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[Repost to condense question down] For a science fiction world of mine I am considering using a type of microscopic organism that is able to generate energy as it goes through its lifecycle, a life...
Technological approaches to refrigeration tend to involve either high compression ratios of fairly exotic (from a biochemical point of view, anyway) volatile substances, or high-power, low-efficien...
Strange title I know, but you'll understand why quickly. I wanted to use a black hole to create absurd amounts of power for hopefully obvious reasons (kind of useful). The problem with natural lar...
In this world, time travel is possible, but the only thing that can be sent back in time are thoughts. From the perspective of your past self, you suddenly one moment realize that you have "memorie...
Would it be possible to use a living organism as unobtainium for interstellar travel? Would it make any sense? The story I had in mind would use them as the main bad guys seeking vengeance on thos...
There lives in a desert a large nomad culture, composed of many tribes who wander about herding camels, goats and sheep, trading and offering services to cities and towns, and occasionally raiding ...
The basis for this question is the selected answer for Plausibility of Mushroom Buildings. Prototaxites and braket fungus are the likely candidates but I want to know if this type of fungis can flo...
The year: Sometime a long time from now The place: Mars Little Bobby Colonist is going to play out in sand dunes beyond the edge of the domed city where he lives. Terraforming efforts over the la...
For the purposes of my story, I have created the following setting. An Earth-like planet orbits a binary star system made up of a Sun-like star and a neutron star. For the majority of time (hundre...
I'm no scientist and my poor brain box is on its last legs; I was wondering if any of you smart beans out there would be able to help me figure this out? Here are the specs of my system; Kereiol i...
If humans found a habitable world and access to it, what would the effects be of a longer day to those who were subsequently born and raised there? Is there any evidence that a longer day cycle (o...
I'm creating a world for a webcomic and I'm running into some difficulties "“ namely, my own limitations. I'm not a scientist, and I don't even know how to start asking the questions I want answere...
Hello! I'm no scientist so I've reached the limit of my knowledge. I was wondering if any of you smart beans out there would be able to help me figure this out? Here are the specs of my system; Ke...
Hello! I've put together my first planetary system, but as I'm not a scientist (and bad at maths) I'm reaching the limits of my brainbox and would really appreciate some fact checking! I have quest...
Alastair Reynolds is a contemporary sci-fi writer whose works often demonstrate a strong grip on science as it presently stands. Recently, I picked up his book On The Steel Breeze for a quick re-re...
I'm modeling this on the Voyager 2 flight path. I want to have this flight at this particular time, and not wait for a more advantageous launch window. Based on this orbital configuration (1st i...
In this solar system, there are three K-type main sequence stars, or "orange dwarves", named Odin, Vili and Ve. At the center of this solar system, Odin is 80% the mass of our sun. The middle sta...
Imagine a species that is very much like humans in shape, size and physiology. But they are able to stare at the sun for long periods without suffering any harm, and without needing any artificial ...
Imagine a planet with two moons that have an orbital pattern similar to that of Janus and Epimetheus of Saturn... Is there a way for one of these moons to keep a stable pair of Trojan sub moons? ...
I'm still working on world map of this pear-shaped planet for my alien race, so I think land-to-water ratio would be something 40/60% or 30/70% (I don't know which one makes creatures much bigger),...
Two rivers converging into one is obviously extremely common, most often when one is clearly dominant over the other (whereby the lesser one is the 'tributary' of the greater) but also sometimes wh...
As far as I know, summer and winter are governed by the amount of sunlight absorbed per unit area, where longer days would increase the temperature along with a higher sun angle. To elaborate on ...
There are exactly 2 force laws that can produce stable closed orbits: proportional (spring force) and inverse-square. The inverse square law occurs naturally for monopole central forces in 3 dimens...
The universe described in the orthogonal series http://www.gregegan.net/ORTHOGONAL/00/PM.html is one, in which the minus sign in the space time interval is replaced with a plus sign. So this unive...
