Posts tagged city
Hello everyone, I am thinking yet again about infrastructure. (my calendar project recently asked about... well, that's outside my expertise, I'll get back to that eventually) And I am thinking of...
After the fall of the lizard empire, most of the lizard people fled to Node to avoid genocide (This is in the Lovecraft universe, racism is mandatory). In short order, this former bomb shelter beca...
I want to write a story taking place on the natural satellite of a gas giant, with said satellite being massive enough to prevent, or at least strongly deter, space travel, such that the resources ...
I'd like to create a land-based mammal that uses its electricity NOT for navigation or hunting, but only as a defense (enough to stun creatures approximately its own size or marginally larger, with...
When designing a flying car intended for congested city routes with slow traffic, should turn signals indicate all possible directions. In most sci-fi, I've seen designs that have no turn-signals o...
If the earth's oceans were electrocuted (from the ocean floor), not worrying about how the energy is gotten to electrocute it, what would happen too everything in the ocean,( fish, algae, etc.) wha...
Photosynthesis has an abysmal efficiency with regards to converting solar energy into useful fuel for a plant, and I was wondering: 1) If it would be possible to engineer a plant to accept electri...
Imagine a tsunami of lava has flash-flooded cities. Oddly enough there weren't eruptions or earthquakes, just a sea of molten rock covering every inch of road, street pavement, what have you. Accor...
Since gamma radiation consists of photons, just like visible light does, albeit on a different frequency, isn't there a plausible way that in, say, 200 years into the future, we could harness the p...
I am thinking of copying the design of an electric eel to create the horn, however as air is not a good conductor of electricity it cannot discharge any electrical shock unless there is a physical ...
I was having a discussion with several people on whether or not a lightning dragon can be biologically plausible, without any magic involved. We came to two main possibilities and I'd love to see f...
I have a character that can produce electricity. Would he be able to stick to things and move around on walls and ceilings using his electricity power in some way? It would need to be able to suppo...
Now that we know about the electric nature of the cosmos, the question arises: "How much are planets affected by electric forces while moving through the universe?" We have been taught that the mov...
Is it possible for an organism to evolve a capacitor if the conditions were right (carnivore that stuns fish, living in complete darkness, etc.)? What kind of challenges would there be to evolve so...
The universe so far: If charged lepton fields are eliminated from the universe, charged pions become stable (having no decay path that preserves charge), replacing electrons to form bound "atomic"...
In my story, there is a large group of humanoid clones that help the city function, doing mundane tasks such as cleaning and maintaining the city. Doing all of the minimum wage jobs and 95% of the...
Superhumans in my setting work based on advanced technology (but not clarketech; no violations of physical laws, no FTL). My question is, how can a superhuman direct electricity? From my under...
It's possible to have lots of electric charge while having only a small amount of mass, and a black hole with a significant electric charge has properties that are different from one with no electr...
In a vaguely Medieval setting with some limited magic, how would an underwater city handle sewage? Sanitation was one of the biggest limiting factors in the growth of human cities, and being under...
In my overcrowded future setting the Hegemony (government of the Earth) wants to make the metropolises of the world self sufficient when it comes to food production. What farming/food production me...
Larry Niven's "Known Universe" (KU) features "The Outsiders" as one of its most prominent alien races. As per KU canon, the Outsiders evolved in a frigid moon (similar to Nereida) and they sustai...
Assume the entirety of Earth (all the land) is covered in a city. What would the climate be like in different parts of it? I.e., what would it be like on the coast, or inland? I imagine it would b...
Tech level: modern - like Atmospheric pressure at local sea level: Oxygen ~30 kPa Nitrogen ~180 kPa (So roughly counting 1.5 times more oxygen, 2.25 times more nitrogen) Technically speaking ...
With specific attention to national electricity power grids. Some pertinent details needed to answer the question might be. What parts of the power grid get damaged by such an event How do they...
The most popular type of stars are red dwarves, which regrettably tend to be flare stars. Yes, I know that geomagnetic storms and power lines do not like each other. Technology level: More or less...
Question: I'm trying to determine how large (geographically) my city will have to be to accommodate for 1 million people. I have a city that was basically formed by the gods to be fertile land wit...
My world has a city of glass found along the outskirts of a desert. I decided on this because sand can become glass and so it was a huge resource that could be used for building. However, the conc...
I've got a species that lives in the Southern Ocean along the Antarctic coast, and they are basically a sentient crossbreed of Orca whales and elephant seals. They are omnivores, have opposeable th...
My protagonist is in a sticky situation: floating in space (fortunately in a spacesuit) and about to be attacked by an alien avatar made from smart matter; tiny specks of dust which share a distrib...
For reference, I'm going with the accepted answer given here: How would technology adoption of Lithium Air battery work?. In my world, it makes sense that governments would be very interested in ge...
My story takes place hundreds of years in the future after global warming has made life at the surface uninhabitable for most life forms. What's left of mankind survived because it became popular t...
I have a location in my story, the design of which needs a reality check. City Description: As my ship cut across the waves a blurred grey smudge appeared in the distance, as the hours passed...
I'm not sure if it's even feasible, but I have a server farm in my book, of a size that puts it on par with Google's. I want to wipe out all the data stored on the hard drives, without destroying ...
In the scenario I'm envisioning, my group is in a city. They've got a source of hydroelectric power, but a few downed power lines/utility poles are making it difficult for them to transmit the ele...
PREMISE The zone will make all electrons disappear. QUESTIONS If a person walks in that zone with his whole body, would he die from heart failure? What happens if he just sticks his hand in? H...
In the course of designing fictional species I often find myself wishing to use exotic senses which we humans lack. This poses a unique and interesting challenge as without possessing the sense mys...
I'm designing an alien plant soecies that has evolved to produce electric shocks, as a way to keep insects away from it. My question is, how would it produce electricity in the first place? Also, c...
Assuming the moon is the same size as ours and its core is generating a magnetic field, and the copper deposits are quite large, consisting of a tectonic plate containing huge deposits of native co...
I previously asked a broad enough question about designing a fictional gas but it was advised by two users to split it into smaller questions. So here I am. The main property I want this gas to ha...
Here's the problem I'm having. I need a solution for the following situation. I have a sci-fi starship drive that needs 140TJ of energy every 6 hours. I have a Fusion Reactor that can produce 200T...
I've prefigured a specific setting as being middling in technological progress when compared with its neighbors. This setting does not have access to hydrocarbons, has severe cultural and politica...
Looking for someone with meteorology/physics knowledge to help with this one. Let's say I've got an island that floats in the sky--nothing special, these are a staple of fantasy these days. For ar...
My time traveller has a maybe 20-minutes-into-the-future smartphone and laptop. They can store large amounts of data, on the Petabytes level or higher. The time traveller can effectively store the ...
As the title suggests, this is a conceptual physics kinda question. What is the feasibility of using an electrically charged (as in not neutral) plasma as the working fluid in a turbine where the...
This is my first post on these forums, sorry if I've accidentally overlooked any rules or etiquette. Please let me know if more detail is necessary or would be helpful. This question is about a spe...
What could be reasons to use direct current in the distribution of power? I know that it is more efficient to distribute current at high voltages to reduce heat loss and that it is easier to step ...
Is it possible (either through genetic engineering or evolution) for a biological creature to be able to detect and absorb electricity from power sources like batteries or other animals? I know th...
Could a untethered blimp be built strong enough to with stand a thunderstorm? Could wind generators be placed on it to transfer turbulence of shifting wind into wind power? Rain could be collected...
This question about time dilation got me thinking. The speed of an electron through copper is a whole heckofa lot slower than the speed of light, but if I understand the limits of relativity corre...
The Volt Dragon is an incredibly dangerous beast that reeks havoc on any attempted air travel. This dragon generates many small but powerful magnetic fields whose strength can be varied voluntarily...
