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Some interpretations of Einstein's field equations allow for FTL by forming a "bubble" of curved space around a ship (check out the Alcubierre drive on Wikipedia). Forming such a bubble would requi...
Perhaps your faster than light drive can go "through" objects or pass "through" their spatial coordinates without interacting with them. Thus you can't harm a planet or a star by hitting them. In...
The most used options in literature to spice up space travel are: FTL drive requires local space to be "flat". This can be played in several different ways. The most direct way (e.g. in the Honor...
A guy named Arioch has a webcomic called Outsider (highly recommended, BTW) with a simple and elegant solution to this problem. Ships in that universe use a drive that jumps them through hyperspace...
Inspired by fuzzys approach I made some thoughts regarding possible underwater skills, tools, etc.: Tools Many already said that remnants of hard shelled exosceleton animals or corals can be us...
written celaphopodic language My thoughts are relying to the concept, that one single image displayed on the skin (accompanied by movements) contains many information. Therefore it doesn't need...
A heat pipe system should be able to handle what your load. The advantage of heat pipes over many other heat-dissipation mechanisms is their great efficiency in transferring heat. A pipe one in...
The complexity of the language based on colour change should not be, ceteris paribus, too different from our audio-oral form of communication. If there is going to be anything that makes is more or...
Absent an accompanying written language, is it plausible that the cephalopod language could develop into something that can be used to discuss complex or abstract ideas? You don't need written...
You need to look at sign languages, which have non-linear elements and and have a somewhat tighter relationship between morphemes and phonemes than is found in spoken languages. If you were signin...
Abstract ideas such as philosophy Think about logographic writing systems where each character has its own meaning, but you can combine them to create more advanced meanings. In such writing syste...
We actually use images to capture our speech for analysis To make a spectrogram like one of these, we split out the higher frequencies from the lower frequencies. With this, we can see the way ...
There is no reason why a color-based language could not be as expressive as any human language. Building blocks Every spoken language consists of a set of phonemes, sounds that can be combined in...
I will approach this from a linguistic angle. First, I expect that you want a language capable of abstract expressions. (words like "truth" "beauty" "disappointment" and the like) Abstract concept...
While the quoted example is extremely primitive, you are overlooking the possibility of shapes (glyphs) enhancing the language considerably. Tribes and extended family units could develop their own...
Given the complexity of colouration that cephalopods are capable of, one can easily imagine their language being vastly more complex than a spoken or written language. You'd begin with the obvious...
Binary Consider how complex a computer is and what it is capable of, yet all its code is composed of almost the most rudimentary elements possible: zeros and ones (binary code). So, the computer s...
Evolutionary biology: the first effective tool user wins. In most marine environments two issues dominate most niches: (1) obtaining food and (2) not becoming food. I posit that your creatures wil...
As far as we are currently aware, the most intelligent things in the oceans are the cetaceans (dolphins and whales) and the pinnipeds (seals, walrus, sea lions). Further, it is more tempting to wa...
I think the best solution would be a Matrioshka Brain. This is effectively a layered set of Dyson spheres. Once it reaches equilibrium, each shell has a particular temperature differential across...
Being careful with your aim You can't not radiate, so if you want to not be observed then you need to make sure you aren't radiating in the direction of your nearest neighbours. To do this you'll ...
To have technological civilization, at the very least you need to have tool usage. Octopuses have been found to use tools with their very dexterous arms. You also need a large brain and if they a...
As I state below, if both stars in the system are suitable for having planets old enough to have interesting stuff like habitable biospheres, complex multi celled plants and animals, or native inte...
The atmosphere should be stable Carbon Dioxide This Carbon Dioxide/Oxygen ratio should be stable, so long as that ratio is maintained by the carbon cycle on your planet. Having volcanoes to keep ...
I think you can, but I can't see any way of doing it short of knowing the end from the beginning. Werrf's answer is excellent in regards to the energy densities of coal and oil that bootstrapped in...
