Activity for Canina
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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A: Should we remove "What would X sport in space look like ?" questions Let's look at the (rather poorly named) FAQ page in the help center which tries to specify in a bit more detail than the few words of a site name what the site's scope is: > Scientific Speculation is for questions that arise from worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapo... (more) |
— | 7 months ago |
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A: A few questions as I dip my toes in the water here That's a lot of questions all lumped together in one, and as I don't have an hour or two to write up good answers for each of them, short ones will have to do for now. > 1. There are 500+ tags, apparently not a single one of them has a summary or a wiki. They're obviously copied from worldbuilding... (more) |
— | over 2 years ago |
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A: Where does this differ from a regular Science Q&A? As I see it, the operative word in answering the question you're asking here is speculation. Now, of course, it's almost impossible to capture every nuance in a site name, which is why we have a paragraph on what the site is all about in the help section. (It can probably be expanded and improved upo... (more) |
— | almost 3 years ago |
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A: Which sciences are welcome? Myself, I think that all sciences are in scope on this site. (We're already barely getting any traffic; artificially restricting scope further probably won't help much with that.) The way I see it is: if it can be reasoned about using the scientific method, then it probably won't be off topic just be... (more) |
— | almost 3 years ago |
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A: Wrong category name in FAQ - "Researched Q&A" instead of "Rigorous Science" You are quite right. This has been fixed, thank you for pointing it out. (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
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A: Avoiding Incidental Ion Drive damage to Following Vehicles? NASA's Fundamentals of Electric Propulsion: Ion and Hall Thrusters by Goebel and Katz, JPL, March 2008 discusses the issue of current ion drive beam focus limits (along with many other matters relevant to ion drives). Section 5.3.3, page 207: > Another significant grid issue is alignment of the... (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
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Are there tags we should remove from all questions? When we did the initial import from Worldbuilding SE, we also inherited the tag set from there. This leaves us with some tags which are (should be) redundant on Scientific Speculation. I primarily have the science-based tag in mind -- after all, all posts on Scientific Speculation should be bas... (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
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Do we want to keep the [science-based] and [reality-check] tags? When we did the initial import from Worldbuilding SE, the \[hard-science\] tag was handled specially and routed to the Researched Q&A category while removing that tag, but its siblings \[science-based\] and \[reality-check\] were left as-is and routed to the main Q&A category. My personal experien... (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
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A: Requirements of posts in Rigorous Science The way I see it for now (and I reserve the right to change my mind in response to discussion in response to this :-)) All of these points are valid for both questions and answers in the standard Q&A category as well; it's just that, in Researched Q&A, we take the normal nice to haves and bump man... (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
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Character set conversion(?) failure during initial import from SE It looks like something went wrong during the import, causing imported posts to get the wrong character encoding. I fixed one at https://speculative-science.codidact.com/q/225476, but have come across others as well. Can this somehow be fixed in bulk, ideally in place without having to re-do th... (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
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A: How do we handle imported questions that don't fit the new site? I would suggest simply closing them as off topic. Deleting the questions seems a little heavy-handed for now, but we should indicate to visitors (and people who might want to answer them) that a particular question isn't a good fit for this site's scope. Absent deletion, the mechanisms that rem... (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
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Would nanotechnology-scale devices be vulnerable to EMP? For the purposes of this question, let's use the definition of nanotechnology from the tag wiki excerpt: "technology that works with sizes of less than 100 nanometres". An EMP can vary in frequency range, but Wikipedia gives "DC to daylight" as excluding infrared and shorter wavelengths. It also giv... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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How close to each other can Earth-mass planets plausibly form from the protoplanetary disk? We occasionally get questions and answers that discuss how close to each other planets can be and still meet some criteria. For example, this answer to the question ''Habitable'' planet close to a star. For the purposes of this question, I am not interested in answers discussing rogue planets which ... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Increasing muscle power without increasing volume Yes, there is likely a way, though I will admit I'm not sure how much of the desired about 20x difference it will get you. By the time you get into those mass ranges, the strength of the bones, tendons and attachments will likely be as important as, if not more so than, the muscles themselves. Also, ... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: If a moon shattered into pieces, what would happen? The short version is that it depends entirely on the manner in which the moon disintegrates, or more specifically the energy thus imparted on the resultant fragments. I'm assuming here that the mass remains roughly the same, so nothing like matter-antimatter annihilation. I'm also assuming that the ... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: How to define operational altitude on other planets? (Do you need it to be strictly an absolute operational altitude?) The easiest approach (no pun intended) might be to go with something similar to what airliners on Earth do. While for the passengers it will be translated to "we're cruising today at 36,000 feet", that's a simplification. What airlin... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Would Moore's Law apply to mechanical computers? Sorry to be a bit of a spoil-sport, but... Moore's law doesn't apply. Moore's law is the recognition that semiconductor complexity (in integrated circuits) increases at a particular rate. The very Wikipedia article itself you linked to states that Despite a popular misconception, Moore is adam... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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Would there be any major disadvantages for a species to have six legs instead of four? I want a world in which animals roam the wilderness on four legs, yet at least some of them are able to do the kind of carrying and fine handling of objects done by humans. The planet is superficially similar to Earth, but it is not Earth, and there are no humans around (at least not yet; who knows w... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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How far from the Sun could we detect an alien spacecraft similar to the Voyagers? Suppose that there is an alien spacecraft travelling towards the Sun. This spacecraft is similar in design, size and power output to Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 as they were immediately after launch from Earth, and is coasting in its orbit (no powered maneuvers taking place). Also suppose that a budding... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How to explain life on a moon orbiting a non-habitable planet It's a commonly held misconception, but you really don't need a lot of gravity to retain an appreciable atmosphere. Conversely, gravity alone is no guarantee that a body will have an appreciable atmosphere. There is a lower bound which is dependent on atmospheric composition and temperature, but it's... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Write once perpetual storage, is such a thing possible? Since you say in a comment that you're willing to settle for a combination of tamper-evident and write-only unless tampered with, as opposed to strictly tamper-proof (which indeed is a much harder problem to solve)... You could easily model this after aircraft black boxes (flight data recorders and ... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Why might obesity be seen as attractive in their culture? I actually believe there are real-world Earth cultures you can draw inspiration from here. So you want a culture where hard work is considered a virtue, but you also want that culture to see being fat as being a good thing. Given that energy stored = energy input – energy expenditure (by basi... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: A moon that is hard to orbit That's plenty possible. In fact, if you're willing to fudge your requirements just slightly, it could easily be the case for Earth's moon. Let's look at the equation for orbital speed, also known as the vis-viva equation $$ v = \sqrt{\mu \left( \cfrac{2}{r} - \cfrac{1}{a} \right)} \approx \sqrt{\c... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Methods for simulating low gravity on high-g planets Do it the way NASA did it in the 1960s -- with ropes and pulleys! No, really. I distinctly recall seeing a video clip, but can't recall exactly where, of how Apollo astronauts trained for walking on the Moon, with its lower gravity. What they had was what looked like (but likely wasn't, at least no... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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What's the fastest (least time consuming) way to completely freeze a living, adult human? Jane was different from the other kids. While all the other kids were playing with fire, Jane played with ice. Now, Jane has grown up and is an accomplished scientist or engineer in your discipline of choice. Jane never got along with Joe, and after an argument between them, Jane has decided to lite... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Reference to Earth in Intergalactic Universe Actually, the "light year" is a unit of length that has its origins in Earth's movement around the Sun, but has since been detached from it. The SI unit of length is the meter. It is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a secon... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Room-Temperature Animal Just as I was contemplating this, L.Dutch posted an answer saying in part that one of your two options would be to 1. tune your surface temperature to that of the environment/background (unpractical if you are out of tropical zones and want to stay alive) I'm going to go out on a limb and say t... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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Why would life on a different planet use DNA? Life on Earth pretty early on settled on deoxyribonucleic acid organized in chains of base pairs as the means to code for the construction of proteins which make up a lifeform. It also has the benefit that it can be biologically copied relatively simply and accurately. But why would life that has ev... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Is it possible to have a planetary system with planets having perfectly synchronized orbits? Is it possible for such a system to exist? I'm sorry, but no. At least not according to orbital mechanics as currently understood. Kepler's third law of planetary motion is one of the old workhorses of orbital mechanics, and applies in this case. As translated and summarized by Wikipedia, it st... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: How to make my humans more cold-resistant? There is actually real-world precedent for what you want. Many indigenous Australians have a genetic mutation that helps them cope with a wide range of temperatures, including freezing. As discussed by Wikipedia here: The Australian Aborigines are genetically evolved to stand a wide range of en... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Can an Alien Breed With Earth Animals? Let's take a stab, and say that your creatures look something like this: Those are pretty dog-like, don't you think? Now, let's look at where that one came from, evolutionarily speaking (its cladogram): That ancestor is Dasyuromorphia, as in The order Dasyuromorphia (meaning "hairy tail") ... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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Could circa-1600 humans have domesticated or tamed kangaroos? The article Why Can't All Animals Be Domesticated? on Live Science sets out a list of criteria that a species needs to meet in order to be successfully domesticated by humans. In short, that list states that to be successfully domesticated, they... cannot be picky eaters must reach maturity quickly... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Reasons why air travel isn't feasible, but ground travel is? Okay, I'm going to take a stab at this, and run the risk of having to delete this answer if it turns out my assumptions are wrong. Given what's in the question thus far, though, I think that an obvious choice would be the fact that... It's much easier to transport large amounts of material on ground... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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What is the smallest change that would allow an Earth-like planet to have atmospheric COâ‚‚ levels of several percent? Start with a planet just like Earth as of today (whatever today means when you are reading this). For simplicity's sake, disregard mankind's continuous spewing of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere; if you like, think of this new planet as not having humans, and maybe not even any fossil-carbon fue... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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Will my bird likely be able to fly in this atmosphere on this planet? I'm working on a species of large bird, and trying to determine whether they will be able to fly or not. I know that this equation likely applies: $$ A = \cfrac{L}{\cfrac{1}{2} v^2 \rho CL} $$ where $A$ is (wing) surface area, $L$ is lift force, $v$ is speed, $\rho$ is air density, and $CL$ is coe... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Could burning debris keep burning in space? First off, something that might seem like an inconsequential detail or perhaps even nitpicking, but really isn't in this case: You don't need oxygen for something to burn. What you need is an oxidizer, of which on Earth oxygen happens to be one of the most readily available. Thus the typical fire tri... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: Venus Transit during huge solar flare All right, let's look at this from a geometric point of view. As seen from Earth, the Sun subtends anywhere between 31.6 and 32.7 minutes of arc in diameter. The area enclosed by a circle (ellipse with the semi-major axis defined as equal to the semi-minor axis) is given as $A = \pi r^2$ where $r = ... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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Is this planet's atmosphere stable and reasonable, and anything to keep in mind for lifeforms living in it? Inspired by the answers to What can I add to an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere to make it unpalatable or poisonous to humans, yet stable and breathable to local creatures?, I am building a planet that currently... Has an iron core, for the magnetic field to help retain the atmosphere Has a surface ... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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What is the habitable zone around my star? I have built a star that is loosely based on a real-world star. It has the following properties: Spectral class G Mass: 1.03 M$\odot$ Radius: 1.02 r$\odot$ Luminosity: 1.05 L$\odot$ Surface temperature 5,792 K Now, I'm trying based on Calculating the Habitable Zone to calculate the inner and oute... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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What can I add to an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere to make it unpalatable or poisonous to humans, yet stable and breathable to local creatures? I have a roughly Earth-like planet in a solar system some distance from ours. The atmosphere of this planet is largely similar to that of Earth, but particularly, has a somewhat higher oxygen content; currently, I'm thinking about 26-28% oxygen (O2(g)) and 65-68% nitrogen (N2(g)), compared to Earth's... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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How quickly could a cyborg determine that a bullet has been fired from the sound alone? L.Dutch made a worthwhile observation in an answer to a different question: Moreover for close range shots there is almost no time to react and move the limb: for a shot fired at 20 m, with a speed of 200 m/s, you have only 0.1 s to have the limb in place to protect you (if you see the gun pointe... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Life on planet regularly hit with meteorites Besides a4android's discussion on the similarities of your planet to Earth... A sphere has an enclosed volume of $ \frac{4}{3} \pi r^3 $. For a 1 m (a little over three feet) diameter sphere this becomes 0.52 m$^3$. (You can see intuitively that this is the right order of magnitude as the enclosed v... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: If our moon had an atmosphere, could it have seasons? The reason why Earth has seasons in the way it does is Earth's axial tilt relative to the Sun combined with its atmosphere. Earth's moon has a much smaller (about 1.5°) axial tilt relative to the ecliptic than does the Earth (23°). Thus its seasonal variations are much smaller. Note that this is i... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Earth-like Moon around the Gas Giant. Eclipse length? For the TL;DR, see the bottom of this answer. Okay, so first of all, the orbital period of the gas giant around its star is $256 \times 24$ hours, and I'd like to establish the distance from the planet to its star. Since you haven't specified anything about the star itself, I'll go with our Sun for ... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How would an advanced civilization have constant communication between planets? I am going to assume that by constant, you really mean constant as opposed to instantaneous. In other words, we are still bound by the speed of light propagation delay. We are also bound by the laws of orbital mechanics as currently understood. Since you use "planets" plural, I take it that humanity... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Is it possible to build a bridge between planets? I'm very tempted to say that no, that's not possible in practice. At least not without severely stretching the laws of physics. But like Nobody proposed, you could perhaps make it work if you are willing to introduce a super-strong material, plus some other paraphernalia. Let me introduce you to a f... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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What impact is required for a visible (from Earth) ejecta plume on Earth's Moon, and would the Moon survive? Take the Earth-Moon system as we know it. Now, something causes a large rock to be lobbed in the direction of our moon. Exactly how that happens is deliberately left unspecified; it could be everything from an Earth-Mars war, to a rogue planet passing through the solar system, to something else entir... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Simple non destructive spaceship liftoff engine I'm going to take the comment you posted on the question, because it is important. The story should not be driven or build around the technology. But I have the ambition to also not just handwave it, because I'm myself interested in physics and does not like stories that doesn't care about the mo... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Why would a fire dragon still be afraid of torches? Fight fire with fire. Remember, the fire-breathing dragon breathes fire for some reason. Even if the dragon doesn't realize that it breathes fire, the ability almost certainly evolved together with some particular set of behaviors. Most likely, this reason can be summed up as one or both of: Defen... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Many eyes or fewer? I don't think there is any inherent reason why a large number of "eyes" would necessarily have to imply the downsides of compound eyes. For an extreme example, you could consider each cone or rod in the human eye to be a separate organ. (Stay with me!) In the case of humans, they all share only two ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |