All Questions
Tagged with science-based hard-science
107 questions
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How does one accurately deduce scale from any given fantasy map (to the best one can)?
Sometimes, a person might wish to know the touch scale of a map, whether made by another person or you, in order to better understand the world a story is taking place. How might one go about deducing ...
- 329
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3
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209
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Is there a NON-CHEMICAL weapon that can target the central nervous and/or muscular system?
There is research on nerve agents and gases, but are there any man-portable weapons that may be able to harm the CNS without gas? Thanks.
AMENDED: Results in symptoms like shaking, tremors that are ...
-1
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4
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Does this alternate Universe with easier-to-understand physics behave the same as ours?
I realize the following question is non-trivial, but I would greatly appreciate any all help.
I'm interested in creating a SciFi story that takes place in an alternate universe I'm calling Universe X. ...
- 131
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3
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Would compound-like eyes that gave a "pixelated" image be possible/practical
The title is horribly worded, but I have no idea how to otherwise title it.
Basically, the idea behind these special eyes is that they would be structured much like real-life compound eyes, but the ...
4
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2
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What would happen if your body had more capillaries?
I'm working on a character who can emit fire from her arms and forearms. I read in a previous question that an increased amount of capillaries can increase the body's ability to carry heat away. If ...
- 41
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1
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Would a T-type Brown Dwarf just glow magenta in a world's sky (airless or otherwise) or would it actually be a lightsource?
Imagine a brown dwarf of the T-type. Current knowledge is that these bodies appear magenta. Would such a body produce enough visible light that it would be a source of daylight for any worlds ...
- 115
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165
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Could we create an artificial metamorphosis on humans with genetic engineering? [duplicate]
I'm writting a hard-science book where adult humans with the help of genetic engineering can undergo metamorphosis, could it be possible?
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Would would an undiscovered element show up as on a light spectrum analysis? [closed]
All elements, when hit by light, reflect it at varying frequencies and by looking at the frequency of the reflected light it is possible to find out the elemental composition of an object, even from ...
8
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How would increasing or decreasing atmospheric pressure affect the amount of precipitation over a planet?
I'm designing planets of varying atmospheric pressures. How would increasing (or decreasing) global atmospheric pressure affect the amount/frequency of precipitation over a planet?
- 985
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1
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Suborbital Flight: Duration, Acceleration, Delta-V
As I understand it, the delta-V requirement for a suborbital, intercontinental flight is only slightly lower than that for Low Earth Orbit, but a few percent of fuel mass could make a large difference ...
- 120k
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2
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How fast would winds be on a terrestrial planet with a 12 hour day?
I'm designing a high gravity (1.38g) world with a fast rotation rate (12 hours). I think the circulation cells would be stronger with a faster rotation rate, but I'm trying to figure out what a ...
- 985
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Designing A Ring World For A Science-Fantasy Setting
Why Am I Doing This To Myself?
Because I'm designing a surreal pulp science-fantasy tabletop roleplaying game, and I want to take the coolest elements of hard sci-fi and mix it with the punchiness of ...
- 51
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1
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Remote listening device inside human ear and powered by the body
Some related (but not the same) questions:
Listening (eavesdropping) device that can be put into victim's ear? (which is closed because of the need to focus)
Microphone implanted in and powered by ...
- 31
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3
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445
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How hard is it to find ship-sized object via satellite?
I came up with a world that is similar to ours but is recovering from oil reserves depletion. In other words, there is very little to no petrol remaining, so the ones who can use it are mostly ...
- 1,374
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1
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How strong would the wind have to be to strip away flesh?
How fast would air have to move for the gas molecules to strip away at a person's body until nothing is left? I would prefer that actual formulas are used and that it takes less than a few seconds for ...
- 1,334
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Who on Land Will Survive The Inverse Great Dying?
Long ago, I asked a question on what would create an inverse Great Dying. Allow me to clarify on what I meant:
252 million years ago, the worst event in the history of life on Earth occurred. 70% of ...
- 14.9k
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How to Build the Fictional Continents Using Our Real Continents
Presented here is a map of Earth with the fictional continents resurfaced, by the Redditor "Stagman1111":
Source
From left to right, the presented additional continents are Mu, Atlantis and ...
- 14.9k
4
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2
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What POD Would I Need For Earth's Lost Worlds to Exist Today?
This is a map of Earth as depicted by the DeviantArtist ToonHolt:
As you can see, many new landmasses have been added, from lost worlds like Sundaland, Zealandia and Kerguelen, to fictional worlds ...
- 14.9k
1
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1
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It is possible to slow down time without a Black Hole? [closed]
Well, I saw a interesting question in other sites and it made me wondering.
Since cryogenics and hibernation aren't exactly that easy, and colony ships that travel through the eons in space carrying ...
- 421
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1
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Scanning for Resources and Mapping a Rogue Planet
EDIT: Thanks to Starfish Prime's answer to this it looks like the atmospheric ice would only be ~16m thick, and the water vapor is a rounding error. I have adjusted the layering to account for their ...
- 585
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1
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Feedback/help on planetary density?
I’m at a bit of a wall here. I have numbers for mass, radius, and gravity for my planet (Neogaea), but the density is escaping me.
Mass: 1.31 earth masses
Radius: 1.027 earth radius
Gravity: 1.25 ...
- 63
4
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1
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388
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Could a world exist without autotrophs, but have heterotrophs?
I was watching Biblaridian’s biosphere videos and he said it is
believed that heterotrophs evolved before autotrophs.
This gave me a cool idea: what if a (my) world had heterotrophs, but no autotrophs?...
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2
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409
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How can I cool the body of a human such that it can see Long wavelength IR light without its eyes glowing
The protagonist in my world has its eyes and subsequently its brain altered (genetic alterations from conception) in such a way as to allow it to see into the UV and IR range via the addition of new ...
5
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1
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292
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Could this planet's tail be visible?
I have 2 planets, a hot Jupiter with a standard majority Hydrogen/Helium atmosphere (Ab) & an Earth-like planet(Ac) orbiting around an orange dwarf star (A) which is very similar to Epsilon ...
- 92
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How realistic is this orange dwarf star?
For my world building project, I have an (on the large side) orange dwarf star with these parameters:
Mass: 0.75 solar masses
Radius: 0.8 solar radii
Luminosity: 0.36 solar luminosities
Surface ...
- 92
7
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2
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689
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Where to begin when designing functioning alternative biochemistry for alien organisms in non-earthlike conditions?
I am building a habitable terrestrial 'super-earth' type planet. Ideally, my lifeforms should be primarily carbon-based and their biochemistry relatively similar to Terran biochemistry, but with ...
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Is my air pressure system okay? [closed]
Second question here. So in a previous question I got told to make a wind system to determine precipitation, which in turn needs and air pressure system. I've attached two images, the first is when ...
- 87
6
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501
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Is my topology/are my climate zones alright?
This is my first try at worldbuilding, and I need some feedback. I've filled in what I hope are realistic climate zones, ocean currents and topology for this current state of the world, all done in ...
- 87
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Time needed to travel to Proxima Centauri in 2050 and technology behind [closed]
Given:
current (2020 year) knowledge and science status of human-kind and
that human-kind and human science development will occur in exactly the same way as it did so far,
how long will a ship ...
- 2,393
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2
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165
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Ability of frozen embryos to withstand many Gs, and the cosmological event horizon for a laser-powered sail ship?
I'm writing a book about a civilization started by humans who sent a laser-powered sail ship with AIs and frozen embryos to the edge of the cosmological event horizon (the furthest we can travel ...
- 11
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0
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47
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What would the effects of simultaneous heating of the human body be? [closed]
Though this has to deal with a magic system, the 'magic' part isn't relevant. Suppose, due to the magic, the human body heats up at a rate of x watts, for a total of T kilo-joules, what would the ...
- 2,033
7
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Telling exact-ish time by hair growth
Background: Agent Jones is pretty close to being peak human: in physical contests he wouldn't win against an Olympic medalist in their discipline but he's easily above the 95 percentile when it comes ...
- 24.2k
7
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6
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607
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Are purely electromagnetic propulsion systems feasible at all?
It seems that one of the main hurdles of creating an interstellar propulsion system is the need to carry reaction mass to accelerate while conserving momentum. Pretty much every "fringe science&...
- 600
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Under what conditions would supernova be survivable under surface
Inspired by this question Would going underground into a planet offer protection from a supernova?, I am proposing the following scenario:
A distant supernova is created by hostile aliens, as an ...
- 1,530
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207
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Can I get some help making my area denial non-lethal grenade realistic and scientifically sound?
I've come up with a haphazard design for grenades that coat their surroundings with slippery polytetrafluoroethylene when they explode, the purpose being an area denial weapon. If someone is chasing ...
- 2,071
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3
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Would superfluid helium-4 grenades make for a useful area denial weapon?
Superfluid helium-4 is an extremely slippery substance, which is why I came upon the idea of weaponizing it. One of the planets in my setting is rich in helium, so the weaponization of the element ...
- 2,071
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3
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246
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Could an animal evolve iridescent horns that appear metallic like chrysina resplendens' chitinous exoskeletons?
Sort of two questions here, but very related. One about whether a mammal-like animal could evolve to have a chitinous endoskeleton, I guess. Then a question of whether, if they grow horns, that ...
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What would happen if the mass of air around earth doubled?
So the mass of air around the earth has doubled. How it doubled isn't part of the question, but for the curious let's say a space station floating around earth processed all the nitrogen, oxygen, ...
- 867
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3
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Intermediate Structures Along a Space Elevator
Assuming all the primary hurdles in building a space elevator are overcome, would it be structurally feasible to attach intermediate stops along the length of the tether (between the planet and GSO, ...
- 171
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1
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124
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Least habitable planet / planetary satellite in the Solar System, and how to build a military research base on it [closed]
Taking inspiration from science fiction video games like "DOOM" (base on Mars / Phobos) and "Wolfenstein: The New Colossus" (base on Venus).
My world so far:
Earth is ruled under a global ...
- 23
1
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658
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Calculating average sea-level air pressure
Right now I'm currently trying to calculate the average surface pressure at sea level of an atmosphere, but I'm having a struggle finding the relevant formulae with which to determine this number. ...
- 51
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1
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I have a way of giving something negative mass. Did I just end the world,or usher in a golden age of space travel?
So, somehow, I have discovered a process that makes an objects mass negative. Not its weight, its mass (although, I guess that the weight would also become negative). The thing is, before I try it, I ...
- 2,884
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Could a prosimian conveniently evolve sapience?
Prosimians on average are not as intelligent as their simian counter parts with the notable exception being lemurs which live in semi large groups. what I want to know is could a group of prosimian ...
- 6,979
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Reality Check: Space Gulag
How realistic is the concept of a space gulag?
So let's say you want another option outside of a stern talking too, a fine, confining to quarters, demeaning tasks, VR "re-education," beating the snot ...
- 2,441
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3
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Santa's new delivery service: a... cannon?
Let's say Santa got himself a new toy: a present delivery cannon. With this new cannon, he wants to deliver presents to children by shooting their presents from the cannon into their chimneys. Let's ...
- 1,228
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Can transistors be made in the stone age? (Spoiler: Dr.Stone)
WARNING: This post contains some spoilers for the anime/manga Dr.Stone.
As I'm watching Dr.Stone, I see Senku and the gang trying to make vacuum tubes for their circuits. The vacuum tube is an ...
- 1,228
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3
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Is the Hammer's Slammers Powergun feasible?
I have seen many people discuss in this community on how a plasma gun ought to be made. But only a few mention the Powergun from the Hammerverse.
I ask if this design will work. Can the bullets be ...
- 2,963
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6
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The scientific description of time-asymmetric retro-causality?
Doing research into my time braking world I was referred to Split Second by Douglas E. Richards. It turns out he conceived of the exact same machine that I did, however he handled the paradoxes ...
- 8,209
2
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1
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148
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How would the world be different if we orbited a different star to our Sun? [closed]
I was reading this article on stars that are just right for the formation of habitable planets, and I was interested in what it had to say about K stars. Here is an except so you can read for ...
- 6,081
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3
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What's the limit of my rockets weight?
I want to launch the heaviest booster + spaceship possible in about 1.5 of earths gravity, using the technology we currently have. To make things easier, imagine there was the same atmosphere as on ...
