Posts tagged technology
This world has gravity, air, and clouds. If humans are weightless yet still has mass, it's gonna take some force to accelerate them. How fast can they move on air, say, if they had fins like divers...
To be able to colonize another world, there are some requirements; the harvesting of energy, enough recourses, handling of the environment (pressure, temperature and gravity and so on) and availabi...
In a futuristic world, on a small military spaceship, I want to give it an external camera/telescope-like device that has incredible night vision so it can see the landscape underneath the ship in ...
Let's say that space around earth has no debris. Super elevator is some super durable cable between a space station and earth by which some elevator can travel. Space station is in geostationary or...
Let's say that I start with a Stanford Torus that can house some amount of people. Over time, more and more people start living there, to the point it starts getting crowded. How could I expand the...
Context I have been thinking about the Pip Boy device from the Fallout series of videogames. It is a portable, wearable computer that can gather a lot of data about the user. It looks like this: ...
Would it be possible to use a living organism as unobtainium for interstellar travel? Would it make any sense? The story I had in mind would use them as the main bad guys seeking vengeance on thos...
First question! I'm excited to see if anyone can help me. Any missteps are unintentional, but feel free to tell me so that I may learn. So, I've recently started brainstorming over a possible st...
I have a world where there are two types of beings. One type, let's call them X, exist in our "dimension," and the other, let's call them Y, exist in another "phase" or dimension. Only 10% of X b...
Suppose we have a planet whose atmosphere has roughly the same gaseous proportions as Earth, but helium replaces nitrogen, and has a strong hydrogen presence in the upper atmosphere; has a gravitat...
For certain categories of items, namely weapons, armor and machinery (that's pretty general, I know), how well would stone fare vs metal? Assume that any complications with shaping the stone are go...
As part of the story I am writing, an individual has been frozen with relatively crude cryogenic technology, then preserved as well as possible. Given the constraints of biology, what would waking ...
In my story, there is a large group of humanoid clones that help the city function, doing mundane tasks such as cleaning and maintaining the city. Doing all of the minimum wage jobs and 95% of the...
My main protagonist is going to fast-forward himself in time by 1000 years. He will simply reappear in the same place (marked by a small beacon), the process being instant for him (no hibernation e...
This is a small civilization (more than just a town or two) almost under the shadow of the regional hegemon. The dominant civilization knows they are there, but don't go too deep into that swamp be...
I have an idea for a futuristic way to travel for my Story. People get into a capsule, and it launches itself extremely fast in the air. What would be needed to make this happen for real and what c...
So I have been thinking about making a building on the moon that would create a 1g environment for the people inside without making the structure too inconvenient to attempt to get into. This is my...
Setting Overview My world suffers from an abundance of a particular type of energy. This energy can be safely absorbed and utilized by living cells, enabling, for example, a dragon's flight and fi...
I am trying to recreate King Arthur's the Sword in the Stone using chemistry. I have a couple ideas how this could be done Would any of these work or how it might work? Arthur removes the sword f...
I've got a lunar colony that struggles to obtain resources, so they're looking for ways to launch satellites into orbit without using up a bunch of rocket fuel. One plucky engineer has suggested ...
Suppose that there was a tribe of nomadic mermaids whose lives were primarily centered around following pods of dolphins to eat. They live in the equivalent of the frigid antarctic seas. As they ...
I'm a supervillain. I have no name, but you can rest assured my intentions are dubious and always result in general harm. My biggest problem these days are these pesky superheroes keep finding my ...
I was thinking of an alternate history, in a part of a civilization, living along the Eastern Mediterranean, during the Bronze Age moves to the sea floor to found an underwater civilization. They ...
As mentioned in this discussion: How to keep humans pilots instead of AI in sci-fi future? the ability to handle G forces is a limiting factor on what pilots can do. Some of my solutions to addres...
I am having some trouble reasoning out some ideas, if any of you could help. So I have in mind a planet, where there are many human cultures, but one of them is more advanced then others. So they...
In a near future setting I am working on, humans have built space-habitats and have established colonies on celestial objects such as Luna. Their spaceships cannot go faster-than-light and have the...
I read some time ago about terraria (singular: terrarium), which are basically small ecosystems of plants, isolated from the outside world (they get just energy from outside, not water or oxygen). ...
This is my first post on Stack Exchange, so I'm not sure if this follows the right format. Let me know what I can change to make this more helpful on the site. Anyways, let's get to the backstory o...
There are several ways to directly convert acoustic/mechanic signals into optic signals (e.g. opening/closing a shutter, or the acousto-optic effect). Is there any way to do the reverse, without us...
I don't trust anyone when I conduct my special line of business. I do my thing, face-to-face, verbally. I hand over a sealed envelope of cash and I'm done. I don't want to be recorded, I don't w...
Space is two things: empty and (mostly) dark. This makes it really, really hard to hide in it, because to do anything in it, chances are, you'll be shining a big bright light through it. Even if ...
I'm creating a near future world where one faction is using high energy density batteries that enable their vehicles to outperform gasoline based technology. Like cold and silent aircraft and helic...
Flame lickers work by sucking hot air into a cylinder and then relying on the cooling of the air by the cylinder wall to create a partial vacuum to pull the piston back. see video In an alternat...
How fast can nanites work Tangential to the above question. This is for a novel about a somewhat near future. The conceit is that very advanced nanites, plus computers that are able to read our mi...
In my future setting on Earth (or an Earth-like planet; haven't decided), the fields of robotics and AI have taken off and we have intelligent, ambulatory robots. (They were initially thought of a...
Imagine when a jet fighter swoops in to drop a 400 pounds giant chainsaw to you just so that you can use it to grind down one problematic enemy into a pulp then discard it a foot away from you. Wha...
In a sci-fi universe where man has the capability to leave our solar system would metals or alloys above and beyond our own be possible? Or at least within the bounds of reasonable possibility? As ...
In the far future the posthuman successors of mankind have disassembled the stars and live on ultra slow and ultra efficient solar system sized computers, Matrioshka Brains. The last enemy of intel...
Armageddon is coming. A giant Texas-sized meteorite on a collision course with planet Earth is discovered in 2020. It will hit Earth in 2030 and will wipe out 90% of living things including humanit...
Once a long long time ago a guy called Newton came up with a law he called his 3rd law. "The laws of motion" Everyone knows about "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction" My question her...
In my world an advanced alien civilization are worshiped as gods by the human population. As the gods have better things to do than actually spend time interacting with the local fauna they created...
Gods in this universe inhabit a higher plane of existence. Their spirits inhabit large, humanoid forms upwards of 30ft, and watch over humanity by protecting it from outside threats. On occasion, a...
La Rinconada, Peru is notable because it has an effective oxygen concentration of only 11%, leading to the need for special techniques just to keep a fire going, and preventing the use of combustio...
On another planet there is a life form that has the same level of intelligence as humans on Earth, but it has no appendage to manipulate its environment. It has similar social structures to humans...
A large solar flare event ignites the atmosphere of Earth, but luckily, humans have been preparing for an event like this for some time. We have a fairly large shelter around 2.2 kilometers undergr...
Background: In this scenario assume technology is initially equal to our own, but a method is discovered to render material indestructible. The affected material is treated as requiring infinite o...
This question differs from that question in that the other question is asking about a change in history while this question is looking for a change in the future. In a near future setting I am w...
With the rise of global warming and our leaders not seeming to do enough about it, expanding our ranges past the earth's ground seems like something we must do eventually. Everyone always points to...
Is it possible to use a power plant-like machine to create small amounts of electrical (or other) energy directly inside the human body, making it such that the human has energy for activity withou...
The apocalypse has come! Everything is dead, and I do mean everything. People. Animals. Plants. Don't ask how, I'm not entirely sure. Let's assume this town is in an out-of-the way area as far as ...
