The winds flow differently on my planet than on Earth, creating some zones of extreme weather, which is how I liked it.Originally Posted by Veldehar
I couldn't find too much about the effects of tectonics on climate, except that they change the climate by moving landmasses around and create volcanoes that have an effect on the environment, and mountain ranges that hoard rain and in turn create rivers, that fertilize huge areas. Faster and stronger tectonics could mean more of all that and more expansive mountain ranges. I suppose the pressure on tectonic plates would be higher on a larger planet, as the amount and size of plates pressing on each other is higher, and the plates are thicker and gravity is stronger. Creating higher mountain ranges. More earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, underwater volcanic eruptions that fertilize the water and foster underwater biodiversity, increasing ocean foodchains that in turn increases abovewater foodchains (and biodiversity) which interact with the underwater ones, and cause tsunamis that cause extinctions, in turn leaving space for further evolution of creatures to fill in the void. That influence the environment themselves. The chain of cause and effect goes on for a long time. You can apply the same to mountain creation->river creation->...
I agree. I've spent way too much time reading every little piece of information I could find and obsessing over what its effect would be, and then trying to predict its effect with a gazillion other factors. And there's an unknown large amount of factors that we don't even understand. So I figure that we can venture anywhere with our worldbuilding as long as it obeys the basic and important advanced principles of nature as we know them. Who knows what other effects could be at work. We can even think of some of our own factors. I've been thinking about altering the periodic table for my universe, giving some of the rare elements that don't really have an important function (that can't be replaced by another) some more interesting properties. And expanding the periodic table, giving some of the higher useless elements that have halflives that can be measured in nanoseconds in our universe, a function. It's part of the beauty of designing a fictional universe that your imagination (and will) is the only limit, I think.
Magic is an interesting subject too. I want there to be magic, that is seen as a natural force instead of "magic", seen that way by both the people in my universe and readers. Kind of like how eezo's effects are seen in the mass effect universe. But at the same time I want it to have more of the mystery and flexibility surrounding magic in the fantasy genre. But it's harder to implement that than it might seem. I'm taking my planet through the primitive age to beyond the spage age, so it should be compatible both with a fantasy setting and a sci-fi setting.
Last edited by s0meguy; 05-31-2012 at 04:04 AM.
The development of a magical philosophy and its interaction with nature slowly lead to developing an entirely new game in order to fit item creation etc. it wasn't the only reason, but it was a catalyst. Effectively I altered the periodic chart, without bothering to actually do so. Once I finish my book on elemental metallurgy... LOL. Okay, the full system for that would be best suited for an MMO.
Upon the Creation of the World the First Dragons cast their seed in the light of a Sun and a Thousand Suns, beneath the Moon and a Thousand Moons, on a World and a Thousand Worlds.
www.sistercontinents.com
Something else I thought of - with a larger atmosphere, there is more warm air and thus has more capacity to absorb and carry moisture, and where the air at a high latitude is really moist, carrying part of it over large mountain ranges more than could happen on Earth, negating the dry areas that would exist behind mountain ranges on Earth.
I just want to add that on a larger planet mountains are lower than on smaller ones since the higher gravity prevents the "growth" of them.
But the forces that cause the formation of mountains would be exponentially stronger.
I don't know that you can really make the claim about plate tectonics, mountain height, and planet size...at the moment, we only have one example of plate tectonics in action...and that's the earth. Anything after that is all hypothetical and theoretical. Earth is the largest rocky planet in our solar system and none of the other planets exhibit any evidence (so far) of plate tectonics...the rest are 'uniplate' planets...here's a link to a brief conversation on the topic
http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/gsl/pid/65...FE790B169879E6
There are certainly much larger mountains on other planets...created by other forces...mostly volcanic activity (Olympus Mons on Mars). We just don't have any examples of rocky planets, larger than the earth, to know...so it's all speculation.
It seems that the question of plate tectonics comes down to a definition of the planetary core. So if you want to go into this level of detail, what's your core made of? How big is it? What's happening down there to create movement? Why can't there be forces at work in the core that could overcome gravity enough to force a mountain higher? Maybe the planet has a thin, and therefore, lighter crust?
I would suggest looking at the atmosphere of Venus as a starting point. There was a Nature article recently drawing some parallels between that atmosphere and ours. Etxrapolating from that might help. Food for thought, It seems likely that Venus has roughly the same number of volatiles as we do despite its much thicker atmosphere. Earth just stores a greater portion in its ocean and crust. So you don't absolutely need a thicker atmosphere, i.e. if you wanted to you could get a more Earth like pressure.
I am fairly knowledgeable about atmospheric chemistry and have some experience with planetary formation. I'm hoping to study exoplanet atmospheres if I can get funding. I might post more later, but if you have specific questions you can pm me. Particularly with UV shields and sulfur chemistry in atmospheres.
The maximum height of mountains is determined by two factors: the surface gravity and the amount of energy needed to melt a given quantity of the material the mountain is made of. The mechanism of the creation does not play a role.
On Earth the maximum height for a granite block with constant crosssection is about 10 km, on Mars it would be close to 30km. A planet with the double surface gravity of Earth could have mountains half as high.
IF mountains reach this height depends on the relative effectiveness of erosion and uplifting.
This statement seems to me not to make much sense. Even if the mechanism of creation doesn't play a role, the maximum height of mountains would be relative to the core of the planet, and not to whatever height inhabitants of the planet decide to call "zero". Which would probably depend on the amount of water on the planet, the more the planet is filled with water the higher up the inhabitants have to live, the "shorter" the mountains would be. The closer the inhabitants live to the core of the planet, the higher the mountains are from their perspective. So you can't just say that mountains would be less tall than those on Earth without knowing at which height the inhabitants live.
Can you point to some sources about mountain creation that back that up? I'm genuinely curious....what about a mountain made of volcanic rock?
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