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Forget about how we get it there, some kind of top secret experiment on mars gone wrong in all the right ways. If somehow Mars's core was mixed with some amount of antimatter, and assuming 100% of...
Many half-human mythological creatures follow a few common anatomical schemes. Some consist of an animal with a human face, such as the sphinx, naga and manticore. Some consist of a human anterio...
Many SF stories feature faster-than-light travel as essentially a trope: Roddenberry has stated☡ that the Enterprise travels at the speed of plot. As an allegory of the south seas, or some throw...
Its the year 2050, and extraterrestrials have popped up next to the Solar System. We know they are coming our way and we know they are most likely hostile. As Steven hawking said: Such advance...
Specifically, could new planets form around a previously destroyed star? (Think of it like a phoenix.) If so, could the potential sentient life detect that their star previously exploded?
Imagine an Earth-like planet with oceans that are comprised roughly 50/50 of heavy water and normal water. My understanding is that while heavy water ice sinks in normal water, it would float on he...
The gas giant has a mass of about 2.13 Jupiter masses in the habitable zone of a Sun like star 0.981 Sol masses, all the moons will need at least >0.12 percent of Earth's mass and a Mars like de...
Let's say that planet X with a gravity similar to Earth increases its gravity by a certain amount. The increase is great enough to make living conditions difficult or impossible: for instance, the ...
It is understood that a way to prevent causality violation and time-travel while still having faster-than-light travel is to introduce a specific reference frame. This is explained in detail in th...
Let's say that a "terraformable planet" is a planet who : is in the goldilock zone of its star(s) has around the same gravity as Earth has a solid surface covered with minerals not too toxic for...
Is there a necessary relation between orbital period and the time of precession? In the case of Earth, the orbital period is one year, while a complete precession cycle takes thousands of years. Is...
Is it possible for humanity to completely annihilate itself? By that I mean there cannot be one survivor left and the annihilation must be caused by humanity itself with current technology (no craz...
In the spirit of Thanksgiving (US) let's tackle a fun one. I'm defining "intelligent" in this situation as "at least on par with hunter-gatherer humans, able to communicate" What natural, environm...
Is it reasonable for a river to be shallow enough to ford in one location, while nearby (say within 5 miles or less), be at least 12 feet (3.6m) deep? The same river can have shallow sections and d...
Let's imagine a race of Giants, with an average height three times that of a normal human being. Let's also imagine that these Giants are completely identical to humans, proportionately speaking......
What would happen to occupants of an O'Neal Cylinder if it suffered a massive hull breach on one of its ends i.e. the base of the cylinder? Specifically, those nearer to the breach. If the breach ...
"Every cloud has a silver lining." The saying is fairly well-known, but I was musing on it while staring through a cloud bank, and I started to wonder: What kind of hellhole would a planet have to ...
How much force, momentum, and energy would be needed to have an object pierce through the Earth? I've tried to research this, but I could not find results for a mathematical value. Assume the Eart...
Hear me out before you downvote; It's not as simple as it seems. On Earth, nuclear reactions produce heat energy. This is used to heat water, creating steam, powering turbines connected to generat...
Context if you're interested In the very near future, a planet teeming with alien life is discovered several light years away from our Solar System - and with a few precautions, it may be habi...
Assuming you already had sufficient money and resources to build a tower stretching from the top of Europa's ice layer down to the bottom of the seabed, could you build it on top of one of its geys...
Let's say there's a habitable planet somewhere, covered with very deep cool water ocean. By very deep I mean thousands of km, but the exact numbers don't actually matter. According to water's pha...
Mod Note: Some people may be squeamish about this subject, please keep all responses clinical rather than vulgar. So, in my world, I try to play the "immortality" trope with twists that make it su...
Suppose humans discovered a beautiful new world they wanted to inhabit, far from the political machinations and military affairs of the alien-populated universe. They established a few colonies on ...
The Mokèlé-mbèmbé (meaning "one who stops the flow of rivers") is a legendary water-dwelling creature of Congo River basin folklore, loosely analogous to the Loch Ness Monster in Western culture. ...
