Posts by Tim B
Imagine a pair of black holes in orbit around each other. I'm wondering how this would distort their mutual event horizons. In fact would it be possible to "break" the event horizons by reducing th...
A village is famous for its flowers and wants to bring in tourism by replacing its timekeeping and basing everything around a flower clock. Schools and shops all agree to set their times by the flo...
Many myths have creatures like sirens who can use their voices to lure men to their deaths. But is there any way a creature could exist in the real world that had that power? I don't just mean foo...
In order to record video and audio it would need to be calibrated for each person and would need to intercept quite close to the ears and eyes, most likely to the relevant nerves themselves. This i...
A really simple question - if you built a space elevator then you continue building past the geostationary point to put tension onto the tether. Now if you keep building out further and further the...
So, I've been considering the Norse legend of Ragnarök, I'm considering how the legend could come true in a purely scientific setting. In other words what science-based explanation would best fit ...
Something that we generally see on earth is economies of scale. Large companies can be more efficient as they are producing massive amounts of the same thing. This can easily be seen if you look at...
As discussed here: How would a Reflecting-Oven-Jay Evolve? The Reflecting-oven-Jay This is a small African predatory bird with a perfectly smooth set of wings with an area of ~100 cm2, so ...
This answer to my question about light-as-a-weapon came up with an interesting concept: The Reflecting-Oven-Jay This is a small African predatory bird with a perfectly smooth set of wings ...
On our world we have any number of creatures that use: Noxious Chemicals Poison(Spiders and Snakes being the obvious examples) Sound Electricity as an alternative to their teeth and claws. One...
Virtually all animals on earth ranging from insects through to swimmers, fliers, mammals and reptiles, have a symmetrical body plan. In other words legs and wings come in pairs, as do most sensory ...
Are there any reasonably plausible alternatives to the process used by our plants on earth (Carbon Dioxide, Chlorophyll, Oxygen) around which an ecosystem could be built in a planet with a complete...
Well, Luminescence really but I liked the alliteration. Would there be any reason or mechanic why plants may develop that glow in the dark? Ideally they would do so in response to stimulus such as...
This question is connected to: Fire Resistant Flora I've been pondering a short story concept where a scientific expedition discovered a planet with a huge amount of both free hydrogen and oxygen ...
This question is connected to: Fire Resistant Fauna I've been pondering a short story concept where a scientific expedition discovered a planet with a huge amount of both free hydrogen and oxygen ...
In many scenes you see something like this: If I was designing a world for a culture living in a rain-forest and their land was cut through by many vast ravines then what sort of spans could the...
In theory I believe that if you moved far enough above the surface of the pole you should be able to reach an area where you have constant sunlight, even in the middle of winter. My question is - ...
Assume a plant was engineered to cope with a wide range of different environments, and to have seeds that were capable of traveling through and surviving both the depths of space and re-entry into ...
Could an artificial plant species be designed and created that lives in a vacuum - for example on the surface of our moon? The main problems I can see immediately would be the lack of an atmospher...
I recently asked about racing in space (The new Space Race - Racing!) and as expected while there were a few options they were mostly pretty limited. However 2012rcampion did suggest that sports i...
Pretty much every vehicle ever invented has been used for racing on at some point, so it seems likely that people would want to do the same in space. However in space it doesn't really work the sa...
Would it be possible to modify a human to be able to survive in space without protective gear? Genetic engineering and cybernetic enhancement are both allowed, although when not in space the perso...
One property of life is communication. In particular sound is very useful due to it's non-directional nature. An alarm call is heard by every member of the pack and warns them immediately of the da...
At the moment it seems we have two different types of planet We have Rocky planets with a solid core that occupies most of the mass of the planet We have Gas Giants that contain a solid core but ...
We've discovered stars that are contact binaries. This means that they orbit so close together that their photosphere reaches through their Roche lobes and links the two stars together. This sta...
