17
votes
The science behind an invisible wall of pain
Ferrite nanocrystals dispersed in one's body, and a microwave source can do what you are looking for.
When the subject gets outside of the shadow area for the microwave source, the ferrite will start ...
7
votes
The science behind an invisible wall of pain
You can buy these things from Amazon. They are usually meant for pets. I find this to be a kind of animal cruelty, but if you apply it to a human, it might be something more humane than prison.
With ...
6
votes
Accepted
Is it possible for a plant to form a biological "greenhouse" to protect its delicate flowers using some sort of clear, insular material?
The plant can produce biogenic silica and have it act like the glass in a greenhouse.
Biogenic silica (bSi), also referred to as opal, biogenic opal, or amorphous opaline silica, forms one of the ...
4
votes
Can two species from the same genus but with a different sex determination system interbreed and have fertile (or at least sub-fertile) offspring?
Not only realistic, but totally real!
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/evl3.191
3
votes
The science behind an invisible wall of pain
Camera and Laser
The invisible wall is defined via software. There is a camera with depth perception. Any part of the prisoner's body that touches the wall (as seen by the camera) is shot by the laser,...
2
votes
The science behind an invisible wall of pain
If you can put implants in the target's body, and those implants either
have long-lived batteries (weeks-months with current tech, dependent on the size of the battery pack)
draw energy parasitically ...
2
votes
Is it possible for a plant to form a biological "greenhouse" to protect its delicate flowers using some sort of clear, insular material?
Plants with their own little greenhouse
AlexP already mentioned Haworthia cooperi, but the pictures in Wikipedia do not present the more strange-looking varieties:
These are tiny, but larger ones ...
2
votes
The science behind an invisible wall of pain
I don't think nanotech is necessarily required when you could just put a chip in the pain center of their brain. From there, you could remotely activate it to cause them the sensation of pain, ...
1
vote
The science behind an invisible wall of pain
We can kind of do this today with millimeter waves. This operates on a principle similar to a microwave oven, set to use a wavelength that completely and fully activates the pain receptors of any skin ...
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