Posts tagged light
The time is The Future. Humanity is spreading throughout the stars, aided by the invention of Schwarzschild gates. The gates allow for FTL travel by tearing open wormholes in space. There are thre...
How do I calculate the spectrum of light experienced on the surface of an alien planet? I need it to decide what color the local photosynthetic life will predominantly be.
In this world, jetpacks among the "pack" part, also have wings, where the thrusters are suited, so you don't have to buy fireproof pants. These wings are retractable when not in use, but aside fro...
Is there any combination of factors that would allow the average human to walk on a cloud without the aid of magic or technology? If so, could buildings and cities be constructed on clouds in those...
The problem with FTL is that, due to the tachyonic antitelephone, it allows causality violation: I send you a superluminal message (you are moving away from me at relativistic speed), you reply wit...
I want to create a world that abides completely by our understanding of reality. The whole premise is that "If the Universe is large enough, this would all be non-fiction", assuming the laws of phy...
This is a follow-up to an earlier question. My intent here is to work out the details, and explore the potential consequences, of one of the many excellent answers I received. Relevant questions ha...
Is there a scientifically plausible way for a habitable world to have a sun that undergoes a regular, dramatic, and easily observable change? One comparable in visual impact to an event like a sola...
I am working on a world (see this question) which I currently plan to have FTL via Alcubierre warp drive. I want to avoid the possibility of FTL sneak attacks so I plan on having something that pr...
I've been working on my story planet and have come up with an unlikely but possible scenario to help explain some of my stories origins as well as myths and folklore. Over the last day or so, I've ...
In the real world, humans have tamed horses and use them as mounts. Horses have very specific characteristics that make them a viable mount, such as size, back-strength, stamina, diet, behavior, et...
Imagine a large butterfly- or moth-like creature, with a wingspan of about one meter (it's moth-like, not actually related to Earth insects). It lives its entire life high in the open sky, never to...
I'm creating a universe where ftl space travel is possible by folding space. You can only travel point to point with direct line of sight. The example I plan to give in the book, to clarify, is th...
I am designing a world where humans have achieved FTL by means of the Alcubierre warp drive and are colonizing the stars. Originally I had communication pegged as being done with quantum entanglem...
I have some typical gryphons in my world. Bird head and wings, cat bottom half. Four legs and two wings. How crucial is a bird tail for flight? Could my gryphons be good flyers with just having a ...
I'm asking for a world I'm making, which orbits a red star. According to this image, there is a star that would make the sky white. What would the sky look like during sunrise and sunset on a p...
Okay, so I have a sci-fi setting in which there is a form of FTL travel. Imagine the universe(all three/four dimensions of it) was stretched out onto the surface of a sphere. Now assume that ther...
This seemed too scifi or hypothetical for physics, so here goes. Suppose a manipulated quark with 0 mass could travel faster than the speed of light. It's known that the faster you go, the slower...
Faster than light travel is Dangerous with a capital D. The main reason for this is because by the time you see something, you've already smashed into it and vaporised yourself, the target and any...
Imagine we have a shade launched in space that can be turned opaque and transparent. We can use it to communicate in binary, and mathematically sound extraterrestrials can pick up the pattern. Of c...
I recently finished reading the Kim Stanley Robinson novel 2312 - set, of course, in the year 2312. Part of the background to the political negotiations and ongoing terraforming in the outer Solar ...
Microraptors are cretaceous-period dinosaurs with feathered wings on both their forelimbs and back-limbs. Despite this, they are not considered 'true flyers' as it is believed they used their five...
Okay, so my character is relatively short (5'6 feet). Her bones are hollow,but similiar to a birds-very dense to make up for strength. Her wingspan is 16 feet. I want her to stay as humanoid as pos...
Let's say that there is a wind going 45 mph and the flight direction of the humanoid creature is in the same direction as the wind. As the flight is in the same direction as the wind, air resistanc...
Let's talk about the visible light "rainbow" In almost all depictions of the electromagnetic spectrum, visible light is shown as a rainbow, and adjacent parts of the spectrum are monotone in color...
What would happen if two spaceships with Alcubierre warp bubbles were colliding? Would the space bubble collapse? Would they reject or push each other? Would they survive it without problems?
Here on Earth, time standardisation was enabled by the invention of accurate time pieces which allowed us to create a global constant (GMT/Zulu time) and regional offsets. If we travel outside our...
I was thinking about how humans have evolved from apes to what we are now, while apes still remain a species that isn't extinct. Is it possible that the human race will evolve into a species that c...
Possibly a dumb and outsider question, but my knowledge in the basics of computer networks is terrible. Imagine the possibly not too original concept, that humanity somehow manages to transmit dat...
The energy source both in terms of fuel and electricity on my ship is nuclear fusion. Very precise nuclear fusion: there is no helium fusion until there is absolutely 100% helium in the main fusion...
I'm throwing around a rough concept in my head and wonder which effect it would have on the present world. How would the world as we know it change if this technology were invented (and nothing els...
In the story I'm writing, an ancient civilization once roamed the local group, traveling from galaxy to galaxy with ease. Thousands of millennia after their disappearance, humanity stumbles across ...
Assuming one had access to all modern technology but couldn't go into space, would it be possible for the protagonist to permanently stay in sunlight? While it would be trivial near the poles durin...
In the mid-21st century, humanity has an interplanetary colony system principally spanning the Moon, Mars, and Titan (as per usual). The furthest established colony is on Proxima b. Humans have FTL...
So let's say that some advanced future civilization is capable of creating and manipulating wormholes, and uses a network of wormholes for their FTL transportation. If an enemy gets too close to o...
A person is traveling in a space craft that was designed and built by sufficiently advanced aliens. This space craft left from Earth and is capable of traveling infinitely close to the speed of lig...
I have a very specific aesthetic in mind for my science-fantasy setting, technology is largely pneumatipunk supplemented with weired phonotic devices;for "reason" there are few electrical devices i...
What colour will planetary rings made up of dust and rock (not ice) appear to be? Would there be a difference looking from space and from the surface? More importantly, how will the rings affect t...
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...
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 am asking if a planet with shades of gray only is scientifically possible in our universe. Basically everything on the surface of this planet would seem black and white to the human eye. Here ar...
Inspired by this answer, If that Lunar-plant is used as a weapon (pointed toward specific cities/forest/seas/lakes), how much damage it could really do? Is that able to burn cities, or anything? I...
Inspired by Mapping the far side of the galaxy, I wondered how it would be possible to create a real-time map of the entire universe. As that question dealt with the issue of a one-time travel to ...
I'm looking for some data to create my own sci-fi setting, but I want to base it on real world as much as possible. Also, I don't want to come up with any arbitrary year like 3290 with no backgroun...
Humans got a one time ticket to the other side of the galaxy, traveling $2r$ in just a few days (where $r$ is the distance from earth to the super massive black hole: 28,000 lightyears) The stars ...
There seem to be honest scientific exploration in the field of the alcubierre warp drive if you believe some articles on the net. So to be a little bit scientific accurate in a story using it, I wo...
I wanted to know the usefulness and practicality of carrying sunlight through fiber optic (I know there are commercial products which help getting sunlight from roof to dark corners of homes and t...
Birds, as we currently know them, build nests and lay eggs on the ground. People and things with sharp teeth live on the ground. There are also things with claws and beaks up in the air, but fewer....
