Questions tagged [science-fiction]
For questions relating to worlds with a setting of common science-fiction.
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What are good structural and energy-storage molecules that don't release gas when synthesized?
Nicar is a carbon world (formed from a protoplanetary disk with more carbon than oxygen, so water is geologically unstable and the chemical environment is strongly reducing) with ammonia oceans and ...
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What would it take for a sky to remain completely violet or purple during the daytime?
I'm a fantasy author. I'm thinking about the setting in my next novel having something to do with a world that has purple skies during the daytime.
I'm wondering how could this be done from a ...
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How to name cities [closed]
So this is a sci fi setting. I want to come up with good names for cities on other planets. For languages, I would say city names would be either English, Mandarin, Russian, Hindi, Japanese, French, ...
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The advantages and the drawbacks of being an android in comparison to being a human [closed]
Judging from many science fiction stuff I played and watched I think that being a robot has many advantages like being ageless and immortal (I mean not aging visually and having an unlimited lifespan ...
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Aerosoleans - How much do they eat?
Aerosolians or 'loopies' live on hypersonic trains. They stick to the sheetmetal and collected microbes from aerosols captured by tiny pockets in their skin. Because of the high speed they can collect ...
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What would cause regular EMP bombardments on Earth?
In the SF/post-Apocalyptic world that I'm building, the Earth is struck by interplanetary EMP bombardments that destroy most electronics. The year is around 2040~50, and the tech level is bumped back ...
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What would the local effects/affects be of a ring spinning near luminal velocity?
To better solicit more inline with what I'm trying to imagine, I'm editing my question, the original question is left below and removing the hard science tag, as that just seemed to cause issues, ...
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Biological differences between people from space-bound colonies and planet-bound colonies
So I wrote a question a little earlier about the differences in mindset between people born from planetside colonies vs. those born in space [it's linked to save me from explaining the whole system - ...
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Can a Tungsten-rod Kinetic Strike create an EMP given enough speed?
So in my story, I have one side of the war using an orbital-based railgun to fire a tungsten rod at extremely high velocity onto a populated city. Let's say the tungsten rod is around one ton, and it'...
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Can I have sand in a desert that would make it impossible to differentiate between land and horizon?
I am looking for an end-result where one would not be able to differentiate between land and horizon. And I want it in a desert. So either some new, exotic material has to make-up the sand. Or it has ...
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What would be the best design for a ship maintenance bot?
Yeah, I know I asked a question about a medbot just the other day but my book has multiple AI "characters" [dunno if they count as characters] and one is a maintenance bot [at least it used ...
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A Repelatron Spacecraft
In one of my favorite books, Tom Swift in The Race to the Moon he uses a spacecraft which is propelled by devices called repelatrons which are attached to the hull of the craft. They can be programmed ...
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Is it plausible for FTL travel to be made easier to achieve through universal pure axial movement?
A bit of a strange concept that's been floating around in my mind. We all know how grid-based movement works. Moving in a straight line along any direction of X, Y, and Z requires only one step/...
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Differences in mindset between people born in space and people born planetside
In my world, humanity has populated the stars and now lives in isolated groups in single star systems. Most people never leave the system they were raised in [interstellar travel is very unusual, but ...
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132 views
Realistic sublight propulsion [closed]
I was wondering if there was a realistic propulsion method that needs at most the power output of a fusion reactor which can be small enough to fit on a personal spacecraft, is efficient enough to do ...
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How would an inter-planetary [not inter-stellar] recycling/scavenging team know when ships have crashed?
In my world, there is a certain group of 'scavengers' — people who go around and pick out valuable (and salvageable, of course) objects from ships that have crashed [onto the surface of a moon/planet],...
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What’s the best design for a mobile medical robot?
So I’m tryna think of the most practical shape/design for a mobile medical robot. In my world [a high-tech space-faring society] they are used since a machine can withstand a lot more environments ...
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What would be the easiest way for a personality-altering bioweapon to be transmitted?
So this bioweapon is a genetically-engineered microscopic parasite used by a certain government in a sort of revolution-turned-war. It works by making its host more paranoid, stressed and non-trusting ...
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Is there any use for a sea navy in a sci fi universe in which most planets are controlled by one government?
I just want to know if there is any purpose to having a water navy in a sci fi universe where you don’t really worry about countries on your own planet attacking you, since you’re the only one there.
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An entanglement drive
I am working on an alien race who use quantum entanglement to transport a craft over vast interstellar distances.
I am wanting to know if this form of transportation possible.
The drive could be used ...
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7answers
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Hard Sci-Fi hardlight-based "energy shield" [duplicate]
I'm making a fairly hard Sci-Fi story, and I was wondering what the most scientifically plausible Hardlight-based 'energy-shield' (for ships and stations) would be. My world tries to remain true to ...
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What skin, hair and eye colors would people living under different stars have?
My setting includes several natural and terraformed earth-like worlds orbiting various main sequence stars, from M class dwarfs to A class giants. Humanity has independently developed from stone age ...
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How Do You Manage Religion in World Building? [closed]
I may be asking this in the wrong place, as it could be a pretty subjective question- just let me know and I’ll ask elsewhere, but I saw on a recent post that the Code of Conduct on this site ...
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Science and Physics of Portals
So I have a character who uses various portals to store and deploy his weaponry and tools. These portals are 2 dimensional portals like those of the game Portal. I have had little trouble with this ...
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How realistically practical is hydrokinetic flight?
According to what I've looked up, the average human is 60% water, and 60% of that water is in cells. Lets assume this "hydrokinesis" is limited to telekinetically lifting and moving liquid ...
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Justifying one level tall spaceships
I enjoy playing FTL: Faster Than Light and got inspired to write my own but more sophisticated 2D strategy game with the focus on custom ship construction. I want to have many systems on board which ...
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Why link supercomputers in a sequence instead of all together?
My sci-fi story has this girl, let's call her "Lucy". She finds herself virtualized into a simulation within one or more supercomputers, which translate programs and inputs into visual cues; ...
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Can cosmic rays be considered as a "galactic resource" in a hypothetical planetary colonization science fiction world?
Like a star's energy, planetary biomass, etc are precious resources for any spacefaring civilization.
Can cosmic rays (for producing energy, causing beneficial but erratic effects like hulk's body ...
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In regards to mass and luminosity, what are those mystery stars?
Long ago (4.6 billion years, to be exact), a hyper-advanced alien civilization had created a solar system from scratch. Somehow, they had artificially prolonged the center of the solar system--a ...
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Consequences of having a device that can transform heat back to stored energy in a limited way? [closed]
My setting uses reactors that work on a fictional gas-like inert substance that can safely store an impossibly high amount of energy in itself (breaking the e=mc^2 equation and causing Einstein to ...
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7answers
183 views
Reasons why sword duelling would exist on a Mars-like planet with unbreathable air
The civilisation on this planet has rockets and computers, so presumably they are smart enough to invent guns if they really want guns. Taking a sabre to a gunfight is clearly a terrible lifestyle ...
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Are there any specific supernatural/scientific creatures which might fuse and grant abilities to a person?
A character of mine gains certain abilities after a creature fuses with em as e dies. However, I don’t know of any creature that would do this or something similar which might explain the phenomenon ...
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Could a space-based telescope 'sense' something extraneous?
If a fist-sized artefact was to attach itself to a space telescope (of near-term build, such as the Nancy Grace Roman) situated in L2 of a Lagrange point, would Ground Control be able to detect it?
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Would a group of Dyson swarms produce a noticeable pattern in a distant night sky?
I am currently writing a scene where a person on an Earth-like planet is stargazing. This planet, an isolated agrarian world, is around twenty light years from the core of the setting's space empire, ...
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I would like to Know the number of Officers and Crew On the Freedom LCS
I am building a future space military that is largely based on US Navy. I am looking for the number of the Officers and Enlisted that man the current LCS (Freedom) class frigate?
I have been hitting ...
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What threat would a highly technological alien species from a superEarth pose to human(-like) visitors?
I'm writing a setting where superEarths abound, frequently with intelligent life, but Earth-size habitable planets are rare, with the focus being on the five intelligent species from Earth-size ...
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Do stars work in hyperbolic space?
Any curved space is approximately Euclidean on small enough scales, so for a sufficiently large characteristic length (significantly larger than the radius of the smallest real stars) the answer is ...
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How would my Homo autisticus evolve?
In a satirical white drama/lighthearted tragedy (the opposite of black comedy/dark humour) science-fiction live-action film I am writing that takes place in 8991 of the Gregorian calendar, it has been ...
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My creature electricity production mechanism
In my organism electricity is usually generated by absorbing free electrons in the air and using them in combination with a proton-laced electrical sack to create an electric current ,which is then ...
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If the world was flat, what would happen if someone walked off? [closed]
A character jumps off the edge of the world in my sci-fi story. Would they float or would they just fall?
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How do the duties of the Space Army and Space Marine Corps differentiate?
So, in my setting, for plot reasons, I want to have both a space-based Army and space-based Marine Corps. Here’s the thing though: I don’t know how to make them different enough without them seeming ...
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4answers
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An objects gravitational force has been increased, how is it different from natural gravity?
By magical means an objects gravitational force has been increased to be greater than its mass. How is this different from natural gravity?
This has nothing to do with this question about how ...
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1answer
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How would plugging in a USB universal connector in a quantum world work?
Most people by now have experienced that USB flat connectors are quantum devices.
That is, it takes three times in order for the plug and socket to be defined (decohered?).
You have to try to plug it ...
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2answers
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Could sci-fi tech be created to track you by your microbiome cloud?
I have a sci-fi story set in the future and was thinking about search dogs and how they track you and then thought about having my character use technology that can see your unique microbiome cloud ...
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2answers
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Would a ring generating a strong gravitational pull keep those inside unharmed?
My spaceship includes a technology that creates artificial gravity (AG). For all intents and purposes the inner workings of the device are unknown. It's essentially a black box. What is understood is ...
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Could artificial gravity help send large spacecrafts into space?
In science fiction technology that induces a gravitational pull is often sidelined as just a convenient way of getting people to walk on a spacecraft. The implications of gravity that can be turned on ...
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Ergonomics of a Metal Storm Staff Gun
Upon the The Peaks of Comprehension lies the the Temple of Knowledge, where monks labor, record, observe and preserve knowledge both old and new. With the knowledge they have gained, the monks go out ...
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How to interpolate between the physical, material universe with relativistic reference frames and a spiritual objective reference frame?
I'm new here and I assume that it might be weird to have souls in a science-fiction question but hear me out. While souls in my setting do have some magical unexplainable supernatural properties, it ...
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2answers
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Would women be seen as expendable as men in a world with artificial wombs? [closed]
My world is about 500 years ahead of ours in terms of technology, with a notable bit of tech being the artificial womb. A sperm and an egg are placed in one and a baby develops in their over the span ...
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Coexisting with a sapient swarm intelligence
My story involves a sapient swarm intelligence, which I've detailed in a previous question here. I'd like to ask an additional question that is related but different from my original post:
Is it ...
