JDługosz‭

In this question I asked about the possibilities of what a boundary might be like, with emphasis on the storytelling. Now I'd like to investigate what a hard boundary would mean in quantum mechani...

1 answer  ·  posted 9y ago by JDługosz‭  ·  edited 4y ago by HDE 226868‭

I love the idea of competing moon gods! The people might not grasp the relationship between the moons and tides but might if the cycle was apparent. On an island in a global ocean with no girdli...

posted 9y ago by JDługosz‭  ·  last activity 9y ago by JDługosz‭

Certainly. I've even seen a product in different colors, powered by tritium. At the very least, you can use common florescent pigments (available in many glo-colors) and mix with UV-producing radi...

posted 8y ago by JDługosz‭  ·  last activity 8y ago by JDługosz‭

I've mentioned in earlier posts that it will be much cheaper to build immense space-based observatory instruments than to even come close to launching an interstellar expedition. There are several...

2 answers  ·  posted 8y ago by JDługosz‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by JDługosz‭

There are two societies. One highly advanced with AI, posthumans, post-scarcity economy and off-Earth resources. So gold and platinum is what a Mercury base resident just calls "rocks". They hav...

4 answers  ·  posted 8y ago by JDługosz‭  ·  last activity 8y ago by JDługosz‭

Noting that this question is specific to human colonization, and Thucydides's answer is explicit that driving concerns are to support life, and I notice that the story I'm working on turns this on...

3 answers  ·  posted 8y ago by JDługosz‭  ·  last activity 8y ago by JDługosz‭

Guran's comment Perhaps they are tinkering with the solar activity, turning stars into Yotta-watt, nano-bit/second beakons. (We would see the pattern eventually, but not before we looked at cen...

4 answers  ·  posted 8y ago by JDługosz‭  ·  last activity 8y ago by JDługosz‭

Human (spoken) languages have a great variety in terms of grammar and what the basic elements are, but they have essential features in common in terms of being a time sequence of phonetic primitive...

6 answers  ·  posted 8y ago by JDługosz‭  ·  last activity 7y ago by JDługosz‭

The readership of science fiction gets smarter over time, so making your SF "smart" (even if it's not hard SF) is an ever-moving target. This earlier question makes me think about Conservation of ...

4 answers  ·  posted 8y ago by JDługosz‭  ·  last activity 8y ago by JDługosz‭

In this Answer I came up a scenareo under which Eriek's concept makes sense. I rather like this idea: an expedition or colony on another world has to, for some reason, pull up stakes and move. Th...

19 answers  ·  posted 8y ago by JDługosz‭  ·  last activity 7y ago by JDługosz‭

A message arrives from several light years away. It is a complete prepared document, not a two-way communication. The document can contain line-drawings and diagrams, both 2D and 3D, plus movies ...

7 answers  ·  posted 8y ago by JDługosz‭  ·  last activity 8y ago by JDługosz‭

This is part of my Alien Message series: Recognizable natural numbers for alien message? Alien message: "Invitation" I recall a TV show featuring a discussion on the design of warning messages ...

7 answers  ·  posted 8y ago by JDługosz‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by JDługosz‭

Start with present day "maker" culture. People, including youngsters, play with microcontrollers and machine parts, with synergistic technology like 3D printing, shoebox-sized robotic milling mach...

2 answers  ·  posted 7y ago by JDługosz‭  ·  last activity 6y ago by JDługosz‭

This is a follow up to What would physics be like in a wrap-around universe? PyRulez commented, "Will gravity still make sense? (Namely, will it converge or not)?" This was bantered about in the c...

3 answers  ·  posted 7y ago by JDługosz‭  ·  last activity 7y ago by JDługosz‭

A targeted hard-science spin-off from this question: In a tidally-locked planet that rotates about a barycentric point that's located outside of its own sphere, what would the coriolis forces be l...

3 answers  ·  posted 8y ago by JDługosz‭  ·  last activity 7y ago by JDługosz‭