Activity for ckersch‭

Type	On...	Excerpt	Status	Date
Question	—	What average global temperature would optimize Earth for human habitability? The year is 2100. While climate change has wrought serious damage to the biosphere, humanity has at last managed to become carbon neutral, and has even developed technology that can be used to reduce the level of carbon in the atmosphere. This has the effect of allowing humanity to set the thermostat... (more)	—	almost 5 years ago
Question	—	Would building a Dyson sphere inside the Earth's orbit render our planet uninhabitable? The year is 3030 and the robots (who have replaced humanity as the dominant intelligent beings on Earth) have decided to build a Dyson sphere around the sun. They're planning on disassembling Venus for materials and building a sphere with a radius a bit less than the orbital radius of the planet they... (more)	—	almost 8 years ago
Question	—	What's the easiest way to locate resource deposits on a new planet? If I've recently started a colony on a somewhat habitable, but uninhabited planet, what's the best way to determine the location of any ore or other subterranean resource deposits? The planet is Earth-sized and of similar composition. It's a similar distance from a similar star, but much younger. Te... (more)	—	about 8 years ago
Question	—	Are there any ways to allow some form of FTL travel without allowing time travel? Faster than light travel is a really cool thing to have in sci-fi settings. It allows humans, in relatable time scales, to travel the galaxy and see a variety of worlds. It allows for conflicts spanning not just a solar system or perhaps a solar system and its nearest neighbors, but huge sections of ... (more)	—	over 8 years ago
Question	—	How could non-photosynthetic non-chemotrophic autotrophs create usable energy? On Earth, the vast majority of the biosphere is ultimately dependent on a large number of autotrophic organisms that produce usable energy in the form of glucose by using photosynthesis. However, on worlds with thick, dense atmospheres or covered in massive sheets of ice, sunlight may not be availabl... (more)	—	over 8 years ago
Question	—	How can I catch an asteroid? I'm interested in asteroid mining, but don't have the infrastructure in place to process ores and the like in space. However, I've got a nice planet-based refinery setup where I could easily process an asteroid, except for one problem: it's on a planet, and my asteroids are in space. I'd like to get... (more)	—	over 8 years ago
Question	—	Are hoofed bipeds feasible? Satyrs, fauns, pan, and even the devil are commonly depicted as humanoid bipeds with goatlike unguligrade hooves for feet. However, common as such beings may be in fantasy and mythology, I have been unable to unearth any paleontological evidence that any form of biped has ever had hoof-like feet. Th... (more)	—	over 8 years ago
Question	—	Is it possible to build long-lived macro-scale structures out of non-atomic substances? A staple of science fiction is substances like 'durasteel' or 'tritanium', which, through generally unexplained means, have vastly superior material qualities when compared to conventional materials. Other common materials for constructing sci-fi vehicles and structures out of are heavy, stable eleme... (more)	—	over 8 years ago
Question	—	What would the climate of the moon be like if it were big enough to have an atmosphere? Suppose we had reached the moon and found it to be habitable. It was big enough to support an atmosphere, albeit a thinner one than the Earth has, and at some point in the past few hundred million years, was seeded with Earth-originating algae and bacteria that were ejected from the atmosphere after ... (more)	—	over 8 years ago
Question	—	How far away would an alien civilization need to be for us to not notice them? Far away, across the vastness of space, lies an alien civilization, who are pretty similar to us. They've got ice cream, peer to peer networking, and photography. More importantly, they do lots of their communication with radio waves, just like us. However, we don't know that they're there, because t... (more)	—	over 8 years ago
Question	—	How far could a planet be from its star and still be kept habitable by intense greenhouse gases? Epimetheus is a planet with about three times the mass of Earth orbiting a sun-like star in the Andromeda galaxy. However, two major factors separate Epimetheus from Earth. First, it has a thick atmosphere heavy in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses which formed early in its history as a plan... (more)	—	almost 9 years ago
Question	—	Could life evolve in the degenerate era of the universe? Our universe is incredibly young, relative to its total life span. How young? Well, it contains stars. Giant balls of readily fusing hydrogen and helium that give off a pleasant glow, suitable for igniting the formation of life forms on planets orbiting at optimal distances with healthy chemical comp... (more)	—	almost 9 years ago
Question	—	What motivation would people have for mining planetary rings? People have proposed mining the moon for Helium-3 and mining asteroids for gold, iridium, and other precious metals. Suppose we have the means to do so in an economically-viable manner. We've got fusion power for long-term power generation far from Earth, space stations that can deal with the major p... (more)	—	almost 9 years ago
Question	—	How many colonists could fit on a 2km long multi-generational colony ship? I'm planning on sending a colony ship on an extended, multi-generational voyage to a distant star. My colony ship is an oblate spheroid, 2km long on its long axis and 1km across on its shortest axis. It's built using near future technology, with power generation provided by fusion plants and thrust v... (more)	—	almost 9 years ago
Question	—	How would evolution shape humans for life in zero-G? If I take ten thousand healthy adult humans, strap them into a colony ship, and fire them off on a three-million year journey to a distant star, what will the creatures climbing out of the colony ship look like at the end of the journey? The colony ship is built using near-future technology, and has... (more)	—	almost 9 years ago
Question	—	Would it be possible to ride a gravitational wave? I'd like to travel really really fast, and I've got some scientists proposing a novel new way of doing so. They've developed the technology to generate extremely powerful controlled gravitational waves. Based on my knowledge of these things, I understand that they propagate at the speed of light as ... (more)	—	almost 9 years ago
Question	—	What goods would be worth trading between Earth and Mars? Mars is a cold, inhospitable, slightly damp ball of rock that would be very difficult to do things like grow crops on. However, it's also very far away. Far enough that, presumably, it would probably still be worth finding a way of growing them there, rather than shipping them from Earth. Assuming t... (more)	—	about 9 years ago
Question	—	Can hive-based aliens develop advanced technology without telepathy? The Chirr are a race of space-faring aliens that look vaguely like rat-sized ants. They've got powerful mandibles and small, fairly dexterous hand-like claws, though their chitinous nature makes delicate manipulation somewhat more difficult for them than it is for humans. They dwell in huge hives com... (more)	—	about 9 years ago
Question	—	Would an island-covered planet be possible? Island planets are common in science-fiction, and we've even got a few questions about them in worldbuilding. However, I cannot help but wonder how, or if, they could form. On Earth, at least, our geological processes lead to the formation of lots of continents, and only a few islands, relative to th... (more)	—	over 9 years ago
Question	—	Would wing suits be an effective mode of transportation for halflings? Let's assume that a halfling is of similar build, but half the height of an adult human. If I strap a wing suit onto one, I should have a quarter the surface area, but one eight the weight of an adult human, meaning that I should have half the loading factor of a human in a wing suit, which should me... (more)	—	over 9 years ago
Question	—	What's the highest population the Earth could possibly sustain? Suppose that we pare down human consumption to a minimum survivable level across the Earth, and devote the entire surface of the planet (as well as the planet's interior, if needed) to support as many human beings as possible. We ignore the damage we are doing to the environment except to the degree ... (more)	—	over 9 years ago
Question	—	How could bird people map the air? For sentient avians, knowing the location and behavior of currents in the air would be vitally important. Jet streams, thermals, downdrafts, and shear layers would all be important in their daily lives. I imagine that bird people would want to map these currents. While they might change on a daily b... (more)	—	over 9 years ago
Question	—	How would life evolve, or could life be engineered to live, in the absence of an atmosphere? They say that nature abhors a vacuum, but could life evolve to live in one? Alternately, could life be engineered to exist on a planet with no atmosphere, even if there is no biologically feasible path through which this life form could evolve? By vacuum, I mean 'no atmosphere', but with ground. Som... (more)	—	over 9 years ago
Question	—	How far in the future would a modern human need to go before they were functionally a different species than people of the time? A staple of fantasy involving time travel is the hero (or heroine) zipping off into the future and then meeting a future lover with whom they go on to have wacky time-based adventures before presumably settling down to make some babies. Eventually, though, this won't work. Even if one of the future ... (more)	—	over 9 years ago
Question	—	What would be the effect of introducing genetically modified chimpanzees into human society? I'm reading this article on speech in animals, and it made an interesting claim: chimpanzees and other non-human great apes posses the anatomy needed to vocalize words, they just don't use it to do so. The article also mentions that many different species that can learn to produce a wide variety of s... (more)	—	almost 10 years ago
Answer	—	A: How can I destroy a gas giant planet? Blowing Saturn up would be hard. Saturn has a mass of $568.3\times 10^{24}$ kg, or about 95 times the mass of Earth. To blow up Saturn, i.e. to place some sort of unimaginably huge bomb in its center and vaporize it, you'd have to energize all or most of that mass to escape velocity, otherwise it wo... (more)	—	almost 10 years ago
Question	—	Why would people use flapping-wing instead of fixed-wing aircraft? Ornithopters are vehicles that fly by flapping their wings, rather than trough use of a propeller or jet engine. They've been proposed and built many times throughout history, and are a common element of science fiction and fantasy. Leonardo DaVinci's design for an ornithopter There's at least on... (more)	—	almost 10 years ago
Question	—	What could humans do to render the earth uninhabitable? If a hostile group wanted to render Earth or an Earth-like planet completely unfit for human life, what could they do to go about achieving that end? By uninhabitable, I mean a planet on which humans are unable to survive in the open for the foreseeable future. Centuries in the future, whatever's ha... (more)	—	about 10 years ago
Question	—	How could humans survive in extremely high gravity? By extremely high gravity, I specifically mean around 28 Gs. I recently asked this question with regards to inhabiting the sun, and surviving in the sun's gravity seems like one of the major challenges. I'm interested in what would be needed to allow humans to survive in such an environment, both in... (more)	—	about 10 years ago
Question	—	Is there any feasible way to inhabit the sun? Is there any feasible way to create a long-term sustainable habitat on the sun? My target region for habitation is the temperature minimum at the bottom of the solar atmosphere. Metals would have to be flown in through the outer atmosphere, but at a mere 4100 K, it's at least cool enough for basic m... (more)	—	about 10 years ago
Question	—	How would winds behave on a tidally locked planet? If an earth-sized planet were tidally locked to a star, and was in the life zone of its star with an earth-like atmosphere, what would its wind patterns be like? The planet would have one hot hemisphere and one cold hemisphere, so intuitively it seems like air currents would drive from the hot side ... (more)	—	about 10 years ago
Answer	—	A: How can a spaceship unknowingly interfere with tides on a planet? If the effects of the tides are significant, and the spaceship inhabitants are observing the planet, it's likely that they would know that they are influencing the tides of the planet. However, if they're on some sort of commercial mission, rather than a "don't interfere/we come in peace" mission, it... (more)	—	about 10 years ago