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Like AndreiROM points out, recognizing that there is a signal, and understanding the contents of the signal, are two completely different things. In fact, it's not even a given that the aliens wou...
AndreiROM is right, thanks to our friend inertia the only time you'd notice anything is while the ship is actively thrusting during acceleration and deceleration, or if you turned really sharply. ...
While I think there is a lot to be said for a predator having incredibly sensitive hearing being able to be traumatised or damaged by something like a much louder industrial noise created by humans...
Well, think about the direction in which each of these operations needs to go. Tunnels go horizontally across the mountain. Mines go more diagonally downwards, or even straight down in some cases....
Awesome question. To test the feasibility of your idea, we start with the heat equation, which in our case is (from these notes) $$\frac{\partial T}{\partial t}=D_H\frac{\partial^2T}{\partial z^2}\...
Not as commonly thought of, no. One of the things that we learn in orbital mechanics is that the planet orbits its star, not the other way around. More generally, the less massive body orbits the ...
The term I've seen used to describe the necessary solvents for silicon-based life is cryosolvent. In Planets and Life: The Emerging Science of Astrobiology, by Sullivan & Ross (relevant excerpt...
Yes! And even without the tidal heating. O'Brien et al. (2005) modeled impact craters on Titan using finite-difference methods for various impact scenarios, including a wide range of sizes and tem...
Long hair is inherited from the common ancestors of humans and merpeople. In-hair-itance As whales evolved from an ancestor of the hippopotamus and manatees from an ancestor of the elephant, merpeo...
The idea of volcanic vents to harbor life during the long night that others have suggested is really good. But that won't help during the long day if it gets to hot and dry. One variable that woul...
I contend that the Trojan, Greek, and Hilda groups associated with Jupiter in our own solar system constitute "fields" as opposed to "belts." The Hildas are perhaps more scattered, but they do not...
Well, we did travel to the Moon with 1960s (and some even 1950s) technology. We also had reasonably detailed plans to use the same underlying technology to make a year-long Venus fly-by mission in ...
Most plants would rely on seeds, and would have multiple cycles during the 39,420 hours of daylight. The seeds would probably have some temperature sensitivity so as to not germinate just before du...
They could be incompetent or short sighted eco terrorists, and it doesn't matter that they use a method that would release a lot of co2. "We destroyed the oil by pumping oil eating bacteria down! ...
One way to give a glow without causing vision problems would be if that glow is monochromatic (just one frequency), and at the same time that person happens to be blind for exactly that frequency, ...
I had written up a long spiel that was going to be part of a long answer to another question, but it looks like it'll do all right here. Just so you don't think that I whipped it up in 20 minutes. ...
Like JDÅ‚ugosz wrote, what will cause problems in the scenario you describe isn't so much your orbit as the fact that you are within the gas giant's atmosphere. I'm going to use Jupiter here to ha...
Looking at current Jovian satellites, Europa and Io give you some idea of what you'd need to consider. Starting with the Solar system model: Europa is (as Aaron commented) the most likely candida...
Yes, because: Here on Earth you see a wide range of colours in the sky depending on time of day, cloud cover, dust etc. as the atmosphere absorbs and scatters different frequencies of the generall...
I like to use Kasting et al. (1993) when talking about better climate models of planets around main sequence stars, as it evaluates habitable zones in while taking into account atmospheric effects....
The tag on this is mythology, not hard science. You need to think mythologically. How could garlic, a spice whose only offense is plain stink, deter an attractive man with a seriously unhealthy...
I think evolution could handle this, given enough time and the right pressures. Here are the steps, in brief: Start with an existing carnivorous plant like a butterwort or bladderwort. Increase ...
There are some real-world examples we can point to that indicate the possibility of a realistic small humanoid. Since we don't need anything exotic like antlers, carapaces, or magic, this should b...
The meteor missed. The end-cretaceous mass extinction event didn't happen. Velociraptors and their friends lived on. They continued to evolve, to be large, and to eat whatever they wanted. We n...
Actually, there is a network with properties similar to those that would likely be seen on an interplanetary version of the Internet. We can use it for comparison. It's called FidoNet. FidoNet us...
