Questions tagged [science-fiction]
For questions that allow fanciful, creative or imaginative solutions based on or rationalized by real world science, but not necessary limited by real world science. Entirely magical solutions must use the magic tag instead. This tag should not be used with the science-based, hard-science, or internal-consistency tags. This tag should never be the only tag on a question, because this tag frames how a question should be answered, not the topic.
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Which goods make sense to transport over interstellar distances? [duplicate]
Think about the Nostromo from Alien. A giant freight ship that transports iron ore (!) over many light years (passing several other systems) to Earth on a year long trip. I think most will agree that ...
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Why are there no toilets on the starship 'Exciting Undertaking'?
DISCLAIMER: Any resemblance to other starships (living or dead) is purely coincidental.
The starship 'Exciting Undertaking' is a brand new ship about to set off on a five and a bit year mission to ...
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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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How do we tell if we're living in a virtual reality world?
Since I haven't found anything like this yet. I was reading a novel and it talked about how some people created a 'Artificial Virtual Reality World' where the denizens were Human Artificial ...
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Science-based FTL drive
So I'm writing a story about a crew of scientists that explore the universe searching for a hidden knowledge in embed in the fabric of the space itself. More like to the Destiny's crew from Stargate ...
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Order of Solar System Colonization
As human population continues to grow and need for raw resources grow, various nations and private organizations begin colonization efforts of our Solar System beyond the blue and green sphere we call ...
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Captured Earth-Like Moons around Gas Giants
Is there a limit (and if so, what is it) to the size (mass) of terrestrial planet that could be "captured" as a moon by a migrating gas giant?
I'm writing a novel where a colony ship crashes on such ...
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Visibility in a ringworld atmosphere?
So I am proposing a ring-world of approximately 1600 km diameter. The ring spins for earth like gravity. The ring itself would be several kilometers thick with Earth like variations in elevation (i....
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What does the physiology and biochemistry of a vacuum adapted post-human look like? Part 1: Radiation resistance
I am a post-human adapted for permanent life in vacuum and micro-gravity. How might my physiology and biochemistry overcome the following challenges?
Please note I have a strong cultural aversion to ...
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Is mathematics a truly universal language?
The quote has many forms, but is basically "mathematics is a universal language." My question is if this is true? If we met aliens could we use mathematics to talk to them?
The fact that we could ...
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Sci-Fi weapon that can kill people through armor, but doesn't damage starship hulls?
I have been trying to come up with some kind of small arm that could be used in a science fiction setting with the following two characteristics:
It is designed so that it won't put a hole in a ...
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Would an ice bullet work? [closed]
Would a bullet made from ice be capable of killing somebody at 100 metres before melting? As an author I would like to use this in a science fiction novel.
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How might it be possible to move a star?
I'm imagining a super-powerful spacefaring race which has the capability to build or modify a star system or even galaxy by moving stars around, but I wonder if it's really feasible.
Is it ...
user10287
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Ways to make contact with aliens on a much larger size scale?
One answer to the question of "Why don't we see any aliens?" prompted me to consider:
The computer was a comparatively simple design, what the natives would call “single core” Von Neumann ...
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How big would an amorphous blob have to be to toss part of itself into orbit?
First contact with an alien life form often goes badly. In the case of Biothanata, it always goes badly. The first glimpse of this alien blob is in the form of a falling star, a meteorite. After ...
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What does the physiology and biochemistry of a vacuum adapted post-human look like? Part 2: Temperature control
I am a post-human adapted for permanent life in vacuum and micro-gravity. How might my physiology and biochemistry overcome the following challenges?
Please note I have a strong cultural aversion to ...
- 1,006
141
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Why would giant mechs use melee weapons?
Mechs are really just giant usually bipedal walking tin cans with their human pilot inside. I mean, shoot the legs and they can't move much anymore. Not really realistic.
Regardless, in a futuristic ...
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Stopping time, by speeding it up inside a bubble
Imagine I have a device that can stop time for the person who holds it (similar to Bernard's Watch). This device works in a very specific way - it creates a bubble around the user (just large enough ...
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Why would a civilisation choose to inhabit a single enormous vessel instead of maintaining interstellar colonies?
The setting: Very distant future, Earth is long gone/forgotten/just not around anymore. Humanity, whatever it may consist of (people, AI, something in-between) inhabits a single vast generation ship ...
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What society might survive the 3 generation rule
A not widely accepted psycho-social phenomenon but one our descendents might sometime face, the Three Generation Rule states:
that the degree of social discipline needed for a space habitat to
...
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Handheld weapons, plasma vs. laser
Assume a fairly futuristic scenario where we can deal with the energy requirements of handheld laser weapons and the realistic creation of plasma ammunition etc.
From what I understand a plasma gun ...
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Telekinesis in Science Fiction
In my idea for a story, my main character has Telekinesis. My problem is, this is a definite hard science fiction world, and he is abnormal in the fact that he is the only known one who can perform ...
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How to convincingly explain Kaiju
This will be a companion question for How plausible is my monster?. My previous question dealt with a story treatment for a hard science and realistic take on Kaiju/ giant monsters. While that story ...
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What does the physiology and biochemistry of a vacuum adapted post-human look like? Part 3: Metabolism
I am a post-human adapted for permanent life in vacuum and micro-gravity. How might my physiology and biochemistry overcome the following challenges?
Please note I have a strong cultural aversion to ...
- 1,006
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3
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Is it possible for coronal mass ejections or perhaps a gamma ray burst to cause firestorms on an earth-like planet?
Ideally this would be some sort of sun or star-related natural disaster that would affect the entire planet and make life outside of protected/shielded areas extremely dangerous. This is a human-...
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Would keratin, spider silk, and bone make good bio-engineered armour?
So, setting is an extremely advanced race who use bioengineered tech in many applications, although most commonly in warfare. Their combat troops are large exoskeletal creatures ranging from hand ...
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Could a moon made of fissile uranium produce enough heat to replace the sun?
This was my answer to this question:
Retrofitting geocentrism - what replaces the star?
I spent long enough on it and got an interesting enough result that I wanted to share, so that it might be a ...
user86462
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What all stops working when I pause time?
Somewhat, not really related.
In my young adult story, the main character has a mechanism that allows her to pause time, and do things while everything is frozen. I have no problem 'magic'ing the ...
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Why is ground warfare smaller scaled than space warfare?
The universe is populated by a decent number of different spacefaring civilisations and races, the largest spanning over hundreds of systems. They have formed relations with each other: Diplomacy, ...
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How would one destroy a black hole?
Science-Fiction has tools to destroy anything: atoms, molecules, DNA, cellular organisms, multicellular organisms, buildings, streets, cities, countries, continents, planets, and even stars. Some ...
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What kind of society and morals would an alien species evolved from solitary carnivores have?
I am envisioning a space faring species, evolved from an obligate carnivore and apex predator.
The obvious concept to me is a tiger like species with prehensile tails that became increasingly adapted ...
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My planet has a long period orbit. How can I make the seasons change faster in order to shorten the length of a calendar year on it?
I wanted a habitable planet around a binary star system, so I conjured up a system that let me have one.
The problem that I'm facing is that the goldilocks orbital parameters for this planed ended up ...
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How to blow up a star by accident?
I have this race of space-dwarves and I need to make them homeless due to technological hubris of some kind: for plot reasons.
I think that if they were to attempt to build some kind of Dyson sphere ...
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Orienting a pilot inside a space fighter
My question stems from What would a space fighter look like?
After reading through @dsollen's question can a human fighter pilot fully grasp 3 dimensional frictionless movement in space? I started ...
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What earth conditions would make a permanent bronze-colored sky?
From a science-fiction development perspective I am looking for some plausible answer for the following:
What conditions (the more permanent, the better) would make for a bronze sky?
All the better, ...
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Proper combat distance scaling for a sci-fi space opera tabletop setting
I'm making a completely homemade tabletop system with the intent of generating a hardish scifi, more sim-like experience for my friends. I've settled on no FTL and all space battles would be ...
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Single biome (hot) desert planet, possible?
I have the below snippet describing a planet in a (hard) sci-fi setting. This harsh planet has some human settlers, who can survive the climate in light weight environmental suits.
The planet is a ...
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What if Earth became a rogue planet? [duplicate]
I'm writing a science fiction novel in which Earth essentially gets the boot out of our Solar System. No sun, no moon, just Earth flying through the depths of deep space. I need to nail down rogue ...
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Alternative biological oxidizer
A concept I've encountered a few times is aliens with "vastly" different biology than terrestrial creatures. In this case, I'm interested in replacing the parts that use oxygen with something a bit ...
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How would a treaty forbiding the use of automated weaponry change space combat?
Background and Goal
I'm building a science fiction setting for a game that will have a lot of space combat focused around fighters. One thing I wanted to avoid was letting the setting drift towards ...
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Why aren't complex devices or electronics ever built out of force fields in science fiction? [closed]
Most science fiction dealing in the subject of force fields depicts them in a similar and unsophisticated light, e.g. force fields rarely do anything besides form basic polygons to create walls, ...
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How much energy to destroy the crust of a planet?
In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode The Die is Cast. A planetary bombardment scene occured where 17 shots was stated to have destroyed 30% of a planet's crust. Now obviously that's a HUGE amount ...
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How many of a Typical Sci Fi Army would you need to take a planet? [closed]
I am writing a fan story for a well known universe with typical Sci Fi armies. (For those who want to knows which, in this universe people seems to love Pauldrons and gothic architecture)
They ...
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How would digestion work for an alien species with a diet of minerals?
If an alien species ate minerals (aka a lithovore species), how might their bodies differ from ours? How would they eat/digest the materials? Do those answsers change if they eat substances like ...
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Could canals solve H G Wells Martians water shortage problems?
Could a world similar to that envisioned in the Mars of Edgar Rice Burroughs / H G exist? And if so would canals be a practical way to make the planet habitable over the long term?
For current ...
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Melting the core [duplicate]
I have suggested that you could use antimatter to melt the core of Mars and restart the magnetic "dynamo", but it occurs to me that I never really considered exactly "how" you could do this. Melting ...
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Reality of a Tidally Locked Planet? [closed]
I am currently working on a futuristic sci-fi story and here comes the world building part. I have been doing researches and brainstorming for days, but I feel like I may seek creative opinions from ...
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What realistic way could limit an FTL drive to only travelling between stars?
How could a Faster than light drive be limited to only travelling between different solar systems, and not within a solar system? I don't really want to allow travel between planets in the same solar ...
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Let’s say a 1 ton (US) sphere of tungsten moving at 99.99% the speed of light hits earth, what happens? As specific as possible
What kind of destruction would it cause? I’m assuming it’d be rather significant, could it shatter a tectonic plate? The crust? How would the oceans fare? Would the planet be able to catch the ...
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Why do aliens who visit us have higher tech than us? Couldn't they wait for us to have it too?
It is a well known fact that if aliens invaded, it would be our puny kill-one-person-then-reload-for-half-a-second-or-more-firearms against their super-cool-ultra-mega-thingy-laser-mumble-quantum-...
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