Activity for System
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Question | — |
Prehensile Hair As I'm sure anyone reading this knows, our body parts move via the brain signaling the appropriate muscles to contract or expand. Now, for hair to function the way it does - its texture, malleability, etc. - it doesn't seem plausible for prehensile hair to happen with a humanoid with muscles all the ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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Can a cube world have magnetic poles? Say that you have a cuboid "planet" that can retain its shape. Can it have a cubical iron core (as opposed to the spherical one described in this question) and generate a magnetic field? Would the shape of the core affect the shape of the field? Does the fact that the core isn't spherical even make a... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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Evolution of Bearfolk What animals and in what conditions would evolve into something resembling a bearfolk like this one A ''bear'' humanoid of 600"“800 pounds standing in two legs, divided in many sub-species with different diets, habits and civilizations. How long is estimated the time for something like this to ... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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What event could cause atmospheric oxygen to slowly be replaced with hydrogen, and what would the major effects of this be? First question What event would cause hydrogen to slowly replace oxygen in the athmosphere? it can be something natural or artifial. it doesn't have to cause too much mass extinctions. Some sacrifices are ok but not an apocalypse. So it must be slow enough so living organisms adapt to it, but... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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Earth as moon of Jupiter I'm making five habitable planets the size of earth as moons for a gas giant the size of Jupiter. Then I want to add many more smaller moons, Our Jupiter has 67 moons, I want as many small moons possible and 5 earth-sized moons for mine. What conditions of this planetary system would threaten h... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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Why would a species of subterreanean worms consume metal? In my latest draft, a worm-like species buries itself deep below the crust of their world and consumes/gathers tiny amounts of heavy metals. Can you think of any plausible reason why a wormlike creature would do so? Why would they spend time and energy digging deep and gathering small pieces of meta... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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Is Game of Thrones realistic: food supplies during extended winters in medieval England In Lyman Stone's fantastic blog post about George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, Stone mentions that the seasonal cycle of Westeros is very unrealistic. Here's the truth: Medieval societies probably could not survive 6 winters in a row. Even modern societies would be hard-pressed t... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
| Question | — |
Smallest possible habitable planet? (also taking density into account) I have seen a few similar questions but none seem to take the density of a planet into account. I'm creating a planet on which several small civilisations develop. The planet needs to have a few biomes of varying temperature such as mountain ranges, deserts, temperate areas etc. What is the smallest... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
| Question | — |
Is it possible for life to exist on the core of a gas planet? I was thinking of writing a story and had the idea of having a society exist on the core of a gas planet. The core would be similar to earth with a breathable atmosphere similar to ours above it but still have the outer atmosphere of hydrogen and helium above it as these two gases are lighter than th... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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What size does a subterranean base have to be for "natural" weather? Many planets don't have habitable surfaces, though at least Mercury has good temperatures underground (source: http://www.einstein-schrodinger.com/Mercurytemperature.pdf). So I'm wondering how large would a subterannean nature sanctuary building/dome height have to be, in order for it to have clouds... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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The Reality of a River World In a setting I am presently working on, I have envisioned a world similar to Star Wars' Takodana, in that its water is mainly in the form of large rivers, or smaller seas (I generally picture it being all rivers, unlike this picture; but I'm flexible). See also; Takodana's surface. How realistic is... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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What would happen to life on Earth if the planet had total cover of permanent clouds? Let's pretend the clouds got there via magic or some bizarre scientific experiment gone wrong. The why isn't important for the question. Question: How would the earth be affected if its entire sky was constantly covered in clouds dense enough you couldn't see sky beyond them? Would life survive? How... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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What adaptations would an elephant's trunk need to have human-like prehensility? Useless Backstory In my world, A hurricane has washed a group of 8,000 pachyderms off of Afro-Eurasia and onto a large island cluster. Due to the island rule, dwarfism ensues, and the population is made of of a group of tiny elephants that are 3 feet at the shoulder in adulthood. These elepha... (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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A monkey-like creature with no legs? Is it possible that a monkey-like creature, in the mountains, could evolve to have no legs and a really strong set of fore-arms? I was thinking that this might be possible because of the climbing skills needed to navigate the environment. (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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Insect-like animal using water for blood? The habitat of the creature in question is most commonly atop mountains (or in moist areas). Such an idea would mean that the creature wouldn't need a heart or stomach to break down things into blood. It would most likely become sick easily, as the water it drinks could be disease ridden. The wings, ... (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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Far Future, Space. Most plausible way to store short-term energy? Please assume the following: A spaceship in the far future. Output: The ships systems have a high base demand of energy and sometimes you need extreme amounts of Energy in a very short period of time. Input: An advanced fusion reactor is used to provide baseline-power. There are a range of 'inject... (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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Is there a reliable way to store all stable elements? This is a follow-up to question about a transmuting 3D-printer Assume you need to store all stable elements in a spaceship. On board, a chemical assembler is used to compose everything, if you have a blueprint and the right amount of needed elements. Is there a common way to store the, maybe as sal... (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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What substances would be really valuable if transmuting material printers would exist? Far Future. Almost every household has a 'fabber'. You put raw materials in it (can be almost anything) and it does what you program it to do. It transmutes the raw materials into what is needed. Then it basically 3-D-prints it. It only works if you have enough and the right quality of input material... (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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How to implement a Solar System sports body/federation? Assume there is a point in time when every planet in our Solar System consists of colonies. Each colony is inhabited with civilians that primarily serve the purpose of its colony. Some colonies may specialise in manufacturing, some in resource extraction, some in research etc. Technology would exi... (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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If Earth was converted into energy by antimatter-matter collision would the energy "destroy" the observable universe? If half the earth was made antimatter and contacted the other half all at once, would the resulting energy be enough to "destroy" the observable universe? I did some math based on the mass of the earth being around 510^24kg and an antimatter explosion given a mass of 1kg being about 43 megatons, and... (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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How might microscopic humanoids contain electricity? In my world, there are a race of microscopic humanoid organisms (0.3 mm - 0.33 mm). They live in a variety of biomes, such as leaf litter, stone and on plants and trees. In terms of technological advancement, they are near the bronze age and merely need to find/discover metal. They have domesticated ... (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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How do I increase my population of my very small starter population while warding off the negative effects of inbreeding? In my pre-bronze age city, there are roughly 20,000 individuals. 9,000 sexually mature males, 9,000 sexually mature females, and 2,000 children. For a variety of unimportant reasons, they have been cut off from the rest of mankind. They need a strong work force as soon as possible, so they resort to ... (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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What land based animals lend themselves to domestication? As a variation to my previous question about the domestication of microbes So my question is : which animals lend themselves to domestication? (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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Making a plant as energy efficient as possible Essential Question : what adaptations can be made to a crawling vine that would allow them to obtain as much energy as a top level consumer if the vine was on a planet 1 au from a sun sized star? (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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Could intelligent life evolve in caves? On a world like Venus, where the surface is unlivable , would it be possible for life to evolve in caves? And if so , is there any reason for intelligence to evolve in a subterranean organism? (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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What can prevent moderately advanced humans from driving megafauna to extinction? The consensus (1, 2) is that the reason most continents have relatively few large animals compared to Africa is that humans, even stone age humans, were able to drive them to extinction. African animals survived to some extent because they had time to adapt to us before he had decent weapons. What ... (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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How small can an organism get? In my world, I am attempting to design a primitive organism to be the ancestor of life on an artificial planet with all chemicals necessary for life. I want the organism to be as small as possible (say 50 nanometers in diameter). Is such a small size possible? (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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AI's and natural selection If a matrioshka brain where constructed specifically for AI , and , say , 1,000,000 AI were placed within it , also with many hostile enemies and various obstacles which may cause the destruction of the AI , might it be possible for the pressures of natural selection to take over , cause the AI to ev... (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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Creating a fully aquatic bird I was wondering if a full aquatic bird could exist and not be on, or return to land at any developmental stage, basically, to be completely independent of land. I already know that there are some aquatic animals that can rest one side of their brain at a time, making sleep not an issue, but I can not... (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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A three foot cell? In one of my fictitious planets, there are large cells that reside in the ocean and are 3 feet (almost 1 metre) in diameter. The cells themselves are aggregates of many amoeboid cells, have only one cell membrane, but many nuclei. My question is: is such a large size for a single celled organism pos... (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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Alternatives to DNA I am in the process of creating my universe, and have based it on semi-hard science. The universe that I have created is quite extensive, and I thought that it would be unreasonable for the only kind of genetic material to exist to be DNA and or RNA, and yet I don't just want to come up with some out... (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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Is having an enormous brain truly helpful? In the year 2020 A.D. , the inhabitants of earth are visited by a not-so-friendly race of techno-pathic AI aliens ,numbering about 500,000, and originating from a type 2 ¾ civilization from a galaxy far, far away. They left their old dwelling to see if they could create a new civilization from ( alm... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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Making Beaks More like Hands For a highly intelligent avian dinosaur whose grasping and manipulating appendages have all but vanished, there are options : for the species to evolve beaks that are better fine manipulators, or continue to writhe in abject mediocrity. So the question is - which type of beak might the birds evolve t... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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Brain to body mass ratio vs general brain mass On my fictitious planet, a 1/2 pound mammal had a brain to body mass ratio similar to that of a human , could they have human - level intelligence, or would the brain be too small the develop that level of intelligence? Edit: Human intelligence being defined as an high level of problem solving skill... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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What environmental pressures might cause rodents to evolve social behavior? Continuing from this question: The rodents on the synthetic planet ( which I am now calling Ark ) can now walk/run erect when desired. The scientists continue with biological forging and work on there social behave , and the realize in hindsight that they probably should have worked on this first. T... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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From mice to men ( series ) A team of alien researchers get bored one day, and decides to conduct an experiment. Seeing that the great ape Homo sapiens sapiens turned out so well ( in terms of technological development and ecological domination ) on earth , they wonder if any other family has the capacity for the same. So the... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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How might a Kardashev Scale Level II civilization transport energy? We all know the Kardashev Scale , and the energy output required to get to each level , but what would be the best way to transport those amounts of energy? I have come up with ways to distribute energy on the second level of the scale , and would like to know which of each set would be most feasible... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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Microbial Civilization Precursors Would a creature similar to semi-aquatic slime mold living on a mostly freshwater planet with shallow seas be able to build technology to the extent that modern humans do? Assuming that each individual cell in the slime mold had a form like that of amoeba in the genus Chaos and had organelles that e... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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How would FTL travel appear through window of ship? How would faster-than-light travel appear through window of a space vessel? All the movies and TV shows like Star Trek and Star Wars seem unrealistic: Star Trek credits: passing stars get bigger and nearly "brush the top of your head", but wouldn't it look more like a flat 2D animation with dots s... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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Repulsive Universe Gravity in our universe is an attractive force between bodies with mass [citation needed]. This allows matter to coalesce and form all the large scale structures we observe - planets, stars, galaxies, etc. At small scales, however, electromagnetic and nuclear interactions dominate the formation of ma... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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Geomagnetic interaction Okay, so I'm a fiction writer and I love neo-futuristic tech, but when I write I like to be as realistic as possible. One such technology, which I'm thinking of using in a fictional series, is the QED over-unity generators that are purported to be able to power themselves and produce more power than ... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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A: How to Convince Humans to Allow a Machine Take-Over "How to convince humans to allow a machine take over?" - the answer is, of course, "Gradually." Start with putting one machine into every home, say an AI that is so dumb that it is not really an AI, but just a computational device. Then start adding other similar machines, maybe some that will do t... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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Sol economy: What is optimal for production on earth? Follow-up-question to this scenario: 2750 A.D : Quite a few asteroids/celestial bodies have been move to a stable earth orbit and are beeing mined for ressources. I am currently designing the economy (cycle). The economic situation in orbit: Gold-rush style (deregulated, hypercapitalistic 'wild... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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How would humans eradicate an organism that can actively spread through Earth's atmosphere? So let's say that an alien civilization that we have made enemies with decides to use an advanced non-lethal biological weapon on the Earth as a warning. The aliens, while not infamous for any technology, have unfathomable knowledge pertaining to chemistry and biology. Alien engineers create an orga... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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Organic Material able to store massive amounts of energy? I am looking for a (at least somewhat) plausible organic matter, which is able to store massive amounts of energy. After reading up on biobatteries and so on, I am aware that I would need something very similar, but much more powerful. Criteria: Does not need to exist or even be possible But need... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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How to deal with a friendly Boghog without hurting it, and maintaining a positive relationship? In the Hickhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Mostly Harmless, on the planet NowWhat there are the Boghogs, and their way of communicating is to bite each other very hard on the thigh, so my question is, if I were to ever encounter one and I wanted to have some sort of friendship with it without either of ... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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How might it be possible to move a star? I'm imagining a super-powerful spacefaring race which has the capability to build or modify a star system or even galaxy by moving stars around, but I wonder if it's really feasible. Is it theoretically possible to move a star intentionally and accurately from point A to point B? How might this be d... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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Would it be possible to shift Titan from its current orbit into an orbit around Earth for terraforming purposes? What are the challenges involved in such a project? Could you use an asteroid re-direct style mission to do the job, or use some sort of fuel based thrust etc. Please limit answers to those concerning moving and terraforming just Titan, for the sake of my question. What problems might we encounter?... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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Pirates of Earth In a short story that I read (don't have the link, but the short story itself is not relevant to this question), it is set about a millennia from now, where humans have long since made contact with numerous alien species. However, over time, the 'Terrans' are notorious for being the interplanetary pi... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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What planetary conditions would make computer and complex electronics useless, or at least difficult to maintain? What planetary conditions would have to exist to make computers and other complex electronics useless or at least difficult to maintain? Would ionised atmospheric conditions, constant solar flares, and unusual elements affect electronics and would these things damage humans or make human life unsust... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |