Questions tagged [science-based]
For questions that require plausible (better than suspension-of-disbelief) answers based on Real World science that are not necessarily constrained to the known limits of Real World science. Contrast with the hard-science, science-fiction and internal-consistency tags. This tag may not be used alone. This tag may not be used with the science-fiction, hard-science, or internal-consistency tags.
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Is it possible for a plant to form a biological "greenhouse" to protect its delicate flowers using some sort of clear, insular material?
In my world, I have a type of plant with a two-stage life cycle. The first stage grows into a structure that functions like a greenhouse that allows in most of the Sun's light but insulates against ...
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Question about speculative human biology
What kind of evolutions would humanity have to undergo to be able to live comfortably on the moon or any other sufficently low-mass body? As I am aware that it can be bad for bones and the ...
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bullet resistant space armor material?
I'm currently developing a world in which humanity has colonized
mars. Armed bandit attacks are common, and military enforcers are necessary to eliminate these threats.
most combatants use firearms in ...
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Can we hit the spaceship
Setting: close to present day. Aliens in ships about the size of the Pentagon are detected at about 10 AU, moving at about 100km/s, and will therefore take about 6 months to arrive.
Realistically at ...
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Can a terrestial planet have a core of metallic hydrogen?
Let's say somehow, a yellow dwarf like our sun was sent hurtling through space, and smacked into a red giant with enough force to cause the two to go supernova.
With the release of large amounts of ...
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How would a supernatural boiling sea in the Southern Ocean affect Earth's climate? [closed]
How would a boiling sea in the southern ocean near Antarctica affect Earth's climate? This boiling sea was caused by supernatural forces providing the energy to boil the water while also keeping it ...
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So, I was thinking a biological kinda ozone layer?
So, in my work, there is this terraformed Venus in the future.
Venus is a sunny, warm tropical world with oceans, islands, and small continents, and is basically the Caribbean/Hawaii/Polynesia of the ...
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Would intelligent life evolve any other body plan than humanoid?
Disclaimer: This question uses some liberal wording to get key ideas across. It's not meant to be academically rigorous, so please try to focus on the ideas and not the exact definitions of the terms ...
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Is it possible for a planetary ring to exist beyond a planet's Roche limit?
So my story takes place on a moon orbiting a gas giant about the size of Jupiter and I was wondering if it was at all possible for a planetary ring to exist beyond the planet's Roche limit. I ...
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How to find the region where gas giants can exist?
I am looking at making a system and it leaves me wondering, at what distance would ice giants start forming from their star compared to gas giants.
Like, lets give our sun as an example, would ...
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Possibility of anachronistic fossils due to time travel
In my story, I have a character who travels back in time to Africa just after the Youngest Toba supereruption, about 74,000 years ago in order to collect genetic samples from the human survivors at ...
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Is a world laser possible?
Right now, I am developing a weapon of mass destruction dubbed 'The World Laser'. Basically, the antagonist is trying to destroy the world completely by cutting it in half in a singular motion using a ...
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How would you justify technological advancement both digital and cybernetic without the risks of orwellian controls? [closed]
Let's just say these past few years, I've been reading SciFi Dystopia fiction in which simply put. All computers and phones and anything digital, makes it so that the users are easily tracked, hacked ...
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How to survive a helicopter crash using alien biotechnology?
In the near-future, in a war between aliens and humans, the aliens hatch a plan to seemingly assassinate a human leader (on Earth), but make it look like it was done by other humans. They have it ...
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What would flora and fauna look in a world with a denser atmosphere? [closed]
Update - Ok to be more specific how would a denser atmosphere affect the terrestrial vegetation in this planet? For starters in Earth we can very broadly say we have 4 types vegetation
Grasses - ...
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What types of materials would be generated by a lava monster that has been cooled down rapidly?
I want to create a magma slime, which has a magical vulnerability to being cooled down and turns to rock easily (like when hit by a water or an ice spell). This rock can then be shattered to gather ...
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Could alkaline digestive system work?
So a human digestive system is generally acidic, especially at the stomach part, when it goes down to even 1.5 pH. Similar things must be happening in other mammals and to an extent, probably in all ...
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Are Liquid Brains Possible or Viable?
I'm designing an alien species roughly based on starfish. Starfish in the real world don't have brains or blood, they just let seawater run their nervous and circulatory systems, but I figure a ...
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What would Julius Caesar think about the development of AI? [closed]
Would the triumvirate use it to his advantage? Would've it be used in Rome for example counting the census? I've been looking for sources around this topic and I've found nothing thus far.
Thank you.
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Are My Ocean Currents Realistic for a Supercontinent?
I followed tutorials online and drew out my ocean currents. However I don’t have a strong grasp on the concept.
My world is primarily Earth-like with a retrograde spin and an axial tilt of 174 degrees....
CommunityBot
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What parts of the human brain can a truth serum modify to prevent lying?
As I mentioned in a previous question, I am writing an alternate history story with many different countries by the time 2023 rolls around. Vitruvia is one such country that runs many experiments and ...
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How many planets can fit inside a Habitable Zone? [duplicate]
I have this idea of putting dozens of terrestrial planets in the habitable zone of a Sun-like star. We know from the TRAPPIST-system that it's possible for two terrestrial, Earth-sized planets to come ...
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Can singularity be achieved in a PC without any external information?
I am developing a highly advanced AI, but I am paranoid about creating a super-intelligence, so everything I do is in a computer not connected to anything more except the obvious electric plug and ...
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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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What kind of environment would lead to the development of traits typical of fantasy races? [closed]
I'm not actively working on my world, but I'm currently thinking about races for it. I want this world to seem like a typical fantasy world at first glance, but have scientific reasons behind it. So, ...
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What astronomical situation could account for the PERCEPTION of a very erratic day / night cycle for a planetbound population with limited science?
I would like to create a world that is at a roughly medieval level of scientific understanding and which - as far as it appears to the inhabitants of that world - has a highly erratic day and night ...
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Pottery Without Using Heat
I'm currently writing a sci-fi trilogy on an alien world with a CO2 and methane atmosphere. The natives have pottery but since fires cannot work on the planet, how would they harden the clay without ...
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How much clothing could one cut through with a chainsaw before it stalled, the chain broke, or some other disastrous thing happened? [closed]
The worldbuilding context is that I have a character who is in a terrible urban-fantasy situation, and is led somewhere where there is something he could use to defend himself with. It's unfortunately ...
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How might heat management in a large hab dome work?
I hope this is more focused D:
Setup; Hela is a exoplanet in the fictional Eurydice system, about 4 Ly from Earth. The exoplanet is significantly younger than Earth, and life on her is in a late ...
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How could a large spherical plant heat air inside to fly?
In another question, Are flying plants possible?, a point was raised that because of the square-cube law, a large, hollow, spherical plant could fly by having the air inside be a little bit hotter ...
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What's the maximum mass for an Iron Planet to have a magnetosphere like Mercury's?
I'm designing an iron planet which migrated into its habitable zone. Basic research told me iron planets cool off too quickly to have a magnetic field, so initially I was looking for ways native life ...
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Can a device that causes memory loss be created with near-modern technology?
I am creating an alternate history world that leads to modern Earth having many different nations & cultures than it has in real life. One country is big on funding many extreme experiments to ...
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Using our current understanding of science, is it possible for biologically plausible animals to be resistant to our current military weapons?
More of a theoretical idea but the implications can help with a lot of worlds and ideas.
A no is as welcome as a yes. The most detailed answer is the best as usual.
In many stories set in other worlds ...
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How would you get a ship out of a gravity well?
Context
I'm helping a friend with a hard sci-fi story and we ran into an issue. In this setting the technology for absurdly powerful and efficient fusion drives which seem not to have heat managment ...
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Very large orbit binary/trinary star systems
In my universe, Ancient Aliens once visited Earth with consequences.1 At that time they left instructions2 that 5,000 years3 in the future something would happen.4 The instructions left behind a ...
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Realistic rollerblade steam propulsion device, like something that might have been invented with 18th century technology. Is it possible?
This was an idea generated by my sister that I thought was very interesting. I intended to make it work by strapping rollerblades on a person's legs and utilize a compressed gas/steam-powered pumping ...
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What could cause the sea level to massively decrease?
I'm trying to find a justification to the sea level on Earth decreasing by a large amount (in the range of 1000 / 2000 m).
The change would begin during the Modern Era or in the future, and last long ...
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How would a planet's (human) life adapt to inconsistent night duration?
I realise this question is rather broad, so I'll do my best to narrow down what I'm looking for as much as possible.
The big idea
The full daylight cycle on this hypothetical planet is consistent in ...
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Is There a Lower Limit on the Size of Fusion Reactor?
It would be really cool if you could build cybernetic arms with incredible strength, power coil guns with a man portable unit, or use power armor for extended combat. One of the ways this is ...
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How heavy does a "city" for two thousand people need to be?
This question is inspired by Mortal Engines, but I imagine something more feasible. The original question I wanted to ask was "How to keep a city in the air?", but I figured out there is ...
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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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How would future humans be able to evolve large heads? [duplicate]
In my story there are future humans that managed to build a time machine and for research purposes decided to travel back in time to change past events from taking place. These future humans have a ...
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Would this winged human/angel be able to fly?
I take no credit for the image below. All artwork and information belongs to Blue-Hearts on DeviantArt:
(click on image for a higher resolution)
I'm personally very impressed at her level of detail ...
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Thermal Superconductors vs Pulse Lasers...in atmosphere
Based of a conversation with @Starfish Prime regarding the answers from this question here.
In short, while the question itself had a satisfactory answer with it being that pulse lasers would ...
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What considerations would have to be made for a spacecraft with minimal-to-no digital computers on board?
I'm writing a sci-fi book where the main method of travel involves collapsing a star into a black hole by putting a satellite equipped with some sort of handwaving mechanism into orbit around the star....
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What would a rough estimate of the global climate of an earth be like if lit by a geosynchronous ring instead of a point source?
Welcome to fantasy earth: like Earth in all the same ways, with the exception that the sun you know has been replaced with a ring you don't.
What would the climate of Earth be if the sun was replaced ...
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Moving Arrows to Supersonic Speeds
In a sci-fi world that I am making, an infantry held launcher is one of the many weapons developed to counter increasingly tough armor protection, brought on by the advent of advanced materials and ...
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Could methane be a suitable "lifting gas" for medieval-tech airships?
So, I've read a few posts on this community about medieval airships. What I have seen is so far that, how none of them mentioned about a lifting gas. Lifting gases are hard to get by.
Hydrogen and ...
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How can we meet aliens in an underpopulated galaxy?
I am designing a hard sci-fi universe where humanity is confined to the Solar system and travels using fusion.
One of the obstacles I am facing is how to make humans meet one alien race which is ...
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Landscape of Indefinitely Old Earth
If we somehow fix the Sun's luminosity indefinitely at current levels, stabilize the Moon's orbit so that it no longer drifts away, and match the solar tides precisely with lunar tides so Earth's ...
