New answers tagged reality-check
1
Trees are not a given. You could have a world whose only plants are grasses, or at least grasslike. Evolution on Earth favoured large woody structures in land plants but that necessarily doesn't mean that that is the only viable pathway. It is plausible that land plants could have maintained the frond like structure of the Caulerpa seaweeds which resemble ...
2
Recipe for Mountainous Single Biome Planets
Start with a desert planet in a young solar system full of small rocky (non-ice) asteroids.
Let the asteroids fall into the planet's gravity well to punctuate the planet's crust with craters and crater ridges. Keep the individual impacts down to a size that at most cracks the tectonic plates, not so big that they ...
1
Biological Warfare
The creatures' doom is spelled out in point #2 of their weaknesses. If they're just animals, we can kill them. We're very good at that. We're already concerned that CRISPR/CAS-9 will give people the ability to create tailored viruses that do what we want. Give us a century's advances in the biological sciences, and no reservation about ...
1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevauch%C3%A9e
These things are heavy from the armor and each one expends huge amounts of energy performing feats of strength as described in the OP. And there are huge numbers of them. They are not magic - they require energy to heal, also from OP. These creatures must have advanced agriculture to support their size and ...
0
At 400-800 AU away from the star, the orbital period would be so long that the transition between the seasons would occur very slowly. There would likely be a small extinction event between each season but many organisms could adapt to the changing environment quickly enough to avoid going extinct.
3
Yes; easily.
This answer could definitely be improved with a more detailed look at the statistical distribution of speeds of water molecules at body temperature and the mean free path of the water molecules in a cell to calculate the average speed gain under an e.g. 1g vertical acceleration; however I think the order of magnitude of the velocities here is ...
7
Perhaps.
Affecting the water in a human body would be enough to make it accelerate and, actually, we already know it would work - frozen meat and a couple of live frogs have been subjected to this technique.
But what exactly happens to the organism subject to hydrokinesis? The live frogs survived "with no ill effects", but frogs are cold-blooded ...
1
It would take a bit of restructuring but if the feathers could be made less bristly and have the 'hairs' of the feather instead be fused into a thin but firm blade of sorts then you'd have something capable of cutting other things with about the same sharpness as a sheet of paper, or perhaps a razor blade. The spine of the feather would act as a nice enough ...
5
Could hydrokinesis be used to fly, Yes, it could.
I was going to try an calculate the numbers, then remembered that people have levitated a frog using magnets (and few other pages), they levitated it using a magnet to repel the water. Therefore is is possible to accelerate at the very least $1g$ (at least horizontally) at this acceleration you go from $0$ to ...
0
I'd like to suggest an alternate mechanism — Well two, potential related ones. One would be a substance similar to powder down — a good hard wave would release a small cloud of disorienting/irritating dust. Alternatively Urticating hair as with spiders. Rather than stabby, they'd discourage predators by blinding them, or causing an allergic reaction
0
Earth life has evolved to thrive in Earth conditions, so simply plopping them down on a distinctly different planet wouldn't work. It would take time for life to evolve to deal with those conditions. However, you do say that the galaxy is artificial, meaning that humans have very advanced technology in your universe. Since that is the case, the same people ...
3
If you just keep the quill it would be nasty. Hollow as well so some poison in it would be extremely nasty and make them more brittle or easy to detach so they break off inside an animal.
I'm thinking of a prehensile tail covered in quills that it could push into a victim with or without some poison inside and barbs so it couldn't easily be withdrawn.
The ...
11
Have you looked at feathers? Do you see that quill-like spine running down the center of the feather. To me that looks very spiky. And these are the feathers that are just evolved for flight. Imagine what feathers evolved for discouraging curious predators from having a nibble could be. Additionally feathers, porcupine spines, and antlers are all made out of ...
4
I think it's possible but would be inferior by far to how animals handle it today. The best hearing in low light animals isn't achieved by having larger ears.
Owls and the record holder which is a moth don't have large ears. Owls have no real external ears yet they can hear the heartbeat of a mouse 25 feet away. This is largely done internally by ear drums ...
4
The lateral line in the fishes has a similar purpose
The lateral line, also called lateral line system (LLS) or lateral line organ (LLO), is a system of sensory organs found in aquatic jawed vertebrates, used to detect movement, vibration, and pressure gradients in the surrounding water.
The main difference is that, due to the higher mismatch in acoustic ...
2
Water is a very effective heat absorber, so there is no way that molten lava in direct contact with water at the bottom of the sea floor (which can be as cold as 4 C) will stay molten for very long time.
However... the crust of solidified lava in contact with water can act as an insulator, limiting the heat exchange between the underlying molten lava and the ...
1
Similar ideas exist to a minor extent in the Shannara book series. There a magical sword was created and given to an elven king, Jerle Shannara. Now hundreds of years later this sword has to be used again, but due to the sword being a gift to the king and not the whole nation of elves, people believed that it should be used by the king and due to how magic ...
1
They would react the way they already react to magic.
Many religions already have beliefs about magic, or on concepts similar to magic.
Many incorporate magic into the religion in some way.
Consider things like praying (to God / Mary / saints / relatives) for something to happen, invoking the sign of the cross to ward off evil, speaking in tongues, faith ...
0
Most religions would have internal disagreements
Most large religions have big communities of believers, and multilayered structures where the higher-up leaders are more cautious than the lower-level leaders. Most large religions would want to avoid making statements which would then be clearly wrong. Taking the 'wrong side' in the evolution debate was ...
3
Q: I'm wondering how religions might react to this?
Religions usually do away with competition, they will deny the new Maguses actually having any powers, or being new prophets. They will frame the Maguses as an impostors, or magicians. When the magic cannot be denied, these people will be regarded as posessed by demons.
Q: Would some say that what they do ...
2
Who needs METAL? Just make a wooden sword. :)
It's like a wooden steak knife, only bigger. Digest out the lignite, press down until it's 23 times harder than wood and 3 times sharper than a metal knife, coat in mineral oil. I'll admit though, while it's impressive to drive wooden nail it is rather sad to watch how slow it is. Miracles should be snappier. ...
4
One quick but critical point before getting into the details. Metal blades tend to be really thin, often as much as structurally possible, so this question really boils down to: can wood actually help you make an effective blade with even less metal?
I think the biggest issue is the use of a wooden core. Combining wood and metal is certainly nothing new (...
0
Would we see a global schism as religions fought internally over what
to do?
Not anymore than they already do about other things. Most major religions have many underlying sects with differences in belief.
2
It depends on what the scientists come up with ... and how quickly.
If somebody is broadcasting video of nanites embedded in a witch's fingertips, and NASA is tracking the source of the nanites to an interstellar probe, the religions will mostly take a secular line. The main question will be whether people use their abilities for good or evil, as the ...
2
No. It doesn't make much sense.
Sword is a sword because of its combined qualities. It's a piece of balanced metal giving you ability to cut, stab, block and has a certain fairly fixed ratio of durability to mass.
It's also expensive, requires training and has limited range.
Spear is simple, cheap, can be made with almost no metal and you can often kill ...
0
Take a good look at the Aztec weapon called maquahuitl which was wood with a bunch of obsidian glued in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macuahuitl
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ceremonial_Macuahuitl.jpg
0
It's not possible, and scientifically it's silly.
The tallest mountain on earth is about 9000 meters, which is about the limit on earth because of gravity making large structures collapse. You want a structure substantially larger than that. The energy to build such a structure would be orders of magnitude larger than the energy you'd get from the sun- why ...
2
Perhaps instead of some sharp bits stuck onto the wooden sword, it could be more of a steel-clad sword with a wooden core, hilt, and handle.
Something where to the casual observer it would still appear to be an almost entirely metal sword. I think a very dense hardwood like Leadwood, quebracho, or camelthorn would make for an excellent core. Hardwoods like ...
1
You asked for science-based, right? Let's do a bit of hard-science here.
I imagine the stations as huge constructions with heights between 2-30 Kilometer, yes I wrote that correctly.
Is this possible? What are the expected difficulties?
Major difficulty: height and weight of the structure. 2km is achievable with common materials. 30km height? How deep is ...
0
Sure, through natural selection.
Essentially, imagine your world fits the following criteria:
The flora - the grass, the trees, the leaves, the plants, or
whatever your planet's equivalents are - are for the most part,
blue. You can justify this with another answer's reasoning.
There is at least one superpredator species. Its intelligence and ferocity is so ...
1
Towers are space elevators.
Towers have wells under them and pump water up.
Towers have photosynthesizers on them that convert sunlight and CO2 and water to sugar. The towers pump water up to keep the photosynthesizers watered.
The photosynthesizers are maple trees. The goo is maple syrup. But they are bioengineered to drip it from their branches ...
10
Wood and metal are not very good mechanical friends, except for putting a round bit of wood in a round hole in the metal, or vice versa. Handles or shafts, basically. That is not what we need here though.
The thermal expansion ratios differ too much, the response to water differs enormously. Wood loves to absorb water and expand!
However, not all is lost!
If ...
24
improving a club with sharp bits
The classic solution to having access to a stick and a small amount of sharp stuff was to make a spear out of it. The pattern has been repeated across many civilizations using many different materials across a very wide span of time (from about a quarter of a million years ago, to Napoleonic lancers, for example). It works ...
15
No, it won't work. Wood moves with the moisture; first rain and the wood will swell, 2-3 days after with a nice weather and the pressed strip of metal falls off.
BTW, wood swell/shrink mostly on the radial and tangential direction. Better (or worse) yet, the wood is stronger along the fiber, so you will press your strip on a tangential direction - the ...
0
Worldbuilding isn't reality… that's the point of world building.
In reality, the all-blue world won't work.
In worldbuilding everything including all creatures - and plants, and minerals - being blue depends solely on the builder's abilities.
0
The speed of an atomic bomb explosion shock wave.
Plotting the radius of the expansion versus time, the slope gives the velocity of expansion. Examination of the time lapsed photographs shows at about 0.05 seconds the faint outline of the shock wave separating from the blast wave (hydro-dynamic separation) can be seen. This occurs at a velocity of about 1000 ...
0
To me the question is more along the lines of 'Is it possible to have every exterior part of every single living thing of 3b+ species on a planet' not reflect more of any color than x' (x because you said blue was just your first choice)
And to this, the answer is 'no, mostly'.
Radiation is one of the few energy gradients steep enough for life to latch on to ...
0
Solar Output + Evolution
Looking at the way life on our own planet has evolved can give some possible clues as to how another planet might see life adapt under similar, but not identical, circumstances.
The spectra of our star, Sol, peaks right around the 500nm wavelengths that correspond to green light (as we'd expect for a blackbody radiation source with ...
0
As I understand the question, it's asking if there's a plausible scientific reason that life on a planet might by (mostly) blue to the human eye.
If all light reaching the planet is blue, then this becomes an obvious "yes", and makes the creation of blue-only images easy :)
As @hszmv mentioned, one way (and arguably the easiest) to do this is to ...
0
Sollution: Vampires can choose whether to infect their victims with vampirism.
And since they're thinking, intelligent beings, they're not going to willingly create too much competition for themselves.
In any case, it’s not our fault. We were born vampires.”
“I thought you became—”
“—vampires by being bitten? Dear me, no. Oh, we can turn people into ...
2
One thing to also remember about the "Blue is a rare color in nature" is that well, you're discounting a huge chunk of life that lives "Under the Sea". Do to the properties of water, red is not visible underwater from a shallow depth of 20 feet and as the depth increases, the higher end of the color spectrum starts to fade. By 60 feet, ...
2
Their genetic material is a dye in visible wavelengths of light
Our DNA is actually a very good dye - we just don't see the ultraviolet frequencies it absorbs in. If you look at a table like this one, plain DNA absorbs UV light about as well as protein that has been dyed by various procedures (Lowry and so on) absorbs visible light.
Your planet's lifeforms ...
0
Mild spoiler alert for the general theme of some movies/shows/books...
Every vampire mythology I've read/seen has some mechanism which counteracts this quick global spreading of vampirism; and each mythology makes sure that humans are the only source of food. Here's a selection:
The vampire may be able to decide whether his food will "turn" or not....
6
Most vampire victims don't survive to turn into vampires
Most of the time, vampires drain their victims dry, killing them rather than turning them.
There's a bunch of factors, but the biggest is that vampires try and make the most of their victims and have little interest in producing more of themselves.
Remember that vampires are generally functionally ...
14
From my small knowledge of biology, animal colour is either to hide the creature or to highlight it. So if there is a significant variety of predators then almost everything would want to camouflage, prey to stay hidden, predators to sneak up on the prey.
so if on you planet, instead of the browns of bark and the greens of leaves, you have instead both the ...
11
Copper Sulfate
Your planet's creatures need lot's of copper(II) sulfate as an essential nutrient for some metabolic process. Copper(II) sulfate has a bright blue color when dissolved in water, so as long as your planet has a lot of it as life evolves, it may be incorporated into some metabolic process. Admittedly this is unlikely, due to copper's density and ...
30
I think you are starting from a false premise
Blue is a rare color in nature.
It would be more correct to say that our eyes are made in such a way that we don't see that much blue around, because they are not so sensitive in the UV part of the solar spectrum.
Just give a look at how different birds see the world around us (of course the rendition of the ...
0
The vampires are smart, and they practice sustainable farming. If they just bite every human and convert the whole human race into vampires, there won't be a supply of humans any more, and then the vampires will go extinct too. So they intentionally bite few enough humans to keep their numbers from spiralling out of control.
New vampires must be inducted ...
0
I'd go with
Small charge to propel a permanent magnet through a coil for about 10-100J in magnetic flux
extra step of helical explosively pumped flux compression generator pumping up the current to 5-10kJ (AK-47 has somewhere around 6-7kJ per shot - so no a lot of extra explosive required)
The energy available should be enough get quite a hot plasma, ...
12
The claim makes sense, but only with some background assumptions that people in the fictional setting presumably take for granted. Specifically, let us assume that:
Vampires exist.
Vampires must bite people to feed.
Vampires live long enough, and need to feed often enough, that a single vampire must bite dozens (if not more) of people during their lifetime....
Top 50 recent answers are included