Posts tagged 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...
We have modern humans found in a near future, first world country on Earth. The primary technological advancements are in the form of extremely cheap and fast genome sequencing ($10USD/genome) and...
The Demonstration You're a rich, successful CEO/capitalist working in the electronics business. Your R&D division is exceptional and routinely fabs state of the art processors at bleeding edg...
The Story The year is 2027, singularity happened. A powerful AI (let's call it Eve) was created. In a matter of days, it escaped the control of its creators and hacked all the computers of the wor...
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...
In 2015 we can rewind the TV, our CCTV footage and, if we wear an action cam, our latest adventure. However if we walk down the street and something happens we didn't quite catch, the annoying fact...
I am currently writing the world, setting and characters for a project of mine called the ORION Project - a story set in a dystopian America in the near future of 2050, where the government has tak...
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?
Given a world where a human-like brain is synthetizable, I wonder: A human-like artificial brain would most likely crave sensorial overwhelm. Pleasure to humans is something deeply associated with...
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...
On the Earth's surface, we look back to an ultimately high tech evolution of computer hardware and according integrated circuit manufacturing appliances. The knowledge required to build robust mod...
The year is 2100. While climate change has wrought serious damage to the biosphere, humanity has at last managed to become carbon neutral, and has even developed technology that can be used to redu...
(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...
In 2039, our company was the first to bring a safe and reliable solution to upload someone's mind to the cloud. Although it was 10 years ago, you probably remember the news, don't you? We guarantee...
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...
I'd encourage you to take about 4 min to read the whole post. Multiple masses of parabanic acid appear at random around the world (but see Context and constraints), displacing any matter in their ...
A moon-sized asteroid approaches Earth in the near future, where space tourism has become normal. The Earth has a few satellite structures above Mars conducting research, as well as successful terr...
I've been trying to answer this question for a premise involving a cyborg being out of touch with modern civilization for a prolonged period of time, and the roadblock I keep hitting is that counte...
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...
Could a perfect mirror/s be made to reflect one side of the Earth from the edge of the solar system and viewed with an optical or radio telescope that is in orbit? The targeting mirrors and telesc...
So, we've reached The Moon/Mars. Our band of intrepid Colonists/Lunatics will almost certainly start by working out of prefabricated facilities (ship, habitat etc) but they will eventually run out...
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...
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 know there are similar questions on here already, yet this is different because I don't care about traditional farming in this question. Environment This meant for food production on interplane...
Imagine a situation kind of like Zootopia with many different creatures all living in one environment, some significantly larger than others. These species aren't necessarily furries like in Zooto...
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...
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 would like to use this scenario in writing a book. Using only countless balloons that permanently hold hydrogen made from water could a city be built in the sky? Workers from the ground can rai...
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...
What might clothing designed to be worn, long-term, in microgravity look like? For the purpose of this question there are two categories. Practical, or everyday wear, and impractical or simply fanc...
Edit: It has been suggested that my question is a duplicate of What could humans do to render the earth uninhabitable?. That question only asks what would be necessary to make human life impossibl...
I am trying to write a sci-fi setting in a not so distant future in which analog signal (brainwaves, in this case) processing is one of the main points of the plot and pretty much required to expla...
A secret government organization created the largest and most advanced computer cluster ever. Ridiculous amounts of money went into it, and it is decades ahead of the competition. The goal of thi...
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...
I have seen a similar-ish question on here, but it doesn't quite match my inquiry. Suppose you have an interstellar civilization (the means of travel between stars being stable two-way wormholes o...
Introduction For more backstory, see here and here The 438th Harmonious Congress of the People of Mars was perhaps the most anticipated since the early years of the settlement. In a rare action, ...
After nearly a decade of development and public prototypes, the Mizaru company is ready to unveil the cybereye. A fully cybernetic eye that provides its user/host with high definition vision, enhan...
Suppose we detect a stellar black hole passing near the Solar system, and we have technology and time to send a manned mission to study it. Are there any experiments or observations that would hel...
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...
I'm trying to think of a scientifically plausible reason for humanity to be forced to abandon earth that would leave animals and plants largely untouched. Is there any natural disaster that would h...
I'm imagining a near-future world where a process can be undergone that will halt all future aging of the body, but the approach causes infertility. Those undergoing it will not have (biological) ...
Deep within the labs of Nox (the company that brought Soma to the masses) a group of radicals lost in the company bureaucracy are trying to make a substance that either prevents or mitigates aggre...
In DC's TV-series (and comics), Barry Allen is The Flash: a superhero powered by the speed-force. This speed-force allows him to move incredibly fast, can be transferred to others, and there also e...
I've been poking around similar posts, but none seem to contain the information I'm looking for. I'll try to keep it brief. In the year 20XX, some powerful organizations are trying to "land" an as...
While by no means a smoking gun, there is still a reasonable amount of empirical evidence on the notion that socialization and testosterone are negatively correlated. Archaeological Evidence Fro...
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...
