Questions tagged [water]
For questions that have to do with the liquid form of H2O.
172
questions
2
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3answers
195 views
How to dry an ocean planet and NOT turn it into a salty desert?
So, Here's the scenario:
we start with an ocean planet, with minimal dry land. The planet stays this way for at least 400 million years. (Notably, life evolves during this time period.) Then, a magic ...
4
votes
4answers
207 views
What would an until-recently waterworld look like?
So, suppose a world that, for most of its biological history, was a water world, with minimal dry land. Starting from the Cambrian Explosion analogue, the world stays like this for roughly 460 million ...
2
votes
1answer
75 views
Could there be electricity in an ocean city?
I was wondering if a "mermaid city" (where people lived in the ocean and somehow breathed underwater) could have any means to create or use electricity. Thanks!
2
votes
2answers
63 views
Does this method of magnetic capture provide a mostly closed loop system?
The issue:
I have set up a lunar base with around 500 people. Cargo shuttles ("Bullets") regularly fly up and down from low lunar orbit. These shuttles, unfortunately, have a very high mass ...
0
votes
1answer
35 views
Giant, flying fish? [duplicate]
I have this idea of giant, literal flying fish. About the size of a megalodon (if impossible, it can be smaller, I just want them to be really big), they fly at speeds of 70 miles per hour (again, you ...
4
votes
7answers
602 views
How do I naturally keep potable, fresh water from freezing?
My planet is always very cold (I don't have an exaxt number). So cold, that most fresh water would freeze. How do I keep this from happening? Humans can't bring it about, and humans also have to be ...
4
votes
4answers
175 views
Would oceanic planet's water be drinkable?
According to Google, the sea is salty because the rainfall dissolves land minerals and salt, which then washes away to the oceans, and over billions of years that process raised the salinity of the ...
8
votes
5answers
220 views
Will water planets have ice caps?
Considering both full water worlds mostly out of water and ice, and rocky planets that just have a bit too much of it - would polar caps form on them if the conditions are roughly similar to modern ...
0
votes
0answers
22 views
Binary lung and gill breathing system [duplicate]
With my animation, one of the protagonist's abilities is that she can grow gills that allow her to breathe underwater, while retaining most of her humanoid features, such as lungs to breathe on land. ...
7
votes
3answers
964 views
How big could a water planet be and not have an ice core?
I'm imagining an artificial planet of almost pure water constructed by an advanced aquatic species. It's "almost pure" because they included enough impurities in the water for life to thrive,...
3
votes
1answer
76 views
How to get Rodinia/Pangaea to now in a year?
I was reading this article, and noticed this section:
At the opposite end of the plates, the presence of water underground changes how easy or hard it is for one plate to subduct beneath another in a ...
4
votes
1answer
127 views
Is there a scientific phenomenon allowing to repel water without using strong heat or wind?
I want to know if there is a scientific phenomena that can repel water like some kind of water magnet, outside of using heat to evaporate it, which as far as I understand can result in violent ...
5
votes
2answers
80 views
How would multicellular organisms evolve in a microgravity ocean?
How would living organisms develop/evolve in a very-low g ocean environment?
The environment would be a small radioactive core surrounded by a small mass of water, less than 100 km in diameter, in the ...
8
votes
4answers
187 views
Water-filled domes as space habitats
I have an idea for a space habitat [edit: as in, a habitat on another planet or moon, not in open space, apologies for any confusion!] which consists of two concentric domes made of tough, transparent ...
6
votes
2answers
171 views
How long would it take for water vapor from an ocean asteroid impact to rain back down?
In my story a consortium of megacorporations spot a new comet 26km wide entering the inner solar system. Earth is in dire need of water because of an already worsening climate change disaster (think ...
7
votes
2answers
914 views
What sort of concern should someone with the ability to breath underwater be aware of?
I have a character (humanoid) that has the ability to breathe underwater; either through gills or through augmented lungs but I'm not sure what starting list I should be aware of in concerning their ...
1
vote
1answer
63 views
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 ...
32
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
67 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
1k views
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
221 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
100 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
189 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
228 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
167 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
123 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 ...
5
votes
3answers
122 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
1k 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
115 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 ...
6
votes
1answer
130 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
290 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
456 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
3k 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
144 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'...
9
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
336 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 ...
25
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
454 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
510 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
199 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
362 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 ...
