Posts tagged biochemistry
Assume an Earth-like or super-Earth terrestrial planet in a state comparable to Precambrian or Archaen Earth. The atmosphere is mainly nitrogen and carbon dioxide, perhaps some methane, but very li...
We're all aware of modern-day fertility treatments, like artificial insemination and hormones, but are there less advanced ways to trigger ovulation and/or otherwise boost fertility? What methods m...
What biochemical reactions might be employed by plants to harvest heat energy when light energy is scarce or even missing? What is the temperature range over which this biochemical reaction can wor...
Creature in question: appears humanoid, but secretes some sort of substance which befuddles humans around them. 'Befuddlement' is an inability to think properly, but not to a great enough degree th...
Out in the desert wastes of my planet, there are living multiple tribes of psychotic raiders who have acquired a number of harmful mutations due to naturally high radiation in the areas that they l...
I was wondering if plants could absorb fine ice dust mixed into the soil. That is, without a thick layer of snow on the ground, but with traces of ice in the soil. As an extension of this, I wonde...
When looking at mammals and their heart rates one can find a correlation between the lifespan of a mammal and their heart rate. Namely most mammals seem to get about 1 billion (the American one) of...
Remember the Xenomorphs from aliens, how they didn't show up in heat vision? I was wondering how you could recreate that effect biologically... a creature which doesn't pop-up on IR (at least, not ...
Supercritical CO2 has been suggested as a potential alternative bio-solvent, replacing water, at high pressures and modestly elevated temperatures. But what about supercritical N2? ScCO2 is an ind...
I am writing a science fiction novel where dead humans are turned into diamonds by compacting cremated remains. What size of diamond would the amount of carbon in a human body form? I know that the...
What characteristics might define a group of multicellular chemosynthetic organisms (similar to that of bacteria living in earth's hot springs and deep sea vents, but relatively more complex, as mu...
People have been trying to imagine elaborate alien biologically possible ecosystems for a while. A lot of people seem to both want but ignore one of those fundamental aspects of our own ecosystem, ...
A civilization is very good at bio-engineering, and I was wondering if there was any kind of chemical an organism could produce which would produce viable rocket fuel. It has to do a of couple of ...
On a world similar to Earth in many aspects, a species exists that is partly carbon-based and partly X-based. X can (mostly) be found in the thick exoskeleton that this creature possesses. I'm look...
I'm working on explaining away the existence of a planet whose entire ecosystem is based upon bioluminescent creatures, and I've been wondering if there could be a reason for their blood (or other ...
Not long ago I asked about pH indicators and their use in making fantastical skin colors (pH Indicators and Fantastical Skin Colors) In that question, I listed bromothymol blue as a type of indica...
Ever since reading through the creative answers in this question (How can I explain alien skin being different colors?) I've been thinking about the logistics behind fantastical skin colors. Howe...
Bamboo, horsetail and many grasses incorporate silicates into their tissues to protect themselves from grazers. Diatoms use it to build a glassy outer shell. Carbon is still the choice for metaboli...
Many questions describe hypothetical biochemistries, or alternatives to carbon, water, DNA, etc that aliens could use. They cite specific examples, given a world we know about, of what creatures w...
Could a pill be made that instead of preventing pregnancy induces a successful pregnancy after sexual intercourse? This article seems to answer my question and is what inspired it, but I'm not 100%...
My scenario is a civilization on a carbon-rich planet. The planet has a hydrocarbon atmosphere, oceans and clouds. Most rocks are carbides. The only flammable substance in such an atmosphere is oxy...
My race of space-going sentients want to weaponise a life form which is explosive in an oxygen-rich environment. To do so, they have access to any planet they care to use, terraforming, and the ab...
There is a predator that lives in the forest. It is roughly the size of a large bear, and moves quite slowly - a person could outrun it at a light jog. Nor is it agile - although its arms and jaw...
I want to design an alien species whose physiology is capable of metabolizing substances regardless of whether their chemical chirality is levorotatory or dextrorotatory. Is this scientifically pos...
So this question, Designing a Carnivorous Plant, talks about animals being attracted to a plant, at first by a sweet scent, and then being drugged by an unspecified toxin which renders them 'euphor...
I have a story where the characters are colonists heading to a new planet. My plan is to have the native lifeforms be descended from a single celled lifeform on a comet that shares a common ancesto...
An illness has been slowly spreading throughout the inhabitants of my agrarian society, decimating villages. The first sign of infection is the excessive production of slimy yellow saliva, and sinc...
Primordial Earth was buried in carbon dioxide. When life started, it was with algae using energy from the sun to crack the carbon out of carbon dioxide, with the byproduct of releasing the corrosiv...
I am building a science fiction universe, and I am currently thinking of many different unique sentient alien species that would populate the galaxy. I have thought of a rocky planet with Earth le...
I have to feed my dinosaurs, the plants in the land are mostly destroyed, but the ocean is almost "untouched", so of course, I'm gonna feed my feathery friends with a lot of algae, specially made b...
Supposing you are trying to colonise planet that has no life what-so-ever but is otherwise an earth analogue. First thing that I realised is that there would be no oil. So they would need to make ...
Why certainly! We have all sorts of exotic drink. Can I excite you for a pint of Tarnesian Starköl - bitter, tart, nutty brew this stuff; or rather have shot of H'elvanian Whisky(?) - 7 years o...
I've been working on an alien species, and I wanted it to have a blood colour other than red. I was going to go with Coboglobin until I found the sites I was looking at providing diametrically oppo...
As a matter of course, a number of scientific articles and books have held speculation as to the possibility of life on a Jovian (gas giant such as Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, etc). Typically, this co...
I'm trying to figure out how a minimalist style society would work. Its secretive founders have been planning this since the 19th century, hiding in universities, influencing the young to attempt t...
I'm designing planets for a hard (ish) science fiction RPG setting. So I want to find out if there are any clues or theories as to what proportion of planets with life will have the basic biochemis...
I asked a similar question a small while ago. Unfortunately, the way the problem was defined excluded certain viable solutions. So I want to try again. The society would have to be complex. Perhap...
Lets say you have a geothermal or nuclear power plant and nearby you have system which converts that energy into nutrient porridge. This nutrient porridge must have everything the human needs to su...
Would it be possible to somehow inject astronauts cells with safe amounts of magnetic metals, or use some sort of magnetic properties, to hold them down to a space station floor with magnets?
Context: Brains in Vats and Virtual Reality on Steroids In the (reasonably near) future, humans have developed the field of medicine significantly, and we now have the technology to isolate the b...
All organisms on Earth produce waste. Whether an organism's respiration has a byproduct, or it just doesn't process all food it consumes, it will always put some amount of matter into the environme...
Aside from resorting to a grey goo-ish nanoplague that kills indiscriminately regardless of biochemistry, how might an alien virus, bacteria or other pathogen still be dangerous to humans? Could a ...
Of all the creatures in Hatjörn's dominion, there is none as peculiar as the Murinae Spirita, the mean booze-rat. A vermin so resilient that has developed the most wondrous means of defence and...
In the 1989 Batman movie[1], the Joker uses a gas that makes the muscles on your face contract into a "smile" to kill people. My question is simple; is there currently, or is there a way to ...
Using pre-industrial era technology how does an intelligent creature create the perfect illusion that reproduces vision,sound and touch sensations and make them seem perfectly ''real'' from the vie...
I designed a humanoid race with bio-electric organs along the arms which release electricity through the hand to the victims (it has to be done in direct contact). The electricity released has to ...
The planet is a Super-Earth with 1.839 Earth masses and an average surface temperature of 180.7 degrees farrenheight, the atmospheric pressure is 50 times more dense than Earth's and there's large ...
I've been working on this creature some more and have hit another snag. If my critters communicate through the use of pheromones and chemical trails, how do they communicate the message that it i...
If we assume their homeworld is similar to Titan, but instead orbiting a Neptune sized gas giant and a bit bigger and receiving the same amount of Solar energy as Titan, The star is a main sequence...
I'd like to justify a lightning man in my world, and I have a theory that by some sort of magic, his cells in the dermis (middle layer of the skin - okay, for simplicity, don't count hair) are able...
