Posts tagged reality-check
So let's say that I have a world with a moon, you know kind of like we do on Earth. But with life on the planet, is it possible to find life on the moon? In the artifexian video on habitable moons,...
In how smart can I make ants, an idea was suggested, to instead of making each ant individually sapient, make the 'anthill' as a whole sapient; a kind of unconventional hive mind. Just as a familia...
Edit: A bounty was offered; Later, I answered my question - see below the looong math answer. I accepted it, because it's the only one to calculate the outcome with all the parameters included. I'l...
That title is really long... but the essence of this question is basically asking whether a complete combustion flame would be more destructive(burn things faster? and spread faster?) than a incomp...
In the movie The time Machine, humans drill the moon and destroy part of it. So this made me wonder, if we destroyed the moon like this... How would it affect the Earth? Is it possible to achi...
In his Robot Series, Isaac Asimov mentions "yeast substitutes" as a way of creating enough food to feed everybody in the Cities. It's also mentioned in Prelude to Foundation. Here's a few quotes fr...
Assuming the Alcubierre drive can be made to work, there are issues with it, like the creation of black holes and white holes in front of/behind the ship. There is also the having to be on tracks p...
Suppose that a person has the ability to kill any living being it touches (literally). That happens due to the fact that when this person touches using such ability, the target's spot being touched...
Is there any way a catdog (like from the television program Catdog) could survive? If it could survive could it evolve? Are there any reasons it couldn't?
Building things in space is a massive benefit as the weightlessness and lack of stress means the only restraint is the amount of resources available for construction. But therein lies the problem, ...
History shows that most inventors of groundbreaking new technologies, for example, the light bulb or the telephone were not actually the first to invent this technology and that there were actually...
Assumptions for the story: The rocket pack is not unlike the scenario of the movie when I was little, "Rocketeer," in terms of viability. I have hand-waved it in my story. The rocket pack should...
I was originally going to claim my world has very low levels of sulfur, resulting in a lack of gunpowder and thus a lack of guns. But after realizing how cool things like fireworks and Hwacha are, ...
Is it possible for traffic lights to work underwater? Even for a short period of time. I understand that any electronics inside would short-circuit pretty quick. But could it be protected by the ac...
Cobaltduckworlda has had somewhat of a similar biological past as earth, but not exactly. As examples, sentience has happened multiple times, and not just in primate-like species. Beasts that did...
I have already taken into concern renewable sources and several other factors. Ventilation Oxygen easily gets into this underground system via diffusion and likewise CO2 easily goes out. Plants a...
Age varies vastly even in just the vertebrate world, from the 2 years a rabbit has to the over 170 year old Seychelles giant tortoise, who is still going. Obviously, Lifespan will determine populat...
For story reasons I'd like to have a mine which exploited part was turned in to a nuclear shelter, for the city built above. Later, the nuclear shelter was utilized effectively as an district of ci...
I recently decided to revisit an older scenario I came up with, Ant-hill world, but I have been hitting roadblocks, both old and new. One of the bigger roadblocks is the evolution of such an odd mu...
I was wondering if three planets can rotate around each other so that: Two of the planets are smaller and rotate around each other Both of the smaller planets rotate around another, bigger plan...
Could a planet have an orbit in the shape of a figure 8 around twin (possibly binary) stars? Mostly curious about the physical possibility of such an orbital arrangement; is it stable over a long ...
On the planet of the Aves, birds have evolved to dominate the Earth instead of mammals. Of the thousands of species in this world, both on the ground and in the water, the only one to develop sapie...
On the planet of the Aves, birds have evolved to dominate the Earth instead of mammals. Of the thousands of species in this world, both on the ground and in the water, the only one to develop sapie...
I wonder if there is a stable star-moon-planet system where a specific area of the planet would be permanently covered by shadow. I'm not looking for a common tidally locked planet with a roughly 5...
I read a novel that mentioned about a past civilization before the Big Bang. They predicted such phenomenon would happen some day, and to preserve their species and recreate their population after ...
Caloric intake varies vastly even in just the world of mammals, from the hundreds of pounds of leaves an elephant eats everyday, to the small amount a sloth eats. Obviously, caloric intake is impor...
A mutated species of hominid now grows up very quickly (perhaps 3x its normal growth rate) has a natural regeneration factor. Like an axolotl*, it can regrow complex structures that it loses, like ...
Assuming the feasibility of utilizing a brown dwarf for a gravity assisted slingshot, or Oberth Maneuver, what sort of hazards/difficulties could one expect during such a maneuver? EDIT: To make ...
Litter size varies vastly even in just the world of mammals, from the single spawn of an elephant to the up to 30 children an opossum can have. Obvious, litter size will determine population, cultu...
I'm a newbie here and I'm slowly building a story based on Ancient Egyptian mythos that revolves around a primarily solar powered city in a vast desert. There will be magic and Gods involved, but I...
In the award winning Studio Ghibli film, Arrietty, there exists a creature known simply as the Borrower. Borrowers are a small version of human, no taller than a few inches, yet are otherwise the s...
In my world, instead of mammals, birds have become the dominant order. Similar to how Quadrabirds replaced the grazing mammals; Aquabirds will take up the niche cetaceans occupy. My goal is that t...
In the world I am designing, instead of mammals, birds are the dominant species. In this world, replacing the niche of deer gazelle and cattle are a group of animals known as Quadrabirds. These are...
On our own world, following the fall of the dinosaurs, mammals became the dominant class. This was caused by a cluster of factors, such as the rapidly changing temperatures and their ability to ada...
In my story, a group of people were stranded on an uninhabited 600 km2 sized island. They were forced to glide there due to fuel starvation of the airplane. Its only "domesticated" animal are feral...
If so, what's the equation (or series of equations) for this, and what variables do I need to take into account? EDIT: the planet in my setting is rather "chilly" (around 9.35 Celsius average) wit...
So everyone has different sections of their brain wired to specific senses. A sections for sight, touch, smell etc. Now if someone loses a sense their brain will rewire itself to allocate more bra...
Purely hypothetical question here. Would it be feasibly possible to have a planet entirely covered in a dense network of interlocking trees? The idea is that the trees themselves act as the 'cr...
In a species I am designing, they have eyesight similar to a cats, their vision at a distance is excellent, but the closer you get, the blurrier the vision is. One solution I had for this was for t...
When calculating large values with computers one is using Floating points, when calculating distances this can be a problem. The floating point problem: Eg. In early Kerbal Space Program t...
A common thing we see in zombie movies in the ability to remove the infected area (usually the arm or leg) despite the fact that a blood borne illness would travel throughout the body. How could I ...
Let's say you're an alien and you want to make sure your species outlives your planet or whatever disaster you currently face, whether it be natural or engineered. You load up a bunch of self-repli...
Gliding is a relatively simple trait to explain in a species' evolution, much quicker than flight or becoming aquatic. But what environments support an animal in the evolution to flight? For exam...
In the never ending quest to get elves to live in trees, I am taking things one step further and attempting to get the entire city in a tree. Magic is not in the equation. The tree would start out ...
Lets say you have an average-ish magnetar "” about 3 solar masses, with a magnetic field of 108 teslas (it's decayed a bit since it was born). Now lets say we have a solar system with a small-ish ...
Suppose there was a giant star at the centre of a system. It had managed to catch several smaller stars in its orbit which had in turn also trapped planets and their moons in their orbits. Would th...
I'm trying to design a species that is largely aquatic and yet capable of walking / running (loosely) on land. I've already figured out a gill and lung type respiratory system to allow them to brea...
A genius programmer (someone with initials PJ) created a neural network aimed to provide the best results in running marathon for human. Thanks to Google deep dream project, this programmer also r...
We have talked about hive minds a lot here and relatively recently, a new idea of hive mind has become popular; the collective consciousness. The basic run down is that a collective consciousness s...
The idea of a collective consciousness (Or Anthill) is pretty simple: instead of cells you have small sentient animal that make up a larger creature. This is different from a hive mind in that the ...
