Welcome to Scientific Speculation!
Welcome to the Codidact home for the Scientific Speculation community, an outgrowth of the SE Worldbuilding community. Please use it, report problems and make requests on Meta, and collect your thoughts about what we need to support this community.
About scope
This site was proposed to be narrower than the SE Worldbuilding site -- but still pretty broad! Here we would like to focus on questions where you can draw a line from what we know of science to whatever you're asking about -- so not "pure magic", but many things aren't possible today and by that logic are kind of magic. Our world doesn't have faster-than-light travel, shapeshifters, alien biology, robots with (more-than-)human-level intelligence and autonomy, fantastical creatures, and so on, but you could still ask questions about how FTL could be achieved with what we know of physics, how atmospheres on other planets would affect development of flora and fauna, how AI could develop into something resembling sentience, how the biology of shapeshifting would work, and so on. Basically, we're trying to avoid the questions where any answer would amount to "it's magic; you can do whatever you want", while encouraging flights of imagination that can be analyzed through the lens of science.
Please use meta to further refine this scope! We know there are going to be some unclear cases; let's work them out together.
You might have noticed that Codidact sites have categories; for example, Meta is a category, not a whole separate site. On this site we have created the Researched Q&A category. This category maps to the hard-science tag over on SE. Post in Q&A for most topics; post in Researched Q&A if you are looking for answers supported by math, citations, and so on.
(We'll be adding some documentation and better category descriptions; we just haven't gotten to it yet.)
About the platform (site mechanics)
If you already have an account on another Codidact site (Writing, Outdoors, Photography, or Meta), click "sign in" and use the same email address and password -- you're already in the system and don't need to create a new account.
This site is running on beta software that will eventually become Codidact. We started with a Q&A platform that already existed, and over the coming weeks, we will be evolving this software toward the feature set we've identified for the first official release of Codidact. This means some things will change (mostly things will be added), but the core -- a community built around questions and answers -- will not change. You can read more about the vision for the platform and the features for the first release.
Many questions and answers have been imported from SE. More imports are possible later as we work out details of scope. Votes have not been imported; this site is a clean start, and anyway, we don't know who voted so we can't tell you whether you've already voted on something. This means that, initially, the site has a large pile of 0-score posts; please review and vote as you come across them. You can use tags to find questions and answers on your favorite topics, and browse links from users' profiles (check out the question and all the answers, not just one person's posts). In addition, check out the "lottery" tab on the question list, which is refreshed regularly with a random collection of older questions.
You can claim ownership for your imported content: log in to SE, go to your profile page on this site (link in the header), click on "edit profile", and go down to the bottom where you'll see an import button. Results might take some time; lots of stuff is going on in the background. If you've previously connected another SE account on another Codidact site, you shouldn't need to do this -- your posts should be attributed to you automatically.
There is a reputation system here for now, and there are a few rep-based privileges, but it's kind of like a private beta at SE; everybody can do most things, so be careful. I believe deletion requires only one vote and auditing is limited. We don't have many moderation tools yet, but we do have flags. Be nice and be careful please. If you run into problems or have questions, post here on meta.
We don't have on-site chat yet, but there is a Discord server for Codidact communities. Pop into the "access-management" channel and check off the communities you want to see chat rooms for. (This is so you don't have to wade through everything every time you visit.)
Welcome aboard!
1 answer
but you could still ask questions about how FTL could be achieved with what we know of physics
That's not scientific at all, according to what we know of physics, it's not possible. End of line
Faster-Than-Light is impossible
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