Posts by System
I don't fully understand the mechanisms behind an ice cap that contains all the water in the oceans. Just to be specific, I have a planet that resembles Mars, i.e. desert at the equator, ice at pol...
My question is: What needs to be added or improved in the human body so that my genetically modified people can fully withstand temperatures of several degrees below zero ( "” 40 ° Celsius) for a ...
Amide bonds are extremely stable and their half-life for hydrolysis in neutral aqueous solution is estimated to be seven years. Amides bind to metal ions through the carbonyl oxygen. Neodymium Mag...
How small could our Sun be and still "burn" with nuclear fusion and emit the same spectrum of light and other radiation as the real Sun does? Edit: The goal is to have a small sun inside a huge v...
What would be the diameter and rotational speed of an O'Neill cylinder on the inside surface of which centrifugal and coriolis forces are equal to "gravity" and coriolis force on the surface of Ear...
Background: The moon has been selected as the base for human space exploration. Rather than ship tonnes of material out of earth's gravity well, interplanetary spacecraft and space stations will be...
What kind of technology would be required for a space travelling civilization to have an effective communication system or network that is similar in speed to the telegram? How would it work? This ...
I am currently trying to make a world that has casual interplanetary commutes with near future technology (within one century); so, to find a reasonable top speed for crafts in my interplanetary wo...
Project Orion was a project to construct a spacecraft that rode the shockwaves of nuclear blasts as a form of propulsion, but the project was abandoned because of budget cuts, environmental concern...
For a while now I've been building a science fiction world and I've been thinking what would be a feasible way to power a large ship capable of interstellar travel. I've always disliked the idea on...
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: Medieva...
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 bi...
Let's say that in an alternate universe, humans developed on a relatively small supercontinent, so their languages and cultures were somewhat similar. After a while, all of the nations merged into ...
The purpose of this question is to know whether or not organic tissue can be used to power and android. Compared to a nuclear cell or an ordinary battery this doesn't seem efficient, it needs food,...
Premise/question Correct me if I'm wrong, or if humans have terraformed the planet by the time you're reading this, but Mars is mostly desert-like. It has large ice caps which contain most of its ...
I am wondering if it is possible for whales to fly. I'm considering two different cases. How could we alter earth conditions (thickness, gravity) so that whales could actively fly (without changi...
How would a biological drop pod make it into the atmosphere and land safely? I have a race of aliens that use biological tools instead of technology. Their ships are living beings that can travel t...
I am working on a planet with life composed of prokaryotic cells, like bacteria from earth but which have formed large organisms. What perplexes me is that I haven't found a single example about ba...
A strange concept which I came up with after realizing that vampires, werewolves and zombies are basically created by an infection from a virus. This has lead me to brainstorm how I could make a mo...
This is something that confuses me with amorphous characters, monsters, robots etc... How do they compute when their particles don't have a fixed form? They are in a sense modular robots only taken...
Reattaching severed limbs is a recurring theme in many monsters, but never has it been explained HOW they reattach their appendages. I doubt the neurons would magically realign and begin to functio...
The saying goes "a wolf in sheep's clothing", which is a biblical idiom to refer to someone pretending to be harmless. This got me thinking about if the reverse could also be true. So I came up wit...
This is a question regarding my little critters that hijack of their victim. By doing so they get direct access to a steady flow of nutrients through the bloodstream and get shelter with optimal te...
This question is supposed to explain the phenomenon in fiction that I affectionately call the "clean death", where a dead monster disintegrates after being slain. Normally this would be explained b...
The Grey Alien trope almost always features a disproportionately large head, which often comes in unusual shapes to boot. There's nothing wrong with the trope, large brains are cool but what baffle...
