Posts by Arash Howaida
Suppose an earth-like world with roughly 500 major tectonic plates. Question What is the plausibility of such a world to sustain (large) continents? Why? Further clarifications: speed of pla...
Premise I was inspired by Karl Niklas who used computer modeling to simulate the ideal structure for a tree when different traits were favored. Here is a chart summarizing his work: Explanation...
In a lab at Caltech Ken Libbrecht has been simulating snowflake formation and under absurdly exact laboratory conditions, they have been able to create almost identical snowflakes. Clearly, in th...
Here on "Earth" organisms tend to evolve only enough mental processing power to handle sensory inputs in modest amounts. Taking "human" brains for a quick example, even though we have millions of s...
Premise The goal is to implement a bronze age version of blockchain in ancient Egypt to introduce a layer of security for the royal tombs. Tomb raiding was rampant, and at times even the legitim...
Premise and research I am simply trying to find a reproducible framework for use with creature-design. In my research I have found the larger an animal is, the more likely that animal is to break ...
While by no means a smoking gun, there is still a reasonable amount of empirical evidence on the notion that socialization and testosterone are negatively correlated. Archaeological Evidence Fro...
Premise Inhabiting my earth-like world will be humanoid beings that have a skin tone that is as dark as Vantablack. Let's assume these human-like beings share the same ancestry as humans and we ca...
Premise The premise is an adept modern chemist is transported back in time and is to serve as the court alchemist to a wealthy prince in the late 16th century. Assumptions: "Transmuting" gold i...
Premise I recently recalled when the Chelyabinsk meteor crashed overhead in 2013. The pressure wave was immense. The infrasounds, as recorded by nuclear missile detectors, appeared to traverse the...
Premise Suppose an earth-like world in the near-future. Then aliens come and decide to play a mischievous trick on this world on an epic scale. The goal is to disrupt Earth's time by 18 minutes. S...
Premise This is a world in which humans are blissfully unaware of their own vulnerability. Needless to say, there are many vulnerabilities to address, however, this question deals only with the vu...
Premise I envisage a world of would-be navigators with roughly Bronze Age technology, sailing on ships to explore their planet. In contrast to our history of navigation where we "cracked the code"...
Often times a mongoose will prefer easier prey than a cobra. However, getting down to brass tacks, should the two fight, it's fairly axiomatic that the mongoose takes the win the majority of the ti...
Premise The Dunning-Kruger effect is a sociological / psychological phenomenon whereby low-skilled individuals mistakenly think they are good at something. In other words, individuals lack the met...
Premise By definition, an ectotherm uses environmental heat sources to regulate its own body temperature. The most common forms of body heat regulation that we observe from ectotherms here on Eart...
Premise We have found extremophiles of the aquatic and microscopic types here on Earth, but so far large terrestrial extremophiles are the stuff of conjecture only. This makes it somewhat challeng...
Premise I want to explore the possibility of a planet that is extremely misshapen. If we were to extrapolate what we have observed from our solar system and the extra-solar planets discovered so f...
Premise Suppose a world has no other means to deal with a potentially devastating meteor impact than creating a net on the planet. Their hope is that the massive net will catch the meteor and slow...
Premise I am in the formation phase of a fictional world. I would like one of its notable characteristics to be extremely large waves. On Earth, most of our large waves are triggered by earthquake...
Premise Suppose a cult has been receiving special "visions" of doom far off into the future. Even though this prophecy of doom is not impending in the here and now, these cultists are very long-te...
Premise In this Earth-like world, a multi-billion dollar privately owned aerospace/defense corporation is devising a secret plan to manufacture a fleet of nano-bots. These nano-bot have swarm inte...
Premise In the movie Gravity, gravity embodies the persona of the film by virtue of its absence. It purportedly leaves the audience with a sense of fear of the chaotic zero-G environment and likew...
Why this question is different from existing questions... The closest question to mine is Anatomically Correct Cerberus. It is clear from the answers to that question and indeed it's axiomatic to ...
Premise I would like to create a world that is rendered nearly impossible to navigate by natural circumstances. In my particular world, a thick jungle covers the whole planet from pole to pole; th...
