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Interesting models have been made of T Tauri stars, pre-main sequence stars that can have strong magnetic fields (though clearly not as strong as those of magnetars). Data is given in Johns-Krull (...
At .6c you aren't going to get much that will slow it down in only a year. You can try lasers if you already have them in place, as it might knock a percent or two off, but considering for a lase...
Here are some jumbled thoughts I had: There's no way the planet can have a magnetic field strong enough to levitate rocks. In my answer to Can there be planets with extremely strong magnetic field...
Like others have pointed out, such a computer already exists. Not only that, it looks like it was done long before electronic computers; take for example the water integrator, built in the Soviet U...
For a spherically symmetric planet, surface gravitation is determined by just two quantities: The average density, $\rho$, and the radius, $R$. In particular, due to spherical symmetry you can cons...
tl;dr: The corpses would still decay, but probably much slower. From the Wikipedia article about decomposition: Decomposition begins at the moment of death, caused by two factors: autolysis, t...
The space age civilisation has heavily computerized systems. That is, all important aspects of the space ships, factories, and whatever else advanced technology they use is completely controlled by...
First, let's start by determining the mass of the black hole. Using Newton's law of universal gravitation - which I think we can safely use, at a distance of 1 AU - we get $$g=\frac{G(M_{\text{bla...
This is actually pretty simple. We just have to calculate the stellar flux, which is the luminosity of the star divided by the surface area of a shell with the radius of the planet's orbit. In othe...
If $R$ is the planet's radius and $\rho$ is the planet's average density, then its surface gravity is $\propto \rho R$ and its mass is $\propto \rho R^3$. Let's measure in units where the Earth's ...
I'm going to work off of celtschk's excellent answer, which correctly comes up with a radius of $\sim1.6 R_{\oplus}$ and a density of $\sim2.5\rho_{\oplus}$, where $_{\oplus}$ denotes Earth. If we ...
Some of the things they could do are modern takes on ancient techniques. For instance crop rotation and allowing the land to rest once in a while. We know that if you plant the same crop year af...
As a few of the others have said, due to time dilation, this planet wouldn't be very useful as a colony. Between the speed and the proximity to the SMBH, it would probably be one of those situation...
Deorbiting is actually pretty easy, and doesn't even need a magic space suit. You could provide him with something like the MOOSE, or even just the materials and a set of plans to build one, and...
Since the spy is communicating with a satellite, they need to to have a view of the sky, and be pointing the beam up which may reduce the amount of leakage down on the ground if the transmitter is ...
Several scientific theories predict the presence of extra higher dimensions. Physics has validated (or at least not falsified) a 4 dimensional (3+1) model of space-time, and if string theory is cor...
There was an article by Brandon Sanderson about how superpowers are basically magic. If you want Wolverine style healing, where you could burn him down to a skeleton with a few gristly bits and he'...
With regards to the real-world, the NOAA says that some deep-sea crabs have low-level UV sensitivity in certain pigments. This would seem to indicate that creatures there may emit UV light - which ...
Assuming the alien life form is multicellular, it should definitively know cancer. Cancer is basically a defect in the mechanism that controls the cell division. Cell division is absolutely essenti...
There's no way to achieve this in the known laws of physics. However given that near a mass the time "goes slower". I guess if you could create a negative mass, near it time should "go faster". S...
In a small way this happens already. Weaver ants have a very complicated communication system using pheromones that allows for an unusual amount of cooperation. A lot of that is hard wired into ...
As Wikipedia notes, $$t_{\text{lock}} \approx \frac{\omega a^6IQ}{3Gm_p^2k_2R^5}$$ where $a$ is the semi-major axis, $m_p$ is the mass of the primary, $\omega$ is the initial angular speed, and the...
Like we learned in Dune, the slow blade penetrates the shield. Anything moving faster or with more force than the threshold is going to rebound. Arrows would be shot backward at speed, swords swun...
The planet The radius you have is perfectly fine. It is true that chthonian planets may have masses of 30-100 times that of the Earth, but this is merely because they are extremely dense. Mocquet ...
First off, the aliens aren't that far away, relatively speaking. Most of our signals are pretty weak, especially compared to the radio output from our sun, and you'd have to be pretty close and...
