Posts by chasly from UK
I'm imagining a scenario where there is a conflict between humans and intelligent octopuses. The humans' main mode of transport is the bicycle. The octopuses decide to stage a night raid whereby t...
The one-electron universe postulate, proposed by John Wheeler in a telephone call to Richard Feynman in the spring of 1940, hypothesises that all electrons and positrons are actually manifes...
A wormhole (or Einstein"“Rosen bridge) is a speculative structure linking disparate points in spacetime, and is based on a special solution of the Einstein field equations solved using a Jac...
A holy man lives down a cylindrical well that is 2 metres in diameter. There is no water in the bottom and all the walls are of solid impermeable rock. He is protected from rain by a roof on suppor...
I travel back in time to the Big Bang in my time machine. I am equipped with all the present day equipment I need. I locate the infinitesimal 'point' where the Universe would come into existence an...
This question draws on an old idea but it is different. The original question is, "If everyone in the world jumps at the same time, will the Earth move?" My question is,"If everyone in one hemis...
Huge numbers of genetically modified flying insects (purpose not disclosed here but it relates to affecting the whole of humanity) are to be dropped into the Earth's atmosphere from space so that t...
@Gryphon has made me aware of this The Least Interesting Substance It is very close but I need a planet that can form naturally. Would any of the substances mentioned in answers to that question b...
In a world of superheroes the job of blacksmith is given to the very strongest of them. Question Is splitting an atom in a human-scale piece of work by using a human-scale tool even theoretically...
In the stone-age world that I am building, I don't just want one-dimensional characters who are either hunters or gatherers. I want a great quantity of people including those who would have become ...
Please note: This has no relation to any real persons on this site or elsewhere and should not be taken to be such. In my world there is a human nomadic desert tribe. They have a long-standing cus...
There are many questions on Worldbuilding about what item(s) a time traveller should take back in time in order to alter past events or even simply to survive. There has never as far as I know bee...
Background A large colony lives in the Antarctic in a network of bases. They have so far evaded the dreadful worldwide plague. When they venture outside their base they don their climate-proof ...
How do steampunk civilizations get lifting gas? Inspired by the above question I was tempted to suggest collecting the gases rising from public toilets. I know that human gaseous emissions contai...
Background We know about the can-and-string telephone. There are various claims about the maximum distance over which this is effective. Let's say 100 feet is possible without too much loss and...
Note: This is different from the previous question Building a full-sized Lego Earth - what would it look like at various levels?. In that case it was about making a solid full-size Earth from Lego ...
Warning picture showing dissected Russian Doll My theory I believe that Russian Dolls reproduce asexually. They are born pregnant. At the time of birth, the outer doll dies. What is now th...
Note - I'm primarily interested in the beast from the original Dr Dolittle books by Hugh Lofting rather than the movie version. The Pushmi-pullyu The pushmi-pullyu (pronounced "push-me"”pull-y...
Can we go from this: to this: Suppose over millennia (or as long as it takes) humans on Earth are artificially selected by aliens to be big and healthy. Is there any theoretical reason that ...
The Emperor (may he live forever) plans to visit the Solar System on a rare royal visit in ten years' time. The Bureau for Interplanetary Tidying have decided that the Asteroid Belt is an eyesore t...
A perverse incentive is a reward system that has the opposite effect to the one intended. In Hanoi, under French colonial rule, a program paying people a bounty for each rat tail handed in wa...
How can we have a world that is inhabited only by zombies and yet continues to be populated? For the purposes of this question, I envisage the type of zombie that has been infected by a virus, is...
Lego representations of Earth have been made at various scales, for example this one: Suppose Slartibartfast made a full-size Earth from Lego (including the oceans being represented as solid blo...
A centaur as we all know is a horse with a human head (and torso). I would like to consider a reverse centaur, which, for the purposes of this question, I will define to be a human with a horse's ...
Pathogen Note: For the purpose of this question I define a pathogen to include viruses and/or bacteria. Edit: I don't exclude other biological agents such as fungi that might have the same effect...
