Asklemmy

43810 readers

1441 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

213

What would a world where gravity is a weather condition look like? (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 year ago by flashgnash@lemm.ee to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

81 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Apologies if this doesn't fit here, not sure where else to post something like this on lemmy

I think having gravity act like weather might be an interesting concept for a fantasy world, where each country has its own gravity patterns, some tend to be heavier some tend to be lighter, some are all over the place

For a few examples, there could be a desert with gravity so high you can get dragged down into the sand

Could be a country with gravity so low everyone uses personal aircraft that work like bicycles instead of land vehicles

Animals in higher gravity areas would have less dense bones, more muscle, etc and lower gravity would have far larger animals because they can support more weight

In a really high gravity area people might need exoskeletons to prevent long term damage

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] lmaydev@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This actually a real phenomenon.

However, gravity isn't the same everywhere on Earth. Gravity is slightly stronger over places with more mass underground than over places with less mass. NASA uses two spacecraft to measure these variations in Earth's gravity. These spacecraft are part of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission.

But it's practically unnoticeable on earth in real terms.

So there could be some sort of super dense mineral in some places. Or basically hollow earth in others.

[–] flashgnash@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The problem with that is it doesn't account for changing gravity patterns. I think as soon as you explain part of it realistically people ask questions about the rest and that becomes a whole scientific discussion

I'm more interested in the effect it'd have on society, evolution, etc rather than the practicalities of how it could happen in the first place personally

[–] xmunk@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago

Changing gravity could certainly be explained by super dense mineral clusters. Once you get below the mantel the Earth is essentially a liquid... it isn't so beyond belief to imagine a world where mantel temperatures are higher and everything below the thin outer crust is fluid... if we then imagine pockets of super dense material with weird magnetic properties it'd be possible for large clumps of that to float through the mantel and cause interesting variations in gravity. Gravity follows the inverse square law so a super density fluid traveling through the upper mantel would potentially cause some really odd effects.

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

You should read The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu