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1500 questions
60
votes
18 answers

Million-year-old records

The universe is brutal on information. I'm looking for ways to preserve about an exabyte of information for a million years. I'm looking for answers rooted in reality without any lucky circumstances helping it along. I'd prefer if there were…
Sam Washburn
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17 answers

How do you power all the nanobots?

We have successfully put 37 trillion nanobots the size of a red blood cell into the experimental group test subjects' willing participants' bloodstream, but without a power source, the nanobots clot up the bloodstream and don't carry oxygen cause…
Daniel M.
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21 answers

Would a fighter pilot with an invincible space ship be able to conquer the galaxy?

Setting Not so long ago, in a galaxy not too far away, there were two civilizations at war. Both were at war because the leaders of both wanted more and more power. Both were advanced and mined the stars. Both had an extensive fleet of powerful…
X-27 is done with the network
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8 answers

Building a bridge to the stars

Could I, purely in quantity of material only, build a solid bridge to a star? Ignore anything like strength, relative motions of systems, that is all taken care of, using lalalaicanthearyouium - this is not remotely based in any actual science. All…
Whelkaholism
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17 answers

Where in the solar system is the most viable place to put my colonists, after Mars and Luna?

Mars and Earth's moon already feature in a lot of fiction about space colonization. After these two planets, and assuming that other solar systems are too far away, what is the best place within this solar system to colonize?
Village
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16 answers

Could a human engineer comprehend alien electronics?

Let's say a human engineer comes across an alien electronics lab. It occurs to me that electrons are electrons, if the aliens are at a similar state of development to us then at least the simplest (discrete?) components might be similar in…
amziraro
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15 answers

What circumstances could lead to city layout based on hexagons?

Most modern planned cities are based on grid layouts. Historic cities are more organic on a macroscopic level, but buildings are still generally square-shaped leading to grid-based layouts on the micro-level. But I recently learned that squares are…
Philipp
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19 answers

Would it be possible for an Earth-sized world to speak a single language?

We have thousands of languages in the world, which seem to have evolved differently due to lack of communication methods (it wasn't quite easy for a Chinese guy to speak with French people thousands of years ago, for example). Currently, the lack of…
Paul92
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21 answers

How would an AI self awareness kill switch work?

Researchers are developing increasingly powerful Artificial Intelligence machines capable of taking over the world. As a precautionary measure, scientists install a self awareness kill switch. In the event that the AI awakens and becomes self aware…
Reactgular
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10 answers

If reality were frame-rate based, how could we detect it?

Inspired by this question regarding reality as simulation and this question about a continuous time line, it made me wonder: if our time were indeed like a high frame-rate simulation, how could we detect it, if at all? So, assumptions are, of course…
Alma Do
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27 answers

How to Defeat a Precognitive Warrior?

My hapless wanderer (let's call her Alice) escaped the Wold forest only to stumble upon a large, featureless and dusty plane, at the center of which lies Castle Morrow, a fort populated by mechanical servitors and a single live member of a rare cult…
Serban Tanasa
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12 answers

How can Dwarves produce honey underground?

I have often heard/read/watched in fantasy about dwarves drinking mead and lots of it. I recently learned that mead is made from honey which requires bees and flowers which require sunlight. I doubt that they could import enough to satisfy the…
Nikolay Arabadzhi
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12 answers

Is a man-eating plant realistic?

Carnivorous plants live in nutrient-poor, highly lit habitats, such as bogs or rocks. For example Earth's biggest carnivorous plant, Nepenthes rajah, lives on mountain-tops with high concentration of heavy metals but few nutrients such as nitrogen.…
Pavel V.
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26 answers

Why would a civilization outfit buildings with separate portals for entering and leaving them?

Human buildings usually have one or more doors which combine the function of an entrance and an exit, emergency exits being the only notable example I can think of, albeit designed for contingency use. My fictional alien civilization builds houses…
MedwedianPresident
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24 answers

Socialist country with good economy?

I want to have a socialist* country where economy is good enough to have at least one big city of more then million people, that has well maintained buildings. The people don't have to be rich but there shouldn't be any queues for basic food &…
MrMister
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