Posts tagged physics
Now, taking out the cost to produce/collect it, assume somehow we perfected a formula or find a natural source (because that is currently very prohibitive), how feasible would be to use antimatter ...
Setting: In my world I've introduced some science-defying material. I use it to grant the ability of flight to airships that are less Hindenburg-y and more ship-y. They are not literally ships that...
A defining factor of my world is the hardships inhabitants have to face when surviving long seasons. Due to the extreme length of a year, time is largely measured by moon cycles. I need to make sur...
This is how time travel in my question works: You go back to a certain point in time, physically, regardless of means. Be it a spaceship or a time machine. So you've reached to the past. You kn...
I wanted two characters unaffected by the heat and gravity to be close to a super massive black hole within the accretion disk, at times moving in orbit and at times completely still. Stars and p...
In an earth-like world, what can I provide as examples of areas where high energy is generated naturally? I'm looking for sources of energy other than heat, for e.g, volcanoes and geothermic vents.
Is it possible for a planet to have a liquid ring rather than a ring made of solid particles? If it is, how long would it be stable for? If not, is there any other configuration of a liquid that c...
A mage has created an amulet of light. It shines light from one side, and the user is capable of controlling the color and intensity of that light. In an effort to avoid abuse, the mage has limit...
Little side project on fantasy story with dragons (or wyverns to be exact, but they're equivalent for the purpose). I have dragons roaming the country side, laying waste and ruin in their wake. As...
My heroine has been stabbed - run through the abdomen by a foot-long dagger - and is bleeding to death. She is currently crawling toward her salvation through a very cold place. She is magically ...
The established fact is that the shape of a planet's continental coastlines is determined by the planet's climate. Higher temperatures mean less ice, which ultimately means higher sea levels. (Ca...
Most works of fiction have quite imaginative views of time travel. Mighty machines that teleport in time instead of space. Gaping portals in space that take you to another time. Mystical beings wit...
An asteroid collision big enough and fast enough to see a massive ejection of rock and moon-chunks, from the surface of the earth AND not wipe out the population of the planet. What size and speed...
I know I won't be able to get a solid answer and I could always just change this detail depending on the setting etc., but in a realistic scenario, I have no idea if they'd be significantly stronge...
Background In my hard sci-fi settings, there is an advanced Type II Civilization, that are progressing toward Type III Civilization (yes, I am referring to Kardashev Scale). They are sprawling acr...
Specifically, half of Earth's gravity. Let's assume that all other factors are equal to Earth. At a glance, it seems like the answer might simply be "double", but at the same time it seems as thou...
Inspired by this answer and the mention of a hyperbolic plane, I've been imagining a world based on that geometry. The closest real-world example of such a geometry I can come up with is hard cora...
I am writing a novel about what it will be like on earth 500 or so years before the death of our Sun. The Sun is heating up gradually and one day that will negatively affect life on Earth. I know t...
I've been poking around similar posts, but none seem to contain the information I'm looking for. I'll try to keep it brief. In the year 20XX, some powerful organizations are trying to "land" an as...
I wanted to create a scene where two god-like characters are talking or fighting on a planet or fragment of planet to which they've teleported that's about to be obliterated by a black hole. The c...
The situation I'm considering is as follows: A large research vessel with a crew of about 100-200 attempts to land on a potentially habitable planet, but something goes wrong during the descent. A...
Let's say that there are two people named S and C. They are not far apart; less than 10 meters. Let's also assume the scenario takes place in late evening or in the night, for simplicity. Normally...
Idea I'm interested in exploring the following concept: people have discovered a certain kind of matter, let's call it "Unobtanium" (as it always goes). Unobtanium actually has mass and is compri...
So, we know that big creatures will generate lots of heat if they're active. We also know that wings are very good at venting excess heat. Now for most animals, this heat isn't exactly spectacular,...
In my world a space civilization is colonizing a massive solid planet. The planet has an extraordinarily fast rotation. The gravity is severe at the poles, making life impossible, but life flouri...
I have dragons in mind for my world, but I'm trying to find logic in how would a medium-sized anything fly off and still be a danger to humans. So far, I have a lizard-like cheetah with wings, ho...
In this article, scientists are investigating river channels on Earth, Mars, and Titan to see how rivers modify their landscapes. The following quote caught my eye: Rivers are, in a way, topogr...
There is a popular belief that the muscles of our body are controlled only by electrical impulses. This is not entirely a lie, but ... From what little I have researched, the nerves send a command ...
What would birds look like if they did not have to fight gravity to fly? The question comes from the premise put forward by some that gravity is not real and that what holds us down is pressure ca...
I'm writing a speculative fiction story that includes superhumans. The focus is on individual characters and their daily lives, and I'm trying to maintain some consistency by not throwing all the l...
Let's say a human were to live most of his life in a 200 G environment but then suddenly enter a 1 g environment, What would be the effects to his body and will this give him the ability to carry l...
Say you were using a black hole as a propulsion drive á la Crane and Westmoreland http://arxiv.org/pdf/0908.1803.pdf- so your black hole has a radius of around .9 attometers - super tiny - around ...
This might be more fit in physicsSE, but since I don't even know if my premise is physically sound, I'll post it here. One day, something caused the universe to get mirrored, meaning a left-righ...
I'm writing a colony story, and I want my ship to colonise Ross128b, which is 11 light years away from Earth. I need the characters to be alive when they get there, but it's okay if they've aged tw...
I am writing a theory for a game that is in an apocalypse. An asteroid is heading for earth and will crash into the earth regardless in this theory. It is 1km in size but due to the YORP effect it ...
How would a mechanism look that allows a person to e.g. turn a crown-sized wheel (from a watch) by any amount (e.g. 180 degrees) resulting in a turntable (from train yards) turning the same amount ...
How many rocket launches are needed to change the axial tilt of the Earth so much that it is noticeable with instruments available today? We can assume that we are talking about the heaviest rocke...
AFAIK, inanimate bodies and life forms are in the end a large set of subatomic particles (and atoms, and molecules) and energy. Unless my basic knowledge of Physics fails me, you can return a parti...
Recently, pictures taken by the New Horizons space probe were released depicting the unusually-shaped object Ultima Thule. Now, suppose there was an world the size of the Earth, but in the shape o...
Im trying to find the equation to the the size of the resulting crater created by meteor strike when I have the mass, volume, diameter, density, velocity and kinetic energy of the meteor Can an...
As we know just because a person has more mass that doesn't mean they can lift more weight or punch harder as those actions are more about training your technique. My story is a martial arts / supe...
So based on my limited understanding, some luxury cars have taken to using their sound system to make the cabin quieter when on the highway or something (Active noise control via wikipedia). And I ...
Premise: a massive organic structure sits somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean giving of an intermittent telekinetic pulse. This would presumably create a constant chain of tsunamis. What sort of abnor...
The problem is that I would like to know how strong the creature I have in mind will end up being and if that would be too strong. I know that 15th century plate armor was very good against slashin...
We are living on this big lump of rock called the Earth, drifting ever so continuously through space. Now imagine a tiny but immovable object in space, a single atom of 'unexplanium', locked in sp...
For story purposes, I'm trying to determine what would happen if a small moon-sized object crashed into an unmovable barrier surrounding a planet. My goal here is to eventually get a ring surroundi...
In the distant future, space-stations use centrifugal force to emulate gravity, effectively being a cylinder (or something similar like a wheel) spinning around a central axis at high speeds. A sp...
I'm working on a simulator-type game which I want to be at least internally consistent, and which I'd like to work as close to reality as possible. That being said, it's set in space, which means t...
This is something that was just offhandedly mentioned in a Sci-Fi book I read once and as I am now writing one myself I thought I might use it. The scenario is that I have a ship approaching a wa...
This is the continuation of a thread of related posts on a hypothetical alternate universe/Light Plane. Other posts from this thread are here: How To Make an Earth with 27 Suns Work Radiation L...
