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Energy Storage: Nanocapacitors A Capacitor is two layers of conductive material separated by a layer of insulator. They contain no moving parts, have no chemical reactions, and charge extremely q...
Is there any software tool for quickly prototyping a planetary system? Ideally this should: Allow for placement of planets of different sizes and masses around a star. Allow for examination of th...
Suppose one constructed a Bernal sphere, similar in design to that described in this article and this article at the National Space Society. If the sphere was simply rotated on a single axis, wou...
I am looking for a tool that can be used to create worlds with a realistic (= physically plausible) climate and surface given general terrain shape, or can at least assist in such a task. My ideal...
Another mermaid questions I'm afraid! Fish have tail fins which are vertical, whales have fins which are horizontal. My race of merfolk are: Very active (more likely to be warm blooded) Have gil...
Assuming a civilization has the technology and capability to build a worldship, a planet that doubles as a spacecraft, installs an FTL drive on it and has the energy to power it, what would the eff...
Terraforming is the process of transforming a celestial body to become habitable by Earth-like life. Even when I try to imagine an advanced civilization, the cost, time and complexity to terrafor...
I'll take a completely different approach from what everyone else is saying, because everyone (okay, sans ivy_lynx) seems to be assuming that there are asteroids in planetary rings. This is not tru...
Assumptions: A typical human has a mass around 70 kg. They consume about 1.1 W/kg continuously(I'm approximating) throughout the day or about 96 kJ/kg daily. This together with the average mass giv...
Turning my comment into an answer. 200 years is an incredible amount of time given our current rate of discoveries...so it's hard to tell what options we might have...though I would suggest our cu...
There is this idea that we find in a few books, mainly The Swarm by Frank Schätzing and in the Ender Saga by Orson Scott Card, that some species could communicate via DNA exchange. Technically, y...
One of the promising forms of energy production that I know of, which isn't yet well developed enough but could take off and is scientifically sound, is focus fusion, as applied with a dense plasma...
If we assumed massive increases in computer power efficiency in the future, the Fujitsu K (http://www.fujitsu.com/global/about/businesspolicy/tech/k/qa/index.html#qa12), which is good for a bunch o...
This is a complicated answer since every piece of technology you mention is going to be improving over those 200 years. That said I think the answer will actually be a blend of several renewable re...
The power requirements are going to be highly variable. Just think about today's electronics -- you could put a set of AA batteries into your TV remote and have it work for years, but an identical ...
In my future setting on Earth (or an Earth-like planet; haven't decided), the fields of robotics and AI have taken off and we have intelligent, ambulatory robots. (They were initially thought of a...
In the case of a world-wide plague epidemic that'll trigger the near extinction of humanity, is it possible that a virus/disease has inconsistent symptoms so that people aren't aware that it's real...
Let's say I have a binary star system. The planet is orbiting the smallest star similar to the Sun at 1 AU, the same Earth-Sun distance. The other star is located at around 50-100 AU from the Sun...
I want to create a world set on our Earth but with humans converted entirely to machines, so the population can be larger than would be possible with biological humans. In contrast to biologically...
I want to create a world set on our Earth but with humans shrunk down as much as possible to allow a huge population. As the population increases they genetically modify their bodies to be as smal...
I'm looking for a rock from which my island is constructed. It needs to be: Either created from the sea or via intense pressure/heat Capable of trapping layers of gas beneath it White(ish) I wa...
Would it be possible for the atmosphere of a planet to reach beyond its planetary ring so that earth-like biology could develop on some of the asteroids there? This question is mainly about whethe...
I think an interesting option could also be that dragons can switch between cold-blooded and warm-blooded metabolism. For example, they could be warm-blooded when young (providing them the needed e...
The question is rather simple, the answer is more complex. It is to answer why some places are colder than others. Example: North America is colder than Europe at the same latitude.
I'm actually going to consider how such a year would affect animals, because I have a feeling nobody else is planning on addressing it. This should be short and to the point, unlike some of my othe...
