Search
Chlorophyll-a (the primary one), chlorophyll-b, and(?) beta-carotene (plus other accessory pigments / carotenoids) dictate which portions of the EM spectrum are used as energy by plants. Pla...
While world building, I came up with a planet that had the combined traits of very rough and rugged terrain and small seas. The planets surface is covered with mountains and hills are common place...
From this chart it appears that the star types closest to our own are K-type (oranger, a little cooler, and less than half as bright) and F-type (bluer, a little warmer, and much brighter). If I w...
I recently re-watched an awesome show - Diebuster. At one point in the show, one of the characters uses Jupiter as a projectile, slamming it into one of the aliens, but to no avail. I can't find a...
At the end of a recent movie, the hero wakes up in a space station which is probably only a few kilometers wide and generates gravity by rotating. In this station, kids are playing baseball. It str...
A Civilization with semi advanced Technology should be able to start climatic changes on a earth like Planet (same land mass to water surface ratio). What would the fastest way be and How? Some...
As part of Fortnightly topic challenge #3: Creature Design I am looking for a realistic way to create a particularly nasty creature. What I would like: A creature that is capable of emitting a ...
Don't scream zombies at this question. That is not meant to be what it is about, regardless of how it sounds. I have an interstellar war between humans and an alien race. The humans are winning, s...
Yes, this is about Dr. Evil's dream: Sharks with frickin' lasers. Except that the lasers would not be artificially attached, but be part of the animal itself (bio-lasing instead of simply biolumine...
Would a blind astronaut be able to sense the gravity of a nearby star/planet/moon? Would an astronaut lost somewhere inside the Sun be able to sense which way is the core and which way is the surf...
Ligers tend to grow to near 1200 lbs (550 kg). As if that weren't bad enough, that mad tree-hugger xenobiologist, Deirdre Skye, grafted just enough human-derived genetic material to make them a hec...
A class of organism, lithotrophs, use minerals (inorganic substrates) for energy conservation/reducing equivalents in biosynthesis. However such organisms on Earth are limited to single-celled pro...
What effect would a crystalline material that is inert under ordinary environmental conditions have on someone if it was injected into their bloodstream? Examples materials include finely pulverize...
This is a question I've been thinking about for a while now. Dragons are, by all observances related to the reptile family, (or maybe lizards) either way these are cold blooded animals. Common ...
I want to build a world populated by humans descended from colonists from Earth who have traveled a long distance and time to arrive (say, 80 years.) They come to this new Earth-like planet in doz...
If I have a world where all races are one-foot-tall versions of their typical fantasy counterparts, what would be the most obvious ways this would affect the building style of these cultures? Would...
Virtually all animals on earth ranging from insects through to swimmers, fliers, mammals and reptiles, have a symmetrical body plan. In other words legs and wings come in pairs, as do most sensory ...
My entry for the fortnightly topic challenge: You are a space explorer. You are visiting this weird habitable planet in the Alpha Centauri System as part if the first manned expedition to another ...
Space is full of radiation. When doing long stays in space, no matter whether it's a generation ship on its journey to a new colony, a research ship exploring new worlds, a freighter delivering goo...
On a tidally locked gas giant moon (which is otherwise earth-like - see this question for pictures) how would medieval sea navigation techniques differ from Earth? I presume that compared to Eart...
Earth is dying. We mis-managed it and brought the whole ecosystem to the edge of total collapse. About 50 years ago, we decided to move humankind to another planet, and now we are almost ready. A ...
Would it be in ANY way possible to have 3 or more stars within a few light-hours (up to several light-days between the most distant stars) of each other, and for the resulting orbital mash-up to al...
My people are traveling in a generation ship. For some reason they can't make the ship radiation-proof. Their solution: genetically modify their descendants to be radiation proof. How could one mod...
I have an interstellar war in which us humans fight an alien nomad fleet. The aliens begin to lose the war and need something to fall back on. Humanity over many millennia has built star gates(kind...
A deadly super flu gets out and kills 90% of the population. During the exponential spread of the virus, it infects people working in a military base that deals in bio weapons. Is there a way to ca...
