Activity for JohnWDailey
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Question | — |
Human Multichromacy--Is This Possible? In the History Channel program Clash of the Gods, some of the highlit characters have been given some interesting physical liberties. The episode "Minotaur" features King Minos with a meerkat-like black ring around his left eye and Theseus as a Caucasian man with a raccoon-like black mottle around h... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
| Question | — |
Could Vegetables Grow on Trees? Let me clarify on that title, because this question focuses specifically on vegetables that have not been cultivated for their fruits--like tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, cucumbers and pumpkins--or their roots (potatoes, carrots, parsnips, yams and casavas) but for either their leaves (lettuce and spi... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
| Question | — |
Plant and Animal Life in a Taller Tibet--Possible or Not? Back home, the Tibetan Plateau averages 4,950 meters above sea level with its highest point being Mount Everest, 8,848 meters--29,029 feet--above sea level. At such heights, problems are resulted as listed: The air becomes cold, dry and most importantly, thin. The Himalayas are so tall that they b... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
Shark vs. Sea Turtle--Who Has the Better Odds of Being Whale-Sized Planktivores? In a hibernating speculative evolution project called The Speculative Dinosaur Project, the "speccers" feature a species of shark called Jasconius pelaganax, the Gigamouth, which is basically a megamouth the size of a Blue Whale. Want visual proof? Here it is: However, it is stated in the articl... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
Geography of a Super Venus It's common knowledge that the atmosphere of Venus is too inhospitable for a proper landing. The most concerning problem with that is pressure. Venus's atmospheric pressure is said to be 92 times heavier than Earth's. Despite this, according to Basic Planet, Venus boasts some impressive geography:... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
Gorilla + Orangutan = The Best of Both Worlds In the great apes, there are two worlds--ground and treetop. Representing the ground is the largest primate on Earth, the genus Gorilla. Representing the treetops is genus Pongo, the orangutan. This is the gorilla's skeleton. And this is the orangutan's. The male gorilla averages around six ... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
Bats With Pterosaur Wings Perhaps THE hallmark of bat anatomy is the wing--a thin sheet of membranous skin attaching four of five fingers. But compared to another group of skin-winged fliers, that's pretty much it. According to recent fossil evidence, pterosaur wings were not simple sheets of skin like bat wings were. T... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
The Boreal Bamboo Forest This is the classic winter picture of a boreal forest, or taiga. This habitat exists only on subpolar latitudes, where the climate is too extreme for broad-leaved angiosperms to take root, thus making the taiga an exclusive conifers-only club. In an alternate Earth, there is a clear ecological di... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
Three-Toed Sloths in Temperate USA Bradypodidae is the family consisting of the three-toed sloths, the one we most associate the word "sloth" with. As far as we know, they exist only in the tropical forests of Latin America and never climbed upwards to the more temperate United States. The only sloths instead to cross the border int... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
Could All Reptiles Be Like the Crocs? Certain anatomical features distinguish the alligators, crocodiles, gharials and caimen from the other reptiles. A four-chambered heart, something also found in birds and mammals A unidirectional respiratory system A semi-erect posture, midway between the legs of mammals and birds (which were strai... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
ELEVEN Inner Planets?! What Will the Ice Ages Be Like? A Milankovitch cycle is defined in Universe Today as a cyclical movement related to the Earth's orbit around the Sun. There are three elements to a Milankovitch cycle that affects the amount of solar heat and with it, the Earth's climate: Eccentricity (Orbital Shape)--The elliptical shape of ... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
e=0. What Does That Mean for the Seasons? Currently, Earth's eccentricity (orbital shape) is 0.0167086. Zero is a perfect circle whereas One is parabolic escape orbit and any greater becomes a hyperbola. And in the theory of the Milankovitch cycles, Earth's eccentricity varies between 0.000055 and 0.0679 over a period of 100,000 years. Th... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
Recipe For the 300-Mile Wide Crater 66 million years ago, a space bomb ten kilometers, or six miles, wide raced through the atmosphere at 20 kilometers per second and landed on the Gulf of Mexico at an angle of 90 degrees. The result was a crater 180 kilometers, or 110 miles, wide. In an alternate Earth, a ball of pure iron is due to... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
If We Push Super-Saturn to the Distance of Neptune A large, visible set of rings is the most conspicuous element that sets Saturn apart from the other planets. The whole system is 175,000 miles (280,000 km) wide but only two-thirds of a mile thick. Now multiply that number by 200. Such is the case when J1407b was first discovered in 2012. No ... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
In The Event One Wants a Gas Titan in His Worldbuilding Story In recent years, we have discovered exoplanets that defy our traditional perspectives on how planets work. WASP-17b is twice as wide as Jupiter, yet half as massive, probably because of its orbital proximity to its sun. Saturn itself is very confusing. It is second to Jupiter in diameter and mass.... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
Could Bamboos Evolve Into Trees In the Past? This question is based on a scenario on DeviantArt. The presented image is here: The description is as follows: By the start of the Cryocene, bamboo has become one of Serina's most successful plant groups and makes up entire forest communities in some subtropical equatorial habitats. Fast-gro... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
Asteroid-Merging vs. Dwarf-Planet-Merging: What's the Difference? It has become accepted knowledge that the planet Earth was birthed via a swirling cloud of dust and gravel clumping into larger and larger pieces of rock. It began 4.54 billion years ago, and 100 million years later, the newly molten Earth was 8,000 miles wide and 25,000 miles around. But in this a... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
The Bamboo Rainforest Ecologically, when you're within the latitudes of 23.5 degrees, you'd find yourself in rainforests rich in diversity but poor in nutrition. The forest floor is a barren mess simply because the canopy is so thick that one to two percent of sunlight ever breaks through it into the floor. As a result,... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
Could Carbon Nanotubes Be Realized Earlier? Word on the street is that carbon nanotubes may be the future of construction. Apparently, a skeleton of this material would be stronger yet lighter than a skeleton of steel, which could mean extending the limit of a skyscraper's mass. A carbon nanotube skeleton would have radically altered the lan... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
Thicker Ozone=Colder Earth? Our planet's best line of defense against the worst of the sun is the ozone layer. It is no thicker than 0.01 millimeters. It absorbs 97 to 99% of the sun's medium UV light (200-315 nanometers). It contains 10 parts per million of ozone in that layer alone. With an absent or even thinner ozone la... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
Cybernetic Nucleic Acid Let's say that a patient is in hospital suffering a terminal disease or at least a physical injury that's very expensive to treat. The only hope of salvation is to have artificial, or cybernetic, DNA injected into the injury. The unexpected side effect is that the injection won't stay in the injury... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
The Western Birds--Ideal Substitutes to the Penguins? Anytime one thinks "flightless bird" and "aquatic bird" put together, one would immediately think of Sphenisciformes, the penguins. But during the Late Cretaceous, there swam a different kind of flightless aquatic bird, one with a greater distribution than the penguins' cold southern waters. They w... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
A Freshwater Octopus? One of the oddest of cryptids is an octopus haunting the lakes of Oklahoma, a landlocked state. The reason this is odd is that although freshwater mollusks are common, Cephalopoda (the class consisting of nautiloids, ammonites, belemnites, octopus, squid and cuttlefish) is exclusively marine. The c... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
If Our Horses Came From the OTHER Subspecies It has become common knowledge among mammalologists that the origins of our most iconic rides, the horse, stemmed from the tarpan, a breed of wild horse that became extinct as recently as 1909 CE. Which leaves us one last variety of wild horse, and the focus of this question: Przewalski's Horse, ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
If Eagles Did Not Exist, Could Falcons Evolve Into Their Niche? This is related to the question as to whether or not cetaceans in an alternate Earth be related to a different group. The small but mercurial falcons belong to one order and one family--Falconiformes and Falconidae. They catch and kill their prey with their beaks. By contrast, the other group of r... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
Four Color Receptors and One Mirror--A Good Mix? So, to make it normal for a human to have tetrachromacy, having four color receptors, would make our night vision nonexistent. In an answer in the question linked above, someone brought up the tapetum lucidum, a layer of tissue behind the retina that reflects light, increasing the availability to ph... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
The Red Skin Gene In one of my more recent questions, one Xandar The Zenon commented that a mutation that creates the gene for red or orange pigmentation on the human skin is more likely than green, blue or purple. But wait. You might think, don't we already have red-skinned humans? Actually, the Native Americans a... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
If Homo Sapiens Had Four Receptors Today, most mammals have dichromatic vision, meaning that they have two color receptors. Which color depends on which species you're asking. For example, the real reason bulls charge at matadors is the way they flaunt their flags--cattle CAN see color, but red does not register. Other mammals, lik... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
Little Green EARTH Men? This question is based on the articles saying that the Mongoloid body plan was all due to an individual mutation from 35,000 years ago. In science fiction, humanoid aliens that aren't of the human species are rampant. The sensual, shamrock-green seductresses of the constellation Orion. The blue ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
Could Whales Elsewhere be Afrotheres? The largest animals alive today--and to loom into the human imagination--are the whales, a group of mammals that had been going from skinny-dip to full-blown dive in just 53.5 million years. Due to their alien, almost non-mammalian shapes, you'd be surprised at which order they belong to. Whale... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
A Blue, Drenched Mars Here is what we know of the planet Mars so far: DIAMETER: 4212 miles MASS: 6.39 × 10^23 kg DISTANCE FROM THE SUN: 141.6 million miles It isn't to say that we haven't found water on Mars, just that liquid water is hard to find on Mars, and it may be because at 141.6 million miles from the sun,... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
Metropolitan Mollusks and Seagrass Serengetis Knowledge has come to me recently that mussels can suck up pollutants, making them crucial cleanup crews in the New York filth. This knowledge is the inspiration for this alternate scenario, in which coral, sponges and crinoids (flower-like relatives of the sea star) have been extinct for 65 million... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
Mountaineers With Big Hearts and Even Bigger Lungs No matter which mammal you are talking about, be it a rodent or a bat or a cat or an elephant or a whale, all have the same lung size--7% of the entire body volume. In this alternate scenario, there is a regional population of men who have two anatomical anomalies that are advantageous in a mountain... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
Could the Therapsids Evolve Without the Pelycosaurs? Here's the scenario: 400 million years ago, a species of lobe-finned fish created tetrapod history as it gulped up air, not water. Fast-forward to 342 million years ago, and one species immediately split into immediate origins of two different groups--Reptilia and Therapsida (which would later beco... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
Could These Two Types of Reptiles Overcome Carrier's Constraint? As a whole, the reptiles have a problem. The majority of them have legs sprawled away from the body, so when they move, they would suffer a kind of problem called "Carrier's constraint", and what that means is that the reptiles flex their bodies sideways as they move, expanding one lung and deflatin... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
The Titanic Ozarks Back home and in this alternate scenario, the Ozarks are all that remains of a Proterozoic mountain range hundreds of millions of years ago. Back home, the Ozarks look like this, highlit in lime: The tallest point is Buffalo Lookout, standing 2561 feet above sea level. In this alternate scenario... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
An Australia for Egg-Layers (No Marsupials) Without a doubt, the most iconic mammals of Australia are the pouch-bearing marsupials. You can find less than 250 species in that one island-continent. Marsupials have been around for 65 million years, and they are all that's left of a much larger clade called Metatheria, the entire bag of pouch... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
The Ice-Free British Isles Looking at the topographical map of the two main islands of Britain--England to the east and Ireland to the west--is looking at two and a half million years of ice sculpting, grinding and melting on a repeating cycle. As proof, here is a map of the British Isles as recently as 18,000 years ago: ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
The Tibetan Bristlecone There are three different species of pine collectively called "bristlecones", all of whom can grow in weather too harsh and soil too poor for any other tree to take root. They are renowned for their adaptation against overly harsh environments. As such, they grow very slowly--some are currently 5,0... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
Suspension Vs. Cantilever--Which Bridge Will Stand Strong? Our most iconic bridges can be categorized in two basic types: Suspension... ...and cantiliever. Here is the scenario in question: There is a straightforward (as in radiating out in cardinal directions) network of bridges that connect city to city in the whole of Europe (can't think of a cont... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
The Key For a Longer-Lasting, Steampunkier Industrial Revolution From 359 to 298 million years ago, the "Carboniferous Coal Swamps" dominated the continents. It was the Carboniferous coal itself that sparked one of the greatest watersheds in human history--the Industrial Revolution, spanning from 1760 to either 1820 or 1840. 60 million years of dead plants s... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
The Reindeer--Let's Get Real, Shall We? You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen. But how will nature give Santa's reindeer the best justification of all? Flight is the first and most obvious issue to tackle. Not everyone is 100% sure where the image of reindeer carrying Santa's sleigh ori... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
The Elf"”Let's Get Real, Shall We? Now the first question is"”which elf? Santa's elves? Shoemaking elves? Keebler's cookie-making elves? Tolkien's elves? The Dökkálfar (dark elves) and Ljósálfar (light elves) of the original Norse mythology? My first proposal is this"”let's mix the latter two together, the "dark" and "light"... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
The Mer--Let's Get Real, Shall We? The traditional description of the mermaid is half-girl and half-fish. That, both biologically and dramatically, is just ridiculous. If the mermaid were half-fish, then why does she move her tail up and down and not side-to-side as fish should? No, my first proposal is to make the mer (the whole r... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
The Dwarf--Let's Get Real, Shall We? Believe it or not, the diminutive but rough dwarf is the closest of all the humanoids to be biologically realistic. How? Let's look up Homo neandertalensis, the stereotypical caveman, in comparison with modern man: My proposal is that the dwarf's skeletal design be identical to the neandertal's,... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
The Tethys Salinity Crisis From 5.96 to 5.33 million years ago, disaster struck the Mediterranean Sea. A tectonic snag turned this... ...into something like this. In this alternate scenario, the sea separating modern Europe from modern Africa isn't the Mediterranean, but one of our old friends, the Tethys. As you can... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
The Centaur--Let's Get Real, Shall We? Undoubtedly, one of mythology's most iconic creatures is the centaur, a human being with his or her waist glued to the torso of a horse. For this post, we are avoiding the question of how evolutionarily feasible such a creature would be because if we were to talk about that, we'd be here forever! F... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
Red Plants Alongside the Green What many people mayn't know is that there actually three basic types of algae: Green algae, the origin of the kingdom Plantae Brown algae, found primarily in kelp forests And red algae For this question, let's disregard brown algae because brown algae is a geologic newcomer--no older than ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
The Bering Land Bridge--Open For PERMANENT Business This is the Bering Sea today... ...and this was the Bering Sea as recently as 25,000 years ago. Truth of the matter is, the Bering had been shifting back and forth from land to sea for 100 million years. Here is Beringia in an alternate Earth: In this alternate scenario, the Bering Land Bri... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
The Next Dinosaur Titans This is a skeleton of a titanosaur, not quite the longest of the dinosaurs, but most certainly the heaviest! As far as we have found, we'd found no species exceeding 75 tons. This post focuses on a neat piece of evolution called "convergent evolution", in which an unrelated species evolves simila... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |