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FYI: Nine-banded armadillos, like humans, are susceptible to leprosy. They've also been able to grow it in mouse foot pads since it won't culture in any normal medium. The bacteria, Mycobacterium...
Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of mountains. Prior to the invention of flight, mountains were often more than a little bit annoying to cross. Passes make traversing a mountain r...
I think you could model your area on Washington state if you want something that sounds a lot like your example. You mention mountains, which have a huge impact on weather depending on where they ...
Nesting. Your creature has reached a key stage in its evolutionary development. It has advanced from digging a hole on the beach, laying its eggs, and trusting to fate. Its instincts now compel ...
My answer is going to go well beyond what we can ever expect from reality, so I hope your definition of "rational SF" is fairly liberal. This is going to be a major undertaking in genetic engineer...
Networks go out sometimes, or can be jammed. This might be particularly problematic in high-radiation environments. See also this answer for reasons they might not be available. Voice communicat...
Yes and no. It'd be worth keeping some of the larger telescopes around, simply because they have a wider area of coverage. A large radio telescope can cover a significant portion of its sky and li...
Not quite. Possibly.1 Advantages of faster-than-light travel for astronomy: You can see events happening in the present. Astronomers stuck on Earth can only observe objects in the past. Even our...
Splashdown recovery! Currently, NASA does not have any manned spacecraft in use (astronauts use the Russia Soyuz capsules). However, in the past, NASA capsules used a splashdown landing in the oce...
What are some ways we (ancient, non-AI-merged) humans have sought to enhance our relationships with our pets? We've put them to work! There are: Search and Rescue Dogs Bomb-tech Dogs Law Enfo...
No can do. I was able to find the answer here, written by LIGO scientist Dr. Amber Stuver: How valid is the wave-like-in-water analogy? Can we "surf" these waves? Are there gravity "peaks" lik...
Xenonucleic acids (XNAs) (see also Wikipedia) may be what you're looking for. XNAs are nucleic acids related to DNA, some of which can store information for organisms in the same way that DNA does...
Space isn't exactly cold. It isn't hot either, because a vacuum can't be either. Heat regulation is actually a big problem because of that vacuum, since heat can't be radiated off into the air. It ...
Maybe. Giant cells actually exist. They occur when many cells fuse together, often to fight an infection. They typically reach a maximum size of 120 micrometers - nowhere near your size - but I su...
Egg yolks are single cells, and ostrich eggs are pretty big. There was a news story about giant fossilized dinosaur eggs found in Chechnya a few years back which where up to 3 feet wide. There is ...
Astronomy would be harder because the period when it was really dark would be pretty short. Much shorter than the 1:19 between sun down and sun up. It wouldn't be impossible, since you could just a...
If I may, I'll make a slightly simpler (I think) derivation of the answer. We start with Gauss's law for gravity. In its integral form, it is $$\oint_{\partial V}\mathbf{g}\cdot \mathrm{d}\mathbf{...
Your planet is screwed. As was mentioned in comments, the Giant Impact Hypothesis details a very similar situation, as Earth collides with another body of slightly smaller size at some angle of ro...
EDIT: Calculations were incorrect, the earth in my comic is not 5.8x larger, it is 2.4x larger. Its surface area is 5.8x larger but the diameter is 2.4x larger. Anyway I'm working on a comic tha...
Imagine similar earth conditions of oceans and currents, and a renaissance type kind of ships of various sizes (ranging from sloops to ships-of-the-line), could a fleet consisting in 1500 (aprox.) ...
In this world, humans have a strange way of reproducing. When partners decide to conceive, A female must be inseminated at specified intervals by a male in order to pass on her genes. However, male...
I'm trying to come up with idea's that have some plausibility of sending information FTL. So we can entangle particles together. When you measure them you influence them. If you measure one up the...
Genetic chimerism is a condition in which a single organism is composed of cells with more than one distinct genotype. In animals, this means an individual derived from two or more zygotes, which c...
I came to SE WB while I was researching about space radiators for my sci-fi. I don't remember where exactly I found an answer to my question (Maybe? Idr) but I stunned with this site. You all looks...
My time traveller from the distant future is about to get stranded back in time, but realises that by travelling back a short time, maybe 100000 years, he is going to leave a trail of destruction b...
