Posts tagged light
In a world where pollution and population have drastically reduced the effectiveness of sunlight to grow food, would light-panels be capable of completely replacing the sun? The problem I'm trying...
I have a binary system. The primary star is F- or G-class; the secondary is K-class, 20AU away, and in a small reflection nebula (suggested here). A planet orbits the primary in the habitable zon...
I have an earth-like planet orbiting one of the stars in a binary system. I have learned that, for G-class stars, if the secondary star is 100AU from the primary one, I can expect the secondary st...
I have a planet orbiting one star in a binary system. When the planet is exactly between the two stars it will experience a double day; when the primary sun sets the secondary one rises, no overla...
Many animals have the ability to see polarized light (or rather, are sensitive to the direction of polarization), most notably birds and bees but also a wide range of other animals including cephal...
This is something I'm thinking about. Now, these would be wings that are not powered by the person themself, since we do not have the strength for it (and I don't want to use legs). They'd be power...
On the earths surface, radar is pretty sweet. It apparently penetrates the atmosphere well and bounces back and can be detected. I think this has to do with the wavelengths absorbed by our atmosp...
Background A McKendree cylinder is a spinning space habitat in the style of an O'Neill cylinder (below), but orders of magnitude larger. McKendree habitats are hundreds of kilometres in diameter a...
I had posted a question a couple of days ago asking if it would be possible for an artificial satellite/cosmic body at the L1 orbit to block out the Sun, but the logistics of that is a little too e...
Ok so my creature will look like this They're not big, about 2 feet tall. They're technically amphibians but have the scaly hide of a reptile. They live near the sea. Their life cycle is simila...
In the universe of my story, the Earth is ridden with metahumans with uncanny powers that do all sorts of different things. Of course, to do all this, they would require a tremendous amount of ener...
Many know that the Lantern Corps of DC Comics are capable of constructing objects of any shape or size out of hard light using their power ring fueled by their emotions. However, I'm wondering what...
I'd like to have faster-than-light travel (and communications) be an late-game option for a video game I am working on. The extent of the playable universe is approximately 4 million light years in...
On one hand, heavier gravity would make flying more difficult, owing to greater weight restrictions on the flying creatures' bodies. On the other hand, the greater density of the atmosphere on ...
My "magic" mirrors are purely technological and are only able to transmit light. More precisely, they can display the visible and infrared spectrums, and communicate via radio waves. They're basica...
Imagine an alternate universe where FTL do happens, let's just say the inhabitants discovered a hypothetical particles that allows ordinary matter to temporarily be in superposition of any amount o...
I've been thinking about this the whole day. At first I thought it was an easy fix, given my dragon's bones have a tensile strength of 3-6.5 GPa and an elastic modulus of 50-140 GPa, depending on t...
As we know, bi-directional faster than light (FTL) travel can cause paradoxical situations. One possible way to resolve this would be a multiverse theory: Whenever a paradox could arise, the univer...
I came to SE WB while I was researching about space radiators for my sci-fi. I don't remember where exactly I found an answer to my question (Maybe? Idr) but I stunned with this site. You all looks...
One problem, I think writers often overlook, is the problem of flying creatures communicating with each other. I call this the "I can't hear you over the sound of the f@cking headwind!" For my wor...
The creature was originally a human, altered by an external agent that basically remade its body (carbon based). The creature is roughly 2 meters and relatively light. It is humanoid and boneless, ...
While I'm working on the Magical Artillery, let's look at another common spell. Mage Light is a very handy invention. When cast, the spell creates an orb, 13 cm in diameter. The orb radiates whi...
Imagine a dragon as tall as average adult horse with a wing span of 12m long measuring from tip to tip. I wonder what evolutionary traits or techniques could allow the dragon to lift itself off the...
On my world there is a creature that has a 'split' in the plumage of its wings and tail. Instead of having a singular D-shaped surface (when viewed from above, the bird facing to the left), it is ...
Basically, in a sci-fi roleplaying group I am apart of, I have began to work on a long-standing human colony world. The tech-level is pretty much bog-standard sci-fi, and such, colonisation is poss...
This question on space stack begins to tackle how a bird could fly inside an O'Neill cylinder, https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/27665/can-birds-fly-inside-an-oneill-cylinder. Here is the ...
I searched the site and found answers saying hard light can't exist. Apparently in the three years since the last question was asked, scientists started making inroads on making solid light a reali...
Is it possible for humans to survive on the surface of the Earth, assuming the Sun was, for some reason, not emitting any light/heat/other radiation? Would whether the Sun was actually present affe...
I have been making a future colonization scenario where people have vast colonies on Mars and cloud top bases on Venus. These things are unbelievably large. I've already thought of a way to travel ...
Sulfur hexafluoride is pretty awesome. It is a gas six times denser than regular air, and thus you can actually make tinfoil "boats" float on it. It also makes your voice deep when you breathe it i...
Would it make sense to use screw- and fin-like bending surfaces for propulsion (like what eels or the king of herrings have but in the atmosphere) instead of regular propellers or even flapping win...
My character is traveling aboard a spaceship through inter-galactic space (it has left the Milky Way). The ship is traveling at the speed of light or so and has been for the last six thousand years...
I am designing a cold-blooded dragon about the size of a house cat with a wingspan of 3 metres from tip to tip. It will climb on top of rocks at noon when there is ample sunlight overhead. I need i...
The Dyson Swarm is common in sci fi as an energy source, and sometimes also as a powerful weapon. As it is commonly understood, it harnesses the energy of the sun, which stores a vast amount of ene...
Throughout the ages, The Summoners were a prominent family of mages (but technology is magic here), who possess the ability to call forth creatures from cards. Of course they can only summon creatu...
I have seen people saying that humans can't fly even with wings because our arm muscles aren't strong enough. Given that one of the uses of powered exoskeletons is to increase strength, would th...
"They fly now?" "They fly now!?" "They fly now" One of the most iconic characteristic of dragons is their ability to fly, on top of that, my intelligent (human level) dragons also use a fu...
I've been designing an an intelligent, bat-inspired avian race, and I've been struck with a question that I need answered. Now, I want to have these bats to fulfill different types of ecological n...
Assume planetary-scale cables are easily constructed, and subsequently ignored. I am assuming these cables would run just under the surface of the planet from one side to the other for minimal mai...
So, the dragons of my setting were inspired by several things, which include D&D dragons, a mockumentary and Asian water monitors. Now, dragons look something similar to this: They glide for...
Taking into account the some limitations of the square-cube law, biology, and aviation, I have tried to make a dragon-like creature and a hominid that participate in a symbiotic relationship. For ...
I've been thinking about a fantasy setting built around the idea of a habitable, tidally-locked world orbiting a red dwarf. Since it is fantasy I do have some leeway in terms of the real world limi...
In continuation of my previous question, I'm wondering about the colour of a flat world's sky. To recap the previous question, I'm imagining a flat world with the sun fixed relatively low above th...
As you know, mythical animals like the gryphon, dragon, wyvern, roc, etc can carry things as they fly. For a big creature to fly, it either needs to massively increase the spread of their wings or...
Let's say that a civilization has access to FTL. Let's say it is instantaneous so travel time between solar systems isn't a factor. How long would it take for them to spread out from their home sol...
Humans (even programmers :-) ) are used to having some access to natural light, but in a colony in space, on the dark side of a tidally-locked planet, or underground (for example) this won't happen...
I have a knight fighting a dragon with an electric breath weapon, I'm wondering what would actually happen when the knight was struck by the weapon, assuming it has the power of a 'regular' lightni...
This character has a set of dragonfly-like wings. These are not normal for her species, and would normally be something of a birth defect requiring amputation. But through liberal application of Cl...
I found one question that deals with how to make lightning from clouds strike a target person, Can we make lightning strike a certain person? but I am looking for something that doesn't involve tec...
In my previous question, I asked about how close can two stars in a binary system be for planets around them to stay earthlike, assuming that both stars have very sunlike and both planets very eart...
