Posts tagged life
I have a really good question. Could it be possible for complex life to have existed in the Precambrian? I'm aware that only the fossilized remains of bacteria have been discovered from that time p...
What hypothetical scientific procedure could be used to reanimate someone who is brain dead. I am aware that it is possible to bring someone back if they are clinically dead which is where a vital ...
Extremely low possibility, but if life synthesizes from scratch after life has existed on a planet for a few million years, would the two separate lineages be able to co-exist?
What would be the likelihood of an asteroid developing a thin layer of gas? If an asteroid is capable of having an "atmosphere", then how likely would be be for primitive plant life, such as a moss...
Would it be possible for life to develop on a planet with a highly elliptical orbit? (Similar to a comet, but possibly less extreme.) If so, what conditions would be necessary and what would the li...
If the right requirements are met, could bacteria survive on the Sun? The bacteria would spend most of their time in hibernation and reproducing, and when the time comes, they spread out on plasma...
How plausible is a six-limbed flying animal roughly the size of hatzegopteryx to be aerial? In this case, an aerial animal will be defined as a creature that solely inhabits the sky. I will call t...
So, it finally happened. The Earth was hit by a comet, and anyone outside of a research station at the bottom of the Atlantic is now dead, or dying. So, here's what we need to know: How big would a...
Scenario A civilization is living on an ancient super structure, they don't know much about it, they just live there and have lived there for as long as they know. For our current situation we can ...
I've read a lot of posts about moons around large gas giants and I think I have fairly good idea about basics to them. I'm not super great with all the science parts myself but they give me lots of...
Suppose that both Earth and Mars was booming with life in a similar way. Except that, on Earth, there was no hominid family, and no humans evolved. Instead, humans evolved on Mars. Assuming we ha...
Lately I have been thinking about possible forms of life on planets that would have radically different experiences than here on Earth. I was wondering if life based on transition metals was possib...
Imagine a spacefaring creature, one that colonises star systems, and then shoots some of its kind on to another system (the mechanism for doing this doesn't matter). The question is, how could thi...
A planet much like Earth orbits a star much like the Sun, but with one difference: the energy from the star is magically transformed into sound within the planet's atmosphere. There is no longer st...
Let's say there is another planet in our solar system that harbours sentient life and this sentient life can build castles, buildings, and other such structures. When would we notice that? We ca...
I was reading some questions on Quora and I found this claim: The polar regions have a very odd reason for them to have so much oxygen production. You see the Polar aurora run day and night in ...
If humans found a habitable world and access to it, what would the effects be of a longer day to those who were subsequently born and raised there? Is there any evidence that a longer day cycle (o...
Knowing foam is formed by trapping pockets of gas in a liquid or solid, what could a foam able to support life on an earth-like planet be made of? This foam ought to be stable enough and large eno...
Partly inspired by this question My Venusians are happy in their cloud top city when a small group somehow (with lots of handwaving) crashes to the surface, falls underground, and ends up in a hid...
Our planet has a surface full of silicates and a core made of iron. It's due to this that Earth is the way it mostly is - most rocks and many minerals contain some form of silica. But what about a ...
Please assume the following: There is a item on the ground and I want nothing but bare earth touching it. I cannot move the item myself. The item is impervious to fire. I cannot afford to guar...
Assuming that a person has the power to manipulate all elementary particles in any way (i.e. changing them from one elementary particle to another, nuclear transmutation, moving groups of them at a...
Take a planet like Gliese 1214 B, which has no land, an ocean 100s of kilometres deep and a seabed of Ice VII. For the purposes of the question, let's assume that the pressure and/or temperature ne...
I once saw an experiment with mice, where they connected the bloodstream of a younger mouse to the bloodstream of an older mouse. And the older mouse became "younger", or at least healthier. If I ...
I know of the conceptualized "Sinkers", "Floaters" and "Hunters" that Carl Sagan and Edwin Salpeter of Cornell conceived of - as possible life forms that might inhabit a gas giant. At the time they...
In my universe a race of humanoid beings caused 3 planets: Earth a larger rocky planet and another earth sized rocky planet to crash and collide into each other, but still allowed the humanoi...
In the South Galaxy, the overwhelming majority of life lives on planets, breathes air, and is carbon-based. All sentient life is carbon-based. However, in the vast reaches of space, there are some ...
I'm trying to create my planet orbiting a red dwarf, honestly I've thought other scenarios but it's like every answer opens new questions. I'll just say what I want my planet to be and I'd like you...
EDITED to address the above suggestion. See below. Most animals breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon-dioxide. Most plants take in carbon-dioxide and release oxygen. Waste products from ani...
On the planet Blob there is an unusual phenomenon. It is known to emanate from the planet's core but 2018-level scientists have no understanding of it. The phenomenon Gravity isn't constant. It v...
We have escaped the galactic government, and now our greatest endeavour yet, life in space. How will these gargantuan space entities eat and survive in space? The whale or other in question is th...
Let's say that humans were biologically immortal. Once they reach adulthood, they effectively stop aging. Due to disease though, the average lifespan is 100 years. (In practice, your access to heal...
Making the following assumptions: 1. The three moons of the Gas Giant are safe enough distances from and massive enough not to pull each other apart or send themselves careening into the void. 2...
I have seen a few similar questions but none seem to take the density of a planet into account. I'm creating a planet on which several small civilisations develop. The planet needs to have a few bi...
Brown dwarfs are celestial bodies in the gray area between planet and star. They're huge, gaseous, hot compared to planets, and come in all different kinds. (1) Is it possible for life to develop...
I'm writing a JRPG-inspired novel set on a planet with 1.7 Earth masses and 1.4 Gs, but is it possible for life to even develop on such a high-gravity planet in the first place? I tried scouring th...
We know that as a planet increases in size, its surface gets covered by oceans (more water is captured by gravity and shape is more spherical). Therefore, a planet larger than Earth can not have a ...
Imagine a planet with extremely low density, and thus low gravity and an equivalently thin atmosphere, but a very active and strong magnetosphere that prevents solar radiation from destroying compl...
Some time ago I asked: "How long would it take until we realise that people stopped dying from natural causes?" I today realized that similar but much more interesting (and more realistic...) ques...
Can you create an atmosphere on a celestial satellite by using giant walls? Perhaps assisted with some means of technology? In a story I am creating I want to create something different from the no...
The question popped into my mind when I read this. Since we know our scientists are searching for planets which might be capable of supporting life; most of them many light-years away, could the...
Basically: I want a highly viscous atmosphere but I want people to be able to walk around. I was thinking earth's gravity * 0.6 or similar. I was thinking that an atmosphere of Sulfur Hexafluorid...
I'd like to explore some details on a so-called water-ball planet (i.e. a planet in the habitable zone of a sun, covered by a 100 km deep ocean). I am particularly interested where life could devel...
When looking at mammals and their heart rates one can find a correlation between the lifespan of a mammal and their heart rate. Namely most mammals seem to get about 1 billion (the American one) of...
I have this planet that's 1.8 times the size of Earth on an eccentric orbit around a star that's 0.2 times the size of the sun. Its apses often change due to the influence of a neighboring gas gia...
I have an idea for a crazy super-organism which could wipe out the human race. Essentially, it is an organism (plant or fungus or bacterium depending on what would be more effective or what would b...
If I were to attempt the colonization of a planet with preexisting life, how would I manage to pinpoint a candidate planet from the comforts of Earth's orbit? I am interested in the stars somewhere...
Recently, a planet around Proxima Centauri has been found. It is in the habitable zone, in the sense that if the planet was a black body, it would have a surface temperature of −39° Celsius. The p...
We have escaped the galactic government, and now our greatest endeavour yet, life in space. How shall these gargantuan space entities move and travel through space? The whale or other in question...
I have an idea about a planet that is cold and dark, but very loud. Constant rolling storms, crashing glaciers and icesheets, earthquakes, volcanoes and so on. Instead of photosynthetic plants, as...