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In the world of Chaos for a book/TV series I may create, a super Earth planet was embroiled in a 100 year long war, until the advanced Rhiobanna Dominion used a massive web of underground nukes to blow the tectonic plates off the planet’s core. The atmosphere and planetary core were unchanged, but the tectonic plates were pinned between by their dual gravitational forces. Several hundred million years passed, and what was once the underside of the plates have become the surface of immense floating islands. My question is: Would this world work with known scientific laws? I haven’t really checked my science, it just seemed cool. Anyway, here are some things about Chaos:

  • The largest island is the size of Greenland, and the smallest islands are around the size of Albany, NY.
  • Smaller islands are often colder, since they drift further into the atmosphere.
  • The core of the old planet works like a sun in this world, providing a decent amount of light, heat, and energy.
  • The islands are connected by massive “threads” of water, functioning like rivers.
  • Gravity on these islands is screwy. Usually, it pulls things toward the atmosphere (“down”), but if one climbs a mountain on one of these islands, the Core’s gravity will pull things toward itself (“up”).
  • Chaos’s moon, Ydroexagogéas, is pretty far from Chaos, but it still exerts a gravitational effect. Whichever islands it passes by get pulled a little further into the atmosphere, and become colder. Respectively, when the moon reaches its apogee from an island, it gets pulled slightly closer to the Core. So, due to Ydroexagogéas, Chaos’s seasonal cycle only takes 3.5 Earth months.

I apologize in advance if this question is too broad or doesn’t make sense.

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  • $\begingroup$ "I haven’t really checked my science, it just seemed cool." Then don't. Anything and everything in sci-fi needing a rock-solid explanation is tiresome. Just run with the idea as-is. Every sci-fi writer knows you're allowed 1-2 colossal "suspension of disbeliefs", and this is clearly one of them. $\endgroup$
    – BMF
    Commented Dec 8, 2022 at 15:37
  • $\begingroup$ For a work to be done, in a scientific sense, a force must be exerted, and there must be displacement in the direction of the force. With this said, we can say that Work is the product of the component of the force in the direction of the displacement and the magnitude of this displacement. Mathematically, the above statement is expressed as follows: W = (F cos θ) d = F. d Where, W is the work done by the force. F is the force, d is the displacement caused by force θ is the angle between the force vector and the displacement vector byjus.com/physics/work $\endgroup$
    – Justin Thyme the Second
    Commented Dec 8, 2022 at 16:05
  • $\begingroup$ A science-based answer for a question that cannot be supported by science. Interesting. $\endgroup$
    – Justin Thyme the Second
    Commented Dec 8, 2022 at 16:07

3 Answers 3

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Nope

but the tectonic plates were pinned between by their dual gravitational forces. . . . what was once the underside of the plates have become the surface of immense floating islands. . . . Gravity on these islands is screwy. Usually, it pulls things toward the atmosphere (“down”). . .

Would this world work with known scientific laws?

There are no known scientific laws that would allow the tectonic plates to remain suspended, or for gravity to somehow invert so people can walk on the underside of the plates.

Make the world how you want. Don't worry about the scientific laws. I will not tell on you.

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  • $\begingroup$ The gravitational force of the atmosphere is what pulls the objects on the plates toward the plates. And the gravity didn’t “invert” suddenly, because basically every living thing died in this event. The life just evolved to face the Core, because the other side is cold and barren. $\endgroup$
    – Jobah_HigherMind
    Commented Dec 8, 2022 at 14:37
  • $\begingroup$ Air isn't dense enough to have the gravity or gooey enough to have the tension to yank up the continents. $\endgroup$
    – Nepene Nep
    Commented Dec 8, 2022 at 14:39
  • $\begingroup$ @Jobah_HigherMind I see. It still doesn't work I'm afraid. No matter how thick or dense is the atmosphere, the Shell theorem says gravity will never pull to the inner surface of the sphere. And there is still no way to keep the plates floating mid-air. $\endgroup$
    – Daron
    Commented Dec 9, 2022 at 9:34
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No

Basically, what you're asking for is quadrillions of tons worth of continents "suspended" in a spherically-symmetric zero-gee region around the planet created by the two opposing gravitational forces of the core/mantle and the atmosphere.

Can you see the problem yet? The atmosphere directly above any location would have to exert the same gravitational pull up as the thousands of kilometers of rock does down. The atmosphere would not only be comparable in mass to the planet, but a lot more so because gravitational force is a function of material density. Air is thousands of times less dense than rock, which means thousands of times more volume of air than rock. All that air heaped on would not be conducive to STP conditions at surface level. What you've got is a gas giant and absolutely crushing pressures and smoldering temperatures.

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NO

the problem here is the assumption that the atmosphere will just stay as a shell so that it can provide gravitational pull away from the core.

even if we assume that there is enough matter in the atmosphere to have enough gravitational pull to offset the pull from the core, what is keeping the atmosphere from just collapsing back onto the core?

an atmosphere is not solid like a shell. it can "flow" and rip apart rather easily. so any bit of it that is close enough that it feels a pull greater than the centrifugal force due to rotation (lets be honest, having it rotate really fast is the only way to even have a chance of it staying up there) will fall down to the core and the shell will collapse in no time.

TLDR: physics say that a shell made of gas cant be stable around a ball of mass

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