Posts tagged humans
At what levels of carbon dioxide do humans have breathing problems (e.g. hyperventilation) or adverse medical effects? And what level would people need to wear breathing apparatus to survive? This ...
Humanoid and Planet I understand that you might think "2 circulatory systems require more oxygen so obviously it is not useful." but I know my Kepler Bb humanoids inside and out from anatomy and p...
This question is similar to this one, which wanted to know what the world would be like 10,000 years after humans disappeared. Almost all traces of human activity would be gone from the earth - onl...
One can indeed brew love in a bottle The love potion set comes with two vials. One is for the intended lovee, and one for the lover. The lovee must drink their potion first, and will be emitting p...
This questions came to me after some discussion on my previous one about a civilization living under Antarctica. I somehow have the feeling this is a dumb question - sorry if it is -, however I ca...
I was thinking about how there are some instances of convergent evolution between marsupials and placental mammals and was thinking about a parallel universe in which there is convergent evolution ...
In this case the person would experience 292Gs by the end of the 14 months, which should be enough to kill him/her but, considering that it would have taken 14 months for the environment to reach a...
What is the minimum size of a planet that could harbor human life? You get to decide what the atmosphere is, but I'm reasonably sure that O2, CO2, and H2O are necessary components of the atmosphere...
All work and all play makes Jack a distributed boy: Jack is at the hotel reception with his wife. Jack is also in the office, meeting with unspecified forces for inscrutable purposes. Jack is also ...
In a previous question, I asked about whether a market for uploaded minds could exist. The overwhelming consensus of the answers was that it would pose astonishing ethical challenges and be radical...
Imagine, if you will, a world where aural communication is impossible. Everything is done through gesture - sign language and written language are common, but the spoken word is not used, and using...
If there was a majority of land on earth (66 percent land), how would it affect the animals and plant? Lets say somehow earth has been created with 66 percent land and 34 percent water? Would our p...
The (female) human body is pushing the anatomic extremes to support, later bear and nurse a baby while maintaining upright posture and bipedal walk. I cannot see a way to realistically make pregnan...
For fun (and for future evil diabolical schemes) would humans have the ability if given the finances and resources, to use some kind of massive wrenching system to pull different continents togethe...
I would like some rare humans (1 in 10 million) to have a mutation that increases their lifetime by a factor of three. In other words, these rare humans could live for ~240 years on average. But I...
It's just another average day in the life of modern day earth. Suddenly a transmission from orbit washes over the planet! Oh no! An alien race, calling themselves the "Thull", has suddenly arrived ...
I am considering a human-like species that has a consciously controlled womb- like organ. These beings would be able to gestate and give birth to any smallish creature that fitted their purpose. Na...
It is well known that our working memory (in our brains) is limited to about 7 items, the magical number 7, + or - 2. This is the Miller's law. (our working memory is not at all like the RAM of a ...
In the question, Weapons for a civilisation-destroying giant robot, I asked about what weapons might be mounted on a giant snakebot over 1 km in diameter and over 9km long, equipped with six fusion...
A group of behaviorally modern humans was cut off from the rest of the earth-like planet. At the time of the separation, humankind had reached a technology level including cattle ranches, brass, wr...
Much effort went into creating sims, uploaded personalities obtained through destructive scanning of a person's brain. These efforts have largely been successful. Whilst officially banned in the ...
Region 2 is north of Region 1. River and lake description: In region 2 there is a crater lake on what used to be a huge mountain. 2 large streams go from the crater lake and merge into a little r...
So, I have a character who has an interesting quirk: they cannot wear flat shoes or boots (i.e. where the heel is at the same level as the ball of the foot or approximately so, within 1.27cm or so)...
So, after multiple users informed me that my previous question was a little to broad, I decided to narrow my focus a little bit. Using only hard science, could there be a planet composed, with the...
I'm thinking of a planet incredibly similar to earth. It's located in a solar system where everything is 1000x bigger than ours. The sudden turn to this is that humans aren't scaled. The Earth ha...
I have a colony of humans living underground in man-made catacombs on another planet. They are, essentially, digging/blasting as they go; they did not create a complete underground city first and ...
I'm thinking on the colonizing of another planet by humans. The conditions of this planet are quite different from Earth, and particularly the day-night cycle is much larger. In my fictional plane...
Sorry if this sounds stupid and/or messed up. So I'm writing this goofy splatter story in which my protagonists are fighting zombies. I'm trying to make the fighting as over-the-top and ridiculou...
In the near future, we've decided to send a permanent colony to Planet W. In my story, this planet has ankle-deep freshwater covering the surface. The 'surface' underneath this ankle-deep water var...
Would humans have to become "wild" for this to happen?
We all know the average human eye is restricted to perceiving color in the visible spectrum (or subsets thereof). Beyond the borders of that spectrum, we have infrared and ultraviolet. I understand...
Let's say I have a roughly humanoid race (similar size, form, activity level, etc.) that spontaneously generates any energy that they need via Magic. However, they still need to eat some materials ...
Say you were to drop a (bunch of) human(s) at some past era of our Earth. I'm assuming they might encounter a few problems such as the composition of the air not being breathable, the water being t...
In the novel Ender's Game, all little kids are protected and closely watched via a 'monitor', a device that sees and hears through them. This happens from around age 1 to about 5 or 6. So my questi...
I am mad scientist and I captured Average Joe, who is not average only in one remark: He is person not to be missed (I double checked). Otherwise he is healthy male, around 30 years old, with no fo...
Part of this story I'm writing involves a human subspecies who are adapted to extremely high altitudes -- as high or higher than our real world's Tibetan population, let's say. I've done research t...
Much like how certain cultures have adapted to live at extremely high altitudes, what would be the evolutionary effects if humans today were taken to a planet with atmospheric pressure not unlike a...
In mammals - and that includes us humans - the lungs make up 7% of the total body volume. This allows us to inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, thanks to the pulmonary alveoli. But bird lungs...
Let's say there is a species of intelligent beings who are indistinguishable from humans in every way - except on average they can jump twice as high as the average human, based on Earth gravity. ...
I want to get a shuttle from place to place in a reasonable amount of time. Say, 6 to 8 hours maximum, with a short break at the midpoint to turn around. Assuming constant acceleration to midpoin...
I am thinking on a small group in the current Humanity, having only around 2-300 members. They have the most important positions in the world politics (i.e. politicians, media holding owners, key d...
Okay, so humans are finally transitioning to a space-colonial society. We sent ships out, colonize worlds, etc... We aren't really in the business of sending multigenerational ships. Instead we use...
Pretty much what it says on the tin: It's the beginning of 2016. Due to a fast-spreading virus, humans have lost the ability to reproduce themselves. The virus makes current artifical fertiliza...
OK, so scientists have found a great new substance: That substance makes you think ten times as fast! The advantages are obvious. However, as every medicine, this pill will have side effects. Ther...
Would a human being be able to run faster, jump high, etc. if the gravity on Earth weakened? I'm assuming a weaker gravitational pull would cause the muscle to deteriorate because the body no longe...
When creating humanoid races or species or just normal individuals, I sometimes want to describe a certain body measure and thus have to estimate a reasonable value. How do you do that? Are there a...
Let's assume that Captain Bob Tiberius Kirk has been injured in a space battle. The universe does not have FTL travel, and the nearest hospital where Bob can be treated is 5 years of space voyage a...
What would be the major changes to our bodies if we were herbivores? Would our bodies be weaker because they were not getting any protein from meat? Would we be completely different? (Probably, I s...
Some time far in the future, biologists develop a compiler targeting DNA. We could now create any kind of lifeform we wanted. In the process, biologists also disassembled and decompiled human DNA ...