Questions tagged [life]
For questions about the characteristics of living beings in different settings. This tag is not for questions about the daily life of characters.
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Superactinide Incorporating Biochemistry
Alright so as it is known, trans-uranic elements are universally unstable. However, in this setting, I'm using forms of quark matter that can imitate the nucleus of transuranic elements at least mass ...
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Could a planet be cut in half and still sustain life? [closed]
Say some sort of anti-planet weapon shoots an arc of energy slicing the planet in 2, could the said planet keep it’s atmosphere and life.
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Underwater life on a 3G world [closed]
I'm creating a 3G ocean world and am wondering how the heavier gravity would affect life under this ocean?
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What evolutionary driver could produce life that are animated only by light?
Imagine an alien world populated by silicon based lifeforms, the mega fauna can only be animated by exposure to adequate lights from the star or the moon. This world concept is inspired by a ...
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Existence of life using sulfur instead of oxygen
All life on earth (or at least most of them) require oxygen, at least to form the organic molecules that build up life. We know that sulfur has similar chemical properties. Organic compounds that ...
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Darkness on a hycean world
Hycean worlds are planets twice as big as earth and covered in water oceans and with atmosphere full of hydrogen. A dark hycean world is one such world tidally locked to a star with one side forever ...
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Plants or something else that enriches distilled water
I'm writing a story in a world very similar to our Earth, but with few differences.
In this world, the "human" beings have to deal with the shortage of drinkable water. But they have plenty ...
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Reasons why a sentient universe would create life? [closed]
The basic idea I had was that the universe basically thought itself into being and from there decided to create life. It sent out the seeds for life to begin, then created a race to watch over things. ...
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Biological siege weapons: Part 2 - Can a living thing effectively perform the role of ranged siege weaponry such as trebuchets?
As was pointed out by the great answers of my first question regarding biological siege weapons, organisms can be rather capable of making it through fortified defenses at close range, but what about ...
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Biological siege weapons: Part 1 - Are living things capable of breaking down the gates of a medieval gatehouse?
The setting features biomancers who, to summarize, are magic users who can create living things as minions or servants through various ways(seeds, modified eggs, whatever), have the option to directly ...
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How big of a reactor a colony of a million should have for self sustaining, closed loop existance, assuming current level of technologies [duplicate]
Suppose there is no sun, how much total energy is required to grow food, recycle air, water, and waste for a single person. I want to know how large of a reactor would be needed to keep alive a ...
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Would soil alone be able to provide everything that's needed to feed the development of an animal body without in-between edibles?
The setting features biomancers, mages who are like necromancers in that their magic revolves mainly around the use and obtaining or creation of minions or servants or the modification of said ...
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What if all life disappeared from the earth?
What if all life (plants, animals, bacteria, fungi, and everything from the smallest cell to the largest whale) disappeared instantly?
And here I don't mean things related to the disappearance of ...
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Is an almost entirely water-based planet stable enough to stay as a planet for long enough for complex life to form?
Imagine an earth mass that consists purely and entirely of water that orbits a star similar to ours at a similar orbital distance to Mars(or whatever distance would be sufficient for the planet to ...
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Too much oxygen and not enough carbon
If a planet has a lot of oxygen to support mega flora and fauna, how much would be too much?
My planet has the oxygen content about that of the carboniferous(as a starter example), which had a about ...
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Indicators of Ai Super Intelligence [closed]
Given the certain state of Ai, what indicators would show some level of ‘Super Intelligence’?
Here are some of my ideas of 'Super Intelligence' this is subjective, of course.
Able to operate on ...
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Realistic reverse aging?
More than a few times in fiction they've had a sentient species age in reverse, as in the children look like adults and the adults like little children. My question is how could this trait be ...
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Biosolvents for Life
What biosolvents could, in theory, permit the emergence of life on other worlds? I have been recently looking through possible biosolvents and I have found a good number, but I am specifically looking ...
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Synthetic hydro carbon based Life
This question includes Genuine Artificial intelligence as life so long as it is self replicating and sapient. Hard science only please.
Can a sapient self replicating entity be designed to exclusively ...
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Scientific explanation for rainbow fire or sparks from a biological entity
I recently re-watched guardians of the galaxy vol.2, and the creature at the beginning could shoot rainbow colored fire. This got me thinking, (as in my spare time sometimes I like to just write a ...
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Would this planet be habitable for intelligent lifeforms
I am trying to make a universe using math and this is a planet from the first solar system I am making. Firstly the star. This star, which I don't have a name for, has a mass of 1.3 solar masses, a ...
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How long can a vampire live?
Okay, say I have a castle with a single vampire living in it. They need to drink the blood of 5 humans per day to survive, but they can substitute with animal blood, or by taking small amounts from ...
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How would the ocean smell if there were no life in it?
My characters are on a planet with no life that somehow has a weakly breathable atmosphere. They're on a beach and they note the smell. This is salt water so maybe the smell is different from, say, a ...
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How can I change Earth to become like Mars?
Earth has its own current population, 7 billions individuals or so. Everything is going great: there are animals, rivers, houses and factories. The world as we know it (without pandemic!).
One day ...
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Is This Living Planet Plausible?
My idea is an planet that is one living organism wrapped all around an rocky foundation. It orbits an sun of one solar mass, and has an Earthlike radius. Its albedo is about 20%, so it gets 1098.4 W/m^...
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How will resurrection affect inheritance law? [closed]
In our world, but in the future, humans have just discovered a technology that will resurrect any person for which a sample of DNA can be obtained. Now, for the first time, some people have been ...
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Oceans of sugar?
Simple/Vague question but what would it take to have a world that oceans aren't salty but sweet? Oceans full of sugar is that even possible?. Also secondary question could life survive in the water?
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Tropical Moon Orbiting Gas Giant [duplicate]
I am asking this question, “How would it be possible for the moon of a gas giant to naturally be habitable for human life?” Specifically, I’m looking at these criteria:
Has a tropical climate with ...
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Can two distinct large isolated life pockets on the planet evolve independently and then merge without driving one another to extinction?
In the geological history of my planet, the plate tectonics resulted in the assembly of a kind of "ring supercontinent", that completely encircled a portion of the ocean and isolated it from ...
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A bacterial organism that survives on the surface of Venus
Yes, you read the title right.
Naturally this cannot be DNA/RNA based, the highest temperature organisms have survived as we know it is 122 degrees celsius and Venus surface is 4 times hotter on ...
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What systems would be needed to keep two halves of a spaceship viable for humans?
A large space colony transport ship (100 colonists) set off for Europa to populate a colony recently built by drones (near future, the 2070s). The six-year flight was going well until unidentified ...
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Life und a Double Planet System [closed]
i am currently working on a CG Short for my Portfolio. It takes place in a Binary system and just tells the Story of a Pilot on one of the Planets.
Anyways, my question for today is how we could ...
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How can we avoid the evolution of inductive reasoning?
Inductive reasoning is one of our most powerful thinking tools as humans. It allows us to find patterns in what we observe and generalize these patterns to predict what will happen in the future.
Even ...
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The Earth is our Moon - A Reality check for a Binary Planet System [closed]
This question is connected to another one I asked about Interstellar Transport Vehicles, but more concerned about what we could expect from a Binary Planet System.
So I want to talk about a few major ...
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How would multicellular organisms evolve in a microgravity ocean?
How would living organisms develop/evolve in a very-low g ocean environment?
The environment would be a small radioactive core surrounded by a small mass of water, less than 100 km in diameter, in the ...
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The cruel life-cycle of biscuits (cookies)
Captain's Log
For some time we have been monitoring broadcasts from a planet that calls itself "Earth". We have noticed that it is fond of placing short documentaries in slots between the ...
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How would plasma-based lifeforms interact with physical matter?
I believe that I had previously wrote about the possibility of energy beings, although it seems that them being made of neutrinos is right out. So I instead thought of them being made of plasma. Some ...
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Is Oxygen necessary for the Sulfur Cycle?
I know that part of the Sulfur cycle requires elemental Sulfur to be oxidized. Every example I've found uses Oxygen and becomes some combination such as Sulfur Trioxide or Disulfur Trioxide. If other ...
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Could complex Precambrian life be possible?
I have a really good question. Could it be possible for complex life to have existed in the Precambrian? I’m aware that only the fossilized remains of bacteria have been discovered from that time ...
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Would scanning solar systems/planets for carbon concentrations be a viable way to search for alien life?
Working on a story about a crew of astronauts on a mission searching for evidence of alien life, either still living or long extinct. Not a biologist or chemist, but from my elementary understanding I ...
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How to plausibly reanimate a person?
What hypothetical scientific procedure could be used to reanimate someone who is brain dead. I am aware that it is possible to bring someone back if they are clinically dead which is where a vital ...
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Bending bones like metal bars
Any person who was once a stupid teen knows how it feels to break a bone and be stupid enough to pretend like nothing happened to hide the injury for weeks on end until their parents notice.... It is ...
user72862
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Lifespan of Plutonians [closed]
Honestly, I think my questions about a fictional Pluto are by far the interesting to me, so I have another question.
Now that I’ve got my humanoids pinned down, and what protects them from the cold, ...
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In what way would a regenerating undead be "undead"?
We all know an undead is a reanimated corpse, something rotten and decomposing yet still animated. Normally an undead (if made of flesh) will have an expiration date after which it won't be able to ...
user71341
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Could life generate twice on a planet using slightly different materials?
Extremely low possibility, but if life synthesizes from scratch after life has existed on a planet for a few million years, would the two separate lineages be able to co-exist?
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Habitable Planet with Highly Eliptical Orbit
Would it be possible for life to develop on a planet with a highly elliptical orbit? (Similar to a comet, but possibly less extreme.) If so, what conditions would be necessary and what would the life ...
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Could bacteria survive on a star?
If the right requirements are met, could bacteria survive on the Sun?
The bacteria would spend most of their time in hibernation and reproducing, and when the time comes, they spread out on plasma ...
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Living machines. At which point can machines be considered a life form or organic?
I found this definition of life. Life is a thing that can adapt to its environment, grow and replicate. But mechanical, electrical, and electro-mechanical machines are never called alive.
People ...
user71341
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What would life be if humans had a healing factor? [closed]
The main premise is that since homo sapiens evolved, humanity has possessed a healing factor similar to wolverine, but lesser.
How would modern-day life be different?
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I'm building a fantasy world with three large moons and orbiting a distant sun. I need help with the following: [closed]
1 - What might the days and nights be like, in terms of comparative temperatures and length, with three moons gravity and a massive orbit?
