Posts by _X_
Possibly one would refer to the most common thing/action that happens during the 24h cycles. For instance, sleepies, from sleeping wakies, from waking up waits, from the fact that you need to wa...
Automated sensory selectivity, i.e. not passing sensory data to the conscious mind, is the result of evolution. Certain sensory inputs have been deemed irrelevant and thus placed in a sort of secon...
During WWII there had been a global mobilisation of personnel. If medical checks and basic prophylactic standards had not been in place, any flu-like disease could have easily resulted in a global ...
If the body of reference is a human body, then you may want to use the spine and the arms as antennas. The vertebras will be coated in metal, as the answers to the linked questions suggested, as we...
No. Not in the way you are suggesting, and not to the frequencies and power that you are dreaming of. However... you could go around your problem and have a symbiotic relationship with some light...
Your trees have been selected by evolution such that their aerial roots anchor themselves in the ground, but would rot and decay if the ground has a high content of water. Borrowing from L.Dutch's ...
In our world, four important factors have determined the look of our clothes since the dawn of time: available resources, climate, purpose and moral. In my opinion, microgravity is simply going to ...
The aliens are machines. They reached a very singular singularity (pun unintended), in which they were able to precompute all that there was to precompute until the end of the universe. This is a ...
Depending on the story, these Y people could have the general look of drowned corpses at sea: bleached skin, slightly bleached hair, a general, incurable, swelling of the abdomen, circled eyes, col...
Narcolepsy is a pathology that lists sudden events of muscle collapse, akin to fainting, or seizure attacks, among its symptoms. As far as we know today, it does not seem to be entirely due to exte...
Hyperthyroidism It is a pathological condition caused by over-activity of the thyroid gland. The symptoms include Weight loss, sometimes significant, may occur despite a good appetite. There is ...
There are some places on Earth that have an unusually high frequency of lightnings. For instance, Venezuela. The explanation, in this case, consists in moisty air locked by mountain ridges, and the...
You could imagine arranging the brain lobes like the segments of an orange. The spinal chord could depart from the center, with the brain lobes arranged vertically in the skull. There would need to...
Of course! Accumulators Accumulators are easier to produce. Volta's battery design could be complemented by a manual worker hot-swapping batteries to the electric engine, just in the same way in ...
Nitrous oxide A.k.a. the laughing gas. It is a colorless, with an almost unnoticeable metallic taste. Some WB users may know it as a mild anesthetic, for instance in dentistry. Exposure to nitro...
Sparkling Pele's hair Tiny tinfoil confetti! How about we keep the ability to start fires artificially, but make enough changes so that fires do not start naturally? There are two main causes tha...
To create a complete new biochemistry, we are going to make carbon-carbon bonds obsolete. Carbon-carbon bonds are the backbone of our carbon-based life. To make them obsolete, we will force life to...
I'd suggest the simplest and cheapest of them all: gravity. Recall that gravity pull is zero only at infinite distances. For convenience of the story, the drone will always be under the gravity pu...
Let me add two more options: Option 1: Progeria, or the "good" farnesol deficiency Real-world Progeria is a disease causing accelerated aging. Affected individuals typically live to their teens, ...
Q: Can a genome be partially sequenced along with trial and error to develop plants that will survive in low pressure? No. The genome can be partially sequenced manually given enough reagents, tim...
As long as the astronaut has a map of the sky from Earth where stellar bodies are grouped by distance (like on onion peels), then geometry suggests that there must be at least one point, or more li...
The two humanoid lifeforms are two mental states inhabiting the same bodies. The switch is triggered, for instance, by the day/night cycle, or it follows a seasonal pattern. All the planet is simul...
ROBOTS! Why send a bunch of under-evolved meatbags to understand a machine, when you can send the most advanced machine available to understand its alien counterpart? If not, then two distinct te...
Safely stored in the cold caves under a glacier in the North pass, lie the dart tips made by a rod of white Phosphorus covered by a layer of Gallium, the latter in the shape of a harpoon tip. The g...
