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Activity for Monica Cellio‭

Type On... Excerpt Status Date
Comment Post #275787 When we work out what the expectations of this category are, it'd be great to create a help page explaining it (possibly drawn from meta posts) and link it in the category description. Moderators can create help topics and admins (hi) can edit the category description on request.
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over 4 years ago
Edit Post #275930 Post edited over 4 years ago
Edit Post #275870 Post edited:
minor adjustments to make this more clearly a science-based question
over 4 years ago
Edit Post #275771 Post edited:
over 4 years ago
Edit Post #275801 Post edited:
over 4 years ago
Edit Post #275771 Post edited:
name change
over 4 years ago
Comment Post #275802 We're going to go with this; changes rolling out soon.
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over 4 years ago
Comment Post #275803 Creative Science is awfully close to Creation Science, a branch of Christianity if I understand correctly, which we don't want to be confused for. Scientific Creativity, while longer, doesn't have that challenge.
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over 4 years ago
Edit Post #275801 Initial revision over 4 years ago
Question Is this the right name for the site?
We try to hammer these things out during the proposal phase; really we do... but in the last day or two we've seen some objections to the name "Speculative Science", and if we're going to change it now is the time, so... do we want a different name for the site? One objection was that the current ...
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over 4 years ago
Edit Post #275796 Initial revision over 4 years ago
Answer A: Do we want to keep the [science-based] and [reality-check] tags?
I would think that, at the very least, [science-based] is implied by this site's scope and doesn't add anything. (I didn't think to ask for it to be stripped on import, but presumably it's not hard to kill.) On WB I believe the rule was that [science-based] shouldn't be the only tag on a question; ...
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over 4 years ago
Edit Post #275771 Post edited:
over 4 years ago
Edit Post #208703 Post edited:
"fall" means toward the sun, the opposite of what I mean here
over 4 years ago
Edit Post #238521 Post edited:
no need to keep a historical link to a sandbox on another site
over 4 years ago
Edit Post #275771 Initial revision over 4 years ago
Question Welcome to Scientific Speculation!
Welcome to the Codidact home for the Scientific Speculation community, an outgrowth of the SE Worldbuilding community. Please use it, report problems and make requests on Meta, and collect your thoughts about what we need to support this community. About scope This site was proposed to be narr...
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over 4 years ago
Answer A: How to use a certain technology to communicate with colonies but keep the how-to a secret?
If the Internet and all its component parts (routers, DNS servers, certificate authorities, etc) vanished tomorrow, would you know how to rebuild it? To most people on most of these worlds, the QEC system is "magic" -- not literally magic, but it's there, it works reliably, and for most people that'...
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almost 6 years ago
Answer A: What would be different if a person has broader visual spectrum than normal
I have aphakia, so I can address the near-UV end from personal experience. For the near-IR, I can only reason from other sources. In daylight, subtle effects like the patterns on flowers mentioned in another answer are completely dwarfed by the giant UV source in the sky. Somebody seeing into the ...
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almost 7 years ago
Answer A: What do Martians use for months and weeks?
As you point out, Mars has so much stuff going on in its skies that its moons aren't going to provide meaningful calendrical support. Nothing else is both visible and consistent enough to act as a replacement. I suggest, therefore, that your indigenous Martians won't look to the sky for divisions o...
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almost 7 years ago
Answer A: How does an ordinary person announce major discoveries?
Twitter. (Or Facebook, or other similar vector.) What you need is the "share" or "retweet" concept, a button that a reader uses to put your post in front of his readers, whose readers have a button... this is how Internet phenomena start. There are no guarantees; lots of interesting, legitimate po...
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over 7 years ago
Question How expressive is a color-based language?
In the answers to this question I learned that some cephalopods communicate via color: Some cephalopods are capable of rapid changes in skin color and pattern through nervous control of chromatophores.[8] This ability almost certainly evolved primarily for camouflage, but squid use color, pattern...
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almost 8 years ago
Question What is plausible biology of ocean-dwelling, tool-using, intelligent creatures?
I want to develop a water-dwelling, intelligent species that could ultimately reach space.1 My question here is about the biology of such creatures. I want my creatures to live in the water, not move onto land, but shorter outings onto land not only would be ok but would help my plot. This makes m...
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almost 8 years ago
Answer A: How can a planet orbit two or more stars simultaneously?
There are three ways a planet can be positioned in a binary-star system: The two stars are close together and the planet orbits both of them (technically it orbits their center of gravity). This is called a P-type orbit. Because the stars have to be far-enough apart to not collapse in on each oth...
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almost 8 years ago
Answer A: Psychological effects of teleportation and coping mechanisms
Teleportation as you describe it is a sudden change in location that the teleportee perceives through all available senses. We obviously can't test that on humans today, but we can get some clues from the closest approximation we can get with current technology: virtual reality. VR, like flight sim...
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almost 8 years ago
Question About how many planets are plausible for this binary-star system?
I have a binary system in which my world orbits one of the stars, not the pair, in the habitable zone. The stars are relatively close together (because I want the secondary one to shed significant light on the planet too), tentatively about 20AU apart with the secondary star in a small nebula. (I'm...
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over 8 years ago
Question Could animal life develop on the TRAPPIST-1 planets?
Recent news reported the discovery of three "earth-like" planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system. This is interesting because the star is a small, cool red dwarf about the size of Jupiter. The three planets in the habitable zone are tidally locked and about the size of Earth, could have atmospheres, and r...
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over 8 years ago
Answer A: The evolution of neon kittens
The cat above glows because it was exposed to a virus that carried a suitable gene: US researcher Eric Poeschla has produced three glowing GM cats by using a virus to carry a gene, called green fluorescent protein (GFP), into the eggs from which the animals eventually grew. [...] The GFP g...
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over 8 years ago
Answer A: Why would robots use verbal communication?
Networks go out sometimes, or can be jammed. This might be particularly problematic in high-radiation environments. See also this answer for reasons they might not be available. Voice communication always works, so long as the recipient is within range, there isn't too much background noise, and t...
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almost 9 years ago
Question What would this nebula look like from a planet?
I have a binary system. The primary star is F- or G-class; the secondary is K-class, 20AU away, and in a small reflection nebula (suggested here). A planet orbits the primary in the habitable zone. This article suggests that F, G, and K classes can all support habitable planets; it's talking about...
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almost 9 years ago
Answer A: How does Santa avoid Heart Attacks from bad cholesterol?
If Santa ate all that, he'd be packing on the pounds way more than he already is (and Santa is not a lightweight now). Since nobody's reported a 2-ton Santa, there must be another explanation. Santa's metabolism is really, really souped up. This makes sense; even though he's not doing the hard job...
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almost 9 years ago
Question How much does my secondary star heat the planet orbiting my primary star?
In this question I asked about the lighting patterns from this system: A really helpful answer there explained when the planet is getting how much illumination. This question is about heat. On earth I have a pretty good sense of the temperature variations over the course of the year at dif...
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almost 9 years ago
Answer A: How will uploaded personalities be represented in a government?
You said "assume uploaded personalities have been granted the franchise", which I am interpreting as "assume they are both 'persons' and 'citizens' under the constitution", which would be prerequisites for having a vote. The constitution assigns voters to representatives based on residency but does ...
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about 9 years ago
Answer A: Would it be impossible for me to have a nebula in my planet's night sky?
I asked How can I safely brighten my secondary star? because I was looking for a bright night, though not specifically a nebula, for my habitable planet. This answer suggested placing a star in a reflection nebula, which could be as close as 20AU to the primary star that the planet is orbiting. Neb...
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about 9 years ago
Question How practical is it to capture an asteroid?
Some answers to this question about mining asteroids suggest that it is easier and cheaper, in the long run, to bring the asteroid to you: move it into orbit around the planet where you are already set up to mine and process whatever it is you're harvesting from the asteroid, instead of moving your m...
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about 9 years ago
Question How can you make a stable configuration including a moon that has a moon?
A moon is, fundamentally, a rock that's caught in the gravitational field of a bigger rock (a planet) and drawn into an orbit. Some of Saturn's moons, for example, are speculated to be debris from the breakup of minor planets, while others are more-conventional small planets. (Please feel free to c...
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about 9 years ago
Question How do seasons work in a binary system (planet orbits one star, not both)?
I have a planet orbiting one star in a binary system. When the planet is exactly between the two stars it will experience a double day; when the primary sun sets the secondary one rises, no overlap. (My second star sheds enough light to make a difference on the planet.) When the planet is on the o...
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about 9 years ago
Question How can I safely brighten my secondary star?
I have an earth-like planet orbiting one of the stars in a binary system. I have learned that, for G-class stars, if the secondary star is 100AU from the primary one, I can expect the secondary star to have an apparent magnitude of about -17, about 40 times brighter than the earth's full moon (-13)....
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about 9 years ago
Question Orbiting one star in a binary system: what are the effects of the second star on the planet?
This blog post about binary-star systems points out that, rather having the stars be close together, they could be far apart and a planet might orbit just one of them. It gives the example of the binary system in Alpha Centauri, where the two stars are 23 astronomical units apart. The post ends: ...
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about 9 years ago
Answer A: How to preserve the remaining trolls?
I agree with another answer that, if your cultural values permit it, giving over the dead to the trolls could work. That'd be a tough sell for early-middle-ages Europe, but then, caring about troll welfare would be too and you've got that, so this might work. Two other approaches: Military applica...
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about 9 years ago
Question How would humans be affected by a 12-hour day?
In Can I significantly shorten the days on a planet that can support human life? I asked about changes needed to a planet to support human life with a much-shorter day (12 hours or so instead of 24ish), and learned that speeding up the rotation of an earth-like planet would be feasible. (Answers are...
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over 9 years ago
Answer A: What types of musical instruments would develop underwater?
As this answer says, most musical instruments as we know them won't work underwater. You might see something completely new arise, but we should assume that people will first reach for what is easiest. And what's that, for underwater music? Vocalization, as noted in the linked answer. There's no ...
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over 9 years ago
Question Can I significantly shorten the days on a planet that can support human life?
I would like to have a world on which humans can live unaided -- they can breathe, the climate is workable, they can eat the local vegetation, etc -- but on which a complete day is substantially shorter than it is here on earth. I think this means I need a faster rotation or a smaller planet or both...
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over 9 years ago
Question Do different star types produce plants with different properties?
From this chart it appears that the star types closest to our own are K-type (oranger, a little cooler, and less than half as bright) and F-type (bluer, a little warmer, and much brighter). If I want to place an "earth-like" planet around one of these star types, how should I expect plant life on my...
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over 9 years ago
Answer A: Interstellar internet use cases, or "What if the internet was mail-order?"
For many uses, I agree with this answer that you would see local internets serving live content (as now) backed by interplanetary replication. The technology exists today to manage large data repositories over unreliable or highly-latent networks with eventual consistency; we'd see that applied to t...
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over 9 years ago
Answer A: Prison in space
By putting prisoners in a place where they wouldn't be able to survive on their own, you are taking on a larger burden of caretaking: What if there is a mechanical or electrical failure on the station and people die? How are you going to keep these distant prisoners fed and basically healthy? Do y...
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almost 10 years ago
Question Where should I place my city in space?
I have a city in space that will have a local population and a lot of travel in and out (center of commerce). Should I place it out in open space or near a planet? Being near a planet obviously involves gravitational forces that affect both the station and travel; my gut feeling is that that's a po...
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almost 10 years ago
Question What could cause Earth to drift out of orbit over a period of months to years?
I would like to have Earth slowly move away from the sun, taking somewhere between several months and a couple of years to reach the point where human life on the surface is no longer possible. (The story revolves around efforts to get protected in time and the resulting conflicts. So yes, we have ...
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almost 10 years ago
Answer A: What would happen if the oxygen levels decreased by 15 percent?
Denver has about 17% less oxygen than at sea level. Note that this isn't reduced concentration; there's just less air. This answer doesn't address the increased proportion of other elements in the air, only oxygen reduction. According to this article on altitude sickness, the first effect that kic...
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almost 10 years ago
Question How can a spaceship unknowingly interfere with tides on a planet?
I've asked before about my polytheists with competing moon gods. I now have a better understanding of how tides -- a very visible manifestation of lunar influence -- work with multiple moons (thanks), but now I need to disrupt it. My story calls for a human spaceship observing this planet (presumab...
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almost 10 years ago