Posts tagged far-future
Subtag of future
Imagine a far-future spacecraft drive that accelerates its reaction mass to a small fraction the speed of light (say, 1,000 km/s). Say the mass flow rate to the drive were 1kg/s, and say the reacti...
I've had a number of interesting conversations with people about how the cosmic microwave background (CMB) will evolve in the future. The CMB is the sea of photons left over from the epoch of recom...
The setting is fifty-five million years in the future on Earth, with multiple humanoid species that have different ancestors, but share similar characteristics. Their ancestors would be animals tha...
Tetrapods evolved fingers from the inner-bones of the fins of lobe-finned fish, could hands ever evolve from ray finned fishes if they were to become fully terrestrial, from a mud skipper ancestor?
So let me explain the frame/world first, I actually think all of it is relevant as some details would probably have quite the impact on the outcome. I was hesitant to post the question as it's quit...
I was thinking about the progress that has been made in terms of energy usage for e.g. transport purposes and noticed how the prominent source of energy had changed over time: first muscle power, t...
(Note: This is a follow-up question to my previous one: Moved into further orbits to protect them, how much damage do Earth and Moon take when the Sun expands?) Thanks to clever stellar engineerin...
Short version A far future catastrophe burns/melts away large chunks of the Earth and Moon. For reasons related to my story's fantasy elements, the remains of the Moon have about one fifth their or...
In my scifi setting small utility robot swarms are used for many purposes. I'm currently trying to estimate how much energy such a swarm would need to operate. Since biology, robotics and nanotechn...
Assume that an Alcubierre drive is feasible. In fact, assume that one has been built. A superluminal starship can propel itself through space by distorting space in front of it and behind it. Howev...
I've been reading some of the excellent answers on this question about galactic empires and it led me to imagine a reasonably realistic multi-system 'empire' might keep most or all of its populatio...
I have had an idea for a possible story, where the protagonists are some kind of future, sapient hominid descendants (Not descended from humans; bonobos or gorillas or something). The main premise...
This question is a different version of other questions that I have found here discussing a similar but different problem. The problem I'm facing here is about the excess or waste heat that an adv...
Please assume the following: A spaceship in the far future. Output: The ships systems have a high base demand of energy and sometimes you need extreme amounts of Energy in a very short period of ...
You are the leader of a far-future civilization - human or otherwise - that has endured for trillions of years doing whatever far-future civilizations do. You've surrounded stars with Matrioshka br...
Hypothetical: Hundreds of years into the future. Humanity needs to travel to exoplanets quickly. I'm aiming for hard sci-fi. What kind of propulsion can travel people at 0.1 - 0.9 lightspeed? Is i...
I'm working on a story that deals with an inordinate leap into the future and was wondering what leaps and bounds in science the human race may have reached by then. So here's what I'm wondering: ...
Okay, so how feasible is it- if even possible- to put the Earth under 'one roof'? So here is the premise. The world is heavily heavily over populated, so overpopulated in fact that almost all of t...
Objective: Replace the human digestion apparatus (stomach, guts etc) From my basic understanding the human body needs food, because it needs ATP (energy unit, some kind of sugar(?)) or you could s...
Say we have a group of space travelers who have been frozen inside a sleeper ship for an enormous amount of time that left when Earth was recognizable. When they thaw out and reach their destinatio...
This is part of the same world I am making that this question I once asked is set in: How to evolve a reptile into a wyvern, 100 million years in the future? I might call these questions related ...
So, it turns out that bats are actually pretty good swimmers; several species of bats have been reported swimming, and they're far more capable and agile in the water than they are on land: https:...
I know it looks like a lot of topics but hear me out here. I am not talking about some nonsense explanation for this ability but more of an evolutionary process. Imagine that for numerous generat...
By that, I don't mean what type of structures, I mean under which part of the Earth? It's an extremely densely populated nation. As densely populated as many major cities - think Hong Kong and more...
Far in the future, I have a bomb about to detonate in the skies above my city, a real city/province killer. A hero dramatically manages to enclose the bomb at the moment of detonation in a living c...
I'm writing a story about someone who is going to be frozen in cryo for about 450 years. He's frozen in 2120, so the technology is certainly well-developed in his time. I'm thinking maybe the cryo ...
So, in a post-apocalyptic setting, when humans have gone extinct and their cities fell into ruin, I was wondering what animals might evolve to conquer the ruins of our cities. Notice: I know that ...
I've tried researching this question myself, but the only data I can find is over huge timescales, like situations where the continents have reformed back into a Neo-Pangea. I'm not looking for an...
I have a question that concerns a story I am writing and I hope it is a valid one to ask. But in my story, several groups of colonists, each arriving on different ships at relatively the same time...
My story involves a groups of colonists from a near post-apocalyptic Earth settling on a nearby, newly discovered habitable world, each colony separated and unknown to the others initially. Through...
Story starts out about 100 years from now. While in orbit around Earth preparing for an interstellar mission, our spacecraft encounters some hand-wavey spacetime anomaly such that we're still in o...
In a far-distant future Pascal enters the bridge of his intelligent space ship. He's a lazy bloke who can't be bothered to sit or stand, so he flicks his fingers and in a moment of Clarkian...
In my story, technologically advanced aliens create a "white hole" at the center of the sun that constantly spits out matter (hydrogen) from a parallel universe, increasing the star's mass quickly....
3-D printers, replicators, nanofabricators etc. are all technologies that, when pushed to their logical limit, seem to make the transport of finished goods obsolete when all you need to do to obtai...
So, I have a story in which all of humanity flee's the Earth. The reason as to why they left is out of the scope of the question. After they leave, I want for the domestic house cat (or some other ...
Right, you are standing on Earth 100 million years in the future and observing the sky. What would you see during night and how would a day look like when you look up. Weather is not relevant (no c...
I'm at the mall and Yellowstone erupts - My, and everyone else's car is covered with ash, fire, and maybe even lava. Lets say it was a big shopping day too, like Black Friday or Christmas Eve, just...
I'm currently working on a story and I'm having some interrogations about the plausibility of a civilization. Quick backstory: Humans had to abandon Earth a few thousand years ago for the classic ...
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...
So I was deciding on ways to end my world in a futuristic scenario, and I had an idea. As we all know, Earth has two poles, and these poles are moving constantly (Magnetic Poles are different from ...
Year 2317 C.E. traffic report: heavy traffic expected along upper Curiosity sector H-311 going towards Juno boulevard, there is an accident at Exit C right lane, so vehicle leaving for Europa via t...
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...
Looking for options with at least some grounding in science: Several hundred years in our future, a group of wealthy philanthropists lavishly funded a colonisation project designed to create a Uto...
Mars gets somewhat nice In about 1.6 billion years, the sun's habitable zone will have moved outward, increasing the carbon dioxide in Mars's atmosphere. According to Wikipedia, its surface temper...
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...
This is the next piece in my question-series, you guys have been absolutely awesome in your answers to the first question: How to solve the old 'gun on a spaceship' problem? In this series, I try ...
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...
Consider the following: We have a city, designed to be a retreat. Everything consumed and needed by the population is created via a machine in the middle of this stronghold. This machine is able ...
How would I future-proof a complex machine or set of machines so that they will still be running 2000-3000 years from now? Is this possible with our current level of engineering and we just don't d...
Due to an unforeseen malfunction your intergalactic spaceship suddenly drops out of hyperspace and comes to a near full stop. The ship is damaged, and will need to be evacuated soon...very soon. Y...