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Are Liquid Brains Possible or Viable?

The brains of your hypothetical aliens could be fluidic computational systems. Fluidics is a technology that uses fluid instead of electricity. Turns out this can be used to make computers. Trouble is ...
a4android's user avatar
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1 vote

Are Liquid Brains Possible or Viable?

DNA computers The machines we are used to, as well as our brains, rely on parts mounted in stable places with connections between them like axons, wires, or shafts. It is these solid-state connections ...
Nicol Wollaston's user avatar
0 votes

Are Liquid Brains Possible or Viable?

Yes but it would have to be huge due to having to use water flow rather than electrical impulses. So computers are binary, on/off, you could do the same thing with hydraulics, valves and pumps etc.. ...
Kilisi's user avatar
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2 votes

Are Liquid Brains Possible or Viable?

You might want to check out quorum sensing in bacteria. Bacteria can form a colony that behaves like a single bit more intelligent organism. Nothing would really prevent same thing happening in liquid ...
Jani Miettinen's user avatar
5 votes

Are Liquid Brains Possible or Viable?

In terrestrial biology, brains work by having many neurons, each with many connections to other neurons. It is thought that the particular number and position of the connections between neurons - the ...
Monty Wild's user avatar
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2 votes

How long would it take humans to notice a civilization on Venus?

I like to imagine Venus shrouded in clouds although not to the extent in our world, but enough to obscure some surface features. If Venus had an atmosphere just like the Earth's, it would need to ...
The Square-Cube Law's user avatar
0 votes

How long would it take humans to notice a civilization on Venus?

Your tropical Venus is lush and green, since its flora evolved under the light of the same sun as ours. Like Earth's civilizations, your Venusian civilizations will need to clear a lot of land for ...
skeep's user avatar
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6 votes

How long would it take humans to notice a civilization on Venus?

I would imagine that some form of radio telescope would be needed to detect the faint radio signals from early Venusians radio. In all likelihood the first signals would be missed as the signals would ...
Slarty's user avatar
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18 votes

How long would it take humans to notice a civilization on Venus?

Martian canals were described in 1877. As we know now, the descriptions were wrong. Over the next century, this was gradually shown. Part of that was showing the lack of water in the spectrographic ...
o.m.'s user avatar
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22 votes

How long would it take humans to notice a civilization on Venus?

Assuming your version of Venus is still cloaked in dense cloud cover even though it has a breathable atmosphere? With the invention of radio, in particular VHF radio. This is because Earth's ...
Mon's user avatar
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5 votes

How long would it take humans to notice a civilization on Venus?

They would know about us long before we knew about them due to our lesser cloud cover and architecture. If their tech was close to ours, we'd both know via radio waves long before either had ...
Kilisi's user avatar
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1 vote

How would researchers on an alien planet be able to support their dietary requirements?

Obliteration. Something has to eat sun and carbondioxide. It may be poisonous and full of heavy metall. But something on earth can eat it. Rats and roaches. And they take the brunt. Now filter out the ...
Pica's user avatar
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1 vote

How would researchers on an alien planet be able to support their dietary requirements?

Adult humans are able to survive without any protein for some time. Only eating carbohydrates and fatty acids - both of these can be quite easily synthesized chemically or separated from local sources....
Juraj's user avatar
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1 vote

How would researchers on an alien planet be able to support their dietary requirements?

For a small number of people stored food is a better option. growing food takes a lot pf labor, especially a large enough variety of foods to keep humans productive. They might be producing a single ...
John's user avatar
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3 votes

How would researchers on an alien planet be able to support their dietary requirements?

Exactly what happens on your world is impossible to say with any accuracy as we only have one example of life to work with, so you have wide latitude. That said some observations can be made. The more ...
Slarty's user avatar
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2 votes

How would researchers on an alien planet be able to support their dietary requirements?

Whatever their form of hydroponics takes would be part of their mission equipment as a matter of course. They might supplement it with their version of vitamin pills but they'd need some sort of ...
Kilisi's user avatar
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2 votes

How reasonable is my hypothesis regarding ring-tailed orthostatic bipeds?

tricking predators into attacking it rather than more vital body parts While it's easy for a caterpillar to make its back look like its head, putting two big spots on it resembling two eyes, having a ...
L.Dutch's user avatar
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3 votes
Accepted

Is my alien foot design viable for a compromise between arboreality and cursoriality?

As a terrestrial, cursorial foot, this is only slightly different to the human foot. When humans are running, it appears to be modern shoes that enforce a plantigrade running habit, whereas humans ...
Monty Wild's user avatar
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