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While once living in Texas, my family and I had the privilege of watching a shuttle re-entry. It was breath-taking. I kid you not, it was like watching the finger of god drawing a line of fire th...
Ahh insects, such fascinating creatures with fascinating traits, but sadly as I have found out most are only available to them and not us thanks to the square cubed law. Maybe the following traits...
Some time ago I asked: "How long would it take until we realise that people stopped dying from natural causes?" I today realized that similar but much more interesting (and more realistic...) ques...
How could an organism (anywhere from animal to monster to humanoid) induce and control lifelike hallucinations simulating reality in (possibly unwilling) humans? The aesthetic thought was of a mon...
In the book Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony, Artemis is contacted by Holly through a fairy communicator, disguised as a ring. The phone was disguised as a rather ostentatious ring on Artemis's mi...
Cosmology since Einstein makes it clear that it's not quite right to say one body in space "revolves around" another, right? Einstein wrote: "The two sentences, 'the sun is at rest and the earth mo...
So, you have the big bad race, whose extermination method is basically to force stars to go supercritical via the power of handwavium. You can assume 1 solar mass for each, but you can change it if...
First, let me define what I mean by "full VR immersion". A helmet or headwear that covers or plugs into the brain, allowing them to control a virtual self or physical thing (such as a robot) as wel...
Starting at the most basic of theoretical questions, is it chemically possible for these minerals to be deposited by an organic enzyme? I'm particularly interested in diamond because it's pure carb...
I am writing a story where a species undergoes devolution. Is there any scientific or plausible way to do this? The process can be instantaneous or may take ages, I do not mind which as I need to w...
In our story's universe, a solar system is hand-crafted by a deity with seven smallish bodies working in a way that I can only describe as Lagrangian Points, where all planets have the same orbital...
A concept I've encountered a few times is aliens with "vastly" different biology than terrestrial creatures. In this case, I'm interested in replacing the parts that use oxygen with something a bit...
Previous parts here: Creating a scientifically semi-valid super-soldier, part 1: Skeleton Creating a scientifically semi-valid super-soldier, part 2: nervous system Creating a scientifically semi-...
This is the sister topic to this question: What are the military pros and cons of colonizing a low gravity world vs a high gravity one? The specific question being asked here is, what specific eco...
I've seen this question raised in several different bits of sci fi media. In games its often that low gravity = lower construction cost or some such. But I've begun to wonder, is it really that cut...
Suppose there's a planet in the habitable zone of a class F star, a bit smaller than Earth and about the same density, with 80% of earth's gravity. How far away from the planet would a brown dwarf ...
One of the syntactical interpretation of the famous linguistics sentence "Time flies like an arrow." is to consider "time flies" as a noun phrase. This makes "time flies" analogous to "fruit flies"...
I understand that there is wide range of bullet calibers. I am interested in the ones that is 50 caliber or less, and if you can be high enough in a blimp to be safe either by to far to see or to f...
I am thinking of copying the design of an electric eel to create the horn, however as air is not a good conductor of electricity it cannot discharge any electrical shock unless there is a physical ...
My story is based on a Glacial Climate setting or an Ice Age. However the transition is gradual and humanity was given some time to adapt. The transition began in our real-world technological equiv...
I want to write a science fiction book on a planet mostly covered by ocean, but I also want to incorporate trains into my story. However, it seems that with advances in ship and plane technology, t...
The basis of my story revolves around a single survivor escaping a massive colony ship gone critical above the skies of an alien world. After his escape via escape pod, the ship crashes halfway acr...
Inspired by this question, so credit to them for the core idea. How might a slow fire energy weapon reliably neutralize its target? Here are some details about the precise design I had in mind: I...
One of the points made in a number of recent questions regarding underwater races has prompted me to review one of my older pieces of world-building. Namely: the difficulty of producing common stru...
I was not entirely sure how to word the title question, so allow me to put my question into more detail here: Suppose there was a planet with just the right conditions to allow humans to live ther...
