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There are two parts to the problem: short-term issues and long-term issues. Short-term issues Part of the problem of the Three Generation Rule is that people like procrastinating. Why do today wh...
As this answer says, most musical instruments as we know them won't work underwater. You might see something completely new arise, but we should assume that people will first reach for what is eas...
Parents don't want their kids to die of cancer or diabetes. Nor do governments want to spend billions treating these conditions. Laron dwarfism is a genetic condition that causes the growth hormone...
Because of radiation and other dangers, a lot of people think that stations on the moon will be buried or dug down deep. There are extinct volcanoes on the moon, which means there could be lava tub...
Water pressure gets very problematic very quickly: The deeper you go under the sea, the greater the pressure of the water pushing down on you. For every 33 feet (10.06 meters) you go down, the ...
I don't think that any of them would have an advantage over corals when it comes to building reefs. Perhaps they could manage to build some, but it would be hard. Echinoderms Coral create coral r...
TL;DR: No. Programming languages are too diverse. Reason 1: Purpose There are, according to Wikipedia's list of programming languages, 806 distinct programming languages, excluding BASIC dialects...
Prevent contamination. Contamination is something that NASA and other space agencies are careful about when sending rovers to other planets (e.g. Mars). Rovers could accidentally release bacteria ...
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'...
