Q&A with a focus on more stringent analysis. Questions and answers should be well-researched, clearly explained, and supported with references, equations, or empirical evidence based on current, widely-accepted science. Please read the category guidelines.
Filters (None)
I was on a beach recently and was contemplating what it would look like if Silicon just didn't bind oxygen very well/at all, perhaps similar to gold. I'm not sure if something else would take the ...
Rockets consume a lot of fuel and carry not eough payload. To reduce the fuel needed, why not send it in the mesosphere? Imagine a big balloon, capable of carrying a small rocket to the mesosphere...
I've been searching for hours, and most formulas I can find use complex/imaginary numbers or variables that I don't know or can't find out (such as the imaginary part of the planet's love number, w...
In this question, it's pointed out that the L3 Lagrange point, where a "true" Counter-Earth would lie, is in fact unstable, and over time any object there would drift into a different orbit. Obvio...
In the red corner, a top of the line Main Battle Tank, you can have your pick, but let's say a tricked out M-1A2 'Abrams' with a full Nuclear-Bio-Chem Protection kit. In the blue corner, a Nuclea...
I want to put a circular city in geostationary orbit. The city will have a radius of 20Km. I was thinking of using quantum trapping/levitation to achieve this. Here's what quantum trapping is: ...
I have a story where a species of the very first (literally first) carbon-based humanoid life (surprise!) that happen to emerge roughly seven billion years ago (their home system were formed twelve...
By Colonies 'in' the outer solar system I mean the various moons and space stations past the asteroid belt. Currently the Hegemony has established bio domes, mining stations, and a few large scale...
Pretend I'm writing a story about a world exactly like our own. Real world physics, no magic, modern technology. Suddenly an eccentric world leader comes up with the idea to replace the melting gl...
There's a Thylacine that's found in Tasmania, unfortunately they only found a single female specimen. It it possible to grow Thylacines artificially (say like in an artificial womb) of both male a...
Premise In this Earth-like world, a multi-billion dollar privately owned aerospace/defense corporation is devising a secret plan to manufacture a fleet of nano-bots. These nano-bot have swarm inte...
I have a story in which a King, knowing his kingdom will fall, would like to have a scorched earth policy. The King would order all residents to begin salting the earth to ensure nothing there can ...
This is going to be a test run of hard-science, social science edition. This is in accordance with http://meta.worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/2348/8914. Okay, so a meteor is about to hit the ea...
I'm writing a rough sketch for a book about a world where people sorta violently and suddenly get barely working superpowers. That is every time each person uses their power they run the risk of ki...
The exposition is that a civilization exists about 200 light years from earth and has been capable of radio communication for several thousands of years. They are not trying to hide from detection ...
In my earlier question, regarding airships, I mentioned fictional gas, as light as hydrogen but non-flammable. Is it possible to make chemical element, with atoms made not from nucleons, but with s...
Let's say that the world has successfully converted and only depends on renewable resources for our home energy needs. In fact, we have a massive surplus - currently in the form of raw electricity ...
The spud gun uses air pressure to shoot a projectile - unusually a potato - at high speed towards a distant target much similar to todays revolvers. The only difference is that there is no gunpowde...
It's been 21 years Ms. Frizzle has been doing her best to educate the masses. Even with all the knowledge available provided on the internet, not only do people not take advantage, they choose to ...
For the purpose of this post, full spectrum means a non-trivial number of frequencies within a non-trivial band. So human eyes aren't full spectrum within the visual range (each cone is wide band, ...
What kind of technology would be required for a space travelling civilization to have an effective communication system or network that is similar in speed to the telegram? How would it work? This ...
Mars is a cold, inhospitable, slightly damp ball of rock that would be very difficult to do things like grow crops on. However, it's also very far away. Far enough that, presumably, it would probab...
This is a purely hypothetical question but I can't find a satisfactory answer to it. Let's say somehow Jupiter collects enough mass to be considered a brown dwarf. Let's assume Jupiter achieves a...
How could the amount (total mass) of oxygen be increased on a planet like Earth (with a similar atmospheric composition), preferably by natural processes? For the sake of having a ballpark number...
I have a spaceship that's powered by an efficient hydrogen fusion drive, but the drive outputs a large amount of dangerous neutron radiation as a side effect, and those neutrons are not captured an...
AA (azidoazide azide) is a hyper-explosive 14 nitrogen molecule. My questions are: what are some theoretical ways to store it so it doesn't explode on you but on the enemy you throw it at, and what...
This question is partially a spinoff of some points that came up in another recent question at Worldbuilding about interstellar space travel. Runaway Truck Ramps I live in Colorado, and on the do...
66 million years ago, a space bomb ten kilometers, or six miles, wide raced through the atmosphere at 20 kilometers per second and landed on the Gulf of Mexico at an angle of 90 degrees. The resul...
I was reading this article from NASA about chemical rockets and they argue that, with a planet 50% larger than the Earth (assuming similar density, about 1.5G surface gravity), it would be impossib...
There is a group of people with about renaissance-level technology clearing out underground granite. They have no access to work animals. 700 men are working at any given time. Mining Using rena...
Inspired by Spaceship orbiting a black hole under the event horizon - a prison where no one escapes, I was wondering if it is possible to make a space elevator that goes down into a black hole. In...
So, I the question of what if a black hole hits the earth has been asked to death by various people, but what if the somewhat tamer wormhole hits the Earth? In particular, we'll say that one mouth...
Assume an Earth-like or super-Earth terrestrial planet in a state comparable to Precambrian or Archaen Earth. The atmosphere is mainly nitrogen and carbon dioxide, perhaps some methane, but very li...
Suppose we have an Earthlike planet, with a rocky moon orbiting it. Under what conditions would dark lunar maria form on its surface, and would they always be on the side facing the planet? For Ear...
Cloud Nine is the name given by Buckminster Fuller to his proposed tensegrity sphere airborne habitats. The principle is simple and the physics seem to be sound. For a sphere, as its radius is ...
I'm working on a sci-fi book, and a chapter I'm currently on is about a guerilla attack on a human city on the planet. The outer atmosphere is mostly CO$_2$ and methane. The aliens breathe methane...
In a very distant future people have survived by slowing the metabolism to extremely long timescales, reducing the energy consumption per time. It is causing thought processes and movements to be e...
So I was curious what would be the advantages and disadvantages to have 12 DNA bases? For example could it be used to store complex memories in an organism, could it cause very complex structure in...
Chthonian planets are gas giants that orbit their stars so closely, the intense heat from the star strips off the gas giant's atmosphere, leaving behind a tail of gas. This turns the gas giant into...
EDIT: As it turns out the method I had thought of using to combat aging doesn't work the way I expected. As such I have rethought this question in more vague terms. New Question: Using current hyp...
As a source of food, would it be possible to have fish and/or plants living inside a water tank situated between the fusion or fission power plant and the crew quarters of a ship? The ship in ques...
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...
We know from the International Pronunciation Alphabet (IPA) and the research that gave us the IPA, what sounds typically used in human speech (certainly not all sounds that can be made). This is al...
In the question of a biological cannon How would a Biological Cannon work? , one option was to use biological by-products for chemical propulsion of the cannon ball. It might have also been propel...
A terrible virus has made most of the populations and government officials of the largest superpowers on Earth stark, raving mad, without depriving them of their intelligence. They have decided t...
Before we begin, this system is created by aliens, and all orbits are on the same plane. These orbits are similar to earth's in shape. So, none of this has to occur naturally it just has to be stab...
There exists a single solitary tree at the mouth of a small river. This tree is basically a fountain of youth, granting immortality to anyone who eats it's grapefruit-sized fruits. As you can ima...
Background I was pondering my answer to this question. I asked myself, "Why would I only do a 45-minute burn and then float for 3 months to get to Mars?". Then I answered, "Because you only have ...
A targeted hard-science spin-off from this question: In a tidally-locked planet that rotates about a barycentric point that's located outside of its own sphere, what would the coriolis forces be l...
If $8.8 \times 10^{16} m^3$ of water volume is added to the surface of Venus, how would I calculate how much of Venus would be covered in water? The land of Venus has its topographical features wi...
