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If you think about it, even something as positive as the three laws could lead to something like this. Sort of like they did with the I, Robot movie. A robot may not injure a human being or, t...
We have a lot of foundations that we kind of take for granted. There is kind of an expectation that once someone enters med school they have some basic understanding in anatomy, biology, math, medi...
Your biggest problem by far here is going to be getting other people to believe you. I'm assuming this mystical tutor is from the future? Given that, surely he must know that there will be problem...
Building off @DustinJackson's answer, I'm going to posit a few ways that this planet would be different from earth to avoid an ice age. First the orbit is a bit closer to the star, this adds more...
Design a self replicating robot that consumes natural resources. Picture a machine that can convert wood and straw into plastic and carbon nanotube conductors and piezoelectric actuators and thi...
I proposed something like this in another question, but it might work better here. Put something in orbit between the sun and Venus to cut down on the amount of sunlight. If you can block it com...
You could quite easily detect the presence of any planets by taking an image of the sky in a specific direction, move some small distance, and take another image of the sky in the same direction. T...
Let's calculate the mass of this huge oxygen atmosphere, shall we? I can use a modified version of the barometric formula to calculate the density at any altitude $h$ above a reference point - in ...
Gamma-ray bursts Let's not give up on the gamma-ray burst (GRB) idea so quickly. Sure, most GRBs are quite short, but there are exceptions: ultra-long gamma-ray bursts. While normal GRBs last on ...
A Bubbleworld would meet your specifications, especially if you encased Jupiter. Bubbleworld A bubbleworld is an artificial construct that consists of a shell of living space around a sp...
First, kudos to you for realizing that planetary mass is not the only thing influencing how a planet (or even if!) a planet holds on to its atmosphere. Distance is also an important factor. Thanks ...
So this giant flying spider has really, really long legs, three to four times its body length. Its legs are also very hairy, with fine, feathery hairs. Like a jumping spider it is able to leap v...
Each planet would have a standard time, with periods that make sense. Mars day is 20 some minutes longer than Earth. So you could just add a couple minutes here or there, or do a time slip, where t...
If the planet was a bit closer to the star, like Venus, had a lot of surface water, and slightly higher gravity, you'd end up with a kind of runaway greenhouse effect, where water would evaporate i...
What would the planet be like? Cold. Very cold. Methane is liquid between −182.5°C(−296.4°F, 90.7 K) And −161.49°C(−258.68°F, 111.66 K), so very, very cold. On "warm" days the seas would boil. ...
You can do it most effectively by looking before you get there. Point your big telescope at the sky in the direction of your destination star. Record the image it captures. Repeat step 1 every mo...
Do it over time. On each rocket launch, you can attach a bit of the required resources. Give it some small booster rockets to direct it the right way. When the rocket is at the peak of its parabol...
Like Samuel mentioned in a comment, the effects would be minor to slim at most, and probably not detectable except from a significant distance. Nebulae are extremely sparse. Wikipedia states that ...
Collapse. Gravity takes care of this. As soon as you remove the core from the Earth, you have a large void in the middle of it, and a lot of gravity acting straight towards the centre of that void...
The pupil is black not because it's coloured, but because there's no light coming back out to colour the image you see. A pupil any other colour than black implies light coming back out, which in ...
As Pavel says, brainwashing is a process. And it's a process that's been done already. 1995, Russia. The Cold War is over. Boris Yeltsin in power. There is some resentment left over from the Cold ...
Note: for the purposes of this answer, I have assumed no tech remains. If you do have tech surviving, then many of these steps will be easier. There seem to me to be a number of steps that you mus...
Communication Seawater is highly resistive to radio waves at the frequencies we usually use them. (see page 7, section Sea Water.) However, at lower frequencies, 10-30 kHz, it is entirely possible...
First and foremost, everyone would not be infected, let alone die. Look at Brazil and Peru and the tribes of the Amazon, many of whom still haven't been contacted. Since they have no human contact,...
You could certainly try. A less sensible method, if your local astrotech store sells them, is to get hold of a mass transporter and a matter inversion matrix (though in many timelines the latter c...
