Posts tagged energy
What examples are there in science fiction of molecular shields that can cancel out or "eat" certain molecules--and are they plausible? Is it hypothetically possible to create a giant levee that is...
Assuming a world where there were no steam engines available, would it be possible for large passenger or cargo trains to exist? Would it be possible to use horse-engines to power a locomotive? I...
I'm trying to design a humanoid or anthropomorphic organism that would be classified as a plant. The main argument people mention is that it wouldn't be able to produce enough energy to survive. I'...
A lot of worldbuilders that I know and have spoken too, insist that unbacked currencies and items with constantly changing values would be what the economy is based on. I, however, am skeptical of ...
Just last week while developing a new CCTV camera system I accidentally produced a free energy generator. I know, what are the odds? So now I'd like to make some money. Unfortunately, this device ...
For backgrounds sake, let's say that there are large, and I mean large beings living underneath the icy surface of Europa. Now consider this excerpt from NASA's page on Europa: One of the most...
Useless Backstory "Why are you waking me up Sergeant? And why did we enter near-light speed?" "We received a distress call, and there wasn't enough time to notify you, sir." "What kind of distress...
How do my PA civilizations rebuild after a depletion of the planet's natural fuels? Even with a wealth of information to rebuild, would civilization still be permanently stunted due to being unab...
The United States (as well as many other countries) is covered in a vast network of tubes: These tubes vary greatly in diameter. Some could hardly fit a baseball, while others are large enough ...
Far in the future, I have a bomb about to detonate in the skies above my city, a real city/province killer. A hero dramatically manages to enclose the bomb at the moment of detonation in a living c...
I'm looking for a weapon a ship can carry that can disable a ship without any permanent damage to its subsystems or significant hull breaches. This will mostly be used by pirate factions (capturing...
It would be cool if this entire planet could use zeppelin roadways instead of tarmac roads. Especially for countryside transport away from cities. A zeppelin for one person is about the size of a l...
Consider a near-future situation where humans have begun to explore the solar system, most groups are still working to start a profitable mining operation and only a few ships have gone beyond Jupi...
Let's say that the world has successfully converted and only depends on renewable resources for our home energy needs. In fact, we have a massive surplus - currently in the form of raw electricity ...
Suppose there was a world on which evolution and natural selection took an odd turn and never produced an organism that could be considered a plant by our modern definition, but which still produce...
My empire's flagship, the Persecutor class UJBHE1 Abhorrent, rides into the home system of my greatest enemy, Baron Obsequious, levels its Death Ray2 at his beloved home, and pulls the trigger.3 B...
Solar wind density is very low even at Venus it is only 10 or so H+ ions per cm$^3$ but it is moving at a brisk clip of 400 km/s for the slow wind and 750 or so for the fast wind. So (feel free to ...
While once living in Texas, my family and I had the privilege of watching a shuttle re-entry. It was breath-taking. I kid you not, it was like watching the finger of god drawing a line of fire th...
In redesigning a large number of my ships, I've decided that having larger ships generate enough power for FTL was too convenient and made balancing the factions varied FTL methods difficult (both ...
As all of you know, humans eat for energy. While being able to maintain homeostasis is great, it's also human to want more. Maybe we want stronger muscles, or the ability to breath fire, or even to...
In my story, set in the far(ish) future, humanity discovers a way to extract energy from black holes (perhaps via the Penrose process?), which sparks conflict as various factions attempt to take co...
Does matter, physical things that can be observed and measured by our five senses, have wavelength (or phase) the way that radio waves do, and if so can that be manipulated somehow? Let me explain....
Assuming that you had: some sort of amazing power plant on the moon that can create an unlimited amount of power a similarly amazing solar panel on earth that can receive an unlimited amount of p...
In the universe there are several worlds where energy harvesting is feasible without pesky wild life habitat preservers standing on your patch'o land bare breasted. So earth has set out to harves...
On a timescale of 1e11 years, all uranium and thorium will have decayed, but planets will still exist, orbiting red dwarf stars. Would it be possible to use lead as a nuclear fuel? In principle, t...
As many here likely know, one of the factors that make both Mars and Venus uninhabitable to humans are their lack of a magnetosphere to keep solar winds out. In the setting I am working on, I want...
Would it be possible for a fully modern civilization (i.e. quite like our own, perhaps slightly more advanced, with near-future tech) to arise on an Earth-like planet devoid of uranium, plutonium, ...
Is it possible to use thermal byproduct of daylight operation to power night time operation of volatile computer storage? In my setting, a moon-like moon with almost no atmosphere has one of its s...
In a previous question, it was established that antimatter could be "mined" through positron-emitting isotopes. By gathering positrons from decaying positron-emitting isotopes (potassium-40 and al...
In the science fiction setting I'm working on, one of the factions are supposed to be using naturally occurring antimatter because the systems they reside in have sufficient natural sources of it. ...
In a class discussion last week, someone pointed out that a typical core collapse supernova releases $\sim10^{46}\text{ J}$ of energy in the form of (anti-)neutrinos while only radiating $\sim10^{4...
Suppose we would create a river, canal or a tube around the earth and water would flow in it. Where would it flow? And if we put some turbines in this flow, could it produce free energy?
Setting aside concerns of containment for now; how much energy would it take to create antimatter? And how much of it would we get back using it as a fuel in a matter-antimatter reactor? What I'm ...
After seeing this question, I wondered what weapon of choice (and, logically, the grand scale of energy amount) is needed to shatter the moon. Let's take our moon, the Moon, the natural satellite o...
There was a question recently about gatekeepers controlling the flow of goods between universes. The gatekeepers became a religious order. The premise got me thinking, and I have come to a conundru...
Inspired by this question on putting massive capacitor-banks on spaceships I have been wondering about alternative ways to store excess energy from ever-running reactors. In this question I would ...
Flash news: Dr. Handwave have discovered a way to store energy, without loss, and for unlimited time. The battery has the following characteristics: Electric: Can be charged by any electric sou...
I was working on a relatively near future time-line (20-30 years), and there is a scene in which the POV character has to sabotage the local power supply. Now my initial guess was that it'd be a ...
The basic idea is that a building (house, business, etc...) would be on a type of foundation that would allow it to be lifted into the air (not by a lot, I'm thinking inches at most) to store energ...
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/can-we-capture-energy-hurricane-180960750/ from this article... "The wind from just one storm is a gold mine of clean energy." "The energy output from the ...
I would like to know on how powerful a solar flare must be to affect blind the eyes of living things, if it's indeed possible. Will it blind only half of the planet, or will it emit for a day or tw...
Post-apocalypse how well would photo-voltaic solar cells hold up? They are solid state so I expect they would do okay for a while, but would they remain functional for 100+ years. I know that du...
A group of ships I've made are supposed to be modular in design with each modular hull segment being self sustainable both in terms of power needs and crew upkeep (oxygen, food, water, etc.) I've ...
The light from the sun is dissipated in a sphere, so there is a squared relationship between the distance from the sun. Would it be possible to place either a lens or solar collectors with a laser...
Although the fossil fuel coal had been used as a fuel since 1,000 B.C., it wasn't until the arrival of the Industrial Revolution from the mid-1700s through the 1800s that coal began to replace b...
If Humanity were to suddenly come to its senses and stop relying all together on fossil fuels and start relying on wind powered and solar energy sources, wouldn't this lead to some sort of climate ...
Stars generate their energy by fusing lighter elements into heavier elements. The most common reaction in Sun-like stars is the conversion of hydrogen to helium via the proton-proton chain, but hea...
How could an organization force solar energy to be bought from them? Something like: A large structure (in space presumably) fully/partly blocks sunlight reaching Earth, so anyone here wishing to ...
Is it possible for a planet to have very little visible-light energy and receive enough energy to support life from ionising radiation? Dim light, including starlight and ionized-air glow is accept...
Planet - habitable, tidally locked planet orbitting red dwarf. Aim: a realistic answer (neither involving handwavium nor aliens that used it all) why a virgin planet that already experienced a wh...
