Posts tagged technology
I was recently learning about pressure in my high school science class. I will admit that I am not extremely well educated in the subject and thus this may be an extremely stupid question. But anyw...
I am writing a short story and would like to know what would be the most realistic way to introduce a human to robot interface (exchanging data with an AI robot)? I was thinking of some kind of a c...
Suppose a civilization in which every possible appliance is a bio-machine. There are automobiles, but each one has a human-like head under the hood. Each datacenter is a bunch of over-grown brains....
If the ground end of a space elevator was severed, what would the unfolding event look like from the ground? What would the movement(s) look like, and over what period of time? I'm assuming that ...
If a spaceship left earth traveling at near or at light speeds (that being possible in this situation) would they not when coming back to earth, arrive many years in the future due to Einstein's th...
In an effort to accurately map and predict earthquakes and tectonic plate movements, scientists wish to insert sensors through the earth's crust and into the upper mantle. Through some Excel wizar...
I'm trying to build a designer organism that would prove a threat to all life on Earth. Sort of a semi-organic von Neumann ecology of microscopic nitrogen-eaters that rapidly consume nitrogen to fu...
I've seen some articles about biologically powering devices through a glucose fuel cell, but from what I can tell this would only provide power on the order of a few tenths of a watt. While it's d...
I read that our current method of cryonics involves replacing blood with other fluid and keeping the body submerged in liquid as well as on ice (these things being done to the dead, for now, instea...
I'm working on a sci-fi/fantasy story that involves a future earth that has become tidal locked with the sun. Part of the story has an advanced civilization that has built a ring (halo) that circle...
The year is 2267 A.D. Humanity has colonized Prima Centuari system. A federal government is established; the population is expected to grow at an exponential rate to reach 1 billion by 2300 A.D. A...
So one theory of the universe is that eventually the universe will collapse, "The Big Crunch". And the cycle between Big Bang and Big Crunch has cycled previously and will cycle over and over agai...
I was thinking about making up a visor like Batman has in the Arkham series, where he "analyzes" a sample and then he can set a filter on his visor for particles of that compound. Something like a...
I have a scenario where a person has nanorobots unknowingly injected into his bloodstream. I'd like his doctor to discover them through some kind of medical test, preferably a blood test. Of cour...
This question's main focus is the building aspect of the nanites. Rulez: No pseudo-science. No handwavium. The backstory is not (that) important. Lame puns ahead, proceed with caution. P...
Here's the setup. You have a gigantic mildly futuristic city, where construction is vertical rather than horizontal. Need a new city block? Add another few floors. Disregard for the moment any phys...
Affected continent is Asia, the world is running out of coal and natural gas. A major mega structure project is underway, its goal is to provide electricity across the continent with a single fusio...
Energy cannot be created nor destroyed. Humans require energy (food) to operate, but that energy must return back to the environment one way or another. If given an unlimited supply of handwave m...
Let me pitch you a setting: a scientific prodigy with not a lot of common sense decides to release a horde of nanotech dissasemblers into the environment. These "dissasemblers" can dissasemble AN...
I am an average person being hunted down by a homicidal cyborg. He is about 90% metal, with his only remaining organ being a brain and all other meat on him being tissues which serve only as an anc...
How do force field work in many sci fi fictional universes? I remembered the last time I checked the strength of the electromagnetic field a.k.a force field is proportional to the power output from...
Generally, when you run a long distance or do something particularly strenuous, you start breathing heavily because of a decrease of oxygen in your blood. Your gasping and weezing is in an effort t...
In the game Portal, there are glowing light platforms. These platforms are (supposedly) made of solid, compressed light. How can these realistically be made?
In an event immortalised in this Google Doodle, at 4 minutes past midnight (GMT) on Jan 1, 2017, the density of Helium suddenly and inexplicably increased from 0.1664 g/L (at normal temperature and...
It's hard to create a new animal from scratch. If you genetically modify an existing species until it becomes a drastically different species, then implant the fertilized embryo in a female of th...
Say, we had a teleport in all bigger cities (let's say circa more than 1 million) in the world (and some other "important" places, like military bases). What would be the impact of this? Would the...
How would we compile our code if all the binaries in the world disappeared and we had only the source code? At first you might think "It's all okay: I have my Roslyn code here", but wait! It's in C...
[WARNING] Approximate physics incoming A few months ago I was looking for a way to get to Gliese 581 within 100 years. So I've been reading a lot from Wikipedia and other sites about different pro...
Spaceships are a peculiar thing. We've got them in all forms, sizes & colours. They have vast computers needed to do all the real-time calculations required for astrogation. Assuming our compu...
Some more-than-usually clever boffins have knocked up a system that allows them to form portals into a region where the laws of physics are rather...different. An object that is fired through one ...
In a distant future, humans have colonized every corner of the solar system, and we can easily convert any object into anything else - be it food or a tricorder, you name it. Using these replicator...
Recently, a robot called Philae soft-landed quite safely onto the comet 67P/Churyumov"“Gerasimenko, then shot some photos and got some other interesting information that was sent back to Earth. Thi...
Each year without fail the notorious serial house breaking old man always deliver the present to all the children in the world, yes you heard me now that's billions and counting, and a piece of coa...
So I'm thinking about an underwater civilization and everything related to it, and I got to thinking about how they would communicate over extremely long distance. I knew that underwater species l...
I have a metallic alloy called "Attrahite" in my world that conducts gravity the way that copper conducts electricity. Currently in the world, passing an electric charge through Attrahite "activate...
There are two societies. One highly advanced with AI, posthumans, post-scarcity economy and off-Earth resources. So gold and platinum is what a Mercury base resident just calls "rocks". They hav...
I'm throwing around a rough concept in my head and wonder which effect it would have on the present world. How would the world as we know it change if this technology were invented (and nothing els...
I'm looking for creative people with knowledge of radio waves and space flight to help me out. I'm currently writing a screenplay about a spacecraft that is basically a radio antenna in space. The...
Okay, this is unrelated to my current world building in any way whatsoever, but... I have always been a huge fan of the humongous mecha genre (bonus points to anyone who actually recognized my ava...
The situation is as follows: there is a city with different districts, each provided with electric power from a different power plant: Thermal power plant nuclear power plant Hydroelectric power ...
In a distant future world, people going to cinemas will not just see movies but 'experience' them. Spectators will be a part of the cast with the help of immersive virtual reality. How would these ...
NASA received a telegram from the direction of Proxima Centauri stating that the abominable snowman are coming for a visit and they expect snow to fall everywhere even along the equator. They also ...
Suppose the chemical reaction: $$3CO_2+2H_2\rightarrow 2H_2O+2O_2+3C$$ This reaction could be used to filter out $CO_2$ from the atmosphere, slowing down or reversing climate change. The solar syst...
Question inspired by movies You only live twice and Moonraker: I am Evil Overlord at his best: I am super rich person with net worth of 32 billion US dollars. I already own island and I am making...
Would it be possible for a virus to extend the average human life-span (but only by about 50-70 years max) if the infected people kept it controlled enough where it wouldn't (alternatively) kill th...
Partly due to WB's great response to my steampunk questions, I think the world I'll work on next will have to be steampunk :) If I had a steampunk cyborg running around, what could he do with his ...
In the 22nd century C.E. human already colonised the entire Solar system, and Earth becomes a dangerous place to live because of the spread of deadly synthetic virus that kills every animals and sc...
I wanna have a scene where the protagonists see the gray goo excreting human skeletons because they can't use the calcium in them for anything. But is this true? Would a self-replicating machine re...
Imagine a starship with a tonnage of 600,000Â metric tons that must maintain an average speed of 10km/s to remain in Near Earth Orbit, that's probably going to consume much more energy than simply ...
Basically what I'm picturing is a slight variation of the usual model that relies on flux pinning (a.k.a quantum locking) to resist damage. The swarm has a macroscopic "core", some sort of electrom...
