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I wrote an answer on Physics Stack Exchange that discussed this a bit. I'll present a shorter and more focused version here. There are two main processes by which a planet can lose atmosphere: Jea...
You need to take advantage of Lagrangian Points. Whenever one massive body orbits another, there are five points surrounding them where other massive bodies will be in equilibrium, in terms of gra...
(NOTE: I started writing this answer before @amflare posted theirs, and before @AlexP posted his comment.) The existing answers do a good job of demonstrating that you can build a city on the side...
When the sun started to behave strangely, astronomers were confused: The accepted solar model didn't at all predict this behaviour. Indeed, based on the new data it could quickly be shown that thei...
People do discover it. They just never report back. It's one thing to sail all the way to a new continent. It's quite another to land there, chart the territory, and then sail back home again to t...
Reptilian with multiple opposing digits? Sounds like chameleons: photo source Yes, our little Madagascan color-changing friends already have the arrangement you are looking for. Why? Because...
A couple hundred years. In 2013, the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IASDCC) published a report detailing comparisons of several independent models (one each from ASI, ESA, ISRO,...
Fire the engines closer to the Sun for maximum efficiency. This is due to the Oberth effect. Assume the spacecraft undergoes a burn when it is farther away from the Sun. The expelled propellant wi...
Probably not. After some more consideration, I'm less confident that the proposal could work. There are two reasons: No guarantee of focusing at any one point, and an inability to control the para...
Solar Sails. Without any sort of compressed gas, chemical reactions, or flywheels, the only way you're going to get a spacecraft to move is via something outside. A human simply cannot provide any...
Interesting question. I'm reasonably certain that the answer boils down to a property of matter called the equation of state. An equation of state is a relation between several thermodynamic varia...
Neutron star material, if it could be contained by means other than its own gravity; would require a cube about 390 meters on a side to equal the mass of the Earth, if it could somehow be 'placed' ...
I think isolation is still there; occasional visitors from off world notwithstanding. Our features are environmentally driven: The caucasian nose, skin color, eye color and hair are all adaptations...
I think it is fair to assume these insects are haptic; meaning they have some sense of touch in their environment. Then the solution can be a code, like humans have, developed along the lines of mo...
I don't think this is plausible. How did they become smarter than humans? The most plausible route to Intelligence is that it evolves in an environment where it is useful, that is where it exists ...
First off, something that might seem like an inconsequential detail or perhaps even nitpicking, but really isn't in this case: You don't need oxygen for something to burn. What you need is an oxidi...
This actually relates to the OP's question; give me a minute. Self-awareness does not require an internal dialogue or a language in which to speak. Self-awareness is having a mental model (simulat...
Yes, obviously, if stone materials are available. The pyramids were built, right? Stonehenge was built. The Roman Coliseum was built, and we know how. Infinite money and workers means stone walls ...
All your settings are completely plausible. I upvoted the @ventsyv answer; but I need to correct one thing: Planets can rotate at any speed; in any direction; thanks to collisions during their fo...
From Here: "The average human brain has about 100 billion neurons (or nerve cells) and many more neuroglia (or glial cells) which serve to support and protect the neurons (although see the end of t...
I'd say yes; in the scenario the listening ship can set up sensors that are literally miles long; like the gravity wave sensors that have recently made headlines. Think, as an analogy, about motio...
Children the age of 3 can be trained to recognize dangerous vs acceptable vegetable foods. At age 3 they can be in kindergarten and learning. They can also learn to acquire berries, honey, and to r...
A) Consider the human tongue; a long boneless appendage, muscular, that (in some people) can manipulate finely enough to tie a knot in string (perhaps holding one end in the teeth, I don't know). ...
Basically I agree with @Kys; but will expand a bit: Intelligence (with or without sapience) is effectively the ability to learn predictive patterns. Whether they predict the future, or the unknow...
How about "The Meek Inherit The Earth"? They could be the only large animal species left on their planet; so they eat plants and invertebrates like worms. There were aggressive species at one time,...
