Posts tagged technology
Human have begun colonizing the solar system using the ablative laser microwave drive, our next target is Proxima Centauri and inbetween there is basically nothing except dust and occasional astero...
This, unsurprisingly, is also related to mermaids. Spearguns using rubber bands and the like are popular underwater weapons, so slingshots would be useful to mermaids. The problem is, these requir...
So, I'm familiar with Steam, Electric, and hand powered machines... What else can you do to power a machine (say, for example, a car or a pump)? Requirements: Assuming you build everything from ...
I am wondering if there is any benefit for a rotating wheel space station to be based on mobius strip layout such as more rooms for growing population maybe because both side of the strips are popu...
In my universe there are more than just one FTL method: Wormholes, Warp, Hyperspace and more. The thing is I need to predict the destination of an enemy fleet. I only can think about spies and h...
Says a F22 with full tank is trying to break through the thin layer of Martian atmosphere and almost moon like gravity(alright that's probably too exaggerated) anyway say there is a runway stretchi...
Consider a billionaire living on earth today. What would be the most effective way to deploy sensors to a vast area of the earth's sea depths? (Sea depths referring to the sea floor, and slightly a...
I am making a "structure" out of carbon nanotubes in deep space. This structure can be any shape or design, I just want it big. Big in just one direction is cheating (so no long thin structures),...
I have a very specific aesthetic in mind for my science-fantasy setting, technology is largely pneumatipunk supplemented with weired phonotic devices;for "reason" there are few electrical devices i...
Edit: A bounty was offered; Later, I answered my question - see below the looong math answer. I accepted it, because it's the only one to calculate the outcome with all the parameters included. I'l...
The year is 2109 C.E my friends and I were caught in a space disaster when the spacecraft we're in broke apart during a daring escape from a patrolling spacecraft. We stole an antique cellphone (fr...
Yesterday I was talking with some of my friends about ideal/utopian worlds and came across a potential infinite loop problem. My ideal world was that of a transhumanist vision. Humans still look an...
Let's say the dots on Ceres are abandoned alien outposts. Within the next 40-200 years humanity manages to send a team of research scientists to the location. The scientists quickly found a way ins...
Building things in space is a massive benefit as the weightlessness and lack of stress means the only restraint is the amount of resources available for construction. But therein lies the problem, ...
History shows that most inventors of groundbreaking new technologies, for example, the light bulb or the telephone were not actually the first to invent this technology and that there were actually...
Assumptions for the story: The rocket pack is not unlike the scenario of the movie when I was little, "Rocketeer," in terms of viability. I have hand-waved it in my story. The rocket pack should...
Is it possible for traffic lights to work underwater? Even for a short period of time. I understand that any electronics inside would short-circuit pretty quick. But could it be protected by the ac...
Yesterday I was reading through this question and it got me thinking: would it be possible on a ship or building mounted railgun to convert the energy from the recoil of the shot in order to partia...
As a high mass star which have already burnt through all of the lighter elements and is now building up iron, the fusion reaction will no longer produce sufficient energy to counter its own weight....
I am facing a great difficulty to come up with a working principle for a permanent force field on my spaceship which will only permits guest while simultaneously deny strangers or foe. The followin...
I suppose there is sufficient time for us to achieve type 2 civ status on the Kardashev scale, that means we cannibalise the Sun! Joke aside would such a civilization level be sufficient to revert ...
I am wondering what the world would be like because in this story I am making, it is in the future where the ozone layer is gone and big cities have big structures that generate an artificial barri...
Guests of this large space station enjoy Earth-like gravity (80-90% minimum). How? Well the space station is so massive it has its own gravity. The disk shaped "core" is made with ultradense mater...
One thing that a few science fiction films seem to get wrong: it is extremely unlikely for two civilizations to evolve completely independently and yet be within a few hundred years of each other t...
In the universe that I am developing the following has occurred... A new type of "liquid energy" has been found/created: 432,540,909,020.0724 Mj in 1 Liter Edit: Description of what the fuel is in...
My understanding of the hypothesis is somewhat hazy, so I probably have gotten something wrong. But as I understand it, the total energy density of the universe is either very small or exactly zer...
Having recently learned about the Interplanetary Internet in development by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and inspired by Kim Stanley Robinson's novel 2312, I began to wonder about the actual r...
I'm looking for some data to create my own sci-fi setting, but I want to base it on real world as much as possible. Also, I don't want to come up with any arbitrary year like 3290 with no backgroun...
We all know (or know how to find) the "rocket equation" that drives the design of a conventional rocket, and we've gone over such things as "specific impulse" and the difference between fuel and re...
Assuming we're talking about a world similar to ours with the difference of the existence of mermaids, that are fishes with an upper half visibly similar to a human's, live in the sea, can survive ...
Coronal Mass Ejection and solar flare produced on the surface of the Sun often can cause disruption to our electronic equipments especially the communication service if it was directed towards Eart...
Is it possible for nanobots to become so integrated with a creatures biology that they could be transferred via the creatures reproduction and passed on to future generations? 'Synthetic Biology' l...
Suppose an intelligent species evolved on a large rocky planet, one with sufficient mass that the species had little hope of developing anything anytime soon that could achieve escape velocity. The...
Set in year 2615 A.D. humans have colonized nearby star systems, we can travel between different star systems using artificial wormholes. A spaceship leaving Solar system for Alpha Centauri have to...
Take, if you will, a sci-fi setting in which power is cheap and handheld energy weapons (blasters, lasers, plasma rifles, that sorta thing) are common. In this setting is an isolated community bas...
Let's say that in my fictitious, scientifically advanced world, humans create some "miniature" (and I say miniature because I'm not sure what prefix use: Nano? Micro? Or even smaller?) machines to ...
Set in near future probably in the mid of 22nd century AD, most of our labours are being overtaken by robots and especially in those sectors which requires zero room for error such as surgical oper...
A secret organization operating out of an undisclosed location for an undisclosed parent organizations have invented a "convince-me" ray gun (CMRG) that works by an unknown mechanism. After an ide...
I have a captured planet/moon orbiting HD 37124 c, known as HD 37124 c m XVIII, and I was wondering: since the moon has 1.7 Earth masses, 1.1 Earth radii, a density of 7.038 g/cm^3 and a gravitatio...
One day, in modern time, the space agencies of the world detect a strange structure drifting through space. NASA manages to redirect the course of this structure, and with their new solid handwaviu...
This began life as a much broader question on the site but I'm attempting to parcel it out as smaller topics to make it more digestible: I am trying to find ways, as the title suggests, to combine...
First, a little background information. For the purpose of my story, I'm making the Earth uninhabitable, similar to this question. This is to cause a mass exodus from the solar system through a bit...
My idea was to use 2 stages for an interstellar spacecraft (particularly the Orion Drive) and use it in a way similar to Project: Daedalus. Phase 1 would involve accelerating to cruising speed foll...
On an air-gapped supercomputer in my basement, there's a self-improving prediction machine "” a so called Oracle "” that knows everything that is on the Internet but cannot send any data outside. (...
Htrae is a planet with an abnormally strong gravity. In Htrae, the escape velocity is greater than the speed of light. Suppose a civilization like humans (call them snamuhs) evolves, with the uniqu...
One of the settings I've been working on is a retro-futuristic world with a technology level and aesthetic of the early cold war era, something quite similar to the setting of the Alien franchise i...
Imagine an Earth-like society that has developed into the digital age. They have computers, the Internet and most of the conveniences of the modern age, but they still use a significant animal work...
Im sure some are familiar with Bioshock's "Rapture City," a (somewhat) successful underwater city that was able to maintain stability and house an entire population. But, using current technology a...
Let's assume that the dictator of a large and rich country is approximately 70 years old, and that signs of old age are showing, meaning that his death is not very far. Let's assume that the people...
I am wondering if alien race detecting our signal could actually understand such broadcast. But for my story, I need the aliens being unable to understand what we are broadcasting. How can I achie...
