Comment by Michael Seifert on Optical telegraph that can be seen as far as 90...
I think this is a better solution than a mechanical semaphore tower, but one wrinkle occurs to me. I wouldn't expect that people with 1500s-level technology would be able to grind a mirror as flat as...
View ArticleComment by Michael Seifert on In a desert made of sugar, what would happen if...
@UVphoton: Give it a few billion years and you'll get Big Rock Candy Mountains.
View ArticleComment by Michael Seifert on Does "Demon Gravity" break physics?
Dark matter is actually demons!
View ArticleComment by Michael Seifert on Are the rivers in my fantasy map accurate?
What is the scale of this map? Approximately how big is it? Basins without outflows usually only tend to form in continental interiors, where the climate is relatively dry and that there's not enough...
View ArticleComment by Michael Seifert on Suppose dragons spewed volcanic ash instead of...
@NickT's question is important. Otherwise, you're limited to a mass of ash that's probably around the mass of one dragon, give or take.
View ArticleComment by Michael Seifert on The abundance of which material would provide...
@realityChemist: Thanks for the order-of-magnitude check! I have edited the answer accordingly.
View ArticleComment by Michael Seifert on Could my glass buildings last for thousands of...
@KalMadda: As an example, the big pyramid at Chichen Itza was almost completely covered in vegetation by the mid-19th century. It's not clear to me how long it had been abandoned by that point, but...
View ArticleComment by Michael Seifert on How long could a person survive on nothing but...
It's worth noting that the molecules for vitamin B1, vitamin B3, and vitamin C are no more complicated than a sucrose molecule; so if the OP's mages can conjure up sucrose it would seem plausible that...
View ArticleComment by Michael Seifert on What could lead a large ocean on a planet's...
Another way to look at it is that if the entirety of Earth's oceans were vapor, then the atmospheric pressure at the surface would be the weight of all the oceans divided by the surface area of the...
View ArticleComment by Michael Seifert on How do serpentine aliens move their eggs to...
I'm not a biologist, but I would think that the trait "the young cause allergic reactions in their parents" would not last long due to natural selection.
View ArticleAnswer by Michael Seifert for How to assassinate Martian separatist from Earth?
When Greg Bear wrote about a separatist Mars movement in his novel Moving Mars, Earth's main weapon in the end was "locusts": nanotech fabrication systems planted surreptitiously on the Martian surface...
View ArticleAnswer by Michael Seifert for Form of currency where precious metals are...
Shell money was used as currency in many parts of the world well into the Industrial Era. They are durable, portable, recognizable and divisible, and so have a lot of the attributes that make for a...
View ArticleAnswer by Michael Seifert for Is it possible for one star to orbit another?
I give you Kepler 16b:On 15 September 2011, astronomers announced the first partial-eclipse-based discovery of a circumbinary planet. The planet, called Kepler-16b, is about 200 light years from Earth,...
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Answer by Michael Seifert for Time travel, assassination, and stunting...
As-SaffahAs-Saffah (722?–754) was the founder of the Abbasid dynasty. This dynasty was largely responsible for the political consolidation and Persian influence that led to the Islamic Golden Age....
View ArticleAnswer by Michael Seifert for How to protect the Earth from the stellar...
Since this is tagged as science-based, here's a scientific paper on the subject of moving the Earth away from an increasingly powerful Sun:D. G. Korycansky, Gregory Laughlin, Fred C. Adams....
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Answer by Michael Seifert for Would we notice ridiculously healthy birds?
The North American House Finch, and to a lesser extent the American Goldfinch, have experienced an outbreak of mycoplasmal conjuctivitis over the past 20-odd years:House Finch eye disease was first...
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Answer by Michael Seifert for Why would people not settle an open plain?
It's a temperate climate, similar to that of the North American prairies.Which part of the North American prairies are you talking about?The 100th meridian has historically marked the boundary between...
View ArticleAnswer by Michael Seifert for How quickly could a Norse longboat get from...
The Draken Harald Hårfagre, a reconstructed Viking longboat, made the crossing from Norway (not Denmark) to Newfoundland in a little over five weeks in the spring of 2016. From their website, here's a...
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Answer by Michael Seifert for How might an astronomer discover they have been...
The Hulse-Taylor binaryThe Hulse-Taylor binary consists of a neutron star and a pulsar in a tight orbit. These two objects emit gravitational waves at a known rate, which causes the period of their...
View ArticleAnswer by Michael Seifert for Could a natural disaster completely isolate a...
Major undersea volcanic eruption near OahuThe city of Honolulu has a population of nearly 1 million people. A major eruption would effectively shut down air traffic (cf. Eyfyallayöküll), and an...
View ArticleAnswer by Michael Seifert for Plausible Original Concept For High-Fidelity...
Supervolcano eruptionAbout 75,000 years ago, a tremendous volcanic eruption occurred at the present site of Lake Toba in Indonesia. It ejected tremendous amounts of ash and sulfuric acid into the...
View ArticleAnswer by Michael Seifert for What would be the structural impact of an...
Summary:If the planet has a "normal" day length and is strong enough to keep from flying apart under its own rotation, then it'll be a boring old oblate sphere.First-order effects on planetary shape:...
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Answer by Michael Seifert for Biology of a creature that could instantly gain...
Swim bladdersImage via Wikimedia commonsMany bony fish have swim bladders. These are gas-filled internal organs that help the fish maintain neutral buoyancy and rotational stability, so that they do...
View ArticleAnswer by Michael Seifert for How would you build a harbor in a world with...
Boat liftsYour harbor could use boat lifts, such as the Peterborough Lift Lock or the Falkirk Wheel. Your harbour would be at the top of the lift, and a channel to the ocean would be at the bottom....
View ArticleAnswer by Michael Seifert for Optical telegraph that can be seen as far as 90...
If you have your heart set on using movable semaphore towers with 1500s tech, they're going to have to be quite large. But if you allow for simple telescopes, it's probably feasible.To distinguish the...
View ArticleAnswer by Michael Seifert for What's a reasonable environmental disaster that...
The Great Europan Oxidation Event (due to biological contamination)Around 2 billion years ago (give or take), a clever species of Terran cyanobacteria figured out how to photosynthesize. The result was...
View ArticleComment by Michael Seifert on Making nuclear weapons almost impossible to build
Concerning the heat from Uranium inside the Earth, it's not just uranium but also thorium and potassium-40 that generate heat; the breakdown is about 45% from thorium, 40% from uranium, and 15% from...
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Answer by Michael Seifert for Could a society with medieval technology...
If you're in a world where you have humans (or carbon-base lifeforms) on an Earth-like planet orbiting a gas giant then you're obviously not in the solar system.So posit that your system's star is much...
View ArticleComment by Michael Seifert on Can you have a planet as bright as Venus...
Just to be clear: a hypothetical planet orbiting the Sun at 0.9 AU would orbit the Sun at a different rate than Earth, and so its distance to Earth would vary anywhere between 0.1 AU and 1.9 AU. That...
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