Activity for JohnWDailey
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Alternate Pangaea This is the map of our Permian from 300 to 252 million years ago: As you can see, (nearly) all of the continents had joined together to create one massive landmass called Pangaea. To the sharp eye, there was only one major mountain range at the time. Now this is the map of a Permian from an alte... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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Russia's Alternate Geological History Since the geological history of the world's largest nation is as big as the nation itself, and since I don't have a master familiarity with Russia's formation over hundreds of millions of years, I'm not going to delve into backstory and instead plunge straight into this Russia in an alternate Earth. ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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Tougher Alternative Than Granite Anyone who has a well-versed background in geology will know that the rock of the continents is granite. It forms as lava cools down very slowly, creating large minerals and crystals that shielded the rock from cracking and thus the brunt of erosion. Granite also "floats", if you will, because de... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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Californian Yellowstone North America's largest and perhaps most popular volcano is the plume of mantle situated right beneath the surface of what we arbitrarily call Yellowstone National Park. This image shows the two most iconic symbols of Yellowstone--bison and geysers. This image shows the very core of Yellowstone... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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An Edenic Outback? (Before anyone asks, this is related to the Sahara, Makgadikgadi and Himalaya questions.) The Sahara may take credit at being the hottest desert, but the Australian Outback is hardly a pushover by comparison. Here, dehydration is the easiest way to die. The most iconic animals of Australia--mars... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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Garlic and Silver"‰"”"‰What's the Big Deal? In popular mythology, wearing a garlic wreath is a good defense against vampires. Silver kills werewolves. But why? How could garlic, a spice whose only offense is plain stink, deter an attractive man with a seriously unhealthy diet, as opposed to more potent spices like pepper or azalea? Why doe... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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Greenland--Not So Green Anymore Back home, there are three factors to consider: Mont Forel, Greenland's tallest peak, can be found in coordinates 66.9333° North and 36.8167° West The Arctic Ocean's average depth is 3406 feet, 17,880 feet maximum The maximum width of the Atlantic Ocean is 4,000 miles We're talking about a plan... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
Changing the Danger Zone of Tornado Alley I am currently at the end of my wits. No matter what change I do to the North American geography, northeastern Nebraska (42.4649° North, 96.4131° West), is still in the danger zone called Tornado Alley. (Heaven forbid, I've had more than enough experience with that reaper's scythe in my lifetime.... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
| Question | — |
Can You Mix Glass in a Metal Alloy? Long ago, I asked for a kind of steel alloy under an alternative recipe. Right now, the list is as follows: Carbon (2%) (Reasonable material and amount) Chromium (12%) (Reasonable material and amount) Titanium (6%) (Reasonable material, but is the amount reasonable?) Iron (>75%) The one p... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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The Great Plains Between Two Taller Mountains In this alternate scenario, only the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians stand firm in the United States. Even so, some differences apply. The Appalachian Mountains (right) have grown to as tall as the Sierra Nevada--14,505 feet above sea level. The Rocky Mountains (left) have grown to the height... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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New York in an Alternate Ice Age The geographical features that make New York stand out from any other of the United States--Long Island, the huge boulders scattered in the city and the Hudson River, deep enough for barges to pass through without problem--are possible because New York was the furthest south that the ice of the Late ... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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Lowland Deciduous Trees Against Highland Conifers In this alternate scenario, there is a clear ecological distinction between broad-leaved deciduous trees and coniferous trees based solely on altitude. The broad-leaves and other angiosperms are the exclusive plants of the lowlands whereas conifers could be found only on the cooler, drier highlands.... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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Tropical Vs. Subtropical Rainforests In this alternate scenario, five million years ago, a mass extinction hit Earth. Not a massive volcanic eruption or a devastating bolide impact, but a sudden cold snap, a transition from Miocene hothouse to Pleistocene icehouse geologically quicker than a human can say "Hi." Half of all terrestrial... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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How This Alternate Solar System Influences the Milankovitch Cycle I have just found out that the Milankovitch Cycle, a machination responsible for the creation of the Pleistocene ice ages, has its part played partly by orbit from the entire solar system. As a result of the orbit we already have back home, the cycles--on average--work as follows: Eccentricity (or... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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If the Black Death Weren't Bubonic What I mean to say is that the Black Death of the 14th century still devastated Europe, but the culprit in this alternate scenario is not Yersinia pestis, the bacterium believed to be responsible for the plague. In OTL, the Black Death was Black because one of the plague's most conspicuous symptoms ... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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The Subductive Hotspot On Earth, there are only two different ways to create major volcanoes. One way is subduction. It occurs when older/heavier rock sinks beneath younger/lighter rock. As the rock descends, it liquefies into magma, climbing up to the surface as a mountain concealing a deadly magma chamber. This is wh... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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The Domesticated Elephant Domestication of otherwise wild animals go way back. Cats have been our best weapons against rodents for 10,000 years. We had been breeding sheep and goats for their milk and mutton for almost as long. The date of dog domestication is...debatable, to say the least. And then there are animals we t... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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The Midwest, Great Lakes Earth I live in northeastern Nebraska, and I had seen more than enough of tornadoes in my lifetime. So in an alternate Earth, it is my hope to make some changes that would save my home from being another potential target for that spinning Reaper's scythe. Marked here in red is a vast plateau that varie... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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The Feathered Serpent in Real Life The definition of a dragon depends on who you're asking. We are so used to the fire-breathing, bat-winged, avaricious antagonists of Europe and the long, lank wise men of Asia that we don't often consider the dragons of the Americas. On the top of the popularity list is the feathered serpent of Mex... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A Highland Gingko Forest--Likely or Not? In this alternate Earth, there is a clear ecological distinction between trees depending on altitude. The lowlands are exclusive to broad-leaved deciduous trees while conifers can be found only on the cooler, drier highlands. The sole--and MAJOR--exception to this distinction is the Taiga, its clos... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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How to Breathe Both on Land and Under the SEA The popular image of a mermaid is a half-fish, half-human creature breathing fine above and below the surface. The only real-life analogy to this are the amphibians - frogs, toads and salamanders. But here lies the snag. Mermaids are often portrayed as marine while there are no species of amphibians... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A Glass Window in an Underwater City In this scenario, an underwater city is a collection of domes interconnected by tunnels 17 feet wide and 17 tall. The largest of the city's domes is 71,000 square feet in area and 137 feet tall. The city is situated 500 feet beneath the surface. When you descend deeper into water, it becomes imper... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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The Rocky Mountains, Great Lakes Earth The mountains of the American West have some major differences. For starters, only the Rockies stand firm"”no Coast Range, no Grand Canyon and most certainly no Sierra Nevada. The Rockies on Great Lakes Earth have a different road from ours. If we use it on our map, we'd see the Rockies starting in t... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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If Tibet Could Do It, Should Other Plateaus? During the summer months, Tibet warms up like a hot brick, drawing in moisture from the Indian Ocean, and that explains why India is the wettest nation on Earth. In this alternate scenario, Tibet is still there, only taller. (The tallest peak of the alternate Himalayas is 33,500 feet above sea le... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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The Alps, Great Lakes Earth This is the Alps back home, cornering the Italian Peninsula and dominating the nations of Switzerland and Austria. The tallest, Mont Blanc, stands 15,780 feet above sea level. In this alternate scenario, the Alps range is the European equivalent of the Himalayas, the result of a subcontinent cont... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A Recent Mass Extinction--How Long Must Life Reel Itself Back In? In our understanding of mass extinction and adaptive radiation, we have found that life can't and doesn't bounce back right away. They take time. It took life eight to ten million years to recover from the worst mass extinction in Earth's history. In the aftermath of the Mesozoic-Cenozoic Extincti... (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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The Two Types of Angels There are two different varieties of angels"”the naked, long-distance flier and the feathered, short-distance glider (The Four-Winged Angel). But both varieties have the following anatomical features that makes flight possible: The bones are hollow, with criss-crossing struts or trusses for struct... (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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Possibilities For A Floral Adaptive Radiation This is based on the notion of adaptive radiation, a process in which organisms diversify rapidly from an ancestral species into a multitude of new forms, particularly when a change in the environment makes new resources available, creates new challenges, or opens new environmental niches. The most ... (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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The Four-Winged Angel One of the Stack Exchange's most popular topics is remaking mythological and fantastical creatures with realistic, believable anatomy. Usually, the answers go that for an angel's anatomy to be believable, he'd either have wings like a bat instead of a bird (the former's being essentially very stretc... (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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The Rods and Cones on Equal Terms Inside our eyes are two different kinds of receptors: The rod, in which the human eye has 120 million and work in low light The cone, in which the human eye has only 6 to 7 million of them, the receptor that brings us color. Before you bring up the tetrachromats, yes, I have read about the humans... (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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How to Make Male Lactation More Common Though the job of breastfeeding is typically known to the women, there are documented cases of men producing breast milk. However, these reports are few and far between, which means that while men do have the ability to produce milk, it doesn't happen often. Let's say that in an alternate universe,... (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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Could the Siberian Eruption Get Any Bigger? Background Information: 252 million years ago, Siberia erupted, releasing enough lava to fill in a volume anywhere between one and four million cubic kilometers. Any time someone thinks "large igneous province", the Siberian Traps seem to be the first thing on his mind. But the actual largest igne... (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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A Reef Without the Coral An improvement of this: A Completely Different Kind of Reef Which I couldn't delete because it already had answers, and deleting an answered question will dock me some reputation. Today's reefs are built primarily by Anthozoa, the corals and sea anemones. Alongside them are Porifera, the sponges,... (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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Solutions to a Giant's Giant Problems Giants do exist. It's just that they can't be anywhere close to being as big as those in Norse mythology or the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. The best we'd ever have for a giant was Robert Wadlow, who grew to a height of eight feet and 11.1 inches. People of his stature suffer the following b... (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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Can Venus' Surface Get Hit Hard? Over four and a half billion years ago, Theia, a rogue planet the size of Mars, slammed into the infant Earth. This impact is believed to have resulted in the birth of many things, from the moon to plate tectonics. But let's say that Theia ditched Earth and instead set a collision course for Earth'... (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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If Mars Were a Superearth For this scenario, we must look at the postercard of the term "superearth"--Kepler-10b. Its mass is almost 3.5 times greater than Earth, and its diameter 1.4 times wider. Now let's imagine that Kepler-10b takes the place of the fourth planet, that of Mars. Mars' mass is 15% that of Earth's, an... (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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Vampire--The Simian With a Canine Bite In this more realistic scenario than typical fantasy, the vampire is just an ordinary human being with a certain genetic quirk that results in the following: A reversed circadian rhythm (active at night) A digestive system that accepts a more hypercarnivorous diet (in other words, meat and only mea... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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If Britain Had Ice From a Different Direction At the height of the last ice age, glaciers as thick as one mile reached as far down south in Europe as London. This is the reason why England and Wales have very little mountains, and why the terrain of their northern neighbor, Scotland, is so rugged. But let's say, in this alternate last ice age,... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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An Earlier Pleistocene = Mass Extinction? Five million years ago, the warm Miocene gradually descended into the cool Pliocene before dropping into the frigid Pleistocene. Such a change in temperature was so gradual that life went on without a global, life-changing catastrophe like what happened at the end of the Ordovician or the Devonian or... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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One Mother + Two Fathers = Twins In the human species, one male partner is enough for the sperm to fertilize the egg. The average cargo is just one child, half of its DNA from the mother and the other half from the father. But there are cases when the fertilized egg splits into more than one, and that's where twins and triplets an... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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The Questioning of Making Granite a Tougher Nut to Crack Ordinary granite is a tough rock"”the toughest on planet Earth"”but it still cracks easily, exposing it to the wrath of erosion. But the granite that makes up the Yosemite landscape is different. The area had been subject to repeated volcanic activity again and again over millions of years, causing... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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If the Moon Titan Orbits Earth Long ago, I made a post with a scenario on how planet Earth would be affected if our moon were the size of Mars. But I've decided that it be more reasonable if our moon were closer in size to Titan, the largest moon of the planet Saturn. Let's see how our moon stands as it is now: Diameter: $3,47... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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What good do tornadoes do? Storms can devastate lives and property, but they have benefits as well--plenty of water for the plants and nitrogen for the soil. Even drought has its benefits, giving the landscape an occasional rest from rain showers. But the one weather type I could not think of benefits for is the tornado. No... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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A Binary Sun, A Hot Jupiter and a Binary Mars...All Within View of Earth In this scenario, the sun is a binary star, sharing orbit with an F-type main-sequence star. The first planet from that binary star is a Jupiter-like gas giant, orbiting one-third of an AU from the stars. Mars is a binary planet, orbiting Earth. How far would Mars need to be to orbit the Earth wit... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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Does Earth Have What It Takes to Have Rings? In popular science fiction, we see habitable Earth-like planets with visible, Saturn-like rings. In reality, such rings exist only on gas giants, a category where we can find Saturn. Is it really possible for a planet similar in gravity to Earth to have the kind of gravity needed to create these ri... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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Humanity With Avian Lungs In mammals - and that includes us humans - the lungs make up 7% of the total body volume. This allows us to inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, thanks to the pulmonary alveoli. But bird lungs are unrivaled. They make up 15% of the total body volume. Gas does not mix between in- and ex- halation... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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Longer Summer Days, Longer Winter Nights in the Temperate Zone Earth in this scenario still rotates once every 24 hours, and the temperate zone still has four seasons, each one lasting three months. But in this scenario, a temperate summer has the sun shining for 18 hours, whereas a temperate winter has the sun shining for only six. What kind of axial tilt wou... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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Venus--Is She Destined to be Hell? Back home, Venus is a twin planet with serious issues. The average surface temperature is 900 degrees Fahrenheit, atmospheric pressure is 92 times greater than ours and carbon dioxide makes up 96% of the atmosphere. Which is unfortunate, because we actually thought Venus to be a beautiful planet, h... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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Nine Different Earths in One System--How to Make That Possible Astronomers place planet Earth under what they call a "Goldilocks Zone"--a spot in the solar system where conditions are ideal for liquid water to form, thus making the creation of life possible. In Norse mythology, there are nine separate worlds--Midgard, Asgard, Vanaheimr, Jotunheimr, Alfheimr, He... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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How to Make Elvish Immortality Biological From my understanding of animals, lifespan is all based on the speed of its metabolic rate. As endothermic animals, mammals live a high-octane life - growing up fast, being quick on activity regardless of the weather and demanding a lot of food in a short period of time. As a result, they, if you wil... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |