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Activity for Ville Niemiā€­

Type On... Excerpt Status Date
Question Genetic exchange between animal and plant, Elves love trees
This question has its origins in the word "dendraphile" used in a YouTube comment. It was used in an insult used by dwarves towards elves. My chain of thought then was that the dwarves would use plainer language like "tree hugger" and after drinking enough beer the "hugger" would be replaced by crude...
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almost 5 years ago
Question Size for bubble-ring generation ship
I've been thinking that the natural manner for interstellar dispersion of humanity with relatively hard science is with permanently habited nomadic generation ships. Instead of building a ship, going to a suitable system and abandoning the ship to colonize a planet model which comes with enough issue...
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over 8 years ago
Question Elevator to the Moon
Inspired by https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/30400/3434 Related but too different in details for answers to apply Why not build a space elevator starting from the moon? As answered in the related question an elevator from surface to surface is impractical. But an elevator does not actually...
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over 8 years ago
Question Interstellar comet hopping
I read a blog post explaining why interstellar travel is terribly impractical. The short answer is that stars are far away and travelling that far takes a very long time and ridiculous amounts of energy. Anyway as a part of explaining the distances the blog gave examples of distances and one of them...
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almost 9 years ago
Answer A: How to go from a free person to a slave
DJMethaneMan was IMHO on the right track. These mages would essentially be similar to slave soldiers such as Janissaries or Mamluks. So recruit young, strict discipline etc. And yes, the methods are not really that different from those use by any other military. Discipline is discipline. The differen...
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almost 9 years ago
Question Economic feasibility of RTGs for base power
A radiothermal generator uses the heat produced by radioactive decay of the radioisotopes contained to generate electricity. The main difference with nuclear reactors is that there is no "reaction", chain reaction or otherwise, just the natural decay of the isotopes. Currently RTGs are used as power...
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almost 9 years ago
Answer A: How can I make a net beneficial genetic trait occur only in a small fraction of the population, sustained?
If it is caused by a combination of several otherwise unrelated dominant traits each of which in separation also causes a slight decrease in fertility or increase in mortality. March Ho had an interesting idea about heterozygous phenotypes. This means that the gene needs two different alleles to hav...
(more)
over 9 years ago