Posts by ArtOfCode
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", i...
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 m...
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 bri...
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 Ea...
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 to...
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 array...
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. Ta...
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 wi...
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 possib...
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...
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...
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...
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 th...
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/thym...
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 ...
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 at...
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...
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 mus...
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 ...
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 ...
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...
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 parabol...
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 mo...
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 bec...
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 problem...
