Questions tagged [mathematics]
For questions about mathematics, including our own system of mathematics and alien versions of mathematics, focusing on their effects on societies and civilizations.
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Can cherenkov effect be used for telling how fast FTL spaceship moves?
Imagine an alternate universe where FTL do happens, let's just say the inhabitants discovered a hypothetical particles that allows ordinary matter to temporarily be in superposition of any amount of ...
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Procedurally generating a galaxy's worth of names
Background
I am investigating the practical utility and limitations of a procedural-generation-based naming scheme for stars and other notable or significant interstellar structures (e.g. nebulae, ...
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How can early people prove that their planet is a cuboid?
Imagine a cuboid planet with a thick atmosphere orbiting a star similar to our Sun. The inhabitants are as intelligent as humans and recently discovered the universal laws of gravitation and motion ...
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How can a race incapable of conceiving discrete quantities evolve?
Shamelessly inspired by this question, where a race was capable of counting only 0, 1 and ‘many’, I have designed a yet more extreme race!!
The Continuuoids are a pretty complex race. They can solve ...
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How can sapient beings engineer transportation and building when they can only count 0, 1 and many?
Imagine a species of humanoid beings living on an Earth-like planet somewhere in the universe; they have developed complex spoken and written languages and they can study their own anatomy and the ...
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How would roads and buildings be constructed if universe does not allow parallel lines? [closed]
Imagine we are living in a parallel universe where the parallel lines can only exists as imaginary lines just not in the real physical world, how would road and skyscrapers work in such a universe?
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Would you notice, visually, if the planet you were on was vastly larger than Earth?
By that I mean, if you are travelling about on a continent on a planet with a circumference similar to the Sun, how much further would you be able to see, and would it be noticeable, without more ...
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Maximum Size Limit for a Wooden-and-Bamboo Neo-Ziggurat
There is a concern that's been brought up only recently--steel and concrete buildings are environmentally wasteful. In further clarification, they waste away too much greenhouse gases. And ...
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Tactical illusion combat countermeasures (password system)
I'm directing a small team of highly skilled, intelligent operatives to raid a top secret research facility. Unfortunately, our reconnaissance has revealed that not only is this secure facility ...
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What could an algorithm for fast prime factorization look like? [closed]
For hundreds of years mathematicians have been looking for a method to quickly factorize a natural number.
For example:
3894757 = 877*4441
Today there's no way ...
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Can fundamental maths be different in another world? [duplicate]
Mathematics is the language of sciences. Can the fundamentals be different in another world/universe?
A few things I'm pretty sure are fundamental don't change:
$1 + 1 = 2$
$\pi = \frac{...
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Is there any math conjecture that would cause a lot of damage if disproven?
As a plot device I need some kind of conjecture that is used in lot proofs and widely assumed true. Something like many papers in computer science start with "Assuming P != NP ...".
In my story for ...
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Could a stone age civilization independently figure out about quantum mechanics [closed]
I was thinking of a stone age civilization that figures out how to use Quantum Mechanics. This civilization figures out some of the equations that describe Quantum Mechanics, and comes up with first ...
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Famous conjecture or unsolved problem that could be plausibly proven/solved by freshman mathematician?
Is there any conjecture or famous unsolved problem, that doesn't require much prerequisite knowledge and could be plausibly proven / solved by freshman?
My hero is average freshman in mathematics, ...
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Days and Seasons via Daily Eclipses in a Flat World
While working on the cosmos of a flat world, I came upon the idea of using a dim sum rotating about an axis through the central pole (as described here) in order to accomplish days and seasons. The ...
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Are there any mathematics that could only be learned by very few people?
I'm worldbuilding a situation where new drug increases IQ when given to preschool children. Unfortunately only 1% of the recipients get the benefits, the rest risk their development being stunted. As ...
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What kind of mathematical disciplines would be most useful for physics?
I'm worldbuilding a story, where a famous string theorist hires a student of mathematics to try construct a new theory. For better drama, my premise of the story is that the student never learned more ...
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Search for something difficult to count/estimate
In one of the stories I'm designing, in Middle Age time, the main character, Mr. P, is a good mathematician serving the King and other lords in different works (army numbers and suppliers counts, ...
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This is going to sound insane but… can we eliminate numbers+arithmetic from math? [closed]
This is going to sound insane but... would it not be nice, if there was no need for numbers (except for counting like in subscripts)? Mathematicians talk about eliminating the Axiom of Choice, because ...
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How can I create an infinite space bound by another infinite space (or contained within it)?
First let me preface by saying this question will be very math heavy, and might be as equally suited to math stack exchange as world building. For that I apologize, but since the reason for my ...
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Could a city of balloons provide its own static electricity? [closed]
In the question: Could a city be built out of Balloons? it asks whether such a city could exist. I would like to know how much electricity (static electricity) could be gathered from the balloons ...
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Velocity Difference From Teleportation
In Steven Gould's Jumper series, the main character has the ability to teleport, and he eventually realizes he automatically does frame matching when doing so - no matter where on earth his origin and ...
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How could someone calculate all potential outcomes of an action?
In my universe, some individuals possess the capacity to assess all outcomes for an action. As you can imagine, this is very useful.
The only way I can think of a plausible way to make that happen is ...
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Mathematics of monsters
Researching for a science fiction novel. My character loves math + I have dyscalculia = Problem. Therefore, I need your help.
In my story, there are aliens we can see, but we can't hear or touch. ...
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Could university accept a child without any formal education? [closed]
My story revolves about a life of a girl that is profoundly gifted even among a family of profoundly gifted. Her father founded a multi-billion dollar company focused on IT security and cryptography ...
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The Emperor bans the number seven on pain of death. Does this inevitably disrupt a medieval society? (trade and commerce) [closed]
The medieval Emperor is up to his tricks again. He has decided that the number seven is unlucky. Despite advice from his courtiers that it can't be done, he bans its use on penalty of death by any of ...
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What would be the mathematical formula to figure out a person's weight on a world bigger or smaller than Earth?
Okay, trying to figure out this math guys!
This may be simple math to some of you, but not me!!!
I googled various ways of asking this question and got some good results, but I'm looking for a simple ...
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How large is my airship and how can it fly? [closed]
Writing epic fantasy, there is no modern technology and no magic that could propel my airship. It is supposed to hold a large pub/brothel in it, with a few rooms.
How large would you say this airship ...
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Fully understanding a universe from within that universe. Gödel's second theorem [closed]
Gödel's second theorem asserts that the consistency of a formal theory containing arithmetic cannot be proved by the tools of the relevant theory itself (provided that the theory is in fact consistent)...
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Population Growth of an Extraterrestrial Colony
Okay, i need help here. I'm sure this question has been asked before and if it has, please refer me to it. But a story I have been working on for a while now revolves around the adventures of a colony ...
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A game to outplay Death? [closed]
Sometimes, when someone dies with things left undone, Death will be willing to play a game for the opportunity to come back to life.
However, there are several reasons why you'd expect not to be able ...
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historical examples of alternative typeset representations
In a scenario where scientists decipher a Math book of an alien culture, the last thing to expect is equations presented the way we know them.The way we write mathematical equations, is mostly taken ...
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How much would a 3" human male weigh?
In my world, which has an Earth-like gravity and environment, an adult, fit humanoid male is 3 inches tall. When I do a simple ratio calculation, I come up with him weighing 7.9 pounds. Basically, the ...
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How many aircraft could this submarine aircraft carrier carry on its flight deck? [closed]
I have a humongous submarine aircraft carrier (dubbed a Kharybdis-class submarine) shaped like a triangular arrowhead. This submarine can launch a wide variety of aircraft from its flight deck such as ...
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How might a Professor of Mathematics Change History?
A professor of mathematics is sent back in time to a post-Neolithic farming village. They accept him as their wise man, and he spends 30 years teaching them all he knows about mathematics until he ...
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If aliens exist, do you think that they ever discovered/created their own Math?
Let's say that the aliens exist, do you think that they are smart enough to create their own Mathematics? Or even their own Sciences?
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How advanced can a civilization get without zero?
More or less exactly what it says on the tin. Start with a group of cavemen on prehistoric earth, discovering fire, language, wheels, etc, and walk them along the path to civilization, but with one ...
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Could geniuses of the past catch up in a few months?
A historical college is facing closure, due their failing job placement, inflated grades and rumors that its nothing but a diploma mill.
The last chance for the new president to persuade to the ...
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Could public-key cryptography, such as RSA, be useful and secure in the late Middle Ages in the absence of computers?
Cryptography has long history. Really long one.
Of course, there is no need to say, how important was safety of secret messages between rulers and generals.
In olden times, ciphers used were pretty ...
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Computers in a society whose mathematics is limited to geomety
Consider a society whose mathematics never developed numbers. Instead, the entirety of their mathematics is highly developed geometry (the kind of work done in the first few books of Euclid's Elements)...
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Effects of a supermassive ship colliding with a planet
The basis of my story revolves around a single survivor escaping a massive colony ship gone critical above the skies of an alien world. After his escape via escape pod, the ship crashes halfway across ...
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Upscaling Insects and the effect resulting upon their biology
Assuming the information in
this video by the Cambridge University is correct, Planthoppers can jump as far as a meter. Their size ranges from 1cm in cooler climates to 5cm in the tropics.
With ...
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How realistic are these levels of cryptographic advances within the setting described? [closed]
Recently, I've been musing about cryptographic applications of theoretical future technologies for (breaking) secure interstellar communications. The setting is a video game (Stellaris) featuring ...
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Could a mathematical constant actually change? [closed]
(Note: I have a degree in mathematics, but this question goes a bit beyond that.)
Take a value like pi ($\pi$). Only a mere handful of decimals is all we could empirically verify to be "true" (...
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How to facilitate inter-species communication with math?
Mathematics is considered to be the language of the universe since it is the most fundamental type of logic (in physics anyway) and therefore the best way of expressing the universe (which is a ...
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How would a culture with a continuous language behave? [closed]
Suppose that there is a race of humanoid beings whose mouth parts are able to make a wide, continuous range of sounds (as opposed to humans who I'm considering to have a medium-sized discrete range of ...
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Little-endian number display system [closed]
What would be the effects on a human civilization if its convention of number display is little-endian, i.e. its people represent one hundred and twenty-three as 321...
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How fast could earth orbit the sun without its orbit changing?
It takes the Earth about 365.25 days to orbit the Sun on its current elliptical path. That means it moves about 30 km/s, 2×π×(149,600,000 km)/(1 year).
So, given that, how high could Earth's ...
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Terraform Mars or Dyson Ring?
Background:
The main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is the closest and richest source of non terrestrial resources to Earth in the solar system. Even though it is vast its resources are ...
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Is my celestial coordinate system efficient?
I want to know whether or not my starship's cordinate system is efficient or not. Soon after my race flew into the stars, we realised we needed to be able to tell where we were. We need coordinate ...
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