Logan R. Kearsley‭

In the story Wang's Carpets (and part of the novel Diaspora), Greg Egan sketchily describes a high-dimensional universe which contains no analog for light, such that the aliens who inhabit this uni...

2 answers  ·  posted 7y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭  ·  last activity 7y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭

Consider a universe in which leptons & quarks (every fundamental particle that possesses electric charge) all have twins with magnetic monopole charge instead, resulting in two parallel kinds o...

1 answer  ·  posted 8y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭  ·  last activity 8y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭

Supercritical CO2 has been suggested as a potential alternative bio-solvent, replacing water, at high pressures and modestly elevated temperatures. But what about supercritical N2? ScCO2 is an ind...

1 answer  ·  posted 9y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭  ·  last activity 9y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭

So, we've gone off to another star system and decided to build a Dyson bubble--a continuous statite, supported by radiation pressure, surrounding a star--with a surface gravity of 1g to live on. N...

1 answer  ·  posted 8y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭  ·  last activity 8y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭

There are exactly 2 force laws that can produce stable closed orbits: proportional (spring force) and inverse-square. The inverse square law occurs naturally for monopole central forces in 3 dimens...

1 answer  ·  posted 7y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭  ·  last activity 7y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭

Some follow-up thoughts on this question... Hydrogen isn't very soluble in water. Oxygen is more so, but still sufficiently insoluble that most oxygen-breathing Earth creatures use special oxygen ...

3 answers  ·  posted 7y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭  ·  last activity 7y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭

The universe so far: If charged lepton fields are eliminated from the universe, charged pions become stable (having no decay path that preserves charge), replacing electrons to form bound "atomic"...

1 answer  ·  posted 7y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭  ·  last activity 7y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭

Despite the wide variety of movement strategies employed by Earthling animals, up to an including curling their bodies into circles and rolling, there is one mode of locomotion that is glaringly mi...

3 answers  ·  posted 7y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭  ·  last activity 7y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭

Mammals live in some fairly extreme environments, but the most heat-tolerant ones all seem to cheat: e.g., they dig burrows to stay cool during the day and come out at night, avoiding the heat, or ...

1 answer  ·  posted 7y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭  ·  last activity 7y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭

I've been pondering for some time an alternate-history story where the Earth as we know it is replaced by a Rocheworld, of the canonical variety introduced in the eponymous Robert Forward novel whe...

2 answers  ·  posted 9y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭  ·  last activity 9y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭

I'm trying to work out some really basic biochemical details for cold-world aliens whose bodily fluids are based on liquid methane rather than water. I figure they have to be hydrogen breathers, be...

1 answer  ·  posted 10y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭  ·  last activity 10y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭

Suppose you have a planet large enough to support life, with water and air all that, but old enough that it has exhausted its internal heat supply, the core is frozen solid, and there is little to ...

3 answers  ·  posted 9y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭  ·  last activity 9y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭

Suppose you want to mine material from, and eventually completely disassemble, a neutron star. Presumably, you would be extracting heavy elements from the crust, and expecting the neutron-degenerat...

3 answers  ·  posted 9y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭  ·  last activity 9y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭

So I've got this civilization that doesn't have electricity, but does have municipal power distribution via compressed air lines. Now, you can do a lot of useful things with compressed air. Even i...

10 answers  ·  posted 9y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭  ·  last activity 8y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭

Suppose you have a planet covered in a deep layer of supercritical CO2, and animals evolved to live in it. Discounting the ones who crawl along the bottom, would their method of locomotion be more...

5 answers  ·  posted 9y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭  ·  last activity 9y ago by Logan R. Kearsley‭