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I'm working on modeling how a civilization can progress from some known state making conscious choices about the fields in which to apply its resources. Is there some good / theoretically sound / w...
If the Earth all of sudden was instantaneously transmuted into pure light, what would happen? How much energy would be released? How much damage would it do to surrounding space? Would it destroy...
What I've found out is that Ammonia has (in the relevant temperature/pressure regime) cubic crystal structure. But what would that mean for ammonia snowflakes? Would they have fourfold symmetry? Bu...
Some science-fiction books I've read (including more than a few by Ray Bradbury) have men from Earth living on Mars, walking around outside of enclosures. I know that this is currently not realisti...
Say you were to drop a (bunch of) human(s) at some past era of our Earth. I'm assuming they might encounter a few problems such as the composition of the air not being breathable, the water being t...
Imagine a world (or rather a solar system) where in its history there has been a war with emergent AI's There are very strict laws governing the speed and complexity of computer systems However b...
I want a mermaid protagonist. If I am to make this story realistic, how should the Merfolk's body structures be made to make them adaptable for both water (swimming) and land (walking, running)? Is...
When doing some research for some of the resent questions proposed, I ran across an article that pointed out a danger of traveling at extreme speeds in normal space as a high percentage of c I was ...
Some published settings -- such as the Greyhawk 'verse commonly seen in conjunction with Dungeons & Dragons -- treat the prime planet's host solar system as geocentric. How could this be reconc...
Let us say that the humans, with our era of technology plus 5 to 10 years, are contacted by an intergalactic alien union. They want us to join them, and we gladly do. As it is common when several c...
Many sci-fi words use anti-gravity or artificial gravity to manipulate the weight of their ships making flight much easier. Wikipedia even has an article on it which discusses several attempts to m...
Imagine a world covered in a shallow sea (usually only 4 metres or less) that has little land, where there is land its in the form of fairly small islands (less than 1sq KM) This will be populated...
Imagine we build a space station much larger than the ISS with more or less today's technology. (For example in a scenario in which price of transport to orbit per kg is significantly reduced by te...
This was spawned from this question about Blueshifting (BS) when traveling near the speed of light. I had found this while learning about the other question. @99.99995 percent c And interes...
I've got an image in my head of a world where it's just normal that the star is black with a golden halo around it - in other words, where the planet is in a state of perpetual solar eclipse. Are ...
Biotechnology is a big keyword in the industry right now, like computing was a bunch of years ago. Nowadays, anyone can pop up a terminal and start tinkering with their computer, program software, ...
Say we're in a world where it is possible to tinker with biology as easily as it is to tinker with programming nowadays. For feasibility, refer to How soon will tinkering with biology be as simple ...
TL;DR: I want a society which behaves as a hive. Is it plausible and how to achieve this? The setup: Different planet in our universe. In other words: Normal, physical rules apply, there is no mag...
Could two planets be tidally locked to each other at such a small distance from one another that they share their atmosphere, and material is floating around between the two?
Y'all should know by now that I want to build a Death Star ;-) Let's assume that we did that already -- and against the odds, we've built two of them, and they're currently in orbit around a plane...
Modern mechanical EM transmitters, like radio towers and radar guns, rely on finely tuned mechanical structures. If these structures do not have the right shapes, the device fails to function. Or...
(First of all, perhaps this is a duplicate of this question, but I'll give it a go since I'd like to focus on something different. Or the answer is there but I couldn't quite catch it. Oh boy... *f...
How would the human body be affected if oxygen levels increased by a lot? Our air is 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen. If it increased to 30% oxygen, what would the effects be and how long would it ta...
I have found that, every time I try to make another humanoid species, they end up as basically just humans with extra abilities. For example, I tried making a race of dark-elves once, and they ende...
I've asked before about my polytheists with competing moon gods. I now have a better understanding of how tides -- a very visible manifestation of lunar influence -- work with multiple moons (than...
