Posts tagged exploration
If this earth were cubed shape would it be possible for Magellan to prove that the earth is cube-shaped without going to space and looking at earth? It might seem strange to think that earth might...
My friends and I are building a world with a 50 mile high volcano on it. The mountain is the result of some bored god deciding to play a joke on everyone. Or, some other god got angry and decided ...
My friends and I are building a world with a 50 mile high volcano on it. The mountain is the result of some bored god deciding to play a joke on everyone. Or, some other god got angry and decided ...
In various science fiction works, we see our plucky heroes beaming down to, or flying down to planets other than their own. They meet with the inhabitants there, be they human or otherwise and then...
Space explorers have landed on an Earth like planet and, to their surprise, the place is luscious and covered in life, to the point of resembling some earthly tropical atoll. What they don't know ...
It's the 22nd century and we have discovered a derelict alien craft somewhere in the Oort cloud. The craft contains a star chart showing its origin on an alien planet some 30 light years away. Let'...
Before anyone points the finger saying this is a tasteless joke, there are some actual good reasons to pick that specific planet for exploration among the giants in our solar system: Smallest mas...
first question here (but not last I think). I'm currently thinking about ideas I have to form the base of a book I'll then write, and I need some insights/knowledge about exploration. I'm looking ...
The year: Sometime a long time from now The place: Mars Little Bobby Colonist is going to play out in sand dunes beyond the edge of the domed city where he lives. Terraforming efforts over the la...
In my world there is a village with a hot spring, the only one on the entire island. The spring emerges from a local cave which has been filled / caved in by a past civilisation, since the water i...
They do not necessarily meet humans and try to interact with them. This question is more about the technical possibility/impossibility of 4D aliens being able to "analyze" the inner structure of ou...
Humans like to explore and seem to have an almost instinctual need to expand. After spreading throughout the solar system and even into the Oort Cloud they decided that humanity should follow the r...
In almost every sci fi alien trope there will be a directive whereby one of the general order states no spacecraft may interfere with the normal development of any alien life or society and is puni...
Let's not debate whether is there any friction while traveling inside vacuum space and assume all ships can brave a perfect storm brewing inside the giant molecular cloud. OK let's get down to busi...
In my stellar empire, the sapient life of the home world are arachnids. Due to an oxygen-heavy world with certain evolutionary characteristics, spider-like beings developed intelligence and formed ...
Using current technology, what could I do to optimize the odds of being located by time-traveling humans a thousand years from now? The accuracy must be such that they could "transport" me out of ...
In my book series, a group of a few hundred explorers are sent from a planet called Ishgabangaloodoo to explore Sea World. Some things to know about Ishgabangaloodoo: Its citizens are referred t...
Instead of Earth as we know it, humans evolved on a slightly smaller, habitable earthlike planet with different geography. Due to the plot reasons, I would like to keep them confined to one (large)...
Explorers are in a spacecraft located 9 AU from a planet. Is it possible to detect fairly small objects (i.e. space stations, artificial satellites, etc., both powered and unpowered) using some sor...
If you want to tell a story of a lonely island on earth, isolated from the rest of the civilization, how many years do you have to go back to be realistic? I think about a story about 350 people w...
Okay, so we are figuring out, that at least for how we are running things now, our Earth can fit about 10 billion people. We can probably raise if your economy distributed resources more efficientl...
So, with all the recent discoveries and almost certainly true theories that a few of Jupiter and Saturn's moons could have a subsurface ocean, notably Enceladus and Titan, would an ~10 meter long s...
As in, could negative matter (N.B. not the same thing as antimatter) exist on the macro-scale as a solid, liquid or gas without the weird effects that cause it to repel normal matter and possibly v...
I have a series of astronauts landing on an asteroid. I'd like to know the threshold of mass for them to not fly off into space. Specifications: Assumption is all astronauts are under 180cm, 80...
After traveling a long long time, your spaceship is finally entering into the gravitational sphere of influence of a Sun-like star. Your captain would now like to move from the Oort-like cloud dist...
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...
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...
It is 2057 and a manned mission to Europa has been comissioned in the prospect of further exploring the ecosystem and energy signatures of Europa. Unlike the implied unnmanned probe, this mission ...
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...
Another question made me remember this. Consider a sizable base (building, station) in the atmosphere of a gas giant planet. It should hold a staff of a couple hundred, with supplies and scientifi...
Let's say I have been chosen to evaluate whether or not alien worlds contain sapient life before we terraform them. Just assume that we learned to work together and live as a species in peace, trea...
If there is a planet whose atmosphere consists of : 30% methane 70% oxygen Then, can we land on it? If yes, then how, and why would it not explode? Also, can such a planet exist for a long time?
For as long as recorded history, the Earth has had two moons - religions were based around the interactions of these two bodies in the heavens, they were worshipped, feared and romanticised. Then ...
I hope this isn't a stupid question ("just add air"). I would like my intrepid explorers to have drilled through the ice of Europa and into the water without creating a geyser (they plugged the ho...
I was thinking of potential planet explorations, by extremely advanced alien species, through automated drones (or "flying laboratories") scanning and analyzing the planets. (By "extremely advanced...
Suppose a team of explorers touched down on an Earth-like planet which do not generate its own magnetic field and there are always a thick layer of cloud covering the sky at all time. My question i...
On earth, we use a simple but effective coordinate system which determines position unambiguously on the surface (GPS achieving accuracy within 1 meter, which speaking as an engineer, is a remarkab...
