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Let's say that I've developed a new engine that can accelerate at 1G continuously. Within about a year, I'm nearing the speed of light. Naturally, I recognize the danger of collisions with gas and ...
In my world I would like to create a pit on the Moon filled with air. How deep would the pit need to be to get 1 ATM of pressure Could the pit maintain the air or would it be lost to space? If i...
It would be nice if there were an atmosphere on the Moon with oxygen; in fact it could be just oxygen at 1/5 the Earth's pressure. People could live there. Now of course given the Moon's lower grav...
Humans have some genes that allow for a precise sense of smell, but they were turned off millions of years back, just like in many other primates. To name an exeption, lemurs are primates with a de...
We know that Gor, or Counter-Earth, is not stable in a long-term sense. Let's handwave that away, or assume that we are dealing with a temporary span of time in which the instability is immaterial....
I'm trying to build an underwater ecosystem under the ice crust of Ganymede. I know Jupiter emits a large amount of ionizing radiation and synchotrons and thought that would maybe be able to replac...
In a previous question - How might kinetosynthesizing "plants" look? - I introduced a worldbuilding thought experiment of mine centered around a habitable moon, heated by tidal forces, which orbits...
Without changing a planet from being habitable for humans and keeping a similar ecosystem why could intelligent races never access electricity? What systems need to be erased from the planet to ...
My world has a semi-nomadic people that inhabit a vast sandy desert. Underneath this desert lie the ruins of an enormous metropolis -- a city that was abandoned tens of thousands of years ago. In ...
The Limbo People (who are hominids with intelligence somewhere between chimpanzees and humans) have long survived by hunting wild boar. They use spears with wooden hafts and flint tips. They are a ...
Premises: red dwarfs tend to have violent sun storms in their early years, thus are expected to strip atmosphere of planets that may be in their habitable zones; water worlds (including planets w...
The planet has a slow rotation around its axis, taking 384 hours for a full day and night cycle at the equator. There is one large continent which takes up around one third of the planets surface. ...
This may seem similar to this question but my goal is for one: The bird does not die and secondly to get more exact solutions. The ultimate goal would be to create a bird which can ignite itself...
I'm designing an alien race that hasn't developed electricity yet. Now, one thing about their species is that they haven't discovered fossil fuels on their planet to use, like coal, oil, etc. (The ...
For a Matrix-type future I want to feed people via solid food. This is to keep all their internal organs working properly. The idea is to feed them an endless kebab that is held together along its...
My main antagonist is an infant Great One that's been imprisoned below the Moon's surface and I want its influence and physical form to have a weakness to direct sunlight which, I think, gives me a...
I have an Earth-like planet that has no frozen poles. It is very similar to a Cretaceous Earth. Is there any sort of odd, yet reoccurring weather event, that could cause freezing air from the upper...
So I've got a fantasy race of people with four arms. Their second pair is able to reach behind them like how our arms are able to reach in front of us, and so could work with things behind their ba...
What are the challenges involved in such a project? Could you use an asteroid re-direct style mission to do the job, or use some sort of fuel based thrust etc. Please limit answers to those concer...
Easter Island is now home to an extraterrestrial/futuristic/handwavey device. It continuously and instantly removes CO$_2$ from the atmosphere above the island. To avoid harmful effects on plants, ...
A creature the size of a bacteria has awakened and starts eating, it eats it's own bodyweight everyday, and it never gets smaller (Unless it mates). The creature is hermaphrodite but it needs a com...
In the terrible movie LA Apocalypse the planet's core destabilized causing the fault lines to erupt, magma spilled out, earthquakes going every 5 minutes. Eventfully things were resolved by detonat...
The current topic challenge is apocalypse, so I figured I might as well come up with a question about surviving one. A man named Noah somehow learns that there will be a large flood within one yea...
How would we compile our code if all the binaries in the world disappeared and we had only the source code? At first you might think "It's all okay: I have my Roslyn code here", but wait! It's in C...
I envisioned this method of maintaining breathable oxygen. So each ship would have these gardens generating oxygen like the plants on Earth do. How plausible is this and how would it likely work?
