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
I think I read your title differently - as in, gravity would ebb and flow like wind or rain or barometric pressure or temperature. In normal days the gravity might be mostly constant, or may fluctuate a few percent as the day goes on, rising and falling over the diurnal cycle. But at times a gravity storm could blow through, causing wild fluctuations from just a few percent (or even reversing!) to a couple hundred percent, causing travelers to lose their un-secured cargo or to be pinned in place until the storm subsides. Locals would know the dangers and have things easily tied down, or beds for riding a gravity storm in relative comfort, but any huge storms people would evacuate, praying that the fluctuations wouldn’t destroy their homes or farms. (And now I’m imagining the end of O Brother Where Art Thou with the cow on the roof)
You read it correctly, that’s what I meant. Both different areas with different gravity patterns but also slight variations day to day like the weather with occasional freak occurances
I think reversal would be rare and restricted to very specific areas
Custom gravity beds would be cool. Personally I’d imagine they’d involve being immersed in some kind of ultra buoyant liquid designed not to cause problems with sustained skin contact
Ergonomic chairs, beds etc would be a must too
Really cool concept, this is like an extreme version of our planet; Earth’s gravity is not uniform, there are variations in the gravitational field due to uneven mass distribution.
Was this planet artificially created? I think a hollow, planet sized structure with a small black hole inside that is off-center could give a very noticeable variation in gravity.
We already experience this on earth to a degree. The moon causes the tides and shore dwelling ocean creatures have to contend with surviving during the high and low tidal periods. Not really weather per se, but it’s something.
Gravity is also inconsistent across the earth, but to a very limited degree.
Good point, and the tidal currents do affect the weather to a degree. But a massive moon (or four) could be used to explain seasonal or even daily changes in gravity.
Sounds pretty heavy.
There’s that word again heavy.
Sorry if someone else pointed to this already, but this could be relevant for your story:
“Unlike a body circling a single star, a planet orbiting a pair of stars would have to contend with two gravitational fields. And because the stars themselves orbit each other, the strength of the gravitational forces would constantly change.”
Ooooh and just when I’d kinda given up on a scientific explanation that works rather well
Good idea there
I’m so glad i could help!!
Wow that would be bound to have some cool side effects. I wonder what the trees would look like
Looks like one more reason to read the 3 body problem by Liu Cixin, which is a masterpiece of Chinese sci-fi. I am not gonna tell you anything more, as it’s a spoiler book sci-fi/cycle, and I advise you against reading anything about-it, just read-it
Roadside Picnic has gravitational anomalies, but they’re very small, don’t move, and are caused by abandoned alien artifacts.
You’d need the planet’s core to contain some kind of non-dense material that will not mix with the dense material … like molten rock but also molten something else that’s much lighter than rock. Basically you need “oil and water” droplets that don’t mix, and are of different densities. Then you need some mechanism for them to churn in a turbulent way. The turbulence makes their movements chaotic and unpredictable.
Only thing I can think of to account for the churning is electromagnetic forces being generated by naturally-occurring nuclear reactions.
So to summarize:
- Mantle composed of two substances. One much heavier than the other, and they don’t mix
- Electromagnetic forces occurring at random places and times causes these substances to churn in a turbulent way
- Turbulent churning of these two materials affects the total amount of mass under characters’ feet at different times, causing unpredictable “gravity weather”
- Those electromagnetic forces somehow result from nuclear reactions happening naturally underground (otherwise where do you get the electromagnetism from?)
I think this is my favourite idea so far as to explaining the gravity changes, very cool explanation
If you’re gonna write this book I highly recommend taking a physics class where you study the physics of bounding surfaces and energy flux.
I’m sorry but I don’t remember the exact name of the subject matter. But there are all sorts of interesting properties that different geometric configurations of matter have on the resulting gravitational field (same for sound intensity, electric field strength, etc, anything with an inverse square law).
There are some crazy properties of gravitational fields you wouldn’t expect. Like for instance if all mass was contained in a shell of constant density, then the entire space inside that shell is zero-G, regardless of the shell’s shape.
From outside that shell — say it’s a mickey-mouse-shaped shell of matter that’s uniform in density — you experience the gravitational pull of all of Mickey’s mass toward the centroid of that shape. But from anywhere inside that shell — whether you’re in Mickey’s eye or his heart or the tip of his tail — the pull from all the surrounding matter cancels out and you float in zero-G.
I’m no writer, just like worldbuilding and character building when I have ideas like this
We would have different bones/muscles/joints.
What kinds of differences are you thinking? I’d have thought existing joints would be reinforced, limbs shorter, bigger muscles for high grav or the opposite for low
The dwarves live in high gravity, elves live in low gravity. :O
Lmao yeees would explain why the elves live longer too because their bodies are under less strain
Idk, humans couldnt survive gravity changing all the time. Probably have bones filled with material that changes density with gravity fluctuations.
yeah any sort of large change would kill us in our current form, like less oxygen in the atmosphere killing off a number of larger species in Earth’s past. this world would have to have adaptions like you mentioned.
The expanse goes into some interesting generational changes between people who live on earth, Mars, and in the asteroid belt. Belters are tall and scrawny and when they go to earth they can’t stand and the gravity crushes their bones, extremely painful. The only way they can be there comfortably is in water. I’d imagine different areas with different "weather " would have different types of adaptations and travel wouldn’t be as common/easy.
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.
This isn’t realistic really but you said it doesn’t need to be 100%
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
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.
You should read The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu
Shaken, not stirred?
Low gravity + strong winds sounds like it would wreck everything and everyone. Hurricanes would turn into a disaster situation rather than a mild annoyance. Imagine cars flying around and ramming buildings.
Ooof yeah natural disasters could be way worse.
There could be entirely gravity based natural disasters too, imagine a gravity quake where gravity rapidly changes between high and low and the havoc that could wreak on structures and people’s bodies
Imagine a rare event like asteroid impact rare where a gravity inversion happens over water. A massive volume of water could rise up, arc over, drop onto a densely populated area. Imagine a small ocean falling from the sky onto a city.
In areas where that could happen they may need to build waterproof bunkers/homes
Completely scraping off any astronomical/space problems with this and just rolling along with the idea, which I like, I think your world inhabitants could be either:
- as you said, adapted locally
Or
- with a series of physical adaptations that would allow them to move between areas of different gravity. I think this would make things interesting because you said gravity as weather, and so you could play with the idea of gravitational seasons and gravitational storms or draughts.
Space is kind of a bust, I was thinking this is some fantastical universe where either it’s something like discworld or just magically the effects of the gravity variance are localised to inside the atmosphere
Would be interesting to think about what kind of variants of humans would adapt to their respective areas
I think the people who evolved in the highest gravity regions would become like supermen and end up ruling the whole world due to their superior strength. If not, it would at least give them a significant advantage while technology is still primitive. How would they defend themselves from attack?
See I kinda thought the opposite. I had thought all the wealthy elite would snap up homes in the nice cushy lower gravity areas and have financial power to control the working class living in the harsher, higher gravity areas
To begin with without technology absolutely the higher gravity people would be at the advantage. I imagine the lower gravity areas’ technology would be able to advance much more quickly though, less energy required from their society, so more going spare for research
Also, oceans still exist and as someone else has pointed out would be chaotic and dangerous to cross, so primitive societies would likely have a hard time
There’s also an advantage for low gravity people there in that it’s far easier for them to construct flying machines, so they would likely be far more mobile, and quite possibly first to make contact
Are you assuming there’s the one species who live all over the globe, like humans do? I was coming from the viewpoint that there may be related but divergent species who evolved to different gravity “climates”. I think that might affect the how things turn out to some extent.
Travel around the low gravity areas would be easier, but they would also only be limited to those areas due to piggyback weakness, whereas the people who evolved/grew up in high gravity would be able to travel the earth, so they would be the explorers, merchants and conquerors. Of course as technology advances this will all mean less and less
I can see the low gravity areas becoming prime real estate though, like you said. Talking geologically for a second, my first guess is that these would be higher elevation as the crust isn’t pulled down so much by gravity, and erode slower. Also precious metal deposits might(?) be closer to the surface too. If this is the case then this will give the low G folks to also advance in tech faster with greater access to useful metals. So if they’re quick enough maybe they can defeat the 'heavy’s with ingenuity.
I didn’t really come to a conclusion there did I? I just got more confused the more I thought about geopolitics…
Nothing wrong with not coming to a conclusion the goal is exploration
I am not assuming everyone would be the same physiology, however I imagine when travel becomes viable technologically people will start to mix and so will be varying amounts of high grav and low grav genetics, also I imagine a low grav individual who is born and grows up in a high grav area would end up suited for high grav through just building more muscle
That’s more or less my thinking with high/low grav dominance, much the same as in real life it’ll start out survival of the fittest and as society and technology progresses end up as smarter and/or more wealthy individuals in the lower grav areas taking over
