Posts tagged light
If your ship just got trapped inside the event horizon of an super massive black hole, could the ship "accelerate" back out with an alcubierre drive?
I've been looking at the altitude boosted SSTO designs from the 90s that were designed to be lifted to launch altitude by modified jetliners and thinking about bumblebees and wondering if bioships ...
The world I am creating is in a swamp that contains larger than life bugs; this includes fireflies. What I ask is, could the bioluminescence of their glow somehow be harnessed or used as a light so...
This is my first post on Stack Exchange, so I'm not sure if this follows the right format. Let me know what I can change to make this more helpful on the site. Anyways, let's get to the backstory o...
In my story there are people with super powers, but they only get to have one. So, if someone's power is to start a fire, then they can't also control it once it starts. My problem currently is wi...
I've created a fairly fleshed out, detailed FTL concept. Basically, you have a circular starship, with a ring of tungsten encircling that, held in place by an antigravity ring beneath it. The rim o...
What would happen if the entire inner surface of a Dyson sphere (not necessarily a solid shell, maybe a very dense swarm) would be coated into a highly reflective material? Let's say it can reflec...
World Rules: Travelers are able to move at the speed of light without disruption of their lives. Time passes "normally" for them. They think, breathe, love, cry, and steer the ship as if they w...
What light spectrum would hit the surface of a planet orbiting a red dwarf star? The planet is a humid greenhouse with a cloudy atmosphere and a strong ozone layer. Over 80% of the surface is wate...
If I wanted to image an Earth-like planet at a resolution where one could read the lips of a human speaking on the surface 1, 10, and 1000 light years away, how large would the telescope reflector ...
I asked a question earlier on here concerning Negative and Heavy Matter - hypothetical types of matter I created to have a working FTL drive. With some extra work, I've tweaked the concept and been...
OK, OK, I know, darkness is nothing but absence of light, so there can be no substantial darkness. Darkness, on its own, doesn't exist. But, can we not get pretty close to this? Can there be some...
My answer to the question Is there a scientifically sound faster-than-light travel system for a spaceship? involved an Alcubierre-drive starship. However, that then got me thinking. What would an ...
Answers to this question note that human (and by extension mammal) wings would use naked skin instead of feathers, as we see on bats. However, with feathers, birds can have wings with shaped more l...
In this world, there is a land isolated by a lava line, and the only way to get in there, is across a bridge levitated by hot air balloons. I had the idea of making a wooden bridge being supported...
A while back, I asked this question about the plausibility of giant floating whales and received an excellent and high-scoring answer from Dubukay demonstrating that, given the assumptions that Dub...
Since different planets have different gravity, atmospheric pressure, air density and composition, it's obvious that a definition of operational altitude based on earth sea level is inadequate for ...
Now maybe this belongs in physics, but I want it here because I'm interested in the impacts on our society if the speed of light (c) were to be 2x faster since the big bang. My first thoughts were...
While building my sifi world I dug into ftl-travel and encountered these mean bullies, causality and relativity. They told me I can't have faster than light travel, because effect can't precede cau...
Set at the present day Earth, the daylight on average is ten times as bright as today, approximately 111,000 lux at noon for example and subject to geographic and the air quality etc. I am looking ...
In a world like ours in the 1980s, but which for whatever reason does not use any form of electricity. (Either it does not exist or batteries and generators etc have not been invented.) For purpos...
Flapping flight bumps into a size limit after a while because of wingbeat frequency. My knowledge on birds is rather limited, so here's how I interpreted that: A longer wing is a longer lever ...
I'm building a world that happens to be flat. Well, it has hills and mountains, but no curvature. However, I still want to limit the eyesight to a few kilometers even if there are no hills around....
In my galaxy, I need a planet that is far enough away from its star to be relatively cold compared to Earth, but not so cold that liquid water cold not exist. The planet has 2 continents, 1 northe...
Basically, a sun-synchronous orbit is where one side of an object is always facing a star as it revolves around it (much like our Moon is, which is where the phrase 'dark side of the moon' originat...
Assume these homo super-dwarf aka fairy and homo sapiens come from a common ancestor, and somehow they evolved a pair of wings and can do vertical takeoff. The average adult is approximately the ...
There exist humans on a world with 35% the gravity of Earth and air five times denser. These people have invented wingsuits with extensions that go past their arms and enable them to fly by flappin...
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...
How do I figure out the temperatures of certain latitudes on a planet with factors such as sunlight and the emission of heat and energy from a planet's interior? Assume the planet is smaller than E...
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...
These dragons spend most of their lives in the ocean, however during the mating season they will migrate inland and gather together on a mountain top. Throughout the journey they will cease feeding...
So I'm incubating a few alternate histories in my head. Many of them will butterfly away the Wright Brothers and many other familiar parts of history, and at least one has aircraft development as a...
So here's the deal: In a D&D-fantasy-style world, the continent of Archaon is inhabited by a wide variety of elves, whose physical characteristics vary based on their dwellings. The forest elv...
2 informational references for Alcubierre fields can be found at the end of this question. Warp-lanes aren't a novelty in science-fiction. Space ships can use a specific route to go through a Gala...
I've been experimenting with a fantasy world that is flat, with the sun fixed in place over the centre. The day-night cycle is provided by the sun dimming and then brightening again. Most of the re...
How would faster-than-light travel appear through window of a space vessel? All the movies and TV shows like Star Trek and Star Wars seem unrealistic: Star Trek credits: passing stars get bigger...
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...
I am interested in a character or race of humanoids similar to the green man in the tent in Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. What qualities would the Sun need to have in order to support a race of hu...
I've been toying with a concept for a hollow/inner Earth universe in which I would like to achieve an even distribution of light. The pickle is that the "sun" of this world operates like a beacon/s...
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...
A creature I am imagining is a small mammal about the size of a domestic cat which - through symbiotic bacteria which live in its fur - is covered its whole body over in blue-white bioluminescence,...
I have a large underground fantasy world which is only accessible through the Mariana Trench. I'd like to do a day/night cycle and have have a bright, sunny atmosphere part of the time, but I'm not...
We know that light exerts pressure upon matter. I'm imagining a hallway where an intense light source on one end shines towards the other end. The goal is to have the beam of light exert so much p...
Let's assume we have a working FTL drive and thus interstellar travel is possible, either by traveling at very high speeds or by instant teleportation (the two main subtypes of FTL drives in sci-fi...
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...
Assume a universe depressingly like ours, in which special relativity holds. No hyperspace, no warp drive, no wormholes, and even the limited get-out clauses offered by real world physics either do...
Imagine that we one day invent an ansible, capable of near-instantaneous FTL communication, but we can not transport physical matter any faster than light. Imagine also that we have gotten to the ...
Most current planets, and any inhabitants living on them, are ultimately the product of long-dead supernovas that exploded and sent matter across the universe, where it eventually got caught with o...
The Emperor of the World wants there always to be a full moon. His Scientific Advisor (the SA) comes up with a plan. He plans to cost out the venture, hand it over to the Keeper of the Treasury wh...
I have an idea for a story where human live on world with low gravity and a dense atmosphere. These humans have developed artificial wings that are attached to their arms so they can fly. Since the...
