Posts tagged reality-check
Can a planet with a dense atmosphere composed mainly of sulfur dioxide have a blue sky like Earth's due to Rayleigh scattering? Or would the composition change the color of the sky? I mean, it's we...
I am building a city in the sky; it floats thanks to hot air balloons and hydrogen. The main issue I have is how to make it grow, as this is not some kind of giant structure to start, it is a small...
Magical fire is often depicted as flames. To get fire and flames the right mixture of oxygen, fuel and heat is needed. Assuming that the magic only provides the heat, there are only two chemical re...
The basic concept of this planet is that, the planet has a tilted axis (you probably guessed that already) which results in the South Pole constantly facing towards the sun. This would result in th...
I need to create a race that should be utterly older than humanity (and as such, much more powerful). My idea is to have that race originate from a rock planemo - a rogue planet, orbiting the cente...
How realistic is the concept of a space gulag? So let's say you want another option outside of a stern talking too, a fine, confining to quarters, demeaning tasks, VR "re-education," beating the s...
As you know, mythical animals like the gryphon, dragon, wyvern, roc, etc can carry things as they fly. For a big creature to fly, it either needs to massively increase the spread of their wings or...
So I'm thinking here about the sort of setting like Eclipse Phase, in which virtually all of humanity lives in a wide range of space habitats because of an apocalypse on Earth. I am imagining a var...
its my first time posting here and i hope i do it right (watched the tour and all that). I've designed a World Map and would want to know if it looks realistic like that in terms of positioning of...
In the game Monster Hunter World, there is a place called the coral highlands. The coral highlands is one of the most spectacular things to look at in the game, having a resemblance to a ocean with...
I want to make my unicorns use the horn as their male genital. Is it biologically possible to put the genital on their head? I know there are many strange genital locations for animals, for example...
I recently asked a question about' "The feasibility of the coral highlands", which come from a game called "Monster Hunter World". In the game, there is another place, called, "The Rotten Vale", wh...
In Stellaris fungoids are, well, intelligent funguses; some Earth-like, two looking like intelligent species infected by funguses, and the rest looking alien. Let's get into the actually basics an...
This is for a story I'm working on. These creatures are what the Native American myth of the Wendigo originated from. Their origins are a mystery, but they need to feed on human flesh at least once...
Recently I have been playing a lot of stellaris, " a strategy game that allows you to control a alien species and advance your way through the galaxy". In the game there is something called "Living...
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...
just looking for a quick accuracy check of my continent's biome/climate map. This continent is on a planet much like Earth and it is about the size of Eurasia. It is situated in the southern hemisp...
On a planet the same as Earth, with no other sapient creatures, how could a Pteropus evolve sapience?
Tools Tools are the most used thing known to man kind, they help us build, eat, sleep, learn, and much much more. However I've grown to be curious if insects could use tools, so far to my knowledg...
So the Plasma Cannon proved to be a bust, now to the next weapon, what which is commonly associated with 'Exterminatus', the Atmospheric Incineration Torpedo. This bomb is far more powerful than a...
Inspired (loosely) by societies like the Gunditjmara and natives of the Pacific Northwest, I always have envisioned a system of aquaculture for one of my concultures, though agricultural studies a...
Consider a planet with life forms, which are different than those found here on Earth, orbiting a star similar to the Sun. Such life forms don't use oxygen and, therefore, the planet's atmosphere i...
Agriculture One of if not the most important factor to our survival, it allows us to feed the very animals that we eat and in general it allows us to survive. But could insects learn or evolve to ...
In 1950 physicist Enrico Fermi wondered why we have found no alien civilizations even though there are about 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the observable universe. Among other things, h...
In my fantasy world there's the race of trolls, vastly inspired by the ones one encounters in Baldur's Gate 2 (see here). Millennia ago, they've been driven underground by orcs and elves, as well ...
I want to know if there is a possible way to temporarily turn normal human into soup like caterpillar in their chrysalis state as they metamorphose into another being, either biological/chemical or...
I had an idea for a new world that included cactus forests, with cactuses the size of a giant sequoia. Is this realistic?
In my story, I have two late renaissance era cultures discovering each other for the first time and I plan for the story to develop into more of how they both understand each other. However, I don'...
Let's talk about dragons for a bit. Giant, flying, deadly predators with teeth and claws and fire and scales. Unfortunately, "giant" and "flying" don't play together nicely in physics' playground. ...
I'm developing a story where humans colonize a few planets. One planet, lets call it Planet A, has similar gravity to earth, air pressure, and solar radiation. You cannot however, walk on the surf...
During much of the Cretaceous period, oxygen levels were substantially higher than they are currently, with estimates indicating that around 30% of the atmosphere consisted of oxygen. Obviously, t...
Summary at bottom. I have a character from a homemade alien species. The species has silver/white hair and blue/violet eyes. I know these are traits of a melanin deficiency, but I imagined her hav...
So if you haven't watched the film, basically there's this one character who suffers from a (fictional) condition referred to as "molecular disequilibrium." As described by the character, it's a co...
A habitat/space harbor ring encircles an ice giant crossing both poles (polar orbit) and rotating to create artificial gravity. Can the ring also precess in synchronization with the planet's year,...
I'm getting into mapmaking, which I enjoy, but some of the specifics of realism still elude me. I know generally how plate tectonics work, but I was hoping to get some help on a specific example. I...
Which minimal order of magnitude is required to simulate single cells and microorganisms in cyberspace? In an utopian future, people will be possibly able to rapidly design new cures, be their rea...
I was thinking of a situation, in which there is a mass extinction that wipes out all large land animals, and after this mass extinction some of the descendants of modern geckos evolve to fill the ...
So, I was recently watching Stargate: Atlantis, and I saw a very interesting concept. In one episode, the villainous Replicators use the stargate network to fire what is essentially a high-powered ...
Around a rocky planet or small gas giant, could there be a system of rings that follow an elliptical orbit? I have used a gravity simulator (this one) to test it, but the way it handles its particl...
What is the cheapest material per ton that one could purchase on our Earth in the 21st century? This could also include the cheapest material per ton to harvest so dirt may seem like the obvious an...
In my DND world, I've established that there is a substance that has these properties: It is made from a chalky "dust" that can be mined The dust gets mixed with unspecified chemicals to create a...
Is it possible in 21st century Earth for someone to create a small super insulated box to store heat like an "anti-freezer" such as putting lava inside the box and the box not being hot to the touc...
I had an idea for a character that was stuck in a ghost-like state for a length of time after an accident. During this time, they would have very limited ability to interact with the rest of the w...
Are there bacteria or other types of lifeforms that feed on rocks and other ground minerals? And if there aren't, is it technically possible? It can eat other things but the majority of its diet sh...
After asking my question about seeing black holes in your path between the stars, I also wondered abut other more mundane objects. Black holes affect large areas of space so even if you didn't get...
How long will a 400 km wide 30 km deep pit (trench or crater) with a relatively shallow (for stability) gradient of slope of 20 degrees from the edge to the surface of the planets crust be expected...
I have a world that isn't an exact analogue to medieval technology, closer to the late 1700s in terms of culture and agriculture/metallurgy, only without gunpowder. I have them ahead of real histor...
Silicon is the main material used in both computers and solar panels. Sand is silicon. Deserts have a lot of sand and sun. This may be an oversimplified way of looking at things, but could we cr...
My VR machine isn't the plug-it-to-your-brain type, but instead it's more like a "reality sphere" around your body that have some kind of gravity machine to keep you in the center of the sphere and...
I recently came across a few examples of a "quantum slime" entity, namely from Starfinder and Slime Rancher, that has the ability to make copies of itself via quantum superposition, and then cause ...
