Activity for ArtOfCode
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Edit | Post #281763 | Nominated for promotion | — | almost 3 years ago |
| Edit | Post #250336 |
Post edited: |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #275802 | Initial revision | — | almost 4 years ago |
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A: Is this the right name for the site? What about simply reversing the name? Instead of "Speculative Science", potentially implying speculating about science (with all the implications of that), we could have "Scientific Speculation", implying speculation about things but in a scientific manner. (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #275799 | Initial revision | — | almost 4 years ago |
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A: Character set conversion(?) failure during initial import from SE I've fixed the most obvious failures in SQL. Beyond that... the posts are now UTF8, so fixing the encoding retroactively is difficult if not impossible - if there are other common bugs please let me know and I'll run an automatic replacement, otherwise please edit them to correct. (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #262927 |
Post edited: |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #262927 |
Post edited: |
— | almost 4 years ago |
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A: Which current networking protocol would be the optimal choice for very small FTL bandwidth? Does it differ from the early days of the internet - in another sense, would it be possible to handle with any protocols ever developed in the field of computer networks? No, that's not possible, on a fundamental level. A protocol is a set of rules defining how one thing communicates with anoth... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Nomenclature for software beings The prefix extra- is generally used for things that are outside of normality - for example, extraterrestrial for being outside Earth-normal, or extracurricular for education outside of the normal curriculum. Let's apply this to humans. If you're sort-of human, but not the original design, you could ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How would mountains and hills have to be made-up in order to impede tunneling them WHILE still allowing them to be mined out? Well, think about the direction in which each of these operations needs to go. Tunnels go horizontally across the mountain. Mines go more diagonally downwards, or even straight down in some cases. So, if you make the middle of your mountain out of much denser, more solid rock that is really difficu... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Would 'cheap' FTL make powerful telescopes obsolete? Yes and no. It'd be worth keeping some of the larger telescopes around, simply because they have a wider area of coverage. A large radio telescope can cover a significant portion of its sky and listen for incoming signals from that zone. This is an advantage, because you then don't have to send an e... (more) |
— | about 8 years ago |
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Could a historic society live on another world? It is 1970. Planet Earth is uninhabitable - the Cold War got very hot. The Earth's entire population is floating through space in giant transport ships. They've found another habitable(ish) world. Unfortunately, it's got 5 times Earth's gravity. Now, I'm going to handwave away several things - we'r... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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A: Moons of Moons of Moons Theoretically infinite, though the classification would get interesting. Consider the Moon. It orbits us, the Earth. That's a nesting of 0, right? Now consider the Earth. What's to say that the Earth isn't just a moon of the Sun, apart from arbitrary human classification systems? On this logic, you... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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A: Can stars that are not powered by nuclear fusion exist? It's hard to conceive of a star that doesn't supply itself by nuclear fusion, except those that already exist. Some background Nuclear fusion is a process by which two nuclei of two atoms fuse together (hence nuclear fusion). It can only happen under immense temperature and pressure. A star is a h... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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A: Mechanisms behind different metabolisms for regular and synthetic food Instead of thinking about how the body changes, I propose you think about how the food might change. In your world, there could have been a cataclysmic event that removed digestive enzymes from existence (what event that might be is the subject of another question...). This means that humans can no ... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: How can I indicate a third dimension on a map of outer space? Do it digitally. A screen is still 2-dimensional, no? However, a screen allows you to add functions such as rotating the map - a tried-and-tested method of showing 3D. See Google Earth for an example: You can also combine this with the other answers here to come up with a method of showing positi... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: How would we compile our code if all our binaries disappeared? We'd get on the phone to some of the people who did it the first time. No, seriously. We have a lot of experts in this field who are still alive, and they may well hold enough knowledge between them to build a working BIOS. From there, we can carry on the process a lot faster than it was done the fi... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: How dark can a habitable planet be? The second law of thermodynamics dictates that without a decent amount of energy, existing physical structures will decay because there are more ways of arranging an unordered structure than one carefully constructed to fit a purpose. That is, $ \text{order} \longrightarrow \text{chaos if energy} \lt... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: Size of the volcano that ends the world It all depends on how obliterated you want the Earth to be. If you want nothing left, you need to completely destroy Earth and accelerate all the remaining fragments so that they clear the area pretty quickly. Using some base numbers from this answer: The gravitational binding energy of Earth, $E{G... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: On feasibility of rotating space colonies On Earth: $$ aG = 9.81\text{ ms}^{-1} $$ That's acceleration due to gravity. On a spinning torus, you simulate gravity by living on the outer edge and using centrifugal force, for which the formula is $$ a = \omega^2r $$ where, as Thucydides says, $\omega$ is the angular velocity and $r$ is the r... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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Could we improve space travel using beamed energy? It is some small number of years into the future. We are regularly using beamed energy, as defined in this answer: large arrays of microwave transmitters. We have developed this so that these arrays are now positioned in orbit around Earth (powered by fuelled engines, regularly refuelled by probes). ... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: Is there a reason to believe that programming languages are going to converge? TL;DR: No. Programming languages are too diverse. Reason 1: Purpose There are, according to Wikipedia's list of programming languages, 806 distinct programming languages, excluding BASIC dialects and esoteric programming languages. There are some features of each language that wouldn't be too hard... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: What would make a sky appear purple during the day? Sky Colour The sky looks blue to us because of two major factors: Atmospheric composition Light hue and intensity There are also a number of other factors including atmospheric temperature and pressure, but they have a lesser effect - they only inflict small changes on the other major effects. ... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: Scientifically Plausible Reincarnation? I think the most scientifically plausible method available to us with what we know is one that has been mentioned: use computers. However, the tech required is still out of our current range, so if you want something applicable now I think you're out of luck. The basic idea goes like this: someone d... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: Low-tech inertial dampener options As you say, just give them low-tech inertial dampeners. If you're using inertial dampeners to mean the same as I am, then we already have the technology to do this and it's used in many places. Take, for example, a military helicopter, which needs to be a rock-solid gun platform for snipers at times... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: What if two planets orbited each other and also a star? This situation is quite similar to the current Earth-Moon system. As another answer here says, the two bodies do orbit each other, around a central point called the barycentre. The barycentre of the Terra-Luna system is within the Earth, so it just appears as if the Earth is wobbling but staying in t... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: Where in the solar system is the most viable place to put my colonists, after Mars and Luna? Habitability For a cosmic body to be habitable by humans, it needs to have a few things (or substitutes for those things): Oxygen Water Correct temperature Food source Some of those we can bring with us (like some food and some water) but we won't be able to send enough supply ships to sustain a... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: Larger moon = Larger Tides = No oceanic ships? It would not discourage oceanic shipping, but it would make the times it can be done more selective. If you have a port that is 20m deep and full at high tide, with our Moon you should still have at least 10m left at low tide (depending on the tides in that area). That's plenty to operate big ships ... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: City in the wake of the Yggdrasil: Engineering Considerations I think your concerns may be well founded. This city will be fairly similar to most other cities and I don't think there's a whole lot you can do about it. However, it will have a couple of good attributes to it: Tourism This is a very big tree, the only one of its kind. Anything like that is invar... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: What are the design considerations for my underwater settlement? Communication Seawater is highly resistive to radio waves at the frequencies we usually use them. (see page 7, section Sea Water.) However, at lower frequencies, 10-30 kHz, it is entirely possible. Unfortunately, this frequency allocation chart shows that the entire 10-30 kHz range is occupied. You'... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: Restoring the world after a global apocalypse Note: for the purposes of this answer, I have assumed no tech remains. If you do have tech surviving, then many of these steps will be easier. There seem to me to be a number of steps that you must go through to rebuild a planet. 1. Water Water is the most basic human requirement and without it ev... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: Brutal, unsubtle brainwashing: how does it work? As Pavel says, brainwashing is a process. And it's a process that's been done already. 1995, Russia. The Cold War is over. Boris Yeltsin in power. There is some resentment left over from the Cold War, but generally people are starting to see Russia in a better light: they didn't, after all, nuke the... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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What power generation method is the best to sustain a hovering city? The Technology We're in the year 2250 on an Earth-like planet. All the space on the earth's surface has been used up by the population of 15 billion, so we're moving into the air. Cities, along with all the farming and other capabilities they need to thrive, are being built on hovering platforms. T... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: Would white pupils/irises on an animal allow it to see properly? The pupil is black not because it's coloured, but because there's no light coming back out to colour the image you see. A pupil any other colour than black implies light coming back out, which in turn implies that the eye is not working at full efficiency. Light coming out means that not all the lig... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: What would happen to a planet without its core? Collapse. Gravity takes care of this. As soon as you remove the core from the Earth, you have a large void in the middle of it, and a lot of gravity acting straight towards the centre of that void. The void may also be a vacuum - depending on whether you replace the core with air or not - which will... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: How To Eat the Moon Do it over time. On each rocket launch, you can attach a bit of the required resources. Give it some small booster rockets to direct it the right way. When the rocket is at the peak of its parabola, fire the boosters to get the resources away from the rocket, into space, and going towards the moon. ... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: You've made it to another star! Now, how do you find its planets? You can do it most effectively by looking before you get there. Point your big telescope at the sky in the direction of your destination star. Record the image it captures. Repeat step 1 every month for a year or so. Combine the resulting images into one. Mark anything that appears round the star t... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: What if an Earth-like planet had no axial tilt? (impact on ecosystem) I'll do a quick explanation of the impacts of Earth's axial tilt to start off: As Earth orbits the sun, it's tilted at 23.5 degrees. This varies between 21 and 25 degrees, but I'll ignore that because the changes are slightly irrelevant here. With the tilt, our orbit looks like this: In this case... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: How would a person with modern knowledge of chemistry and medicine fare in Ancient times? Your biggest problem by far here is going to be getting other people to believe you. I'm assuming this mystical tutor is from the future? Given that, surely he must know that there will be problems getting society to believe what they're told. However, we've already done solutions for that on this s... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: Is triple-strands or multiple-strands DNA possible? It is possible but impractical. Double-helix DNA's structure is something like this: $$ \text{B "” (A/C/T/G) : (T/G/A/C) "” B} $$ where B is a backbone molecule, A/C/T/G is adenine/cytosine/thymine/guanine, "” is a molecular bond, and : is a hydrogen intermolecular bond. What's important here is ... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: Entry requirements for a Type n civilization The scales are fairly similar for each component you mention: simply, as you have a greater understanding of all of those fields, you are able to harness more and more energy. The fields you mention have a sort-of order of fundamentality. Engineering is impossible without physics; physics is impossi... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: What way to go about interstellar colonization is likely to be the first one technically and monetarily feasible? While uploading human personalities to robots is out of the question, giving robots robot personalities, capabilities and intelligence is not. So: Robotically Controlled Suspended Animation This method, which I shall term RCSA, makes use of robots (who have no concept of time apart from millisecond... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: A Human Hunter with Sonic Powers? It's already been done. Two species of moth, the hawkmoth and the tiger moth, use not just sonic but ultrasonic signals to defend themselves from bat attacks. The hawkmoth has only recently been discovered to do this. How? They use their genitals. No, I'm not joking. Have a look at this video (from... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: How fast could a climatic change forced by a civilization happen? Volcanoes This is the way that comes to mind first. Drop bombs in every volcano you can find, empower full enough to cause an eruption, and detonate them simultaneously. This does obviously have its difficulties: it is probably quite hard to stop a bomb detonating once it's in lava. The alternati... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: The power of the Jupiter projectile You are going to do a lot of damage. To restate the calculations PipperChip has done: $$ Ek = \frac{1}{2}mv^2 $$ $$ Ek = \frac{1}{2} \times 1.89 \times 10^{27} \times 13000^2 $$ $$ = 1.6 \times 10^{35} \text{J} $$ That's quite a lot of energy - enough to destroy 665 Earths. And that's just the ener... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: On a generation ship, how to handle the dead? I can see a few methods: 1. Cremation This is already a popular method of dealing with your body when you've passed on (at least here in the UK). A furnace doesn't take up much space, and especially on a ship where you have huge amounts of power, it certainly won't take up much of it. You could then... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: Explaining uphill rivers scientifically? As user3453518 says, this could happen for a short distance by inertia. I advise you to read his answer; there are some very good points made well in it. I'll add some science to it. The formula for gravitational potential energy is $$ \large E\text{GP} = mgh $$ where $m$ is the mass of the object... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: Implications of 'Respawning' There is much the same problem with teleportation. Let's compare the two: Teleportation I am going off what seems to be the most accepted method - it's not the only one. You are taken apart into molecules Information about these molecules is sent across some network to the destination The telepor... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: The Space Race - Do we remain countries or unite? It's a good idea but it will never happen. Becoming one nation is a good idea in terms of interplanetary commerce and diplomacy. If we're multiple nations, then we are pretty likely to have multiple currencies, and other planets aren't going to appreciate having to exchange multiple currencies to th... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |