18
votes
Hiding a Continent
Your example is not possible. During the several centuries when sailing ships were the dominant carriers of international trade, they went essentially everywhere. The vagaries of the wind meant they ...
- 20.6k
10
votes
Hiding a Continent
No, because people just flew wherever they wanted before that.
It wasn't till around the 1950s and 1960s that radar and regulations got advanced enough to track most planes. Hobbyists and rich people ...
- 26.5k
9
votes
Justification for using Saturn as a future base for colonization
Saturn has an escape velocity of 35.5 km/s compared to Earth's 11 km/s. It means you need about 9 times the energy to get to orbit.
The maximum temperature is 151 K, which is about 30 degrees colder ...
- 899
8
votes
Accepted
How to stop Jimmy’s (self-conscious) limbs from rebelling?
Jimmy is a human octopus/arthropod.
Jimmy over here is a pretty special fellow, for his species, because unlike humans, whose brains are pretty centralized and coordinate essentially all bodily ...
- 13k
7
votes
How to get the Lilim to breed true?
Differential chemotaxis
Sperm use chemical gradients to reach the ovum. The receptors they use are genetically encoded, and so are the chemoattractant molecules produced by ova. You need to ...
- 4,117
6
votes
Accepted
If Venus were at .85 AU, Earth at 1.1 AU, and Mars at 1.4 AU from the Sun, would they disrupt each other's orbits at conjunction?
Final answer: the system remains stable.
Let me explain exactly what I did. I ran an N-body simulation including the following planets:
Venus at 0.85 AU (other orbital parameters unchanged)
Earth at ...
- 3,369
5
votes
Accepted
Are high-density moons plausible beyond the frost line?
Definitely
Even if you can find some correlation between moon densities with the distance from the Sun you can find multiple reasons as to why a planet can have a denser moon than the nearest planets ...
- 145
5
votes
Hiding a Continent
Without changing history, and it being a year-round dry landmass: nearly impossible, however...
I can think of two options.
OPTION 1: Cyanobacteria covering the entire landmass
These are bacteria ...
5
votes
Justification for using Saturn as a future base for colonization
Bad idea
First, BillOnne's answer is quite correct - anyone who goes there is staying there permanently, the delta v to get to orbit is prohibitive. Which does not, in and of itself, make ...
- 20k
4
votes
Hiding a Continent
No
What happens if a country decides to violate the agreement and settle the new continent? The international community would have to sanction that county, but do that without saying why they are ...
- 7,566
4
votes
Saturnian Cloud Cities Pt. 2- Ice-harvester planes
I see an inherent problem with the concept of using an airplane when taking off and landing back from above rather than from below.
Let me explain: on Earth when an airplane has a non critical issue ...
- 248k
4
votes
Saturnian Cloud Cities Pt. 3- Wind Turbine Problems
Objection could be valid, but it misses the important part that those layers have significantly different densities, and are separated by a good deal of km's and what will be harwested is the ...
- 6,388
4
votes
How to get the Lilim to breed true?
Lilims twin a lot
Fertilised lilim ova have a far higher chance of twinning than humans. Around 50%. (Maybe 100%?). Even triplets are common, and quadruplets are only as uncommon as human triplets.
...
- 5,611
5
votes
How to get the Lilim to breed true?
Chimeras:
Your Lilim have a modified form of meiosis. Lilim eggs don’t separate in meiosis. So there is an L egg and an X egg together. The X egg is the one fertilized. If the sperm carry a Y, the L ...
- 60.5k
3
votes
Saturnian Cloud Cities Pt. 2- Ice-harvester planes
using reactive propulsion in the case
loss of water (oxygen) your typical piston based prop would be fine
ramjet, with higher speeds of sound in hydrogen the thing has to move at insane velocities ...
- 6,388
3
votes
Accepted
Would the articulations/joints/bearings of a bulletproof full-body suit be easily pierceable?
You say weight and size isn't an issue but those are absolutely a major issues with modern materials. There's a reason we haven't made any full body bullet resistant suits in real life.
I am assuming ...
- 78
3
votes
Justification for using Saturn as a future base for colonization
Frame Challenge: Saturn itself is a poor choice for colonisation, but some of its moons, Titan and Enceladus in particular, are not bad options. It won't be paradise, but both have a solid surface and ...
- 411
2
votes
How plausible is my solar system?
The answer is: your setup is definitely plausible.
I have a personal story about this question. Back in 2007 I wrote a scientific paper (I'm an astrophysicist) arguing that very low-mass stars might ...
- 3,369
2
votes
Saturnian Cloud Cities Pt. 2- Ice-harvester planes
Flying on Saturn is actually quite realistic:
https://what-if.xkcd.com/30/
If your aircraft es specifically designed to fly on Saturn, it should have no problems to do so. After all, even the ...
- 501
2
votes
Saturnian Cloud Cities Pt. 3- Wind Turbine Problems
If not, then what alternative electricity source must I use in place of it?
/The hydrogen gas is heated by long geothermal cables that dip down into the lower atmosphere to harvest Saturn's immense ...
- 287k
2
votes
How to stop Jimmy’s (self-conscious) limbs from rebelling?
Corporal punishment.
In the most literal sense. Misbehaving regions are punished by the other members of the corpus collective, in a manner appropriate to the crime and body region. The exact nature ...
- 287k
2
votes
How to get the Lilim to breed true?
Uterus bacteria
Create or preferably alter some bacteria that live in the uterus. These do their normal symbiotic tasks. However, the bacteria are triggered when anything other than a LX has nested. ...
- 29.7k
1
vote
Hiding a Continent
The Ocean of Death:
Obviously, if you are going to have an extra continent, the landmasses need to be arranged differently. On our Earth, weather and such would be altered by an extra continent, so I ...
- 60.5k
1
vote
Hiding a Continent
Charles Fort was right.
Several times, in the course of this book, I have tried to be
reasonable. I have asked what such repeating phenomena in one local
sky do indicate, if they do not indicate ...
- 287k
1
vote
Hiding a Continent
Geology that is just right.
The center of the island is intensely cold. This naturally makes the air above the center of the island cold, and hence it descends. As it nears the ground it has to go ...
- 362
1
vote
Hiding a Continent
You only option I think is to have a large volcanic area which
undergoes periodic eruption, producing scattered low islands all across its extension. Think of something like Ferdinandea island, but ...
- 248k
1
vote
Saturnian Cloud Cities Pt. 4- How to deploy the cloud-city
Perhaps the copper block areas include reactors, fusion or atomic, and provide heat for the short term, and are cheap and maybe radioactively dirty in the short term until you get the heat balance you ...
- 5,795
1
vote
Saturnian Cloud Cities Pt. 4- How to deploy the cloud-city
the materials (graphene cables, algae cells, turbines etc) are carried by rockets
You have a lot of kinetic energy to shed if you want to start being in the atmosphere. Usually that kinetic energy is ...
- 248k
1
vote
Saturnian Cloud Cities Pt. 3- Wind Turbine Problems
A) Deploy gliders, or lots of little drone or kite turbines, or B) piezoelectric 'cilia' or cables that hang below your city.
a) Rather than collecting energy from one large turbine, or a wall of ...
- 5,795
1
vote
Would the articulations/joints/bearings of a bulletproof full-body suit be easily pierceable?
If the plates of the armor are strong enough, then the joints can be protected very nearly as well. Here is how. This is King Arthur's armor from the 1981 movie Excalibur. Note the overlapping plates. ...
- 899
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible