Questions tagged [water]
For questions that have to do with the liquid form of H2O.
157
questions
3
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1answer
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What effects would large-scale hydraulic mining have on the landscape?
Premise/question
Hydraulic mining is the process of spraying high-pressure jets of water into the ground to dislodge sediment and rocks. The muddy water from this is directed into sluices where ...
35
votes
15answers
9k views
Are 'tree waterfalls' possible?
Something like the above (Natural Springs by Ellie Cooper) - either where the water originates from atop the tree through regular rainfall, or is directed up and into the tree via the spring (or some ...
7
votes
7answers
1k views
Where would a technologically advanced group of people forced into space by a calamity obtain water from?
The fleet in my setting are forced to leave the planet due to a volatile virus, and leave in pre-prepared spacefaring vessels capable of transporting ten million people per ship. The ships have ...
3
votes
1answer
61 views
Finding water underground, Earth is 500f on the surface
If you had a tunneling machine and wanted to tunnel towards fresh water underground, how would you find the water? I'm imagining some sort of sonar, but would you need triangulation of some kind? ...
5
votes
4answers
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Could a large enough fleet generate tsunamis while moving from a place to another?
Imagine similar earth conditions of oceans and currents, and a renaissance type kind of ships of various sizes (ranging from sloops to ships-of-the-line), could a fleet consisting in 1500 (aprox.) ...
16
votes
8answers
6k views
Feasible and rational way to give food and water to a prisoner?
There is a lord who is being kept prisoner in a castle tower by a griffin who has taken over his home, but requires the lord be kept alive for political value. Naturally this requires the griffin ...
3
votes
2answers
206 views
How Could People Utilize a Hypereutrophic Sea?
In a previous post I asked about the feasibility of connecting the ocean to a dried sea bed with hand tools and it was pointed out how environmentally disastrous this would be.
So the bronze age ...
2
votes
1answer
94 views
Extracting all water from Ganymede?
Is it theoretically possible to extract all ice and water from moons with subsurface oceans like Ganymede or Enceladus?
What would the consequences of isostatic rebounding be if this was done on a ...
2
votes
1answer
138 views
zora armor, and how it could actually be made to swim up water falls?
so in the game's legend of Zelda, there is the Zora armor. it helps you swim faster (which is shown by having flippers on the feet so obviously that would help, and it's skin-tight to fit whoever it ...
2
votes
3answers
164 views
How can a salty ocean be turned purple?
On my Conworld, the oceans are purple. This is mostly for aesthetic purposes and my current explanation is an abundance of cyanobacteria. I'm not sure that this explains it correctly, so what could ...
3
votes
4answers
142 views
How to make a viable aquatic mount
Just as in the real world where horses were tamed to travel long distances quickly across land, would it be realistic for an animal to be tamed and used as an aquatic mount for quick transport around ...
5
votes
1answer
99 views
How would much smaller heat capacity of water affect the life on Earth?
Water, as is, with its physical and chemical properties, is the base of any living being on Earth.
Water has a rather high specific heat capacity of 4.184 J/gC, which in itself has a great effect on ...
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votes
3answers
115 views
Type of feet for large creature in shallow freshwater
A quadruped creature, similar in size to a small cow has found its niche in shallow freshwaters in a tropical climate.
What type of feet would be suitable for this environment?
I speculate that the ...
5
votes
5answers
999 views
Fight a biblical flood apart from building barriers [closed]
In a medieval setting, which methods of fighting a rising sea level exist apart from building barriers? The idea is that a civilization has to fight the flood just long enough to finish their ark.
...
3
votes
1answer
112 views
Earth like planet, more surface area under water?
Planet: earth like, half the radius of earth, gravity is .7g.
Assuming this is possible and humans live on this planet, would it be possible to have 90% of the planets surface area be under water? ...
9
votes
7answers
4k views
Would this system work to purify water?
This is part of my generation ship worldbuilding. I mentioned my water purification system in a different question, but I never directly asked about it. Here, I will directly ask about it. I think it ...
0
votes
0answers
49 views
What atmospheric changes could make water purple? [duplicate]
I'm writing a story based on another planet and would like for the water to be purple instead of blue, but I don't know if an atmosphere that would allow that would be safe for humans to breathe in.
6
votes
1answer
124 views
Ecological implications of osmotic portals
Suppose some magical civilization on Earth-like planet can create portals. Any given portal entrances are spherical surfaces of the same radius. Any particle enters one sphere and exits another in the ...
18
votes
5answers
4k views
Getting fresh water in the middle of hypersaline lake in the Bronze Age
An ancient kingdom covers a several rivers in a desert basin all converging on a central, hypersaline, lake. Because of its central location, and the importance of the salt, the lake has important ...
3
votes
3answers
255 views
Is a confluence of more than two rivers plausible?
Two rivers converging into one is obviously extremely common, most often when one is clearly dominant over the other (whereby the lesser one is the 'tributary' of the greater) but also sometimes where ...
10
votes
16answers
5k views
How to supply water to a coastal desert town with no rain and no freshwater aquifers?
Think Tatooine in climate, but with oceans. Here are a few restrictions due to setting:
There is modern technology, but not too much electricity ie no super high amperage machines.
Population is ...
3
votes
5answers
443 views
Does a character being allergic to water (specifically the $H_2O$ molecule) make rational sense?
I'm writing a drama book and it's meant to be taken 100% seriously, and the main character was born with an allergy to $H_2O$. She does not have Aquagenic Urticaria, as that only affects the skin. She ...
18
votes
3answers
2k views
Closest Proximity of Oceans to Freshwater Springs
I am trying to wrap my head around the geography of a settlement in my world.
The settlement is situated along the coast, along a river roughly 500m wide with temperate mixed forests surrounding it, ...
4
votes
1answer
143 views
What construction and physics implications would there be for life in an underwater “high rise building?” [closed]
I'm working on a project in which part of the story takes place on a planet that is mostly ocean. There is a small continent with some manufacturing and refinery structures, but the rest of the planet'...
8
votes
7answers
2k views
How much water is needed to create a Katana capable of cutting flesh, bones and wood?
I've created a character for my world that has the ability to manipulate water with her magic. She applied this ability by using it with a katana hilt. I will try to explain how she uses this ability ...
19
votes
3answers
4k views
Does water in vacuum form a solid shell or freeze solid?
I'm working on a sci-fi setting which includes an aquatic space-faring species.
When a human space vessel is ruptured and depressurizes, the gas can escape rapidly and we immediately suffer from the ...
0
votes
4answers
233 views
How significantly would the course of rivers change over 10,000 years?
This one is rather straightforward. A character falls into a magically-induced coma for about 10,000 years and then wakes up to find the world around him different in quite a few ways. There's not a ...
48
votes
13answers
11k views
Pressure inside an infinite ocean?
Handwaving the origin of one such place, imagine a universe where every part of space is filled fully and evenly with liquid water (at, say 1 degree Celsius). What would be the experience of a solid ...
24
votes
8answers
4k views
How could a planet have most of its water in the atmosphere?
I am creating a speculative evolution project for school (and partially for leisure) and I need a planet for my organisms to live on. I have a rough idea of what it may be like but I'm no expert in ...
9
votes
3answers
384 views
Is 'Black' Whitewash Possible?
Question: Is it technically possible to make a 'Black' Whitewash?
True Whitewash is a plaster-like substance that has been used to coat stone and wooden walls for cosmetic and waterproofing purposes ...
2
votes
5answers
395 views
Creating the perfect post-apocalyptic suburban town, part I: water source
I'm writing a story set in the immediate (and eventually distant) aftermath of the human race globally being given access to a runic magic system in the modern day. This... eventually goes very, very ...
11
votes
10answers
6k views
Is there enough fresh water in the world to eradicate the drinking water crisis?
Lets assume, by the means of some advanced scientific discovery, scientists find a way to teleport simple matter to any part of the world and use this process to teleport fresh water and/or small ...
6
votes
2answers
194 views
Electrical, Internet and phone connections on an isolated part of a world?
In the world I am creating, a chunk of the USA, specifically in Northern Oregon, is teleported to another world. The teleported section has all infrastructure intact, including power generation in the ...
5
votes
4answers
283 views
What would happen if the boiling point of a section of ocean was lowered to 5C?
Suppose, that in a particular area of the ocean on an earth-like planet, all water molecules are transmuted into an exotic variety of $H_2O$ that is identical to normal water in every way except with ...
11
votes
5answers
2k views
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 ...
10
votes
2answers
1k views
Infrastructure damage from sudden thickening of water
Deep in a laboratory far under the megacity of Exampleville, a scientist is experimenting on a new compound found in an alternate, magical universe. He accidentally knocks over a vial of Handwavium, ...
8
votes
4answers
365 views
Water planet turns into desert world without being rendered uninhabitable
A habitable (human could survive in its atmosphere without suits) desert planet which used to have large oceans is quite common in ScFi. I was thinking about the processes which could have been ...
6
votes
5answers
354 views
Salty or fresh or brackish waters?
So this is a small map of all the continents on the small planet of Parsas Decem. As far as most of the rivers go, Iāve got it figured out. What Iām wondering is, can salt water flowing in from the ...
9
votes
5answers
4k views
How to get rid of human waste without using bodies of water
A particularly religious people living in a land filled with rivers need to get rid of their excreta. They have disfavoured sewers and dumping waste on water because they venerate oceans and rivers, ...
4
votes
4answers
837 views
Could a terrestrial planet have water for a core?
Thereās a planet called eaglypt whose surface is 100% barren desert. However, there is a twist: the planetās core consists of liquid water, and there are a few places where this water seeps through ...
6
votes
2answers
139 views
Maximum realistic salinity level with thriving aquatic environment?
I'm trying to create a planet which environment is not immediately lethal to humans, (reasonable oxygen level) however after closer inspection turns out not to be specially Earth-like.
One issues is ...
4
votes
2answers
134 views
What water generating technology would be required to create a planetary scale flood?
Aqadatio is a planet which is completely flooded. This flood was generated by its own government to get out of debt (long story). The inhabitants of this planet are technologically advanced, more so ...
7
votes
4answers
702 views
How common is it for a river to enter a valley from a flatter plain?
before I get into my question I wanted to thank everyone for their input in my first thread about the general principles of river drawing. I have taken your comments under consideration and began ...
8
votes
4answers
350 views
I'm going to have to redraw most of my rivers - what do I need to know to make them true to life?
I'm new here but I've been a worldbuilder for the last decade or so. I'm pretty late to the 'mapping out your country' party and I've only been at it for about 8 months, but I'm starting to see some ...
1
vote
1answer
158 views
Genetic altering to make human lungs strong enough to process water [duplicate]
I am aware that human lungs can't process water due to other reasons, but I am working on a setting that has genetically altered humans of various degrees and one of them can breathe water and air. I ...
70
votes
24answers
17k views
What is the utilitarian purpose of artificial waterfalls?
In sci-fi and fantasy artwork, I often see a city built on top of or incorporating waterfalls:
James Gurney's Dinotopia (above) is an egregious example with "waterfall towers". When the city is ...
1
vote
3answers
295 views
How do I build an ancient moisture vaporator?
Let us suppose a world that exists under a harsh red sun. The entire planet, which may once have been fertile, is, in its current state, covered with desert. The civilization living there, which may ...
0
votes
3answers
205 views
What amount of heat would be necessary to evaporate the oceans? Can his heat threshold be reached if there were no ozone layer? [closed]
The problem in my fictional future Earth was: almost the entire ozone layer disappeared due to a massive release of CFCs in the atmosphere. I was trying to calculate if this would lead to the oceans ...
2
votes
0answers
99 views
Why would somebody want to stop the four elements? [closed]
I'm writing a story about the four elements that are in four people. One controls water, one controls fire, and so on for air and earth. Why would the antagonist want to get rid of the four people/...
3
votes
9answers
1k views
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 ...
