Posts tagged reality-check
Why would a creature that lives on the surface of a planet evolve limbs that can bend at many points (like a tentacle or elephant trunk) and still end in some sort of hand-like appendage?
In a world I'm designing, one of the eldest extant intelligent species is the Trolls. These are not D&D trolls, but something else. I have a number of basic characteristics for these beings, an...
George is supervillian, and he has a evil plan but he needs a distraction to pull it off. Earlier today he was reading supervillian weekly and he saw an article on faking the Apocalypse and he wan...
There it is. The elusive Ersa 772. Filled with an estimated $15 trillion in precious metals, mining that asteroid could make you the richest man on this side of the galaxy. You have all of the fund...
Would it be possible to have a planet made up of about 60-70% water with no landmasses larger than Australia? I would like this planet to be as earth like as possible, but I'm open to changing aspe...
You can imagine doing surgery on the brains of insects or spiders to implant electronic devices and transmitters so that it becomes a drone and will transmit data. To gain intelligence on a target ...
I am looking for a technologically-viable substance that could be used to accelerate growth in plants or very large trees. The option for administering the substance to the plant is open, whether ...
Primate evolution has led to the loss of a heat cycle. This has allowed us to have children at any time of the year. But imagine a world where humans never gained that ability, perhaps even evolvin...
I have decided on my preferred method of zombie apocalypse. I have chosen super leeches. But I have run into some problems, I'm not entirely sure if such a thing would be possible. I have a few ide...
I have a character who loses her forearm. To up the cool factor (and because this once happened in a dream of mine), I'd like for her to dip her stump in gold. Would this actually result in gold ...
Dragons commonly breathe fire. They can do so over considerable distances, often many times their body length. But this needs to be powered somehow, by a substance that the dragon can generate on i...
I have an alien species that is my pet project. Now I'm to reproduction, which I have a specific idea for, I'm just not sure exactly how it works. My creatures are aquatic, and everything goes on u...
I've been thinking about the use of Dyson Spheres as a long range communication device. The sphere would effectively have an and open and closed state for a collection of panels which could be swap...
What requirements would a meteor have to satisfy, to approach Earth unrecognized until hitting the atmosphere and cause climatic changes after the impact? The meteor should have at least a circum...
For fun (and for future evil diabolical schemes) would humans have the ability if given the finances and resources, to use some kind of massive wrenching system to pull different continents togethe...
On Earth, photosynthetic organisms require additional nutrients to survive; in addition to "feeding" off of sunlight, plants respire and absorb water from the ground in order to grow. However, th...
Consider a dual-star system, with the distances between S (larger star) and J (smaller star) similar to Sun"“Jupiter. A planet P rotates around J on a 90-degree ecliptic and is Earth-like otherwise...
Earth is destroyed in explosive fashion by an unknown force. How does this affect the rest of the Solar System? Does sudden absence of that mass affect the orbits of the other planets at all? Let's...
As a tree grows new layers are added each year so that the trunk expands in radius. The living part of the tree is a relatively thin layer on the outside just beneath the bark, and the wood further...
The setup for this is complex, so I'll begin by stating the core question: In a heavy ship engagement, using energy-dissipation armor, about how much warmer will the sea get, and will that have an...
One thing that has always bothered me in robot-controlled AI stories is that there is always the assumption that the AI would choose to fight a conflict against humans on Earth, where humans domina...
Many different books and novels contain creatures that have human upper body. But have the legs and thorax of spider. They are usually called by different names but they're sort of like centaurs b...
As we know, solar power is the ultimate source of energy for mankind, and it's the most abundant(I have read that we receive more than 1000 times the energy we currently use, if we were to have a w...
This post-apocalyptic environment, as narrated in the book, depicts a world where most if not all animal life has been abruptly killed, and similarly most vegetation burned out. After the disaster,...
So here's the premise: We have an Earth-like planet, with a civilisation at roughly the same state as ours today. Scientists have been monitoring the atmosphere for centuries, what with forecastin...
On a world like Venus, where the surface is unlivable , would it be possible for life to evolve in caves? And if so , is there any reason for intelligence to evolve in a subterranean organism?
Would it be possible for a planet-wide climate be set so that the temperature even at the poles would continually stay within a narrow range between 17 and 21 degrees Celsius? (This is approximate...
Making a world where you live in the air, as the surface is not survivable (Venus-like) but there are mountains which serve as islands. I'm gonna leave out the story of the planet as it's not impor...
Suppose there's a planet that has similar characteristics of Earth and can provide life, suddenly shatters in many pieces and scattered over the system. A small but very dense object is attached in...
If all, or most, fresh water was frozen due to temperature drop over the space of a few generations, what would be the effects on living organisms such as humans and animals? Take in to considerat...
I'd like to create a temple haunted by beings who are ostensibly ancestral spirits - basically, ghosts. How could ghosts be explained without an afterlife? gives me some intriguing ideas, but I'd l...
I showed a draft of a short story I wrote to some friends and got a very derisive comment from the chemist in the group. According to him the chemistry just isn't possible. I'd like a second opi...
I have an alien race that is carbon-based, like life on Earth, but this alien life uses different essential elements in their biochemistry than those elements used on Earth. I'm trying to come up...
Giants do exist. It's just that they can't be anywhere close to being as big as those in Norse mythology or the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. The best we'd ever have for a giant was Robert Wad...
Continuing from this question: The rodents on the synthetic planet ( which I am now calling Ark ) can now walk/run erect when desired. The scientists continue with biological forging and work on t...
It is well known that our working memory (in our brains) is limited to about 7 items, the magical number 7, + or - 2. This is the Miller's law. (our working memory is not at all like the RAM of a ...
In a world with humanized (or at least tool using) reptiles, how long would a tattoo be able to last on the scales? Would the tools need to be much different than what we use today? Would it be p...
Somewhat inspired by this question : Could a civilization as advanced as humans exist on a planet/dwarf planet like Pluto? Assume two dwarf planets in tide lock orbit around one-another. Assume ...
I was watching a television program recently about Naked Mole Rats and how they are they are one of the only known Eusocial mammals. They have a single queen who produces offspring as well as warri...
In A World Out of Time, per Schlock Mercenary, Earth is moved to a new home by lighting a fusion candle. The fusion candle idea is discussed in the Schlock quote: Building a gas-giant colony s...
I'm going on vacation, and browsing through my texts on the latest iPhone. Uh oh, my private airplane, which for some stupid reason has no tracking devices, crashes onto some undiscovered island. E...
In a couple of games, you encounter a creature or two that regrows limbs immediately after losing them, not necessarily the same kind or aesthetic of limb. You shoot the creature, it loses an arm, ...
The story begins in classic disaster film style. A small rogue black hole is approaching our Solar System. It isn't going to get close enough to destroy everything, but it will agitate our Sun, ca...
Let there be an earth-sized planet with a rotational period of just over 3 hours and 38 minutes described by David Hammen here . On this oblate spheroid, with nights lasting for an hour and 49ish m...
Imagine a terrestrial planet extremely close to its star (assume it's identical to the Sun to make this simpler), maybe a bit like Kepler-78b but with an orbit of only about a week, for the purpose...
In my earth-like world, there is one thing that separates it from Earth; this world has a single rocky ring, around 10.3 meters thick, 5(ish) miles wide. In our own world we know that without an o...
In an answer to this question Cyrus suggested that pre-technology merpeople might use shrimp or prawns in lue of maggots to eat away rotting flesh. Similar to how plants and (in some cases) anima...
This theory, what I call the world shift theory, states that the Earth's original orbit was solar stationary at one of its poles constantly facing the Sun, building, over time, the magnetic poles. ...
Darmstadt, Germany, current day: All ESA members meet on super secret meeting. They had it enough with NASA and want to claim their first place in space. How do they want to do it? Landing manned m...
Let's say I happen to find myself outside of earth's atmosphere [right at the Kármán line 100km up] one night and don't wish to cause a fuss as I descend to my home. I am stationary in regards to...
