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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.

3 votes

You have some cheat codes for real life, but they're expensive to use. Can they still be used?

How far can teleportation go, and how large can an object be? Because if the machine can, in an hour or less, transport a large manned colony to Mars soil, then it's actually cheap. Very, very cheap …
Emilio M Bumachar's user avatar
3 votes

Lonely astronaut

He's the first and only person born in space. Developing in microgravity rendered him unable to ever survive on Earth, as became obvious while he was growing up. Heart too weak or something. (optio …
Emilio M Bumachar's user avatar
4 votes

Telekinesis in Science Fiction

Nanotechnology. The apparently floating object is actually being lifted by an unseen swarm of flying, remotely controlled nanobots. Your abnormal protagonist simply has early access to this cutting …
Emilio M Bumachar's user avatar
3 votes

What weapon of mass destruction could theoretically vaporize a whole solar system?

Kinectic projectile There's literally not a limit to the amount of energy you can put into one. It just asymptotically approaches the speed of light as you add more energy. Just keep going until it's …
Emilio M Bumachar's user avatar
37 votes
Accepted

Why would a decision making machine decide to destroy itself?

The machine knows - because it has simulated it - that hostiles have bypassed all security measures and are seconds away from the door, ready to reprogram the machine to serve their evil goals, to the …
Emilio M Bumachar's user avatar
7 votes

What kind of recurring phenomena could cast darkness on a planet for days/weeks at a time?

Very occasionally, the creatures go to war on each other along factions, at large scale. One of their wartime activities bring up gargantuan amounts of dust. Nuclear explosions come to mind, mayb …
Emilio M Bumachar's user avatar
4 votes

Eternal space battle around a planet. But why?

There's another civilization, much more powerful than any of the warring parties, that has announced an ultimatum: no one harms or sets foot on that planet, or we are going to go to war. (why, oh, wh …
Emilio M Bumachar's user avatar
0 votes

Communicating the idea of danger to an unknown alien civilization

Send two images in a reasonable encoding we can decipher, such as our bitmap. Send a crude simplified image of our Solar System ( think astronomy books for children), followed by an identical image wi …
Emilio M Bumachar's user avatar
2 votes

Are nuclear armed missiles effective weapons for spaceborne combat?

I agree with Nosajimiki's answer that a nuclear-armed missile doesn't need to penetrate a ship to destroy it. As for whether it is "realistic to expect a nuclear warhead to survive the impact of penet …
Emilio M Bumachar's user avatar
2 votes

Limit computation technology in a futuristic society

Hostile A.I., smart enough to avoid total defeat, dumb enough to avoid total victory. Focuses on pillaging and plundering processing resources advanced enough for it to use. Once it focuses exclusi …
Emilio M Bumachar's user avatar
2 votes

Is it biologically possible for one species to need another species to reproduce?

Bees and flowers. Bees carry gametes from one flower to the other. No reason that the analogues to both couldn't be humanoid. What's in it for the bee? Here on Earth, there's free food. On your planet …
Emilio M Bumachar's user avatar