunately in real-life on our planet (Earth) deep sea mining for rare earth minerals is devastating to biological ecosystems and has very little motivations beyond the capitalistic/industrial ones,...
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Is an Underwater œcumenopolis viable?
An important planet in my setting is an ocean planet with a few atolls as its landmass. I intend the planet to be an underwater oecumenopolis (imagine a planet-spanning Rapture from Bioshock). Most ...
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Hyper-Agile Submarines?
Building off of another question I asked about the realism of short-range combat in the future, I was thinking about making combat scenarios with small, hyper-maneuverable submarines. These submarines ...
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What materials would merfolk use to craft armor?
What materials in the environment could merpeople use to make armor? The merpeople live in the mediterranean sea and have contact and trade with humans who could provide resources and craft the armor ...
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What would be the technological limitations of an advanced aquatic species? [duplicate]
My latest idea for worldbuilding involves a world in which the surface of the planet is 95% of the planet's surface covered in saltwater (there are still minerals and other collectible resources on ...
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Impact of a massive and static super predator in migration path
I'm in the process of adding the fun parts to my world, and I'm a bit perplex on this one;
Premise
Let's assume a fantasy ooze
An ooze is a mindless carnivorous blob of jello - think cube-shaped or ...
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How quickly will the oceans freeze if Earth becomes a rogue planet?
Assume Earth has been wrenched out of the Sun's orbit and has become a rogue planet (for the purposes of this question, assume that it happens near instantaneously, i.e. say the Sun just vanishes). ...
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How would an underwater city be structured? [closed]
Let's say there is an underwater civilization of merpeople. They were able to develop medieval technology (approximately, since an underwater civilization would develop differently than an above water ...
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How would humanity fight against a neolithic aquatic race
In the early 1950s an aquatic race called merfolk for simplicity sake was discovered. But they weren't friendly in order to scare them off the crew that discovered them fired off a warning shot which ...
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Could plankton create civilisation? [closed]
Could a species of planktonic beings, with sufficient intelligence, creativity, and physical ability to manipulate objects, create a technological civilisation at the same level as humans? While being ...
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Irrigation in ancient societies [duplicate]
In what kinds of environments would the irrigation of crops require authoritarian governments ? This would be about ancient pre industrial societies.
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Could merfolk cook without air by using electrical heating?
Basically title.
You can't light a fire to cook your food because everything's all wet and there's no air you see. But can you take some raw meat, apply an electric eel to it for 20 minutes, turning ...
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How do submariners contribute to the surface-world?
If there are people living deep underwater swishing around in nice submarines, how will they provide value to normie landlubbers?
http://theoildrum.com/node/4558 all but rules out the possibility they ...
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Could a creature swim using an organic dress?
Could a creature swim through water (faster than the average human) using a fin that wraps around the body like a dress or skirt? Specifically, the fin would surround the rear end in a circle, with a ...
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How would merfolk sustainably magically grow coral?
This question is a modified version of my earlier question, where I will clarify some of my worldbuilding.
In my world, merpeople are capable of manipulating coral by making it grow at a faster rate ...
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Could a non-nuclear sub power itself by ocean energy?
The sub would be about the size of:
the Sōryū class, which displaces 4200 tonnes (implying about 4200m³ volume) and has a 6000kW propulsion system
the Oyashio class, which displaces 4000 tonnes (...
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What consequences could arise from merpeople magically growing coral?
In my fantasy world there are merpeople who have a magical ability to manipulate coral, they can make corals grow at a much faster rate than it naturally would, as well as control the shape it grows. ...
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How can my low tech free diving species ventilate their homes?
I have an air breathing species that, for reasons of Plot, spend most of their time underwater. They’re pretty much comparable to humans in everything except how long they can hold their breath. ...
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How can you breathe underwater?
SCUBA equipment is pretty amazing, allowing us to breathe underwater and explore.
But they have drawbacks: they're noisy, cumbersome, and time-limited.
It seems like a futuristic scenario would ...
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Are low-energy submarines possible?
I'm envisioning submarines just cruising around doing normal things, taking the role of cars, trucks, RVs. I'm trying to estimate how much energy they would need.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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What kind of biological modifications can make humans survive rapid resurfacing?
Context: After reading this question and commenting (half joking) that it might be possible for the designated mech pilots to undergo biological modification to remove the problems typically ...
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What technology would be necessary to allow soldiers to ascend rapidly from deep in the ocean and to the surface?
In my world, submarine technology and ocean exploration is highly sophisticated. A large sub can house hundreds of people in addition to smaller subs and they are used to travel, kind of like ...
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