A friend of mine (honest! This is not for me, I swear!) needs some plausible science to explain the setup of his story.
The basic premise is, sea levels have risen to such a degree that landmass on Earth is limited.
So… what scientifically believable series/chain of events, or one single catastrophe, could cause that?
(When I say ‘believable’ it just means it has to stand up to some scrutiny. The ideas can be highly unlikely. Like, I dunno, a massive asteroid plunging into the ocean and displacing the sea level?)
Anyhoo, speculate away! Evil fictional scientists are sitting at the edge of their desks waiting for your answers.
I’m thinking this probably isn’t what he has in mind. Global warming will raise sea levels maybe 20-25 feet over a couple hundred years or so. The effect will be something like a reduction of 10% of land mass (just a WAG on my part.) I think he wants something much higher and a lot quicker. Maybe something like 30% loss over 30 years.
Perhaps plate tectonics goes amok and raises the Pacific sea floor? No idea how this could happen but I suppose it’s possible to the extent that it’s not totally impossible.
The only reason the world isn’t totally submerged is because we have some tall land peaks that protrude due to plate tectonic activity.
If the land mass (crust) was smooth we’d have almost 3km (2 miles) of water (or ice) covering all of the planet.
Run the scenario backwards though and you could readily see a hot primal earth with a smooth surface covered entirely by water. (Except you’d need to explain where all that water came from!)
I thought that might be the case, but acc. to geology.com, while plenty of coastal cities would be submerged, the vast bulk of land would still be habitable. It would suck (esp. since I’m in one of the vulnerable areas!) but not bad enough for this dude’s purposes.
I think the guy is hoping for a near-Waterworld type of scenario. Like, one where the very highest elevations are all that are left.
Heh, I think he needs the readers to assume Earth’s mountains and valleys and so on actually exist (or existed). Rather than a hypothetical Earth where we had no nooks or crannies.
Thanks, though! Imaginative responses so far. If there’s a consensus that one of these is a good enough possibility, I’ll send it over his way and see if the idea, uh, floats.
Goodness. So like… Earthquakes or the aforementioned plate tectonics? Occurring in so many different places? What could cause such a thing, hypothetically? Underground nuclear testing or drilling gone mad?
It was a Star Trek plot so it probably doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, but in a holosuite program run by Dr. Bashir in “Our Man Bashir”, the evil scientist has a plot in which he sets off mining lasers all over the world simultaneously, causing the surface of the earth to shrink “like letting air out of a balloon”. The oceans cover the earth, except for the very top of Mount Everest, where the bad guy has his base.
It was a fun, but silly episode, so like I say, it probably doesn’t hold up to any real scrutiny. Still, this is what I thought of when I read the OP.
“So like… Earthquakes or the aforementioned plate tectonics? Occurring in so many different places? What could cause such a thing, hypothetically? Underground nuclear testing or drilling gone mad?”
I like it!
How about the old saw of the earth’s magnetic field changing direction? [It’s due any few (hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands) of years or so from now.] Perhaps that could entice the cells in the mantle to reverse direction and thus create obduction [Obduction - Wikipedia] in order to flatten the land mass?
The only way to do it with current tectonic setup (i.e. no cueball Earth) is to add a lot more water to the Earth system. So water-ice comets, a lot of them, or similar. Suffice to say all those impacts aren’t going to make Earth a fun vacation spot.
Or, here’s an idea for free - a wormhole experiment goes pear-shaped and accidentally opens a huge portal to the depths of a water world and all that H[sub]2[/sub]O just comes fountaining out until hydrostatic equilibrium is reached. Which just happens to be when 90% of the Earth is under water, or whatever.
Gigantic gas bubbles forming along the (volcanic) ring of fire causing massive portions of the sea bed to rise (but not enough to break) displacing enough water to cover a significant portions of the Earth’s land mass.
So the end result would be shallower seas but way less land mass.
The only remote thing I can come up with is if we were to have a 10 or 15 degree increase in temperature and torrential rains coming down almost non stop might erode a large portion of the land masses along with the addition of water from poles melting.
Very slow (faster than tectonic action tho) and very boring. Not to be rude but it I guess that’s more plausible than a worm hole.
(No need to mention a temperature increase.)
You don’t need a waterworld as such; Europa would do. Europa probably has 2-3 times the water of Earth.
How about this - the first wormhole experiment between Earth and Jupiter goes horribly wrong when the wormhole is accidentally dropped into Europa’s oceans. Th wormhole is only small, but it is adding water to Earth’s seas at a constant rate, and no-one can get near it to turn it off.
