Posts by celtschk
OK, so we have two sun-like stars (I'll just write "suns" from now on) at $100\,\rm AU$ distance, and a (probably earth-like) planet at $1\,\rm AU$ distance from one of the suns. I'll call the sun ...
Whoever has this machines and the resources to operate it, basically has absolute power. It is the ultimate weapon (just delete your enemies). It will allow you to go to space easily. It will allow...
Well, some mosquitos when flying make a noise that is clearly audible by a human (as everyone who had one in the room at night knows from painful experience). So I assume that ship has the same abi...
Many animals also prefer to chase their food, but are not allowed to at zoos. And a troll that has to decide between starving and scavenging almost certainly would prefer the latter. Therefore a s...
We are in a future where genetics has advanced to a point where arbitrary modifications can be done to living beings. Now a geneticist wants to make a flying human. That is, he wants to modify a hu...
In four dimensions, you don't have a rotation axis (fixed straight line) but a rotation plane (fixed plane). However, not every 4D rotation has a rotation plane; there are rotations which have no f...
Yes, the ends of a wormhole basically behave like a normal celestial body (assuming there's no additional physics not yet known to us that affects their movement). They would move with the expandin...
Raw materials may be available everywhere, but maybe the best FTL drives are built in the Aldebaran system, the best conventional thrusters are built around Barnard's Star, the asteroid mining equi...
Well, I'm not a biologist or biochemist, but I think your scenario could be made to work (although still very unlikely) as follows: Our genetic code is based on four nucleotides which make up two ...
While there would certainly variations, I think for the dominant treatment there would be only three possibilities: Enslavement. If we can keep control over the dogs despite their intelligence, t...
Since in your world, there are no natural time cycles, life will not have an external synchronization. Therefore the main changes in your world will be to changing weather (unless your world doesn'...
Here's one method that doesn't rely on either gravitational time dilation or simulation: If you look at the basic equations of quantum mechanics, you notice that if you scale all masses by a commo...
OK, so humanity is going to space, and they are going to take farm animals into space, not only humans on earth value meat, but humans in space do, too. However, they don't want to waste precious r...
There are many one-time energy sources around: They are called bombs. So maybe there's a leftover nuclear bomb around. People would naturally not normally want to trigger it. However, if it is the...
OK, so scientists have found a great new substance: That substance makes you think ten times as fast! The advantages are obvious. However, as every medicine, this pill will have side effects. Ther...
Here's an unconventional idea (which however assumes you are able to build large space constructs): Put a gigantic parabolic mirror around Barnard's star which concentrates the energy in a focal po...
Back in the days when men were real men, women were real women, and small, furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centaury, an obscenely rich woman decided s...
Space is full of radiation. When doing long stays in space, no matter whether it's a generation ship on its journey to a new colony, a research ship exploring new worlds, a freighter delivering goo...
I think all the virus would need to do to have that effect is to dramatically ramp up the levels of adrenaline and testosterone. I think it is perfectly possible that a custom-designed virus could ...
Yes, this is about Dr. Evil's dream: Sharks with frickin' lasers. Except that the lasers would not be artificially attached, but be part of the animal itself (bio-lasing instead of simply biolumine...
One thing that necessarily happens on a generation ship is that people die of old age. Now that poses a tension: On one hand, you need to handle the dead with dignity. On the other hand, you probab...
To add to the other answers, there's also the possibility of the water appearing to run uphill due to a an optical illusion. I'm not aware of any river where this is the case, but since it happens...
First, an "acceleration shield" in the true sense of the word is impossible. However, one could imagine something close to it: The reason why acceleration affects you is that it actually doesn't a...
Plants can have very different pollinators: The wind, insects, and even birds. However, is there a conceivable scenario where a plant could naturally have evolved to depend on humans as pollinators...
I think such plants would have no use for leaves. Leaves are basically solar energy collectors, and since your plants do not do photosynthesis, they have no use for them. I'd expect all the energy ...
