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Okay, my first trial run, How would humans and society react to a superhero existing and saving the earth?, of social sciences with hard-science is looking some what sickly at the moment (maybe som...
So, I ran into a problem regarding the aftermath of a colonial war for independence. What happens is the following: The scenario is this: late 24th Century, humans have colonised the Inner Solar Sy...
Sometimes I reminisce about the giant eagles from The Lord of the Rings and two things come to mind: Boy, I wish I could have my own giant eagle! Could a bird even carry something that heavy on i...
My idea was to use 2 stages for an interstellar spacecraft (particularly the Orion Drive) and use it in a way similar to Project: Daedalus. Phase 1 would involve accelerating to cruising speed foll...
I'm not into psychology, but I've heard a lot about veterans who have committed suicide, went crazy, became addicted or have their lives ruined in other ways because of the shock they lived through...
Assume there's a human being who can keep a strong electric potential near to (or on) his skin. Is it possible to use the air-ionizing property, or similar ones solely or mostly solely based on thi...
Suppose we have a rocky planet (somewhere between Earth- and Super-Earth- sized) orbiting a star far enough away that it would be around Pluto's temperature if sunlight was the only heat source. If...
It is estimated that in about five billion years, our sun will enter its red giant stage. During that phase it will expand and completely engulf Mercury, Venus and possible Earth. Earth will either...
All the recent talk on Worldbuilding about the vast energies available to higher-level Kardashev civilizations, the need for 50,000 year message-systems, and so on, got me thinking. With enough ene...
There is this fantasy in fiction that humans meet another species and figure out that it's intelligent. This usually happens with dragons, dolphins, aliens, collectively intelligent plancton... Bu...
Holograms are a real thing. But what science-fiction TV shows and movies call holograms are something different entirely. From a classical geometric optics standpoint, in order to create the illu...
Given Earth's current level of technology, space- and ground- based astronomical tools, etc., to what extent would it be possible to locate the Milky Way from a somewhat distant galaxy, say, in ano...
It is some small number of years into the future. We are regularly using beamed energy, as defined in this answer: large arrays of microwave transmitters. We have developed this so that these array...
There an atmospheres in which I can live, like Earth's. There are atmospheres in which I can float, like if it were a really heavy gas. Is there some atmospheric composition where I could both be a...
In A World Out of Time, per Schlock Mercenary, Earth is moved to a new home by lighting a fusion candle. The fusion candle idea is discussed in the Schlock quote: Building a gas-giant colony s...
I have two earth clones, in essence, separated by 16550 miles (26350 kilometers). They are, of course, tidally locked, and orbit each other once every 24 hours. These planets orbit a sun identical ...
The Halo video game's extended universe book Halo: Evolutions describes the Battle of Psi Serpentis, in which a superjovian planet is converted into a brown dwarf via massive nuclear bombardment of...
The story begins in classic disaster film style. A small rogue black hole is approaching our Solar System. It isn't going to get close enough to destroy everything, but it will agitate our Sun, ca...
I'm currently exploring a setting where humans have managed to create traversable wormholes with one critical flaw - something in the wormhole both kills multi-cellular life and destroys electronic...
For my story, I need to know the following: I have a (long exposure) analog (as in "not digital") picture of the night sky taken on a random planet somewhere in the Milky Way galaxy. I know it i...
In How large a bioengineered mobile lifeform could exist on Earth?, I asked how big my nanoassembled war beasts could be, and it was suggested that I make my question more specific. I am designing...
An alien race decides to test the hability of humans to survive and engage into space travel, for whatever reason. The planets The aliens prepares a pair of Earth-like planets revolving around a ...
My basic question is could life 'as we know it' (carbon DNA/RNA based, using water as the main solvent in metabolic processes) evolve on a planet where the temperature ranges from 16 degrees Celsiu...
As per the title, given A billion ($10^9$) dollars. Present day technology. A year of time (including making projects and testing), (preferred, not compulsory) No restriction about maximal nor mi...
I have an engine with unlimited $\Delta v$. Don't ask how I got it, it's probably one of my earth changing inventions. Either way: I no longer like Earth and want to get off (I'm headed for a reti...
Setting The US is waging a failing War on Drugs where cartels are quickly gaining power. Scenario In the near future, say 2030, with current technology, the Texas state government is implementin...
Arising from the comments in This Question, which started to stray offtopic into the question of whether men are needed at all. In Short: Could you create a fertilized human (necessarily female) f...
What single chemical element (get out your periodic tables) could most efficiently destroy all life on the planet. Restrictions: Natural elements only, and no anti-matter...nice try. Looking for...
This is inspired by What single element could destroy the world?. Injecting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere has been proposed as a mechanism to relieve the symptoms of global warming by creatin...
When looking to design armor - how can I determine whether a given ballistic object would completely stop, deflect into another direction, or penetrate another object given complete physical inform...
In many movies we see super heroes creating walls of ice to block explosions and bullets. How realistic is this? In the Incredibles Frozone shoots ice at a police officer just before he shoots a ...
So I'm writing a setting featuring asteroid mining à la Deep Space Industries, where the material mined is used for construction in space rather than brought to Earth. To maximize efficiency, I'm ...
I gave this a quick test on sandbox, and agreed with the comment that I should steer away from the physics part and focus on the geology, etc. Assuming Europa's ice crust is 10km thick as some spe...
Anchor one end of the cable to the side of the moon that faces the earth. Drop the other end of the cable to earth so that it drags along the ground. The earth's gravity and friction contributes a ...
I've built a device, it's capable of turning matter to energy and energy to matter with perfect efficiency, I've got the resources to build a space station in secrecy, and I want to get off the pla...
Lets say I have a space fleet flying to attack an installation. The enemy knows I'm coming but not my numbers or exact disposition. Since I'm moving much slower then C the light from my fleet wil...
As the legend goes, Coca-Cola was planning on shooting lasers at the moon to project their logo. Unfortunately, the FFA said no (they didn't want planes to be blinded). I haven't been able to confi...
The idea of uploading one's personality and consciousness to a computer is a semi-common science fiction trope. It has been suggested as a way to essential immortality. In a story I'm working on, ...
In the Warhammer 40k universe, there are planets where the population hasn't developed so far and are left in the feudal stage, (or the technology has degenerated so much it is back to the point). ...
It's the far future. Humans are still! increasing in population. We have developed habitable orbital structures and terraformed any planet we possibly could. We reached the maximum potential for h...
I have a story where a powerful outside force killed (next to) all humans on earth some decades ago. The way I want to build it is that it required that the human outposts on the moon to die as we...
Okay, so some space miners fly into space to get Helium-3, and then fly it back to earth to sell to non-space people. Flying into and off the earth is rather expensive, so they want to simply take ...
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...
In Ribbontails Series Aman5 there are creatures called Kuutamian animals. These animals are sapient and can have any form. The creator uses the excuse that they have three DNA strands, but how real...
The Biblical story of the Flood describes how over a period of 40 days the earth is flooded so that the peak of the highest mountain is 15 cubits/22.5ft/6.858m below the new mean sea level. The fl...
An x-ray binary is a binary star system consisting of a star and a stellar remnant. As matter is ripped from the star and is then accelerated into the neutron star/black hole by its gravity, x-ray...
After writing this question, I came up with a new question. Consideration The considerations are mostly similar to the linked question (reading it is highly encouraged, as I am trying to post as...
Earth is more massive than Mars, so people on Martian soil would definitely suffer some health issues due to weaker gravity. Blood circulation is badly affected as heart muscles starts to deteriora...
An alien spaceship the size of an Empire State Building experiences a technical issues with its cloaking device, their duty technician needs 24 hours to repair and meanwhile the alien wants to avoi...
In this question about a Mars battle set up in 2100-ish, we decided, that the best battle devices would be drones. In that setup the whole "drone" thing was hand-waved, but I would like to know if ...
