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You would have to have another form of input in order to look sideways across time. Our eyes see what is around us in this space and time. You'd have to have a time2D vision organ to allow you to s...
Everyone will burn to death. This NASA page shows temperature changes during the collision between Earth and Theia in the Giant Impact Hypothesis. The temperature is on the x-axis, in Kelvin: Y...
This question has already been debated by exo-astronomers. The best answer they could come up with (using 1974 technology) was the Arecibo Message. The details might change, but the essential ide...
Work towards the heat death of the universe. Your idea sounds a lot like the heat death of the universe, a hypothetical event where the universe reaches maximum entropy and no more work can be don...
I wrote a blog post about this for Worldbuilding Stack Exchange's blog, Universe Factory, so I'll work off of that. First, the good stuff: a picture of what you're looking for. It's from Alexey Bo...
Neutron stars, while small, have a lot of mass. A neutron star with a diameter of 22 kilometers could have twice the mass of the sun, so large orbits are possible. Actually, because of the threa...
So you know how sometimes songs get stuck in your head for hours, even if you've only heard a small snippet? That's because some music creates patterns that resonance with our minds, and once st...
This is a tough question to answer because any planetary system with more than one planet is tough to analyze. When two planetary systems collide, the result is overwhelmingly difficult to analyze,...
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{...
