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)
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...
Blood of most vertebrates contains hemoglobin, which contains iron. I've imagined a world where someone once had a seemingly stupid idea of using blood as a source of iron. Now, the world is analo...
If a parasitic creature was discovered, how would officials determine whether that parasite was a new species or an existing parasitic species? How long would that process take? Assume the specie...
Our universe is described as having three physical dimensions, plus one time dimension, where the eigenvalues for the physical dimensions are all the same, but the eigenvalue for time is opposite (...
Is it possible that subterranean caves do/have existed on Mars? We know of the past existence of water on Mars. Which region (if any) of Mars would we likely find/expect to find a cave system bel...
Our intrepid interstellar crew arrive in a new solar system. The find a planet in the Goldilocks zone. However the planet has no life, but is otherwise earth like*. The atmosphere is 80% nitrogen, ...
I'd like to justify a lightning man in my world, and I have a theory that by some sort of magic, his cells in the dermis (middle layer of the skin - okay, for simplicity, don't count hair) are able...
Like it says on the tin. Problem? Basic configuration is not going to work. If I used several additional layers and all the Outer and Inner layers using carbon nanotubes, whereas the Middle Layer(s...
Nuclear rockets, or as I like to think of them, "half way between a continuous small atomic explosion and reactor whose front fell off". There are many variants, and my aliens are using relative si...
Simplifying a larger problem. Building a sci-fi text game and I don't want the science to be too wrong. Imagine I have two points in space which are 111,125 kilometers apart and it takes 17 minut...
A star system consisting of two stars forms, with one being more massive. As such, the larger star soon exhausts its fuel and ends up as a neutron star. The secondary star has a semi-major axis of ...
This is the Bering Sea today... ...and this was the Bering Sea as recently as 25,000 years ago. Truth of the matter is, the Bering had been shifting back and forth from land to sea for 100 mi...
In Larry Niven's short story "Bordered in Black", there's a planet (Sirius B-IV) with much lower gravity than Earth. As a result, the planet has a gentler atmospheric pressure gradient, i.e., the a...
I ask because I have a problem trying to find an appropriate launch window around that time or any point in the mid-1980s, and I need to reach Jupiter via Hohmann transfer so I can then use a serie...
While the vampire is a monster of folklore, modern technothrillers (e.g. Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency, Ultraviolet, Blade, Underworld, Daybreakers) have portrayed vampires as humans infected b...
What kind of system using modern technology would be able to counter a railgun projectile on a vehicle (both land and sea)? Would a think slab of angled armour in the shape of "<" work to cover ...
In his Robot Series, Isaac Asimov mentions "yeast substitutes" as a way of creating enough food to feed everybody in the Cities. It's also mentioned in Prelude to Foundation. Here's a few quotes fr...
Suppose the chemical reaction: $$3CO_2+2H_2\rightarrow 2H_2O+2O_2+3C$$ This reaction could be used to filter out $CO_2$ from the atmosphere, slowing down or reversing climate change. The solar syst...
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...
When I was observing the Moon yesterday, I asked myself: What would happen if a meteoroid impacted the Moon on the more clear part of the Moon which we can see, leaving a crater of the size like t...
How dark would it be living in an impact winter? Where would an asteroid have to hit earth to cause an impact winter? gives a great breakdown of the effects of an impact winter, but I'd like to k...
When thinking about a potential answer to this question about preventing flight in a cyberpunk dystopia, I had an idea that I do no possess sufficient knowledge to prove/disprove. Thus you'll be t...
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...
My novel is set on a planet covered in 90% water with no moons. How would the lack of natural satellites effect the waves and wind?
This is in reference to Could an organism have evolved to kill its prey by shouting at it? However, most answers here speak towards the brute force side of the equation, measure by it's decibel le...
In Lyman Stone's fantastic blog post about George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, Stone mentions that the seasonal cycle of Westeros is very unrealistic. Here's the truth: Medieva...
I'm currently working on a Sci-Fi setting for my friends to use in a campaign (my friend is GM but he's too lazy to come up with a setting so I offered to do it), I've already worked out the minor ...
I am writing a setting for a role-playing game. In it an alchemist has finally found a way to create gold from lesser metals. Like his former historical models the alchemist is so jubilant over hi...
Epimetheus is a planet with about three times the mass of Earth orbiting a sun-like star in the Andromeda galaxy. However, two major factors separate Epimetheus from Earth. First, it has a thick at...
So, after going through a some rough calculations, I figured my earlier question ran into a few problems regarding the final velocity of the asteroid. I pulled the mathematics a bit incorrect, so I...
I wrote a novel based on a human civilization that lives floating cities and dirigibles on a small, atmosphere-abundant super-Earth with a liquid water core (there's a smaller solid core under that...
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...
In recent years, we have discovered exoplanets that defy our traditional perspectives on how planets work. WASP-17b is twice as wide as Jupiter, yet half as massive, probably because of its orbita...
The coldest place in the universe that we have observed is in the Boomerang Nebula. Similarly to a refrigerator, heat is carried away through a fluid, resulting in a space colder than the surroundi...
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 ...
In an effort to reduce the murder rate I want to greatly increase the chances of getting caught. To do so I invented a device that will record your last words (and potential the murderer's and your...
Consider a civilization with the industrial age technologies. Oil and coal are rare (probably used up). All products produced by oil and coal are also nonexistent. The civilization has invented ele...
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...
I was thinking about making up a visor like Batman has in the Arkham series, where he "analyzes" a sample and then he can set a filter on his visor for particles of that compound. Something like a...
Planet has these characteristics: Half of the planet is always on day, and other half is always night (it rotates at the same velocity as its orbit) There are no underground water sources; it's a...
Using my world changing invention and my massive intellect I have created the perfect defensive tool for myself and any minions valued friends I deem might need one. The tool is a super suit that ...
Earth, present time or very near future. Astronomers have just announced that it is believed that almost 9 billion habitable Earth-like planets exist in the Milky Way alone (this is true, but there...
In our universe infinite energy is not possible, at least given the known laws of physics. But in another universe what would allow for energy to be in the same amount as space? But how large i...
I want to play with the idea of a sapient species evolving on a world where at least part of the world experiences a permanent day. The obvious way to doing this would be where part of the world f...
So for my story I want to have a binary planetary system, where both planets are about the size of earth and are habitable by human people. I'm also thinking that they will be tidally locked to eac...
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...
Given that a laser beam is made up of coherent light waves running in parallel in the same direction, and that space is not a complete vacuum (dust, radiation, electromagnetic forces etc.), what ki...
And how much fuel would you need to carry? I'm trying to determine what kind of engine you'd need to accelerate a good-size spacecraft (thousands to millions of tons) at a constant 1g in a race acr...
Preamble The Alternity Cosmos II is a complement to a dice role-playing game that uses heuristics based on hard-science to 'build' plausible star systems for the Alternity game: http://www.altern...
I've seen a couple questions before (like this one and this one) that ask about the habitability of a planet, with a key part of that being if the atmosphere is survivable. It seems like we should ...
