Questions tagged [physics]
For questions regarding the physics relevant to fictitious worlds. General physics may be off-topic.
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Maximizing efficiency of the The geodesic sphere (literally being on cloud nine)
I’ve read about the geodesic sphere from other questions here and the underlying thing that confuses me isn’t the materials or the physics since both work, it’s making people live inside one. But what ...
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Combat between flying power armor: how would it work
In a certain world far beyond the reaches of our own, there are humans. Humans make war just like on Earth. They have an early modern level of technology- cannons, arquebuses, swords, axes, polearms, ...
user107102
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Would you read about a universe that has no shadow? [closed]
I'm devising a story that, due to some physical/mythical/"spiritual" reasons, has an entire universe that exhibits NO SHADOW at all.
The explanation to this phenomena I'm thinking about is ...
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What causes my expedition RTG to produce way less power when deployed in a magic realm
Dear colleagues from the Institute of Subatomic Research,
as you will have noticed, our latest expedition to the Magic Realm (TM) through the Strange Portal (TM) was a considerable success. No one ...
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How could entropy control go wrong? [closed]
The magic system of my story works by either increasing or decreasing entropy with the decrease requiring a specific spot ex. dust collecting into a concentrated point or the increase requiring an ...
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Person flying upwards at high speed after falling downwards [closed]
This question is a continuation of the one here.
This is for a book for my eight-year-old daughter, who loves science, and I am trying to involve as much correct science as possible.
A woman with a ...
CapIsland
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How might the surface of a tectonically active planet appear without a global ocean?
I hope this is "specific" enough, and sorry I don't really know formatting rules yet.
I'm trying to build a habitable desert super-Earth, where water can only exist seasonally around the ...
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Formula for determining maximum flight speed of superpowered individuals
I would like to be able to roughly determine the maximum horizontal flight speed of any superpowered individual using only the maximum acceleration that person can produce. To do this, I will need a ...
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Would Artificial Gravity With Short Range Be Possible?
Assuming a spaceship with artificial gravity was possible, would it be possible for it to have an extremely short range, like a few feet. So you'd be able to have a ship with 1g but not have it ...
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How to increase the structural integrity of comets (for the purpose of moving them)?
Suppose there is a comet of radius 500m made of mostly ice, with the rest being rock, dust, and other frozen gases. The comet is being hollowed out in order to use the water as reaction mass (giving ...
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Can magnetic fields be used to either strengthen or weaken chemical bonds? [closed]
My understanding is that magnetic fields compress atoms slightly. Could this conceivably be used in combination with certain substances with very specific properties to strengthen them in the presence ...
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Can you climb a ladder into space? [closed]
Can one climb a ladder into Space?
If you have a heavy sphere traveling in Earth's orbit and attach a super-strong, superlight cable to it, down to Earth, could you travel via some sort of carriage ...
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Could a solid metal, tapered, segmented whip with a tip of equal mass to a 5.56 round produce fire arm like ballistics if cracked? (Not on the ground)
The whip would be around 10–11 feet long and most likely made from some steel alloy. If we were to ignore the strength limitations of humans and assume that someone could actually effectively use this ...
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How much weight could a sauropod carry or pull?
I can find many sources for mass, but none saying how much any sauropod could carry or pull. Is there a formula for this stuff? Does anyone have a general idea? I want like a range that they could ...
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How do rivers work in a hyperbolic world?
So, I want to write a story set mostly in a world using hyperbolic geometry (except brief beginning and end bits with the main characters coming from/returning to our world), but I'm a little confused ...
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Definite pitch designs only, what musical instrument and class of musical instruments would be easiest to design if the world reset?
I saw a couple other threads with slightly similar questions. But I want to stress with this one, that the focus is what instrument and instrument family would be the easiest to build anywhere in the ...
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How well would various forms of data storage survive in the vacuum of space?
In my story, some personal effects get jettisoned from a spacecraft airlock. Some time later (months to years), other characters discover one of these items drifting in space. It holds information on ...
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How expensive to take 80% of plastics out the ocean?
Suppose that all the world would work together to take plastic out of the ocean. Here I include microplastics, which are much harder to remove.
How expensive would it be to remove 80% (in wheight) of ...
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Black Hole Containment
Black holes are often featured in advanced sci-fi technology. A significant challenge for such technology is the safe containment of a black hole. Some stories have electrically charged black holes. I'...
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Would the atmospheric circulation experienced on my world's high platforms seem to be reversed?
In this world, that rotates in the same direction and at the same rate as Earth, where the land platforms that cover around 10-20% of the world's surface is (magically) suspended at the 1 ATM level, ...
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Catching a fast slug of metal in space
You have a mass driver which throws a 1 kg slug of iron at your spaceship. The slug reaches your spaceship and at that time it is going 30 km/s relative to the spaceship. You intend for the spaceship ...
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What is the danger zone of a waterfall to aircraft?
In my world, which is similar to that described in this answer, with suspended platforms between 5 and 40 km above the global sea, with 1 ATM at 25km altitude, with a similar gravity and scale height ...
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An atmosphere that gets denser with increasing altitude, to support these flying creatures
I'm thinking about implementing a race of flying creatures in my current setting: an earth-like planet with a breathable (enough) atmosphere. The easiest way to do this is just creating a race of bird-...
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How long would it take for a Japanese-style castle to burn to the ground?
In my story, the land of Koyokuni has a Japanese-style castle, Akimachi Castle. The castle - and indeed the entire city of Akimachi - is uninhabited, though the land is being repopulated after the ...
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Amount of antimatter needed to propel large spacecraft?
Okay, So i'm not really into physics or mathematics but i'm trying my best to learn some bit of how the calculations needed for the amount of antimatter needed to propel a spacecrafft to relativistic ...
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Could a planetary object spin at (or near )the speed of light? [closed]
And if so, what would it look like to an observer on the planet and an observer in orbit around the planet?
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Communication between a stationary observer and a spaceship traveling at near lightspeed
I was wondering about the possibilities of communication between a stationary observer and a spaceship traveling at near light-speed(lets say 99.99%). If the observer can send out signals at a certain ...
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Would direct matter to energy conversion be hazardous?
A simple question...
In a setting I am working on, I want most advanced civilizations to use a form of Cymatics to facilitate matter to energy conversion.
They have the technological acumen to "...
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How should I determine the properties of keels and ether?
I was reading this PDF on the speed of sailing ships, and it occured to me that I need to determine the physics of the flying sailing ships in my world. Being flying sailing ships, there will be no ...
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What would happen to an Earth-like planet if it had a more magnetically permeable inner core?
I was contemplating the impact of doping an Earth-like planet's core with a substance that alters its magnetic permeability. Specifically, I considered a scenario where the planet has an improved ...
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What type of security measure/contingent conditions could make jumping into a portal impossible inside a laboratory?
I am writing a spy-adjacent story where one of the characters is able to open and close portals that teleport them to a set number of known locations.
There is a moment in which this character tries ...
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The Wheeler-Feynman Handshake as a mechanism for determining a fictional universal length constant enabling an ansible-like link
I'm writing a science fiction story set in a future where aliens have made contact with us and established interstellar trade.
I'm trying to invent a fairly believable universal standard unit of ...
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What potentially breathable gas behaves the most like a liquid?
So I've already found that Neon seems to be the highest viscosity gas, at least that I can find. However, I don't feel like simply adding a lot of Neon to the atmosphere of my fictional planet of ...
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Could three-dimensional beings engineer a multi-dimensional structure?
Consider the bigger-on-the-inside concept of sci-fi staples like the TARDIS from Doctor Who. A generally accepted explanation for how a space’s interior could be larger than its exterior shape and “...
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Plausibility, habitability and conditions of shell-system
I have some questions regarding the feasibility of this planetary shell-based construction. I have read other questions about shell worlds, but this case has some unique elements, so I thought I would ...
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How deep underwater can red photosynthesis work?
The Setting:
I have a binary star system.
First star: K5.2V class Orange Dwarf, 60% the mass of Sol, 17% luminosity of Sol, and at 4.5 billion years old. This star is the only one with a planetary ...
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Could a race create a 1 Megaton non nuclear explosion?
I've been taking a look at Largest artificial non-nuclear explosions . There they mention non nuclear explosions of 3.2 - 2 kilotons occurring 80-100 years ago. Also, one of 4 kilotons around 40 years ...
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How long could a sealed room/building smolder and still be capable of a backdraft/flashover when reopened?
As a hypothetical, say a bad dude decides he needs to burn a home for some reason, but doesn't want the fire to be immediately spotted and responded to. He gets the house sealed up to the point where ...
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This teleporter causes gravitational warping of the user’s body—how come it doesn’t kill them?
So I’ve got a nice point-A-to-point-B teleporter machine, and for some extra flavor I’d like to have the experience of using it include a healthy dose of gravitational/physical warping to push, pull, ...
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High Gravity Giant Shell
I am designing a genus of eusocial, high-temperature, extraterrestrials from the planet 61 Virginis b. They are based on tungsten chloride and use sodium chloride as a solvent. This species has ...
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Decaying Planets
Assume there is this planet with only one type of life; a planet-wide mat of microscopic lithotrophs. These creatures eat through the surface of the planet over time, converting the surface into gas. ...
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Orbital limit for a sapient-habitable moon?
How far does a moon need to be from the roche limit for sapient life to evolve?
This is something I've been wondering about for ages. Life on exomoons seems to be a really unexplored subject in ...
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Is there a material lightning does not strike?
I was imagining the possibilities of creating a ship mast which could not get struck by lightning. Is there a material it could be made of that would never get struck by lightning?
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Would lenses work in a universe with four spatial dimensions?
Let us assume that we have a universe with four spatial dimensions rather than the three of our universe, in which matter can exist that is a four-dimensional analogue of three-dimensional matter.
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Could a slow rotating planet combined with high density atmosphere create high winds?
I am trying to design an alien ecosystem around a K type star. My idea was to have purple plants and high wind atmosphere so originally I wanted to make it tidally locked. However after watching some ...
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Is using gravitational manipulation to reverse one's center of gravity to walk on ceilings plausible?( in a fictional sense)
While brainstorming for my story I thought of a character utilizing their gravity-controlling ability to "flip" their center of gravity and walking on the ceiling/street pole /side-of-...
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How much energy would it take a person to make an object weighing 10 tons move 10 m/s with an inch punch? [closed]
We assume that the object will withstand the impact. Air resistance and friction force are neglected.
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Stop all mobile phones with EMPs
In this question, I found out that a single EMP is not enough to stop all mobile phones from working. So as a follow-up question: how many EMPs would you need, and how expensive would this be?
To be ...
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How do I store enormous amounts of mechanical energy?
Imagine a typical steampunk setting. Now, let's make two grand assumptions about it:
Steam engines here are MUCH more efficient than those in our world. Yep, we have to violate laws of physics for ...
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EMP that causes all mobile phones to stop working
I know that there exist nonnuclear EMP weapons, but these do not influence the entire world. Could someone build a device that creates an EMP that is powerful enough to make all mobile phones on the ...
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