Posts tagged reality-check
This concept is relatively simple. There are many animals which start mobile, but become sessile later in their life history, all of which are simple and primitive. And I was wondering this: what i...
Stories with shrinking never seen to take into account the Square-Cube law. I'm trying to consider what it would take to do a story like this that actually fully addresses the square cube law. I ...
Lets pretend that Mars was a bit larger, so the gravity could hold on to the water and possible atmosphere, and then play along with the accidents that happened on earth happened at a similar tact....
Does the following progression/collection of technologies make sense on the way to an artificial womb? The central assumption to this question is that the female body is a delicate, complicated ma...
I trust Brandon Sanderson to have done his research - in his book "The Rithmatist" he writes about coiled spring batteries that power a passenger train. I do wonder what could be achieved with a sp...
In this question someone suggested that the classic 'elf' ear could evolve for the same use as whiskers. How (un)realistic is this idea. Lets assume that the humanoid species that evolved these ear...
Island planets are common in science-fiction, and we've even got a few questions about them in worldbuilding. However, I cannot help but wonder how, or if, they could form. On Earth, at least, our ...
Context A God contest is organized. Each participants starts with a human-free alternate Earth and a certain amount of god-credits to buy humans and supplies. Some Gods used a big part of their bu...
I'm aware that deep sea fish don't actually "explode" when brought to the surface but any air sacs in their bodies would expand and cause them possibly fatal damage. However, what other physiologi...
If an Earth-like planet was tidally locked to a star similar to Sirius A, at which distance from the star would the night side be able to have liquid water, possibly with an average temperature of ...
I'm currently writing a military science fiction story set in a post cyberpunk world I've been building. The story focuses on a tank crew, but it also prominently features an enormous airship that ...
Mycolaria is my working name for an alien planet featuring a much more visible role for fungi of all kinds, large and small. There are also animals and plants on this world. This is the second in a...
Please note for this, assume technology is being used for their creation, not any kind of space major or anything. Edit: Removed the ability to do so within systems without having generators on b...
Background I have a character. He is the master of a particularly specific martial art that is pretty much only movement. But it's pretty powerful, in that he can separately: a) move in a manner t...
Continuing my line of thought from here: Could you cool the earth's mantle and then bore into it? You cannot bore into the mantle by cooling it as you go because the pressure would crush your littl...
Assuming a fairly earth-like planet, perhaps, higher in minerals and resources. And a race of highly industrious, highly cooperative, very enginuitive people. Their science is comparable to our own...
Say a technological advanced civilization wants to create an Earth-like planet using materials from the Oort cloud. Could they really be able to create a habitable world resembling Earth using ju...
Early on in the cartoon The Legend of Korra, we're shown one of the main characters working at his job. He works in a power plant, where he and his coworkers spend all day using Bending (essentiall...
Assuming fission thrusters as described here: Would a nuclear fission thruster with continuous fuel injection be possible?, and assuming drilling for the planet's molten mettle core as discussed he...
I'm always interested in the possibilities of human creating an orbiting space habitat like Stanford Torus or O'neill Cylinder. Those habitats were designed to support certain numbers of colonists....
Centuries ago, humanity have been incorporated into an alien hive mind, spread by a bacterial-like infection. The "bacteria" infects the blood and brain and allows the infected to join their minds ...
This question prompts me to evaluate the possibility that the romans or greeks could be blown in a storm to the Americas and survive if they had enough water provisions? Or maybe not provisions bu...
In a system where 2 planets of similar mass are orbiting around a common barycenter, would the following configuration considered stable on the long run? They orbit at 1,6 AU from their star The ...
Let us assume that we have a moon with a reasonable iron core enough that it can retain atmosphere, (as per this question), now let us further assume that the people who settle on the moon are shor...
This is in my world of balloons and zeppelins, war and peace, day and night. Sleeping may be the least important thing but it is still important. On this world, the day and night cycle is 8.89 of t...
Are there any valuable deposits (gold ore, iron ore, silver, copper, gemstones) which are likely to be found in or around excavation sites for building materials like limestone, sandstone, slate or...
Being on the autism spectrum is often described as a feeling of being on "The Wrong Planet" So I'm wondering what the right planet might be like... For those that are unfamiliar: Social conventi...
(Disclaimer: I tried this question earlier in the scifi site as well as real science sites, and was told should be on topic here) I'm writing a speculative story about aliens coming to earth - and...
Diamonds are carbon. Plants take in CO2 and use the carbon. Chemically, could the right kind of plant have diamonds for berries, or is there some other limiting factor?
It would be useful for a story I'm working on to color the world or various dominant parts of it red. I'm trying to look into the following alternatives, but am open to further suggestions. Essenti...
A class F star (1.4 times the mass of the sun — it has to go supernova) is expanding into the red giant phrase. Its Earth-like planet, with life on it, has slowly been pushed out of orbit as it exp...
So let's say that an alien civilization that we have made enemies with decides to use an advanced non-lethal biological weapon on the Earth as a warning. The aliens, while not infamous for any tec...
What effect would a crystalline material that is inert under ordinary environmental conditions have on someone if it was injected into their bloodstream? Examples materials include finely pulverize...
I need an advice about creating an independent city (a city state) in the middle of a desert (the stony kind of wasteland). I will scratch what I have in my mind so far and I would be glad to hear ...
When you mention livestock you think of creatures such as cows, pigs, sheep, chickens and so on. We've been domesticating animals for like 17,000 years or so and have used them for a variety of mea...
I am writing a SF story, in this story, a life-form(You can just call them alien) from another universe comes to earth. They used "imaginary velocity" to make their time elapse faster than all bein...
Imagine a world so brilliant and yet unthinkable - a habitable Earth-like planet infested with intelligent life attempting to erect a flexible Dyson sphere enveloping two yellow hypergiants. I know...
Imagine a big planet, gravity quite strong, 1.5 times earth. Irregular surface, rocky etc... (though flora and fauna will come into it later). It has a very thick atmosphere, drained off by a twin ...
For the purposes of this question, lets assume that we are in Edwin Abbott Abbott's Flatland, but the world is a disk, with living shapes Above, and 'dead' shapes Below (the underside of the disk)...
Consider a planet similar from Earth: very suitable for life, with vegetal and animal life forms thriving onside. I wonder if one of these life forms could raise as a civilization as humans did, i...
Let's take an imaginary world where, without its inhabitants realizing it, everything is physically influenced by what people thinks, by what they believe, by how they see the world. Of course the ...
I'm wondering what types of firearms would be impacted if explosives and combustion in general were to have a random chance of being more potent or less potent. Could new firearms and/or ammunition...
I'm trying to figure out a realistic mechanism to explain a global drought that only lasts for about a decade. Assume an earth-like planet. My goal for this drought is not to have no rain and kill...
I envisioned this method of maintaining breathable oxygen. So each ship would have these gardens generating oxygen like the plants on Earth do. How plausible is this and how would it likely work?
(I've tried to research this online but I'm a linguist, not a physicist, and most places that discuss this quickly get too technical for me. Simple answers will get tons of gratitude!) I imagine t...
I ask this as a basis for a World (in this case Moons) Building I'm doing. I came up with a couple of different problems and some possible solutions to those problems: All of these questions pre...
Let me set the scene: A team of scientists in their lab one day is told that some miners have discovered some strange new substance. Its properties are extremely peculiar, unlike anything ever befo...
Consider a planet where a day, that is to say the amount of time a specific (roughly equatorial) point is in sunlight is much longer than on earth. A humanoid race has evolved on this planet. You c...
Time travel on movies and tv always say they were able to tell the year by looking at the stars. But how? For example Voyager goes back in 1996 and Ensign Kim says astrometrics puts them in the ye...
I was looking a bit at the evolution of Stars and one thing I sometimes see floated is this idea that in the far flung future, when the sun has ballooned into a red giant and the earth burned to a ...
