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As long as the astronaut has a map of the sky from Earth where stellar bodies are grouped by distance (like on onion peels), then geometry suggests that there must be at least one point, or more li...
Here's another option: There are three genes: The X gene, the Y gene, and the Z gene. And there are three sex chromosomes: The XY chromosome, the XZ chromosome and the YZ chromosome. Each sex chro...
Genetically engineered recycling bacteria. Many varieties. Plus (perhaps) some new acids to help them along with harder breaking. The "natural" means of recycling for the Earth is biological deco...
I propose a double light web, and a (quite distant) robotic 'catcher' grid. Things in orbit move in nice predictable orbits, at least in the short term, and are only slightly affected by the gravi...
Basic characteristics The system you're describing here may be a contact binary, where the two stars have come close enough to actually touch. These systems may actually be stable for millions (or...
So start with a planet that is mostly made of a metal with a low melting point, say lead. It's set close enough to a star that during the day the surface becomes liquid, but it also has a low rotat...
So wind wise, you'd have Hadley cells that extend around the planet. Basically hot dry air on the sunward side would cause the air to heat up, rise, and make a low pressure area. Meanwhile on the f...
Keeping it on mars, one easy reason is flooding. If they are there teraforming, things start to warm up, a lot of permafrost will melt. That water has to go somewhere, and the most likely place is ...
Here's a rare, but plausible scenario that nobody seems to have thought of yet: Meteor Strike We're already tracking all known comets and meteors in case any of them have even the slightest chanc...
There is one way that we know of that can make this happen, which is tidal energy. Jupiter's moons Ganymede and Europa both have a lot of water, as does Saturn's moon Enceladus. As they orbit thei...
You might not want them following you home You never know what you might run into out in the deep of space. If you come across a new civilization that would pose an imminent threat to humanity, su...
It could be similar to the existing carnivorous plants that we already have on our planet. This way the plantimal could try to lure its food into its mouth and then slowly digest it. All you need...
I cannot find anything usable for a good comparison of a wolf and a hare the size of a human. The closest thing regarding the bite is this article about the bite force quotient, which might help yo...
The second law of thermodynamics states that global entropy of an isolated system always increases or remains constant This tells us a couple of things that are relevant here: If the system is n...
You could have massive volcanic eruptions and regularly create a temporary volcanic winter
If multiple of your creatures can work on the same "child" they could be faster at "giving birth". This could come in handy when you think about different seasons. Normally there is a certain time ...
Maybe for the "joining of legs"-part you could use a mechanism similar to velcro, which was inspired by burs, so that they are hold together. Then you could let the mermaid control if the mechanism...
Maybe the Pixies could write on a piece of paper. For them it would be a big painting and for humans it would be a tiny note, but we would be able to read it. This kind of communication might tak...
I am going to assume that by constant, you really mean constant as opposed to instantaneous. In other words, we are still bound by the speed of light propagation delay. We are also bound by the law...
It's a combination of several factors, most of which have already been mentioned but I'll put them all together anyway, with some helpful analogies. 1. Aesthetics/Rule of Cool For this I'll use t...
Let's break this down a bit. What conditions would render disposable heat sinks necessary? As has been noted already: combat and stealth. Radiators can be damaged, and will give your ship a n...
Use the vacuum to help cool the ship. Specifically, have several enclosed/mostly enclosed spaces that are transparent to IR and that is pumped to a vacuum. Use water to absorb the heat, and then sp...
I'm going to run through your list of points and see what happens: Fine. Has to interact via either gravity, strong or weak Fine. $0$ charge (no electromagnetic interaction), integer spin (are bo...
I think the result will be very similar to what happens here on this Earth during a solar eclipse. I like this quote from http://www.eclipse2017.org/2017/what_you_see.htm: You'll get the shrin...
Let's imagine that the hottest part of the apparatus is the barrel, so to speak, which is cylindrical with length $l$, radius $r$ and temperature $T_b$. We can surround it with a fluid of temperatu...
