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I am a writer trying to build a fantasy realm relatively similar to our world. The only difference between this world and ours was that every creature and animal was significantly larger, potential...
One species has two genders, like humans, the other has three(essentially male, female, and one without breeding capabilities that first appears as a genetic quirk but quickly becomes more prominen...
This is not a question on whether or not floating, balloon-like organisms are biomechanically viable - I already know the answer to that, which is yes. This instead deals with the plausibility of s...
Using current technology, what could I do to optimize the odds of being located by time-traveling humans a thousand years from now? The accuracy must be such that they could "transport" me out of ...
One of the planets I am working on is supposed to have a day of about 6 earth hours long & I'm wondering what effects this will have on its surface and climate. Also, I don't know if this is r...
What would be the ideal spots to build/start a colony on Mars? I am looking for. . . Good location; a particular well placed crater, lots of caves nearby, etc. . . Good mix of resources; Ice, ir...
The subterranean nation of Glot has developed the ability to "thermally link" two equally sized diamonds, such that they are always the same temperature, regardless of spatial separation. We can c...
Imagine we took earth and slowed it down so that a day lasted 100 years, could humans (or any life) survive? Let's assume that there are no ill effects of slowing it down, no massive tidal waves, n...
How do you go about building a working Earth-like ocean ecosystem from scratch in Europa's subsurface ocean? On Earth, abyssopelagic species have evolved to live more than 6km below the surface. A...
I'm attempting to rough-estimate potential population density of three-dimensional megastructures in space. Assume a filled spherical volume (i.e. death star, not Dyson sphere), where all internal ...
Inspired by this question regarding reality as simulation and this question about a continuous time line, it made me wonder: if our time were indeed like a high frame-rate simulation, how could we ...
Someone showering after exercise aboard a rotating space station spinning to simulate 1 gravity. How might Coriolis affect jets of water falling within a cubicle of 2 metres in height?
The question stems from watching a scene from ID2 and seeing the massive alien mothership landing/crashing on the North Atlantic. What mass would a starship, or any other artificial object constru...
If we could embed tiny "water" wheels into our veins and arteries, what is the maximum amount of power we could achieve? Assume that they will work and won't malfunction or clog our blood. Also, we...
I'm trying to think of what kind of cosmic event would cause an explosion powerful enough to "shake" or disrupt the whole flow of a galaxy and on that same note what other kind of super cosmic even...
The setting is our Earth of today (2018) with one difference: some Space Agency decided to go back the Moon and built a ship that is ready to depart, using today's technology. For reasons, the cre...
I would like to give my imaginary earth-analogue planet multiple (natural) moons. Is the orbital period of such moons at all related to their size (or apparent size)? In other words, am I free ...
In this paper by Bains et al, an alternative to oxygenic photosynthesis is discussed. Apparently, 4 times the amount of biomass can be produced using hydrogenic over oxygenic photosynthesis. Oxyge...
There is no other way around it--Madagascar is an evolutionary uniquety. 80% of the island's species live nowhere else on Earth. Among this uniqueness is a habitat that seems to come out of scien...
I have a species of humanoids that spends a lot of time around fire. They are able to spark their own fires, and they have a reasonable fire resistance. One problem presenting itself is smoke inha...
I am wondering if it would be possible to make very lightweight and small steam engines for airships. Said airships engines are actually electric, but the boiler generates the electricity (via a ge...
We do not know how exactly it happened, but poor John Doe made a space-time trip along a three dimensional analog of a Möbius strip (a Klein bottle). He is now back on Earth, but he is now the mir...
Fantasy and sci-fi works often are set in worlds of dramatic terrain, because, well... it's dramatic. A few examples of the kind of thing I'm talking about: I understand that Earth has som...
Mars has been colonized, close to a million people are now living above (and below) the martian soil, every few months a ship from Earth arrives with more resource for expansion and more settlers, ...
Imagine a large room, perhaps 50 metres in length and 35 in width, with its ceiling 40 metres above the floor. On this ceiling, there are LED lights, rendering the brightness of the room to look so...
