New answers tagged modern-age
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How to shape society's values such that paleontology becomes the largest / most profitable industry?
Make paleontology relevant to everyday life
The problem with paleontology and why it's always the awkward unwanted stepchild when it comes to getting funding is that paleontology has absolutely no broader relevance to modern life. Even compared to similar disciplines such as the taxonomy or ecology of living organisms or history in general. Other ...
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How to shape society's values such that paleontology becomes the largest / most profitable industry?
You can't do it in a truly realistic way but you can do it in a fantastical way.
The wild arms series had this with dragon bones. Dragon bones made of a fantastical metal that could not be acquired any other way except digging up dead dragons. the metal was incredibly useful entire industries and military complexes grew up around exploiting it. Later it ...
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How to shape society's values such that paleontology becomes the largest / most profitable industry?
Conclusive evidence of dinosaurs being aliens, found
An alien civilisation makes first contact. They are super smart dragons currently and claim that dinosaurs are their ancestors.
They also claim to be Earth’s true owner and have broadcasted an ultimatum of wiping the human civilisation to make way for their return.
Humans must do accelerated research ...
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How to shape society's values such that paleontology becomes the largest / most profitable industry?
Large-scale motive
The main enduring large-scale motive in this world is power (basically via money or military might), so you'll need to tie into that if you want everyone in the world interested in paleontology. Depending on your genre and the story you're wanting to tell, there are many possibilities. Here are some off the top of my head:
Ancient ...
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How to shape society's values such that paleontology becomes the largest / most profitable industry?
Fossils are more common
The reason fossils are rare in our world is because bones decompose; within a few hundred years, most skeletons are reduced to nothing, and only a few rare exceptions survive the millions of years to become what we consider fossils.
So, what would have to change? We have a couple options:
Bones don't decay: This happened with wood ...
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How to shape society's values such that paleontology becomes the largest / most profitable industry?
Ancient Technology
Someone discovers ancient alien technology (stasis boxes, warp cores, etc.) that are incredibly important and valuable. Paleontology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleontology) is anything older than 11,700 before present, so that covers a lot.
Now, astro paleontology might get a space program roaring along - imagine if someone found ...
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How to shape society's values such that paleontology becomes the largest / most profitable industry?
My initial thoughts all run in the direction of making fossils more valuable as economic resources, similar to the 'fossils' on Harlan's World in the Altered Carbon universe (a nonrenewable resource that is required for their most advanced technology), or by making some changes in the process by which some fossils become preserved for study and others ...
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How to shape society's values such that paleontology becomes the largest / most profitable industry?
Anthropology required for time traveling
A certain amount of detail is needed in order to time travel to specific times and places, the more is known about the period you're visiting, the less other resources are needed to make the trip.
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How to shape society's values such that paleontology becomes the largest / most profitable industry?
Fossils actually cure diseases
Some impurity in fossil oil cures diseases such as AIDS, COVID-19 and Ebola. But only in reservoirs that have the fossil from animals that filled some specific niches in the past. In fact, different species produce different impurities which cure different diseases. Paleontology then becomes a matter of survival for the world ...
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How to shape society's values such that paleontology becomes the largest / most profitable industry?
You can't make it the biggest, but it can be a lot bigger
The largest and most profitable industries work with the most available resources and sell them to the largest markets. Everyone wants oil, everyone wants steel (though mostly indirectly), everyone wants software, everyone wants to buy stuff cheaply and easily, you can probably name at least one ...
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How to shape society's values such that paleontology becomes the largest / most profitable industry?
Chinese medicine claims it can be used to treat impotency.
Rhino horn does nothing medicinal yet fetches up to $30,000 per pound and has managed to drive rhinos to the point of extinction.
If fossil dust was used instead, it's value was be much greater thus funding an industry to collect them.
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How to shape society's values such that paleontology becomes the largest / most profitable industry?
Fossils as jewels.
Diamonds are precious because they are rare, because people want them for jewels, and because of a Belgian family with a monopoly. Fossils are already rare: if your world values them as much as they do diamonds, and makes necklaces with authentic dinosaur teeth, tribolite seal rings, or bracelets/cuffs from hollowed out vertebrae, then ...
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If you already have hydrogen that would be much, much efficient for lift than hot air, assuming you can contain it.
Hot air balloons of this size have not proven viable.
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Lifting Bag Size
Average hot air balloon needs 64 ft^3 to lift 1 pound with an internal temp of 100 degrees F.
400 tonnes = 881,000 lbs -> 881,000 lbs * 64 ft^3/lb = 56,384,000 ft^3
Assuming your lifting bag is 3x the length of your hull...
3 * 105 ft = 315 ft length
... and assuming a cylindrical lifting bag (sharp edges, unrealistic), cross sectional ...
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Electrolysis is an endothermic process, you have to put energy in to do it. You can't get more energy out of the hydrogen than it took to make that hydrogen from water. Which begs the question, why not cut out the middle man and just use whatever power source powers the electrolysis to heat the balloon itself?
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An ideal kinetic armor — one that protects against physical attacks — needs several properties that often run in opposition to each other:
It needs to be resistant to shear stress — fracture, slicing, puncture — in order to prevent penetrating attacks
It needs to absorb and redistribute force laterally, so that a crushing impact towards a single point on ...
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