Questions tagged [microorganisms]
For questions about microscopic organisms.
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Effects of breaking down the oceans plastic within 5 years [closed]
The oceans are full of plastic. In a story about the morals of DNA changes, one scientist meaning well creates a group of super bacteria/microorganisms (afterwards just called bacteria for simplicity ...
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What are the parenting options available to species that reproduce by fragmentation?
How would a species that forms new life only when the parent fragments, do parenting?
Like sea stars and molds, my species forms a new child when the parent is broken. However, this is the only means ...
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What life could survive in a backrooms-like enviroment [closed]
you know what the backrooms are, you're on the internet.
for those who somehow don't: the backrooms is an internet urban legend that entails a pocket dimension that you can get to via no-clipping ...
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Abiogenesis ocurring inside an organism
Some time ago I pondered about where does our gut microbiome come from, and upon research it apparently comes from outside, of course, but then in a speculative biology kind of way I envisioned an ...
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The believability of flesh eating plankton
Context
I am disigning a place called the Poisoned Sea, see this question for description, there are clouds of purple plankton that eat the tough flesh of the dead God-Eaters and anything that enters ...
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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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What is a good rate of growth of size and numbers of creatures that start with a microorganism?
I am thinking of a story where a meteor carrying a microorganism lands into some hot spring mountain caverns that between a city and a desert and evolves to be able to able to take DNA samples from ...
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How can I use sensory details to convey to the reader that something is being digested in acid? [closed]
I have a scene where a slime monster engulfs a person and begins digesting them by secreting acid. This scene is being viewed from the perspective of another person standing some distance away. I ...
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How to survive a fall from a skyscraper by having super powers to turn yourself into mushrooms?
Given:
The character falls from a skyscraper, 200-300 meters high
The character has a super-ability to transform their muscles and tissues into yeast, mycelium, fungi, slime molds, spores, and ...
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Realistic Micrometer-Tall Humanoids
Okay, I have a species of humanoids who are 1 micrometer tall, when fully grown. They have the same exterior proportions as humans, but due to their small size, they don’t need internal organs as we ...
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What sort of Life Form could my Creature Excrete to Make Its own Habitat?
Concept: An organism that through its natural biological processes excretes some form of microscopic life that spreads through an environment by breaking down organic (and maybe inorganic) matter and ...
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How could exobacteria be biologically compatible without using terrestrial DNA?
Humans are terraforming what they believed to be a barren planet when they encounter a new species of bacteria. This species is exobacteria (bacteria of extraterrestrial origin), but the human ...
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Is it possible to have a cold flame?
Imagine I have this make-believe psionic microbe-or-something that feeds off of the heat energy from combustion.
And let's say that this new fire radiates cold instead of hot.
The big problem with ...
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How to protect yourself against alien microbes without a space suit?
One of the main problems when dealing with alien life would be that of microbes. Having evolved under completely different circumstances, first contact between any two different alien species could ...
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How plausible would a self-aware, conscious viral life-form be?
In my story there is a parasitic viral life form which infects multiple species and has the capability to hijack the entire host body as well as communicating with the host. Essential to the story is ...
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How would sudden introduction of plastic-eating microbes affect the 21st century?
A time traveler went back in time to the 21st century, but don't worry: he took every precaution possible to not interact with anything*.
*Of course, it's impossible to not interact with your direct ...
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can bacteria or microorganisms produce or excrete blood?
my question is inspired by @Renan comment in this question Can a naturally occurring milk river exist? and so i think i want to incorporate it for my blood river from my old question what organs or ...
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Could sentient mitochondria evolve?
Hideaki Sena's cult classic novel, Parasite Evil and it's video game sequels revolve around the premise of mitochondria gaining sentience and usurping mankind after aeons upon aeons of multicellular ...
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What if God in my world was like Immortal microbes/germs with hive mind? [closed]
I have been sitting on this one for a while. I decided to probe this a bit further and make it the world for my next work.
I think there are several parallels you could draw between this and our ...
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How long would it take to eat the Sun?
Premise: Space lab is working on making synthetic cells out of different materials. Experiments are classified as too dangerous to be disposed of with conventional means, and are set on an collision ...
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How Would Organic Material Erode If Petrified
So in my world, the main Antagonist has the ability to drain the life from things around her, turning them to stone in the process. That made me wonder how organic material would erode if it were ...
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Designing the properties of a biological agent that could wipe out 90% of the population without being stopped
I'm interested in coming up with a plausible agent of destruction, virus or fungus or engineered weapon or what have you, that could conceivably wipe out a majority of the human race. What physical ...
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Can a microorganism reproduce so fast that it can be used as weapon?
I've seen almost the same question here, but it was like Can a microorganism reproduce so fast, to be used as fuel?. Then, I was inspired and new question came up. Does some real microorganism in some ...
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Could a microorganism reproduce so fast that it can be used as a sustainable “burnable” fuel source?
[Repost to condense question down] For a science fiction world of mine I am considering using a type of microscopic organism that is able to generate energy as it goes through its lifecycle, a life ...
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The Microecology of Living Quarters
A Question on the Balance of Ecosystems on the Microbial Scale
Say that we had some living quarters on an Earth-like planet, within a moderately-sized base. The inhabitants of this base can freely ...
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How can the Progenitors oxygenate a world?
The Progenitors are an ancient race of almost infinite technological sophisitication, who mysteriously vanished millions of years ago for no good reason (I don't like TV Tropes, but you are welcome to ...
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Radiotrophic Fungus Organelles
The question is basically summed up in the title but here is some context:
Context
I got a character who has been genetically engineered to handle high doses of radiation exposure (50,000 grays) and I ...
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Microorganisms that excrete primarily sugar?
Exploring the idea of "living" matter, (possibly non-carbon based if necessary), decomposing by bacteria (or similar) into sugar.
In our world, sugars are held quite valuable by living systems, so ...
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Everything alive in the world dies this instant. Without bacteria to decompose anything, what happens to the remains? What does this look like?
So when I say everything, I mean everything. Humans, animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, all dead. If the bacteria and other detritovores and decomposers can't decompose anything since they themselves ...
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Creating a new domain of organisms
Anyone who has taken high school biology know that all life on earth are divided into three different domains: Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukaryota. On a planet in the outer habitable zone of a K-type ...
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Could a microbe plausibly generate lift gas for manned balloon flight?
QUESTION
I was thinking about ways of justifying practical balloon flight for a pre-industrial civilization, when I remembered that some microorganisms produce methane, and better yet, hydrogen.
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Could a self-aware bacterial supercomputer start its own ecosystem?
I know A LOT of this gonna be a stretch and that I'm probably misunderstanding or exaggerating current real-life trends in science, but that's kind of why I'm asking the question. We know it's ...
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18th century zombie scientists
How would the Royal Society react to news of walking corpses and would germ theory or other medical sciences be advanced due to the study of them? What theories and conclusions about the cause and ...
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How small could an animal be before it is consciously aware of the effects of quantum mechanics?
The Megaphragma mymaripenne is the smallest animal with eyes, brain, wings, muscles, guts and genitals.
If by some miracle it could be still shrinked, how much smaller could it get before it starts ...
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How do Nanites receive, store, and execute instructions?
How do we develop & send instructions to nanites and how do they receive, store, and execute those instructions?
Just like in biological organisms, some instructions need to be included for how ...
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What weapons would be effective at a microscopic level?
As part of a series of questions that I've been doing about microscopic humanoids ...
In my world , there are a race of microscopic humanoid organisms ( 0.2 mm - 0.22 mm ) . They live in a variety of ...
user15036
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Would primitive weaponry be useful when scaled down to microscopic size? ( series )
As part of a series of questions that I've been doing about microscopic humanoids ...
In my world , there are a race of microscopic humanoid organisms ( 0.2 mm - 0.22 mm ) . They live in a variety of ...
user15036
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What tiny animals pose a threat to the survival of microscopic humanoids? (Series)
In my world, there is a race of microscopic humanoid organisms (200 μm - 220 μm) who live on land in a neotropic suburban area. They live on plants, leaf-litter, trees, rocks, etc.
Given this ...
user15036