Posts by Monica Cellio
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 ...
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 ...
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...
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 communicat...
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 zon...
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. Sa...
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...
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 prerequis...
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 ...
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...
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...
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 st...
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 ...
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 trol...
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 24...
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 eas...
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 sh...
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 w...
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 repo...
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 st...
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 i...
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. (T...
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 th...
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 (than...
Broadly speaking you need three things: (1) something that makes it infeasible to keep living on land (most people won't move unless pushed), (2) the inability to evacuate from the planet, and (3) ...
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