38
votes
Can a planet stay cracked?
There is a crack in Mars called Valles Marineris. It is about as long as the contiguous USA.
And here is a 3D rendering of it:
This rift is comparable to your specs in length and width, but not ...
- 125k
25
votes
Can a planet stay cracked?
No, it couldn't be remotely stable, and erosion is not going to matter.
Even assuming the crack got formed by some very 'gentle' process that didn't destroy the planet outright, you’ve got to consider ...
- 321
23
votes
Life underneath a blue star
Blue stars live around 10 million years.
According to the most recent timeline of human evolution, homo has developed in the last 2.5 million years, while 10 million years is what it has taken for ...
- 236k
18
votes
Is it possible to have a habitable planet with 2 sun that have sunset for one and sunrise for the other at the same time?
an habitable planet with 2 suns that is in just the right orbit so that each day one sun sets at the same time the other rises
For this to happen, the suns and the planet need to be on the same line, ...
- 236k
16
votes
Can a planet stay cracked?
The volume of the hole is about 10,500,000,000 cubic kilometers. The density of Earth is about 5,518,000,000 tonnes per cubic kilometer. The mass of the hole was about 6$\cdot$1022 kg. As such, the ...
- 23.5k
15
votes
Would a lower gravity planet have deeper oceans and higher continents?
Let's use our Solar System as sample to verify if planets with lower gravity have higher mountains, looking at the highest mountains in it.
Name
Height
Location (surface gravity $m/s^2$)
Olympus ...
- 236k
14
votes
Would a lower gravity planet have deeper oceans and higher continents?
Looking into your question, I found this at the Astronomy Stack Exchange: Does a planet's mass or gravity affect the height of it's mountains?.
There's some mathematical and scientific things in there,...
- 151
13
votes
Accepted
Life underneath a blue star
Binary Star Merger - It wasn't always a blue star
If it started with two lower-mass stars, it would allow a much longer history. It would pass through a "peanut-shaped" contact binary phase ...
- 3,132
12
votes
Life underneath a blue star
Sentient Life Could Colonise The System
Ten million years is an eyeblink in evolutionary time. However a technological civilization could settle the place. It might even be possible to stabilise the ...
- 15.4k
11
votes
Can Mars disintegrate entirely in this scenario?
One part of the question says:
Before the fly-over, Mars's rotation can be accelerated to up to 1 Martian day per hour if that helps Mars to disintegrate.
Would that help Mars break up into pieces?
...
- 23.5k
9
votes
Can a planet stay cracked?
Hot Mess:
This is a tricky question to answer. The first big question is, "What caused the crack?" The likely sources of the damage will seriously affect how the crack looks and how it fills ...
- 51.5k
9
votes
Can a planet stay cracked?
Short answer:
I suggest you use a small, artifically shaped and terraformed mostly iron nickel world to have a crack which is very large absolutely and also relative to the size of the world.
Long ...
- 23.5k
7
votes
Life underneath a blue star
Rogue planet capture
Life evolving on a blue star is just not likely. Life arriving there skipping the hard part would be a very convenient event however how can that happen?
Rogue planets are planets ...
- 2,103
6
votes
Accepted
What are the most important aspects of an environment that a drone would need to report for survivability?
The immediately obvious:
Atmospheric composition/pressure.
Temperature (diurnal variation), day length.
UV and other radiation.
Eccentricity of planetary orbit.
Presence of biome.
Presence of large ...
- 21.7k
6
votes
Is it possible to have a habitable planet with 2 sun that have sunset for one and sunrise for the other at the same time?
L1 Lagrange point is not stable, and neither is the barycenter
What you're asking about is the L1 Lagrange point, which is not a stable location.
https://ke.gsusigmanu.org/3669-could-there-be-a-planet-...
- 1,548
6
votes
Accepted
how would you call a star when referring to a "sunset" or "sunrise"
Why wouldn't they still just call it sunrise/sunset? they would probably refer to the star at the centre of their solar system as a sun.
It's a fairly common trope in sci-fi settings that Earth and ...
- 891
6
votes
how would you call a star when referring to a "sunset" or "sunrise"
The names of the planet and the star are taken from Chinese language. Then why are you looking for sunrise and sunset in English?
Take sunrise (Rì chū) and sunset (Rìluò) from Chinese also.
- 3,882
5
votes
What chemicals would an atmosphere unbreathable by humans (yet allowing alien life to thrive) contain?
Maybe the same stuff we have on Earth?
Imagine 100 people at a concert. 14 are from Iowa. That crowd is 14% Iowans and it is ok because they are into it. Then the van from Council Bluffs shows up ...
- 272k
5
votes
Can a planet stay cracked?
No, by definition.
People still debate if Pluto deserves to be called a planet or not. The current definition has three elements:
In orbit around the sun.
Large/massive enough to reach a hydrostatic ...
- 97.1k
5
votes
Is it possible to have a habitable planet with 2 sun that have sunset for one and sunrise for the other at the same time?
After considering many different configurations of star systems, I have decided that the most stable system where the two visible stars would always be 180 degrees apart as seen from the planet would ...
- 23.5k
5
votes
Is it possible to have a habitable planet with 2 sun that have sunset for one and sunrise for the other at the same time?
Frame challenge: a synchronised sunset/sundown would be really underwhelming.
The reason why sunsets and sunrises are romantic and dramatic is because they a) cause the sky to change (relatively) ...
- 1,622
5
votes
Is this an accurate environment for life on a super Earth speculatively?
There are a number of issues.
It is possible to have a planet with twice the size of Earth and a lower gravity, but it requires the radius of the planet to be at least 1.45 the radius of the Earth. ...
- 2,710
4
votes
How could large scale mining operations render an arid region unlivable?
It's already here on Earth, no further explanation needed. Surface-mining leaves large areas of surface barren and uninhabitable. It's the easiest, cheapest form of mining and the only one which is ...
- 3,520
4
votes
how would you call a star when referring to a "sunset" or "sunrise"
Not all languages use sunrise and sunset, your perspective is being skewed by using English.
For example Italian uses "alba" for the moment when the star appears above the horizon and "...
- 236k
4
votes
Is this an accurate environment for life on a super Earth speculatively?
Should be fine
There was a time in the Earth's history where we had a lot of large animals. Look:
Your world is like the prehistoric Earth. It is believable you have big animals too.
There is no need ...
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3
votes
Accepted
How could large scale mining operations render an arid region unlivable?
Mine tailings
The first thought was about all the acids that are used to extract the base elements from the ore. However, they would be deadly, but they will form a localised pollution. On the other ...
- 2,380
3
votes
Oxidized alkaline planets?
If my chemistry knowledge is not too rusty, I think it is not possible, based on the following considerations:
According to the theory of Brønsted–Lowry
In the Brønsted–Lowry theory acids and bases ...
- 236k
3
votes
Life underneath a blue star
On a super-earth.
To have life evolve very quickly you need ample resources, and a lot of chances.
So, suppose this star caught a rogue superearth in its habitable zone. This super earth has a thick ...
- 23.5k
3
votes
Can a planet stay cracked?
No, it is not stable.
It's hard to account for everything that would effect such a scenario, but just to name a few things that would happen, first, all of the liquid water on the planet would try to ...
- 742
3
votes
Lift 10 Billion Tons of Material From a Planet (Every Second)
Nice question, I like the scale, but I would say it requires some better technologies for making K2, which with generative design systems and resources (computing power) when done on K1 scale, should ...
- 5,563
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