this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
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What would a world where gravity is a weather condition look like? (lemm.ee)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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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

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[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I suppose wheeled boats are just... cars with sails? Sailcars? Wind chariots?

Hm, one thing I didn't think about was magma, if the variations are not so small. Going to have more volcanic eruptions, as fluids get pressed out of high-gravity regions and into low-gravity ones (creating big mountains that grow and tumble into the high gravity wells like some sort of horizontal convection?). Earthquakes too, as the high gravity regions sink and the low gravity ones rise creating shear force. I bet the planet would be more "lumpy" than your run-of-the-mill oblong spheroid. I wonder what continental drift would be like?

With that much irregular magma flow, I bet the magnetic field would be weird if it could sustain one at all. Maybe as 'cells' where the eruptions occur in low gravity regions, then gets pulled into high gravity regions where it compresses, heats due to radioactive decay, melts and is pushed back out into low-gravity regions. So maybe you'd have 'local north' for the cell? Or a very weak magnetic field overall (yay radiation)? I don't really know on this point.

Oh and exceptionally high-precision clocks won't be useful except locally, because of the effect of gravity on spacetime, but that doesn't seem so bad. Low precision clocks based on pendulums won't be useful at all! Spring escapements should be fine though.

Maybe it would be better to live underwater?

Wow all of that, and home ownership still seems more accessible there than here. I bet real estate prices are a bargain!

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I can't imagine living under water would be much fun either, I imagine the bottom of the ocean in high grav would be absolutely unlivable due to the pressure

Also, I'm not entirely sure how it works but divers have to come out of the water really slowly and carefully so they don't get the bends, imagine that where the water pressure keeps changing

Infact imagine any underwater structure where the pressure continuously changes dramatically

Also also the tides would be going absolutely crazy overhead

All that said that would make it even cooler to have some kind of hermit character, maybe a powerful wizard living under the sea despite all the hazards and difficulties

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

As a mercenary science hermit, I approve.