How to go about in making Solid Clouds plausible

In my many worldbuilding concepts, I really like to know how would soft fluffy Solid Clouds be plausible without resorting to A Wizard Did It or similar.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Nov 3rd 2020 at 12:54:15 PM

There isn't a way to make buoyant solid clouds really, unless they're made of flying swarms of insects or nanobots something or other.

Just say A Wizard Did It or Hand Wave it, there isn't a feasible way to make long-lasting solid clouds possible.

Yea this would run into really crazy problems really fast. Like, how would solid clouds even be maintained? They'd expect weathering, for instance, and if they float in air they'd have to be lighter than stuff like Styrofoam. You're basically opening up a can of worms, but each worm is a can of worms in itself, so it's cans of worms all the way down.

Save your sanity and just ignore it.

The only thing I can think of is if your world has an extremely dense atmosphere, approaching to that of solid matter. In that case, the water droplets (or whatever these clouds are made out of) might raise the density of the air parcels in the cloud to the point that they exceed the density of solid matter, which would thus float on the clouds.

An atmosphere this dense would probably not behave like air (in particular its optic traits and viscosity), although I figure with a bit of Artistic License or finely tuned atmospheric traits you could get away with it.

There's basically two ways of doing it and neither are very plausible or convenient.

First is that you somehow position locked the water like you're playing Gary's Mod. Not just the cloud as a whole but every single droplet of water. This would also make each tiny droplet of water act kinda like a needle and the only reason the walker isn't perforated is the shear number of droplets. Also, see the third line in the song "Me and Mr Jones".

Second up is that it's not a cloud at all but an extremely low density solid like aerogel. Not physically impossible but structurally dubious and not stable to walk on. Also, your body weight could send an entire cloud tumbling to the ground.

Edited by Belisaurius on Nov 4th 2020 at 11:46:38 AM

To some degree, the answer may depend on how far you're willing to stretch the definitions of the words "solid" and "cloud".

I suspect that it might be possible—and likely very dangerous—if the cloud were somehow massively electrically (or magnetically) charged, and somehow not discharging to earth (incredible layer of insulation below?) and not dispersing rapidly due to repulsive forces (perhaps titanic magnetic flows both holding and shaping the clouds?).

One might then potentially (so to speak :P) use appropriately-charged shoes to prevent one's feet from sinking. That said, I suspect that keeping one's footing would be very tricky indeed!

Otherwise, perhaps the "clouds" might be some sort of "foam" arising from some exotic sea—something that forms long molecular chains when "foaming", at a guess. You could then end up with "sea-mist" "clouds" that could support at least some weight. That said, I don't know enough chemistry to suggest what sort of substances might be required for this, or even whether it's plausible at all.

This is easy. Have a world contaminated with Nanomachines (son!) that generate Some Kind of Force Field that connects to each other. Clouds with these guys would behave solid, especially if the nanomachines intelligently know when to turn the effect on (or off).

Those nanomachines together would be able to hold the weight of someone standing on them, yielding to pressure to a certain degree (making the structure of a few million nanomachines feel "soft" and "fluffy" despite each individual nanomachine being firm), while these nanomachines would levitate a mile over the ground, creating a very plausible illusion of a Soilid Cloud (if we had the technology to do so).

Bingo!

Edited by Nen_desharu on Nov 4th 2020 at 10:17:03 AM

Wouldn't that make any and all water on the planet locked in place?

I was thinking along the same lines, the gaps filled with something like Helium or Hydrogen to make it lighter than air overall.

^^ Only if the effect were turned on all at the same time all the time. If they have a programming that allows them to turn it off and on at will or by a certain signal they'd be little else than dissolved solids or microbes in terms of what's in the water.

The only remaining question would be what would happen if you drank this water...

Just call them "suspended quantum particles" and walk away whistling. Magic is magic even if it's dressed up as science for Halloween.

Edited by Fighteer on Nov 5th 2020 at 9:51:24 AM

Having the nanomachines be selectively activated suggests the idea that they might be used or have been developed as a means of weather control: sequester cloud-water, perhaps move it into position, and then release it as desired.

All of this makes me think you're much better off just not explaining it.

^^ Which also works. Much better answer than "suspended blah blah blah" or magic this.