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**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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You are asking questions about a story set in a world instead of about building a world. For more information, see [Why is my question "Too Story Based" and how do I get it opened?](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3300/49).
Closed 7 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/62316/edit)
I have a world of magic set in our present world where good and bad magic creatures (witches, sorcerers, demons, vampires..) live hidden among us.
My main characters are few good witches who are tricked by a demon to make a pact to serve him, and he granted them powers. Unfortunately for him he cut corners and didn't corrupt them before, so they will continue to work only for the good causes (helping people, saving innocents lives, killing evil creatures ..) and are only obliged to obey when his orders help the good.
Is there any way he could make use of them under described circumstances?
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A lot of things.
* The demon has rivals within the demonic realm. Defeating those rivals serves both the good side and this demon's plans.
* There are a lot of innocent kids that could turn evil. Some are most likely than others. If there is an increase number of innocent kids that are very likely to turn evil that are saved, the odds would be better for evil (isn't statistics fun).
* Incite the witches to "do the right thing" in special cases where the right thing is not the popular one. Goodness will be seen as painful to the general population.
* The same thing can be done to mingle with neutral creatures. If any time a neutral creature does something bad witches come and lecture them, they will eventually want to team up to demons (decolonization-style).
* "Go do those good things but disguised as evil creatures" will create more confusion. Evil wins when we confuse it with good.
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## Which witch
Witches are probably just as likely as other humans to have a range of political and ethical opinions. There are people who genuinely think they are doing a good deed by persecuting and killing people working at abortion clinics, people working at refuges for abused women, people of other skin colours, people of other nationalities, people of non-vanilla-heterosexual sexuality, etc.. In some places you will even find one or more of these as the majority opinion. Therefore there are probably witches with those ranges of opinions too.
All the demon needs to do is decide who to give his orders to. It's quite possible that one of the witches will think it's a good thing and go for it, even if the majority may not.
## Switch witch
Give half the instructions to one witch, and half the instructions to another witch. Each set of instructions should look reasonable on their own, but together they produce a disastrous result. Combine across multiple witches for maximum obfuscation.
## Stitch witch
Lie to the witch about what's good or not. (And indeed about whether the demon itself is good or not.) A bit of brainwashing could sway their opinion.
## Snitch witch
Tell the witch about something true which is detrimental to them or people they care about, as a reason to do something which isn't quite good but will have adverse affects for the person/people they now have a reason to dislike.
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History is full of people who we're trying to do good but ended up doing bad. Demons are typically master manipulators, So eventually I believe could trick them into doing bad things all the while believing that they're doing this for the greater good.
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If he is a planner he could make them do something that seemed good not but the fallout would cause massive problems later.
Maybe defeat some evil monster that then causes a backlash and unites "evil Kind" against good.
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So I tried googling them, all I got was
A:[unspeakable horrors not meant to be seen][Which does not help]
B:[A giant tentacled balloon]
C:[Some strange shadow skeleton pseudo-death god]
So yeah, pls enlighten me on this, it's been bugging me forever :/
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The main idea of being called [Eldritch Abomination](http://allthetropes.wikia.com/wiki/Eldritch_Abomination) is
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> There are no words that can encompass such disgusting foulness, not in English or any other human tongue. They are The Other. The Inconceivable. Alien beyond comprehension, their sole existence is an affront to all reason.
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So the answer to your question is [无](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(negative)) (not to be confused with *µ* if trying to find a link!) — the question itself must be “unasked”; no answer can exist in the terms provided.
Use of the Eldritch Abomination in storytelling *requires* that no details be given. The reader/viewer/player has inherent fear of the *unknown* or brings up fears from his own imagination that works specifically for him.
*Jaws* (movie version) turned out much better because they couldn’t get the robot shark to work and Stephen directed it instead to *not show* it. Remember the scene with the roast and the dock? Or Brody on the beach just waiting for the monster to appear? [Showing only the protagonist, that was scary](http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/03/25/a_breakdown_of_the_jaws_beach_scene_julian_palmer_analyzes_spielberg_s_iconic.html).
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> So what makes the scene so good? In the first episode of new video essay series “The Discarded Image,” Julian Palmer suggests the answer is Spielberg’s knack for **putting the audience in the place of the actor**: The director uses color choice, camera placement, and foreshadowing to go “beyond the proscenium arch” and **engage viewers directly**. He’s not the first to do so, of course, and Palmer frequently uses Alfred Hitchcock’s work to contextualize Spielberg’s innovations in suspense.
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(Bold mine) That is, the nature of the monster is not at all important here, is never shown and not yet present, and the fear (in the story as well as in the viewing) comes from the inner fears of the protagonist.
Likewise, the first *Alien* movie was much scarier before [the alien](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(creature_in_Alien_franchise)) was seen in detail, and the fragments that showed were, well, *alien*, so you didn't know how it fit together from seeing the parts. Once it became known in diagrams and cultural references, it culminated in the *Far Side* cartoon of “Alien family dinners” and was definitely **not** scary anymore.
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As for Lovecraft’s squid, [not everyone finds them scary or creepy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tentacle_erotica). Invertebrates might have been creepy to New England fisherman, and he likes to use cool words like *squamous*, but today finding a live [*Architeuthis*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_squid) is *really cool*, not horrifying.
(Fine art is not smut…it's acceptable as a *featured image* [on Wikipedia](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tako_to_ama_retouched.jpg#mw-jump-to-license), right? But under spoiler tag just in case.)
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So **no**, not even Google can help. “What is it?” **is** what it is. You have to find it within yourself to bring forth the worst fears you can imagine, and fear the unknown.
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Eldritch abominations are creatures (usually from another dimension) which are so different from our own biology that the mind cannot comprehend them. For example the old ones in Power of Five or the creatures from the dungeon dimensions in Discworld. These creatures can often cause people who see them to go mad or have there minds changed in some way. Many eldritch abominations disguise themselves as humans leading to an extreme reaction when the creatures true form is revealed.
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If you take a look at Merriam Webster:
[Eldritch](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/eldritch):
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> "Eldritch," also, comes from a time when otherworldly beings were commonly thought to inhabit the earth. The word is about 500 years old and believed to have come from Middle English "elfriche," meaning "fairyland."
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[Abomination](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abomination)
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> Something abnominable - worthy of or causing disgust or hatred
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So an Eldritch Abomination is something disgusting from another world.
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The concept of the eldritch abomination by its nature is impossible to pin down. It is generally regarded as *something* that is so far outside of normal human experience as to be incomprehensible, whether it's because the thing follows motivations and desires that no human has ever pondered, or it takes a shape that have never existed either in nature or the mortal mind, or it simply exists on a scale so mindbogglingly vast that the mind cannot cope with the scale of it. Exactly what about your abomination is so alien as to confound the viewer on a fundamental level is entirely up to the story you want to tell.
The abomination itself however is secondary to the theme that drives the cosmic horror genre, which is that man's place in the universe is so utterly insignificant next to the beings and forces that exist outside of the relative safety of planet Earth. So really, what an eldritch abomination *is*, is whatever is most likely to make somebody acutely aware of just how much there is out there that they do not understand. If you've never read some of Lovecraft's stories, you should take a look at [The Colour Out of Space](http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cs.aspx) or [At the Mountains of Madness](http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/mm.aspx) to get a feel for what kind of themes this concept is used for.
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A simple question, could a moon exist and stay whole if it was inside the ring of asteroids orbiting a planet? And as a side note, would it create a kind of bulge in the ring where the asteroids surround the moon? Honestly, this is entirely because my friend wants our planet to be uniquely pretty and I personally don't think this would work.
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Ever heard of [**shepherd moons**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepherd_moon)? Shepherd moons are moons (typically not very massive) that orbit in the middle of planetary rings, creating gaps in the material. They also keep the ring material where it is, rather than letting it dissipate:
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Hirtenmond.png)
Image courtesy of Wikipedia user The Viewer under the [Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en).
Examples of shepherd moons include:
* Prometheus
* Janus
* Epimetheus
* Metis
* Adrastea
* Pan
* Cordelia
* Ophelia
* Galatea
The list in the Solar System goes on.
See this video (which [vanillagod beat me to](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/46644/627)) of Prometheus (right) and Pandora (left) orbiting Saturn by its F ring:
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/PIA07712_-_F_ring_animation.gif)
Image in the public domain.
The rings extend beyond the edges of the image; these gaps are relatively small.
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Yes, you absolutely can have a moon orbiting within a ring system. In fact, we have a perfect example of that in our own solar system: [Saturn's *A* ring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_of_Saturn#A_Ring) has the [Encke](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_of_Saturn#Encke_Gap) and [Keeler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_of_Saturn#Keeler_Gap) gaps, wherein orbits the moons [Pan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_(moon)) and [Daphnis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphnis_(moon)), respectively.
So if you want a ring system with moons orbiting within it, go ahead. If you want to make it realistic, just make sure to have the moons clear out sufficient elbow room for themselves, which will create a corridor wider than the moon(s)' diameter.
For comparison, the Encke gap is 325 km wide with Pan having a mean radius of 14.1 ± 1.3 km (thus mean diameter 28.2 ± 2.6 km) and the Keeler gap is 42 km wide with Daphnis having a diameter of approximately 8 km. It thus seems reasonable for such a moon to clear out a corridor with a width about 5-10 times the moon's diameter in the ring system. When viewed from some angle other than straight on, for any reasonably sized moon, this gap will be readily visible.
And because pictures get everyone's attention, even though it's small, here's a side view of Pan, [courtesy NASA by way of Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pan_side_view.jpg):
and [Daphnis from either above or below](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Daphnis_raw_2010_cropped.jpg) (hard to tell):
Particularly in the context of the picture of Pan, it's worth keeping in mind that the rings of Saturn are [less than 1 km thick](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_of_Saturn#Physical_characteristics).
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A picture is worth a thousand words.
Check the leftmost part of it.
[Click for a bigger picture (this is the source).](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Saturn%27s_Rings_PIA03550.jpg)
[And the source article as well.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moons_of_Saturn)
Edit: HDE's answer also uses Saturn's moons for an example, and his answer is even better.
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Depends on the moon. The rings exist because it is *inside the [Roche limit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roche_limit)*.
Any moonlet within the rings must be *small* and *made of strong material* so it resists being shreaded. How strong depends on how close to the primary you get. So, you might get a solid metal ingot able to withstand the tidal force, where it already came apart at any natural fissers or boundaries between different materials.
You can calculate the details for a specific situation.
Others have pointed out that such moonlets will have an effect on the rings.
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I think the issue is how quickly the moon would GROW as it slowly accumulated mass from the ring. A moon is nothing more than a big chunk of debris in a ring, so it would attract the much smaller dust in the ring rather than slowly being ground down by said dust.
A stable "ring" of asteroids would imply the asteroids have little velocity difference relative to each other so chaotic collisions that could threaten the moon wouldn't occur, else the asteroid ring would just self destruct on its own, regardless if a moon was there or not.
If the "moon" is just the largest remaining fragment of a larger orbiting body that is still in the early stages of settling into a ring orbit post-fragmentation then it could be hit and break up further, but it would probably be an irregular shaped object, not something we typically characterize as a "moon" (although there are potato shaped moons out there).
Look at how folks think Mars "stole" it's moons from the asteroid belt. If you hypothesize that a planet, with an already existing ring system, could lure a larger asteroid into it's orbit like Mars did, then you could have both a ring and a moon, at least for a while. They would probably occupy different orbits but eventually the moon would attract and suck up all the ring fragments (or hit them and send them off into chaotic orbits, probably some would fall down and hit the planet, not good!)
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It certainly is possible.
In the book "Planetary Rings: A Post-Equinox View" by Larry Esposito he talks about a "Ring-Moon"
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Found in the glossary of said book. This implies there must be a possibility for such a occurrence to exist and be physically possible.
Although I believe that this could not last too long as the moon inside the ring will slowly incorporate all of it's mass into his own while he orbits the planet faster than the individual smaller particles that make out the ring. On human scale this should still take a while so for a story there could be a moon inside a ring.
Consider [this video](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PIA07712_-_F_ring_animation_videoquality_6_framerate_5.ogv) of two Saturn moons about the bit with the bulge in the ring.
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On earth, we use a simple but effective coordinate system which determines position unambiguously on the surface (GPS achieving accuracy within 1 meter, which speaking as an engineer, is a remarkable feat in of itself).
For example, Greenwich, England is located at coordinates 51.4800° N, 0.0000°. This disregards tilt of the earth, position around the sun, minor gravitational directional changes due to the pull of the moon, etc. because they are not relevant.
My point is that should we one day inhabit one or more planets outside our solar system, we'll need a new unambiguous system to identify coordinates of the planet in 3d space.
A 3d coordinate system with an x, y, and z coordinate would be relatively impractical since the position of the planet in question would be constantly changing position. There are several factors that come to mind to take into consideration:
* Position of the star it is orbiting
* Any local moons that may alter it's position slightly.
* The tilt of the planet at any given moment (unlike our current system which needs not consider the current tilt of the planet, you would need to know the current tilt in order to find the proper 2d planetary coordinates)
Like most good systems, it must have the following qualities:
* Be precise, in this case lets say within a kilometer of the destination.
* Be concise. Minimize the amount of information you need to provide, in this case in order to unambiguously find the position of the planet
* Be accurate also in the near future. Coordinates which are established on earth must still unambiguously be valid by the time a ship arrives (lets say remain within a kilometer of the destination within 100+ years time)
Assume there are no adverse space-time effects to consider (which would likely make an accurate and practical interplanetary coordinate system nearly impossible).
Assume that we will have computers and thus you do not have to provide information that could otherwise be calculated or remains relatively static (within 100 years time stays the same). For example, given a star's 3d coordinates and angle, a computer would load the planet's distance from the sun and be able to determine roughly where that planet would be, without having to include it in the coordinate system.
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"They" would need to give you two things: the coordinates of the planet itself, needed for the interplanetary travel, and the coordinates of the volcano on the planet.
These are two different coordinate systems, with different origins and uses. It is like when you say "42nd Main Street, third floor, office 31". You use a three dimensional system for locating the bunch of offices of the company (42nd Main Street, third floor) and then a different system to locate office 31.
So, to locate the planet, the system does actually exist. Actually, several of them. The simplest method is to give planet's xyz coordinates, but the more stable is to give its orbital parameters. These are enough to know where the planet is just knowing the time.
e.g. Earth has a semi-major axis of 149513000 km, eccentricity of 0.0161700, inclination of 7.155 deg to Sun's equator, and an argument of perihelion of 326.0590 deg. These, together with current time, tell you exactly "Where Earth is".
Once on the planet, the current longitude/latitude system is well defined once you know the origin of longitudes, to say, the Greenwich point.
If you were also in need to locate the star itself, for interstellar trips, you have two options: either the galactic coordinates (galactic latitude, galactic longitude and distance to the galactic center) or those relative to Sun's position.
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*Disclaimer: I may work on software that has to automatically shift between a dozen frames and coordinate systems on a constant basis to meet user needs and expectations!*
I think you might be putting too much into GPS =) I'm going to divide this into two parts. First part is an ephemeris overview, the second is more directly associated with the question.
I think you're actually trying to do several things at once:
* GPS is a way to measure time signals and map them back into space to define a point in space.
* ECEF is a coordinate system (Earth Centered, Earth Fixed) where points on the surface of the *idealized* Earth don't move. ECI (Earth Centered, Inertial) is an inertial coordinate frame. Points on the surface of the earth move fast in this coordinate system, but the coordinate system is not rotating (more on that later)
* Instructions need to be able to describe where to go.
Each of these is a separate issue. As an example, the output of GPS is a point in space, but it isn't necessarily in any particular coordinate system. You can always convert from one system to another without losses. For example, it is really common to use ECEF to map GPS points onto the earth, because for most common purposes, we'd like "stationary" objects to not move. This can also be converted into latitude/longitude/alt (LLA), which is what people typically think of for "GPS coordinates," using nothing but basic trigonometry.
However, there are situations where this system does not give good results. Consider if your target is moving (such as planets always are). It is not meaningful to give out the "GPS coordinate" of a moving car, because the car rapidly leaves that location. Likewise, the XYZ coordinates of a planet will likely shift over the years, unless your coordinate system is fixed to the planet.
There are also situations where you don't want ECEF or LLA. ECEF is a "rotating" frame because the Earth is rotating, and it is tied to the earth's surface movement. Because it is rotating, you have centripetal acceleration and the Coriolis effect. This means, for objects propagating over long times (like planets would in your example), their motion is actually a remarkably complicated shape. Modern sniper computers actually have to account for the Coriolis effect, making the bullet twist to the side in a non-intuitive manner! For positioning satellites, people talk almost exclusively in ECI. ECI is an inertial frame, so Netwon's laws of motion work roughly like you expect them to (at the price of points on the surface of the earth having large apparent veloicites.
**The first major challenge of your problem is defining a coordinate system, so lets look at how we do it today.**
An intuitive guess would be that we start with ECEF, and build outwards to LLA and ECI. However, this is not the way they are defined. **A coordinate system must have a mathematically sound definition, or positions and motion are ill-defined within the coordinate system.** "Points on the Earth hold still" is a poor definition. Consider plate tectonics, which guarantees that a coordinate system perfect for Washington D.C will not be perfect for Berlin.
We, instead, start from ECI. ECI is centered on the centroid of the Earth. This is a relatively fixed concept (though technically changes infinitesimally when we send things to Mars). Anybody can measure the Cg of the Earth, so the center of the coordinate system is reliable. Now we need an orientation for the coordinate system. This is the equivalent of deciding which direction faces up on a map. This is trickier. We know we want an "inertial" frame, but that doesn't specify directions people can agree upon.
To deal with this, we sacrifice a bit. We get "close enough" to an inertial frame, in exchange for a measurable coordinate system. ECI notices that it has two rather reliable datums: the normal for the orbital plane for the Earth, and its rotational axis. Twice a year, at the equinox, these two align, creating a convenient measurement time that occurs every year. We arbitrarily pick the vernal equinox (rather than the autumnal equinox) to base our ECI systems off of. This does mean recreating the ECI frames requires observing seasons.
Now we get into the specifics. ECI is actually a *class* of frames. Each frame just changes how things are measured. Consider J2000, which is a ECI frame built from the equinoxs and poles of the Earth January 1, 2000 12 noon "Terrestrial Time." Note we even had to agree on a time to make ECI work!
Woof! Now think about ECF. ECF coordinate systems have to rotate, but we don't actually tie them to the earth. We tie them to a mathematically perfect Earth. We declare "ECI and ECF coincide at a date-time," such as Jan 1, 2000 12 noon, and that ECF rotates about the earth's rotational axis at a fixed rate: 7.2921150 x 10^-5 radians/s. This gets close enough to the earth's movement that we can claim spots don't move on the surface of the earth.
Holy cow! What was the purpose of all of that? **Defining a coordinate system accurate to a kilometer over the galaxy will be hard, much less measuring it!**
As a note: There are more systems than the ones shown. For plotting paths from Earth to Mars, a solar centric model is often used. This is a much more inertial frame, so longer paths are easier to calculate. There are also galactic frames used, which are usually specified via constellations.
Final detail: instructions. We don't always give instructions in coordinates, for the reasons stated earlier. They aren't always enough. We often give instructions in steps. It would be valid to say "go to Lat/Lon, orient yourself towards the tip of the mountain visible from there, and head that way. I'll be along that line." It's also valid to say "here is an ephemeris table describing my position over time. Go there." Instructions are complicated.
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You will have trouble creating a map of the universe with 1km resolution. Consider a major issue: gravity wells. The universe is not flat. Those bends are going to matter a LOT if you want to see 1km resolution over a travel path of 41314127500000km. That distance, by the way, is the distance to Alpha Centauri, which is a relatively short jaunt by galactic distances. For comparason, that is like planning a trip from the moon to the earth, and trying to define a landing site within 10um!
Instead, we would do trips in steps. First we'd use a galactic coordinate system with poor resolution to jump into the right 1000 cubic light-year block. You would find your location using a best fit of visible stars to a 3d constellation map. Then we would take the time to acquire a more local coordinate frame to jump to the right star. Then we would probably use orbital mechanics to determine the right planet. Then we'd analyze landmarks on the planet to determine a local coordinate system. Then we'd jump down and survey to get to km.
The shape of these instructions would vary, based on what you are actually trying to do. Instructions on where a person is on a planet would be different from instructions as to finding an asteroid in an astroid belt (which may have collided with something since coordinates were read).
There's always PO boxes!
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The only realistic way to accomplish a coordinate system for stars (and thus planets as well) would be to model the movement of stars through the galaxy. You would need to know both the velocity and acceleration, as position would very quickly become useless. Hence, you would need to actually be able to predict the movement of stars.
The problem is, as it stands, we don't actually understand that. There are a number of theories about how stars move in galaxies, most of which have issues of some form. To my knowledge, [density wave](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Density_wave_theory) is the best, but does not account for all phenomena. For example, density wave would suggest very uniform galaxies, which we rarely observe. The lack of uniformity is likely due to past collisions with other galaxies, non-uniform mass distribution, influence of other galaxies, or even effects we do not understand.
I would suggest that either density wave or measured acceleration values would be sufficient to keep the system accurate. It might need manually corrected every decade or so, but could work with our current technology. However, it is quite likely a spacefairing civilization would know more about galactic movement than we do, and might be able to develop a model which could accurately predict future movement much better than we could now.
As to how this system would physically look, I would expect if this is within a single galaxy (you did not mention multiple), we would use radial coordinates from the galactic core, plus a z axis. Essentially, r, θ, and z. Most likely, θ=0 would correspond to the homeworld of the civilization in question, much like GMT=+0 being in Britain. From there, each star would have its associated position/velocity/acceleration vectors (all likely functions of the model being used linked to measured data), and then each planet would be connected to the star the way we currently measure solar movement (you said to ignore the details on this, so I am, and I don't completely understand them myself, anyway).
All that said, I'm doubtful about your expectation of 1 km accuracy. That's nothing on a galactic scale, and roundoff error would likely cause far greater than that to be lost. That isn't even accounting for the likely error inherent in whatever FTL system in use. On the other hand, solar systems are quite big, and simply getting close enough seems like a workable outcome. There are likely good reasons not to be FTLing around inside a solar system in the first place.
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Actually you would need to map in 4d, not 3d. We actually use 3d mapping (latitude, longitude AND elevation). I would expect each planet to have a similar system of terrain mapping as we have here on earth. The planets would be mapped in relation to the sun, the basics would be w(time), x,y with z being less important for most travel in the orbital disc. z will of course become more important as we do more and more travel.
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First off I'll note that in the future we may have a way to determine position anywhere in the solar system or throughout the galaxy without assistance [using pulsars like stellar GPS satellites](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_pulsar-based_navigation). (I know some of the people who worked on this idea and they say it's plausible with today's technology, they just don't have the funding yet.)
For traveling to other stars, you could therefore give heliocentric XYZ coordinates and velocities (since stars are not affected by gravity too much over timescales of human interest).
Now one thing that makes the celestial navigation problem vastly easier is that (unlike points on the Earth's surface) there is not a continuous array of stars and planets: there exist only a finite number in discrete locations. Think of addresses: we don't give the GPS coordinates of a house, we give the city, street name, and street number. In order to identify Earth, for example, we would only have to identify the Sun (and we don't have to be too precise, since the nearest star is light-years away) and then we can label Earth as the third planet. Anybody who can observe the solar system will be able to see and identify the location of Earth.
Finally, I'll leave you with the [JPL HORIZONS](http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi#top) website. Set Ephemeris Type to ELEMENTS and click Generate, and it will give you the [orbital elements](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_elements) of the target body (default is Mars). Six orbital elements are enough to completely specify the orbit of a body. They change slowly over time, but if you just want to identify a planet they're close enough. If you want to precisely predict it's position, then you probably only need to additionally store the rate of change of the parameters.
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You can just use names, much like a postal address:
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At the time you will need such coordinate system, Google Sky will be able to convert it to an exact position pinned on a map.
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The co-ordinate system you choose would depend on the location you want to specify.
If you want to specify the position of a star within the Milky Way, one option might be to use a polar co-ordinate system centered on the galactic center of mass. Inspired by the terrestrial longitude/latitude co-ordinate system, we would align the North/South axis with the galactic axis of rotation (mean orbital axis of all the stars in the galaxy). This would require a choice of "North", a "galactic prime meridian" (0 degree "galactic longitude" plane), and a choice of right or left handed co-ordinates (in which direction do longitude values increase). We might base the galactic prime meridian on the location of the Sun. Of course the Sun is in orbit around the galactic center, so our co-ordinate system would be slowly rotating. It would also mean that virtually every star in the galaxy will have some motion with respect to this co-ordinate system, so won't have a fixed location. However, that motion might be slow enough that we can assign galactic co-ordinates to stars and they will remain useful for practical time spans.
To specify the location of a remote world, you'd have to identify its host star and its orbital parameters, as described in other answers.
To specify a location on the surface of a remote world (we'll assume worlds with solid surfaces), you'd need to establish a co-ordinate system for each world. Again, drawing inspiration from terrestrial longitude/latitude co-ordinates, it would be a polar system, with the axis aligned to the planet's axis of rotation (assuming it has a stable rotation). Again, there needs to be a choice of "North", a choice of prime meridian, and choice of handedness. On Earth, Grenwich was something of an arbitrary choice, chosen perhaps only because it was the site of an observatory. On a remote world, one might identify the site of a specific colony or a geographic feature and set the planet's prime meridian from that. As with plate tectonics on Earth, the exoplanet surface might be in motion, so whatever feature was used to set the prime meridian may gradually move away, so it would only serve as inspiration.
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If somehow Mars suddenly had our exact atmosphere, could there be lots of life in a few million years? Would the temperature rise quickly? Would the ice caps melt? Could the life be as advanced as modern humans?
[Answer]
Atmosphere is not enough - it would also need water.
And Mars already had both atmosphere and water: **Mars would lose both new atmosphere and new water for exactly same reasons it did lost them before,** in a similar timeframe (around a billion years or so) or even sooner (because now its core is less active, creating weaker magnetic protection). So if any primitive life evolved (and it would be harder on Mars, because its dead crust is much thicker and the planet is geologically almost dead) **any new life would die out soon as water and atmosphere are stripped by solar wind.**
So the answer is: No. Life would take many millions of years to evolve, and conditions would revert to the existing conditions pretty soon (in a geological sense).
Also as @jamesqf correctly noted, **when life emerged on Earth, atmosphere was very different from present one, with no oxygen.**
It is not obvious **if life can emerge in any atmosphere with free oxygen** like the terran one, because **oxygen was poison for first primitive life,** and current terran life still needs to protect its molecules from oxidation damage (by handling oxygen very carefully).
[Answer]
If you're asking whether life could arise on a Mars that suddenly became Earthlike, you have to remember that Earth life did not arise on an Earth that was at all like our present conditions. The atmosphere was probably mostly methane (though there are other theories), with little free oxygen. See e.g. the "Great Oxidation Event".
[Answer]
Short answer: No.
Long answer: We have two scenarios to consider. Four billion years ago Mars had Earth-like conditions and water in its liquid form, but we are still unsure if there was life, even in the form of bacteria. And even if it was, it is highly unlikely that it survived the last four billon years of very harsh conditions.
So, scenario one, given that only the Mars' atmosphere changes to match Earth, but there is no life on Mars at all, a few million years won't change anything. You would probably need another billion for life to emerge via abiogenesis or for a viable "panspermia accident" to occur (ie. a meteor containing bacterias or other form of microbiological life hitting the surface in a way that doesn't destroy them and in a place which makes it possible for them to survive and develop).
Also note that even if you want Martian polar ice caps to melt, you would need atmosphere which would produce a massive greenhouse effect - denser and more richh in CO2 than Earth's atmosphere.
But, scenario two, let's say some extremophilic strains of microorganisms survived those billions of years or - more probable - our spacecrafts carried some on them. If the atmosphere changed suddenly to match ours, such microorganisms could reproduce and in a few million years they might evolve in ways very different from their Terran ancestors. Still, it would be just extremophilic microorganisms, living on a cold, desert planet.
[Answer]
I would point out, for arguments sake that:
* We do not know how life started on Earth.
* We do not know that there is no life on Mars.
As such, not only could it be conceivable that within a few million years with an Earth atmosphere life could originate on Mars, it's also entirely conceivable that it'd never happen or that it's already happening with Mars's existing atmosphere.
[Answer]
One of the biggest problems is gravity. Mars's gravity is not strong enough to not leak oxygen. So even if you had an earth like atmosphere and water, it might not stay that way for long.
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Venoms have evolved in certain classes of animals on Earth (notably snakes and frogs, but also fish and maybe elsewhere that I can't think of right now), sometimes for defense and sometimes (particularly in snakes) for offense or hunting.
Assuming an evolutionary process, **could venoms similarly evolve naturally in mammals?** What might be reasons why they might not? (For example, might it be too costly in terms of energy to produce a venom for it to provide enough advantage to be worthwhile?)
[Answer]
Actually there are [venomous mammals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venomous_mammal) however they're obviously not widespread. I believe venom could evolve in more mammals but hasn't because of lack of requirement for it.
Consider the primary species which are poisonous or venomous:
* Snakes
* Frogs/Toads
* Fungi/Plants (such as nettles)
* Some fish
Venom and poisons fall into two categories, as a weapon when hunting and as a defense mechanism.
My suggestion would be that what groups all these species is their relatively slow speeds. Many of them are cold blooded and are vulnerable in cooler environments. The poisonous fungi certainly aren't renowned for going anywhere quickly! Even some of the fish (jellyfish for example sting their prey to prevent it escaping while it's digested).
I believe that most poisons and venoms have developed to make up for the creatures' weaknesses.
By contrast mammals are mostly fast and active. They don't suffer in cooler temperatures and generally rely on their speed and senses to escape harm/catch prey (something a nettle rarely does). As such they've never developed a need for venoms.
As to whether more mammals could evolve venomous characteristics I don't see why not. After all it's a competitive world. If a rabbit suddenly developed a venomous bite it would certainly dissuade a cat from hunting it!
I leave you with this thought from [XKCD](https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1398:_Snake_Facts): *Snake Venom evolved from saliva, which means that it all started with a snake who's mouth was slightly more gross than usual...*
[](https://xkcd.com/1398/)
[Answer]
As Liath pointed out, (I just looked that question up yesterday trying to come up with a question to pose to the group.) If you read the article [venomous](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venomous_mammal) all of the listed mammals are pretty small. The Duck-billed Platypus is the largest but even that is really pretty small.
The Platypus is the only one that has it as a defense only weapon. One of the problems would be generating a toxin that will harm your food/enemies but will not cause adverse effects in the host. Most of the animals listed are rodents and the toxin is mostly for feeding and against invertebrates. The Vampire Bat is technically venomous, but it's venom has an anticoagulant and a local anesthetic, sooo...
Mammals are the biggest animals on the planet so we can take what we want without having to resort to costly poisons. Even the biggest snakes are non-poisonous. I suspect that if we (mammals) evolved with the dinosaurs more of us would have had venom in one form or another.
[Answer]
If a trait is beneficial to an organism, it is more likely to be selected for. You could imagine an environment (resources, predators, etc) where venom could be useful enough for a mammal to provide an evolutionary advantage given enough time. Perhaps if a mammal had to compete with another species for resources, and they were fairly well matched competitively, a mutation (or series of, more likely) could eventually provide an advantage for one or other. Such a mutation could be venom.
You could alternatively develop something between venom (which is injected) and poison (which is ingested or absorbed), like the toxin that a slow loris has. They have glands on their arms that secrete a substance which, when mixed with their saliva, is toxic to other animals. (I forget the details.) Obviously this evolved because it provided an advantage to slow loris; they are small and slow, and it is a useful defense against predators.
[Answer]
It's not a well known fact, but there are actually a species of venomous mammals already out there!
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> This platypus, renowned as one of the few mammals that lay eggs, also is one of only a few venomous mammals. The males can deliver a mega-sting that causes immediate, excruciating pain, like hundreds of hornet stings, leaving victims incapacitated for weeks.
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This is from "Unlocking the mystery of the duck-billed platypus' venom", American Chemical Society. I can't figure out how to link it.
[Answer]
As pointed out by other posters, Venomous mammals do exist and are fairly widespread - even the common shrew could be considered venomous.
>
> Shrews are unusual among mammals in a number of respects. Unlike most
> mammals, some species of shrews are venomous. Shrew venom is not
> conducted into the wound by fangs, but by grooves in the teeth. The
> venom contains various compounds, and the contents of the venom glands
> of the American short-tailed shrew are sufficient to kill 200 mice by
> intravenous injection.
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Alternatively, lots of mammals have pretty nasty bacteria and digestive enzymes in their saliva, which, whilst not technically 'venom' have pretty nasty cytotoxic effects - leading to nasty occurrences such as necrotising fascitis, and even death in some cases - e.g. Cat Scratch fever.
I've also heard anecdotally from several sources, that the worst bite you can recieve is from a human - the bacteria that live in a persons mouth can lead to some pretty nasty flesh eating diseases!
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[Question]
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Can flashbangs in real life make you see all black for a few seconds instead of all white?
I'm making a videogame and I want to know if it's possible to have flashbangs that are already available in real life or if I need to use magic for that one.
Just like a real life flashbang, it has to be a stun weapon, non-lethal and preferably no life-threatening permanent damage.
I know for a fact that when I get low blood pressure, I see all black and go momentarily blind and feel my ears ringing, especially when lifting in the gym on an empty stomach.
So seeing all black instead of all white isn't just a personal design choice as to not blind or give an epileptic attack to myself or to my players every time someone throws a grenade... but it's also technically possible.
Can an actual grenade give you those same symptoms?
[Answer]
>
> Can flashbangs in real life make you see all black for a few seconds instead of all white?
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>
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A smoke bomb will do. You can choose any color and the people caught within the smoke will only see that color. Takes longer than a flashbang to take effect but is actually less harmful. Not only there is less chance of killing an epileptic person, you also don't harm anyone's retinas.
It's also legal in many jurisdictions, even for civillian use. Here is a link to some black smoke bombs should you wish to experiment with one for inspiration or science!
<https://enolagaye.com/colored-smoke/black/>
And look at what they say about this product:
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> Gone are the days of burning toxic tires to produce the visual effect of black smoke. Developed over the span of a few years, our non-toxic black smoke uses only the highest quality dye to replicate the look of a real fire. Fitted with our easy to use Wire Pull® ignition system, you have the perfect black smoke effect option.
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And at the parent page to that:
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> We consider these products to be perfectly safe for general consumer use and this category has been specifically designed with everyday consumers in mind.
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(By the way I find it funny that we live in a world where the everyday consumer needs smoke bombs)
That thing even comes in different venting and density options, so you can pick one that suits your needs.
Oh and if you want people to actually faint as per the title, rather than just being caught in darkness and confused, add odors to it. [The Pentagon has been actively researching that for decades](https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/714884) (emphasis below are mine):
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> (...) But Dalton did find two loathsome odours that transcend culture. One is a truly repugnant mixture called **US Government Standard Bathroom Malodor**, a stink concocted to test the efficiency of deodorant cleaning products. "It's very pungent," says Dalton. "More precisely, it smells like sh\*t, but much, much stronger. **It fills your head. It gets to you in ways that are unimaginable. It's not something you are likely to come across in the real world.**"
>
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> The smell is so awful that some volunteers began to scream and curse after just a few seconds' exposure. Even though the smell is quite harmless, **almost everyone thought it would damage their health**. Dalton wasn't surprised.
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Just amp the concentration until it makes people faint.
[Answer]
Assuming unconsciousness is potentially okay, though if someone is rendered unconscious while standing it might violate the "no life-threatening injuries" rule. There really aren't any non-lethal incapacitants, just *less* lethal. That said...
### Halothane Grenade
[Halothane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halothane) is a potent anesthetic, heavier than air (which means it won't dissipate *too* fast to be effective as a thrown weapon) and is a liquid at STP. Using either an explosive or mechanical aerosolizer, your grenade can disperse it around the point of impact.
Minimal doses would cause reduced level-of-consciousness without fully rendering the target unconscious, while someone who gets a lungful would likely be knocked right out. As with anything that induces unconsciousness, there is a risk of permanent damage, but as mentioned in the precis, there's no such thing as a non-lethal weapon that can actually incapacitate a person.
On the minus side, it's also a potent ozone antagonist, so anyone using it isn't going to be very eco-conscious in doing so.
[Answer]
Tear Gas:
[KU Gas in the Great War](https://www.kumc.edu/school-of-medicine/academics/departments/history-and-philosophy-of-medicine/archives/wwi/essays/medicine/gas-in-the-great-war.html)
"Several chemicals were weaponized in WWI and France actually was the first to use gas - they deployed tear gas in August 1914. The agent used was either xylyl bromide, which is described as smelling ‘pleasant and aromatic’, or ethyl bromoacetate, described as ‘fruity and pungent.’ Both are colorless liquids and have to be atomized to be dispersed as weapons. As lachrymatory agents, they irritate the eyes and cause uncontrolled tearing. Large doses can cause temporary blindness. If inhaled they also make breathing difficult. Symptoms usually resolve by 30 minutes after contact. Thus, tear gas was never very effective as a weapon against groups of enemy soldiers."
[Answer]
If you remove the metal casing of a Grenade (say, wrapped in soft Plastic) - just the blast wave alone (without any shrapnel) would be enough to cause a bTBI (Blast-induced, Traumatic Brain Injury) and knock someone unconscious.
However as others have pointed out - if you have enough force/energy/effect on target to render someone unconscious, you probably have enough that with the right (or wrong, depending on PoV) set of circumstances, you could have a lethal effect.
[Answer]
**Vantablack smoke grenade**
Flashbangs are white because they emit a bunch of light.
Black is the opposite of white, it's the absence of light. Thus there's no such thing as black light (not to be confused with *blacklight*, which is ultraviolet and mostly non-visible). We perceive black, mostly because "black" objects around us are actually very dark grey but still reflect an appreciable amount of light.
There are materials that reflect a negligible amount of light, which include [Super Black](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_black) and the perhaps better known [Vantablack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vantablack). Objects coated in such materials appear flat, even when full of wrinkles.
You could imagine a grenade that releases a puff of a black powder material that absorbs near 100% of light, giving the illusion of a black explosion. That alone of course wouldn't blind you, it would juste create a space of black void in the air that you can simply look away from.
However, there's a good chance the powder would also cause eye irration (and possibly blindness) and be wildly unsafe to breathe (which might cause all sorts of other fun effects, or simply HP damage-over-time), so that might do the trick.
While not quite a "black flashbang", I offer this because I think it would be visually interesting, and still would make a serviceable weapon in a game.
[Answer]
Your title says grenade, yet you talk of flashbang.
This answer is about what a person see when near a strong concussion wave (grenade, flashbang):
Despite sensory overload caused by loudness and shockwave pelting against your ears and body, your cochlear balance is also overly simulated to a point of disorientation, we will focus on what the eyes see because the video games does not offer audiotory-overload nor strong olfactory simulation.
**White - mostly**
For the eyeballs subjected to a flash-bang, the visual aftereffect is much on the white side and none of the blackish aspect.
When I say more white-ish, it actually a strong white with a start of gradual diffusion toward to a light shade of yellow around the edge of your eyeballs’ field of vision.
Much like the after effect of staring into the Sun then closing your eyeballs and seeing those tiny dots of glow, flashbang is like being inside the Sun, your entiree eyeball retina surface area are impacted with the surrounding edge of field vision starting to recover from strong white, to faint yellow down to restoration of actual colorized recpetion. The area of white is not really shrinking during recovery because unlike the self-inflicted Sun spot, it got bathed inside the sun. Recovery of vision restoration starts around the edge of your field of vision (because blood circulation starts there (more so on the sides, than on top or bottom.)
This whiteness-diffused-to-yellowish-edge gets smaller and smaller over time but it is like a S-curve of recovery, you get most of your vision back (survival gene) and a reminder (long time big-spot).
**Black - most severe**
The only time it goes to black is when the concussion bang becomes too strong to a point of an eye retinal detachment or the eyeball blood vessels collapsed/blocked/stroked and blackness is in either top part of field of vision or lower part, or in spots (as in a slow-going macular disease). Those blackness have poor recovery time, if at all, more permanent than not (unless treated promptly).
**Red - rarely**
Other rarity is redness in field of vision that occurs when the eye balls have broken retinal blood vessel and that red blood fills the internal of the eyeballs. Typically that smearness of red tint is even and subtle but not pronounced.
**Disclaimer**
This answer is not meant to be a medical diagnosis guide and are provided for gaming purpose, strictly and only. As it goes without saying, go to the emergency room if you experience ANY of above.
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[Question]
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In my world, there is a remote island country (unofficially named Banditland or Sin Island) started by cartel/mafia kingpins and unethical businessmen from across the world. In this country, very few things are illegal. Gambling is legal. Prostitution is legal. Blasphemy/Heresy and mocking people is legal. Every drug is legal. Counterfeiting foreign currencies is legal. Fencing stolen goods is legal. Human trafficking is legal (you cannot enslave island citizens however). Dueling is legal. There is no copyright enforcement. As a matter of fact, it is easier to state what isn't legal in this country. Only Mala Se crimes like assault, murder, rape, theft, arson, and vandalism are illegal in this country. Even then, those crimes are only illegal if you commit them against the citizens of the country. Citizens include people who are born in Banditland or those who willingly immigrate there.
If such a country existed in the modern world, they would definitely be a rogue state by U.S. government standards. As a matter of fact, even compared to other rogue states like Iran or North Korea, Banditland would be a huge pariah hated by many other countries. My Banditland exists in modern times in a world that is almost identical to 21st Century Earth. I'm trying to conceive of a way to make sure that Banditland doesn't get blockaded or overthrown in a United Nations intervention. Here is what I have so far:
1. Banditland has a strong military; although this would get expensive for the kingpins who run Banditland.
2. Banditland is pretty much a puppet state of one of the world's superpowers who protects it both diplomatically and militarily in exchange for Banditland harming the enemies of the superpower.
3. Almost every major country uses Banditland to harm its enemies, making it a neutral yet valuable country to have around.
4. Banditland has a very harsh terrain like being covered in jungles and mountains which makes an occupation very costly.
Can a "criminal" country in the modern world last a long time doing stuff that is illegal in almost every single other country? Or will international geopolitics spell doom for this nation?
[Answer]
**Well... yes... and no...**
What one country considers illegal another country may not. That's true today all over the world. Take the practice of [female genital mutilation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_genital_mutilation), for instance. Most western countries absolutely abhor that practice — to the point of [some really large multi-national non-profits acting diligently](https://www.unicef.org/protection/unfpa-unicef-joint-programme-eliminating-fgm) to bring it to an end.
Is female genital mutilation legal in, for instance, the U.S. No. Is it generally abhorred in the U.S.? Yes. Is the U.S. on the verge of landing the marines in countries that practice it to stop the practice?
***No***
In a sense you've asked a question that's too broad. There are *thousands,* maybe even *millions* of practices that one country would consider illegal and yet are practiced in another. And they're allowed to do it because (a) no country actually has the moral right to force any other country to conform to its beliefs (oh, they try...) and (b) most countries either have something the other country wants (oil, cheap labor...) or is big enough to push back on an effort to stop it.
So, from one perspective. Absolutely. A bandit country more-or-less like you're describing can exist in the modern world.
**Except...**
You appear to be describing what we'll call... the Free State of [Tortuga](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortuga_(Haiti)). At least the Tortuga of the 1600s made popular in Disney's *Pirates of the Caribbean* movies. Could such a lawless place exist?
Not really. Oh, we have our drug cartels in Columbia and our human trafficking out of Somalia and as much graft as you can imagine in Mexico... but you're describing an oxymoron... a place that's *completely lawless* and yet *under the control of other nations.* The problem is that those other nations require results and the bandit nation is in the business of giving them the proverbial vulgar hand gesture.
So, while there are plenty of examples of modern countries that do absolutely deplorable completely breathtakingly evil things (Nazi Germany's enactment of the Jewish Holocaust comes to mind as does the subjugation of women in too much of the Muslim world), the reality is...
* You can't depend on a bandit country to do anything useful for you. The moment you've enforced enough order to get predictable results, you no longer have a bandit country.
* People need to eat, get medical care, etc. Yes, they can, have, and do live without great amounts of those things, but the more they must fight to stay alive the less time there is for banditry — but the less they have to fight to remain alive, the less the general population *wants* banditry. Laws are imposed by the largest group with the mightiest weapons. And those nations might be interested in selling the peons a few. At which point you no longer have a bandit nation.
* Finally, you appear to be describing, basically, *chaos.* Sounds like a place you want to visit on spring break, right? Yeah, if only to avoid liability, most nations would be telling their citizens that they visit that nation for a hedonistic vacation at their own risk — and it wouldn't take more than one or two high-profile murders or kidnappings before everyone who might want to go there... stops going there. Why is that important? Because if the only export from your island country, which needs imports of foods and materials to survive, is considered illegal everywhere else... Let's just say it's a lot easier to stop an island nation from exporting cocaine than it is a cartel in Columbia that has *an entire continent* worth of coastline and landmass to work from to sneak something out.
**Conclusion**
You've created a easily located, hard-to-defend, impossible-to-feed lawless nation and hope that it can realistically exist in the Real World.
It can't.
But examples of different *aspects* of your lawlessness exist today all over the world. What you generally won't find is that the criminals are working out of an easy-to-find hard-to-defend island. Instead they're working out of large landmasses with population centers that allow them to hide behind the proverbial human shield.
Frankly, if such a place existed, the first world leader to vaporize it would get booku credibility. And the first world leader to get caught using the services of such a high-profile criminality would be lynched.
And maybe that's the problem: you've created a high-profile example of a service that's traditionally very, very, very low-profile... for a reason.
[Answer]
# Image is Everything:
For a state like you are describing, the bad optics would be lethal. But there is a perfectly workable alternative.
Lie your a\*\* off.
All these things are illegal but done in LOTS of places, often with the explicit support of the government. But if you ASK the government, they insist it's not happening, or certainly not at the building that's being discussed, and you MUST be mistaken, since state inspectors were just in that building, and they were most certainly NOT using manacled slave labor to produce knockoff prescription drugs alongside methamphetamine. No, I don't think we will allow international inspectors.
Well, yes, prostitution is legal, but only to protect the sex workers. Drug use is legal as a means of controlling the drug epidemic (fueled by the demand of larger nations), and yes, that does mean the state produces those drugs for internal use only. They make how much? No, that's not what the reports say. Now there is a perfectly legal guest worker program, and I assure you we have the signatures of all those employees around here somewhere. It IS true, some of them take their pay in methadone, but those poor souls were addicted before they came here.
The law as written is an obvious sham, and no one enforces the so-called legal system unless it happens to be convenient.
This is not to say that the state wouldn't have other governments spying on them constantly, or that there wouldn't be the occasional annoying unauthorized drug raid or precision bombing strike. Hey, it's the cost of business, and it would cost more doing it somewhere else where the bribery system wasn't formalized into the tax code.
But everyone agrees that (okay, FINE) the plutonium doesn't get sold to the terrorists, and no one is going to audit the banking system (too many embarrassing recodes there...). As long as there is something to benefit everyone, then as long as there is a market, there will be buyers and sellers.
[Answer]
# North Korea
Though we can't make direct comparisons between your country and North Korea, they have parallels to one another.
N. Korea does a great many things that aren't legal to most nations, both within and without the country. Family incarcerations and possibly executions are some big ones within the country. But outside they have orchestrated assassinations or big thefts like bitcoin or hacks. Many countries wouldn't mind N. Korea to be nothing more than a smouldering heap of ash. Many others want it changed to their values. Even its allies aren't happy anout some things they are doing.
Why isn't the country forcefully changed? To begin with changing the country would be very difficult thanks to the culture. But it is also a great pawn in the geopolitical match going on. Despite what it does, some countries support N. Korea and some oppose it. That is why no one will do a thing but talk.
Besides the allies it has an army. It is ageing and will never win from any other country, but that isn't its purpose. The purpose is threat. If you attack them you'll certainly win, but they will make it far too much trouble to bother. It is better to leave it as it is.
## Your country
Your country can be much the same. Even without any use of the country itself the world can use it as a pawn, allies threatening retaliation if it is attacked. Even if no one would help the political ramifications of attacking are bad. People within the country will not be happy if a win is at the cost of many civilian lives.
Yet your country has merit. Many countries have ethical and moral obligations. There are many things they have to do secretly to not upset their population. It is a good idea to put some distance between you and these acts. Rent the Wagner group for your public terror of rape, murder and torture of a population you want cowed for example. You deny responsibility by saying it wasn’t why they were hired or that you hired them at all.
Your country can then be used as a proxy to illegal activities for many countries. The country can't possibly be neutral in geopolitics, but they certainly can survive and have a place.
[Answer]
# The criminal overlords need to be more careful with tourism.
People mostly don't care about immoral actions in other countries. It's routine. What they care about is people being harmed.
Suppose Elon Musk visits this country, and is murdered by someone. Or Taylor Swift visits and is tortured and sold as a slave to a salt mine. That sort of high visibility crime draws eyes and would cause problems. They need to make sure that tourists can visit, and so long as they stay in approved areas, they won't have problems, and that local people won't cause them problems.
Hostage taking is fine, and selling off some rich person for a few thousand is routine.
# They need to stop weapon of mass destruction production.
Other countries won't tolerate them if they unleash chemical bombs, biological weapons, or nuclear weapons on them. They need to stop any such weapons being revealed to the world at large.
# They need to stop major terrorist organizations from setting up shop.
If they are seen as a country where you can safely launch violent attacks against rivals from, they will be challenged. They need to stop violent terrorists from using the island to protect themselves.
# They need to have some reason that countries don't coup it.
Intervention in foreign countries is common, and there will no doubt be local dissidents who foreigners could supply with heavy weaponry to overthrow the bandit lords.
As such, they need to produce valuable supplies that they can use to have good diplomatic relationships with foreign nations. Perhaps they can test drugs on captured slaves? Perhaps they have diamond mines? Regardless, they need a resource to do stuff with and bribe foreign nations to not intervene.
[Answer]
If Banditland kept to themselves then it might be possible. *However*, you said that countries use Banditland to attack their enemies. That alone will almost guarantee that they can't survive in the modern world.
That sort of situation is more a less a *proxy war*, which there are many examples of in the last century. Major nations are very hesitant to attack each other and start another large scale war. If the enemy is using a smaller, weaker nation to do their dirty work, that larger nation likely wouldn't hesitate to wipe them out. They disarm their opponent with minimal risk to their own territory and with an extremely high chance of success. Banditland as you describe it can't be trusted thus would not be part of any defense treaties/alliances, so a larger nation could completely neutralize it with minimal risk. Unlike real-world proxy wars, the situation you describe would make it very difficult for the opposing nation to justify assisting in the defense of Banditland. They'd be on their own, and unable to defend against a serious attack.
Look at it like a "pros and cons" list. Taking them out has tremendous upside and minimal (if any) drawbacks. Allowing them to remain is a tremendous risk and doesn't really benefit you at all. In the real world, Banditland would have an "international peacekeeping coalition" knocking on their door in short order.
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Yeah, plenty of third World countries like that already. Basically run by gangsters. They fulfill basic requirements for funding by pretending to be democracies and have no natural resources worth the effort of invading for. No one invades for the good of the people, they invade for their own benefit in some way.
Right now a gangster country is a valuable friend to have and Western countries fund and pledge military assistance against their own people to what are basically gangsters who do whatever they want and make any laws they want. The value is their vote in international bodies.
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**It is a small and worthless island.**
The fact that people there are doing whatever is of minimal consequence to people everywhere else. The counterfeiting could be troublesome but the fakes issued by this small time island are not hard to identify. Transactions like gambling or human trafficking are easy enough to quietly accomplish in other places, saving the trip to this nasty little island.
All of the "Banditland!" stuff is technically true but in actuality the island is a sleepy little place. Much of the island is overgrown and wild donkeys wander around. Inn proprietors (actually proprietor) will be happy to feed and lodge a visitor with hard currency. The main export of Banditland is actually Banditland Radio - the owner takes advantage of their freedom to mock people and do so frequently and often, to hilarious effect. They also play some sweet tunes, some of which are bootleg copies.
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The things you describe happening in Banditland are very very tame compared to things happening in many real-life countries which have never been invaded. Contrary to what many politicians would have you believe, countries do not get invaded because their governments are terrible and do terrible things. Military invasions are very costly both economically and often politically. Countries get invaded for one of two reasons
* they have something you want, something valuable enough to invade over. Typically resources or land.
* they caused some really significant harm to what you consider your interests.
So, the only thing that would happen is citizens of most countries would be warned against traveling to Banditland, and that would be that.
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**In the near future humanity discovers a spatial anomaly at a point located somewhere between the orbits of mars and earth.** This anomaly quickly induces delirium in anybody who approaches it and even seems to have mild (though sometimes severe) reality warping effects on its environs. Notwithstanding all this, (being the curious naive idiots that we are) humans attempt to study what is dubbed "The Strangeness", at first via probe, but eventually with full blown manned-missions. Naturally, these all end terribly (lots of dead/insane astronauts).
The good thing that came out from the horrors of the latter, is lots of data! Using what the various astronaut teams were able to collect and transmit before their demise, scientists on Earth manage to invent "meta-memetics containment fields", which can be used to isolate/contain the madness leaking out from The Strangeness. Rudimentary versions of such - which shield from some, but not all of the anomaly's corruption - can be implemented into small systems such as spacesuits. This considerably improves the research progress speed by subsequent teams and soon an entire space station is build around The Strangeness and extensive experimentation begins.
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The space station is a [rotating torus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_torus) with the anomaly located in the donut hole in the center. It generates two very large advanced MC Fields - these ones perfected: they block all the effects of The Strangeness from escaping, *or [atleast in theory...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy%27s_law)* - in the form of two transparent force spheres, one inside the other. One seperates the donut hole along with the spatial anomaly from the space station, the other is located outside the space station and thus seperates the anomaly and the space station from the rest of space.
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**Now my question is why would these containment systems be arranged in this way?**
It makes sense to have two containment units, of course, redundancy is imperative in any engineering project (especially those related to eldritch abominations), but why would one sphere be outside the space station? Why not setup *both* spheres to be between the anomaly and the space station?
Now in my story there are very good (read evil) secret reasons why this needs to be the case, but are there any proper engineering explanations for why a redundant containment system would essentially "trap" people on the inside of what you're trying to contain, in the event of a primary failure?
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*This question is a follow up to [this one](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/88877/how-can-a-race-of-eldritch-abominations-help-humanity).*
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The station is not there primarily to contain the evil, it is there to study it. In order to study the anomaly it is necessary to sometimes manipulate the inner field allowing some of the reality warping through in order to try and understand it's effects on experiments set up on the station.
The outer field protects other ships in the area (or even Earth itself, depending on the strength and distance of the anomalies effects) from any evil strangeness being studied from leaking out.
Nuclear reactors have similar levels of containment, the reactor vessel itself contains the nuclear materials, while the entire area is enclosed inside a concrete containment building. This will trap any radiation leaking inside the building with the workers, but protects the surrounding environment from contamination.
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# The two fields interfere with each other
I'm not certain what an MC field is, but it's not a stretch to say that the two fields could negatively interfere with each other. Placing them sufficiently far away from each other negates this effect.
# It has to be projected from the outside-in.
The first field is created by the station, projected inside and around the anomaly. The outer field is made by a ring on satellites around the station.
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**Security**
The first thing that comes to my mind is Event Horizon. With distortions in reality being a real threat, the personnel on the station can't be trusted to be making decisions based on true reality. So, as a security failsafe, there is an exterior shield that can only be opened from the outside. If there is some sort of incident on the station, the powers that be, have the option to "erase" the station and its occupants to prevent anything more widespread.
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Looking at the description of the anomaly and the research station, I would suggest the reaction of the funding agencies on seeing the plan would be a raised eyebrow, followed by the director asking:
**"Are you nuts!!!"**
Based on the description of what has happened to devices and astronauts, and the clear lack of understanding what exactly is going on, I'd suggest an alternative arrangement:
1. The anomaly is encased in a protective field
2. Remote control probes and other devices can orbit the anomaly at various distances
3. The outer ring of orbiting sensors also marks the boundary of the secondary containment field
4. Depending on how the field works, individual orbiting probes, recording devices etc. should also be encased in a protective field
5. The control station is at a safe distance away in a leading orbit, say perhaps a light second, which is slightly less than the distance from the Earth to the Moon, and also minimizes the light speed lag (farther away and you have a significant delay between receiving signals and sending return signals based on the observations you are receiving).
6. Maybe a gigawatt laser weapon should be at the station covering the anomaly, just in case
7. The control station is also covered in the protective field.
8. If the budget allows for it, a secondary or backup station in a trailing orbit is also stationed a light second away from the anomaly. It also has a laser battery and a protective shield.
The key issue here is that because you are dealing with a very dangerous unknown phenomena or event, you don't *just* have 2 layers of protection, you have as many different layers and spacing as you can reasonably afford.
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**Interference**
Whenever trying to study something scientifically you have to eliminate as much noise and variables as possible. Similar to microphones being in sound-proofed rooms and neutrino detectors being in deep ex mines.
The instruments studying the anomoly are extremely sensitive and pick up noise from CMB, Near-by stars, satellites, the new telepathy lab that just opened up near cassini trying to commercialise the existing research.
In order to study the anomoly they have to silence all of that and prove the readings they are getting aren't errors in the detectors.
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You're not isolating the hole from the station, you're isolating the station from the hole.
The reality warping effects of The Strangeness are fairly potent over long exposure. In essence, the shields can protect against the memetic effects forever but struggle against the reality warping effects, which means the station would fail in a short number of years.
Some bright scientist worked out however that with sufficiently powerful Mc fields, you can create an area of space that's detached from the rest of the space. As such, by layering the shields around the station, the station is able to operate without worry of reality warping.
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Instead of making the space station a simple torus, complete the sphere by having rings set at the 90 and 180 points around the torus, enclosing a sphere in a frame. This framework forms the basis for the generation of the polarized spherical force fields.
Now, assume the field is polarized. Sort of like a magnet, it has a north and a south pole. Only the poles are complete spheres, inside each other.
So the field is generated in the space station ring framework.
One polarization is on the outside of the ring, the other polarization is on the inside. Like on a large flat magnet, one side is negative, the other side is positive. Shape the flat magnet into a sphere, and the inside would be negative, the outside would be positive.
The space station generator framework is in the middle of the two polarized layers, generating each polarized field on either side of the framework (which becomes inside the sphere and outside the sphere).
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How the "force lines" of an MC field look like I don't know but if there is a field up there is reasonably generated by something in the station. So it makes sense that it emanates from the station and somehow closed both at the interior ring of the the donut and outside. Analogy with electrical field of a torus prompt me to ask how the shied will close in two spheres but perhaps you can arrange it.
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**Closed**. This question needs to be more [focused](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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A common problem in building a revolution in your world is that there have been so few famous revolutions to work off of that it feels that your world just copies them. So what are some ways to make your world’s revolutions feel realistic, yet unique?
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General features of revolutions:
1. **Revolutions almost always involve a regime whose legitimacy has been undermined in some way.**
There are lots of reasons to be unhappy with a regime, but only undermined legitimacy will provoke a revolution.
Fights for legitimacy capture ancient instinct driven responses in people that go back all of the way to our hunter and gatherer days. We are hard wired to respond to leadership disputes in very particular ways.
Even very, very bad regimes (e.g. North Korea during its worst famines, Albania) won't face revolutions if the regime's legitimacy and authority is not seriously subject to question.
There is a myth that revolutions are caused by mismanagement of government, but, in general, that is not true. It takes not just disagreements on matters of policy and/or bad results, but a perception that the current regime is insane or controlled by outside conspirators or has engaged in impermissible corruption against its purported values, to make a regime or leader ripe to be replaced.
Regimes are more vulnerable to revolutions when the regime is not well established yet, are more vulnerable where they is a succession dispute or disputed election, are more vulnerable to revolution when ideas like "democracy" delegitimize the hereditary or other basis of the existing regime, are more vulnerable when regime leaders appear to defy or disregard the basis (religious, legal, or otherwise) that justifies their authority.
2. **Revolutions are normally led by secondary elites in the existing regime.**
To present a viable alternative to the status quo there need to be people who are suitable to serve as leaders of a new regime, particularly if they have been somehow slighted relative to their perceived entitlement. Even if the mass of the revolution is run by the masses, the revolution will usually be lead by young military officers, university students, union leaders, religious leaders, or disaffected aristocrats who won't be getting inheritances because they are younger children.
For example, when new political parties that turn out to be viable are formed and replace some existing major political party, the leadership of the new political party almost always includes experienced politicians of repute who have defected from their prior political party affiliations.
3. **Revolutions need to create a sense of identity in the revolting population.**
An ethnic or "national" identity can be particularly effective in this regard but isn't the sole available identification. Revolutions basically harness tribal instincts and are most effective when a "tribe" feels like it doesn't have any meaningful way to receive a fair shake through the status quo. One of the reasons that ISIS was able to take so much land so quickly in Iraq and Syria was that neither the Iraqi government, nor the Syrian government, both of which were dominated by non-Sunni Arab factions, seemed to provide a meaningful voice for Sunni Arabs.
It doesn't really matter if the policy differences for the "oppressed" tribe are really all that substantive, indeed symbolic differences are probably more powerful. Instead, what matters is an appearance of having no advocates for your "tribe" in the current regime.
Social class, if clearly enough delineated and felt by people can form a basis for a revolution, but if it is divorced from an ethnic identity, it is less likely to. For example, even though the economic interests of whites in Appalachia and blacks in the United States have lots of similarities, the lack of a shared ethnic identity has prevented them from forming viable coalitions with each other in the past few decades.
Even an oppressive caste or slavery system can be quite stable, so long as the legitimacy of the system is not cast into doubt, the oppressed "tribe" has no one to lead them from the elite, or it is hard for the oppressed population to see itself as not part of the same social and political system as their oppressors.
Religious affiliations can be a powerful way to create a sense of "tribal" identity and a source of crystalized sense of membership in an ethnicity which often tracks religious affiliation anyway, although these are hardly the exclusive means by which this can be accomplished.
4. **Revolutions need a spark.**
It can be almost anything - a woman refusing to take her designated place on a city bus, a single incident of police brutality, or an incident that victimizes a member of the revolting tribe that is viscerally humiliating or disgusting in a way the causes other to feel empathy.
But, without a triggering spark that creates a unified emotional reaction, the masses that need to rise up in a coordinated matter won't be able to mobilize. Contrawise, a good spark can trigger the early phase of a revolution even without much organization on the part of would be leaders, although it will only keep burning instead of puttering out if the other elements of a successful revolution are present.
5. **Revolutions need to be mishandled by those in power.**
If the existing regime can find a way to promptly defuse the revolutionary movement, it will die. Crushing early revolutionaries without mercy can also be effective if this successfully creates the appearance among the revolting populace that they are hopelessly outmatched. Thus, the regime must either demonstrate that it doesn't deserve to be the subject of a revolution (or that there are viable alternatives to a revolution, like political campaigns through ordinary channels), or convince potential revolutionaries that it is hopeless to try, or both.
6. **Revolutions need resources.**
Successful revolutions, unlike unsuccessful revolutions that start but don't follow through, need a logistical basis of funds and personnel. It can be foreign or domestic.
Economics can drive this by creating a class of overqualified and underemployed people with the time necessary to commit to the cause and little to lose. A failure to co-opt almost everyone who is competent to lead a revolution or even simply to work in it as a follower, is a common failing of a regime that creates conditions ripe for revolution. For example, a lot of Islamic revolutionary action is driven by huge numbers of young unemployed men with theology degrees in Saudi Arabia in large families who have no way to prove their own worth and lots of time on their hands, freedom and a sense of privilege.
The labor movement thrived when competent people were kept out of management by accident of birth, and deflated when more meritocratic grounds for advancement plucked the most qualified potential union leaders into the ranks of management, both directly by depriving unions of resources and indirectly by creating a perception of opportunity that those who advanced from lesser conditions by virtue of merit created when they filled leadership positions.
A subset of this is religious backing. Religions thrive when they provide a cultural center for a threatened or oppressed culture, and wither organizationally when their creeds merely replicate the status quo establishment position. People back religions actively and with resources because they think this support is necessary for their culture to survive.
7. **Revolutions need to inspire self-sacrifice.**
Some of those personnel need to perceive the cost as just enough for it to be heroic to die for it, or at least to take great risks of ruin for it beyond personal advantage. Unless some key figures in the revolutionary movement see their efforts as advancing the greater good of a worthy cause, the revolution will fail.
Religiously based revolutions are often good at inspiring self-sacrifice, but religious revolutions have no monopoly on this and fear of a theocracy from a regime can be just as effective in many cases at inspiring this. Still, there needs to be something that some true believers can sincerely hold onto as being worthy of self-sacrifice without question.
8. **Revolutions can easily fall into stalemate mode.**
The more time passes, the less likely the insurgency is to be resolved finally for either party. Many revolutions and coups are swiftly successful or fail just as swiftly; but very long standoffs where the revolutionaries don't have the capacity to replace the regime in the near future, but the regime doesn't have the capacity to end the insurgency are common and can last for decades. Even 5% or 10% of the population that is absolutely convinced that the current regime is illegitimate is enough to keep a revolution going indefinitely, but that is not enough support to bring about a change in control. Regimes don't need mass agreement with their policies to succeed, but they need nearly uniform (certainly more than 99%) belief in their legitimacy to avoid a prolonged and difficult to manage insurgency.
9. **Revolutions need to convince people that their conditional support will pay off.**
While every revolution has die hard supporters on each side, lots of people are contingent and conditional supporters of whichever side that they perceive will prevail who are trying to act in their own best interests in a confusing time.
The appearance of a likelihood of success can dramatically change the tides of an uprising, as the recent attempted coup in Turkey illustrated. The President's ability to access mass media and convince people that he was alive and in control caused lots of people to mobilize in support of his regime and to remain silent as he ruthlessly consolidated control.
The perception that you can win is as important as the reality. This is why control of communication channels is so important during revolutions — it affects people's perceptions.
10. **A revolution's leaders need to have enough of a vision to act decisively until things settle down.**
A revolution, should it achieve temporary control, has a brief honeymoon period, like any new regime, during which it has to show that it is in control and bringing about sweeping change that benefits the winners of the revolution and justifies the cause. An appearance of incompetence, corruption, or lack of direction and vision and change, can open the door to a swift and successful counter-revolution by old regime elements who can show that they know what they are doing and what needs to be done, while disavowing the most abhorrent acts or individuals of the old regime.
11. **Revolutions can happen at any scale.**
A revolution can involve changes in group leadership at any level that is or can be made to become sovereign (i.e. accountable to no one above them in all material things in the near term) from a group of cast aways on an island or group of POWs in a camp, all the way up to whole nations or even groups of nations.
But, revolutions do not generally happen at any level that is less than sovereign, because subordinate units in a hierarchy that don't claim to be sovereign can almost always have any legitimacy or succession dispute resolved by those who are higher up in the hierarchy that it is a part of.
12. **Revolutions tend to come in waves.**
A strategy sufficient to undermine the legitimacy of one regime will often have a contagion effect and spread to other similar regimes (a la Arab Spring, the Revolutions of 1848, the Revolutions of the late 1800s that removed monarchies, created national identities and drove Latin American independence movements, the Communist wave of revolutions, the post-colonial independence movements).
These larger waves provide intellectual fuel to undermine legitimacy, economic and personnel support and training, a model for creating tribal identity, and by the success of the early versions of the attempt give hope for those following them that it is viable.
This hope is often misfounded as the homegrown version of the revolution is often more solidly organized, well planned, and tuned to local conditions to an extent often not recognized (unless the general approach is revised substantially for local conditions as Mao did for Stalinism). But, it still creates hope and people often don't look very critically at the prior revolutions about which they are often ill informed anyway in deciding to make conditional and contingent commitments to the revolution that are critical to its success.
13. **Revolutionary Leaders Often Lose Control**
This is point thirteen for a reason. Revolutions rarely go as planned. Revolutions can get ugly, and revolutions can be hijacked by people who hold different ideologies or by pure opportunists. The initial revolutionary regime is often not the last. Instead, cycles of unstable revolutionary governments until one sticks are common.
For example, the Russian and French revolutions cycled rapidly over periods of days and weeks. The U.S. soon replaced its confederation with the 1789 constitution. The Glorious Revolution was short. China's Republic lasted only a generation. Rome cycled rapidly through political upheavals.
Most 20th century revolutionary regimes cycled quickly through more than one regime before stabilizing.
**Caveat**
These comments are assembled and synthesized over a lifetime. In more time and with more specific questions, I could probably summon selected sources and historical precedents to justify this, but a lot of it comes from thinking and observing critically over a large mass of material of a long period of time so it would be difficult to attribute much of it.
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* Speakers of this language would communicate through differences in volume, rather than pitch or [phone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_(phonetics)).
* While speakers *might be able* to use these features - just as in English we can use can aspirate without changing meaning - it wouldn't change the meaning of the utterance.
* For practical reasons, it would be relative volume rather than absolute volume, so that speakers would not need to be positioned at specific distances from each other to be sure of their meaning.
What physiological (speakers need not be human), cultural or other reasons might cause a language like this to develop?
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**It's like morse code, but with louder or quieter dashes or dots to convey even more information.**
It's amplitude modulated rather than frequency modulated. This kind of language would make sense if you communicated by pressing on somebody. In that way, the mechanism for receiving communication is more like touch than hearing. If only a very simply ear were to develop, one more like a simple pressure sensor than a frequency sensor (like the cochlea) then amplitude would be the only way (besides time) to modulate information onto that sensory perception. It's very likely that very early ears on animals worked this way.
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A creature with no voice. Sound is made by thumping two parts of the body together--thus it can make only one note. (Think of the noisemakers some insects have.)
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Samuel's answer is quite well phrased. In fact the simplest radios use Amplitude Modulation (AM) which is basically a volume-based language spoken and heard between AM transceivers. The motivation for its evolution being that humans in search of a means to electronically communicate via RF radiation had to develop a methodology whereby the equipment of the era could emit a signal identifiable as intentional, amid all the noise any potential receiver would have to discard. In general, a 'noise floor' is identified and any energy received that was too weak would be ignored, all other energy would be routed to the rest of the circuit, possibly for amplification, and then for output via a speaker.
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In humans, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't, for the reasons listed at the end of this answer. In other creatures, though, perhaps if the ear simply senses the energy of the sound waves reaching it, and reports that as a fluctuating signal. There would likely need to be multiple "ears", that trap sound from various directions, since it would be impossible to have more than one person talking at once without being able to have the brain focus in on one voice; the overlapping volumes would change the meaning of the speech. The more ears they have, the better the brain would be able to process the input and focus in on individual voices. Perhaps a series of several pits around their head, each one of which senses the relative energy of the sound waves reaching it.
Even then, they would be much more likely to develop a language based on timed pulses, ala Morse code. For the creatures to not develop this, they would have to have a limitation in their ability to sense passage of time. The time sense of these creatures would have to fluctuate wildly, to the point that they would be unable to reliably tell the difference between a dot and a dash. Perhaps their brains are sort of like modern computer processors, which change processing speed from moment to moment as needed, slowing down to conserve energy, and speeding up when decisions need to be made; with the sense of the flow of time adjusting accordingly.
With these limitations, it would rule out the language being based on a constant sound with modulated volume; it would need to be repeated bursts of sound with each burst being at a constant volume throughout, since timing can't be considered. It might take the form of some sort of barking sound, with the barks varying in volume. A conversation might be begun by an individual "barking" a few times to set the initial volume of the conversation. If the other individual wishes to speak (or loses track of the conversation) they might break in in the same way, and wait for the other to make a statement relinquishing control of the conversation before saying their piece.
You are correct that relative volume would be necessary. That could be in one of two manners: volume relative to the previous sound burst, or relative to the initial calibrated volume. Making it relative to the previous burst would require recalibration if the speaker reached the top of their vocal range. One way to do this is being limited to three phonemes (quiter, same, and louder) so that after a long series of louder phonemes one could modulate very far down in volume in one step without changing the meaning.
Still, very significant hurdles would need to be overcome:
1. Any relative movement between speaker and listener would have to be carefully compensated for, since increased distance would change the volume
2. Sound is usually somewhat focused; turning your head (or sound generation organ) slightly to the side would change the volume, and therefore the meaning of your statement
3. Any conversation would have to begin with an exchange of volume calibration noises, and if one got distracted in the middle, non-verbal communication would have to be used to reset the calibration, making extended conversations difficult
4. Changes in ambient noise can affect the conversants unequally, leading to loss of calibration even in the best situations
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Its very very rare to not try to use the full capacity of a communication medium, so you would need an extraordinary circumstance to cause it to occur.
If the human culture is dominated by an apex predator who is capable of detecting pitch or phone, humans may develop a language which is capable of sneaking under the radar of this predator.
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I don't see how humans or any earth animal would develop such a language. It would be like developing a counting system using only the index fingers. The improvements are so obvious that development will take a different direction, combining more aspects into the communication.
What I could see is **creatures using literal AM radio to communicate**. They are either all crystalline or have some crystal growths for receivers, as well as antennas. Let's take intelligent porcupines with mixed metal and crystalline needles as an example. By directly feeding electricity from their equivalent of a nervous system into the transmitter needles an receiving replies with the crystal needles, they can communicate with each other over long distances.
If the creatures have limited mobility (maybe they're even just sentient crystal formations), this would make a lot of sense. Alternatively, conditions in their habitat might make vocal/visual communication very difficult. A permanent thick fog, dense sound-absorbing foliage and/or the predators mentioned in other answers might drive the creatures to communicate mostly by their own unique AM radio.
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I think such a language wouldn't make a lot of sense for a human being, because:
A) We would only be utilizing our very advanced voice boxes at a fraction of what they're capable of delivering, which doesn't make sense from an evolutionary standpoint.
B) Human hearing is only so sensitive - we can only differentiate *so many* differences in volume, and thus the "vocabulary" of that language would be very limited
C) A human being can only "yell" for so long before their voice gives out, which might be inconvenient when you're trying to have a conversation over a pint.
D) Did you only ask this question only in order to use the **language** tag and participate in the fortnightly challenge? :-)
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**The aliens I am writing are a very soft-hearted civilisation**, lacking many of the aspects that make us (humans) pretty vile creatures depending on the perspective. This harmonious behaviour seems like wishful thinking considering the desert planet they are supposed to live on.
**The planet is a dry and arid environment, which is home to some of the deadliest creatures in the universe.** Earth being second in line. There are only two planets bearing life in my setting so it's a rather small sample size. The alien planet has an assortment of dangerous beasts. Ambush predators lurking under the sand, creatures capable of digging through solid rock, swarms of flying creatures and many others populate the world. However, on the bright side, **some areas are exceptionally welcoming as is the case with oases filled with lush plant-life.** Many of the less dangerous creatures live there. Most migrate between the oases while others choose to guard them vigilantly.
The aliens themselves aren't so different from humans aside from cosmetic differences. Not too outlandish, they are humanoids after all. It should be noted however that they live in the oases (though there are exceptions). They are more dependent on water than the fauna of their world. However, it is not as if they are incapable of traveling through the desert. Their ancestors did so in order to mix the gene pool.
## Is this harsh environment conducive to a peaceful society?
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The psychology of a species that evolves in a harsh environment may well emphasize cooperation to a greater degree than is the case with humans.
Human evolutionary history is such that, while social, a lone human would still be able to survive, hence extreme competitiveness could be beneficial.
However, if a species evolved in such a way that a lone member could not expect to survive for very long, and a larger group could survive better than a smaller group, it would place a biological emphasis on cooperation. In such circumstances, internal competition that risked the life of another would be taboo, as it might reduce the chances of survival for both the individual and the group. When meeting individuals from another group, because survival would be easier with that group than without it, evolution would emphasise that those meeting would be looking for ways to unite those groups, rather than the human outlook of being suspicious of them.
So, rather than being a species evolved to live in moderate-sized groups that are competitive with one another, as humans are, they would be a species that forms large herds.
So, once the evolution of intelligence and the development of technology for this species has reached the point where the existential threats are neutralized, the species will still fall back to their herd-like ways.
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The environment seems to influence how a religion depicts the divinity behind it. I have read some time ago a comparison between the religions developed in the harsh environment of the desert or semi/desert of the middle East (Judaism, Christianity, Muslim and so on), where the god is represented as vindictive and harsh toward those who do not follow his words (like the desert is toward those who don't act carefully with it), and the religions developed in countries with a more favorable climate, like Buddhism, where the god is not as harsh (like the nature which is rather more friendly and gives harvest with less struggles than in the desert).
However, despite all the good intention professed by the religions, wars have been present in all the countries, including those under Buddhism influence. And let's not venture into looking at the powder keg which is commonly called Middle East....
An harsh environment makes for a more fierce competition for the scarce resources.
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# No Correlation Between Environment and Pacifism
... at least as far as I know.
Some examples:
* Aztecs: *literally* living in a world full of/made from warrior deities, some requiring human sacrifice to keep the world going. Environment: jungle. (Potentially also the most metal of all mythologies. A version of the world got destroyed by JAGUARS!)
* Islam: Coming from the desert, most caliphates and believers have a history of being relatively tolerant and peaceful, but not always. Muslim leaders have both been known as peace-loving (such as Saladin) but also militant (looking at you, Suleman). It's a toss-up!
* Christianity: Also coming from a desert, this *does* emphasize forgiveness and pacifism. It's also been used to justify atrocities (Diaspora Jews, Crusaides, WW2...).
* Ancient Norse: from cold seas, short growing seasons, and a pantheon full of warrior gods. Known for producing the most effective raiders (possibly) in history, so much that it was an occupation: *viking*.
* Inuit: from cold seas, glaciers, ice shelves, these people could have been the people who drove the Ancient Norse entirely out of Newfoundland. Not entirely pacifist, especially as hunting was the main mode of providing food, but not known for wars either.
* Hawaii: from a tropical sea, King Kamehameha was, like his other countrymen, a warrior. Their mythology is not exactly peaceful, either, such as Pele's beef with... lots of things. (Maybe it comes with the fire theme...)
* Ancient Greek: from the east Mediterranean, fighting and war was seen as both tragedy and a means for glory. I refer you to the Iliad. Spartans were unique in that they were highly militant.
* Ancient Egypt: hugging the Nile, they actually seemed to be relatively peaceful internally (although tombs depict a fair amount of violence to other nationalities. Egypt vs Kush. Egypt vs 'the Sea People'.)
As far as I can tell, environment is not the sole factor in determining how militant the religion is. Influences of religion and beliefs are many (cultures, socio-political events, geographic events, climate, etc.) but I do not think there is much of a case for 'harsh environment => more pacifism'.
# It Could Be Factor, Though
It does seem reasonable for the average alien to look around, see super deadly creatures, and decide 'maybe I will save the violence for animals, try to keep as many potential allies as possible'. It is only a little step to incorporating that into a religion which promotes pacifism (at least with respect to their own species).
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tl;dr: a harsh environment on itself can lead to a peaceful society, if the members of such society develop a balanced, symbiotic "relationship" with their environment, AND all of the groups of that society live in equal harsh conditions.
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There's a (quite old) movie that comes to mind with this question: [The gods must be crazy](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080801/).
In this movie, there's a small african tribe that lives happily and peacefully despite the fact that they live in the desert. They have learned to share everything and work togheter to survive in their environment, and every member of the tribe does something that contributes to the entire tribe.
This all changes one day when someone passes flying on a small plane over where the tribe lives, and dumps an empty glass bottle of coke which falls undamaged to the ground and is found by someone of the tribe. Seeing that this unknown and mysterious (to them) object fell from the sky, they assume its a gift from the gods, and everyone starts finding a variety of very practical uses to the bottle. The problem is, though, that there's only **one** bottle, and soon they start to fight over it. Years of peace and companionship were broken as soon as a very useful but scarce resource was introduced to the society of the tribe.
In a harsh environment, resources can be scarce and hard to obtain, and on top of that, the environment itself can have a lot of ways to try to kill you. This can indeed lead to a society that HAS to learn to distribute their resources on the most efficient way, and to work togheter to be able to survive to all the dangers in the environment.
So, if all the distinct groups learn to work this way, and all the distinct groups live in similar harsh conditions, then it is highly possible that the society will develop a friendly, shareful way of life as everyone knows the needs of everyone else.
But, if one or some of the groups doesn't learn to use efficiently their resources, and/or turns out to have plenty of a specific resource that is very valuable and scarce to other groups, then conflict will eventually and inevitably arise.
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I'd like to take on the evolution of 2 species that are more primitive than humans:
**Bonobos and chimpanzees**
Both species look so alike that they were considered one for a long time, but their social behavior is so fundamentally different that they are now considered different species.
Chimpanzees deal with stress, competition and aggression by fighting it out. Bonobos deal with the same problems by hugging, cuddling and having sex.
[One current theory](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/07/3/l_073_03.html) why their behavior differs so much is that chimpanzees evolved north of the Zaire river, where the bigger and stronger gorillas eat fibrous plants while the chimpanzees have to fight over tree fruits that aren't available all the time in great numbers.
Bonobos evolved south of the Zaire river, where gorillas went extinct after a long drought. So now they have no food competition and can eat the fruits and fibrous plants as well. This allowed them to feed bigger groups, fight less for territory and resources and avoid death by fighting.
**That means that harsh environments foster more aggressive societies.** It's very well possible that groups would be very tight knit to cooperate with food sourcing and defending their territory, but there would be a lot of fighting between the groups.
**Early high civilizations and Aboriginees**
We see a similar development in the first known human civilizations. Wherever in the world (Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, America) there emerged a "high civilization", it was always in a fertile environment. The lack of competition for food allowed humans to work and live together in big groups that became cities. The surplus food gave them time to develop intricate cultural rules, a bureaucratic government and new technology. And let's not forget that the conflicts with neighboring cultures and nations forced them to invent new technologies and improve their millitary.
The major advancements in metallurgy have almost all been done for warfare. Copper blades were inferior to bronze blades, those inferior to iron blades, and those inferior to steel blades. In order to cast a canon that didn't explode in your face, inventors had to improve the quality of their metals. In order to guide a missile into enemy territory, scientists had to invent wireless communication. In order to gain bragging rights, scientists had to keep a human outside or earth's atmosphere alive. **All these major technological advancements were achieved in the context of conflicts and wars.** Although it's plausible that space colonialization might be peaceful, a global nuclear war would certainly speed that development up.
As a contrast to those civilizations, have a look at native Australian Aboriginees. They also developed a very rich culture with an incredible oral tradition, but they are not considered a "high civilizion". Their environment was a lot harsher than the fertile Nile or the lush mesoamerican jungle. They still managed to develop technologies that provided them with enough food and free time to teach their children a rich culture, but the relative lack of resources meant that they couldn't live together in huge cities and build lasting structures. They did develop the perfect strategies to survive in their part of the world, but **the incentives to keep on inventing new technologies are missing in their history: constant conflicts with other people that were roughly their own level of technology.**
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I think, it should be treated as a biological question, instead of social development question.
The comments and answers speaking about the contemporary societies of Middle East are actually speaking about the creatures, originated in more hospitable environment, and partially adapted to live there, and then going through the long history of cultural adaptations, wars and colonialism.
Your creatures already started in that less hospitable environment. Imagine that instead of the quarreling almost-chimpanzee with a lot of intra-group aggression and domination games, your creatures evolved from the almost-meerkats.
Obviously, you would have then a long cultural adaptation history layered over this biological foundation, so that the current society will not resemble a meerkat pack. Over the history they would have developed different political structures, family types and religions.
But in the time of crisis and societal collapse, they fall back not to 'warlord and his male warriors, women enslaved and forced to breed' type of society, but to 'matriarch with children, and her retinue of helpers and protectors' type of society.
PS: I know that in humans, biological and social are not so easily separated. And that evolutionary psychology is mostly a load of pseudo-scientific crap. On the other hand, we invent imaginary society here. And we don't have a real example of culture, produced by creatures of other biological foundation then humans.
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I'd say yes if that's how you wanted to build things I have a few points that could be used.
My view would be it would have to be an environment that would look after you along as you and your group don't slack off (or in some way provide a bad performance). Not looking after or harming other group members could be more frowned upon as dead or badly injured members wouldn't contribute arguments would get in the way of work.
Plenty of defensive positions would also help create a more peaceful society.In our history there's been violence to gain more resources it's not been that strange for people to take things by force rather than work to say grow their own crops.
An unpredictable environment encourages violence because there's more to play for and hunger will kill you just as dead as a spear so why not lose or gain quicker?
You could also use the quarian from mass effects as a design they don't value property too much since they don't really have the space for it and their kind of forced together by being nomads with few resources.
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The short answer: **Depends, but overall unlikely**.
There's little to no correlation between the harshness of an environment and the violence of a given group or society in it. Even during hunter-gatherer times when life was hard, we've found evidence of people [violently killing one another](https://time.com/4189061/nature-journal-kenya-warfare/#:%7E:text=This%20Discovery%20Shows%20Humans%20Have%20Been%20Killing%20Each%20Other%20for%2010%2C000%20Years,-In%20this%20August). If you take a bunch of random humans and plop them down somewhere, they will be violent toward one another as long as they exist; human history is rife with examples of wars.
Biology provides another route. If your alien species evolved in a way in which cooperation is extremely important, they could evolve to become more pacifist. This is unlikely due to [game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_(game)) [theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons), although it isn't out of the possibility.
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Harsh environment? Not really, at least not alone.
There is a theory in anthropology that stone age civilizations in Europe were incredibly peaceful. This is because amount of work just to survive was immense (it took days to cut one tree with primitive stone tools). For hunter-gatherers food was scarce to the point that population growth was basically at 0 and settlements were spread out far, far away from each other. Add to this lack of any mode of transportation and just reaching another community becomes a problem, let alone fighting with them. Life was so work-intensive, that losing people to warfare was simply not sustainable for the specie to survive.
So according to this theory harsh conditions itself are not enough if your aliens tame the earth and archive a prosperous but harsh life. Plenty of examples in other answers. But if the harshness of the environment means that the alien race never archives any prosperity and never reaches the point where a single life is disposable (warriors) or redundant (nobility), then you can have your peaceful, over-worked and fragile civilization.
From your description of the alien planet and the aliens, I think you might be on the right tract with the world building. Those aliens would likely have an recurring motif in their oral tradition of tribes fighting against each other and despite victory perishing to nature, because some aggression is bound to happen before the natural selection roots it out as ineffective.
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So, I had a species that primarily lives off meat and insects, but I came across numerous articles which seem to point out that sapience and civilization is near impossible without being omnivorous. This led to me wondering, Based on our current understanding of how sapience evolves, are insectivores and carnivores viable to become sapient, create civilization, and get technology to at least the level of the Middle Ages over time? What complications would arise from this? Pros and cons?
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Those articles claiming that sapience and civilization is near impossible without being omnivorous are (perhaps) suffering from anthropocentrism: "The only evidence we have is ourselves, so the only possible answer is like ourselves."
You wrote that your species "*primarily* lives off meat and insects" (emphasis mine). So that means they do eat things other than meat and insects... they *are* omnivorous! So, if you want to be in line with those articles... you're golden.
Either way: remember that sapience is an evolutionary adaptation, *not* necessarily an evolutionary *advantage.* In other words, being sapient isn't necessarily better or worse / more evolved than not being sapient.
First, a clarification: "Sapience" is the ability to know things, and reason with that knowledge.
Are octopuses sapient? It certainly seems so. What about chimpanzees? Yeah, I reckon. Dogs? Uh huh. Elephants? Sure. Dolphins? It can be argued, indeed. What about horses? Hmmm. Again, it could be argued.
No one really knows what environmental pressures result in sapience, but going by the definition and the examples I just listed off the top of my head, dietary choices and even environment don't seem to matter. So your bug and meat eating critters are fair game.
Now, what about civilization?
Well, what is civilization?
Wikipedia [says](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization), "A civilization is any complex society characterized by urban development, social stratification, a form of government and symbolic systems of communication such as writing."
Good enough. So while there might be sapient complex societies with social stratification (see, again, chimpanzees), that's not a guarantee of "civilization" as we define it.
However! Do elephants need writing? Nah. But they do have ultrasonic long-distance communication and seem to have institutional (cultural) memory (as do ravens, btw). So maybe "oral history" is just fine rather than writing.
Urban development and a form of government are, essentially, technology with the purpose of scaling up small groups. Where there is prosperity (read: agriculture or a perennial and abundant food source) there is population, and with population, urbanization and government are handy (perhaps necessary) tools with which to manage a large group consistently and with a minimum of conflict... things advantageous to the ultimate goal of any species: to make sure one's offspring have offspring.
That's a very long winded way of saying, again, sure your bug-and-meat eating critters can have a civilization, given an environment with the right resources in the right amount.
You can extrapolate the complications over time by considering the behavior of your proto-critters, much as you can extrapolate human culture and behavior by looking at the behavior of "lower" primates. Think about how elephant society works and draw conclusions as to what they might be if there were millions or billions of elephants instead. That's an extreme example, but I hope you get my point: an elephant civilization would be very different from a crow civilization would be very different from an octopus civilization.
As for pros and cons... evolution doesn't think in terms of pros and cons, better or worse. If a species' babies grow up to have babies, that species is well-adapted to their environment. If sapience means more babies grow up to have babies, that *might* become a dominant trait. If the population gets big enough and language helps them stay organized and have grandkids, language (or agriculture or animal husbandry or roads...) might become a dominant trait.
Go forth with your bug and meat eating critters, and multiply. :-D
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The real issue here is a consequence of [Trophic Levels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level) and the [Ten-Percent Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_efficiency#Ten_percent_law). As quick summary, significant energy losses occur every time an organism eats something, so it's getting about 10% of the energy that the thing it ate got from it's source of energy.
Since every creature has some energy needs and civilization needs a lot of creatures in a (relatively) small area, you need a lot of resources to support these insectivores/carnivores. This is why you have a lot of primary consumers (like insects who eat plants) and much fewer tertiary consumers (like tigers).
This means that carnivorous civilizations are limited to areas that consistently produce *a lot* of food or are constrained to move with their food source(s). This isn't to say culture or technology is impossible while being entirely carnivorous. [The Inuit have a nearly all-meat diet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit_cuisine) and are still a civilization. There are social groups with [dolphins and whales](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetacea) in spite of their all-animal diets.
There is also the idea that more advanced technologies happen when people spend less of their time and effort simply trying to get food and more time and effort on learning about and experimenting with their world. This is simply harder when you are not a primary consumer or producer.
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Many plants are poisonous or only grow in certain places at certain times of year; so, herbivores need a good memory and discrimination skills. Carnivores on the other hand benefit from complex reasoning skills and a certain sense of self-awareness to be effective at tracking, stalking, and ambushing their prey. The reason Omnivores are normally associated with intelligence is that they have both evolutionary pressures so they can develop memory, discrimination, complex reasoning, and self-awareness all in one package. These are the general building blocks of sentient thought.
That said, it is possible for any animal to find a niche in which all of these skills are needed regardless of what they eat. For example, let's say your insectivore were some kind of migratory animal that survives by moving between different seasonal insect blooms that happen at different times of the year and in different places, they would need a good memory. If they lived in an environment where some of their prey insects use mimicry to closely resemble poisonous bugs, then they could develop a strong sense of discrimination to keep them from eating the bad bugs. If some of the bugs they hunt are faster than they are, then they would need to develop complex reasoning to figure out how to ambush their food, and if some of the bugs they hunt have keen senses or if they are a prey animal of something with keen senses, then they would need to develop to be self aware enough to not make a lot of noise, or stalk without cover, or stand upwind of things they are stalking/hiding from.
This just leaves the final element of being driven to modify one's own environment for better survival. For humans, it was agriculture that really sparked the growth of civilization, but not all animals that modify their environment do so for growing plants to eat. Some animals build nests or burrows to keep their young safe. Some animals build caches for storing food for winter. Various species of ants farm fungi or honey dew secreting insects. And let's not forget, humans raise animals for food too. The ancient Steppe civilizations produced great empires like the Mongols and the Scythians off of animal husbandry and not agriculture; so, your animals may get into the practice of farming prey animals as they get smarter so that they can stop wasting energy on migrating. Once they are "farming" for food, their evolution could follow a similar growth as humans.
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I don't forsee much of a problem in evolving intelligence/sapience, but not eating plants makes it much harder to live by farming. You need a *lot* more land, or maybe very fertile land, to produce the same amount of calories from meat instead of plants. That makes it much more difficult to move from hunter/gatherers to farming communities, which are needed for a Middle Ages level of technology. You can't really take your iron bloomery with you every time the community moves with the herds.
However farming insects could solve this in part. In modern insect farming, some species can produce 50% of the food mass as insect meat ([Wikipedia link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect_farming#Reduced_feed)), so then you only need twice the land area compared to eating plants directly. Farming insects presents some difficulties of their own. Unlike plants they run away, but they can't be stopped with something like a fence, and I don't think there are any insects that can be herded. (Though in your fictional world there might be. Nest building insects like bees and ants tend to stay in one place.) So I guess the bugs need to be kept in some kind of boxes, with the 'humans' harvesting the vegetables and feeding it to the bugs.
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On Earth, for mammals, one of the potential problems is that intelligence is expensive, and requires omega-3s, which can be tricky to find in nature.
Insects are apparently a potentially good source of Omega-3s (per <https://www.infona.pl/resource/bwmeta1.element.elsevier-c89c5b3e-6a99-335e-94ad-4c556add6141>). So, if you're in a place where there's a LOT of insect biomass, you probably have the nutritional basis to support evolutionary pressures towards a big brain.
Note that *large* brains aren't always required for intelligence: it's just the cheapest way to get smart. Turns out, because weight is a huge issue when flying, Corvids and similarly smart birds do much more with far less brain, by instead having their brains loop the information more often. This is slower in theory, but since their brains are smaller, they save on signalling transit time, and achieve intelligence on a par with animals that have a FAR higher brain:body mass ratio.
There are also distributed neural systems, such as the nine brains of an octopus, where the brain is scattered around in the body.
And there's hive intelligences, where the "intelligence" is an emergent property of the complex behaviors of the members in response to pheromonal stimuli. I'm not convinced that there's a way for hive intelligence can result in anything approaching the lateral-thinking and symbology of true sapience, though.
So what kind of evolutionary pressures support large brains, or one of the alternatives? Well... for the most part it seems to be about having to think up new approaches to finding resources, like shelter, safety, or food.
If you can make the insects plentiful, but variable (different insect types in different seasons? Each species dangerous in a different way, found in a different environment, etc?) so that the creatures have to think adaptively and cooperatively to forage for them, that could work.
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**Yes**
The key trigger for sapience is fire/cooking. Raw food requires a longer gut to get the maximum energy from eating. Cooking starts the breakdown process before the food is consumed.
What this means is the creature requires less intestines and the intestines require a lot of energy to run. Cooking the food allows a smaller gut and creates a surplus of energy in the body which allows evolution to start increasing the brain power (which also takes a lot of energy)
As long as there's enough insects for them to cook, it's possible.
See [Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catching_Fire:_How_Cooking_Made_Us_Human#:%7E:text=Cooking%20had%20profound%20evolutionary%20effect,foraging%2C%20chewing%2C%20and%20digesting.&text=erectus%20developed%20a%20smaller%2C%20more,to%20enable%20larger%20brain%20growth.)
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I'm going to say definitely yes, because it already happened.
Neanderthals were purely carnivorous and were probably sapient. The line for sapience is kind of unclear, and our knowledge of neanderthals is likewise not 100% certain, but since neanderthals definitely had tools and fire, [probably](https://australian.museum/learn/science/human-evolution/how-do-we-know-if-they-could-speak/) could speak modern languages, and buried their dead (though we don't know if this was symbolic/religious or just practicality) I'd say they were probably sapient. There is admittedly limited examples of Neanderthal art or jewelry which one could use to argue a lack of symbolic representational skills, but it's quite possible the limited artwork is due to cultural or environment factors that made it unlikely they would survive, and besides it's not clear that art making is required for the basic definition of sapience.
Now to be fair the inability to eat plants was ultimately the downfall of neanderthals. They were adapted for extreme colds and so when the ice age ended and the northern regions thawed out they found themselves outside of their element. With the prey species they primarily depended on also going extinct they risks effectively starving to death as they were unable to hunt enough meet to keep up with their much higher metabolic requirements compared to prehistoric homo sapiens. Had neanderthals been able to eat the now far more abundant plant life that could have helped them replace the calories lost when their usual prey died out.
However, having your entire world environment change practically overnight, as happened when the ice age ended, is kind of a rough deal for any species to survive. In a theoretical world where the ice age hadn't ended, or if there was more land in the north part of the world so that neanderthals could have continued migrating towards the colder north pole to compensate for the warming affects, neanderthals would have had a real shot at a modern sapient creature.
I'd say it's harder for a creature that can't eat plants to achieve sapience, the lost of adaptability offered by eating plants and the lower efficiency of raising livestock vs farming would be a problem for a generalist species (high intellect and sapience is more beneficial to generalist species, so sapient species would likely be generalists). In fact it's likely that while a basic sapience can be achieved without plant eating, as with Neanderthals, as the sapient species continued to develop into the degree of intelligence and technological ability of modern humans they would also tends to evolve towards a more omnivorous diet.
If you want a carnivorous sapient species I would suggest you go the same route that caused it to happen with neanderthals and remove plants! The ice age made plant life far less abundant as the ground was more often buried in snow. This, combined with the need for a much higher caloric diet that was only sustainable through large quantities of meat, was what drove neanderthals to adapt to a mostly carnivorous lifestyle in the first place.
So if you create a world where plant life is less common, or it takes extremely specialized adaptations to find and eat the existing plant life, you would better justify why a sapient species living there didn't tend to evolve towards an omnivorous lifestyle. I'd probably suggest a cold world where fish, instead of small herbaceous, made up the low ends of the food chain. Alternatively if you had a sapient aquatic race they would have to be carnivorous as it would be the only viable source for energy on the scales of the size of animal you would want to be sapient, they couldn't live off of kelp alone.
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Technological approaches to refrigeration tend to involve either high compression ratios of fairly exotic (from a biochemical point of view, anyway) volatile substances, or high-power, low-efficiency solid state electronics.
Neither of these seem particularly practical paths for a living organism to take for lowering its temperature.
What earthling biology has come up with is the equivalent of a swamp cooler--i.e., sweat--which dumps heat into the energy of vaporization of a consumable volatile substance (water). But if the air is already saturated, or you get dehydrated, you're screwed--a swamp cooler or sweat gland can't function anymore.
So, is there a plausible mechanism by which an organism could evolve to actively pump heat into the environment (i.e., refrigerate itself) in a closed-loop system that does not require wasted consumables like sweat?
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Look at what desert animals do to stay cool: they cannot afford wasting hard gained water, thus they increase the surface with which they can exchange heat with air.
This results in larger ears, for example, and more slender bodies (while the animals living in colder climates tend to be more spherical).
Just compare a [fennec fox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fennec_fox) with an [arctic fox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_fox), and the difference will be striking:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cmQrd.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QD2Oo.jpg)
those large ear lobes are nicely engineered radiators, which the fennec uses to keep its thermal balance without losing water.
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Suppose you had an animal with a second "heart" that could be used as part of a [pulse-tube](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse_tube_refrigerator) cooler. This heart would act as the pump to compress and relax a closed chamber, with an ear or a backbone "fin" as the heat exchanger.
Or,
There's a cooler system the name of which escapes me, in which air is forced into a tube. Partway along the tube, the diameter is increased, which causes the air to cool due to expansion. This tube then turns back on itself, acting as a heat sink for the incoming air. In this way the part of the machine in contact with the first part of the tube gets quite cold over time. So all your animal needs is to be able to exhale through such an arrangement. Presumably there'd be a muscle-valve to shut off this alternative exhalation port when not wanted.
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Yes, there are at least two plausible mechanisms. Compressor-based heat pumps don't seem very plausible for a biological process. However [absorption refrigeratoration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_refrigerator), mentioned in a comment by AlexP, may be plausible. What I find even more plausible, though, is something like ["rubber band refrigeration"](https://hackaday.com/2016/08/25/a-refrigerator-cooled-by-rubber-bands/). This mechanism relies on having a material that heats up when stretched.
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> No, the second law of thermodynamics isn’t in jeopardy. The secret is in the molecular structure of rubber bands. The bands are made of long polymer chains. A relaxed rubber band’s chains are a tangled mess. Stretching the band causes the chains to untangle and line up in an orderly fashion. By stretching the band you are decreasing its entropy. The energy of the molecules in the band don’t change, but entropy does. All the work one does to stretch the band has to go somewhere, and that somewhere is heat.
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Such polymer chains can plausibly be created by biological processes, in the form of stretchy webbing/skin that the organism stretches out then allows to cool back to ambient temperature. After subsequently relaxing the stretched-out material, it's cooler than the original body temperature and absorbs heat out of the body. Then the process repeats. The only question is whether it could plausibly be made efficient enough to be of practical benefit.
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In addition to [L.Dutch's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/153836/21222) involving ears, it is believed by some scientists that the plaques on the back of stegosaurus served the same purpose, i.e.: the beast pumped blood to the plaques were they could exchange heat with air, much like the heat sink on top of a computer processor. Those plaques had grooves which seem like the space for blood vessels.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Z7ivC.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aipJ4.jpg)
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**Deep loop heat sink organ.**
Giving up heat to the air, yes, yes. How droll. Been done and done and done.
Squirrels and dogs scrape the earth and lie belly down, depositing heat in the cool dirt. I propose taking this one step further.
The hot animal has below it a very long erectile organ which it pushes deep into a yielding substrate like sand or dirt. The temperature is lower at depth and for this purpose deeper is better until you get to a couple of km down and things starts heating up again. So not that deep. That would be silly, anyway.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3Emns.jpg)
I envision something like this grasshopper ovipositor.
<https://biologydictionary.net/ovipositor/>
This buried organ then serves as a heat sink. Hot blood is pumped down into this organ. It deposits heat at depth and cooled blood returns to the animal.
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Thermoacoustic refrigeration requires only a resonant chamber and a source of high amplitude sound, both of which have precedents in biology.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoacoustic_heat_engine>
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One could also imagine the use of a phase change material. Like having cells or vesicles filled with a wax that melts inside the body thus cooling it in the process. The vesicles would be transported to the surface where they solidify and release heat. This would also only work if the outside is cooler than the body temperature. This seems to have no advantage over just pumping blood to the surface. However, it could be an advantage if there are large temperature changes between night and day. The process could be used to keep the organism cool during the day and to restore over night.
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**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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You are asking questions about a story set in a world instead of about building a world. For more information, see [Why is my question "Too Story Based" and how do I get it opened?](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3300/49).
Closed 5 years ago.
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If someone has lived say two or three hundred plus years and has attempted to remain a part of normal human society without arousing suspicion, how easy would this be?
Would it be difficult for someone to live outside the system, but remain part of the world? If they have this longevity and they do not seem to age, say they are perpetually in their twenties or thirties, and thus move around constantly to avoid suspicion, would this easily work? Could it? Getting employment, housing, insurances, an ID of any kind, so on, and so on, wouldn't these and other such things be an issue again and again?
And even if they had things like...a SSN or medical records...once they changed identity that's out the window so then what? Could this life be easily lived, especially in the modern world?
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Here are some ideas :
* Certain identity documents (like social security cards or driver's licenses) aren't essential to get by. If you are willing to accept the low-paying work, you will be able to find jobs that look the other way.
* You don't have to live in the United States. While the U.S. and U.K. have a great deal of tracking, the rest of the world does not. In many places, you are who you claim to be. Especially if you can look and sound like a local.
* Some parts of the United States are basically wilderness: Alaska, parts of Hawaii, Texas, New Mexico, upstate New York, even great swaths of Europe. You can be a squatter or homesteader (basically picking a spot and building a home there with no regard as to whether you own the land), and not be bothered by authorities.
* Generational memories are poor. About every thirty years, people will easily accept that your long-lived person is his own son or daughter. Even photographs (which are fairly modern) can be dismissed with a strong family resemblence. If people get too pushy, it's time to move.
* Please avoid the "my long-lived person is rich off compounding interest and good investments". This is just a personal preference because it seems to be used a lot in this genre. Practically: a long-lived person is just as likely to make investment mistakes, or have savings wiped away by disaster as everyone else.
* A long-lived person is going to become very smart. This is usually just reduced to convenient expositionary flashbacks, but I feel it's really not taken advantage of. The long-lived person, depending on how much effort they've put into learning, is almost guaranteed to be both a polymat and polglot. He will probably pick up: farming, ranching, building, electronics, heating and cooling, advanced finance (cash, loans, bonds, stocks (connected to building)), (futures, hedges, commodities (connected to farming)), first aid, chemistry, minerology, forestry, astronomy, literature, art, government (socialism and capitalism both, we vacillate between the two nearly every 60 years), law. What is "basic" knowledge in one generation later becomes "niche" or "rare" or "arcane"; but the person with access to all of the early stuff more clearly can understand the later stuff built on top of it. Likewise, the long-lived person will probably fluently speak whatever languages have come through the region(s) in which he or she had lived, because at some point it becomes convenient to pick it up.
* Mail order (and equivalent) has been around for a while. The person can have access to nice things and remain anonymous.
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It sounds like your big worry isn't "living off the grid", but avoiding all of the problems that come with having a job.
With decent compound interest, work isn't an issue. The range of people who aren't so incompetent with money that they'd have starved by now but aren't competent enough to save up enough to live on the interest is probably very narrow.
The problem is, how do you transfer the principle from one identity to the next? I'm assuming you don't want to do the standard "I adopted my nephew" plot device.1
Up to the late 20th century, this wasn't too much of a problem for a man of means. As each loophole was closed, new ones opened. You'd have to pay enough attention to move from Swiss numbered accounts to Bermuda, from US municipal to corporate bearer bonds, etc., but that's not too hard.
But by the end of the 1980s it was getting hard to invest any new money in anonymously transferable implements, and by the end of the 2000s, the last of the existing ones stopped paying interest.
One option is to just ignore that change. There are plenty of movies that still make US Treasury bearer bonds and even Swiss numbered bank accounts into plot devices, even though they haven't been useful for money laundering for decades.
Another possibility is to turn to crime. I'm sure you can make the right contacts who will be willing to launder your money for a reasonable fee. Or maybe they have some legitimate businesses you can invest in and give the profit to some other person with no questions asked.
Or just make it a plot device. Every 20-25 years, for 300 years, your protagonist has been able to roll over his money to his new identity. 1995 was a bit of a problem, but he pulled it off. But in 2018, nothing's working. He's delayed things for a bit by transferring a bit of precious metals or other commodities, but those aren't going to appreciate in value the same way as financial instruments—and besides, if one guy buys \$100M worth of gold and loses it and another guy finds \$100M worth of gold later that year, the IRS and other agencies are going to notice pretty quickly.
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1. This has never been very realistic; it's just one of those things you get away with in stories because everyone else in the genre does it. You can try to make it feel a bit more realistic by mentioning the adoption papers and inheritance taxes and so on. But let's assume you don't want to use the same old plot device at all.
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A privately owned company which is owned by a foreign privately owned company which in turn is owned by another privately owned company
The company hold the assets and the person is issued with a company credit card. He has a driver so doesn't need a licence. Staff are kept on short contracts and replaced regularly so they never really notice the person not aging.
If the companies taxes are all above board and everything is squeaky clean, the government won't look at anything too hard. You stay out of photos and be a recluse as much as possible nobody would even notice.
You could virtually avoid all forms of ID
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If he has lived hundreds of years, than surely he has lived for at least a hundred years *before* the modern amenities that you refer to as the 'grid' were developed. 150 years ago there were no supermarkets, no electricity, no hospitals and no id cards. Rural areas had no running water or sewage.
A pioneer that crossed the Appalachians to settle ohio in 1790 certainly didn't have anything like a 'grid'. Therefore, if you fellow had the skills of a early American pioneer (or Medieval peasant, or whatever), then they should be fine.
While it would be difficult to get a job in a big city, it would not be so difficult in a smaller town. It wouldn't be hard to get a job as a seasonal worker in an agricultural region, not should it be that difficult to farm an abandoned field or otherwise marginal area. Once a decent food source is established, this person can use his skills to barter for anything additional he might need.
One skill that your guy might have in abundance, that is not so common today, is animal husbandry. Sheep and horses don't work any different than they did 500 years ago, and veterinary or general animal knowledge skills might go a long way in a smaller town. Once the person is established and reasonably well known, having a government id wouldn't be a deal breaker. If you go to Idaho or Montana, it isn't that hard to find people who are into being off the grid, anyways.
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Income:
If they have lived for hundreds of years they have had enough time to accumulate enough money to live off the interest. Doing so anonymously these days is going to be something of a problem but I don't think it's impossible:
Once you have plenty of money you "die" and leave your wealth in a few trusts. They are managed by large banks or the like and are directed to disburse assets to the unidentified individuals who are able to adequately authenticate that they are the intended recipients. Back when you set this up that probably would have been by means of messages encrypted by one time pads. These days you would have directed them to replace those with a public key cryptography system--directions signed by your private key are to be considered valid. This would be much more secure as while one time pads are cryptographically unbreakable they provide no protection against embezzlement by fake orders. A dirty trustee can't fake a message signed by your private key, though.
Note that this approach avoids the problem of having to keep establishing new identities, but it does raise your taxes as the disbursed money won't have an associated tax number and thus will be subject to backup withholding (IIRC this results in a flat 30% tax rate.)
You can get around by taxi or bus, you won't be able to drive or fly unless you make a suitable fake identity and that's growing ever harder. You can direct one of your trusts to buy a house and maintain utilities on it.
Note that this will **not** withstand government scrutiny, but they don't go around poking into the details unless there's a reason--keep your nose clean and I don't think there would be that scrutiny.
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There's another issue that you overlook which has become a genuine problem for people trying to assume new identities such as police going undercover: your online trace.
We live in a world where you can Google up a list of known members of a New York mob family. Where the first thing a new member of a biker gang does after being patched in is take a selfie with the boys. Where, even if you don't have a Facebook page, there's reasonable odds you're mentioned on someone else's. And the younger you are, the more likely this is to happen.
Someone suddenly showing up without any prior apparent presence is going to raise flags, and the longer you're around the more likely you will leave some trace, even through other people. I was speaking to a police officer a few months ago and he mentioned that it was easy to figure out which of his peers were engaged in undercover work; they were always reluctant to appear in group photos, and tried to avoid appearing in any photos.
Your long-lived person is going to deal with that more and more; even if they actively avoid attracting attention, someone is going to refer to the weird young guy who lives out in the woods. And over time, people are going to wonder why that weird young guy is still a young guy.
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In my part of the world, living off the grid is a way of life
Imagine a world of no cellphones, computers, electricity, motor vehicles, even plastic does not exist, no metals too, etc etc... and you just have a patch of land, the forest, a a stream, you now have yourself a home.
Clay pots are good containers for anything, sure they break easily, but you can replace them very quickly if you have clay. Fire is the only thing that could be difficult, specially rainy seasons (we only got two seasons here) Food is a PLENTY, you got fruits, vegetables, poultry (if you choose), fishes in the stream, bugs in the roots (as long as you can classify edible bugs), snakes, anything can be eaten, so you choose your meal everyday.
clothes can be a little... complicated too (in "outsider" standard) They range from leaves, to animal skins, into... nothing.
hunting tools and weapons are always sharpened wood instruments, sharpened stones and slingshots.
You wont have to worry about... insurances.
If poisoned by animals or insect, you have to slit yourself open near the location of the sting or bite so that the bad blood could flow out, but you risk yourself losing blood, and pray if the poison was released. Most of the time, its 50/50.
Alternative medications are the solutions for health problems, But theres no question that hygiene is sacrificed in a off the grid life (no soap, or plumbing) do always remember DO YOUR BUSINESS DOWNSTREAM.
All in all, I have seen people that are amazed when they see my rubber shoes, how they call us foreigners because we ride cars and how they are amazed when we magically replicate them through our phones. living off the grid still works until today, unless progress cuts down all the forests like we always do.
So to answer your question:
Lets say your protagonist has lived for 300 years up until now.
1708 - 1808: He learned about common diseases, the art of hunting using only primitive tools and herbal medicines, he also acquired knowledge on how to start fire without flammable liquid gas and a little bit of chemistry.
1808 - 1908: He learned about the types of soil, where to harvest clay, architecture and engineering. weather reading, poultry and plant cultivation. he also learned medication from this time.
1908 - to present: lives of the grid for the rest of his life
BUT Things change when it becomes like this
1708 - 2018 Lives in the cities
09/05/2018 decides to live off the grid
I assure you, he will die in one month (maybe less)
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This will actually be pretty easy, as long as you stay out of criminal databases where they have your fingerprints or biometric data. If you move to another city or different part of town you will have no problems with persons remembering you look like your old self. If you are in a country without an actual central database, you can probably easy live a long time with the same ID. With good makeup you can probably easily live in an age range of 18 to 50 and will only look "quite young" or like you had good anti-aging-surgeries.
When you need to renew your birth date (every 30-40 years) there are several possibilities:
1. Forge your birth certificate (relatively easy, especially if it is from a rural hospital without electronic verification) - then just ask for a correction on your ID card, where your birth date seems to be misprinted -> show your birth certificate and your young face as proof.
2. If you have "lost" your ID card you need (bribed) relatives to verify your identity. Find someone who has a child your target age, where the child is missing/presumed dead. You can bribe them with some bogus story about an abusive family you need to get away from. If they vouch that you are their son and that you have lost your papers, you will get a new ID.
3. If you want a fresh start, you can apply as an immigrant without any proper papers. It is a tiresome process but you can eventually get an ID and a permit to stay. So you can just generate a completely new ID without any ties.
4. You can live in a country in which most people look vastly different and will probably not recognize the subtle differences between someone who is from a different descent. If you are caucasian you could steal the identities of students abroad or immigrants in an asian country and could probably get by if the person looked somewhat similar to you.
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You will need some sort of income, and the IRS plus its equivalent in every other country are pretty good at tracking electronic money.
So you will need a job that pays in cash - say, masseur, or the oldest profession.
From there you can buy prepaid credit cards and use those to pay for AirBNB. That gives you a place, and the electricity, water, gas and internet will be billed to someone else.
You can use the same cards for food and transport - for all purposes, the electronic transfers are between the card issuer and the service or goods provider. You can charge the cards at ATM's, pharmacies or supermarkets.
I do that with cards and AirBNB all the time - not because I want to be off the grid but because it's much less bureaucracy to get an AirBNB than to properly rent an apartment (and it's usually better value for your money than hotels). As for credit cards the prepaid ones won't rape your assets with insane interests, and you can control your expenses much better with them.
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From the dawn of time we came; moving silently down through the centuries, living many secret lives, struggling to reach the time of the Gathering; when the few who remain will battle to the last. No one has ever known we were among you… until now. -- juan sanchez villalobos ramirez
Buying an identity on the darknet costs a little over $20. That's all digital but with that information you could begin applying for legit cards; this is identity theft but something that happens. Your immortal would have to live a little outside the law if they'll be assuming identities.
Forged documents will run you more money but if your immortal is living outside the law it would just be a cost of living. A quick search shows a good quality scannable fake ID can cost about $200 USD, pick your state.
Look at how people living normal life spans assume identities and you can apply the same for your immortal.
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Millions of people live in the real world under assumed identities, blending into modern society. A network of landlords, health clinics, and other businesses cater to the undocumented community. The part about living for 300 years seems like a non sequitur to answering this question, but this special person would need to periodically acquire a new identity so that their physical appearance matches their documented age. After several decades of this routine, they would master all aspects of it.
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For centuries and millennia the most common form of wealth was owning land. If the immortal person accumulates wealth, they are likely to own more and more land.
They could acquire landed estates in several different locations and have tenants farm them for rent. And they could come to one of the estates and live there for maybe 20, 25, or 30 years as the relative and representative or overseer of the landowner. And when they decide to move they hire someone as the overseer for this estate and then announce that the owner has died and the new owner hired someone else as the overseer.
Then he would go to another estate he secretly owned and announce that the owner died and the new owner appointed him as the new overseer of the estate. And he would use a different name than at the previous estate.
If he has three or more widely separated estates he could stay for 20 to 30 years in each in rotation and nobody would remember him from previous stays when he returned to an estate. How many local people would be certain that he looked exactly like someone they hadn't seen for 60, 75, or 90 years? Very few.
If he is successful he may be able to buy new estates every few decades, so that if he eventually has 10 estates and stays at each one for 20 to 30 years, his stays at each one will be 200 to 300 years apart and nobody will remember him from previous stays.
Or maybe he might have a business that involves travel.
Here is a sort of a reverse story to the one you propose.
Christian Jacobsen Drakenberg died 9 October 1772, and claimed to have been born on 18 November 1626, thus allegedly dying age 145. In his case he looked like an old man for decades and nobody bothered him saying that he should look older (i.e. like a dead corpse) by now.
There were two times when Drakenberg could have been replaced by another, and presumably younger man.
A sailor, Drakenberg was captured and enslaved by Barbary pirates in 1694 and didn't escape until 1710. It is possible that the Drakenberg who escaped in 1710 was not the man who was captured in 1694. The returning Drakenberg was said to look only 60 years old, not 84. If he was a sixty year old impostor he would have lived to be "only" 122. If he was only 40 he would have lived to be "only" 102.
In 1732 Drakenberg traveled from Denmark to Norway and returned with a birth certificate from his birthplace which is now considered to be a forgery. He would have been 106 ears old if he was who he claimed to be, and possibly 62 to 82 years old if he was a 40 to 60 year old impostor in 1710. If Drakenberg was replaced by a look alike but presumably younger impostor during the trip, the impostor should have looked as old as the 62 to 106 year old man he replaced, and thus should have looked roughly 102 to 146 years old when he died in 1772.
So Drakenberg is believed to have been either one man who lived a very long time, or two or three men who claimed to be one man.
And possibly the second Drakenberg was an immortal man well over a hundred years old in 1710, who knew a slave named Drakenberg who died in captivity, and when he escaped took Drakenberg's name to appear decades younger than he was, and on his journey in 1732 found a younger man who resembled him and got that man to return and impersonate both him and Drakenberg, while he took the younger man's identity.
And perhaps he repeated that over and over again.
I might also point out that Old Parr (1483-1635) was reputed in his village to be about 150 years old when aristocrats heard about him. It is reasonable to suppose that his age was probably exaggerated by decades, but it is also reasonable to suppose that he should have been decades older than the oldest people in the neighborhood if the locals believed in his vast age. In any case, he was reputed to look very old, but much younger than most men his reported age - who would look like long dead skeletons - and wasn't reported to harassed by people accusing him of using witchcraft to live so long.
I might also add that Katherine Fitzgerald, the Old Countess of Desmond (died 1604) was reputed at the time to have lived to be 140, or more reasonably 120, and yet no accounts of her life mention villagers with torches and pitchforks attacking her castle or accusing her of using witchcraft to attain her allegedly unnatural age.
Her husband, Thomas Fitzgerald, 11th Earl of Desmond (1454-1534), would have been 150 years old in 1604, so unless their marriage was a May-December one, or even a February-December one, she would have lived over a century.
Or perhaps the immortal man could be some sort of merchant or banker who has a privately owned business, as was normal until a century or two ago, with branches in different cities. And if he marries and has children, he could eventually arrange a fake death and leave his business to his widow and children in the will.
But he might make arrangements before death to give a big part of his business to a fake identity of a trusted employee, or partner, or illegitimate son, and also leave that fake identity money and part of the business in the will. And do that over and over again to various other fake identities over the generations.
And show up from time to time at one of the branch offices under one of those fake identities and and become the branch manager, and save up enough money to open one or more branches of his own, etc.
And whatever methods he used to hide his unnaturally prolonged relative youth over the centuries and millennia, he would have more and more trouble in recent times as society becomes more and more bureaucratic and obsessed with record keeping.
He would probably have to create some sort of charity to hold much of his money and have to spend much of that money on actual charitable stuff, while remaining in charge of the charity long enough to hire himself under a fake id as the next hardworking but reclusive head of the charity, and repeat every generation or so.
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They don't. No matter where you live, no matter what you do, no matter how low your profile, someone, somewhere will figure out who you are eventually. One person alone can never keep their identity secret forever.
Which is why you get somebody else to keep it secret for you. Namely: governments. Now, I know what you're thinking. "Governments are who you want to hide your identity from!" Not necissarily right. See, people think of ET. They think shadowy men will come to your house in the dark of the night, take you away, and dissect you while you're conscious. To be fair, if you exist before the 70s or so, they probably will, but only under certain conditions. Governments (theoretically speaking) don't dissect strange people solely because they are strange, but because they believe that by dissecting strange things they can gain access to beneficial information. The way to get the government to stop harassing you is to have something better to offer them than a chance at immortality. What about military leadership that has centuries of experience? What about a brilliant scientist who will never die? Replacing highly skilled dead people is a huge problem for upper level government function. An incredibly high skilled minister, secretary, or official who will never die would be a godsend. And few are better than the government at keeping secrets.
Or, you could run down the private sector part of the skill-tree and pay the government not to dissect you. In any country without strict campaign finance laws, it isn't difficult to get the government to do what you want by making sure the people in it know they are there because you put them there and they can be replaced if you want them replaced.
Either way, once you hit the late 90's, no government will be interested in doing much more than collecting a blood sample. If your immortal isn't willing to get his arm pricked or his cheek swabbed to give everyone else the same opportunity they have, maybe you've got a bit of a jerk on your hands. Although, that could make for an interesting character.
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[
Based on a local legend, this species of dragon can't fly, but instead covers itself in flame to protect itself from hunters.
With as little magic as possible, would something like that be possible?
**More details about the creature:**
* It's about twelve meters long, nocturnal carnivore and is said to have thick scales.
* The flames are not a constant effect, the creature only uses it to scare off hunters.
My question is: **How could a creature like this exist?**
Magic is allowed, but I'm trying to avoid using it as much as possible.
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It is a legend that they are covered in flame. No real creatures get covered in flame. But what if they just look like they are covered in blinding bright flames? That happens. Maybe the dragons are **bioluminescent?**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wZK8s.jpg)
<http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160526-the-organisms-that-glow-brighter-than-any-other>
A cardinalfish (Apogon sp.) spits out an ostracod after it triggers a flash of bioluminescence (Credit: naturepl.com/Alamy Stock Photo)
>
> But Gerrish has found that the threat of attack provokes the most blinding >bursts of light.
> "The brightest luminescence of the ostracod is produced when they are
> preyed upon," says Gerrish. "The ostracods release large amounts of
> both luciferase and luciferin, which mix and light up the outline of
> the predatory fish."
>
>
> This flash-bomb tactic could be some of the brightest bioluminescence
> in the ocean.
>
>
>
So too your dragon. It is not on fire, but produces a fire colored flashbomb effect when under pressure. Hopefully it makes use of the time bought to counterattack, or slip way.
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All thoughts of evolution & practicality aside, I'll assume that the firedrake exists in the context of the given world and look towards one possible answer\* to the how.
Some points to consider:
* This dragon is assumed to have some kind of ancestral line going back squillions of years through evolutionary history.
* Fire is really not amenable to biological life. Even Smaug didn't like it so well (in the movie) when all that hot molten gold splattered all over him!
* Yet Fire is exactly what the firedrake uses as a matter of defense!
Alcohol is the key to the *firedrake's* success!
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ptppn.jpg)
Most people think that dragons subsist on a diet of naked virgins strapped to a post outside their caves, but this is a base canard. Being of neo-reptilian kind, your basic dragon, as do its lesser kin the monitor & the iguana, likes nothing more than to chow down on fruits & leaves. Perhaps with the occasional virgin to round out the diet. In order to digest all that plant matter, deep down in the complex digestive history of the dragon is the lowly microbe. The native flora of the dragon's gut loves to break down all those carbs, most of the byproducts of which process the dragon uptakes into its bloodstream.
But there's a catch! All that alcohol has got to go somewhere, and the dragon's response is to utilise it in conjunction with once of its most ancient defense mechanisms: grease.
Yes, grease.
You see, dragons when cornered by adversaries will face off, mouths agape (to show off teeth and huge impressive jaws) & legs spread wide. The secretion of an oily substance along the forelimbs and flanks serves to create a slippery surface that predators and foes alike will find difficult to grasp. Evolutionarily, this pathway derives from an ancient scale-protective secretion that kept ancestral dragons dry when swimming and during severe weather.
Now enter the alcohol: a specialised system of bladders contains the dragon's supply of both oily-grease & also alcohol. A system of efferent vessels lead these substances to ducts along the dragon's flanks and forelimbs. While the oil is secreted generally from pores along the ventral surface of each scale, the alcohol is only secreted in strategic locations --- those parts of the dragon that another creature will be directly facing. If the creature is a terribly predatory monster, the secretions are released and the alcohol is set alight by scraping of its *broad scales* --- those are the bigger, thicker defensive scales. These are tough, almost stony iron and quartz rich deals that easily spark when flared by muscular contraction. The sparks light up the alcohol which doesn't harm the dragon because these scales are so thick. But other creatures fear the light and heat of their most ancient enemy: Fire!
Fun fact: part of the evolutionary story of the firedrake, as opposed to other kindreds of lesser dragons, like the monitor, is that defense is nòt the original impetus for the mechanism. Mate selection: that's where it all starts!
You see, young dragons don't produce sufficient quantities of alcohol until they are nearly mature, and their scales are not sufficiently hardened & mineralised until some while after that. The inability to autoinflame is a sure sign of sexual immaturity. But once the firedrake becomes old enough, it will light up and go looking for a mate. Various breeds and kindreds of firedrake have characteristic mottling and patterns of "fire lines" along their limbs and flanks. Male patterns are visually more striking; females tend towards an all-over glow.
(\*NB: this is how firedrakes are in [**The World**](http://aveneca.com/cbb/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=4585): but they are generally rather smaller - - - nothing like your impressively huge 12 yard long monsters! Just some food for thought.)
[Answer]
The bombadier beetle uses a hot, chemical spray to ward off predators without hurting itself - if a dragon had similar glands under its scales, it could raise its scales and release a cloud around it of boiling, noxious gas that would burn anything next to it. It wouldn't light up though.
In order to get flames, we either need sparks, a stronger exothermic reaction, or something that ignites at lower temperatures.
### Sparks
If we keep the glands under the scales, but fill them with oil or alcohol - something easy to produce and flammable - and then give the dragon some way to ignite it with a spark when sprayed from under the scales.
Hydrogen gas is an option, too - it could be generated from the dragon's stomach acids.
Since dragon scales are famously hard, iron pyrite might do the trick; if you want something a little more exotic, then the eletricity-generating organ similar to electric eels or electric rays are able to deliver enough voltage to generate a spark - they do not spark in those animals, the dragon would need specialised conducting elements to generate a spark.
### Stronger Reactions
Something like sodium peroxide + zinc + water will produce a reaction strong enough to burn, but due to the sodium hydroxide being strongly reactive with water it will be difficult to produce or contain inside an animal. The other highly reactive metals (lithium, potassium) have similar problems.
### Low Temperature Ignition
Carbon disulphide has an autoignition temperature of only 90 degrees celcius - a temperature that can be reached by the bombadier beetle's chemical mix. The carbon disulphide could be sprayed around the dragon, then ignited with a single squirt.
The problem is that carbon disulphide is highly toxic and a strong solvent, so it would be impossible for the dragon to store. It would also be impossible to manufacture - most processes for creating it involve temperatures above 600 degrees - so the dragon would need to find a source (e.g. volcanoes), and could not produce it on demand.
### Less Violent Reactions
Most of the above prioritise reaction speed, so the dragon can use it as a defence mechanism on demand. There are some other processes that might be able to be controlled appropriately or hand-waved away so cover the dragon in flames. A good example is pistachios, which will, all by themselves, catch fire and burn if enough are stored together in a humid environment. If a dragon were to have a pistachio-shell-like compound in a special organ near its skin, where it can control the humidity and oxygen (and thus, the temperature build-up), it may be able to have a reservoir of burning material it can either expel or use to power one of the processes above.
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All these answers are pretty good, but there is another possibility that I don’t think has been mentioned...
If you take a flammable gas like methane, and pump it into water as it freezes, you end up with *flammable* ice. Cooler still (heh, puns), you can actually hold this ice in your hand as it burns, because the water shields you from the heat.
So am I saying your dragon should be covered in methane/ice? No, well maybe, that’d be cool, but that’s beside the point. What if your dragon naturally made a sticky sort of mucous that was secreted out of its skin. The top layer of the mucous could be as simple as fat and/or sugar based compounds from the dragon’s diet, while the bottom layer could be as simple as some kind of water based slime. Now all you need is a spark, maybe from specialized scales, fire breath, a special organ, all of which were mentioned in other answers and boom, your dragon is covered in flames that will burn until the fuel is gone and then self extinguish once they reach the water based slime coating the dragon’s scales.
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This assumes your Dragon has a breathe weapon.
Dragons have evolved to produce a modified version of their breath weapon fuel that secretes between scales. This primarily occurs as part of fight or flight response in dragons. This gooey substance quickly spreads into a vast network of flames covering the dragons body. As we all know when a dragon feels threatened, the first response is to face the threat, show the threat your dragon teeth, and then intimidate further by displaying your royal fire which ignites your burning goo covered fireproof scales.
[Answer]
**"Would something like that be possible?"**
You're asking about the eternal flames, but you're forgetting that it's a flaming, nocturnal carnivore. That won't work. Its prey would see it coming from miles away: it's nighttime, and this huge thing is on fire! Your dragon would starve.
[Answer]
The question is borderline closeable with *"unclear what you are asking"*. I'll fill in the gaps with wild assumptions from the top of my head.
For example, if the beast uses this strategy to escape hunting, then it is preyed upon, either by other animals or by humans.
Also, of the creature evolved such a specialized form of defense, it was probably *in lieu* of the usual defenses, i.e.: camouflage, speed, flying (mentioned in the question), a hard carapace etc.
The trope that they won't get you if you are on fire may seem like genius at first. It was probably invented by [Dan McNinja](http://drmcninja.com) circa 2006.
However, while this solves one immediate problem, it has some limitations, and also introduces a number of other problems.
* If the predators are humans, they can just fill the beast with spears and lances from a distance and wait for the fire to die out after the creature itself does. So the fire coat is only useful until hominids learn how to make tools.
* This creature cannot live in environments rich in flammable plant matter. Woods, forrests, savannahs... Those ecossystems would be devastated by the mere presence of such a creature. They would quickly be without food for themselves in such places.
* The creature therefore would live in deserts or wastelands, preferrably hot, sand deserts. In such places, water is usually rare, which introduces another problem...
* The creature needs to **drink a lot**. Even if you handwave its metabolism so that it thrives with internal temperatures in the hundreds of degrees through magic, any water and other fluids inside the creature will become hot, pressurized gas. So either the creature keeps continuously venting steam, or they will resemble giant walking puffer fish. If the latter, then they are walking pressure cookers and may explode violently if they get hurt in certain ways, or if they stop venting. This is a serious hazard... Exploding pressure cookers can destroy kitchens and kill people in real life.
* This is even more troublesome for the creature because if they have access to large bodies of water, they risk falling into it and dying out of thermal shock; If there is little water, they may vaporize it while they drink. In the very least the steam coming out of their mouth may temporalily blind them after a sip. Rains may be harmful or lethal.
* They will have a hard time hiding while they sleep. In fact, they broadcast their presence at night. Predators will take advantage of that. Even if they do manage to hide, they will leave very evident tracks. During day or night, whatever they prey on will be warned of their presence with plenty of time to try an escape.
* Last but not least, if they produce flammable methane in their bowels like many animals do... Let's say that each time they defecate or pass gas will lead to explosions. If they have cloacas, then each copulation will be a very literal bang.
---
If you still want to go with such a creature, just remember that combustion needs fuel, relatively high temperatures and oxygen (or an alternative oxydizer) to be stable. You can get the latter from the atmosphere as long as the creature doesn't get into a tight place. The other two, fuel and temperature, could only be provided by magic. That, and the ability to withstand the fire, are the minimal magic requirements - though you may want to consider the bits about water that I've mentioned for magicking away as well.
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[Question]
[
[This related question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/31460/28) asks about considerations for Santa's sleigh (particularly weight), but my question is more basic: how do you design a vehicle that satisfies Santa's design requirements, including the very tight schedule, in a way that doesn't turn Santa into a puddle of goo from high-Gs and vaporize the reindeer from wind-speed?
Key design requirements, as I understand them:
* The vehicle must be able to support take-off and landing at the homes of all good children on Earth in a span of roughly 24 hours. (Good children on space colonies are excluded.) We can't afford a long pre-flight check; really, we probably don't even have time to open and close a hatch. (Art never shows a hatch anyway.)
* Without knowing the number and distribution of stops we can only guess at the one-night mileage, but even at conservative estimates... mach-*what*? Gotta support super-high speed.
* It's ok if maintenance and repairs take the next 363 days, but there's not going to be time on delivery night for pit stops and spot-repairs -- the vehicle needs to operate continuously during the delivery run. (Santa would *probably* prefer to be able to do a test-drive tuning check between deployments, however, so less-extensive maintenance is preferred.)
* Santa, a well-padded humanoid, needs to survive the trip without long-term damage. As far as we know it's the same Santa every year.
* The reindeer need to survive the trip. Santa is pretty cagey about the reindeer, though -- who'd know if Blitzen is the same Blitzen as last year? It's ok to assume that Santa runs a breeding program, though protections for the lead reindeer with the light-emitting mutation would be advisable.
* There are no explicit requirements about materials or fuel sources.
[Answer]
Santa has been running a successful deception operation for centuries, fooling people with aliases and disguises (Think about it. Sinterklaas en Zwarte Piet certainly would surprise anyone looking for a jolly fat man in a red suit, wouldn't they...), but it is time the truth be told, and the answers to all the questions revealed.
Santa lives and operates in a pocket universe.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/B3zRz.jpg)
Connected to our space-time continuum by a wormhole exiting at the North Pole, Santa's pocket universe (aka "the sack") allows him and his elves to manipulate the flow of time, mass and energy within as compared to the outside universe. Subjective years can pass inside "the sack" while milliseconds pass here on Earth, allowing Santa to prepare toys, make detailed observations of the children of Earth, prepare the Naughty and Nice list and have a friendly AI check it twice (another answer, I'm afraid) and do all the other preparatory work for the big night.
Getting from place to place and entering buildings and structures with or without chimneys is a side effect of the way "the sack" is structured. On Christmas Eve, the wormhole mouth is disconnected from the North Pole and attached to "the sleigh" where eight powerful "reindeer" pull it around and position it under the trees of deserving children (the origin of the terms "sleigh" and "reindeer" to describe these very high tech devices is obscure, and no consensus on the origin is possible, since every elf has a different version). As time and space are not synchronized between "the sack" and our universe, what seems to be a ponderous and drawn out year long operation inside "the sack" only takes from midnight to @ 0600 EST on Earth. Santa is fairly certain that extending the reach of "the sack" to children in Earth orbit and the Moon would not be much of an issue, but has some doubts about extending the operation beyond Cis Lunar space. (The Apollo 8 astronauts are said to have been particularly pleased with the presents they got aboard their Apollo CM on Christmas eve, 1968, but respected Santa's wishes and didn't tell mission control. Santa wanted to surprise Gene Kranz).
So there you have it. Santa is operating in a pocket universe with different properties and using a wormhole connection between where he is and us to find out "who's naughty and nice", prepare the toys and appear under the trees to deliver presents.
By the way, he asked me to tell you that while he does enjoy the milk and cookies, he would appreciate a glass of single malt scotch on the fireplace mantle as well...
[Answer]
Let me introduce you to the concept of legendary matter. Legendary matter is mostly like ordinary matter; indeed, there's a legendary counterpart to each ordinary particle, having basically the same properties. With one exception: Instead of the ordinary charges, they have their own charge fields, the legendary charges. Correspondingly the legendary fields are completely separate from the ordinary fields. This allows legendary matter to freely move around and even through ordinary matter, without ever interacting with it, except through gravitation (that's inevitable).
Now you may wonder why researchers never have found that legendary matter. The answer is: They have; they just don't know. Legendary matter is part of the mysterious dark matter.
Now you may wonder how Santa can then deliver real presents, and how it can be that some people have indeed seen him and his sleight (although the latter is a *very* rare occurrence). Well, what I wrote above is not the whole story: There exist another field, which is able to convert between ordinary and legendary matter. Santa uses the conversion field generator for two purposes:
* Quite obviously, he has to convert the gifts into normal matter when he lays them down under the Christmas tree.
* When he delivers the presents, he of course has to see where he flies; but just as we cannot see legendary matter, anyone made of legendary matter cannot see anything made of normal matter. Thus Santa uses a quite weak conversion field to shift himself and his sleight just a little bit into the ordinary matter regime, not enough that the ordinary matter would hinder his flight, but enough that he could interact with light, and thus see where he would go. A side effect is that he also gets visible to us.
There are also occasions where he temporarily shifts himself completely to ordinary matter; mostly in order to drink some milk and eat some cookies.
[Answer]
Assuming that Santa travels at the speed of light or faster to reach each home this would be problematic. Which with as many starts and stops needed would play heck on whiplash (or corporeal retention!). Even just one acceleration to half the speed of light in say seconds, would likely cause an x-ray burst and the complete disassociation of his particles.
So instead of going ultra fast, Santa plays with time. He makes Christmas/eve 364 days long from his perspective, so his deer can fly at much more reasonable speeds allowing him a little time to snack on cookies and milk between stops, feed the deer and run back to the north pole periodically to get the next batch of presents needing to be delivered. Of course to any observing, it appears that Santa is nothing more than maybe a flash of red out of the corner of the eye. Or maybe a jiggle is heard when the radio is off.
I could also see, Santa actually having several sleighs, Elves filling each one up depending on location to be visited, and when he comes home, hitch the deer up to the next sled and off you go again! Even their each one will have to have space warping abilities, since piling all the gifts for even 1 small town could fill a semi-trailer or two.
Come to think of it, the gift sack is much more likely to be a space warping device, that allows Santa to reach in all the way to the work shop to get the right gift for each, a little 'rift' exists in the sack, kind of like [Nakor and his oranges!](http://midkemia.wikia.com/wiki/Nakor)
[Answer]
I would expect the technology to consist of a very small self-contained antimatter reactor, with a warp drive similar to the Alcubierre concept or the warp drive from Star Trek. Warp drive operates by moving the space surrounding the vessel so that the vessel is dragged along with it. An extremely fast warp drive could carry the sleigh near every house within a time zone within the hour and then to the next, and presumably there would be no strain on any component of the vehicle. Also, relativity would be a nonissue since the vehicle would remain at negligible speed and within normal space. A rigid system of reins could support the reindeer unharmed, though they'll be nervous unless they've been trained. The reactor could be contained with an energy shield and a spare or several could be carried in the back, and the gifts could be simply constructed with a replicator like in Star Trek and then beamed in with a transporter (also Star Trek.) Advanced holography would leave any tracks and provide something to consume and dispose of the milk and cookies and leave the occasional ashen footprint or sleigh track. Presumably the sleigh itself would be made of some sort of steel or titanium alloy, since if a warp drive is used, weight isn't a concern.
[Answer]
Speed of travel is completely irrelevant ironically...
Clearly, Santa is a mutant.
He has many names...err powers but the powers relevant to his gift giving gig are as follows:
1. **Teleportation**: Santa is able to teleport to any location on the globe, the teleportation may include other physical objects he is in contact with.
2. **Replication:** Santa is able to replicate multiple physical copies of himself. These are not separate 'persons' merely extensions of Santa's all powerful will. The teleportation power is retained by the replicant Santas.
3. **Psychic:** The actual Santa spends his annual Christmas gift giving extravaganza in silent meditation in a large dome at the north pole controlling the mentally linked avatars as they travel the globe delivering gifts to little ingrates.
**History**
The sleigh and reindeer are remnants from a time long past when Santa did things on his own in the more traditional manner. When Christmas was a small event in a fairly geographically localized area he did in fact fly around and drop off presents via a genetically modified elk powered sleigh. Over time as things grew Santa learned to hone his powers and he was able to skip the travel time altogether, but humanity had become so entranced with the myth of the sleigh with silver bells and reindeer that to this day he keeps up the charade by providing each of his avatars with reindeer and sleighs. Rumor has it the fleet of sleighs numbers in the thousands.
[Answer]
It is not as hard as is sounds. There are some facts that very few people know, which make it a lot of easier.
First of the facts is that Santa lives, not in the North Pole, but in Korvatunturi, Finland. The common misunderstanding is because Santa Travels over the North Pole on his way to America. Why? Check a globe to find out
Why has the Santa chosen to live in Korvaturi? It is on the east border of Finland. To the east is Russia, where Santa actually does not visit. It is a territory of Ded Moroz, who delivers presents to children on New Years eve (check Wikipedia: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ded_Moroz>). Santa and Ded have had this arrangement for centuries, for obvious practical reasons.
So Santa only has to travel towards west. Due to direction earth spins, this gives him considerably more time. Always when crossing a timezone he gets another hour 'extra'.
Secondly, in Finland as well as in most European countries, Santa delivers presents personally as he visits the houses early in the evening at Christmas Eve. He then arrives to the North America in the night and has all the time until the next morning to deliver the presents.
To sum up:
* Santa has divided workload with Ded and hence has a lot less of the area to cover.
* He travels towards west, giving him more time.
* He visits different countries at different time.
In addition, Santa is known to use something called 'Magic', of which very little is known outside Korvatunturi.
[Answer]
According to Norad, Santa's sleigh's max speed is "faster than starlight." Additionally, we know that despite being rather aged, he is still athletic and has not died yet.
"Faster than starlight", eh? You know what that means? [Time Travel](http://www.andersoninstitute.com/faster-than-light-travel.html). Backwards to be specific.
So here is how Santa does it. He delivers as many of the presents as he can. Then, at the end of Christmas, he starts going faster than starlight, and go backs and delivers more presents. At the beginning of Christmas, he slows down and starts going forward in time again to deliver presents. He just zips forward and backwards through time. This would take an extremely long time, but given that he can not die from old age and is supplied with free meals of milk and cookies (you can survive on [just milk](http://www.biology-online.org/biology-forum/about1099.html) by the way), he could do it.
Of course, to prevent causal paradoxes, Santa would have to be a logistical and temporal genius. The rest of the year though, he watches literally *everyone* though, so I would not put it beyond his mental capacity.
Really, this is the only possible solution. Why would Santa's sleigh go faster than starlight anyway, if that automatically implies time travel?
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[Question]
[
Luis and his team of vigilantes (referred to as just The Knights) want to expand to a worldwide society.
The founding members could head the organization, teaching others while ensuring the Knights stay on track with their goals and ideals. However, Luis fears making himself or anyone a central authority over The Knights; this would undermine the goals they are working towards. Intrigued by how cryptocurrencies work, he wonders if a "proof of work" or "proof of stake" algorithm could be used for charitable/hero work instead of computational work. The Knights work by defending the innocent when necessary, but also by doing charity work for those in need. Their ideals include honesty, privacy, and freedom.
The Knights should:
* allow anyone to join (as long as the new member is capable and willing to maintain the Knights' ideals)
* be able to reprimand a member who is not acting ethically
* be anonymous
* have access to tools and information not available to the public
* allow members to share information with each other
For example, even the founding members could be reprimanded (including expulsion), but ONLY if they somehow betray the organization's ideals.
The Knights should not be able to:
* be taken over by centralized organizations (governments, terrorist groups, etc.)
* become centralized
* change their core ideals
* be able to perform public actions against their ideals without being reprimanded
(some clarification on this last point: The Knights value privacy. They don't care what other knights do in their private time; this refers only to actions when in public as a knight)
These points don't need to be fulfilled so that they are 100% guaranteed, but they should be unlikely or implausible (e.g. cryptocurrencies can be taken over by controlling over 50% of the mining pool, but that's quite hard to do for most cryptocurrencies).
Some ideas I have that may or may not be useful:
* limit the amount of new members to a certain amount each month (or day or year or whatever)
* admissions include a 'job interview' with a randomly selected Knight
* have ranked choice voting each month on new applications and have the most voted members join
* have 'performance reviews' using random Knights (or voting once again)
* make sure Knights are geographically evenly distributed
These could answer some concerns, but still leaves some questions open (how would such a voting system be implemented?)
What must Luis do to allow the Knights to go global without centralizing them?
**Edit**: By anonymous, I mean more like "superhero secret identity" than "[Anonymous](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(hacker_group))". If a citizen encounters a knight, they will probably know which knight they encountered, but not necessarily who that person is when they're not acting as a knight. This means that the public *could* theoretically reprimand a knight. Basically, if a knight went completely off the wagon, it would show up on the news. The knights would know exactly which knight committed the crimes, but not the identity of the knight.
[Answer]
## Two of your goals are in contradiction to each other.
You want them to be resistant to centralization, but be accountable and fixed in views. If they're not centralized the individuals will evolve and change as they see fit, and people intentionally fake having your values so they can take over the organization to aim at their political enemies.
This has happened often with major organizations, and is a common end result of decentralization. You don't need government or terrorist infiltration for this to happen- there are lots of political types who are looking for an organization to join who will pervert the goals towards their desires.
You want to fight criminals? But what about the real criminals, immigrants/ the rich/ a disliked race/ a disliked sex/ meat eaters/ nuclear power supporters?
## What you need is a semi centralized structure built by the core.
Luis would set up new chapterhouses in varying locations with people they saw as trustworthy and good and useful. Chaptermasters, or whatever democratic structures people valued that included people who were trusted would be able to vote and discuss and coordinate actions and share intel and resources.
New people wouldn't be able to vote to change the goals or the organization or get free access to the more hidden resources, unless they worked their way up the organization to gain greater levels of access and became friends with other chapter masters. The leadership of each chapter house could achieve your goals, and prevent goal drift.
In the same way, no one knows what all the branches are doing. Each Chaptermaster knows their people and can keep them accountable, and each Chaptermaster will know some other Chaptermasters and their up and coming people, but they won't know the whole organization. Everyone in the core leadership is recruited by someone trustworthy, but there's no core central organization of trustworthiness.
## If you want a completely accountable organization you need an AI.
People aren't good at doing performance reviews, as they let personal bias creep in, don't agree on definitions, and let personal feelings creep in. A cryptocurrency to allow membership promotion would quickly be gamed, but for access to lesser resources like money, or favors, or things that can't be gamed you could design an AI to analyze crime impact.
This AI would use police reports, social media, and all data sources you provide it to evaluate the impact of each member according to an agreed upon set of ideals, that only the Chaptermaster leadership could vote on. New members could download an app and note their actions and gain social credit which could help them advance in the organization.
You'd still need people for the more sensitive information and power, because AI algorithms can be gamed, but this would allow you to make the lower levels more anonymous and accountable.
[Answer]
The sociology of this is difficult, and may not be entirely compatible with human nature. However, this being fiction, we can downplay enough of the stumbling blocks that it might work if the formula were just so.
Our system needs decentralization as you've hinted, but this pretty much rules out "voting on new recruits". That just won't work, the cliques and bureaucracy that develop will eventually make that a popularity contest.
Furthermore, we need that decentralization to avoid the worst sorts of corruptions. If this becomes the NYPD with 50,000 members strong, all belonging to a robust, self-serving organization, how long can it be before they're just in it for themselves?
We're going to go with a terrorist-network-like cell organization system. You never know the names of more than a few others, you can't rat out anyone else. Furthermore, it always feels *small* to you, the new recruit (or seasoned veteran). No one has your back. No one will show up and corroborate your story. The maximum cell size will be 3. As attrition wipes away various members, you will have no back-chain with which to send messages to other cells, either.
Some knight (A) recruits two more members (B and C). This knight's original recruiter may or may not still live. If in some vigilante action, both B and C are killed, A just starts over. For that matter, if any event leads to just one surviving knight, he recruits two more (not simultaneously, training up one, then another months/years later).
But if two survive, they part ways and start new cells somewhere else, never making contact again.
There is no authority, other than a small set of rules that they transmit to each other when recruiting/training. Anyone captured/tortured can't snitch but on a few others, within their own cell. Of course, if all they have is their name and ideals, and don't go tattooing themselves up with logos or wearing sacred robes or other silly stuff, anyone who captures them might not even know that they belong to the Knights of Nee(dful Vigilanteeism). In many cases, authorities might not even ask captured knights the right questions.
This should cause growth to be slow, such that new cells are uncommon, it might take years before circumstances cause new cells to be created. Almost (but not quite) balanced out by the destruction of entire cells (all 3 wiped out).
This system or one close to it has the greatest chance of giving you results similar to those you desire, though it doesn't conform to your proposed rules & system. So we're ditching:
* Voting on new applicants
* Performance reviews
The voting wouldn't serve to help get good recruits. It just spreads around blame if things go bad. Not every new recruit will be good, part of figuring out whether an individual will be a good candidate for any job means evaluating them as they do the job, something that's just not possible before they do it. And performance reviews are really about keeping people in line with a sort of secret police (we all know how well that works in the real world with IA and cops!). Instead, we've replaced this with a small core of people who can exert peer pressure meaningfully (the other two members of the cell).
What we do get out of this is:
* Resistance to centralization
* Anonymity
* Reprimands from others when needed
* Limited growth
* Even geographic distribution
What we only get some of:
* Resistance to tenet mutation
This one's tough. Some recruits will have their recruiter (A) killed early, perhaps before they were taught everything. Now they have to strike out for a new city and recruit their own cells. Others will suffer setbacks and defeats that compel them to change their ideals, and perhaps even found new cells with those modified. However, if we look at other human institutions, the rate of change for these things can be slow, with many other groups maintaining various dogmas and such for centuries at a time with very little change.
[Answer]
**A minor frame challenge to start with:**
>
> have access to tools and information not available to the public
>
>
> allow anyone to join
>
>
> (should not) change their core ideals
>
>
>
These goals are incompatible. The first two criteria alone make it difficult because you either have a public platform where anyone can pretty much gain access or you have a private platform where there is some significant barrier between the in group and everyone else. So you pretty much need to drop or otherwise scale back your expectations on one of these two requirements.
The reason I include the third criterium is because resolving the first two means requiring some method for members to select who has the merit to become members. Once you let an organization self-select who has access, membership becomes more about politics than merit. So, undesirables (pick your prejudice) will naturally be selected against the longer the organization exists leading to extremism. So, instead of maintaining it's heroic core ideals, these ideals will be radicalized until they become villainous. Keep in mind that many villains (Lex Luthar, Magneto, Thanos, etc.) actually have heroic core values, but they are cranked up so high that it leads them to do terrible things. Let's say for example a couple of founding members do not like aliens. They may be moderate enough to let in "good aliens" at first, but they are more likely to select candidates that are also anti-alien, and be more strict in voting out those aliens that do get in. Over time, the population of the vigilante groups will continue to self select for more and more anti-alien members until eventually, just being an alien-rights sympathizer will be grounds for exclusion. The end result is a culture where eventually Superman could never become a member no matter how heroic he is, and guys like Lex Luthor can climb the ranks in spite of his many infractions, purely because of how popular his anti-alien stance makes him.
Since both of these issues revolve around "not available to the public", the best solution will be to ignore/minimize this requirement so that the other 2 can be maintained. While "allow anyone to join" and "should not change their core ideals" also seems contradictory, there are actually good real world solutions to this problem.
So, I think the best compromise here is to make the platform publicly accessible, but not have users include any PII in thier user profiles. So, superheros can learn all about the best places to buy crime fighting gear, discuss how to avoid conflicts with law enforcement, and debate the ethical ramifications of any given action etc, all in a more or less publicly accessible fashion, but without revealing anyone's secrete identity which is really the whole point about caring about if it is public or private.
## The Solution: vigilante.stackexchange.com
This exact forum we are using is designed for pretty much what you are talking about. It has core rules set forth in the beginning, but ultimately it uses voting and gamification to accredit reputable persons who then have the most power to moderate actions and in a more abstract since, simply speak with more authority because thier reputation score is so high. Those who participate long enough to gain a high reputation will generally be indoctrinated enough in the culture by the time they get there to be mostly compelled to upkeep the culture.
So Mothman (rep.173) might write the question about something like, "If a bad guy captures my sidekick, how many innocent strangers have to be in danger before I should focus on saving the innocent people over my sidekick?"
High reputation users like Batman(rep.71,462) and Superman(rep.44,121) who've been on the stack since the beginning would have options to moderate the post above and beyond what new comers would have, but they would not have unlimited power to just close the post unless some concensious of users is reached. So, Superman might knee jerk VtC the post because he finds the very idea of the question offensive to his own personal beliefs, but as long as it is on topic, most heroes will not VtC it; so, Superman's personal beliefs can not just over-ride those of the community, no matter how much reputation he has. This helps ensure that being a founding member grants enough authority to guide the tradition of the stack exchange but not enough to become a centralized power unto himself.
The reason no government or criminal can just come in usurp the stack is because the only way to rise in reputation is to post in ways that most active users agree with. Sure TheJoker (rep.1) can join, but he's not going to actually gain access to any meaningful tools in the SE unless he is actually posting things that reinforce the culture of the stack and prove to be useful to the other vigilantes who are looking for guidance... so even if he does eventually become a 10,000+ rep user, it's because he's actually spent months/years cementing the values of the stack and training up a better next generation of heroes. So, any little bit of harm he might be able to do along the way will likely come at the cost doing a lot to help the heroic community... and if it ever becomes apparent at any stage that he is using his account(s) to manipulate things in unapproved ways, there is always the elected moderator ban. This is of course a pretty rare and serious course of action when taken against established used (no wants to see the re-instate Joker tag start going around) but it happens all the time when with low rep junk accounts.
[Answer]
**There will be an app for that**
If this organization operates in a modern society, modern software can take care of its needs, similarly to how software takes care of other decentralized networks.
While the organization itself is decentralized, the app must be hosted in a trusted source, and only a limited group of trusted developers can authorize any changes to it.
Once an aspiring member of the organization downloads the app, he or she creates personal profile and applies for full membership. Membership application is reviewed be automated algorithms, and a set of interviewers is selected. If the new member passes interviews, a whole set of new functionality is open in the app. Keep in mind that this is not in-the-app information filter within the application, but encryption/decryption keys maintained by the network. Thus, it is not possible to hack an individual app to gain access to restricted information, this access would be granted only to the confirmed members.
Full member can have access to the society's private information and would be required to participate in its business - particularly having a duty to evaluate other member's actions and deciding if they have to be disciplined.
There may be several "tiers" of membership with expanding access to the information. At the lowers tier, members have access only to "public internal" information, while at the highest there will be access to very sensitive operative information.
Government agencies can infiltrate this network, but it would be virtually impossible to bring it down.
[Answer]
**The Knights belong to a religion.**
Lots of people belong to this religion. It is a popular one because the ideals set forth in the holy texts are appealing and societally acceptable. These texts are old and widely distributed and read and so not amenable to edits added by governments or interested persons.
Persons who wish to engage in knightly activities can do so, as little or as often as they see fit. They can be great deeds or they might just be small activities. Those are good too. There can be all kinds of knights.
Public persons, knights or otherwise, who claim to be adherents to this religion and who do public deeds that are contrary to the ideals of this widely followed religion should be called out by fellow adherents, knights or otherwise. They should be called out! Call them out!
Persons can be anonymous in their knightly and idealistic actions. The Knights do as they do because they believe in their ideals, not because they are trying to impress anyone or gain status.
Do the Knights have secret knowledge? I think a Knight will tell you that they do, but that you are invited to share it.
But as for your bullet points: there are no performance reviews, no admission list, no rankings, no interviews. Those fly counter to the core principles of honesty and privacy.
[Answer]
**Self governing cells**
Interestingly, we can look at groups who try to do this already. Many criminal or terrorist organisations work decentralised, while still communicating with each other.
*communication*
First you need communication. Like another answer, an app or whole telecom system can be developed for secure communication. We even have that now. In many countries the emergency services are on their own network to prevent interference and prying eyes. But criminals certainly do so as well. They use special phones that should be secure (although some are produced by the government to gather information on criminals. No joke.). This way, information can be shared to critical parts of the organisation in a secure manner.
The act of sharing this information can be done anonymously, though sharing of information can of course lead to identification. In addition, the identity of knights is always known at some level, as people are selected and trained. Yet this can represent the most anonymous network to spread globally, allowing one person to never know most of the knights in the world.
Each communication device/setup acts as their own server. This limits the amount of (encrypted) information one can have, while always available for others. It also makes it necessary to share information and stay connected for better information analysis.
*cells*
Second is to make cells that run themselves. One or a few knights go to an area to patrol, make decisions and share information if needed. To aid their effectiveness, it is recommended to gather 'squires' to help them. These don't have (direct) access to information, but are vital to gather further information or to have a larger force. From this pool of squires you can elevate some to Knight if they perform well. Possibly squires are only taken when they show great promise to uphold the Knight code.
The cells do not directly interfere with each other. They can collaborate, share information and draw strategies, but none can command another.
They can still hold each other accountable, but that is something different. This is important. As with anything, rules can be applied in different ways to uphold the same ideals. That means different choices *can* be made, fully autonomously. They don't do so without fear of consequence, knowing that their actions can be judged.
One problem stems from this. To be reprimanded, they cannot be anonymous. Again, it is likely most wise that knights do know each other in the vicinity thanks to physical meets of special digital ones, but are otherwise untraceable. Second, a report us expected of the activities of the knights. This way they can act publicly against the code to uphold their cover for a greater good, but aren't directly reprimanded or acted upon unawares that they are knights.
*TLDR*
The knoghts will be autonomous cells of one or a few all over the world. They have their own secure communication and training. Each Knight is capable of acting differently publicly to hide their affiliation. Each Knight must still be known to cells operating in the vicinity for report, accountability and making sure the Knight's code doesn't change. They are then further anonymous. This way a leak of Knight turned bad can be held accountable and be caught, is unlikely to convince many neighbours at once, cannot kill the whole organisation and can still operate mostly free to the core ideals. Information is still shared to the network, but if required can become more anonymous the further it gets.
[Answer]
I think I "answered" or addressed all your main points. I was pretty happy with it, first post and all. Then I found the mistake. In the post I use higher and lower committees, much like cells as someone brought up. But I mixed it up with a more ranked structure. I should have used terms like central hub, inner or closer committee, and outer or further circle. Also circle of knights reminds me of the round table. Committee = circle in this context.
Anonymous: This may get a bit technical so please bear with me.
One could use what's called a one-time pad (OTP), described here <https://www.wikiwand.com/en/One-time_pad>, it is unbreakable. The only issue every needs the same code and random number generation is hard for computers. But atmospheric static has been used for that, so you can have a pc connected through deep/dark web sending info. Not a lot of hardware, near absolute secrecy. Let's call these stations for the post.
Crypto: I don't think it would work to well as a main currency because it is just too volatile, but it would give the knights a way to move money that would otherwise be tracked. As long as they set-up their of 'banks' or had traveling moneyers. If they had these stations all across the world, they could all agree that one crypto-ducat is one dollar (or whatever). A traveling knight could have thousands on a flash drive or just wire it to a station. It also works for charity because every money exchange skims some, just to make a living, and others are corrupt that will take whatever they can get away with. This way they'll always have local money for their local projects. Tech can be good or bad, it's just who's using it.
Organizational Structure: My advice to stop any one individual or group from taking control would be committees.
Think the round table it the knights elected Arthur as a knight commander, or perhaps no commander at all, just the majority. Then layer over and over as the group grows. Keeping the knight motif, you could start with a small cell (If want some historical inspiration all knights worked more as a sergeant with a squad), then they grow into chapters, commanderies, orders, etc.
You can have some sort of round table at the top. Then each level sends a trusted knight to the higher level and vice versa. They report activities, threats, etc. Organization stuff. And they collect the codes. Then any issues the knight sent to the lower levels finds can be found and reported.
A good equilibrium would be to have each committee have a liaison to the lowest to the highest committees to bring messages, reports, vote if a top member died. But having them solve local/regional/etc. problems on their own with the round table giving support and punishment as needed.
You can also have senior members be able to go anywhere unrecognized with a liaison, that gives them freedom to move around. So that Luis and his team still get to do stuff.
Recruitment: You can look to history. A knight had pages, squires, and men-at-arms.
Children - They generally look up to their authority figure. Introducing them to the knight's ideas would impact them even when they aren't good. Many gangs and mafias convince good kids to do bad things. But the reverse is true, and you can get the interested ones to train as squires when they are old enough. Plus, I isn't just knight's families. Orphanages are charities, the knights do charity. Honestly, I think a lot might want to join without any indoctrination or teaching. They'll just want to be like their heroes.
Squires - Just teaching those who are ready under a knight.
Men-at-Arms - Another good place to look are veteran groups. There are plenty of veteran charities, and I mean veterans doing charity such as building things. From what I understand they miss the camaraderie of their unit, but don't want to or can't fight in battle between nations. They want to help instead. Your knights could have already done charity with them before. They have expertise and knowledge the public don't have. Plus contacts. Want some space age tech? He knows a guy. Luis can't figure out the complexities of the computer system? She was an intelligence analyst, piece of cake.
See if there interested and have them work with a knight.
Secret Societies/Order - Most of these do charity work so it would make sense for the knights to be involved to some degree. This will give your everyday, regular civilian a chance become a squire if he does something to impress him or just likes him. He/She could be anyone you need for the story.
Application: While it depends on the number of layers and stations you have, I think the basic framework could be rather simple.
Someone, let's say Jim, impresses or is assigned a knight to train him. He learns combat, first aid, the tenets. Then he is ready. They do a background check. Then they vote him in, or vote to see him and let him make his case or whatever. After, he is Sir Jim of the (whatever you named that committee)
? Maybe a junior knight to teach him the secret stuff and give experience.
You said you wanted a worldwide group and geographically evenly distributed so perhaps making him a journeyman who goes where he is need might a good idea, could include family drama or financial drama depending on the pay. (And interest of the Author).
Some Ideas: To remain both secret and fair, Sir Jim should be able to contact his liaison, not just committee, and the committee above through liaisons so he can report... indiscretions, but they remain hidden, except the liaisons. At least until he becomes a senior knight or something to that effect. Until then, he can know the other knights in his committee, past committees, or just one's he's met before.
If everyone is equal it is still a secret organization so clearance levels might be in order. Maybe junior knight is just what they call a new knight. Maybe the 'head' committee will send a mysterious black knight no one knows who's Luis himself.
[Answer]
It sounds like your describing the Knights Templar.
Supposedly started by as few as three knights signing a compact with one another, the Latin Rule.
They started out with the purpose of protecting travelers from Europe into Jerusalem. This was a vigilante action, often against bandits, and also very often against robber-barons, literally minor nobility that would send their men to inspect travelers’ goods and take all of the interesting things.
Anyone, nobleman or not, who was willing to sign on to the Latin Rule’s code of conduct could join the organization.
<http://www.templiers.org/regle1-eng.php>
The organization used space loaned to them by churches or royalty as their bases of operation. This shortage of their own possessions was used by the French King to round them up. However, because of their relationship with many monarchs and churches, they had broader access to technology, methods, and information than most. They had a hierarchy of Masters and Grandmasters, but it’s unclear how centralized that was.
Checklist:
* Met - Allow anyone to join (as long as the new member is capable and willing to maintain the Knights' ideals)
* Met - Be able to reprimand a member who is not acting ethically
\*\* Each group, initially, only had a single rank above “brother”, the Master. The Master could reprimand.
* Met - Be anonymous
\*\* The order did not check identities. They actively recruited among the excommunicated, criminal, and knights dispossessed for whatever reason- all people who preferred to live under adopted identities
* Met - Have access to tools and information not available to the public
\*\* Because they took up rooms with monks, the church, or really anyone that would give them room, the order had better access to technology, methods, and information than most
* Met - Allow members to share information with each other
The Knights should not be able to:
* Met- be taken over by centralized organizations (governments, terrorist groups, etc.)
\*\* Although a GrandMaster rank appeared later, the basic loose organization of the order remained in place until the Knights’ destruction.
* Met - become centralized
* Met - change their core ideals
\*\* The Knights took on additional missions, but remained true to their core mission of providing safe passage for travelers for the entire 125 years of their existence, losing a considerable chunk of their manpower in the defense of Jerusalem from Saladin (see the Battle of Hattin)
\*\* Some of the additional missions that the Knights took on (the invention of modern-style banking) was a natural growth from their core mission. Example: by allowing a traveler to deposit coin in exchange for a paper certificate of deposit, the traveler is now carrying anything but worthless paper for the robber-barons, or at least easily concealed. Once at his or her destination, the traveler can exchange the certificate of deposit and some proof of identity (usually letters of introduction) for their deposited treasure
* Met be able to perform public actions against their ideals without being reprimanded
\*\* The Knights were subject to the whims of local rulers - they followed the battle plan of the King of Jerusalem against their own military advice. They were subject to criticism from the church who housed them and comforted them
[Answer]
This is not a complete answer, but something to consider.
In software development there is a term "Conway's Law":
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> Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure. — Melvin E. Conway
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For example:
If you have two teams who don't trust each other, but each are working on modules which need to interoperate, you will find each side will write a lot of 'guard code' inspecting each message send and rejecting it if they don't think it is valid. Or if there is a small a group from each team who meet to sort out a design together, then you will find there that the codebase will end up a with a common project with interface definitions and common types.
Likewise how is your organization going to have its structure evolve to resemble the flow of 'influence'`*` in the organization?
**Where does the money come from?
Where does it go?**
*Are the knights rich enough to be vigilantes and doing charitable work on their own coin or are they funded by the org?*
If they are rich, then there needs something which binds them 'To the cause'. Is it secrets [Read: dirt the have on each other]. Or do they have a way of trading favors? Or can they be shunned (from vanilla business dealings) if they 'Break the code'?
If they are not independently wealthy then what form of decentralized funding (or distributing the initial cash injection) do you have?
---
`*` Influence, Money, Power at a high level are all interchangeable commodities.
[Answer]
This can very well work with systems already thought of in crypto.
The hard thing is the bridge between on chain info and off chain; oracles. Once oracles translate vigilante actions into on chain data you can use a variety of smart contracts to reward, reprimande and/or level up your vigilantes.
Besides oracles you can use other mechanics like voting. One type of oracle could just be vigilantes with good rep. To reach a certain level or rank you would need the endorsement of high standing members.
To completely prevent any risk of being taken over or corrupted is near impossible, it might be interesting to think of ways to recover from such a scenario.
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Would it be possible for life to develop on a planet with a highly elliptical orbit? (Similar to a comet, but possibly less extreme.) If so, what conditions would be necessary and what would the life look like?
Of course, a highly eccentric orbit would require the planet to go well outside of its habitable zone for extended periods of time, so any life forms would have to be able to survive a "deep freeze" or super hibernative state (bees, for example, can be frozen and will "wake up" again when thawed).
[Answer]
On such a planet life would probably evolve in different ways than on our planet, and complex life could be different from what we consider as "plants" and "animals". There would be a huge evolutionary pressure for a much more efficient hibernation than we have in real life, or if the conditions are even more extreme, then life could thrive while in the habitable zone, after that everything dies off and leaves spores behind, which then start everything anew in the next cycle.
Certain spores even here on Earth can survive for years even in vacuum. If life on a whole planet was forced by the circumstances, they might even get better at it.
For multicellular life, the star can be huge and hot, so the planet orbits farther away, therefore much slower. A full revolution could last dozens (or hundreds) of Earth-years, out of which several Earth-years are spent in the habitable zone. Enough time for the spores to hatch, thrive, then when the cold season approaches, they will die off leaving their spores for the next generation behind.
Eucalyptus trees integrated forest fires into their natural lifecycle.
Life will find a way.
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I think that because of how orbital mechanis work, a planet with an aphelion inside the habitable zone and a perihelion too close to the sun would be better for life. A planet spends a lot more time near its aphelion than near its perihelion. Thus this planet would have moderate weather most of time and scorching weather during a short "season", instead of a short moderate season and a long freezing period.
The scorching season will will probably lead to extreme cloud formation due to the higher temperatures. This means that albedo of the planet would rise, moderating the temperature increase. However, water vapor is also a potent greenhouse gas, in fact the most important one on Earth, so this will probably increase the planets temperature as well. Ultimately this will push the onset of the for every habitable planet inevitable runaway greenhouse effect to an earlier date. Still, don't expect a season of a giant, burning sun, but rather a global monsoon season.
EDIT1: **How will this impact life and evolution in general?** I'm not even sure how this would impact the weather exactly. At least not beyond the fact that the evaporating water would create a monsoon season. Stronger erosion and thus more nutriants, minerals and salt in the oceans and that local life will somehow use this hot season are the only other general conditions I'd be willing to predict. Weather is a chaotic system, which is extremely hard to predict precisely. Unless I use an example with an number of set parameters, everything is possible. Relevant parameters would be the eccentricity, semi major axis, stellar spectral class, how much surface water there is, how much the temperature will vary, axial tilt (Regular seasons will still mess with the climate and [Milankovitch Cycles](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles) might be truely nasty on such a planet.), daylength, tidal locking (which spin/orbit resonance, as 1:1 is rather unlikely for such an eccentric planet) and a number of other factors a more educated person than me would come up with.
Life would either use the monsoon as the watering and growing season, if it is moderate, or would have to develope seeds and roots, which can survive what is basically a steam cooker. A desert world like Mars would experice this very differently than a water world and a continental world like Earth would experience something different again. The water would moderate or worsen the temperature swings, depending on the dominant feedback loop. This is the cloud formation increases albedo vs the greenhouse effect story again. If the world in question orbits a red dwarf a lot depends on wether is is a 3:2, 2:1, or 5:2 spin–orbit resonance. It is a common misconception that a tidally locked world always faces the parent body with the same side, aka. is in a 1:1 spin-orbit resonance. If the eccentricity is appreciatably bigger than 0, which it would be in this case, one would have increasingly weirder resonances. Additionally in these cases the monsoon season would be more of a weekly phenomena instead of a yearly one. This would influence the answer to you question a lot.
I believe you see what I'm getting at. One could spend an entire scientific carrier exploring the climate of eccentric exoplanets and its effects on evolution without even scratching the surface of a fraction of the possibilies. **If you want, you can give me some parameters and I'd hazard a guess on what kind of critters might populate such a world.**
For your own exploration of such a biosphere I'd recommend [this video series](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6xPxnYMQpquNuaEffJzjGjMsr6VktCYl) on crafting fictional alien biosphere.
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**Some types of life would be possible.**
Considered a highly elliptical orbit where the closest approach is inside the habitable zone, this planet will then spend nearly all of the time outside the habitable zone and warm up only for brief periods.
Now add geothermal springs that maintain life-friendly temperatures year round. Plant life that becomes dormant for the extended periods of little sunlight might be possible. Life similar to our ocean thermal vent bacteria (and related food chain) would be possible.
Temperature at sufficient depth would stay the same warm temperature year-round. Earth has such a ecosystem too.
Complex eco-systems are unlikely.
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It would be possible for life to exist on a planet in a highly elliptical orbit. If the planet was of sufficient mass and had a sufficiently massive heat generating core like the Earth then liquid water could remain a liquid deep under a frozen ocean for thousands of years and life could evolve and live near to oceanic vents.
So a very eccentric orbit would allow deep sea life to evolve without a problem. The lower the degree of eccentricity the greater the chances of life spreading throughout the oceans protected by a variable thickness ice sheet.
If an even less eccentric orbit was allowed then the ice might melt in the equatorial regions during summer and allow life to spread onto land. Plant life that briefly flowered, seeded and then died would be viable as would amphibians that returned to the ocean for winter.
Having land animals survive would be more difficult, but should be possible even with a considerable eccentricity. A planet moving between Mars orbit at aphelion and Venus orbit at perihelion should be able to allow land animals to develop as the oceans and atmosphere would act as immense dampers preventing the worst excess of heat and cold.
It is entirely plausible that land animals could hibernate for longer periods than is seen on Earth with sufficient evolutionary pressure such as an eccentric orbit might provide.
You might be interested in the [Heliconia series of books](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helliconia%20Helliconia) which deal with a similar situation although in this case the planet is found in a binary system and takes many hundreds of years to orbit the primary star.
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An eliptical orbit is a very highly eccentric orbit. A planet in such like orbit sometimes stay very near to its parent star, and sometimes very far. Possibility of existing life or supporting life is very hard in such condition.
Before, scientists assumed that the more elliptical a planet’s orbit is, the higher the planet’s average temperature will be since it’s getting with a lot more energy during its closer flybys. But in a study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, a team of researchers from the Planetary Habitability Laboratory and the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico found that this is not always the case — those planets may actually exhibit cooler surface temperatures more amenable to habitability.
A star’s habitable zone is where temperatures and conditions are thought to be most opportune to support liquid surface water, necessary for life to evolve. Planet’s with elliptical orbits are sometimes thought to move in and out of this zone — too inconsistent to support stable conditions for life. The new results suggest it’s possible they may possess the right temperatures to support water and even life.
“Since many planets are in an elliptical orbit, it would be applicable to many objects,” Abel Méndez, a Planetary Astrobiologist at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo and lead author of the study, tells Inverse. He and his research team created climate simulations of Earth-like planets that have elliptical orbits, which hinted at the cooling effect.
“I had a hard time believing it myself,” Méndez says. “We found ways to evaluate that in the solar system, especially for Mars, and also we started to see a similar trend in the climate simulation of planets.”
According to Edgard Rivera-Valentín, a planetary scientist at the Arecibo Observatory and co-author of the study, if scientists followed previous models, Mars, which has an eccentric orbit, should have an equilibrium temperature of about -43 degrees Celsius. In reality, it’s -63 degrees, closer to the model his team came up with. This is colder than scientists previously would’ve expected.
Earth also has an elliptical orbit, but its orbit is nearly circular, and this cooling effect doesn’t really affect planets with nearly circular orbits. In the future, the research team plans to work on a paper focusing specifically on planets in habitable zones. And who knows — planets like the ones orbiting red-dwarf star Wolf 1061 or even exomoons around Jupiter-like planets might actually be ideal places for aliens to evolve.
“The outcome would be to understand the climate of many planets, not just those that are habitable, and also evaluate whether some are habitable and some are not,” Méndez says.
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> Abstract: There exists a positive correlation between orbital eccentricity and the average stellar flux that planets receive from their parent star. Often, though, it is assumed that the average equilibrium temperature would correspondingly increase with eccentricity. Here we test this assumption by calculating and comparing analytic solutions for both the spatial and temporal averages of orbital distance, stellar flux, and equilibrium temperature. Our solutions show that the average equilibrium temperature of a planet, with a constant albedo, slowly decreases with eccentricity until converging to a value 90% that of a circular orbit. This might be the case for many types of planets (e.g., hot-jupiters); however, the actual equilibrium and surface temperature of planets also depend on orbital variations of albedo and greenhouse. Our results also have implications in understanding the climate, habitability and the occurrence of potential Earth-like planets. For instance, it helps explain why the limits of the habitable zone for planets in highly elliptical orbits are wider than expected from the mean flux approximation, as shown by climate models.
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[Answer]
Life as we know it is possible in a quite narrow range of parameters, which can be basically limited to those allowing for liquid water to exist.
As such, as long the orbit swipes within the boundaries of the so called habitable zone, defined as the range of distances from the main star where liquid water can exist, the planet could host life.
Too close to the star and the planet would be a sauna, too far and it would be a freezer.
[Answer]
The answer to this question lies in chemistry and energy.
An orbit can be highly elliptical and still remain (mostly) within the habitable zone - In our own solar system the habitable zone extends from near the edge of Venus' orbit out to the inner edge of Mars' orbit. If the nature (mass, atmospheric composition, geological processes, magnetosphere etc) of Venus or Mars were more compatible with the energy they receive from the Sun for their orbit, they may actually have been habitable still.
Parameters that could impact habitability of a planet in a highly elliptical orbit:
* Tidal forces
+ Does the planet have moon/s that generate energy as heat within the
planets core? Is the planet a moon of a larger planet generating heat
from interactions with that planet, and (potentially) benefiting from
the protection of that planets magnetosphere?
* 'Protective' influence of parent/ satellite bodies as orbit nears the sun
+ (frequency in which the planet as a satellite is in shadow during orbit around
parent planet) or (frequency of eclipses/ number of satellites if the
planet is the parent body).
* Chemical composition of the planet. Does the planet have an abundance of gasses that provide greenhouse effects - (heating or cooling). Are some of these compounds involved in a self regulating cycle - (chemical compounds that evaporate as the planet heats up near the sun, providing a temporary cooling effect, then precipitate once the planet moves far enough away from the sun).
* The impact of the life cycle itself on habitability. When conditions on the planet are most favorable for life, what effect does the bloom of life have on the planet? (In terms of Earth-like life, more plant life = more carbon. More trees = more oxygen, more animal life = more methane)
* The type of star the planet orbits.
Stellar class impacts energy output in a multitude of ways - Heat - Radiation - Magnetic activity.
[Answer]
Here on Earth we have the [wood frog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_frog), an amphibian that has evolved to be able to survive an Arctic winter, frozen into immobility and complete or almost-complete metabolic stasis.
As for how life gets started on such a world: unless it has a completely alien biochemistry, it needs a place where liquid water exists for a very long time. That somewhere might be deep underneath an ice sheet, where geothermal heating and concentration of minerals preserves water in the liquid phase under a deep ice sheet. We speculate that life might have evolved on Europa in exactly this situation. It then radiates out, gradually evolving an ever more freeze-tolerant chemistry, until eventually it is able to completely suppress the formation of lethal ice crystals. At this point the stage is set for complex life outside of its initial warm niche, that reaps the reward of abundant solar energy when the planet is close to the star, and then "hibernates" for the long period when the planet is distant from its star. (Actually, not hibernate. Freezes into a glassy state courtesy of cryoprotectants in its tissues)
The wood frog has gone part way down this postulated evolutionary route. It has not been driven any further because Arctic winters do not get cold enough for long enough to drive such evolution to its end point. So, of course, have all cold-climate trees and evergreens.
Elsewhere I've read speculation that cosmic and ambient radiation would be the limitation on human beings in suspended animation. Lacking any ability to self-repair while suspended, radiation damage would accumulate, and be experienced as if caused by an intense flash of radiation at the time of re-animation. 100 years worth is survivable (the radiation dose would make one feel quite ill). 1000 years worth is a "certain death" dose. So with any orbital period longer than 100 years, life will have to have specially dealt with this added problem.
Do read Vinge's *a Deepness in the Sky* but be aware that the thaw-freeze cycle is not caused by an eliptical orbit, and the evolution or even the biochemistry of the inhabitants of this planet may not be entirely natural. (*a Fire upon the Deep* contains some hints).
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You can make the orbit extended how much you want, given the star's heat would be mostly constant on the surface. I came up with two ideas:
1. Give the star its hot-cold intervals that would perfectly synchronise with the planet's movement. The star would go colder when the planet is near and hotter while the planet would move away. It's silly how improbable that would be, but you can always lean on the anthropic principle.
2. Give the planet rotation of day=year so that the habitable half would be hidden from heat while near the sun and it would face the sun while away.
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If the planet is small enough or rotates slowly enough, migration could be a viable strategy. Life would prefer to stay on the sunny side while distant from the sun, but would hide on the shadowed side during the short time of nearest approach. Plants might adapt by spreading faster, through radical asexual seeding or rapid spreading through root sprouting, especially if the dormant roots can survive temperature extremes by living (at least in part) deep underground. (Plus you might get some mileage off the ominous and vaguely familiar warning "Summer is coming.")
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A planet with a thick, dense atmosphere orbiting a dwarf star with a very near habitable zone might go past its orbital extremes so quickly that its temperature would never have time enough to stray too far from the average. For example, the orbital periods of TRAPPIST-1'S planets range from only 1.5 days to 18.8 days. If this is "too easy," you could suppose planets that have somewhat longer orbits and range just far enough to get interesting temperature excursions.
TRAPPIST's planets are close enough together to affect each other's orbits, so there might not be very many stable configurations of multiple planets with highly eccentric orbits possible.
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How "highly elliptical" do you want it? Venus is a hundred million km, Mars 220. That should be no problem.
But you want a bit more, I guess.
If you let "winter" (short days/long nights) in the north (or south) coincide with the aphel of the orbit, you could keep that one hemisphere somewhat temperate. The other one would then swing between the extremes, of course.
Another option would be to have a dense could cover during aphel, and a much lower albedo around the perihel. How that would keep stable during a whole evolution taking at least two billion years, I don´t know;).
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[Question]
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I am working on a story and I would like to know if it's possible to detect or recognize mammals, fishes or any other sea creatures that swims in an ocean from an aircraft with our current technology with installed instruments withing an aircraft and not using instruments or sonar that actually enter the water or float on the surface of the water. Aircraft usually flies below Low-level clouds which lie below 6,500 feet (2,000 meters) and used to spot creatures like a group of jelly fish to huge whales. but creatures are mostly huge. and they have far better technology for better resolution.
1. Is that possible with our current technology?
2. If it is only possible in the future, how will it work? I need to know the mechanism or the future tech they could use to detect it.
Please talk about its limits on detectability like the depth of visibility and rough sea/smooth sea etc.
In my other, [similar](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/114613/is-it-possible-to-detect-submarines-in-a-sea-from-an-aircraft-if-possible-how-w), question I got answers to detect a submarine. In this one I need answers to detect living creatures.
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It is already possible, with some limitations.
Currently [drones](http://www.petethomasoutdoors.com/2013/03/researchers-deploy-drones-to-spy-on-sperm-whales.html) are used to research sperm whales,
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> airplane research is costly, invasive and impractical. Large planes cannot be flown closely to the mammals without altering their behavior.
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> Much smaller, quieter drones, on the other hand, are inexpensive and can be flown almost directly overhead.
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[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6dtJl.jpg)
Also [sharks](http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=95656&tid=4142&cid=4530) are observed from the air
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LmJv9.jpg)
So, as long as your creature, or your pack of creatures, is big enough and you are not flying too high on the sea level, you can observe it from the air.
Of course you need to have a calm surface and decently clear water to be able to peek below the surface.
If you want to be able to spot a blue whale (30 meters long) from 2000 m height on calm and clean water, your optical system needs to be able to resolve $2 \arctan(15/2000) = 0.46^\circ$.
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**LIDAR is being used to observe lots of different ocean animals from the air.**
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidar>
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> Lidar (also called LIDAR, LiDAR, and LADAR) is a surveying method that
> measures distance to a target by illuminating the target with pulsed
> laser light and measuring the reflected pulses with a sensor.
> Differences in laser return times and wavelengths can then be used to
> make digital 3-D representations of the target.
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This group is looking at commercially important fish and plankton schools.
<https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/csd/groups/csd3/instruments/floe/measurements.html>
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> Because of the limited penetration depth, LIDAR is most effective when
> surveying fish that live near the surface. Those that have been
> successfully surveyed include menhaden , sardines , mackerel, salmon ,
> mullet , capelin , anchovies , herring , squid, and jellyfish. The
> agreement between lidar results and more traditional echosounder
> results is good if both instruments cover the same area at the same
> time, and gets progressively worse is several days elapse. To get this
> agreement, the lidar data must be thresholded in some fashion to
> remove the return from background scattering levels.
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> For survey purposes, we would like to convert the lidar signal into a
> depth profile of the biomass density for each species. This means that
> we need to know the reflectivity of each target species and we need to
> be able to identify the species responsible for our signals. At this
> time, laser reflectivity measurements have been made on three species
> of live fish: sardines mackerel and menhaden
>
>
>
<https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2017.00366/full>
>
> Image scale is established via an independently powered LIDAR/GPS
> data-logging system recording altitude and GPS location at 1 Hz.
> Photogrammetric calibration of the camera and lens allowed distortion
> parameters to be rigorously accounted for during image analysis, via a
> custom-programmed Graphical User Interface (GUI) running in MATLAB.
> The datalogger, camera calibration methods and measurement software
> are adaptable to a wide range of UAV platforms. Mean LIDAR accuracy,
> measured from 10 bridges 9–39 m above water, was 99.9%. We conducted
> 136 flights in New Zealand's subantarctic Auckland Islands to measure
> southern right whales. Mean lengths of 10 individual whales, each
> photographed between 7 and 15 times, had CVs (SD/mean) ranging from
> 0.5 to 1.8% (mean = 1.2%). Repeated measurements of a floating reference target showed a mean error of c.1%. Our system is relatively
> inexpensive, easily put together, produces accurate, repeatable
> measurements from single vertical images, and hence is applicable to a
> wide range of ecological questions in marine and terrestrial habitats.
>
>
>
The LIDAR of an image will not look like a whale to a person. You have to know how the whale (or squid, or plankton school, or fish) looks with LIDAR and so you need to establish an image base, which is what the first group is doing with fish.
LIDAR can be used at night or from an altitude high enough that sentient animals are not aware of you.
In the linked articles there is mention of infrared images but I was not clear if they are using infrared LIDAR or if this is an adjunct imaging modality.
[Answer]
Since nobody has posted this before:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Vh2mP.jpg)
Source: <http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=4903>
Source credits NOAA for the diagram. Some quick research will show mostly the same results from other sources... I am including this diagram for its completude and simplicity.
Other wavelengths are not helpful either. Radar and microwave will perform even worse. You will probably need gamma rays to penetrate further than 200 meters, but I don't know if it would even be possible to have a reasonable resolution with that (and I think you want the animals to stay healthy after being detected).
Therefore, if you wish to detect animals by **looking at them**, you will only skim the surface. Given that many of them buggers have evolved some sort of camouflage on their backs (i.e.: orcas, great white sharks), you are in even deeper trouble.
You are limited to visual contact if you wish to detect individual animals. If you drop that requirement - that is, if you want to know whether there is life or not, you can go through a different route. Spectography will show you where there is chlorophile and other substances on the surface. Look for the organic ones, they are telltale signs of life.
Finally, you can also spot algal blooms and krill clouds from very far (even from space, if you wish to add satellite imagery as a backup), visually or spectographically. Stalk over those areas and you will be more likely to spot beasts from all sizes, from seals to blue whales if you are patient enough.
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1. At the moment you can use thermic and normal vision to see fish. Thermic vision only works with warmblood sea animals though.
2. At the moment ships use sonar to detect swarms of fish and other stuff underwater. It is very possible that, within the next 50 years, they make other devices not using sound but maybe other kinds of waves that don't get reflected by the water surface. It's very plausible.
Plausible but more futuristic: sharks scan electromagnetic fields to locate their prey. This might also be realistic in the future.
[Answer]
E/M does not penetrate enough to be useful for detecting fish below a few ten meters, as the other answers have stated.
I'd like to bring sonic detection back up. There are ways to both induce and measure soundwaves at a distance, so you would not need to mechanically interact (no buoys etc). The technologic *system* is not available in 2018, but all the components are, so i guess with the right business case it could get developed.
For every material, there are certain laser frequencies and local field strengths that induce a material to not simply heat up, but to ablate directly. This is currently used in laser marking. The process of ablation induces a small shockwave in the material, so by timing the ablations, one can introduce any soundwave into a medium. This is currently used in materials science and researched as a way to destroy kidney stones by induced ultrasound. Using more than one site would even introduce the possibility of creating a phased array, giving you the ability of creating directional soundwaves. So now you have a tunable, turnable soundsource (or even sources) on the water. Reading the return signal remotely is also within our technological grasp, lasers, using signal- and wave-interference, are already employed to listen to conversations by reading the vibration of windows. Again, creating more than one listening spot improves reception by the signal processing opportunities that an array offers (directionality, noise supression, localization).
Sound-based imaging is only capable of detecting things whose accoustic impedance is markedly different from the surrounding medium, though, so exclusively-soft creatures like jellyfish would not be detectable.
[Answer]
Yes, as long as the animal you're looking for is near to the surface.
Sound is pretty much the only medium for long-distance detection, and that requires touching the water. Otherwise you'll be using elecro-magnetic radiation in some form, whether visible light, radar or infra-red.
] |
[Question]
[
If there were some organ, akin to the liver or a gland (I'm blanking on organ functions right now), that produces magical energy to project through the body, its various vessels, and directly out of the body, where would the most efficient location for it be? And where would it be if it were only to affect other organs (like forcibly activating melatonin, melanin, or adrenaline)?
[Answer]
These answers depend greatly on the way the vessels are connected. If it needs to operate at chemical speeds, it might be able to simply hook into the bloodstream and have that do its thing (this is how our [adrenals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrenal_gland) work). If it needs to operate faster, it might choose locations which are connected in more of a neural approach. Perhaps for fun, such an organ might be snaked along the spinal chord.
If Eastern style magic is useful in your world, consider having it very close to the center of gravity of the body. Many Eastern groups believe there is an "energy center" there, such as the [Dantian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dantian) of many Chinese martial arts. There are many such "energy center" concepts such as the [Chakra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chakra) used in many Indian religions and practices.
I'd also consider looking into what it connects to. In yoga, for instance, everything is associated with the breath, so a magic system with elements borrowed from yoga would wish to make the organ related to breath.
And finally, many consider the heart to be an organ with the behaviors you mention. It all goes to show just how much freedom you have to make such attachments, and make them work.
[Answer]
I would consider making the skin the magic gland. (The skin is technically speaking, one large organ). Since the skin is the boundary between the outside world and the inside of your body, it make sense to make the skin the organ, as it would allow the easiest "exposure" to manipulating the environment.
And since the skin wraps around pretty much the entire human body, it would have quick access to any inner sections of the body where we needed to project magic. If we need to directly apply magic to certain organs, the skin area closest to that organ would be able to activate, giving the lowest average magic application time.
[Answer]
You can consider the *mitochondrial* potential. They are the energy converters. It has its own genome. They co-exist vitally with each cell and concentrations can vary widely, with some organs containing more than others. I'd like to think that magical potential could reside within these mysterious motors.
[Answer]
It's magic—why can't it go anywhere it wants?
The body has a variety of distribution networks already: the nervous system, the circulatory system, the lymphatic system. Depending on how you envision your magic to work, you can place the organ centrally in any of these systems (e.g. heart or lungs for circulatory system, maybe basal ganglia for nervous system, thymus for lymphatic system (it's where immune cells that might attack the body are selected out)). The [pineal gland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineal_gland) has interesting historical connotations.
But you can also postulate your own additional distribution system for magical power, arranged in whatever way makes sense for your idea of magic. Chinese medicine postulates a [system of "meridians"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian_%28Chinese_medicine%29) of just this sort. You could pick somewhere where there seem an interesting convergence of meridian lines, for example.
[Answer]
The pineal gland already has mystical connections and has been used for this purpose. You ought to play off that, [along with the existing mythology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Beyond_(film)) of the "third/inner eye".
[Answer]
The best energy transfer system in the body for Magic would be The peripheral nervous system (PNS), the part of the nervous system that consists of the nerves and ganglia on the outside of the brain and spinal cord. This electrically based system is bi-directional, allowing you to sense magic as well as transmit it, and can allow for Reflex reactions. PNS reflexes can happen without active though, as the impulses don't even have to travel all the way to the brain in order to react.
So the Magic Gland should simply be part of the Spinal Cord.
[Answer]
The endocrine glands affect most parts of the body, and as you can see from this Wikipedia image, they're all at or near the body's center line.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_gland>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xDj7A.png)
>
> Endocrine glands are glands of the endocrine system that secrete their products, hormones, directly into the blood rather than through a duct.
>
>
>
[Answer]
It's magic. If it's stored then it has to be some sort of substance, but being magic it's not made of matter. My 2 cents, have a sort of aura. The aura being a real substance with most of it being subdermal and escaping through skin pores but have some of it being an outside aura that clings to the body. Perhaps the outer aura absorbs sunlight or some ambient magic just flowing around or perhaps magic is directed from the aura and the subdermal storage is for replenishing the aura. Perhaps mitochondria are the source and some of their waste heat is absorbed by the aura.
Biophotons is just infrared light from body heat. In that way people really do have an aura, it's just not magic. People also have terrahertz radiation and it's something that technology still struggles with making use of, though we are getting there.
To be clear if it's subdermal then the gland is in the skin, but under the protective layer of the skin.
Hope this helps. I'm curious to know what idea you'll decide to implement in your world.
] |
[Question]
[
If is plausible, what are the most reasonable factors to bring to bear?
I have a large continent where a number of races/cultures are present in the present day, but I want the one in the south to have arrived a number of centuries ago after a cataclysm destroyed their homeland. This southern area has some desert and is quite temperate compared to the rest of the continent north of it, but I need a plausible reason to keep the other races/cultures from having expanded down there.
They are all humanoid races, somewhat like standard Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Celts etc... but they are all far more "human" than any of those stereotypes such that their cultures are largely what separate them, though they do have some slight physiological differences.
I don't want a major conflict in the south when this new race/culture arrives because there were only a limited number of ships that escaped their homeland and they were sailing for long enough that their supplies were stretched to the point of breaking and they were extremely lucky to stumble across the land they did. They do encounter the race/culture to the west but the language barrier and the lack of anything much to trade means they leave pretty much empty handed and largely un-harrassed. Scout ships find uninhabited, suitable lands to the south and then they split off into different groups forming their own colonies across the southern part of the continent and eventually become an empire of different states ruled centrally from the imperial capital.
I'm happy with all of it bar the fact that it seems way too convenient that the southern lands are uninhabited and they can just waltz in and start setting up their new empire. I've thought about having a precursor race/culture that dies out leaving small clusters of survivors that become the races/cultures of the present day and either fear, tradition, superstition or risk of disease keep them from venturing too far south. E.g. Perhaps the source of their downfall was in the south, but I'm not sure if that makes any sense or if I'm just throwing additional complexity in where it isn't needed.
Any suggestions greatly appreciated.
[Answer]
**The southern lands are not amenable to northern-style agriculture.**
A similar sort of thing happened in Africa. After developing agriculture (and possibly iron), Bantu speaking peoples spread across the continent, displacing or assimilating the earlier Khoi-San peoples who had been the main occupants before.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gBCjy.jpg)
<https://medium.com/bahasantara/a-beginners-guide-to-studying-african-languages-part-1-bantu-languages-cce41072eb45>
You will see on the map an island of white. This is the place where the Khoi-San people persisted and where they were when the Dutch moved into South Africa in the 1600s and encountered them. The Bantu agriculturalists did not move into these dry lands because they were unsuitable for their kind of agriculture, which had developed in the tropics.
This can be the case for your people. The Northern countries are populous agriculturally based lands. They never moved into the southern lands because their style of farming does not work there. Your southerners can be pastoralist herders (like the Navajo or Maasai) or hunter-gatherers like the Khoi-San, or have a dry-land Mediterranean type agriculture, depending on what works for your story.
[Answer]
Invent some zoopathogen which a southern animal (like mice, or even some insect) is symbiontic with, so it has a stable genome, and which is fatal within five days for adult humans.
Those new settlers come from the place where that animal originally comes from and where that symbiontic disease developed. Everybody from there catches it as a child, when it is far less fatal, so they are immune.
[Answer]
Probably not.
See, civilizations grow over time, and that means they tend to expand. Cities get bigger, and territory claims other stuff.
Your best bet is to only have the land becoming habitable as the refugees arrive, or have a depopulating disaster happen there very recently. Yes, there would still be some people trying to live in there, perhaps exiled criminals or something, but the population would be low enough that the refugees would be able to establish themselves as civilization in that area.
I would recommend having the land uninhabitable to humans until shortly before the refugees arrive, as a depopulating disaster might not perfectly efficient and might have side effects lasting for a while.
[Answer]
The plague ALWAYS starts in the south and the rest of the people have had their fill of it. They are a little irritated by the new comers who will dig up the anthrax spores again.
[Answer]
Not only can this happen hypothetically, it does happen in real life.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OvuzH.gif)
Australia has high mountains on the west and east, meaning clouds almost never go over the central continent, rendering it a nigh-uninhabitable wasteland. The Sahara desert is more habitable than central Australia.
[Answer]
Perhaps the southern area has no consistent, reliable source of surface water. There are small ponds and creeks, but nothing large enough to support large-scale agriculture or even a small town. Instead of pooling up, rainfall drains through the sandy soil deep into the ground.
A long time ago, a few small towns existed in this area. They dug wells to extract water from an aquifer that ran close to the surface in several places, but this was not a large aquifer and was soon depleted. This entire region was soon abandoned, as the rest of the continent had a much more reliable water supply and plenty of available space. The various races wrote off that region for good, as there was nothing unique or interesting about that region to be worth the hassle of trying to live there.
When your newcomers arrive, they initially have the same problem. Shallow wells look promising but dry up quickly. Your newcomers have key advantages, though. The ships that brought them here used rainwater catchment systems to harvest and store fresh water during the journey, and your newcomers constructed scaled-up versions capable of serving entire communities. They're also more skilled at mining and excavating than the other races (insert story reason here), and are able to dig stable wells into the much more substantial aquifers that run deep underground.
[Answer]
An alternative idea is that the cataclysm that destroyed the homeland of the escapees also had the effect of opening up a path to the unexplored part of the continent. If the new continent was on top of 1km high sheer cliffs, the land on top could be colonized by animal and plant life but not by humans. The seismic aftershocks from the destruction of homeland collapsed one of the cliff faces to create a difficult, but usable pathway for the refugees to ascend.
Such plateaus exist in the real world - Mount Roraima for example.
<https://www.sciencealert.com/welcome-to-mount-roraima-the-floating-island-plateau>
The difficult route in and out could also dramatically limit trade. You'd probably want to dramatically increase the land area available and maybe open a path to the sea at the same time, but it's a plausible way for a vast, fertile area of land to go unexplored by humans.
] |
[Question]
[
In an effort to work out a believable form of faster-than-light communications for my setting, I've ruled out a few things: wormholes (which are in use, but are too random in where they lead, to be used for this) and quantum entanglement (which flat out doesn't work for information transfer).
In my research, the only natural phenomenon that even hints at being capable of this is the hypothetical tachyon particle. The problem is, they're believed to not be capable of interacting with anything, if they do exist.
Does anyone possibly have a suggestion for a minimal-handwaving way to acceptably explain away how they might detect these, in light of this issue?
[Answer]
# Minimal handwaving is done with a single big lie rather than little ones.
If you try to tell the little lie, there's constant follow up, but what about this, but what about that, but what about the other.
The big lie tells not about the technology but about the timeline, not about how it was done but about who did it. Make it a story about the person who did it, where they were in their career, what country they were in. The war they'd just survived, when they emigrated from *small war-torn country* to *large technological nation* with nothing to their name. Acceptance to *legendary institution*, the great breakthrough, the implications and celebrations, **but never how the technology actually works.**
That way you have to wave your hand precisely once, rather than over and over again in lots of little ways.
[Answer]
## Tachyons are detectable.
Fortunately, I believe your question is based on a mistaken premise. Tachyons, if they exist, would likely indeed be detectable. In fact, since they were initially theorized, there have been several experimental searches for tachyons, though very few in recent years. I'll talk about a couple experiments noted in [Status of experimental searches for tachyons?](https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/63297/56299) They're important because they represent a couple main avenues of detection, and you *should* be able to base your communication system on them.
* **[Clay 1988](http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1988AuJPh..41...93C): Cosmic ray showers.** As high-energy particles plow through the upper atmosphere, they decay into a number of lighter particles which are detectable by humans on Earth. The products of the decay of the initial particle all travel extremely close to the speed of light. Clay notes that the first scientist to exploit this phenomenon was Ramana Murthy, who proposed looking for particles that arrive even sooner, before the first photons from the event.
* **[Alvager & Kreisler 1968](http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1968PhRv..171.1357A): Cherenkov radiation.** The effective speed of light is different in different mediums; photons interact with atoms in particles in a substance, effectively slowing them down. If a charged massive particle travels faster than this effective speed of light, it should emit photons called Cherenkov radiation, which is a well-studied phenomenon for massive particles. As tachyons travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum (and thus faster than the speed of light in any medium), they should produce Cherenkov radiation, and would in fact be the only particles to produce such a signal in a vacuum.
* **Alvager & Erman 1965: Mass-energy and momentum.** We can use special relativity to calculate the magnitude of a particle's energy $E$ and momentum $p$. For normal massive particles, we expect $|E|>|p|$; for tachyons, we should see $|p|>|E|$. I am still trying to find out more details of their experiment; the pair monitored an isotope of thulium, $^{170}\text{Tm}$. Thulium-170 usually transitions to Ytterbium-170 via $\beta^-$ decay, but it appears that tachyons could play a role in more complicated processes.
* **[Baltay et al. 1970](http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1970PhRvD...1..759B): Missing energy.** Even in the case of tachyons that don't interact (or don't interact strongly) with detectors, we should still be able to see them *indirectly*. In particular, some unstable particles might have decay chains involving tachyons, and if these chains are observed and some energy remains unaccounted for, it could be a sign of tachyons. Neutrinos, incidentally, were originally detected basically the same way.
The basic point is, tachyons can be detected directly (e.g. as products of cosmic rays or atomic decays) and indirectly (e.g. through Cherenkov radiation and missing energy from meson decay).
## Applying this to communication
These experiments are, to be frank, not very useful for communication. Most involve observing tachyons produced naturally, instead of by humans, and at effectively uncontrollable rates. We can rule out most of them for your use, but I think the most promising is Alvager & Kreisler's method of Cherenkov radiation. Let me talk about their idea in slightly more detail.
The pair's setup involved two parallel plates with a static electric field between them. Tachyons should gain energy traveling through the field while losing energy via radiation, and it should be possible to tweak the field's parameters such that this total energy changer is zero - which they did. The tachyon should, over the course of traveling through the detector, travel through a potential difference of $\sim9\text{ kV}$ and gain corresponding energy based on its charge; the Cherenkov photons would have energies in the range $0\text{-}3.8\text{ eV}$. It was expected that 12% of the produced photons would be detected (although no doubt we could, today, increase that percentage). Tachyons with charges from $0.1\text{-}2e$ could be observed.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1k9De.png)
Figure 1, Alvager & Kreisler 1968. A diagram of the duo's detector.
I would guess that this setup could be scaled up such that detecting tachyons traveling over interstellar distances would be feasible. Presumably, information would be coded in the number of tachyons detected, and therefore the amount of energy produced in the form of photons. Furthermore, of course, you are perfectly able to change the parameters of the device and the properties (e.g. charge) or your tachyons, so you can optimize the process as you wish.
## Suspension of disbelief, handwaving, and all that
[Separatrix's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/146483/627), which I think also makes your assumption of undetectability, argues that you should do as little handwaving as possible - quite true - by avoiding discussing the details of the technology. This can be quite effective, and it definitely should not be ignored. I could stand to make use of it more.
That said, the basic idea behind the Alvager & Kreisler detector is simple enough that I believe this issue is not very important. If you wish to go slightly in depth when describing the device - or if you want one character to use something akin to jargon while talking to another - simply mention the electric fields used, or the potentials, or the energy range. I'm not a fan of using random (and irrelevant) jargon in writing, but in this case, it's quite relevant indeed, and the detector is simple enough that you're not as likely to alienate readers as you might think.
[Answer]
Tachyons aren't known to exist. But if they did, they could absolutely interact with conventional matter. That being said, you'd probably have trouble sending tachyon pulses around the galaxy. Not because of any tachyon-specific issues, but just because galaxies are huge. Right now there are probes about 20 million miles from Earth, and picking up their radio signals is a huge to-do. A galaxy is a billion times bigger than that distance, which means that the energy is diffused a billion billion (a quintillion) times more.
Depending on your setting, it might be reasonable to send the message to the nearest outpost, and wormhole it to some other outpost, and then tachyon it to your friend.
[Answer]
**Mary particle.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ywCrk.jpg)
Tachyons always move faster than light, and so also backwards in time. It is hard to imagine how to interact with something like that from our standpoint in the kitchen with a coffee. Sort of like interacting with God. God is so Godly.
But what about things like [massless particles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massless_particle) - our familiar friend the photon, and his weird cousins gluon and graviton? Those things always move at the speed of light. What does a tachyon look like from the perspective of a massless particle? From that perspective what is the tachyon up to? Mary is familiar and motherly, and less intimidating than God - the glorious intermediary. So too your particle.
In your fiction, you can discover that tachyons can be detected through their (time-backwards) interactions with massless particles. To keep it squarely in fiction you can invoke the little known graviton since it is so mysterious you can assert what you like. People might call you out if you ascribe new properties to the photon. But you could.
It hurts my head some to think about what interactions between a light speed (?timeless) particle and a superluminal time backwards particle would look like. Good luck!
[Answer]
If tachyons indeed don't interact with the universe, then they look an awful lot like dark matter. That doesn't really interact with anything either except gravitationally.
So just imagine there's multiple types of dark matter, which includes tachyons. Anything that doesn't or barely interacts with the conventional universe will be some type or another of dark matter. Your tachyons could interact with some of this dark matter, allowing you to detect the passage of a tachyon by detecting changes in the dark matter.
] |
[Question]
[
## Some Context
The setting is a fantasy world with lots of magic where Liches exist.
A Lich is "born" through a series of complex, dangerous and horrific rituals that a mage casts upon himself over the course of years, decades even. In order to become a Lich, the mage has to do two things:
1. Cast several spells to protect his physical body from decay;
2. Transfer his "essence" into a vessel, which he will keep with him always.
The main objective of this ordeal is eternal life - or, at least, to greatly expand one's life expectancy.
**While a human lives about 70 to 80 years in this setting, a Lich's lifespan is counted in hundreds of years**.
A Lich's body will still age, but at a much slower rate. It will eventually decay and turn into a living skeleton, until the anti-decay spells can't stop him from turning into a pile of dust. As the decay advances, he continuously uses magic to keep himself together and "emulate" whatever he needs to (like his voice).
## The Question
What I want is to determine a Lich's lifespan based on actual facts about the decay speed of a preserved human body through existing means, like embalming.
So... **how long can a human body be preserved before turning to dust?**
---
## Side Note
I've come across two pieces of information before writing this question:
1. I've seen a rough estimate that a human body will completely decay in about 8 years without any kind of preservation;
2. Some older questions pointed out that a correctly preserved body might stay preserved indefinitely.
I'm not interested in either of these options - the first is too short and the second is way too long. The ideal answer is not the perfect preservation technique, but one that will keep it alright for a considerable amount of time. I will, then, use this number as an estimate to state how long my Liches' bodies last.
[Answer]
I cannot give you a definite answer, but there are several aspects to consider.
A perfectly embalmed Egyptian mummy in it's tomb can exist indefinitely because it's not moved around and lacks the moisture to decompose. As soon as it's handled by people, it takes damage.
Liches move around but don't heal. Every tiny scratch and cut will eventually accumulate until there's nothing but dust left. Even the subtle movement of robes over skin will eventually wear the skin and tendons away if they cannot regenerate.
Compare the different components of a body to preserved or processed materials:
* The outer skin will wear away at the same speed as leather. Wearing clothes, handling objects and even sitting down wears it away. Within a few decades, there won't be much left of it.
* Muscles and tendons are more robust, but prone to drying out and breaking or flaking away. I don't know how fast bare muscles wear away, but once they're gone, there's nothing left connecting tendons and bones. With proper care (like rubbing them with oil to keep them smooth) I'd estimate they add a hundred years or more to the unlife of a Lich after the skin is gone. Without proper care, they're gone in no more than a decade.
* Bones are comparable to ivory but the movement of joints will eventually wear them away in a severe case of attrition. Since Liches are prone to avoiding any physical labor, they may last a few hundred years, maybe up to a thousand.
**BUT:** Some limbs may simply fall of if the tendons connecting them to the body decay first. The feet are probably the first to fall off because they have to carry the complete weight of the body and move (literally) with every step. If the tongue or lips decay, the Lich has serious problems speaking and pronouncing his spells correctly.
---
Interesting addition by Ralph Bolton:
>
> Since we're magical, could the Lich use some sort of 'astral projection' to appear to be somewhere whilst his/her body remains at home? Even a Lich laying on a bed would endure some form of decay, but it would be considerably slower than walking about and generally being active. I guess some interactions with the outside world could escalate, demanding actual physical presence versus 'projected presence' too. Such requirements would have to be carefully rationed to ensure maximum longevity though.
>
>
>
---
*And don't forget the army of skeletal minions with fly swatters keeping little corpse-eating insects at bay.*
[Answer]
Mummification goes a long way into preserving a corpse. [According to Wikipedia, some mummies are over seven thousand years old](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummy).
But let's face it. You want to go Lich because the human body sucks. Why not take it up a notch?
Mummies can only survive for millenia at chill temperatures. I believe that inside liquid nitro they could last for millions of years, maybe billions. So get your lich assets into one of these:
It's where gullible rich people store their remains in hopes of living forever. Add some tank treads and big robot arms and not only will you really live forever, you will also be [a Daft Punk song made true](https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/daftpunk/harderbetterfasterstronger.html). You can also add guns. And internet. The liquid nitrogen environment also helps in overclocking any electronics you may wish to bring along.
[Answer]
There are a variety of preservation techniques with different results. Obviously you want to avoid ones where the body is not free to move around. Extensive wrapping, immersion, etc won't work unless the techniques are temporary.
**Desiccation**. Drying the body in a warm arid place will preserve it for a long time. Moving the body around after that, and exposing it to humidity, will slowly weaken it, which may give you your sweet spot of a few hundred years.
>
> Coastal hunter-gatherers in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile and
> southern Peru, known as the Chinchorro culture, were among the first
> to perform artificial mummifications. Under a scenario of increasing
> population size and extreme aridity (with little or no decomposition
> of corpses), dead individuals may have become a significant part of
> the landscape, creating the conditions for the manipulation of the
> dead that led to the emergence of complex mortuary practices as early
> as 5000–6000 BC. ([ref](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3931544/))
>
>
>
**Salt** can help preserve while keeping the body from becoming too dried out (which makes it brittle).
>
> Prior to the introduction of carbolic acid, or phenol, and later of
> formaldehyde, the main preserving agents used in anatomies were
> alcoholic solutions of arsenic and/or alumina salts in different
> concentrations....Coleman & Kogan (1998) used almost the same
> chemicals (they replaced alcohol by isopropyl alcohol), but added a
> vast amount of sodium chloride. They argued that the high salt content
> retained in the tissues prevented any further significant desiccation.
> Salts have also been used...and 1% of anhydrous calcium chloride...and
> 5% of potassium nitrate. ([ref](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3931544/))
>
>
>
There are multiple preserving agents and different combinations of them preserve tissue in different ways. You will want something that allows the body to move and look sort-of normal. Given that you will be using the body and exposing it to bumps and motion and stretching, plus air and humidity and maybe even rain, it will not last as long as it would in a tomb.
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Have you looked into [warhammer 40k's tech-priests?](http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Tech-priest) Although starting with a human base they can replace and augment their failing bodies with more and more technological bits (or in your case, magical) untill they can barely register as human anymore.
Also a Ship-of-theseus problem: which bit of the body is the "soul" anchored to? just the largest part? Because what happens to the bits that fall off?
You could end up with a Ebbonwood-and-silver manequin with a bare skull bolted on top.
Taking the comments below into consideration: it would vary with the degree of crazy in the particular lich. Some might tyr to live lives like they still had a normal body (and as such would wear away quite quickly amid the buzzing of meat-flies) and others might try various forms of mummification, magical preservation or the replacement of the parts that they leave behind. You could even have a lich who tries to posess 'fresh' bodies, althought that would take so much magical focus that they woudn't be nearly as powerfull anymore.
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I'm trying to create an egalitarian society on an Earth-like planet, populated by simultaneous hermaphrodites. The hermaphrodites are similar to human women that have both male & female sex organs. Hermaphroditic ability to sire children is equal to human male fertility. On the other hand, hermaphrodite ability to bear children is equal to human female fertility.
In my society self-impregnation is outlawed taboo and hermaphrodites who want to have children must have a partner. Many of these partnerships are analogous to human marriages and tend to last.
Would hermaphrodites in partnership relations develop gender roles, where one is mostly breadwinner while the other is mostly homemaker?
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**Edit:** I rewrote this due to the comments
Let's say that at the beginning we are at an equilibrium state in which the couples are perfectly symmetrical, and there are no different behaviors that can be regarded as gender roles. Now, outside forces on the couples could push them toward a gender specialization such that one partner is like you said the breadwinner and the other the homemaker.
One major such force could be society. If it's the norm to have gender roles, it's highly likely that even small kids would adopt a gender identity or at least consider what they prefer and have it influence their process of finding a mate and their behavior in their relationships. But something has to be the first trigger.
## Option 1. Biological constraints (i.e. pregnancy)
In the limit case in which bearing a child is extremely easy and takes only few days, it makes little difference which of the couple will bear the children, obviously the couple could alternate who bears the children and no difference in behavior is to be expected. This isn't the case, since pregnancy is 9 months long and taking care of small children is also a handful, so this is definitely a force that would push the couples to specialize, one in childcare (and from that to homemaking) and one in their career.
## Option 2: Economical constraints
What if in this society one paycheck is more then enough, and people don't see a need to earn as much as possible? (This can be due e.g. to strong social networks, religion or lack of ways to spend a lot of money) What if at the same time a very well-maintained house was considered a big virtue? This could easily lead to a joint decision to split the work.
This can be combined with the first option to make it more difficult for someone to have a child (thus be out of the work force for a while) and then resume their career.
## Option 3: Personal preference
Let's not forget that even in same-sex couples there may sometimes be something similar to gender roles, and in heterosexual couples the roles my switch. So a personal preference or natural talents could also play a role.
# Summary
Since the existence or lack thereof of gender roles is something that perpetuates itself, I think it's a matter of equilibrium. A trend in either way will amplify and become the norm, until a trend in the opposite direction changes things. The fact that genders in your society are not based in biological differences makes change all the more easy and therefor plausible.
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If human physiology is of any guidance, then yes with a twist.
It is much healthier for both bearer and a child if the bearer is young. Besides, I'd expect the female functionality to cease at the certain age, while male functionality to continue for much longer.
So, it is reasonable to expect the young people to play a female role, and then switch to a male one. Which gives some interesting cues about family pattern.
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**No.**
I do not doubt that a visiting human would apply a gender role to anyone from this planet they met based on their aggressiveness or beauty (or whatever gender role baggage they brought with them).
But the idea that specific gender roles would develop in a world effectively without genders is a bit too human-centric to my mind. They would most likely just have the variety of personality types that all humans have.
If they're anything like people though, they make divide their members into groups based on other physically identifiable characteristics. Like the thinking that redheads are more aggressive or blondes have more fun. Since they don't have groups with different sex hormones that might influence one or more behaviors, the groups will likely have less agreed upon differences though.
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**Yes** (*Well sort of, from a human-centric point of view*)
Since hermaphrodites have a single gender you can't have gender roles like humans. But on the other hand, if there is a "marriage" between two hermaphrodites, I expect that one of them will specialize as breadwinner and the other one as homemaker.
Specialization is an advantage, if one hermaphrodite is much better at making money the family would be better off financially if that one takes the "male" role of only siring children and not having career breaks.
Since fertility rate by age is equal to human fertility rate, there would be more hermaphrodites that could only sire children but can't bear them. If you are rich older hermaphrodite your role is similar to "male" in the human society.
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To answer your own question, you have to ask yourself another one: **How strong is their innate biological drive to reproduce?**
Your hermaphrodites have both male and female methods of reproducing. So they (or their prehistoric ancestors) will have a biological drive to father offspring **and** a biological drive to bear offspring.
Therefore you need to decide how strong their instinct to perform **both** roles is. Are there times of year, or times of life when the urge to get pregnant outweighs the urge to father a kid? Or vice versa? Is there a ticking 'menopausal' clock which makes them likely to want to get pregnant when young and save fatherhood for their middle aged years? If you've fathered a kid, does your body demand you are the mother of the next one?
Civilisation, culture and intelligence can overwrite some biological drives - just think of all the people you know who have decided not to have kids, or to adopt other people's kids. So if you want gender roles, turn down the instinct to be a mother to human level or below, and take up some of the suggestions from other answers on breadwinners, etc.
If you want to avoid gender roles, dial the instinct up to 11 and have the desire to be both a mother and a father as higher than humans' interest in sex, but a bit lower than humans' interest in food.
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It's possible that these roles ( with one partner has a full-time job, one partner stays behind and is exclusively responsible for raising the kids) could develop but they would not be on restricted gender lines and partners could switch roles when necessary without the stigma of being a failure.
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You might get the one earning the greater wage choosing to continue their career and the other taking a career break to have children because it brings in more money.
...just like we often do now.
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Children need to be cared for. Stable families offer great survival benefits and pair-bonds leads to stable families.
Since their premodern times, one member of the pair would stay home to care for the child while the other provided. Thus, these roles would be replicated in the society. It would be my expectation that the role would be traded between them. For example, the one acting as the provider while the nurturer tends to young children. Once the provider becomes pregnant, it now becomes the nurturer, while the other nurturer becomes the provider.
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In Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, all reproduction is done through cloning test-tube embryos, developed in artificial wombs, with childrearing and educational psychological conditioning handled centrally by the state.
Separate gene pools allowed for a stratified and caste based society, with Alphas and Betas prepared for leadership, political and scientific roles, with Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon classes being trained and equipped to fulfill the social requirement for more menial work assignments.
In this society, physical sex was purely a recreational activity, rather than a practical one.
<https://web.archive.org/web/20081121233046/http://www.123helpme.com/assets/18219.html>
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So they do have marriages? And look for their children themselves?
You know, our model of society is not "only possible". E.g. they can have families, but raise their children in some kind of kindergartens.
Or they can have special "works". Like "milk-giver" (which is assigned to persons who has best "milk-producing" mamaries), "nanny", "hunter" and so on.
You know, that nature prefers specialisation over "Jacks-of-all-trades", so, I'm pretty shure that during their "stone ages" they could develop something like this. (E.G. Danni produces more milk, Jaiden is best hunter and Perrin is best berry-finder).
I'm not shure about gender roles. In our society it came from burdens of pregnancy (it's hard to hunt with big belly) and from reason that "men are more expendable" (So they shoul do more dangerous activities), because it's easier to repopulate with 100 women and 10 men, than with 100 men and 10 women.
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As each adult can do both parts of reproduction, then any variant is possible. One parent may have a preference or they may take turns being pregnant. Age, health and income would likely factor into the decision as to which would be pregnant to varying degrees, but are not sure ways to decide.
If its possible AND likely for everyone to be pregnant at some point during their lives, then a well developed maternity leave is almost a certainty. This would let even people working intense jobs have the option of being pregnant without a significant loss of income.
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It might not be so different from our society.
Look at same sex married couples.
They are rarely completely symetrical because no one is the same. People have different personalities/skills.
The child bearer can't be the breadwinner because childbearing is hard. So naturally there would be a "daddy" and a "mommy".
Your "societal gender" would not defined by your X or Y chromsome but by your personality/skills/fitness/age/position in society.
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I have thought of a similar society, but with my interpretation there would be sort of a spectrum of masculine and feminine. Most people would be somewhere in the middle(average) while some people seem to be highly specialized(extreems) this would be based on a stable yet versatile genome with average people being able to maybe switch gender roles based on preference and necessity.
Those in the middle of the spectrum may do this more easily, while those at the masculine end may be more massive and protective. The feminine might be more nurturing and petite.
As for self insemination it should not be outlawed or taboo but is something that will kill the host, and is the only ethical means for immortality as one clones themself but has to redevelop their memory. It usually happens in a pre late life ritual inducing the self rebirth. Or sometimes when one dies of natural causes though the body will induce self hurt on its own well before you die as it senses your body failing. These usually result in miscarriage and is the end of one's life cycle.
The life cycle also ends when injury or illness causes death. Only the more feminine can physically handle reproduction about 3 or 4 times. The average usually have two, the third is the self reproduction. Some of the extreme cases of masculine can only self reproduce for their body cannot take the punishment of birth.
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Assuming in a galaxy far far away there is a Type 2 civilization (currently on the verge of making the transition to Type 3).
Their scientists predicted that the star (red giant) they are orbiting is going supernova probably within a couple of years (a decade maximum), they won't be able to evacuate everybody in time.
My question is how can they stop the supernova? If it can't be put out in time how can they survive this ordeal?
Note: I'll accept any good answer such as the scientists somehow managed to build a king size Noah ark that can sing opera finds and fits itself inside a cosmic superstring located just outside their planetary system (call it coincidence) and come out at the other side of the universe unharmed but visibly shaken.
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### A [Kardeshev Type II](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale#Type.C2.A0II_civilization_methods) civilization capable of transitioning to a [Kardeshev Type III](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale#Type.C2.A0III_civilization_methods) should no longer be bound to a particular planet or even a single solar system. They should already be able to move populations from world to world with little effort having already mastered the ability to harness energy from thousands or even millions of stars in their civilization.
BUT for the sake of argument, let's say you have a highly advanced type II civilization which has mastered energy for an entire solar system by harnessing the power of their star and now they discover their star is unstable.
* With their level of science, they would be able to determine how long their sun was going to survive. They would have mastered technologies which related to the rate of output, the age of their star, their star's expected lifespan and rate of fusion decay.
* All things considered, most stars ARE fairly stable and relatively long lived. And a star which has lived long enough to have a civilization form around it (if this is the species host star) is liable to be a [second generation star](http://everydaylife.globalpost.com/meant-sun-referred-secondgeneration-star-39133.html) and very stable overall.
So let's add to the challenge and say, it is a large second-generation star whose mass is high enough to become a supernova. Since you specified red, it would have to be a very large red giant, like the star Betelgeuse. A massive supergiant whose fuel source was running out could conceivably go critical and become a supernova. The process of becoming a supernova is incredibly slow, on the order of ten million to ten billion years.
**With these suppositions in place: Could anything stop it from doing so?**
* Possibly, it would depend on the level of technology available to the species in question, how fast their star was burning its fuel source and how close to nova their star is.
### First things first:
* In most cases, you don't extinguish supernovas. You prevent them. The energy output by a supernova is so great that once a star explodes, there is almost nothing to be done except to be very far away and enjoy the show. Once a star has gone supernova, there is no stopping the action because the overall process is slow to build but once its going, it won't stop.
This is a simplified representation. A star is composed of two primary forces, expansion due to the fusion reaction and compression due to the force of gravity:
1. Conversion of hydrogen atoms into helium atoms. It will do this until there are no hydrogen atoms left to convert. This conversion creates an expansive pressure pushing matter away from the center of the star.
2. Gravity compresses matter causing its collapse toward the gravitational center of the star.
* These two forces, gravity crushing down and the explosion of energy coming up balance each other and create the energy output we know as a star. As a star consumes its store of hydrogen it will, if it's massive enough continue to try and convert the helium into heavier elements until it can no longer sustain nuclear fusion to do so.
* If it reaches the element of iron, it will simply no longer sustain fusion, period. Most stars will top out at carbon because the energy required and the mass needed to keep fusing are a delicate balance. When a star maxes out at carbon it basically becomes a hunk of cooling material and will die as a small dwarf star.
* However, there is another extreme. When a star is massive enough to burn through its energy supply, it may do something else. When the energy pressure from the star is no longer great enough to keep the mass of the star from crushing down, it may simply collapse violently and then explode in a burst of energy called a supernova.
* The supernova uses up all of the remaining fuel in an orgy of energy output dwarfing anything the star has produced all of its life, in single second. If a star becomes a supernova, it may fuse elements all across the periodic table and this is where the heaviest elements in the universe can be found, the byproduct of first generation stars who exploded violently to create the building blocks for second generation stars.
### So if you wanted to prevent a star from exploding violently and you were a species capable of spaceflight but you need centuries to evacuate your star system, you might:
**Number One:**
* **Find a new fuel source for your star.** A new source of hydrogen or helium would slow the degradation rate of your star giving you more time before it completely collapsed.
* If your star system had two or more gas giants, if your species could move entire worlds, they might want to place the gas giants in orbits closer to the sun and allow the sun to draw mass from the giants adding to its fuel supply. These would have to be massive worlds, nearly stars themselves (See: **[Brown dwarf](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_dwarf)**) to offer any reasonable amount of mass capable of delaying a star's collapse.
* The other alternative would be to bring mass from another nearby stellar body and do something similar. The energy required to move a planet would be dwarfed by the effort required to move a star, even a very small one, so this is the far harder of the two tasks. A star, however, would be more favorable since it has more potential fuel to work with.
**Number 2**
* **Slow the rate of stellar reaction within your star.** If you could slow your star's rate of fuel consumption, **(See: [Stellar Husbandry](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting#Stellar_husbandry))** this could conceivably buy more time, since it is the fusion of mass which causes the star to use up its fuel. However, reducing the reaction rate could also cause the star to collapse as the energy of the star's output keeps mass from being forced closer to the star's surface which ultimately could cause the same nova you were trying to prevent.
* Somehow you would have to buffer the reaction but keep the star "fluffy", perhaps by using artificial gravity to simulate the pushing motion of a star's energy output and keeping the mass from collapsing into the body of the star prematurely triggering the supernova.
### Why would any species do this, even assuming they were able to do either?
* Both of these ideas posit incredible capacities, which might be available to a transitioning type II to type III civilization but both seem fantastic in terms of their energy requirements.
* I did have a reason to consider both of them, though. If your species is limited to slower-than-light or relativistic travel, even if they had ships capable of evacuating their worlds, they would need to delay the supernova for as long as possible in order to reach a "minimal safe distance" (likely some number of light years, at least).
* This means the long-term benefit would be worth the effort if it meant you had another 1,000 to 250,000 years to get as far away as possible.
**Other References: [How Supernovas Work](http://science.howstuffworks.com/supernova.htm)**
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A star *does not* go supernova "within a couple of years". A red giant is the beginning of the decline, and that will cause disruption already: ours will swallow the Earth (or possibly leave a scorched iron core remnant), for example.
The star will cycle for *millions* of years as it moves up to higher elements and temperatures.
The *end* is indeed sudden, but you're already far away from the original home orbit and a dyson sphere kind of thing is even less practical than normal because of the enormous size of the red giant and the high solar wind.
So, even if you suddenly find that the projections are off by far enough that your final evacuation is not ready, you will already be living out around Neptune. But... a star like ours will burn out and not become a supernova. So you're talking about a star with at least 8 solar masses. The red giant will be even more huge, so your living places will be very far back.
You might not evacuate the solar system on short notice, but can find shelter nearby. Like, get behind a Neptune-like planet, such as the one your habitat is orbiting already.
Now the bad news: the blast of electromagnetic radiation is easily blocked by a planet or constructed shield. The problem will come from neutrinos. The flux is *so incredibly high* that it will transmute a significant number of atoms in your body and every other material, and the planet-sized shield won't stop it.
A T2 civilization will be beyond our comprehension, not just 1950 but in space. They may not use biological bodies. They will have advanced nanotechnology. Maybe they will turn themselves into spores that are designed to weather the conditions by using redundancy and storage systems that physically won't mind a little transmutation. Maybe they will beam themselves elsewhere. Maybe they will become one with the star and live on as energy beings. Maybe they will all be destroyed and restored from backups made before they went to study the star close-up, and will be sorry they lost the continuity and richness of memory (but not all memory since updates are sent out periodically).
[See here](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova#Core_collapse) for more about supernovae. You should read up on that as a prerequisite, not just learn a little from what questions you thought to ask.
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They go back in time to when their sun was young and hydrogen rich and encase the entire star in a oversize [General Products Hull](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Products) that neatly encases their sun. Or perhaps, they are just good planners and don't need to travel back in time.
Due to the GP hull, the sun lasts longer than it otherwise would since it is not wasting its hydrogen on solar flares and solar wind. In the late stages, the additional pressure on the star keeps the star from even going into the giant/supergiant phase as the helium burning phase kicks in. During the main sequence phase, the fuel losses are actually quite minor, but they become quite large in the later stages of a star.
If the stellar radiation becomes too intense over time, your can even activate the Slaver stasis shield, cycling on and off the sun rapidly (hundreds of time per second you would not even notice), adjusting the duty cycle to match the desired level of radiation. This would also obviously extend the stars life.
This should extend the useful life of their sun by many millions, if not billions of year. If the alien race is emotionally similar to the Puppeteers, they would perhaps prefer this method over evacuation anyway. It is similar to the Puppeteers solution to their problem in that respect.
I've read the *Fleet of Worlds* and know how the Puppeteers build a hull, so this is not completely practical at that level, but perhaps an alternate hull construction technique would be possible, or just another similar technology.
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Sadly, the real answer to the question as postulated is that it cannot be done. 10 years is not enough time to make any difference sans time travel. Even if you have fully advanced Von-Neuman machines at your service, you can't make a change to the core of your sun in ten years. No non-magical machine can penetrate to to core of a star and alter its composition because of the temperature are hot enough to turn all matter into plasma quickly.
To prevent a nova, you must change the core. And if you have magic tech, surely you could evacuate to safety,
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It occurred to me later that our aliens actually could penetrate the core. All you have to to is target your sun with a gas planet traveling at very high velocities. A small red-giant is about 20 solar diameters, so lets assume a radius of 12 million km. The radius of 12 million km can be traversed at .1 c in about 400 seconds. Since the photosphere is not very dense, the gas planet could hit the core largely intact. Note, that .1 c may simply be faster than needed -- .01c means 4000 seconds (1.1 hours) to reach the core, don't know the lowest speed that would allow you to hit the core which depends on the size and the planet and what percentage needs to penetrate the core.
I am pretty sure that this would be a bad day for our aliens though as the impact would cause huge solar solar flares, and the sudden influx of new hydrogen fuel would perhaps react at a greatly accelerated pace since the core temps are much hotter than those needed to fuse hydrogen.
But, instead of dropping in a planet, why not drop in a big lump of frozen hydrogen enough for say 1 minute worth of fusion, 42 billion metric tons of hydrogen. Now the splash "crater" and solar flares are much smaller and I am pretty sure that most of the hydrogen can still penetrate to the core. Optimize the size and speed of your hydrogen ice balls and repeat as needed.
Even given this strategy, I still don't think it actually helps out the aliens. The core will become even hotter as most of the new fuel burns much faster than the current helium/carbon, etc. core. So the existing core will simply burn faster. I think you have to remove the heavy atoms in the core at the same time you refuel it to actually drop the core temperature. We hit the magic tech required level once again.
So, still no happy answer. But maybe this gives someone an idea for saving the day.
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Here's an out-there idea that might make a good plot.
They are there studying the red giant and eventual core collapse close up. Maybe they plan to *use* the energy of the supernova to do something, and is part of their development plan for moving to type-III. Perhaps it is to generate a wormhole or warp drive experiment or study physics at very high energy beyond existing experiments. So, maybe they have tinkered with the stellar core and accidentally accelerated the collapse!
Maybe the energy\_harvesting thing will prevent a normal supernova as the energy is taken for some use. Their plan is to quickly modify the apparatus to take almost all the energy, even though that wrecks the experiment or engineering effort involved.
Maybe they are creating a wormhole and they can manage to, use it to escape by swallowing the entire habitat, before the blast reaches there (light-hours away). Or not a wormhole but space-warping stuff, so they shape it to form a fork on front of them and remain protected in the lee, or make a bubble around them, or something.
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Wikipedia's article on the Kardeshev Scale predicts that a [Type II](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale#Type.C2.A0II_civilization_methods) civilisation may have access to [star-lifting processes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting).
It seems highly unlikely that if a T2 civilisation were unable to evacuate a solar-system within a certain window, they'd be able to prevent a giant nuclear explosion in *less* time.
The most plausible option seems to be;
>
> Attempt to delay your solar-apocalypse as long as possible while you evacuate as many as you can.
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Looking at the answer Thaddeus wrote it occurs to me that since you are talking about the balance of energy production and mass, it would be optimal to directly add energy to the star without adding mass even if you expect that mass to work as fuel. This has some benefits:
**No added mass.** If you add mass it increases the size of the star and even if you manage to make it postpone the super nova, it will still happen and probably become more energetic. Although with super novas that is not really relevant.
**Propagation.** While energy, just like mass, will be added to the surface not to the core, energy will reach the core with conduction and radiation (actually reduced conduction and radiation of energy away from the core) even if convection is too low for new fuel to reach the core. You make the surface hotter, the core **will** lose heat lower and collapse will be postponed.
**Evaporation.** Increasing the surface temperature will make the star lose mass faster thru stellar wind. Reasonably this would not be significant, but it might be possible to make some specific spots on the surface **very** hot with lasers or similar focussed energy. This might allow stripping mass off the surface in a controlled fashion. It might be possible to trigger fusion reactions on the surface, which would make feeding energy to the star much easier. And the explosions might be capable of stripling noticeable amounts of mass.
**Civilization level.** The level of civilization specified in the question is pretty much defined by the fact that it has access to sufficient energy for this. They **should** be capable of building mirrors or other infrastructure capable of using a significant portion of the stars energy output to make it cool slower. And have enough control of the process to keep any habitable planets habitable.
[Answer]
Build a Dyson sphere around the star, with an opening pointing away from your system. You might be able to deflect much of the matter way from your system, but the supernova will happen nonetheless.
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Related Question : [Can we 'beam' energy from the moon?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/3372/can-we-beam-energy-from-the-moon)
I was wondering if instead of 'beam'ing energy from the moon, could it be possible to extend a power cable from the earth to the moon?
If the power cable was fixed at a stationary point on earth, it would be at one of the poles, I guess, otherwise the cable would wrap around the earth as the moon revolves. What other reasons could prevent this from becoming a reality, or what type of improvement in technology would be required to make this achievable?
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*Edit*
I asked this question primarily because it was stated in the above question that 'beam'ing energy from the moon to earth would have a pretty bad efficiency. Now, as several people mentioned in the comments, I get it that a cable would be no better as it too would lose power during transmission. However, for the sake of this question, let's assume that the cable material is a superconductor, and has the adequate properties (tensile strength, etc.) to withstand the rigors of satellite-tethering!
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The first and major issue is already presented in the question. Since the moon is not in geostationary orbit around the earth, that is: it doesn't orbit the earth at the same speed that the earth rotates (aka lunar month is different from earth day), thus the moon appears over different places of earth. Any cable attached to earth and the moon would wrap around earth over time. Attaching the cable in the polar region of earth is not going to help much without some kind of an "untangler" in space because the plane of the moon's trajectory (its orbital inclination) is not polar with respect to earth.
A second major issue is the material to fabricate such a cable: mainly its (tensile) strength to support its own weight. Refer to the concept of a space elevator to find out more about that issue. A material with a large tensile strength vs. density ratio would be required.
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It's not really feasible, and even if it was it's not what people would do. There are lots of good reasons not to place the generators on the moon (for example the obvious generation to do in space is solar, but the moon has nights and days).
On the other hand though if we were running a Space Elevator out to just past geosynchronous orbit (so that centripetal force keeps it in place) then it would be quite easy to have massive solar panels on the station at the end of the space elevator and run the power from those back down the cable. That has most of the advantages of the moon and few of the disadvantages.
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**You need space elevator**. And not only one. If my calculations are correct, you need *four of them*, possibly connected to each other.
(Googling Space elevator length gave me 60000 miles = 96560.6 km. Googling "distance to Moon" gave me 384400 km. $384400 \div 96560.6 = 3.98$, thus 4 space elevators)
**You need to somehow resolve variable distance of Moon to Earth**
As stated in the comments, the Moon changes its distance relative to the Earth by 10 percent. This means its distance can be:
$$(384400 - (0.1 \times 384400)) < \text{ distance } < (384400 + (0.1 \times 384400))$$
$$ 345960\text{km} < \text{ distance } < 422840\text{km}$$
So, you do not only need 4 space elevators, you need to build space elevators using curved cable, which is another level of the whole engineering issue.
**You need to resolve losses on the cable**
Being in energy field, I have to tell you sad news. The power cables lose their power on the go. We kinda resolve it by pushing the power on high voltage to the cables, but you are still going to lose some power.
Long story short, I believe it is more plausible story to beam energy than to send it via cable
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A few others have addressed the "how" of it, so I'll try to take a stab at the "why" of it. Rather than having a power station on the moon, why not have the cable itself *be* the power station.
An electric generator consists of a conducting coil moving within a magnetic field. The Earth itself emits a magnetic field. In 1996, NASA had an orbiting spacecraft extend a 20 km conducting wire. The orbit of the spacecraft moved the wire through the Earth's magnetic field, creating a significant current. <http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/wtether.html>
The problem is that this energy robs kinetic energy from the spacecraft. The more electricity you generate, the more you slow down the spacecraft. For a small body, this isn't viable for power generation, since you would need to continuously accelerate the ship to make up for the drag.
Instead, let's steal kinetic energy from the moon. The tether moves around the earth with the moon, moving through the earth's magnetic field. The tether produces electricity, which we use.
Wouldn't this slow the moon and bring it crashing down on our heads? Well, yeah, but the moon has quite a bit of kinetic energy. A rough calculation gives about 3.6\*10^28 joules, or enough to supply the entire world's power supply for the next 65 million years. That would then be a problem for our descendants.
To resolve losses, consider that the strongest power generation will be close to the earth, where the magnetic field is strongest. The connection to the moon is present to make sure that the near end of the cable keeps moving. Perhaps that part of the cable could be made of superconducting material, to further minimize losses.
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Scientist haven't found a way to control lightnings. If they can achieve that, there could be a way without a cable in the whole distance, and a pole from Moon, and several poles from Earth could make the connection, but in a wireless way. So the cable is impossible, but power connection has a chance. By the way it can't be effective, or cheap. Maybe transports with "batteries" with very huge capacity of power can be a way.
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Make the cable non-physical. I mean not solid matter in the usual manner. A string of thin ionized plazma will support magnetic field lines. Those are vibrated to transmit power, and fancy modulation is also used to keep a tight wound torus bundling the field lines together, trapping them and the plazma in mutual feedback. A few superconductive rings made from carbon nanotubes, every few thousand miles, are used for robust containment and initiation.
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Given the capacity to 'beam' power to the moon in so many forms, why a power cable? Or solar on the moons? If you need a midway point...a 'beanstalk' or 'space elevator' to get out of the atmosphere, and then a rotating laser to beam power to the moon from there.
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There is no way to build this cable.
Pavel Janicek came close. Given the situation he described it could be done, although it takes more than 4 cables:
1) You need a space elevator to get into space.
2) You need an orbital ring to actually connect to (monorail fashion, it must be free to move along the ring) as neither body keeps one face pointed at the other. (Yes--the moon does not present a constant face to us! It's called libration--the moon wobbles back and forth. While it's approximately right the end of the cable would wobble badly!) Keeping this ring stable means at least two space elevators, I suspect three would be needed.
3) As he said, the moon moves in and out during it's orbit. His answer of a curly cable wouldn't do it--you're flapping the cable around, that's got to do very bad things. Instead, don't actually connect it. Instead you have cables heading out from both the Earth and the Moon, they are long enough to have overlap even when the Moon is at it's farthest. These cables are coaxial, in effect they are trains riding on each other. This allows it to move in and out without causing disaster.
However, there's one more factor involved. The moon doesn't orbit in the plane of the equator, but 5.145 degrees off from it. I haven't been able to dream up a coupler that can deal with this situation.
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So, in most sci-fi worldbuilding, there inevitably is a need for powerful energy sources to do all the magic, which simple energy sources such as burning coals, energy from the earth and possibly even Nuclear Fusion is not enough.
Thus, I ask, what are the most powerful theoretical energy sources?
Here are my notes:
* *No need to be present in modern times, can be in the future and theoretical, as long as it is still "hard" in nature.*
* *Calculations are optional, but helpful.*
* *Assume that any resources necessary to make such energy sources is there. In other words, virtually unlimited resources to build such a device.*
* *Would like unusual or uncommon sources of energy. I would not be happy to see answers like antimatter or ZPE.*
* *Any size for the power source is fine. From portable to stellar. Whatever size you want.*
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I would highly suggest that you read the Isaac Asimov book, *The Gods Themselves*. In this story, humans transport matter between a few parallel dimensions where the fundamental laws of nature are different. I don't remember the specifics, but here's the basic idea:
In Universe A, our physical laws prevent certain Isotopes from forming. However, in universe B, their physical laws allow these isotopes to form, while prohibiting the existence of isotopes present in universe A. By transporting an isotope from Universe B into Universe A, an Isotope begins to decay, as it is subjected to different physical laws and thus cannot sustain itself. The process of decay gives off energy, and seemingly, we have an infinite source of energy.
Problem: turns out that transporting matter from Universe B to A comes with the side effect of *changing the physical laws of our universe*. Stuff gets weird, and there is the concern that our physical laws changing might make our sun go supernova.
The solution? Why, to find a third Universe! By finding a universe with another set of physical laws and interacting with it, we are able to, in essence, reset the physical laws of our universe to their default values, thus preventing any sort of cataclysm.
This is a very haphazard explanation, however, and it's definitely not as nuanced as the book. I would highly suggest that you give it a read in your spare time.
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Black Holes, if they indeed evaporate, are effectively perfect mass-energy converters. The trouble is that black holes small enough to emit this energy rapidly enough to be useful don't seem to occur in nature. In theory, they could be produced artificially, by focusing high energy beams onto the smallest point on which they can be focused, but you need the energy in the first place, so why not just use it directly?
A tiny amount of Neutronium, liberated from the gravity well that formed it, will explode most enthusiastically. Much like creating and maintaining artificial black holes, though, using Neutronium as an energy source requires tricks and logistics and some way to prevent it from exploding prematurely, and we don't have any idea what could do that.
If you can somehow cage micro black holes or Neutronium, all you need do is open the cage to get levels of energy that make nukes look like firecrackers. I expect it will cost more energy to maintain such a cage than you'd get out of it, especially over longer durations.
Among the most powerful explosions in the Universe are Quasars, but I have no idea how one could meaningfully harness one of those. A dramatically scaled down version could be a smaller black hole that you dump gas onto. The energy that results will not be as efficient as the black hole's death radiation, or even antimatter, but it could be fairly impressive if properly set up. I'm not familiar enough with the numbers to predict how much one could expect to get from such a system compared to Fusion.
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A reasonably plausible energy source: *total matter conversion* through black hole evaporation.
Black holes can bend the space around them and cause the creation of virtual particles, whose energy comes at the expense of the black hole's mass. The *smaller* a black hole is, the more it bends the space (even if the bent volume goes quickly down), and the faster it evaporates, until it goes "bang". This energy flux is equivalent to the black hole actually having a *temperature*, going up with the black hole's mass going down. This temperature is called Hawking temperature, and the thermal radiation it gives off is [Hawking radiation](http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1982IrAJ...15..327M), to all intent and purposes a kind of black body radiation.
So: create or obtain somehow a suitable black hole with a time-to-bang in the order of months to years. Bombard it with protons, creating an electrically charged black hole (what is called a [*Reissner–Nordström singularity*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reissner%E2%80%93Nordstr%C3%B6m_metric)). The black hole can now be manipulated and controlled using electric fields (of course, *enormous* electrostatic fields). Supply it with sufficient mass to balance the mass lost in radiation, to keep it at the same distance from the bang (you will need to shoot the mass fast enough to overcome the hole's radiation pressure) and reflect unwanted wavelengths back to their source.
You now have a [radiating point in space](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation#1976_Page_numerical_analysis), that can power a radiation conversion rig and supply energy in the process, while consuming mass.
While you *can* increase the radiation flux by pushing the black hole closer to explosion, it would be better and more efficient to have several black holes in parallel (this also allows more time, in case anything goes wrong, to implement remediation measures or, at worst, effect an escape).
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**Solar energy. From many stars. At once.**
There are a billion trillion stars. That should be plenty. Solar panels are pretty hard science.
1. Install solar panels around many stars. You could choose stars with optional radiant frequencies.
2. Power is transmitted back thru portals or wormholes. Portals are science less hard than solar panels, yes but standard handwaving for SF.
3. Confluence of portals transmits energy.
4. Or (simpler!) you could just have the unfiltered radiance itself come thru the portals which would be less fussy as all the collection apparatus would be on your side where it would be easier to repair. Letting a distant star's radiation thru to where you live could get a little chancy, with odds of "mishap" increasing with every additional star added to collection.
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Why not? It could be still nuclear fusion, but in a small practical device. A set of ultrasound speakers create dense bubbles in a gas or a liquid, a set of lasers ignite the bubbles. The timing and the orientations of speakers and lasers are so complex and delicate that the devices need to be re-tuned at regular intervals. The technology and the knowledge of the proper tuning is controlled to a small group of people who are thus very powerful.
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I also vote for a black hole. BUT NOT EVAPORATING IT. It is dangerous anyway.
Simply throwing matter into the acretion disk can convert some 40% of the mass into electromagnetic radiation. This is by far the most effective substance to energy converter known and the most bright objects in the universe (see quasars). It looks even brighter if you happen to look along the rotational axis (see polar jets).
(Except, of course, direct annihilation with antimatter, but antimatter sources are scarce these days.)
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Related to the direction of black holes mentioned prior, "Vacuum Energy" would likely be the most plentiful but also most diffuse energy source. It's also one of current the Mysteries of the Universe so it will at least not rile up too many hard science purists
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_energy>
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**Antimatter** *(go with me on this)*
Ok, I know you said you didn't want to see this, but let me explain. The biggest issue with antimatter is that it is incredibly difficult to create and contain. You end up putting more energy into the this process than you can get out of it. To get around this issue we just need a source that we don't have to create and is self contained until we extract it (which is where the unusual source bit you asked for comes in). *(If, on the other hand, you don't want to use antimatter simply because its an overused trope, then my sincere apologies! Please feel free to skip the rest :)*
According to the multi-verse theory, it is entirely possible that there exists a parallel universe, matching our own in all physical laws, but made up entirely of antimatter. (Possibly the most likely parallel universe to exist. Also explains where all of our antimatter went...) So, in the distant future, we discover a way to connect to this universe (via some kind of wormhole or something), pull bits of antimatter over, annihilate them with our own matter and boom, all the energy we could ever want. (Also potential catastrophic meltdown and universal annihilation, so be sure to put up some caution signs!)
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Pulsars emit intense radiation bursts from their poles as they spin. Build a containment unit with energy harvesters at both poles of the pulsar.
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Sphalerons: as the [Wikipedia article on them has it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphaleron):
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> According to physicist Max Tegmark, the theoretical energy efficiency from conversion of baryons to antileptons would be orders of magnitude higher than the energy efficiency of existing power-generation technology such as nuclear fusion. Tegmark speculates that an extremely advanced civilization might use a "sphalerizer" to generate energy from ordinary baryonic matter.
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Given an Earth-like planet, what sort of geological features or weather systems are required for a place to have the same average day and night temperatures throughout the whole year? Is such a thing even possible?
The closest I could think of were tropical climates that are hot all year long (though even these have cooler wet seasons), but I'm looking for something more temperate, around 15-25°C during the day.
The minimum area of the region should be roughly as big as Belgium.
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A large body of water can have an enormously stabilizing effect on the weather. It is a common joke that weather at San Diego is the same year round.
While not entirely true, it does have some truth to it. Summer in San Diego usually has a range from 65F to 75F, while the Winter range is 50F to 65F. I live at about the same latitude, but several hundred miles inland (and several thousand feet higher) away from any body of water and temperature can range from 63F to 92F in summer and 27F to 53F in winter.
Water does not guarantee a mild climate though, as the Great Lakes region is known for its Lake Effect snow which can drop a substantial amount of precipitation in a short time.
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Seasons are pretty universal, being caused by the angle at which the sun's light hits the planet. To make a point on a planet without seasons, you have two main options:
1. Give the planet's axis no tilt. This will allow you to have different regions with different temperatures depending on their distance to the equator, but no seasons anywhere else on the planet either.
2. Put the planet further away from the sun, so it is cooler overall. The tropics will still be season-less just like on Earth, but their temperature will be cooler.
A planet with an extremely thick atmosphere that blocks out the sun and heats the planet through greenhouse gases will have less temperature variation over the entire planet. Of course, such a planet will not actually be Earth-like.
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A large body of water is **part** of the answer.
The water circulation in the Pacific Basin is clockwise (bringing cold water from Alaska to California) in the summer, and *counter*-clockwise (bringing warm water from the tropics to California) in the winter. The average water temperature off San Francisco (and probably also San Diego) is *higher* in the winter than in the summer.
This has a lot to do with the nearly constant temperature in San Diego.
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The reason of why we have seasons, and those are always opposed in the North and South hemispheres, is because the axial tilt in the Earth rotation axis, which is 23.4°. This gives a huge difference of the Sun's light incidence over the planet between the Summer and Winter seasons.
Let's calculate the higher and lower effective Sun's light incidence over various regions of the Earth using a simple formula: **c = cos(incidence angle)**
In the regions near the 0° latitude (the Equator) the difference is from 100% Sun's light incidence at the equinoxes and 92% at the solstices (both twice a year) which gives the tropical regions barely the same temperature every day.
At higher latitudes (let's say Rome, at 41° 54′ N) the differences can be from 95% at Summer solstice to 42% at Winter solstice, which makes a hot Summer and a cold Winter.
If you want a region to have the same temperatures every day a year, your world should have its rotation axis perfectly perpendicular to its orbit (0° axial tilt). This way the temperature in a certain region will depend only on its latitude since you will no longer have seasons.
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The simplest answer was given above: give the planet a perfectly circular orbit with zero obliquity (no axial tilt) and each part of the planet's surface will receive the same energy from the star year-round. You could take this a step farther and assume your planet is orbiting a red dwarf star such that its habitable zone is close enough that the planet becomes tidally locked to the star, so the planet always shows the same face to the star. This can make the planet look like an eyeball (see here: <https://planetplanet.net/2014/10/07/real-life-sci-fi-world-2-the-hot-eyeball-planet/> or here: <http://nautil.us/blog/forget-earth_likewell-first-find-aliens-on-eyeball-planets>). For an eyeball planet the temperature structure would vary a lot across the planet but not in time.
The thicker the atmosphere, the more uniform the temperature across the planet's surface (Venus is the extreme example, but one to be avoided if you want life on your planet). I don't have a good feeling for the effect of the spin rate on the stability of the local temperature. Faster-spinning planets will have more "banding" structure in their atmospheres but I don't know if that is a stabilizing force. Someone with a specialty in atmospheric dynamics would probably know.
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# High altitude tropics
While San Diego has remarkably stable temperatures year round, there are other places that are even more stable. In tropical highlands, places get the same stable insolation as the steamy lowland tropics, but the air temperatures are mitigaged by altitude. This results in basically the most pleasant places on earth.
There are several tropical highlands straddling the equator. Africa has the Rift Valley mountains, from [Ethiopia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addis_Ababa#Climate) and [Nairobi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nairobi#Climate) in the Kenyan Highlands through [Rwanda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kigali#Climate) and Burundi. All the cities in the Andes from [Caracas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caracas#Climate) to [La Paz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Paz#Climate) have pretty stable temperatures. And through extraordinarily wet, the [highlands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Hagen#Climate) of New Guinea have very stable temperatures too.
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It's called a cave. Go down about a hundred feet and the weather pattern is very stable. It's a bit chilly, but not impossible to make a comfy place.
Avernum takes place in a giant interconnected cave system.
The same could be said for the Underdark, though I've only been there in Neverwinter Nights so I can't say if there are storms.
Journey to the Center of the World also featured interconnected cave systems.
If you want something a little more open, a Dyson Sphere or Ring should also have the same temperament everywhere unless something's gone terribly wrong. Like the heat source drifting closer to one wall (floor?) than another.
Planets can't really be temperament unless they're tidal locked to their star. Then it's all about placement. The side that's locked toward the star would be hot, then a safe zone around the Dawn Belt and finally a frozen wasteland on the other side. Our moon is Tidal Locked to the Earth meaning that for millions of years, we've only seen one side of her.
If you have a dimensional disturbance story (a.k.a magic) or a possible Fey Loci then that would solve the problem as well.
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This may not be the answer you are looking for, but thought I'd post it anyway: if a country is close to the equator (e.g. Sri Lanka), the temperature would be same (approx. 30 degrees C) all year around. The day time is also fairly constant i.e. sun rises at about 6am and sets at about 6pm (variation through the year may be about 1 hour).
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There is a trace of radioactive isotope of potassium found in every bananas, I'm curious can I grow a banana which is rich in heavier unstable elements so that I can harvest and threaten my neighbor? (A single banana must be able produce fission reaction.)
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No.
Now lets run through some of the reasons.
Some plants do indeed concentrate metals from their environment. Bananas do indeed concentrate potassium and in theory such mechanisms could be used to concentrate fissile material.
<http://nepis.epa.gov/Adobe/PDF/9100FZE1.PDF>
Chemical isotope seperation is indeed possible though it's tends to work better with light elements:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotope_separation>
Radiation isn't too much of an issue, living things can evolve to handle extreme radiation up to the point that there are microorganisms which can live inside a running nuclear reactor feeding off the radiation.
So it's vaguely plausible that a plant might concentrate fissile isotopes.
No, the big problem is getting enough fissile material close enough together fast enough. If your banana plant can survive the radiation, can select fissile isotopes and can concentrate them you still run into the problem that if you have material close to critical as soon as it goes supercritical it explodes with the force of tnt, not the force of a nuclear bomb. Once your big fruit gets close to the tipping point of being able to produce a nuclear reaction it boils the water inside itself and produces a wet pop.
In actual nuclear weapons they need a "gun" setup where one lump of fissile material is shot inside other fast enough that it's way above the limit for going supercritical right away so that a lot more energy can build up before the lump of uranium tears itself apart with the energy released.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aEGOC.png)
If you want something sort of feasible you might be better having your mad scientist produce a banana plant that makes nitroglycerin.
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**No, because you can't make a nuke out of potassium.**
Being radioactive is not enough to be a viable nuclear fuel source. If you want to make a fission bomb, you need a material that is *fissile*. [Fissile materials](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fissile_material) are those which are capable of sustaining a nuclear fission chain reaction. Uranium is one such material, which when struck by a neutron will sometimes split into two smaller atoms and release several neutrons in the process.
Potassium doesn't do this. It decays either into calcium by releasing a beta particle (during the process of which one of its neutrons becomes a proton) or else decays into argon by capturing an electron or releasing a positron, but will not enter a fission chain reaction under any circumstances.
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One additional issue not addressed above.
The plant can't make radioactive isotopes itself, it can only concentrate them. You would need sufficient radioactive material in the soil within range of the plant's roots. Assuming a large root structure filling a cube 10m to a side, this gives us approximately 1000 cubic meters of soil to mine.
Assuming you'd like to concentrate uranium to build your bomb, the Earth's crust contains around 2.8ppm uranium. This would yield a maximum of 2.8g in your banana assuming maximum extraction efficiency. Not quite enough for a bomb, but perhaps enough to make an interesting story.
If you plant your banana tree right above a shallow deposit of ore, and give its roots the ability to penetrate rock you might have more success, but then you might simply dig the stuff out of the ground.
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Taking into account Murphy's answer...
1. Grow the fruit in a specially designed radioactive-isotope-rich environment
2. Feed it or genetically engineer it to be of a very large size.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SJIdu.jpg)
3. Grow it into a mould to make it into a [shaped charge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaped_charge)
4. When the time comes to fire it, you can make it suddenly contract in size by freeze-drying it. <http://www.instructables.com/id/Freeze-Dry-At-Home/>
5. Stand well back!
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When you say *"A single banana must be able produce fission reaction"*, I assume you mean a [fission chain reaction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_chain_reaction#Fission_chain_reaction). As such you need:
1. Fissile material. I think the other answers have addressed the implausibility of this part.
2. At least a critical mass of that fissile material.
Assume for now that you have the power to transmute any element to the same mass of any other element (implausible).
So to create a fission chain reaction, you will need (more than) a critical mass of that element. From [this table](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_mass#Critical_mass_of_a_bare_sphere), we see that californium-252 has the lowest critical mass of the elements listed at 2.73kg.
This is awfully heavy for a banana - I just weighed a pretty average looking one in my kitchen - it was 140g.
So even if you were able to transmute the entire mass of one banana to a fissile element, you wouldn't have enough to easily achieve a chain reaction.
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Perhaps there are elements with critical mass lower than this - suggestions welcome.
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Let's take your typical dragon- 12m long, reptilian, claws and horns, flies using big bat wings and breathes fire. Assuming that the dragon in question has wings and muscles big enough to get them off the ground with a stag in their claws and a human on their back, how much armour could the dragon wear? What material would be best- could you make a kevlar dragon-suit?
For the record, the dragons are employed by police/military, but ***I'm not asking about need***- I'm asking about their ability to wear armour.
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How much armor could such a dragon wear? As much as you want it to.
Anything that big can wear whatever armor it wants. Humans are known to fight in some pretty heavy armor. [Dragon Skin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Skin) (yes, it really is called that) [has been reported](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/18790506/ns/us_news-military/t/army-dragon-skin-armor-failed-battery-tests/) to weigh 47.5 lbs. (21.5 kg). The U.S. Army-issued Interceptor armor weighs only 28 lbs. (12.7 kg). According to the Army's [physical requirements](http://www.military.com/join-armed-forces/army-weight-rules.html), the Dragon Skin armor weighs about one-fifth the highest denoted weight for a human.
If your dragons are winged quadrupeds, they should be able to support armor that is up to one-half their own weight while on the ground (four legs allows greater carrying capacity). They likely wouldn't be able to fly while wearing it unless they possess some form of augmenting magic. Which, let's face it, is an extremely likely possibility, given that we don't find dragons in our world (nuts).
What should the armor be made out of? Anything you want to make it out of. Modern armors are made from synthetic materials and layers, such as Kevlar and Dragon Skin. Medieval armors were made from leather and steel. Ancient armors were made from animal hides and [even bone](http://siberiantimes.com/science/casestudy/features/warriors-3900-year-old-suit-of-bone-armour-unearthed-in-omsk/).
Of course, as the discussion in the comments is indicating, you probably don't need them to wear armor. If you're using a dragon to quell a riot, you're probably doing it wrong.
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Quadrupedal armor is a [very](https://worldwarriorbg.wordpress.com/2011/12/03/war-elephants/) [real](http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barding) [thing](http://www.bulletproofme.com/Canine_Vests.shtml), and while we don't have any flying quadrupeds that we would want to put armor on, it's not hard to imagine a design for such armor based off of the already-existing animal armor in the world.
They would have to cater to the specific needs of a dragon though - space for wings to come out and effectively create lift would be a primary concern. As would weight - too heavy an armor and rider, and a dragon wouldn't be able to fly at all (Not that non-flying dragons can't still be fearsome).
But the biggest issue you need to address is: Why would a dragon *need* armor in the first place? They are, after all, already covered in scales. Perhaps your dragon's hide isn't as impenetrable as some fictional counterparts, so armor *would* make sense. But if they have any protection from their scales at all, you'll have to justify why they would ever wear armor (bladeproof vs. bulletproof might work).
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tl;dr: If you've already [hand-waved](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HandWave) in a 12m long, massive, winged, fire-breathing, flying creature, armor really isn't much more of a stretch, so put whatever you want on them. Dragons are already so entrenched as a fantasy genre staple that nobody is looking too closely at weight ratios.
The reason dragons—or any other significantly sized, winged flying animals—don't exist has to do with size to strength and weight to wing surface area ratios and metabolic constraints. The real question is could a naked 12m long dragon fly at all, and, in the absence of magic or other hand-waving, the answer is absolutely not.
The first issue is that strength doesn't scale up as quickly as weight due to the [cube-squared problem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law#Biomechanics). A good discussion can be found [here](http://insects.about.com/od/antsbeeswasps/f/ants-lift-50-times-weight.htm), which I found via [this answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/9359/larger-weapons-for-a-larger-world/9382#9382).
The gist is that muscle strength is proportional to the surface area of the cross-section of the muscle strand, a two-dimensional measurement, so strength will vary (roughly) with the square of size. Weight depends on the volume of the creature, a three-dimensional measurement, so weight will vary with the cube of size.
The result is that the highest strength to weight ratios are found at the smallest scales. An ant can lift and carry 50 times its own weight, I can lift and carry only 1/4 to 1/2 of my own weight, and the very largest dinosaurs could likely only barely lift their own body mass. (The [very largest animals](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_organisms), whether modern or [prehistoric](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur_size), were aquatic, as they are too big to lift their own mass.)
Now, your dragons are 12m long (about 39 feet), which is about the length of a [T-Rex](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrannosaurus). Depending on who you ask, tyrannosaurs weighed between 5.4 metric tons (6.0 short tons) and 6.8 metric tons (7.5 short tons). I wouldn't think it unreasonable to assume that a dragon of similar size would fit somewhere into that weight range, but that means we are dealing with an animal with the length and mass of a [school bus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_bus). How could it fly if it can barely keep its body off the ground with its legs?
When the animal is winged, another limiting ratio comes into play at takeoff: mass to wing surface area. As discussed [here](http://qr.ae/fcwz3), the wing surface area required to provide enough lift to get off the ground will grow much faster than body weight as a creature is scaled up. Small birds can get away with small wings. Bigger birds require a *much* larger wingspan for their mass.
[How large](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_birds)?
[Ruby-throated hummingbirds](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby-throated_hummingbird) max out at 0.006kg weight and 0.11m wingspan.
[American crows](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_crow#Description) max out at 0.62kg weight and 1m wingspan.
[Mallards](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mallard#description) max out at 1.58kg weight and .98m wingspan.
[Peregrine falcons](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peregrine_falcon#Description) max out at 1.5kg weight and 1.2m wingspan.
[Bald eagles](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bald_eagle#Description) max out at 6.3kg weight and 2.3m wingspan.
[Wandering albatrosses](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wandering_albatross#Description), which have the largest wingspan of any living bird, max out at 12.7kg weight and 3.5m wingspan.
Of course, most dragons are depicted as featherless, with wings more like those of bats or pterosaurs than those of birds. This fact actually makes a flying, massive dragon even less workable, as [bat's wings are very thin and fragile](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat#Wings), composed of delicate skin stretched over bones with low mineral density (and thus high fragility). They rip and tear easily and would be even more prone to damage as you scale them up.
[Here is a table with bird and bat wing loadings](http://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/Wing_Loading.htm) which shows that even the largest bats have a mass-to-wing-surface-area ratio lower than that of a hummingbird.
It turns out feathers are an [efficient way of increasing wing surface area without adding much weight](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feather#Structures_and_characteristics), but even feathers run into limitations; [body mass in birds is actually constrained by how long it takes to replace flight feathers during molting](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090615203056.htm).
So let's look at the [quetzalcoatlus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzalcoatlus), very likely the largest creature to ever fly. A pterosaur, it massed over 200kg with a wingspan of up to 12m.
We're still [not even sure how quetzalcoatlus got off the ground](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-pterosaurs-first-took-flight/) or whether they were even capable of more than long glides from a high starting point and relied on thermals to climb.
But, making the completely arbitrary assumption that a 12m long dragon masses at least in the ballpark of a similarly sized Tyrannosaurus Rex—let's just call it 5000kg—that is still 25 times the mass of quetzalcoatlus. What kind of wingspan would our dragon need to have?
[This article](http://www.wired.com/2012/01/why-cant-humans-fly-like-birds/) attempted to (very roughly) predict the required wingspan of a human-sized (70kg) bird.
[This article on wing loading](http://sciencelearn.org.nz/Contexts/Flight/Science-Ideas-and-Concepts/Wing-loading) says that the maximum for bird flight is 25kg body weight per square meter of wing surface area ([Wikipedia backs it up](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_loading)). It also mentions that an elephant weighing 3.5 metric tons (which is actually small for an elephant according to [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_elephant#Description)) would need a wing surface area of 1750 square meters to take off. That's larger than six tennis courts, and basically requires the wings be made of aluminum or some other man-made material just to not buckle under their own weight. A dragon's wings would have to be prohibitively massive.
The final issue is metabolism. Dragons run into both the huge caloric requirements of dinosaurs (or any other multi-ton creature) and the even more demanding metabolic needs of flight. You don't get giant apex predators without giant prey (as with dinosaurs) or highly efficient feeding on concentrated food sources (like the way [blue whales gorge on up to 3.6 metric tons of krill in a single day](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_whale#Feeding)).
So where is your dragon getting his calories?
My brief research into metabolic requirements for flight determined that the topic is [complicated](http://www.fbs.leeds.ac.uk/staff/Rayner/Flight/publs/ioc/s31.1.htm). [Really complicated](http://jeb.biologists.org/content/213/16/2788.full.pdf). I'll come back to it when I have more time.
In conclusion, biology is all about [tradeoffs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tradeoffs_for_locomotion_in_air_and_water#Flying_birds), and dragons, envisioned as you describe, don't make any.
In earthlike gravity, air density, and physics, it's unlikely they could exist and fly at the scale you suggest even if designed expressly for that purpose. With or without armor.
On the other hand, we've identified dragons' only natural enemy: the square-cube problem!
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Let us compare to real world flying animals. An eagle can carry about 1/3 its weight while in flight, at least for shorter distances.
<http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=wildlifenews.view_article&articles_id=343>
Let us assume that in order to fly, despite its size a dragon must be very light. At 12 m long let us give it the weight of a horse. 380 -550 kg.
1/3 of that is 128-180 kg carrying capacity in nature for short distances.
With selective breeding and training we could assume they can extend the duration they could carry this weight to a more useful distance or time. (Even short range flight would be incredibly useful though)
So any Armour that does not restrict movement or hinder aerodynamics that gives a total load less then 550 kg could be used.
Hardened leather would be best protection to weight ratio. However be aware there is nothing non magical that will protect from the force of a Batista bolt. (Giant crossbow) Since standard cross bows could pierce even plate mail.
Edit: What type of armor should they wear?
This depends largely on your world and what they need to be concerned about.
Are dragons smart animals? Then the pilot is the most important part. Once he dies the dragon runs amok. (Like elephants) Most of your armor should go to protecting the pilot.
Where does the biggest threat come from? Do most dragons die in air combat? (dog fights) If that is the case most of their armor would be in the back and rear since that is traditionally where most dog fight kills come from.
Are dragons primarily used for dive bombing? Then you might want supper heavy armor but only on the front (what is exposed to the ground in the steep dive). Make it out of angles to focus more on deflecting shots instead of stopping. Make it arrow dynamic and you will even dive faster. Perhaps instead of armor they would take some type of shield for this? Then they could drop the shield as a weapon at the bottom of their strike to add to the confusion. Then they would be lighter immediately after and able to escape more quickly. Do remember though, they are flesh and blood. To much force/weight in this decent and the dragon might break off its wings trying to stop.
I think for police dragons hardened leather is best. But you will have some forcible entry dragons that are heavily armored and stick to the ground.
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Concerning a kevlar suit: I would assume that a dragon that breathes fire has some kind of natural protection against fire inside his throat / mouth, and it would be pretty surprising if his throat was more resistant to fire than his scales. So fire protection shouldn't be as much of a priority as resistance to piercing/slashing.
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Dragons are probably far heavier than the armor you're placing on them, to the point of being relatively insignificant to them. For comparison, an [elephant armor](https://www.royalarmouries.org/india/single-object/2) weights around 160kg, with the elephant itself weighting around 7,000kg. As long as you're wearing them with anything weighting as much as conventional materials for human armor, it shouldn't be cumbersome to them.
As for those wanting a need to equip them with armor, it can be used as protection against [Dragonslaying equipment](http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Yusaris); almost every setting with dragons on it also has some equipment that magically inflicts extra damage to them, but is not any better than traditional swords against mundane armor.
Since these dragons are being used by the military, they would expect foreign armies to develop some Dragonslaying weapons and create specialized troops just to deal with dragon-based regiments. It's just as anti-tanks units in modern warfare; clumsy against foot soldiers, but needed against any enemy bringing tanks against you. If you can stop such specialized weaponry with mundane armor, you're a fool to not suit your dragons with it.
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They can wear armor as armor can be specifically designed for them or by them if they ever need to wear armor which also raises the question if they even need it.
That would depend on what the dragon would be fighting as in the case they are fighting normal humans or really anything that could not really damage there scales they would not need armor just like how humans don't need armor when fighting an ant.
But if they are fighting anything that can damage or penetrate there scales like magic or dragon slaying weapons,very powerful magic beasts,very high level adventurers,other dragons and etc they would definitely use armor and considering that there are already dragons in that fantasy world it is not far-fetched to assume that magical material exists like mithril,adianmantium, and etc there armor is likely to be made of those materials as armor made of mundane material is likely useless to a dragon anyway
A dragon wearing mithril dragon armor will have a significant advantage against a dragon that is not wearing one.
Armor also provides extra protection that could save a dragon's live when fighting enemies of similar strength so it would be stupid to not wear it when going to combat
I honestly find it baffling how in a lot of stories how dragons don't wear armor I can understand if they are not intelligent or they are the most powerful in the story but If the dragons are intelligent and there are multiple of them or there are creatures equal or greater to them in strength I find it just downright stupid that they don't wear any kind of protection what so ever seriously considering the benefits of wearing it, it seems illogical not to.
Now answering the question yes a dragon can and should wear armor as armor could always design armor for them and they would definitely need it especially when against things or beings capable of threatining or killing them but if there opponent could not even scratch there scale no they do not need to wear armor like how a human does not need armor when fighting against an ant.
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Nowadays heavy duty drilling and machining is often done with cutting tools fashioned from cemented carbides, which consist of a hard phase like Tungsten Carbide embedded in a "soft" metal like Cobalt. This gives a really tough material that withstands a lot of punishment. I'm wondering if swords made from such a material could best convential steel weapons and armor.
Here are some reasons why noone tried it before:
* Cemented carbides were invented in the 1920s when swords were long obsolete
* Their production is costly and requires powder metallurgy
* A sword has some very challenging geometries for this method (especially the thickness)
* You need actual diamonds to sharpen them (and depending on the pressed pellet you would need to remove a lot of material)
Now suppose an organization has the means and the will to make such weapons and swordfights were still a thing, would a warrior equipped with a cemented carbide blade have a distinct advantage over an adversary with steel weapons and armor?
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Steel swords **were** made by exactly this technic. Hard-tempered steel at the edge and soft elastic steel in the middle. That is why it was an art and good swords were so expensive.
As for cemented carbide - it is a bad material for swords for exactly the same reason why diamond is: it is fragile. It does not like hard impacts and can just shatter into pieces. Steel is the best material for such a thing as a sword even now. No one uses cemented carbides in an axe after all.
Adding cemented carbides would still be a good option, but only for the tip of a sword, for single use thrust through armor. It would be a really great advantage.
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Starting from near the bottom, you do *not* need diamonds to sharpen cemented carbide; it can be done with a so-called "green carborundum" grinding wheel (which is silicon carbide bonded grit). Specific, but quite a bit cheaper and more durable than diamond grit abrasives.
The biggest issue with carbide for something like a sword is brittleness. Carbide inserts in saw blades and machine tools are made of cemented carbide, and they're notorious for chipping and breaking on impacts (such as interrupted cuts). This can be managed in machine tools and saw blades by controlling feed rates, but you don't have that option with a sword. A hard parry is likely to leave you with an effect like that scene in one of the *Highlander* movies, where the sword just shatters like glass.
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There is one thing to be aware of:
Many modern steels already work in a very similar fashion.
You will notice that tungsten and/or vanadium are often mentioned on tools or knives - these elements are so called carbide formers, and the carbides they form (as literal little lumps of carbide... controlling their size is much of the art of making such steels) are much harder than the surrounding steel matrix. Resulting in a material inheriting a mix properties from both soft matrix and hard carbide.
A steel with "coarse carbides" (big lumps) can be very very durable, but also limits how sharp and especially how easy it can be sharpened. Trying to grind a mishmosh of hard and soft particles smooth can easily end up with the harder particles being displaced - and the holes they leave being stuffed shut with worn off bits of the softer material.
Iron itself also forms carbides, however these are closer in hardness to the matrix steel itself. Steels solely relying on iron carbides and a harder-than-usual steel matrix are preferred for, say, a fine woodworking plane or sushi knife that you don't need to be super wear resistant but super sharp and hard.
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Unfortunately, there seems to be a significant amount of missing information in the OPs thought process about using carbide tools to cut through armor. A carbide tipped/toothed sword might look cool, but I seriously doubt it would work very well.
**Disclaimer:** I'm not a professional machinist, I only pretend to be one (sometimes) at night and on weekends. I don't have all the answers, but I know of plenty of problems.
# Feeds and Speeds
When doing milling, cutting threads, or anything to do with machining metals, feeds and speeds are absolutely critical to the process. These calculations take into account the type of material you are cutting (by actually knowing what it is), the cutting speed (as accurately as possible), the size of the cutter, and even the angle of the cutting blade to the surface (baked into the type of machining as well as the tool used).
If you get it wrong, you risk damaging the tool to the point where it dulls or even breaks. With many machining tools, it won't even cut below a certain speed, it just wears the tool out prematurely by grinding the material away instead of cutting.
This is a science and machinists know it can go very wrong very quickly. "Wrong" being a damaged or completely broken tool. There is definitely a fair amount of "wiggle room" here, depending on your machine and tools, but you won't know how much you can "wiggle" until you are familiar with the tool, machine, and the material. With the material changing with every single opponent's armor, you're never going to be able to know what's safe until it's likely too late.
<https://www.wisc-online.com/LearningContent/mtl8202/MLT8202.htm>
Without knowing the exact material and hardness of the material you are up against, you immediately risk damaging your sword. Since no human can gauge their swing against a mobile attacker to inches per second or feet per second until it's already in motion and not with the accuracy needed, there's no way to know if it's appropriate to actually cutting the armor vs blunt force. There's also no way to get the correct cutting angle between the sword and the armor, since both are in motion and a change in surface curvature in the armor might cause the carbide to skip off, rather than cut. Since carbide is so brittle, skipping off amounts to a hard shock which can break it. Even sword made of steel can't be brittle, since they need to flex with every blow the take or give.
Even if you had a motorized chainsaw sword, you still aren't getting the feeds & speeds right, so instead of breaking off 1-2 teeth, you're breaking off 10-20, if not all of them.
# Cutting depth
Milling processes need to be done with a specific cutting depth and chip removal. If you remove too much material at once, you also risk damaging the tool. If you don't remove the material fast enough, you risk cutting it again, preventing you from making a deeper cut in the armor.
This is managed partly by the tool as well as by the feeds & speeds mentioned above.
# Tool pressure.
If you don't have the right pressure between the tool and the work piece, you risk breaking the tool. This is why machining machines usually have really tight tolerances and machinists talk about backlash (recoil arising between parts of a mechanism) and chatter (to vibrate rapidly in cutting) quite a bit, since they can negatively affect not only a cut but also damage tools. Both can cause excessive tool wear as well as not correctly cutting the material.
When using a tool freehand (sword) with a material that isn't in a vise or otherwise clamped down (opponent), you aren't going to get the correct tool pressure to get a good cut. Depending on circumstances, you may have too little pressure or too much. Too little and you don't get a cut, and too much damages the tool.
You also have to worry about how far apart and the size of your teeth. Uncommon knowledge says that you should have at least 3 teeth engaged with material, or you risk shearing them off. This goes for band saw blades made of spring steel, but I can imagine it works for just about anything.
Also, if your teeth are too close, you'll need more pressure to do more than scrape across the surface. Too far apart and you have too much pressure. If the spaces between the teeth are too shallow, they clog and prevent you from removing more material. However if they are too deep, you risk compromising the structural integrity of the teeth.
Again, this all depends on the material you are cutting as well as the speed and feeds you are trying to cut at.
# Carbide inserts
Carbide also comes in inserts for tools, so when they get dull, you can swap them out easily and either sharpen or toss them. This is for mid to high grade milling tools, and they can cost quite a bit. This allows for better tool maintenance and longevity, since you can replace a single tooth, instead of scrapping the whole thing, or having to to a major repair in the field.
Replacing a broken tooth still isn't something you're likely to do in the middle of a battle, but rather something you'd do before/after a battle, since it still takes tools and time. You also don't want to be carrying around a 20 lbs. bag of replacements that can get in the way, wear you down, get sliced open, get cut off, or otherwise inhibit the battle.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cemented_carbide#Inserts_for_metal_cutting>
# Conclusion
With all the things mentioned on this thread about carbide tools, it just doesn't seem to be a good idea for use with a sword. There's too many things that can go wrong and other materials that are better suited, as mentioned in other Answers.
Some of it can be mitigated with the carbide inserts, but not enough to make it more effective than the current steel used in swords. Adding the complexity of all the different considerations with speeds, feeds, tooth distance, tooth size, and more, it make this nearly an impossibly unsolvable math problem to avoid completely damaging your sword beyond use in a single encounter, let alone multiple opponents on a battlefield. This might work, marginally, in a duel, but not when potentially engaging with multiple enemy on a battlefield. If your sword isn't reliable enough, then it's basically useless for more than blunt trauma, which makes a bad sword.
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I'm embarking on a fantasy book so I guess in essence you can write about anything but I do want an element of plausibility. Could you have hot desert caps on a planet and an icy/winter equator?
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Certainly. I will assume by desert you mean "hot and arid" rather than just arid. A planet could obviously be entirely frigid with the poles significantly more arid than the rest of the planet.
One possibility could be a cold planet with limited volcanic activity which, for whatever reason, is only observable or easily measurable near the poles. The geothermal activity near the surface heats the polar regions to near boiling, effectively turning the water on the surface and in the lower atmosphere to vapor. Combined with an interesting weather stream which frequently generates high winds, the poles are a near absolute desert.
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The planet might have a 90° axial tilt.
That means each pole will be in direct sunlight for half a sidereal year and in shadow the other half year.
The equator will receive exactly 50% sunlight and 50% nighttime each day. But it will still experience drastic seasons, because over the course of a year the sun's height at noon will vary from perfect zenith to just above the horizon. Twice a year there will be a sunset which will take all night and directly transition into the sunrise of the next day.
The poles will receive twice as much sunlight as the equator, so they will be hotter on average. Just like deserts on earth, they will have very hot days and very cold nights. Just that both take far longer than on earth, so the temperature differences will be even more extreme. It's unlikely that much fauna and flora will survive under these extreme conditions, so they will be quite desert-like.
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Yes, it's entirely possible.
Your planet would have a pretty extreme axial tilt, something like 50- or 60-plus degrees. You would see the following effects:
**The poles** would have extremely long 'days' equal to years, as we currently see on earth. The difference is that during the summer, the 24-hour sunlight would be much, much warmer, potentially warm enough to dry out the whole region - hence hot desert. During the winter, the area would freeze solid for six months.
**The equator** would be much cooler, since it never gets close enough to the sun to warm up. At extreme tilts, this would be similar to the conditions in the arctic circle, where even in summer it's generally not warm enough to melt permafrost. The equivalent of summer for the equatorial band would be the equinox, when the sun would be directly overhead. Whether the days at this time are long enough for ice to melt is up to you.
Between the two would be temperate bands, just as we have today. This is likely where most life would be found.
You'd also likely see some strange weather. Strong, hot winds would blow from the summer pole towards the winter pole. This could bring energy to the equatorial regions, again, depending on your design.
You could make more of a regular day/night cycle at the poles by having the star a relatively cool red dwarf and having the planet orbit much closer, making years much shorter.
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Two stars orbiting each other with a planet in between. The planet is tidally locked to both stars so each pole always faces 'its' star.
As some have pointed out this system is not 'naturally' stable. But, in the comments, Jose Antonio Dura Olmos suggested an intriguing notion that could introduce a dizzying array of potential plot points - the system is stable due to an ancient civilization's experiment with their new technology. After they had successfully created and stabilized this system they applied the knowledge to their home world and in the successive millennia life arose independently on this world. Or perhaps they seeded this world with microbes and intelligent life came about through evolution.
As I said, the plot points for where this could go are amazing. The intelligent life gains enough understanding that their home world is unstable and yet it exits. Who were the ancients? The system is degrading and they need to fix it. They can't and they need to come to terms with their demise. Or they go off in search of the ancients who would share their DNA.
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Your planet is actually a moon with one side always facing a hot gas giant. One side of the planet would always get warmed up by the gas giant and would have two day-like periods where the sun rises on the horizon, then sets behind the gas giant, then rises from behind the gas giant and sets on the other side of the horizon, giving an effect similar to a daily eclipse. The other pole would be more temperate and have only one day-like period, where the pole faces out from the planet towards the star and gets warmed up, and where the pole faces out from the planet away from the star and gets cooled at night.
The tricky part is getting the distance from the star and gas giant just right so that, given a livable atmosphere, liquid water and solid ice can both exist on the surface of the moon. You would also need to get the orbital period to be such that you don't get nightly frost on the side that faces away from the gas giant. To make the poles arid, spin the planet; this can keep most weather from approaching the poles. Some severe storms could still form in polar regions, but these would happen much more often on the outward-facing pole than the inward, and they would last longer on the outward-facing pole. The inner pole might still get storms from time to time, but they would likely be much milder because these are more influenced by the gas giant than the star.
The result is either a moon with an icy band around the middle and deserts on both poles, or you get an outer pole that is wet, stormy, and full of jungle life and an inner pole that is a dry desert, with a massive wasteland of ice in between.
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This is very difficult to pull off with normal physics, because of the reasons why poles are typically cooler:
* There is little direct sunlight constantly heating the poles.
* The magnetosphere holds less atmosphere near the poles, meaning there is less insulation in those places. Heat radiating outward has less atmosphere to get through.
* Counterintuitively, light coming from the sun has to pass through more atmosphere in order to reach the surface, because it's coming in at a low angle, and thus is more likely to be deflected into space.
* Antartica is colder than the Arctic, largely because it's mostly land and at a higher elevation, whereas the heat capacity of the Arctic stabilizes the temperature at a higher level.
Therefore, to establish a warm polar situation we might do a few things. First, we note that our own poles are relatively arid, receiving in places the same precipitation as the Sahara desert. If we put land in both places which is just above sea level, we are off to a good start. We can posit we get it warm enough that snow (a primary reflector of sunlight) is not there, and we say that most of the area is covered with [black sand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_sand) or the like. Increased volcanic activity in this area would obviously help with this, meaning we are getting heat from both the planet core and from the sun.
This suggests a strange magnetosphere as well - if the magnetic 'pole' were not only close to the equator but rotating (rather than being mostly fixed), it would mean that heavier atmosphere would concentrate in the polar regions and also that volcanic activity was more turbid. (I have no idea if a magnetic pole would reasonably do this, but we can stretch a bit here I think.)
A significant tilt to the planet would help, but too much won't help because for a quarter of the year the area would be entirely in the dark and therefore cold, and for half the year the equator would actually be nearer the sun than either pole (because the axial tilt of a planet stays pretty constant in relation to the fixed solar plane). Some tilt, though, means more direct sunlight for part of the year.
Meanwhile, the equator will need to largely be comprised of very high mountain ranges. On an Earth-sized planet, you lose about 6.5 degrees Celsius per kilometer of height, so we'd want as much of the equator to be as high as possible. Maccu Piccu is about 8.5km up, Tibet is on average 4km, to give you an idea of what 'high' is. The surface should be largely reflective: sand or white stone, and some hostility to plant life.
To really make this work out, I'd posit some high-altitude high-albedo clouds in the equatorial regions - far more than you'd see on Earth, and periods of high-intensity short-burst rainfall in the north, where water that evaporates captures a lot of heat and forms flash storms, flushing that heat back to the surface while still trapping it in the atmosphere. Having a secondary heat source (large moon, second star, or gas giant) also helps, to get direct light on at least one polar region.
All that said, this strains credulity to the maximum, because most physics simply don't favor these conditions, especially not for very long.
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You said fantasy, so rules of physic don't apply.
The planet could be orbited by a moon on an equatorial orbit which actively cools the planet through a magic cold radiation. This radiation gets partially absorbed by the atmosphere, just like the heat radiation by the sun. The moon is closer to the planet than the sun, so latitude will have an even larger effect on the intensity of its radiation than it has on sunlight.
The orbit might in fact be so close that even the difference in distance between surface and moon becomes non-negligible (that would likely put the moon inside the planet's [Roche-limit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roche_limit), but we already established that it's magic, so magic powers might keep it from breaking apart).
Without this moon's cooling, the planet would likely be far too hot to be habitable. The people living in polar regions might understand that and worship it as a power of good which relieves them of the scorching heat whenever it appears over the horizon. Those living near the equator, however, will curse it as an evil entity which brings them unbearable frost.
Btw: Now that you have placed a huge ice-magic related [BDO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dumb_Object) in a low orbit around your planet it would be a shame if it wouldn't be somehow involved in your main plot.
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We can use a see through material at the poles as a green house. Have a see through material like quartz cover the top of the water ice and over time the heat from the sun will gather under it, melting the ice down to the surface. This will make the environment warm.
The surface should be an easily drain able material like sand. This way as the ice melts to reveal the ground the water drains down into the earth. This will provide the environment to be dry.
The planet will need a 0 degree axis to sustain this and simulate a night/day at the poles.
The rest of the planet, and even above the pole it can be a ball of ice making the planet much like you wish. As per one of your comments, this sort of environment will doubtfully create human like species.
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I have two ways this can possibly happen: The planet is tidally locked to a red dwarf and is in a polar orbit around it, or the planet is orbiting around a regular star, but it is tilted like Uranus
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I've been working on my story planet and have come up with an unlikely but possible scenario to help explain some of my stories origins as well as myths and folklore. Over the last day or so, I've been playing around with a small moon in a geostationary orbit around the planet. Now I just need to clarify how the phases of the moon would appear to my surface-dwellers.
A moon in a geostationary orbit is possible as answered here on [astronomy SE](https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/6188/the-existence-of-natural-satellites-in-geostationary-orbits). Unlikely but possible. For any particular location the moon would appear fixed and always in the same place in the sky. **There would be no rising or setting of such a moon**, it's just always there. A constant Big Brother looming over you. Some locations on the planet wouldn't even know of its existence.
Typically a moon takes *at least* a few days to orbit a planet. The way that the light from a star reflects off the moon surface gives observers the phases of the moon. Here is a helpful image from Wikipedia which shows the [lunar phases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_phase) in relation to their position around Earth over a one month lunar cycle.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bzj8U.jpg)
If we now interpret this image as a **one day lunar cycle**, with the moon always in the same location above the planet. Ignoring how long such an orbit would remain stable, **am I correct in figuring that from an surface observer's point of view the moon would appear to wax and wane fully in one day?**
**OR would it be always in the same phase for a particular location?**. eg observer in Location A would always see a crescent moon and Location B always a full moon?
Note: for the purposes of this scenario, it's a very small moon and as such won't have huge tidal forces on the planet. It also won't block out large portions of the sky during lunar eclipses or reflect too much light in the evenings. All of which, while very interesting, are not part of this question.
I also don't mind that it probably would be located within the Roche Limit for its mass and density, as that is all part of the story!
**I just need help to figure out the phases.** sadly, no werewolves are involved...
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# In one day you would see the full cycle (if you can see it)
So if you stand a little distance from a lamp holding a ball at arms length, then turn around, you will see the phases on the ball. This is the same process, you are turning at the same rate as the ball, just as the planets surface and the moon would be.
Your small not-too reflective moon might not always be visible...but for the sake of a story there is obviously no harm in you ignoring that.
# Inclination and eccentricity
I appreciate Zxyrra's point about the inclination and eccentricity - they would change the moon's appearance if you had anything but a circular orbit angled normal to the planet's rotational axis. However a [geostationary orbit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_orbit) is necessarily circular and angled normal to the planet's rotational axis. Due to this the moon will always orbit around the equator of the planet.
What would affect this would be the *planet's* tilt and eccentricity. If the planet was tilted 90$^{\circ}$ you could instead observe a moon permanently half-lit, half dark top to bottom rather than left to right. This would vary from one extreme to the other depending on how you wish to tilt your planet.
**All in all the best way to play about with how this would look involves you, a lamp, a ball and making yourself dizzy**
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## You are (somewhat) correct
Just as shadows of stationary objects on Earth change direction as the sun passes, so too will the shadow of your moon - kind of like a [sundial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundial).
However, the moon's **[eccentricity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_eccentricity)** (shape of orbit) / **[apsis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apsis)** (distance along orbit) and **[inclination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_inclination)** are able to change this phenomena. It may be farther away from the planet at some times than others, causing phases with differing duration - or cutting off a completely full moon. Additionally, just as we don't have an eclipse every night here on Earth, an inclination could still change the relative location of the moon - regardless of if it revolves at the same speed the planet rotates.
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The phase of the moon depends on the angle between the line from the sun to the earth and the line from the earth to the moon. When that angle is 0°, the moon is between the earth and the sun, so we see a new moon; when it's 180°, the moon is on the opposite side of the earth to the sun, so we see a full-moon; when the angle is between these two extremes, we see some fraction of the moon's surface in shadow. The variation of phases happens across one full orbit.
The same holds true for a geostationary moon. Since the angle between the two lines varies as the moon follows the earth's rotation, we still see phases. Now, the moon's full orbit takes one day, so you'll see the full range of phases during a single day. If you're close to the point the moon orbits above, you'll see the new moon at solar noon and the full moon at midnight, with waxing in the afternoon and evening, and waning through the night and morning. As you move farther away from that point, the times will change because your angle of view will be different. And, of course, if you're on the other side of the planet, you won't see the moon at all.
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Think of it as a triangle with the sun, the moon and the observer. The face of the moon is always lit by the sun (except during eclipse) and how much of that face is visible to the observer depends on where the observer is in relation to the moon. Closer to the poles, observers are further from the moon so it looks smaller to them. An observer on the ground underneath the moon will see a new moon at noon, and a full moon at midnight. At any given time, an observer on the equator closer to the sun will see more of the lit up face then one further back.
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Just go to the Moon and take a look. From the Moon's point of view, the Earth is a selenostationary$^{1}$ satellite just as you describe. And as others have said, it goes through the full range of phases every lunar day.
$^{1}$ "Seleno" refers to the moon so, just as geostationary means orbiting Earth above the same point, selenostationary means orbiting at a particular point above the moon.
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[Question]
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For reasons unbeknownst to them, a hundred US military personnel from 2016 have been thrown backwards in time, coming out in the middle of Kansas, December 9, 1941, one day after the Pearl Harbor attack. They can find no particular pattern among them except they're all officers (commissioned and noncommissioned) or specialists, with none of them being grunts. They further are all either decorated or otherwise distinguished from their peers, and span the Navy, Marines, Army, and Air Force. None have any particularly meaningful expertise outside their military careers (none are electromechanical engineers, none designed weapons previously, none are manufacturing geniuses, etc, etc).
They can't figure out *why* they went back in time. For some more concerning is that their memories have been altered. **They no longer have any specific knowledge of the events of WWII**, with their knowledge of history becoming less and less spotty the closer to 2016 they try to recall. While they realize that the allies most likely won the war (since the allies are still around for the most part in 2016 and the members of the axis didn't seem to fare as well; they even recall Berlin being divided in two by the US and Russia), they don't know the actual mechanics and events, and so they can't act as prophets for the battles to come.
They reach out to the US Government and somehow manage to convince the powers-that-be that they are, in fact, from the future. The US military forms a small task force to allow these 100 men to advise the military as to ways to improve their military by means of tactics, organization, training, strategy, and logistics.
*To clarify: none of these men are engineers, and so they can't help design modern technology unless the technology is simple enough for the normal man to understand. These men probably won't be useful in even so much as (for example) speeding up the development of the jet fighter, unless it's arguing the case as to why the jet fighter is a good idea, and to describe what roughly a modern jet fighter looks and acts like. Nobody is going to have these men make blueprints.*
Since the 100 men know the US emerged victorious, they're not aiming to help the US win, but to:
* Reduce the casualties in WWII
* Speed up the victory of WWII
* Leave the American public sector in a more favorable place
+ Economically
+ For traditional warfare (They think they remember a "Korean war" coming up, although they can't remember the exact date or any real details)
+ For non-traditional warfare, specifically the Cold War
They also are wise enough realize that not all modern tactics, strategy, etc, will be a good fit for the past. Some things won't apply, some things will need to be altered, and some things will be smart ideas for the military to implement right away.
As long as they can provide a solid (enough) argument for any suggestion the US military has expressed willingness to cooperate as far as the US public will allow.
Oh, and the 100 are considered top secret, and knowledge of them is to be kept absolutely secret from both the world at large, and the citizens of the US.
How would these 100 men help accomplish the before listed goals? What knowledge might they possess that could be helpful? How would their efforts affect World War II and the coming Cold War?
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This is potentially massive but as Officers they are likely to focus their efforts on three large areas which were warfare evolutions
* Combined Arms Battalions (or if USA, the Brigade Combat Team)
* The Role of Special Forces as force multipliers
* The rise of Mission Command
Each of these areas have detailed histories and to the layman, they are unlikely to mean much, but to serving personnel each of these three pillars sit at the heart of how we fight and win modern wars.
**Combined Arms Battalions** are integral, independent fighting units which can manuevere the battlefield with everything that is required to engage and defeat an enemy. One Commander has control over all of the assets required to support and deliver the mission (G2, G3...G9). They are not dependent on stovepiped organisations to provide some asset (although cynical service personnel prob have loads of examples (Fixed Wing unavailable in the HIDACZ at this moment haha ;-) )
**Special Forces** are highly skilled, highly trained operators often supported by extraordinary assets in order to disrupt the enemy to a far greater effect than traditional warfare. As an example, Delta Force was inspired by watching the SAS which in turn were an evolution of events in World War 2. It is very likely your officers would be the inspiration for the entire Special Forces movement in modern history.
**Mission Command** is the idea that each devolved military unit is empowered to complete it's mission in the best way it can see fit. IE As a Commander you state that your intent is to secure a bridge crossing and inform your Platoon that is their mission. How they secure the X'ing then becomes a matter for the Platoon to decide...at the lower level each man is empowered to decide how he will accomplish his part within the timings and parameters set.
It is quite revolutionary and would have ended the idea of trench warfare. Advance towards a trench is not an order, secure the town of Riems is an order.
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These documents should your Bible : <https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/455017/1995_AFM_Vol_2_Gen_En_Basic_Pt_1_Op_Art.pdf> << Basic Forces (Similar to WW1/2)
<https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/455022/1996_AFM_Vol_2_Gen_En_Mob_Pt_1_Op_Art_Tac_Doc.pdf> << Mobile Forces (Similar to Modern Armies)
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The big problem is similar the "bring on the industrial revolution" trope in SF: everything is based on an accumulation of knowledge and experience from the past. Even then, it isn't entirely clear just what the "x" factor is for industrialization, Hero of Alexandria described simple steam and atmospheric engines in the first century AD, and places as diverse and the Hanse and the *Serenìsima Repùblica Vèneta* had liberal social systems, banking and other social and economic factors which *should* have led to an industrial revolution, but for whatever reason failed to do so.
Your 100 men might have knowledge of 21st century tactics, operational art, and strategy, but by your own setup will lack the tools to make the tools to actually execute any of these strategies and tactics.
Consider a modern Infantry squad is festooned with radios and other communications gear. They wear composite body armour, carry a range of automatic weapons, anti-armour weapons and probably a backpackable UAV, and ride into battle in a Stryker or Bradly fighting vehicle if they are not ferried in by helicopter. A WWII infantry squad communicates by voice (Platoon level portable radios didn't become common and ubiquitous until the Viet Nam war), and the bulk of their firepower is the BAR. They don't have the organic ability to deal with enemy tanks (and won't until about 1944). They wear uniforms of organic fabric, wear a steel helmet for protection and move on foot. To use modern infantry tactics at the squad level requires you to bridge that gap.
The other branches of service will be facing the same issues. Much of what we think of as modern warfare is dependent on advanced long-range sensors, high-density communication networks and a very robust (and in the case of Western nations, global) logistical network. Much of what we take for granted today was developed in the Second World War, and the move towards portability and ubiquitous availability of this sort of equipment depends on the development of solid-state electronics, advanced, portable computers and even the discovery of physical principles which are unknown in 1941 (think of night vision equipment based on light amplification rather than infrared searchlights).
Another issue is military organizations of any era are based on the available technology. Regiments in the Second World War era often had organic artillery or anti-tank guns, or separate machine gun companies (note, different armies had differing organizations, this is not specific to the US army of 1941), while post-war organizations gradually dropped these establishments as crew served weapons and later individual weapons became capable of doing many of the same jobs. Would a soldier of the 21rst century used to having a Javelin anti-tank missile (with a range of 2500 m and capable of day and night fire) be able to recognize that a platoon of M-10 tank destroyers provides only a fraction of the capability?
Frankly, 100 field soldiers are not going to add a tremendous amount to the ability of the allies to win the war. 100 scientists and engineers who understand the principles of modern technology and can "make the tools to make the tools" will have a far greater impact.
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Well, they could do a lot - but I'm not sure if this would change WWII a lot. The future conflicts for sure.
How? Well, they know a lot of things that wasn't obvious like "hey, heavy tanks aren't so nice, but we have this Main Battle Tank concept, you should try to do sth like that" or "M1 Garand is cool, but you know what is much cooler? Assault rifles! We can tell you how this work, try to construct that". They would give a clear idea what will be good and what won't, saving A LOT of effort of scientists and engineers.
Maybe they would be able to make some minor improvments in organization and tactics, but (as far as I know) US Army tactic and strategy didn't evolve much, it's still based on motorized troops, air superiority and caring (as much as possible) about soldiers. Tactic evolved with the posibilities. For example, Blitzkrieg (German doctrine of mechanized assaults and massive usage of tanks with close air support) was created BECAUSE someone (well, probably Guderian was first with his "Achtung! Panzer!") saw potential in it.
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To be blunt, your soldiers aren't bringing anything new to the table.
Answers up above have pointed out that many of the things considered "novel", and "modern", aren't, except the ones explicitly reliant on new technology that wasn't available at the time, which as stated these guys are not bringing back with them. The military tactics and strategies used today would be quite, generally speaking, familiar to an experienced soldier or officer in World War 2.
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If they are believed, their knowledge of 21st century strategy, tactics, and organization can "decide" many controversial questions and avoid dead ends.
* Of course the Air Force is an independent service, equal to the Army and the Navy.
* Jet engines or turbofans are the way to go.
* Battleships? Who needs battleships? Carriers are the way of the future.
* Heavy brigades/divisions have roughly equal proportions of tank companies/battalions and mechanized infantry companies/battalions. Separate tank battalions and tank destroyer battalions? Forget 'em.
* On the other hand, light battalions/brigades need their organic anti-tank.
* Infantry squads need two or three fire teams organized around decent GPMGs.
* All artillery in heavy divisions is self-propelled.
* The first hour counts for medevac. Combat lifesaver training, ambulances, helicopters.
* Cavalry does *not* mean horses. It means MBTs and IFVs, or helicopters.
* Of course the force is racially integrated.
The same reasoning might yield a large number of premature suggestions:
* Bombing *can* decide wars, even without nukes.
* Submarines are really useful to protect carrier battle groups.
* Army aviation needs helicopters with anti-tank missiles.
* The Army doesn't need much air defense below the theater ballistic missile level, the Air Force fighters will take care of that.
* 105mm is light artillery for airborne forces, all serious tube artillery is 155mm. On the other hand, 203mm is oversized. Who needs that?
The problem will be to tell the practical suggestions from premature ones.
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First thought is, they would definitely know that atomic weapons exist and that they work, giving a boost to the Manhattan Project (not started until 1942).
This would apply to other areas of technology as well. Even if they can't tell you how they work, knowing that something is possible and important to future military endeavors will definitely fast track research and development. That weird helicopter thing Sikorsky is working on for the army, give him more money. That rocket guy in New Mexico (Robert Goddard) give him some funding that he's trying to get for years.
None of these things would likely change World War 2 much but they could quickly increase the United States military technology in the 1950s and onward.
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1. They had radios and could have used them more often and more effectively.
2. They would have beefed up the sniper program with a lot more trained snipers in the field vs. a limited number of marksmen.
3. Armor would have included better guns that were available to US military, but which they failed to implement.
In WW2 one guy was responsible for taking out an entire panzer division. How did he do it? With a radio calling in artillery strikes on the enemy. This is the basis for US military doctrine today. To many WW2 US infantry charged into a situation and fought out of them with guns blazing. Modern tactics would have put higher priority on spotting enemy targets and calling in artillery and air strikes on that target before engaging in direct combat. By the time infantry engaged the enemy it would be from better positions and mopping up what was left over if anything was left over. The infantry would also not engage until the area was well scoped and snipers had eyes on the target.
Give credit to the Soviets for implementing snipers much better than anyone else. Once again, instead of having regular infantry engage the enemy, modern military tacticians would first use snipers to pick off key vantage points prior to sending regular infantry in. Regular infantry would then have snipers keeping a close eye on the periphery for them while they advanced into areas.
While spotting, targeting, and calling in strikes seems slower than rushing in, it would actually prove faster as infantry would face less opposition as they advanced. Too often US infantry got bogged down in gunfights with enemy forces that could have been eliminated with calling in both air strikes and artillery strikes after spotters identified the targets. With a radio, you can let the artillery shells and bombs from air planes do the job while infantry protects those calling in the strikes.
Also, snipers in both urban and rural settings proved very effective for the Russians and proves very effective for modern military forces today in both settings. Guys in a pill box are easy targets for snipers who could take them out prior to sending in infantry. Spotters with high power optics available at the time could have identified targets and areas of resistance prior to sending guys in.
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I second Thucyidides answer, tactically they're of little use because the tactics they know won't work in this world with these units. Really we haven't discovered any brilliant new tactics so much as slowly and steadily adjusted our tactics as new technology made new options available. For the time modern WW2 leaders likely are better tacticians for planning WW2 battles then they are.
In fact, I hope they don't try to offer direct tactical level advice, they would likely get people killed by suggesting tactics that don't make sense for the weaponry and armor available at the time. People will be lured in by their 'future special knowledge' and go along with foolish plans. Ideally, they realize they should not try to play in everyday tactics!
They could have an effect on the war, not win it but help with it; but the effect is not in smalls scale tactics, but in the assorted other knowledge they have which could help.
For starters, WWII is interesting because both sides were constantly looking for super weapons in really bizarre areas. You know about Nukes, but you may also have heard of our bomb-detecting dolphins, firebomb bats, and all kind of other attempts at brilliant super weapons which did not pan out at all. These generals will know what weapons are used in the future, and by process of elimination what super weapon attempts didn't pan out.
They also will know what weapons are common in the future, which can help. For instance, by telling everyone how important air power is in the future they may be able to encourage quicker adoption of the carrier and naval air power.
While I don't believe training in modern tactics would help identify mistakes in tactics of WW2 directly, there is still a chance someone can identify them. With 100 militarily minded individuals you have a good chance of at least one being a military historian, who read about WW2 and knows a good bit about the battles there. I know you said they forget this knowledge, but how much does 'forget' mean? sure they don't know exact battles but they may remember some of the analysis about bad tactics or military doctrine, either directly or in a vague enough manner that they will recognize it when they see it happening in front of them.
And finally, ignoring their military training entirely, you still have 100 people from the future who will all have an assortment of non-military future knowledge, from college & education, past jobs, hobby, or personal interest. This collection of assorted other knowledge is likely to do far more long-term good for the country then their military training.
For starters, the general knowledge of the future technology and expected of any modern man could be useful. Telling people how massively powerful computers will become will likely ensure the government invests more money into their development (remember, the first computers were seen as so massive and expensive as to be of limited use, no one expected the exponential growth of computing). Knowledge about nuclear reactors and Nuclear weapons would confirm that the Manhattan Project would work and may result in funding the project sooner and with more financial support. I could go on with many examples, but knowing where our industry will be now can help decide what is worth perusing and what is ill-advised for the government.
Furthermore, with 100 people you will likely have more useful specific knowledge. The officers will have gone to college and gotten various degrees. If even one of the 100 officers got a degree in Electronic Engineering, or computer engineering, or some related field you know have the knowledge to jumpstart the production of electronics & computers. Someone trained in business or economics would have studied economic patterns of the past and may have suggestions on how to avoid things such as the .com bust. Frankly, anyone with knowledge of the hard sciences will have some unique knowledge that was discovered only recently. With so many people there are going to be many such instances of someone having the right knowledge to further some scientific discovery or governmental/economic policy. It will take longer for this knowledge to pan out to concrete results, but it will likely be the most useful in the long run.
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## Their value is likely zero during the war, but they will have some value after it.
Just to restate the primary premises here:
1. These soldiers are not bringing any new technology with them.
2. They do not know the specific events of WWII other than the statement that the Allies won.
3. They know modern tactics, but especially without knowing the events of WWII may not be overly versed in WWII's tactics and why they were used.
After determining those things and With those premises, the governments best course of action is likely to refuse to talk to them any further and do their best to shield real decision makers from any knowledge that they even exist.
From the perspective of our WWII handlers, they know that the Allies win if nothing changes. Introducing new knowledge from these people from the future may speed that up and make things better, but it could also change things in a way that causes the Allies to lose. In other words, letting senior decision-makers know anything from these future soldiers is a huge gamble when they are currently sitting on a safe bet. With things of obvious utility like engineering advances, that gamble is *probably* worth taking, but even then they should think long and hard before letting the butterfly flap its wings. When talking about tactical refinements by people who do not understand the current ground situation, the answer is that it is almost certainly not worth taking.
Remember while there are certainly timeless things about tactics that will be applicable in any era, those have also been known for millennia. When you talk about the small details, they are very dependent on the situation you are facing and particularly susceptible to changes in technology. Modern tactics in the countries that used to be the Allies, in particular, are heavily dependent on concepts like robust communications, sensor platforms, and air superiority they either did not exist or were in their infancy during WWII.
A modern officer sent back might be able to speed up refinements in combined arms, but the people during WWII figured the basics out very quickly as combined arms came into existence. And again, modern combined arms expects radios capable of communicating with those particular allied forces to be available very low on the chain of command which was not true in WWII. The modern officer might be able to nudge things knowing how things will be, but he'll have to adapt to the technology of the time. That, of course, is very manageable, but changing tactics comes with risks and if these soldiers come with the knowledge that the Allies win if things play out naturally, that risk is probably not worth it.
After the war, they are likely to have some value because if they remember modern society they will be able to say what inventions are achievable in the relatively short term. This will help focus research efforts and could spur technology somewhat faster. Knowing for a fact that something is possible prevents researchers that might otherwise give up to continue on for one thing.
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The most significant knowledge they have is that of atomic weapons. Specifically, they (and everyone else in 2016) know that
1. Atomic (fission) weapons are feasible, something that the Manhattan Project scientists weren't decided of until July 1942
2. Nuclear weapons have huge strategic significance
Given this knowledge, they would be able to push for the acceleration of the Manhattan Project. They would be able to confirm the feasibility of atomic weapons eight months earlier than happened. Even if this only saved them four months, they could have ended the war in April 1945, avoiding (among others) the battle for Berlin.
This would have led to a US/British/French occupation of Berlin instead of the divided Nato/Russian occupation, and given Truman and Churchill a huge ace in the hole at the Potsdam. This would have altered the post war balance of power hugely.
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Three important concepts differ from WWII-era, and modern leader training can affect them:
1. The concept of Strategic Bombing as a (mostly) standalone force capable of destroying an enemy's infrastructure, industry, and morale. It was popular in WWII, but quite discredited since.
This change will preserve allied bomber forces from being expended in expensive but often marginally-effective raids, and freeing aviation resources for more effective use.
2. The concept of Aircraft Carriers over Battleships as the Navy's primary offensive resource. This change did occur later during WWII.
The Dec 9, 1941 scenario is a bit late - all USA WWII battleships were already long in production by this date, but production of aircraft carriers could perhaps have been accelerated.
3. The Army's concept of timed counteroffensives to defeat an entrenched enemy (often called "meat-grinder" tactics). The US Army developed this during 1951 to counter the much larger numbers and trench-warfare defenses of the People's Liberation Army in Korea.
Since trench warfare did not occur much during WWII, this knowledge seems likely to have negligible impact.
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The biggest difference between the ww2 military and modern western militaries is the rise of the professional soldier.
I apologize that this is disjointed. I'll clean it up in a day or so.
In ww2, soldiers were largely conscripted men, whose long term goal was to get out of the military and back to real life. Most soldiers in the war never fired their guns, and most of those never hit an enemy.
The 21st century soldier is a volunteer career soldier, trained to the level of a ww2 commando. The early introduction of post Vietnam management and training practices does not require tech (although tech helps).
Can't use laser tag equipment for simulated fire exercises? Bath beads were known in ww2. Load them with paint instead of soap, inventing paint ball, and you can make a decent simulated fire exercise that even incorporates every army's weak spot - logistics.
Individual units have more autonomy than their ww2 counterparts. They are given a broad objective within the overall strategy, and then they work out the "how" on their own within the rules of engagement.
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There are substantial technological and infrastructural improvements that they could provide even with only a lay-person's knowledge. There are some simple things that hadn't been figured out yet.
1. [The interstate system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System) was a huge boon to the US's economy. Eisenhower [was inspired by the German highways during WWII and their utility for logistics](https://www.army.mil/article/198095/dwight_d_eisenhower_and_the_birth_of_the_interstate_highway_system). Starting the interstate system 15 years earlier could really kick-started the US economy in preparation for the cold war.
2. Any of them who have studied military history may have remembered how to make [chaff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaff_(countermeasure)) (you cut aluminum into strips of half the radar wavelength). That have sped up anti-radar technology for planes by 6 to 12 months.
3. They could [get duct tape added to standard military supplies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duct_tape#History) two years earlier.
4. [Inter-modal shipping containers weren't developed until the 1950s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Containerization). Getting those earlier could really help the US supply Europe during the war and boost its economy afterwards.
5. They likely could help get [composite tank armor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composite_armour) developed earlier. Even if this wouldn't make it out by WWII, it would help in the post-war conflicts.
6. [The double helix structure of DNA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA#History) wasn't discovered until the 1950s. They could get a decade jump on all DNA-based medical discoveries.
There would also be areas where modern knowledge could be a hindrance to scientific endeavors. The biggest one I can think of is the Manhattan project, where the knowledge that centrifuges are used for modern uranium enrichment would actually be [the wrong direction for WWII](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project#Centrifuges) (though could help post-war development).
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A lot of folks have covered in various ways some of the things these future officers could help. I hope I can throw out a few more and emphasize some that have already been brought up.
One prime point is that although the OP specified officers, not "just grunts", there is an important oversight. Many Officers in the modern US military started out as "just grunts". I was in college ROTC and was somewhat surprised to find out that roughly half of the higher up students were "prior service" meaning that they were either currently in the reserves or active duty as corporals or sergeants. Based on that asuumption, several of the officers brought back will have been "just grunts" at some point in their careers. This will lead to something important!
Training: A lot of people say modern boot camps aren't as brutal as WW2 boot camps and that may be true, but modern boot camps are more systematic. It's no longer 6 weeks of harsh discipline and push-ups. There is a lot of education going on. An example is that modern Marines go through a lot of MCMAP training, or Marine Corps Martial Arts which contains some good stuff. Everything a recruit goes through these days has a purpose. So these guys will have a memory of what they went through as a boot and might be able to improve the training by quite a lot. This won't make a massive difference right away, but if the reserves coming in to help at the front are of better quality, more are going to survive to become experienced. This kind of thing should yeild great results down the line.
Improve the Weaponry: Even though these guys aren't engineers themselves, they may be able to work *with* engineers to do things like building a better sniper rifle. The Famous Barrett Sniper Rifle was an evolution from the truck mounted .50 cal Machine gun. I don't think it would be a very long stretch to have someone start developing a shoulder fired .50 cal sniper weapon that would have an effective range well past the best German or Japanese Marksmen. Add in the small amount of knowledge that officers insignia shouldn't be shiny and that the enemy hasn't caught on to this quite yet, and a Sniper armed with a great rifle could take a heck of a toll on the enemy command structure. Even the scope technology should be there, based on the work done on Bombers from that time. Bonus, we might start not advertising our own officers by blacking out the shiny stuff. Other suggestions could be made on things like ablative tank armor. not direct design, but in suggestions on *what to design*.
Tactics: Not all modern tactics would necessarily work out, but some would. Another answer mentioned a closer coordination between artillery and infantry. Scout, Pound, and then move in.
Logistics: Make no mistake, Wars are won by logistics! That's often an officers job, and even though I can't think of some specifics, I'm pretty sure things have improved on that front. Outside the box thinking could help here. A bomber is a plane that picks up heavy things and drops them, with precision, somewhere else. Bullets, Beans, and Bandages could be sent to the front that way, in theory. just an example pulled from the aether.
Medicine: It's remotely possible that a combat medic or doctor could be sent as well. A modern combat medic might be able to help in the development of new lifesaving techniques. This would be of greater benefit later in the war as new groups of medics could be trained.
These guys could make great guides to development
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[Question]
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My premise involves a habitable planet with a dual core: it has two masses similar in composition to Earth's core, which revolve around each other over the course of hundreds of thousands of years. The revolving motion creates electrical anomalies on the surface of the planet.
My goal is to have the dual-core dynamics working in such a way that they psychologically and physically affect the folks living on the planet, while still providing a habitable environment, with ample flora and fauna. Part of the conceit for the plot is that the core dynamics flare up every once in an eon or so, and that one of these flares occurs during the course of the story.
Regarding the actual possibility of such an event occurring, if the idea gets anyone's juices flowing I can live with it.
That being said, how plausible is this premise?
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The Earth has a core for much the same reason that it's a spheroid: Gravity.
When you have as much stuff as there is in the Earth, it's own gravity is so great that it simply isn't strong enough to hold its shape. All it can do is fall until there's nowhere to fall to, which leads to a sphere.
Similarly, dense materials sink while lighter ones float on top of them. With the enormous forces involved, solid rock acts in some ways as if it were a very very thick liquid. (most of the Earth's mantel is "plastic" rock like this rather than outright molten)
Iron and nickle are the heaviest materials that make up a significant portion of Earth's mass, and so that's what we find at the centre. Two cores would require having something less dense between them that they could displace to reach a lower equilibrium.
You could spin the planet until the cores are in equilibrium, but then anything *above* them would be moving FASTER than orbital speed and so the planet would fly apart.
You could move them at a different rate from the rest of the planet, but the friction would be staggering. It would very cause the cores and the planet to sync up, the cores would then merge together. The heat produced would probably melt the surface of the planet.
You could make the planet hollow with two giant balls orbiting each other inside each other. I'm not sure but I think the co orbiting balls inside would be stable with respect to one another, but would not be stable with respect to the sphere in the same way a Ringworld is unstable relative to the star it contains. You would need active attitude control to maintain distance.
There are also problems with building a planet sized hollow shell that can hold up under its own weight, or a pair of cores able to withstand spinning around each other that fast.
Such a thing is obviously not a naturally occurring phenomenon, and the cores would spin around each other in minutes, not hundreds of thousands of years.
That all aside, Earth's magnetic field is pretty complicated without needing multiple cores. Among other things it seems to occasionally drop into chaotic behaviour as if the core were several cores (there's only one but different parts of it are behaving differently) and then can re-emerge with the field running in either direction. This happens chaotically on the order of millions to hundreds of thousands of years apart, with the chaotic transition periods taking hundreds of years to tens of thousands of years. This is called a [Geomagnetic Reversal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal)
At least one science fiction writer has used this as a plot point: Robert J. Sawyer's Neanderthal Parallax trilogy involves a geomagnetic reversal.
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I don't know how realistic a scenario this is. I would think that if two cores formed in Earth (this could happen in the early solar system, if another moderately-sized [protoplanet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protoplanet) hit Earth), they would collide and merger, forming a slightly bigger core. For there to be two cores, they would have to stably "orbit" each other inside the planet. Given the extreme conditions down there, I doubt this is possible.
But that's overly boring, as are a lot of my answers to "What-if" questions. So let's dig deeper. Earth's core is, of course, the source of its magnetic field. Its field forms by the circulation of molten liquid in the outer core, driven in part by Earth's rotation. This creates a dipole magnetic field.
[Wikipeda](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_magnetic_field#Radial_dependence) talks briefly about creating a *quadrupole field* - that is, creating four poles. Two would be "North", and two would be "South". [Here](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/VFPt_four_charges.svg) is a good visualization. Unfortunately, that one isn't loading here, so I'll go with this one instead:
[](https://web.archive.org/web/20210507002455/https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/07/Magnetic_field_of_an_idealized_quadrupole_with_forces.svg)
Image courtesy of Wikipedia user Geek3 under the [Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en).
Here is the caption:
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> Magnetic field lines of an idealized quadrupole field in the plane transverse to the nominal beam direction. The red arrows show the direction of the magnetic field while the blue arrows indicate the direction of the Lorentz force on a positive particle going into the image plane (away from the reader)
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The caption for the other image is this (emphasis mine):
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> Example of a quadrupole field. This could also be constructed by moving two dipoles together. *If this arrangement were placed at the center of the Earth, then a magnetic survey at the surface would find two magnetic north poles (at the geographic poles) and two south poles at the equator*.
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I doubt you'd see any electrical effects, but you might see an interesting [aurora](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora#Magnetosphere). An aurora is caused by the [solar wind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_wind) interacting with Earth's atmosphere, but the solar wind can also interact with Earth's [magnetosphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetosphere) to create some cool effects. A change in Earth's magnetic field means a change in the magnetosphere, which means some awesome aurora-like events. You can see [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/29/what-factors-could-cause-a-world-to-see-northern-lights-much-closer-to-the-equ/3729#3729) for some more information.
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The two cores *would* coalesce due to gravity. You cannot have an "orbit" in an environment with friction, i.e. in a planetary body.
One solution would be to have the magnetic i.e. ferrous cores suspended in a super-core of non-magnetic material of higher density than the ferrous cores. The material would need to have the following properties:
* Denser than iron
* Semi-plastic at very high temperature and pressure
* Plausibly be created during planet formation
* Non-magnetic
Note that on the surface of the planet the location of the north and south magnetic poles would not change, in fact a system with such high angular momentum would seem to be **more** stable than our current magnetic fields which do in fact wander. The field lines would be about the center of rotation of the two cores.
**If you want eccentric magnetic fields on the planet, then you might want to consider a more liquid core.** This is completely plausible, and you could have phenomenon in which multiple poles appear for a few years or decades. I would suggest giving the planet a thicker atmosphere to protect the inhabitants, and don't give it a moon so that the planet's wobble will be more eccentric.
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Like many of the other posters, friction will kill you every time in a system like this. Engineers work very hard to make internal revolving systems efficient. However, the mention of a more engineering like system might actually work very well. However, as mentioned, hollow just doesn't make sense. I recommend filling the inside of such a structure with something with little/no friction even at high densities. Basically, I recommend a superfluid. A super massive (and super cold) gas giant with a superfluid helium core that caught large solid bodies might be able to support this. However, only in a gas giant, so people would come later as space travelers.
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To have a "core" you need a sharp edge to define as "this is the edge of the core." The Earth doesn't think it has a "core," but we find it useful to abstract the Earth into a molten core and a non-molten outer body.
The first question would be what defines this edge, and how does it progress over time. It would be easy for the edge to get fuzzy, and slowly migrate into the center.
The second question would be what prevents the two cores from mixing over time. You need something to do it.
For some inspiration, I'd consider looking at Jupiter's big spot. It is a storm that has been raging for a tremendously long time, and it has a very clearly defined edge. Something stormy and chaotic like that could provide a core with enough oomph to remain split into two dueling cores for a very long time.
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Some bodies in our solar system seem to exhibit *superrotation*. That might be a more plausible way to get such effects, especially if you make the skin, lumpy like ours with contenents thicker than basins, have interaction with the inner rigid body, with another ocean in between.
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Humans' evolution has led to the loss of most body hair, which the NY Times article *[Why Humans and Their Fur Parted Ways](http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/19/science/why-humans-and-their-fur-parted-ways.html)* covers fairly well. Among the theories:
* Humans went through a semi-aquatic phase
* A defense against external parasites that infest fur (lice, fleas, ticks)
* Sexual selection: skin serving as a sign of fitness
But imagine a world where humans never lost their body hair, perhaps even evolving more effective fur coating depending on climate and environmental pressures.
Human culture is very intertwined with clothing, evidenced by the question *[What's the point of clothes?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/1171/2394)*. It's difficult to conceive of a world where clothing never existed, but only because it was unnecessary for comfort and protection.
I imagine that a civilized society would still require some sort of identification for positions of authority, various jobs, and stature. Colored bands, hats, or sashes might be utilized for such purposes.
But I'm wondering more about the larger impact in society without clothing and its entire industry. Sure, fashion might be conceived of all sorts of ways of styling ones' fur, rebellious teenagers might shave patterns or portions of themselves much to their parents chagrin, and the hair-care industry would be positively lucrative.
Assume human fur would be sufficient for most environments on earth, allowing humans to comfortably survive in cold climates. People living near the equator might have thinner coats, but sufficient to provide protection from the sun without being too hot. (Fur thickness or color might well have precipitated racism in this alternate human history.)
How would the world be different where humans possess a practical, comfortable natural covering that for the most part precludes the need for clothing?
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There would be differences, but those differences would mostly be fairly subtle.
TL;DR: Tiny Clothing Industry, Fashion Industry about haircuts and dye, no tropical holidays, low skin cancer rates.
The main likely outcome is the lack of a nudity taboo, there may well be some taboos that serve a similar purpose of controlling sexual signalling but nudity in of itself would become much less likely. It's still possible that one would develop, in which case society would look much like our own, but it's unlikely so the rest of this answer will run with that outcome.
The clothing industry would be much less important and would be restricted to small statement or utility items such as sashes, belts, etc. Certain haircuts, patterns or dyes could well be used to signal social status and rank. For example certain dye colours and patterns might be only used by certain people.
People would be much less flexible in their ability to move between environments. People adapted to the equator with thin fur that offers more sun protection than heat protection would struggle in colder conditions and need clothing, immediately making them seem weak and ineffective to the locals.
Equally though people adapted to the colder climates would have thick warming fur that would cause them to quickly overheat in tropical conditions. The idea of people in cold areas moving to a hot area for holiday may well seem crazy, especially if the fur is related to status so they would strongly resist shaving it off. The development of Swimming Pools and Air Conditioning might change that a little but people would still be much less likely to travel to find different weather.
On the bright side though incidences of Skin Cancer would be much lower :)
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Huge effect here, but not in the way I think you are going for.
Human's developed something exceedingly unique on Earth...our skin. Unlike any other creature, our skin is built for endurance allowing sweat to flow freely and cooling us off. This allows us to reach an extended level of physical endurance that very few other species can replicate. Early humans were more than capable of chasing down game animals over a longer period of time, exhausting our prey and allowing for it's eventual capture. There exists to this day, tribes of people that can run hundreds of miles in a single journey, without rest. This ability is almost entirely from our skin's ability to cool us off as needed.
A natural fur covering would heavily impede one of our most distinctive evolutionary traits...we wouldn't sweat to the same degree (would human panting become prevalent?) and our activity would be confined to short bursts in hot climates. Our rates of movements would be heavily reduced and it's questionable if our species would be capable of some of our greater movements/migrations as we spread through the globe.
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I'm not sure if WWII would have had the same outcome. One of the most environmentally stressful roles in WWII was ultimately tankers that were forced to endure extreme temperatures inside their tank for extended period of time. Without our ability to endure these conditions via our skin, I'm not sure if extended tank warfare would be possible without some heavy air conditioning techniques coming around.
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**Clothing**
Even with fur, in any location that has variation in temperature and climate conditions, you're still going to have clothing. In the middle latitudes on earth (consider North America and Europe, for example), any particular location may have temperatures ranging from well below freezing to hot and muggy over the span of a year. Further, they'll experience a range of snow, slush, rain, clear, and things in between.
Nobody's going to wander around naked all the time in such conditions, fur or no fur. So, clothing is still a factor. (Also, people today depend on having pockets.)
The *nature* of the clothing may change; I would expect looser-fitting clothes so that one's fur doesn't get matted and, especially in summer, pressed uncomfortably against one's body. For indoor use and on pleasant days (spring/fall without rain) we should expect to see clothing that covers less body area (and thus interacts with less fur) -- shorts and tank-tops, or maybe just shorts, might well be the norm. For going outside, one might need to don additional garments.
I think the net result of all this is that clothing is still used but it is much more *utilitarian*. Clothing is not how you'll make fashion statements.
Finally, they're still going to wear shoes, about as much as people wear shoes now. The environment hasn't changed, so people who don't want to go barefoot on city sidewalks or when walking across gravel or in places with lots of litter or dirt or in snow or whatever bothers you, aren't going to want to do that in their furry incarnations either.
**Fashion and personal expression**
So if clothing isn't the avenue for fashion that it once was, what will replace it? I think Tim [has the right idea here](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/3110/28) -- dyes, decorative shaving, and other specialized hair care will become more important.
Also, with a body covered in fur tattoos aren't available any more (unless you also shave the area). On the other hand, if you *do* do the "shave + tattoo" approach, recovering from errors in judgement is much easier -- let it grow out. There'll be no need for expensive and painful tattoo removal. So it's possible that a tattoo industry will still exist in an altered form.
**Housekeeping**
We should expect either a lax attitude toward, or an industry designed to combat, the shedding problem. Anybody with dogs or cats knows that a certain amount of shedding happens year-round and more during the spring (when animals shed their winter coats). If furry humans also go through this (and your question implies that they probably do), they're going to generate a lot more "droppings" than we're used to, and they won't be confined to people's homes. People will shed at the office, when shopping, when eating in restaurants...
Society might decide that that's a normal part of life, not unsanitary, and not worth worrying about. On the other hand, people might consider this a problem ("waiter, there's a hair in my soup" just became much more common), in which case we should expect technological and social responses. One's daily grooming probably includes a thorough brushing over the whole body, but maybe it is also customary to do something upon entering another space (office, restaurant, etc), something akin to wiping your feet on the doormat but for the whole body, to catch loose hairs. Maybe some equivalent of the RoombaTM is always running and in use. Air-filtration systems might also be beefed up.
Related to this, they'll probably approach plumbing, specifically the hair-trap in the shower, differently. Either it has to be ok for that much hair to go down the drain, or there needs to be a way to catch as much as comes off an entire body without blocking the drain from water. If you have longer hair (as I do), think about how much hair you pick out of the trap after a shower now, and multiply that by a factor of several.
**Recreation**
If loss of fur was a result of humans going through an aquatic phase, this suggests that our furry humans won't be much into swimming, water parks, and maybe other water sports. What will replace those -- in particular, how will they, socially, cool down in the heat? You'll have to decide how outdoor-oriented your furry people are; they might just spend more time indoors in the air conditioning in summer, or they might replace swims with camping trips in the woods (where the shade helps).
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To extend Twelfth's answer... a few things off the top of my head in no particular order. Most of these apply to lower technology human societies where modern technology hasn't compensated for biological differences.
Humans lack fur because we hunt by running. Humans can out run any animal on earth.
It's people without horses catch horses. They jog after horses, never catching them but never letting them rest either. After about 20-25 miles at most, the horse can't run any further, the human walks up and puts a rope arounds it's neck.
With flint, wood and bone weapons, hunters wound prey and then run it into the ground.
It's hard to cool by sweat with fur. If you ever seen a horse, "lather up" you've seen the basic problem. Horses have very thin, fine, close knapped fur yet still it interferes significantly with evaporation.
So, first off, humans with fur would have evolved to hunt differently. Likely, we would hunt with traps or with in larger groups like wolves. In either case our entire physiology might shift. We'd be adapted to sprint horses or wolves, to catch game quickly.
One affect might be a decrease in sexual dimorphism (overt differences in body shape by sex.) Part of the difference between men and women can be attributed to men being more adapted to protracted exercise. Distribution in muscles, muscle recover time, more sweat glands etc all point to optimization of men for running. If such optimization were not needed, then men and women might be more similar in physiology just like wolves and other canines and just like wolves, there would be less specialize of labor and less specialization in behaviors.
Most sexually monomorphic species are matriarchal, with the entire group supporting the reproduction of the matriarch, at least in hard times. Human society might be radically different historically although we might start out with something like we have now after technology has leveled the playing field between men and women.
We likely would have had trouble with prolonged relative work like most pre-industrial agricultural work. Humans have to be careful not to kill horses and oxen by forcing the animals to work as long as humans do. We would adapt society to allow working in sprint shifts, with two or more individuals tag teaming a single job to keep the work going. If men and women where physiologically similar, they could swap off child care and work for everything except nursing.
Individuals might commonly pair up with siblings, other relations or friends for life, both specializing in the same job and together forming a complete work team. So, if someone was a blacksmith, their partner would be as well. People didn't have time to waste so individuals would have some secondary task to occupy them at a lower level of effort while they rested from the main task. Human social structure would be based on this partnership. It would affect everything from military units to marriage.
Humans would be less mobile in general, at least preindustrial. Unable to walk, march or run as far, they would have to adapt activities to being closer to home. Any systems based on walking, like cities, would be more compact.
Armies would march and move slower but move faster in battle itself owing to likely greater sprinting speed. Battles would have to be decided faster before exhaustion set in. Battles would be very intense but short. This would favor more organized forms of shock warfare, like Greek Hoplites. The idea would be to hit the enemy hard and fast and do maximum damage in the shortest amount of time. Alternatively, there would be more pressure to develop a rotational system like the Romans used to grind away at an enemy while preventing exhaustion of individuals.
If the pair system did evolve, that would be part of the military as well and if men and women were more physiologically similar, then women would participate in combat more. If women could fight, that would increase per capita fighters in the population. Combined with intense shock warfare, battles could be more devastating with more adults overall in a population likely to be killed.
Slavery might be more difficult both in terms of the danger of going to war to capture slaves, the added difficulty in controlling women and the inability to substitute humans for animals and machines in many circumstance e.g. treadmills. Managing slave work would be more difficult if slaves had to constantly swap out task.
Having fewer slaves would likely reduce the profitability of war (slavery being a huge driver of warfare in classical times.) It would also foster technological development because it would be difficult to solve a complex problem just by throwing more slave at it e.g. threshing grain or grinding flour.
There would be greater pressure to domesticate animals for transportation and labor and greater pressure to develop vehicles and machines. Riding animals and carts would be more common of basic necessity which would make it harder to restrict horses to military caste aristocrats. With less of mobility advantage, such societies would be less hierarchal and more egalitarian e.g. classical Greece with few mounted warriors relative democracy as compared medieval Europe with knights on horses like tanks and most of the population serfs.
Lastly instead of skin color, fur length would likely distinguish whether individuals had equatorial or polar ancestry. Equatorial peoples would evolve shorter fur while polar peoples would evolve longer. Fur color would likely be seasonal. In Equatorial regions, long fur might become a status marker indicating an individual did not have to labor and worry about heat. In polar regions, the opposite would occur, short fur indicating a individual had surplus wealth for heat or clothes.
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Tim B has written a brilliant answer among many good answers, but I nonetheless think he doesn't give enough weight to the really big difference he himself spotted: *"People would be much less flexible in their ability to move between environments."* That would mean that conquest, migration and settlement would only take place in a broadly east-west direction. And when the land stopped, expansion would stop.
Jared Diamond's book *[Guns, Germs and Steel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel)* details the profound effects on human development of the fact that, even for us naked-skinned humans, to expand along an east-west axis is much easier than to expand along a north-south axis, and Eurasia aligns east-west while Africa and the Americas align north-south. This has affected agriculture, domestication of animals, parasites, plagues, and wars.
For the furry humanoids all these effects would be vastly magnified.
I doubt that the species would ever spread out to cover the whole world, and even if it eventually did, I doubt it would long remain as a single species.
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**Grooming**
Whilst parasite control would be something that was well under control in the modern day, we would have still come from a culture where we cooperated in removing fleas and lice from each other. Combing each others fur would be a common social activity but with lots of subtle social rules.
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I searched this question because I've been thinking about it and then wondered if anyone else did. Here I think is the main thing. People pay way too much attention to other people's facial expressions. Our genes give us our face but a natural face can look sweet or angry and we react to others' faces constantly and continuously, but make all kinds of assumptions. Our brain creates a cascade of what-ifs and guesses: "He's sad. Probably because..." "She's mad because I just said that." "He's not very smart, is he." "What does she think is so damn funny?" We read a spectrum of information on each other's faces, but no one knows what is in the mind of another, so this makes us very self-conscious. This is why we humans have such a hard time of it. Self-consciousness. Not only are we guessing at what others' expressions mean constantly, we are assuming or fearing that others can read our emotions or thoughts. We attempt to interpret what they might be interpreting, and we go through this all day long every day. We become aware of this sometime in our innocent little childhoods, and then we have lost that innocence forever as we embark upon the speculation train of who could be feeling and thinking what, and why.
Other animals don't have this, so they get to glide along without angst at all. If we had fur, our faces would be like dogs' faces or fox. Covered in nice colors and patterns, nicely shaped, and very attractive I think, and the emotions we feel or the genes or injuries that might make one's face look a certain way, are blissfully hidden behind our fur. We look a lot better! Think of a hairless cat. They don't look as good as a furred cat. A furred cat could have a really ugly bare face but that doesn't factor in at all if you are a species with fur. Everyone looks good. We would still read faces, but it would be different. Look at your dog's face and notice many expressions, but fur does a lot to make one look good at all times, and dials down the misinterpretation factor significantly. I would say that having fur would make us all enlightened, but I wonder if there would be a need for enlightenment at all, if we were furred.
Next question: I wonder why animals don't cry like humans?
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In my world there's a salt flat like [Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salar_de_Uyuni) (of different size if need be)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TDweg.jpg)
*([source](https://www.denomades.com/en/san-pedro-de-atacama/uyuni-salt-flat-4-days-id191))*
**Is there a chance a medium- to large-sized forest could have grown naturally in the immediate vicinance of the salt flat?**
What changes to the biome (*or to the trees*) would be needed, otherwise?
**Note:** the surrounding area does not have to be like Bolivia, in can be a salt flat in any climate.
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# The 'forest' is a forest of cacti
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/U4oHZ.jpg)
I [searched](https://www.google.com/search?biw=1276&bih=841&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=fy5rWrG5K9XqjwPanYiQAg&q=salar%20de%20uyuni%20forest&oq=salar%20de%20uyuni%20forest&gs_l=psy-ab.3...75953.76788.0.77107.7.7.0.0.0.0.236.668.0j3j1.4.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..3.2.263...0j0i67k1.0.p7Yuh28a9rc) 'salar de uyuni forest,' and this is what popped up. There are islands in the middle of the salt flat that have cactus growing on them.
It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to make your cactus forest bigger and more dense. If the islands have fertile soil, then a dry forest can get pretty dense; and pretty green after the rainy season. Here is a spiny forest from Madagascar after the rainy season. The rainy season is about the same length and wetness in [Madagascar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toliara#Geography_and_Climate) as it is in [Bolivia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potos%C3%AD#Climate).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Cib7A.jpg)
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**Highlands and lowlands.**
Salt flats are dried up bodies of water. That means that they are low lying, which is how they filled with water in the first place. Adjacent to low lying areas are sometimes higher areas. These areas have a different climate than the low lying body of water / salt lake / salt pan.
Here is an example from google satellite image..
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wRgG6.jpg)
Depicted: the [Bonneville Salt Flats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonneville_Salt_Flats). I zoomed out to include part of the Great Salt Lake and Salt Lake City to help orient. But at 7 o'clock from the Salt Flats are the Ipabah Peaks.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/q7GEp.jpg)
<http://www.peakbagging.com/UTPhotos/Ibapah.html>
It is a forest. Other higher elevations in the vicinity of the salt pan and salt lake are also forested.
The key to different biomes in close proximity to one another is change in elevation.
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Yes, many plants have evolved to cope with salt, some filter it out at the roots, others absorb it , put it in the leaves and then shed the leaves. Mangroves have evolved several ways.
Coconut trees grow right next to the sea, ideally they actually overhang the water. They separate out the salts and store them in various parts of the plant.
Basically anywhere there is water, plant life will evolve to cope with whatever else is in the environment eventually and thrive.
Ground water with an impermeable layer of rock between it and the salt pan area would do it or something similar. No need for humidity. We have several villages here which have fresh water springs within metres of the sea and no salt in them at all due to the rock.
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The other option, apart from salt tolerant plants, is to have a rain effect zone; an area of high rainfall at one margin of the salt-flat, while most of the salt-flat is in a [rain shadow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain_shadow), will have much lower salinity. High water inputs cause salt to migrate down into the subsoil instead of it sitting on the surface. This means that part of the old lake or seabed could be in salt-flats while other areas are in grassland or even forests.
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There is no need to change anything for a dryland forest to grow near a salt flat, other than a change in altitude of perhaps only several metres and the right level of natural rainfall (not too much). A salt flat can be maintained by groundwater largely independently of local rainfall if it is not a dry salt bed.
Have a look around Sea Lake (Lake Tyrrel) in Victoria, Australia and you will find that there was originally much forest that has now been cleared for farming. The salt lake there is in a depression.
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**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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This question does not appear to be about **worldbuilding**, within the scope defined in the [help center](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/help).
Closed 7 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/66559/edit)
In short: there are a few servers in a small server room. Being cheap general not-really-business-oriented machines, they did not necessarily have good safety features from the beginning, and what's more, they could be arbitrarily modified before being brought to the room and installed there. **How could such a server die a sudden and dramatic death, with the perpetrator able to make practically any preparations for the sabotage?**
I've heard some kinds of chips can explode somehow, but if this scene sounds absolutely implausible, consider what could be different if the servers were manufactured a decade or two into the future.
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As much as I'd like to learn if blowing up a computer is in any way possible, I also have two conditions specific to my story:
* there must be no visible clue of intentional sabotage — it must look like a technical problem upon visual inspection (so, no explosives inside the server case)
* the attacker must be able to remotely\* start the process at short notice, with at most 3-4 days from the start signal to the final catastrophic event
\* Meaning: from outside the room. E.g., hacking the system, changing voltage or air conditioning of the room. No inside traitor, however.
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I'm writing a story involving an Internet-connected server which at some point explodes. The system is optimized for the compilation and execution of simple programs as well as for various computations, working as a cloud testing environment for a local community of computer scientists. (The reason why anyone would want to make it blow up is, frankly, difficult to explain.)
The tiny server room where it is located can be assumed to be reasonably safe (physically), however security practices are not the priority for the inexperienced sysadmin. Therefore, the chance of initial compromisation is very realistic (i.e., the outside person installing the server may loosen some screws or even infect the system, and the sysadmin would never notice). Also, the never-updated system could be hacked at any time, since the server is connected to the Internet.
Whether it was from personal experience or science fiction films, I thought the processor overheating would do the job. For example, a bug in the system could suddenly cause a massive amount of computations to be performed, generating constant intense load on the processor, which would ultimately cause it to overheat (and explode...?) However, it now seems to me that more problems need to arise to lead to such an extreme outcome. Since nobody around the server room really knows or cares what is going on (as long as the server is up), and the computer scientists never visit the room themselves, the attacker has lots of opportunities.
If an explosion is really improbable, a similar dramatic incident could happen instead, e.g. the spinning fans could slip off or the box could fall to the floor or catch fire, leading to disastrous consequences and possibly destroying nearby objects in the process (which, come to think of it, could be the ones exploding subsequently). As I noted, the person setting up the server is free to prepare it for anything.
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# Backup battery bank failure
As you've noted, it would be difficult to get computer chips to fail - they simply don't contain anything all that explosive. About the best you can do is an electrical fire resulting in exploding capacitors, but they're more like popcorn than an all-out fireball *boom*. So, we'll have to focus on the surrounding infrastructure - the most likely candidate being batteries.
Datacenters typically have large banks of backup batteries (Google, for example, has a battery in [each of their racks](https://cnet4.cbsistatic.com/img/ODt1FkLz25YmW72t0HPDvm2DWMI=/620x0/2009/04/01/66450093-fdc0-11e2-8c7c-d4ae52e62bcc/Google_data_centers-1.jpg)) - classic examples look like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oiqyb.jpg)
The great thing about typical batteries is they are rather good at exploding. A novice datacenter admin might try to mimic Google using cheap batteries with imperfections - making their setup rather vulnerable to a major problem.
**Remote triggering a battery failure**
It would have to be poorly designed but let's try it anyway! So, the first thing that would be needed is the safety vents on the batteries would have to get blocked up. Maybe they could be blocked up by dust - after all, dust is a common problem in servers anyway. The above image is even pretty dusty.
You'll next need to build up some heat around that battery - this part could *kind of* be performed remotely. Assuming they used a Google-style design and the battery is in the rack, then we could maybe pull it off by making the CPU get way too hot. Disable the fans and overclock it, then make the server run something seriously intensive. If possible, disable the CPU's thermal safety measures *(this is hard, but it's likely that it's optional anyway; dust ignites rather easily)*. Do this to all the racks to make the heat really climb for the one at the top of the cabinet. If you're lucky, dust around one of the CPU's would catch fire; a short amount of time later, that fire engulfs the battery.
Rather usefully, this scenario doesn't necessarily require any physical access too as it can be explained with a series of novice mistakes.
**Summary**
A stack of poorly designed, very dusty Google replicas with a cheap built in battery. Maybe even place the battery right next to the CPU to give it the best chance it can get!
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5o9nd.jpg)
Next, it sounds like your datacenter isn't big enough to have either of these, but let's consider them anyway.
# Diesel generator fire
Many datacenters also have diesel generators as a backup. A somewhat famous example was during hurricane Sandy in NYC when the guys at Squarespace manually [hauled diesel up 18 flights of stairs](https://www.squarespace.com/press/2012-11-1-fuel-buckets-keep-new-york-data-centre-live-through-the-hurricane) to keep the servers online. This could be used as a nice source of something classically explosive nearby.
# Cooling system failure
A major source of cost and complexity in an average datacenter is the cooling system - large pipes filled with warm water.
So, if one of the pipes became clogged in some way and the datacenter builder didn't bother with all the normal safety measures (such as [an expansion tank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansion_tank)) then the heat would build in the system potentially taking it to breaking point. Water explosions are wonderfully powerful, but there's no fireball of course - so it depends on the kind of effect you're after!
# Fire sprinklers
Rather ironically, a fire sprinkler can cause a fire when electronics are involved. Let's say the perpetrator triggers the fire alarm which in turn rains down water on the rack. That generates sparks, which in turn starts an electrical fire. The fire then proceeds to explode one or all of the batteries using the setup above.
In this scenario, for some physical accuracy, the top server would spark but would be too wet to ignite any dust. One of the lower servers would receive enough of the water (but not too much to drench it) to be the actual ignition source.
The bonus of using a sprinkler is it would be a lot easier to pull off remotely; it wouldn't involve breaking basically every safety measure a CPU has. It's also rather subtle - a novice probably wouldn't bother checking the ceiling when positioning their servers.
# Or..
Hit [backspace](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1XqrTgRpfM&t=2m22s):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/J9E6k.gif)
Shift is *even better*:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ov7mZ.gif)
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Your server banks are cooled by massive quantities of a [flammable refrigerant](https://www.racplus.com/news/safety-concerns-grow-over-surge-in-use-of-flammable-refrigerants/8620789.article) which ends up getting ignited by a spark from faulty (or sabotaged) electrical wiring.
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Not too long ago I had smoke come out of the vent on my computer. It was due to the power connector on an optical drive. It was continuing to burn the plastic, but would not “catch” to burn without the heat source.
I recall when Li-ion batteries were first appearing, an early adopter (because of the low weight to power ratio) was RC aircraft. Many did in fact end in an impressive fireball.
So, being an *early adopter* of some new technology might be key; it doesn’t have all the safety features yet, they apply the low level tech themselves rather than find an already engineered solution, and they don't appreciate the dangers. It also has the advantage that you make up something new so people don't complain that X doesn't behave that way, since you use Y which is made up.
A true explosion in the technical sense seems unlikely because the materials are not explosives. Or maybe the people combined things that were not meant to be explosive, like how airship waterproofing is what today we call *thermite*.
Furthermore, a lot of stuff simply doesn’t burn, and that's also by design. Your people might use different stuff rather than normal, not realizing that it compromises normal fire safety.
Finally, you might have an intentional self-destruct mechanism! Yea, they didn’t know that the cheap ebay drives were surplus from government contractors intended for servers on board military spy planes…
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The server / computer has none or very few flammable parts
The small batteries are very small and would be hard to over charge
Can get a capacitor to pop but that is far from an explosion
Memory and CPU is mostly sand and it is not going to explode or catch on fire.
A fan might heat up and have a short electrical fire.
The operating systems protects the hardware in that a regular program cannot control hardware directly. It is call the hardware abstraction layer.
I think the best shot would be to hack the EPROM to shut off a fan and hack the thermal sensor to not report over heat. Even access to the EPROM from a regular program is not easy. Hope the EPROM fails as part of the overheat or they just don't check.
An OpenSource OS like Linux you might be able to do it but still you are just going to fry (short) some components. No fire or explosion.
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The problem you have with having anything dramatic happen is everything is isolated.
For example, a power supply under the right conditions might catch fire for a bit, but is encased in a metal shell that would limit or prevent its spread. The following is about the best you can get.
Let's pretend the servers were purchased with no name power supplies, and were already running at 105% of max. Due to cheapness, the safe guards provided by normal manufacturers was left out. Now some motherboards allow overclocking via software, so with the correct virus you could potentially push it even further over the top causing the whole system to draw even more power. Then runs software to max the CPU and GPU. You might also be able to A. stop the fans,on the motherboard or B. override any alarms when you force the fans to 1rpm.
At this point you might be able to melt some wires inside the power supply. Largely the CPU have heat sensors built-in, and would automatically throttle the speed down to prevent damage. You would have to be a super genius to alter the CPU as it is all encrypted in multiple layers by Intel.
Maybe you could get the capacitors to pop, and a small fire that would be contained by either the metal case of the power supply or the chassis. An actual explosion would be almost impossible. The super cheap components inside the power supply would quickly melt or short out, and cause an open circuit disrupting the short. Either that or trip the circuit breakers, and that would stop the short.
Typically servers are connected to UPS, which would detect the short and turn off.
If you significantly tampered with the electrical system, maybe you could have a fire, maybe. As in prevent the any breakers in the whole electrical box from tripping.
Your only hope is the building catches fire, and there is a gas station with a giant propane tank outside which the fire can spread to and then EXPLOSION!!!!
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Yes, computer chips can explode, but it's a question of scale.
Cooling fans are controlled by the operating system to keep temperatures within specified limits, starting/speeding them up if more cooling is needed, slowing/stopping them to reduce power consumption and noise when not needed. Also, CPUs will slow themselves down if necessary to reduce generation of heat if there is a threat of overheating.
These measures can be subverted; cause the CPU to work very hard, continue to run at its highest speed with all cooling turned off, and the chip will overheat and go into thermal runaway. It will eventually destroy itself explosively. In human terms, it won't look or sound like much, perhaps all the sound and fury of a Christmas cracker.
There may be smoke, and there may be ensuing fire; computers do contain a fair amount of combustibles - plastics in the circuit boards, chip packaging, insulation, and various mechanical parts. Likely not enough to do anything more than release a harmful dose of toxic smoke, but there is potential to start a larger fire if more combustibles are very close by - as in stacks of paper piled all around the machine. For a single node in a server rack, going "poof" like this would probably do nothing to anything else - nothing within range will be combustible.
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You'd be surprised how much stuff is handled in software these days. For example, one fellow [discovered](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/07/how-charlie-miller-discovered-the-apple-battery-hackhow-a-security-researcher-discovered-the-apple-battery-hack/) that a Macbook with a compromised kernel could actually break into the microcontroller in the battery, and reflash its firmware. (The battery was using its own off-the-shelf OS, and Apple hadn't changed the default password on the batteries it shipped.)
In any case, this software is responsible for handling charging and discharging. If I recall correctly, lithium batteries will catch fire if they're discharged too much, and then you try to re-charge them. According to [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery):
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> Discharging beyond 2 V can also result in capacity fade. The (copper) anode current collector can dissolve into the electrolyte. When charged, copper ions can reduce on the anode as metallic copper. Over time, copper dendrites can form and cause a short in the same manner as lithium.
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Besides turning cooling of and overcharging the batteries you could also try to spin the harddrives over their max speed maby, you can get them to shatter. The harddrive shards could also make some big damage allthoug this is very unlikely to happen.
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There is this community where people dive into the sea for precious stones. I need an oxygen cylinder sort of thing for divers. It can be plant based or it can be a dependency on some other species. There is no magic in the world. The world is an alternate earth in medieval times. How to achieve that?
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Leather, treated properly, can be very water tight. I would make a bell out of leather, large and with open bottom attached to a basket like contraption with stones tied to it to weigh it down. Sort of like the balloons we use to fly around with hot air, but this would go down into the water. The "basket" part of this would be attached closer to the balloon/bell part of it. I could then dive from the balloon/bell, or work directly from it once i'd set it down on the floor. I'd keep a rope or line attached to my dock or boat. Once done working or run out of air, release the weight stones and come back up to the dock or boat for more air and stones. If I ever saw the water level rising inside of my balloon/bell, while under water, i could swim outside it and look for air leaks (bubble streams).
Say I consume [30 liters of air per minute](http://www.arb.ca.gov/research/resnotes/notes/94-11.htm). And say a cowhide gives me 30 sq ft or leather (2.8 m2). That would make a sphere with a radius of about .5m. Which would give me about .44 m3 of air (440 liters), so almost 15 minutes of air. But because volume grows with the cube of the radius, while area only takes the square, it would only take about 10 to 11 cowhides to give me a balloon big enough to hold 8 hours worth of air.
The bell would sort of collapse some at different depths, kind of like an atmospheric balloon expands as it goes up and shrivels up when it comes down. The bell would have to be flexible to allow this, so the leather would have to be thinned down just right. But, this is a good thing. It means the air in your bells is getting pressurized by the water around it. You want that air to get pressurized, otherwise breathing would become impossible very quickly.
At depths of even 10 meters, [you'd have to worry about compression sickness](http://www.scubadiverinfo.com/2_divetables.html). The most you could spend down would be about 2 hours, without the need for a decompression chamber. So to stay that max, you'd need about 6 to 7 cowhides to make for 4 hours worth of air, compressed down to half volume - 2 hours. But different pressure affects how you absorb oxygen in your lungs so it would affect how much volume of air you would need per hour, and I don't know exactly what that would mean.
A problem you would run into is that a leather bag containing even just .44m3 of air, submerged in water, would have a strain similar to the same bag holding that much volume of water, hanging from a roof. The internal pressure would be trying to tear the seams apart. Even if you glued and super-stitched the seams, you would be likely to come apart at the seams, and all the more as the bell got bigger. This would be a bigger problem near the surface, where the bell is in full volume without as much external pressure to balance the pressure from the buoyancy of the air inside it. One partial solution would be that you would need to reinforce the bell with a netting of thick ropes that will be the ones that end up carrying the weights at the bottom. The leather bell sits inside the netting. Another partial solution would be to create a network of multiple bells, rather than one bigger bell. This will require more material but it may prove an absolute necessity. Another possible solution is to make a double or even triple layered bell, with the layers glued to each other, so that the seams of one bell never run too close to the seams of the other. It would be ok for them to intersect, but not run alongside. The bottom line is, imagine you were building a bag that you could hung from the roof and fill with water. Mind you, a cubic meter of water weighs a ton, literally a metric ton, 1000 kg or nearly 2200 pounds. The strains on the bag and its moorings would be pretty much the same. If you can build such a bag, you can use it as a bell, turned upside down, with air inside and water outside.
An interesting aside here would be that the people in the world doing this, would have learned the hard way about compression sickness, and would constantly have to deal with it. People being tempted to stay longer, jut to get a little more precious metal, and then ending up with the "bends" (compression sickness makes a person double up and bend their joins in pain).
This sounds so doable and fun (building the bell, not getting the bends), I might have to try it just for the heck of it. The balloon thing, without the compression sickness part. So maybe just the 15 minute version to start with.
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Depending on how "alternate" this alternate world is, I have two recommendations:
**If the world is very *similar* to Earth:** The most grounded solution would probably just be a long, flexible tube. One end would be attached to something buoyant (like a leather sack full of air, or the side of a rowboat), and the other end would be taken with the diver. By only using it to inhale (and just exhaling into the water), he should be able to continue breathing for whatever depth he could safely traverse without any protection against water pressure. It's portable in the sense that he could coil it up to carry with him when he's not diving. The tube itself could just be a (fictional) hollow plant vine coated in preservative.
**If the world is very *different* from Earth:** A symbiotic relationship with a fictional animal would probably make for an interesting detail, and would also serve to differentiate your setting from reality ("here's why this works in my world, and didn't work in human history"). For instance, divers could have a carnivorous plant which attaches to their skin like a leech, and sucks their blood to feed off their CO2, and leaves O2 as a waste product, so the diver would be able to just stop breathing, but still maintain a relatively healthy oxygen level in his blood for a while (if he attached a lot of these leech plants).
Depending on the direction of your narrative, this could also give you an opportunity to introduce limitations on the divers. For instance, the instinctive imperative to breathe is extremely deeply rooted, and a diver would have to overcome that primal impulse in order to use one of the leech plants. This would limit the use of such creatures only to people who are either extremely disciplined, or completely insane.
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I don't think an oxygen cylinder is really the way you should approach this. Take a look at the history of [freediving](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freediving). In ancient greece they would use a large stone tied to a boat to help them get down 30m, and they would be able to stay there for up to 5 minutes. This could be used to get them down twice as deep with little difficulty.
Why is this better than some form of stored oxygen? At 60m down, you're already below what you can reach with recreational scuba gear. Your body can handle the pressure just fine, but at that pressure normal air becomes toxic - the partial pressure of nitrogen is too high.
Oh, and any air you breathe at depth has to be pressurized. If not, you simply won't be able to resist the force of water pushing against you in order to breathe in.
Oh, and the amount of air you use depends on its volume, not its weight. So if you have a balloon large enough to hold 5 minutes worth of air and take it down to 40m, it becomes only 1 minute worth of air. (FYI scuba tanks take advantage of this in reverse - if the air is pressurized at 2x what you need and you have a way to supply it at just the pressure you need, your tank effectively has twice as much air.)
So in order to breathe air at depth you need:
1. Pressurized air. A balloon would allow the water to do the compression for you, but I don't know of medieval materials that can expand and contract as needed. If you don't have a balloon then you need
2. A container strong enough to hold pressurized air. This is actually really important - the pressures involved would make most containers explode.
3. A different mix of gases. Deep dives use heliox, a helium-oxygen mix, in order to get around nitrogen narcosis. FYI pure oxygen won't work, either.
4. Something to make sure you get air at the right pressure. If your air is pressurized above the pressure of the water, you need something to make sure you don't burst your lungs when you breathe in.
If I haven't made it clear already, an oxygen cylinder is not a good idea. So why is freediving better? *It doesn't have any of the above problems!*
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Something else to consider is how people first figured out that the precious stones are down there. They're not going to be discovered while fishing - you do not want your nets to hit the sea floor because that makes them likely to get caught on rocks and either get stuck or break. In order for them to be discovered by your divers with oxygen cylinders, you'd have to have a reason for those to exist and be in use prior to discovering the precious stones.
The most plausible explanation is that there are precious stones in shallower waters as well. At a depth 5m or less, it's reasonable that someone could spot it while fishing and retrieve it. As knowledge of the stones became more widespread, the stones that are easy to collect are all harvested. Over time, the people have to go deeper and deeper in order to find new stones.
So why would they use anything other than freediving? Having to go deeper only over time means that there is plenty of time for them to refine their diving techniques, such as using ballast to get down faster and breathing techniques to be able to stay down longer.
Also, consider the first person who tries using an external oxygen source instead of just holding their breath. They're very likely to die or be seriously injured. If you've taken scuba lessons, you'll understand why - it's really easy to mess up badly. Here are two mistakes you can make and why an untrained person is likely to make them:
1. Holding your breath as you ascend. It feels pretty natural to continue holding your breath until you reach the surface, especially because it makes you more buoyant and helps you ascend. However,
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2. Ascending too quickly even while exhaling. When you free dive, you generally are going to try to come up as quickly as possible when you're done (in part so that you can go down again sooner). This is a good recipe for getting decompression sickness (the bends).
So imagine this - a group of divers, where one has figured out a way to take air down with him. He goes down and is able to stay down for longer than anyone has ever stayed down before. However, as soon as he comes back up it's clear that something is wrong. He is clearly in pain, and gasping for air. As his friends watch, horrified, he passes out and starts turning blue even though he's still breathing. He soon dies, having suffocated due to lung damage. As they mourn their friend, they look at each other and understand - man was not meant to stay underwater for that long. (Still works if he only gets the bends)
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**Stay Dry**
You may try dry-digging, by placing a long, wide, tube made the same way a wine barrel is. However, this is a cylindrical tube weighted at the bottom and dropped into your area of interest. Get it nice and solid into the lake-bed.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dUyuC.png)
Next, simply pump the water out, take a ladder, and climb down to bed. Then you can start digging for stones all day long. If you need more clearance, you can make your tunnel as wide and sturdy as a ship's hull, but just a long cylinder to the base of the lake.
This could work so long as you provide air ventilation when your miners start digging.
Please note that I am no artist. Also note that I'm nonetheless proud of the precious gems.
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You create a large ceramic pot (ceramic because it is water and air tight and easy to build into different shapes. The pot should be shaped like this:
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Place weights around the neck of the pot so that it naturally floats this way up when filled with air.
You have large bundles of rocks on the floor of the ocean tied to ropes, you use the ropes to pull up the rocks into your boat and then attach them to the pot. You then stand inside the pot and release the rocks from the boat. The rocks then pull you down to the bottom.
The increasing water pressure will push the air up further into the pot but the same amount of air will stay inside. It will just fill a smaller volume.
Walk around on the sea floor with your shoulders and head inside the pot, you can duck out as needed to grab things then go back in to breathe. The weights and the air inside keep the pot naturally stable and the rocks keep it down by the sea bed.
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^
/ \
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When the air starts getting stale or you have what you came for then release the rocks (leaving them attached to the main line so you can pull them back up for next time) and the air inside the pot will pull you to the surface. Pull the pot back into the boat to refresh the air inside then repeat as often as desired.
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This world has a type of seaweed which grows deep under the water but still relies on photosynthesis. It creates bladders filled with oxygen (from photosynthesis) along its stem for flotation, and because of the square-cube law, making these bladders larger gives more benefit as the plant grows.
Divers discovered that these bladders could provide a limited amount of air: breathe out, then bite down on the stem and breathe in as much of the escaping oxygen as possible. Each one is only good for one or two breaths, but it's an extension of time underwater, and they can even be "farmed" under appropriate conditions. The bladders are also difficult to carry while diving and tend to burst if brought to the surface, so in preparation for a dive people would cut a strand of this plant while underwater, tie the base to a weight of some sort, and tow it over to their diving site. Then they could get a few breaths before coming back to the surface again.
The process of putting the cut plants near the dive site takes a lot of time, but it's necessary for safety. Some divers try to go down in a single breath to avoid all the laborious preparation. This limits their time and has a greater risk of decompression sickness (since they're going up and down more often) but means they can get down to a new lode faster than other, more careful divers.
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A bellows operated at the surface could force air through pipes (bamboo, intestine, rubber, etc). The pipes could connect to a watertight, inverted, bowl (like capsized boat) that could be weighted to sink close to where the gem harvesters would be working.
This would be far less portable that what you may be asking for, but it would allow for divers to remain below for lengthy periods of time.
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Instead of storing the oxygen under compression, you could generate it chemically.
One example of this is the 'oxygen candle'. From [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_oxygen_generator):
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> A chlorate candle, or an oxygen candle, is a cylindrical chemical oxygen generator that contains a mix of sodium chlorate and iron powder, which when ignited smolders at about 600 °C (1,112 °F), producing sodium chloride, iron oxide, and at a fixed rate about 6.5 man-hours of oxygen per kilogram of the mixture. The mixture has an indefinite shelf life if stored properly: candles have been stored for 20 years without decreased oxygen output. Thermal decomposition releases the oxygen. The burning iron supplies the heat. The candle must be wrapped in thermal insulation to maintain the reaction temperature and to protect surrounding equipment.
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This seems within the range of plausibility for a gunpowder-level alchemist.
Breathing pure oxygen at the pressure a few tens of meters down is a Bad Idea for humans, but the physiology of your characters may differ.
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great place of ideas <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_diving_technology#Pre-industrial>
DaVinci designed airtanks made of leather, diving suits, and breathing hoses connected to woden floats. Metal or wood diving bells and snorkels were common. goggles were also known.
air pumps and hoses started showing up in the 16th century.
<http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/features/leonardo/diving.html>
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Balloons are one option. Rubber trees => rubber => balloons => fill with oxygen by keeping them airtightly wrapped around some greed plant's twig until it is inflated with oxygen. The balloon ought to be transparent (of course) for photosynthesis to work.
Another option is to use a large air-tight bag mixed with chemicals which slowly react together and produce oxygen. Such chemicals do really exist in nature too (Hydrogen Peroxide when treated with a catalyist -i forgot the name- immediately disintegrates into water and oxygen). The larger amount of chemicals in the bag, the longer you can stay underwater.
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While multiple people have tried to improvise oxygen storage devices from various medieval materials it's not going to work. None of the proposals work at extreme pressures and nothing else is viable due to the buoyancy problem.
A low pressure air storage system of sufficient volume is going to have an insane amount of buoyancy. It could be counterweighted enough to allow the diver to descend but you're going to have an insane mass to lug around--being at neutral buoyancy doesn't cancel inertia.
Using the numbers from the cowhide answer I get about 2 m^3/hr--and remember that a m^3 of water weighs about a ton. Thus his 8 hours of air in cowhides requires that he starts with a 16 ton counterweight--good luck hauling that around!
Furthermore, as the storage isn't rigid he's going to be losing buoyancy as the dive goes on, he must shed about 1 pound per second from his counterweight. How is he going to accomplish anything?!?!
Also, there's an additional problem with this answer--compressing the air into a smaller volume doesn't lessen the **volume** of air you breathe. Thus when you're 10m down you use twice as much surface-pressure air as you do on the surface. Your 8 hours at the surface is 4 hours at 10m, 2 hours at 30m and a mere hour at 70m--not counting what you need for decompression.
Lacking the ability to construct high pressure air cylinders the only options are the caisson approach (enclose the area, pump the water out) or air being pumped down to the diver.
How complex the pumping option is depends on how much pressure your system can handle. If your pumps and hose can handle the needed pressure, fine, it's easy. If they can't you have to break it up into stages. Lets say you're at 20m but your pumps can only deliver 15 psi. Build three pumps--one on the ship, two that are lowered into the sea and run off a steam line. Each one feeds air to the next, the diver breathes.
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Taking several notable real life inspirations from the animal kingdom I like to design a realistic Dragon towering any creature ever lived but has a nasty habit of generating sonic boom every where in its wake. What are the prerequisites my Dragon have to evolve in order to attain supersonic flight?
I think it's must have close to a mammal blood circulation to supply ample oxygen to its already effective muscular system and is warm blooded like a cheetahs to give it energy for sudden rush of adrenaline, a crocodiles eyelids to cover it eyes, and so on. My concern is that this colossal winged breast would be too heavy and its skeletal structure have to be augmented naturally through evolution but I have no clues how any animal can survive unhurt after performing such a earth shattering feat any ideas? No tech pls and absolutely no thunderpants!
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**Dragons would need to have a reason to be supersonic in order to evolve to do so.**
Being able to fly at supersonic speeds will have incredibly high metabolic and structural costs for the dragon. In order for one to evolve these traits, we need to answer the following question: why do supersonic dragons produce more offspring than non-supersonic dragons?
If supersonic flight doesn't get more food, or more mates, dragons won't evolve it. Similar non-supersonic dragons would outcompete the supersonic ones, since they would require far less food.
In nature, nothing else flies supersonic, and supersonic flight won't be worth its calories if its used to catch cattle or ponies or other such animals. That's not to say that it couldn't be useful, though. Dragons have projectile weapons, so if dragons mostly fight against other dragons, supersonic flight could give them a key edge in dogfighting, especially since the dragon they were closing in on wouldn't be able to hear them coming.
**Dragons would need to consume incredibly high caloric density food in order to evolve to be supersonic.**
It takes a *lot* of energy for an aircraft to reach supersonic speeds, probably more than an animal could obtain eating other animals. If dragons fly at supersonic speeds, they'll need to consume something more energetically dense. Something like oil.
If dragons consume oil from naturally occurring sources, they could directly burn this in an internal jet engine in order to achieve supersonic flight.
**The Ecology of Dragons**
Dragons are large creatures that eat oil. They both extract calories from it, and produce refined fuel which they burn in their engines. These engines resemble a pulse-jet engine, and are primarily comprised of carbon fibers and thermally resistant graphites which the dragons synthesize from their food.
Naturally occurring oil, of course, is rare, and as a result, dragons have become incredibly territorial. They've got large, stiff bodies covered in smooth scales to reduce their drag, and can launch flaming globs of tar at one another mid flight. Large dragons can fly at supersonic speeds, which gives them maneuvering advantages in their aerial fights over oil-rich territory. Because their bodies are stiffened for high speed flight, they can't turn their heads very much, so skill in dogfighting is key for dragons to protect their territories.
These supersonic dogfights, of course, are necessarily short, as the thick scales of graphite that dragons grow on the leading edges of their wings and along their heads slowly ablate during supersonic flight. Dragons prefer to cruise at fast subsonic speeds and use their size and breath weapons to dispatch smaller challengers if possible, rapidly accelerating into the supersonic regime only when absolutely necessary to outmaneuver an opponent. These graphite scales also provide a measure of resistance against the breath weapons of other dragons.
Larger dragons can grow these heat shields faster and thicker than smaller dragons. As this gives the largest of these creatures a major edge in combat, evolution has driven these majestic creatures to grow to truly colossal sizes.
[Answer]
The real issue behind your dragon problem isn't biological - it's mechanical. The fastest animal on earth is the Peregrine Falcon, which can only reach speeds of 389 KM/H while going at full-dive, which is several magnitudes slower than needed. Simply put, an organic life form could not possibly achieve supersonic speed...
Unless they can make it into space.
Skydiver Felix Baumgartner have been well-documented to have broken the sound barrier simply by falling high enough - 24 miles up to be exact. If your dragon can get itself that high up in the first place, all it would take is falling down, then catching itself before it breaks every bone in its body.
The problems your dragon would face trying to do this are:
* Getting that high up in the first place
* Surviving the atmospheric climb without externals
* Breaking its fall in a non-catastrophic way
Let's get our dragon into space first.
## **Getting Up Into Space**
If your dragon is Titan-levels of large, and you don't mind it leaving a crater behind when it launches into the air, it could simply push itself off the ground and, with a light enough body, accelerate itself up 24 miles high. This would require an enormous amount of energy, but we're not looking to solve the ecosystem problem of a giant dragon - we just want to get it into space.
Another option, that could pair well with the above solution, would be hydrogen gas pockets that allow it to float up into the atmosphere (and would explain where it gets all that fire, if it can breath fire that is). You wouldn't make it all the way up with just hydrogen, but coupled with a good launch, you might just make it high enough.
This would also have to be aided by wings to give them additional thrust(origin of their wings I will get to later) since any momentum that could solely carry them up that far would create a sonic boom on takeoff (Not that this would be necessarily a *bad* side-effect).
Getting both of these would be evolutionarily unlikely - you would need a strong food chain full of high-caloric prey, coupled with a reason to float and have such strong legs. Fortunately, I have an idea...
## **Surviving In Space**
Your dragon will need to not only survive in the incredibly low-atmosphere of space, but also survive the lack of oxygen involved with being so high in the first place. Evolution-wise, there's one option that might give you both of these at once: Deep sea hibernating ancestors.
Deep sea ancestors on the scale of Giant Squids would give you giant, strong dragons with especially strong legs that would be increasingly strong outside of the high pressures of the ocean, and hibernating beneath the sea, perhaps after feasting on giant squids, would give them a reason to survive without oxygen.
It even suggests a means by which this behavior was evolutionarily chosen for - launching themselves from the sea floor, the faster and stronger dragons, who could also handle the rapid change in pressure, could more easily catch Giant Squid the faster they can go. Some dragons may have even figured out that they can get a better chance of catching them on the return-trip, which would lead them to trying to jump higher and higher, until eventually they evolve the ability to survive breaching the water, then as they move onto land, learn to use their strong legs to leap into space.
## **Surviving the Drop**
This is your biggest challenge - to explain how a dragon that evolved from a sea creature would survive a 24-mile drop. Their initial sheer resistance to pressure (possibly owing to their scales) helps, but they'll need SOME way to catch themselves as they break the sound barrier.
Fortunately, being from the sea gives them one unique feature that could help them with this - Fins, or evolutionarily speaking, evolved wings. Originally used to slow themselves back down after catching a squid, they could use them to catch the air and shift their direction mid-flight, so that their momentum is reduced and redirected in a wholly non-catastrophic, and entirely sound-barrier-breaking way.
There you have it - dragons that leap into space and come crashing down at supersonic speeds, evolved from giant sea-dwelling predators that ate giant squids literally for breakfast.
[Answer]
Actually I think a smaller dragon would be more likely to achieve these high flight speeds. If for no other reason than it can help them escape larger dragons and can be used as a weapon.
I don't think the dragon could reach these speeds by flapping their wings alone, especially since most dragons would already need magic just to fly because of their size. But if they are very fast and can fly high into the stratosphere, then turn down and dive, they might be able to break the sound barrier with just a little handwavium. This could have come about partly from escaping larger dragons, (fly higher than they can) and then attacking either prey or as another defense against the larger predators.
If it was used as an attack dive they might need reinforced heads and necks, but the sonic boom would really mess up another flying creature or any other creature it passes near.
[Answer]
I was going to post this as a comment on @Zibbobz's answer, however it kind of grew to being its own answer.
If there was some local fauna which was kind of like kelp. With pockets of hydrogen gas to help hold it's self up. The plant would have evolved this to help them scatter their seeds or pollen over a very large area.
When the dragon wants to go hunting it grabs hold of lots of these. Cuts them free of the ground and floats up, up and away. These plants will have evolved to have very stretchy gas sacks so they can reach higher altitudes. (a normal weather balloon can stretch four times its size during flight[1](http://www.diyspaceexploration.com/introduction-to-high-altitude-balloons/)) During the early phase of the flight the dragon takes many deep breaths to oxygenate its blood and then holds its breath once it passes out of the range where it can breath. Whales can hold their breath for up to 90 minutes.
Once the dragon is high enough or the balloon/kelp pops it drops down in a very stream lined shape with its wings folded back. It is still holding its breath. Here it will break the sound barrier. The pray it is falling on will not see or hear it coming. The pray is going to have to give it a huge amount of energy. This has to feed a dragon after all.
As the dragon needs to slow down it first goes from noes down to nose level then slowly expands its wings. Hopefully managing to glide out of the fall before it splatters its self into the ground.
The highly flammable plants may be a problem with this plan. Maybe need to explain that the plants seeds can be activated by fire and thus why they are around fire breathing dragons. We are trying to deal with big dragons, some amount of hand waving is required to deal with the square/cubed law.
[Answer]
What if the dragons utilize their standard, magically hot fire to **modify themselves** for supersonic flight?
Arcane knowledge of metallurgy and surgery, passed down through the ages, is used to augment their bones with titanium alloys bathed in dragonfire, strengthening their frames for the ordeal while being hollowed to reduce weight. Scales are reshaped and smoothed to reduce friction, and re-enforced on the leading edge to take the brunt of supersonic flight.
Tanks are added to artificial structures, and the dragons use magic to purify and store enhanced rocket fuel that they then use to literally rocket themselves to supersonic speeds.
[Answer]
If you are only concerned about the boom and do not necessarily need flight, you could consider different methods of creating a sonic boom.
One scenario that is not so far-fetched and actually might have happened is that dinosaurs with very long tails could have flicked them like a bullwhip, accelerating the tip of their tails to the speed of sound.
[Here](http://www.nytimes.com/1997/12/02/science/did-dinosaurs-break-the-sound-barrier.html) is an article from '97 about a paleontologist discussing whether it is possible.
[Answer]
Taking the speed of a perigrine falcon as 1/3rd the speed of sound.
We know that the force of acceleration is proportional to mass.
We know that the force opposing this (air resistance) is proportional to surface area and the square of velocity.
We can rearrange those to say that velocity is proportional to SQRT(mass/surface area).
We can say that mass is proportional to density and wingspan^3.
We can say that surface area is proportional to wingspan^2.
So velocity =k x SQRT(density x wingspan).
We can define density to be density(any animal) = density(peregrine falcon) x y.
using symbols v = p(falcon) x y.
Where y is the density of the animal divided by density of a falcon.
So v = k x SQRT(pyw).
For a peregrine falcon, v = 1/3 speed of sound = 113 m/s. Where; p=1,w =1.
113 = k x SQRT(1).
So k = 1.
For a dragon:
v = 113 SQRT(xw).
Lets set w = 30 meters, and density double that of a falcon, x=2.
v = 113 SQRT(60) = 875 = nearly triple that of sound.
Assuming you have solved the problem of how such a big and heavy animal flies, then getting them to dive much faster than sound is trivial.
The bigger they are, the faster they fall.
[Answer]
A creature meeting your size, speed, and strength requirements would have to be composed of extremely lightweight tissues, most notably including the skeleton (which must be able to handle the physical stresses of accelerating to supersonic speeds rapidly) and muscles (which must be able to convert the creature's biochemical or magical energies into mechanical energy efficiently, rapidly, and at high volume).
The most "realistic" way I could imagine all of these requirements being satisfied is if your dragon looks like a blimp: a giant sack of air that moves short distances by flapping its wings, and naturally floats in the air because its body density is about equal to the surrounding air density. Such a creature might achieve supersonic speeds by rapidy forcing most of the air in its body cavity through a small opening to create jet propulsion. This would also cause the creature to deflate to a narrow, streamlined shape that's more aerodynamic for long, straight flight paths.
We could go into further technical detail, but as you can see the result is a bit ridiculous. Really what I'm saying is you need a fart dragon.
[Answer]
Well, the big problem here is air resistance. Falling objects top out at a speed of somewhat above 500 km/h because of air resistance. Sound of speed is 1200 km/h. So it would need immense energy to speed up above that limit. Luckily there is an easy way around it: just decrease the air pressure. To get still enough oxygen to support big creatures the percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere has to be increased. But all that are possibilities and would it make easier to achieve higher speeds. Still, [most birds reach their highest velocity in dives](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_birds_by_flight_speed), so you may want to let the dragon break to supersonic speeds while make an diving attack from a higher flight position.
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[Question]
[
So I was recently inspired by the answers that I saw on this stack exchange to the following question: [Feasibility of H.G. Wells' Continuously-Exploding Atomic Bombs](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/165473/feasibility-of-hg-wells-continuously-exploding-atomic-bombs)
And it occurred to me that you can make the core as hot as you want, as long as it doesn't touch anything. So, envisioning ping pong balls hovering on hair dryers (via Bernoulli's principle), I was wondering if you could build a reactor where a mass of uranium is left hovering in a (fast-moving) column of coolant inside a larger tank. The motion of the liquid serves to cool the core, as well as keep it in place in the vessel. Incidentally, if you use many smaller uranium pellets in the core, and they are held together in this column by Bernoulli's principle, you might be able to stop the reaction by slowing down the coolant flow and letting them all fall down and separate.
So, is it possible to build a reactor based on these ideas?
[Answer]
**Of course you could, but it's a VERY bad idea...**
With enough time and money, such an engineering feat as that you have just described is surmountable. You could certainly design and build a nuclear power plant that does this, but no sane person who has the expertise to design a nuclear reactor would ever do this. It is the equivalent of spending a fortune to have all the seatbelts, airbags and crumple zones taken out of your modern car.
Modern nuclear reactors work on a fail-safe design. They actually need power to keep the reactor operational. There's more to it than this of course, but basically the control rods are set so that without power, they fall into a position that controls and limits the reaction of the nuclear fuel. They require power to be raised out of the way so as to let the reaction build up. That means that if the power to the reactor fails for any reason, the reaction stops rather than building up to a critical mass and melting down the reactor.
Your design does the exact opposite. It basically requires power to slow the reaction, not the other way around. In short, while you have power you can control your reaction quite well and in a visually spectacular manner, but if your power cuts out for any reason, or you get a mechanical failure to your coolant fans, or any other problem, your reaction rate and temperature actually starts to increase. You'd end up with a meltdown.
In short, you want your reactor to fail safely, or in other words fail in a way that the default position of the reactor without power or during a mechanical breakdown of some sort means that the reaction stops. This design only allows the reaction to be controlled IF the reactor is operating correctly. At your first failure in the plant, you are going to have a really bad day.
[Answer]
Your design seems like an absolute safety nightmare. I'll also note that your safety idea of the little fuel pellets separating when the air flow is removed rather depends on them not being so hot that they start melting, which rather defeats the whole point of the exercise.
The underlying idea, though, that if you remove the tiresome need to avoid melting your reactor down into deadly slag you can run it *really hot* and so gain all sorts of efficiency gains and various other benefits is a) quite true and b) something that people have looked into, though not necessarily for the purposes you were thinking of.
Operating such a thing inside a gravity well, such as on the surface of Earth, is a pretty terrible idea, because any sort of failure will *ruin* your reactor as a load of very hot, intensely radioactive gloop sloshes onto the floor of the containment structure and melts and burns away til it cools off enough, or alternatively intense radioactive fissioning *gas* will rise up and plate itself all over the ceiling, burning and melting its way through as it does. The former would be indistinguishable from a meltdown, and a lot harder to avoid, and the latter is a whole new and exciting kind of catastrophe.
In *space*, however, you don't have to worry about gravity or even convection, if you don't want to. Hell, in an emergency, there's the option of blowing out the reactor core into space where it won't do anyone any harm (not recommended in orbit around a planet. or possibly even in a planetary magnetosphere. or near other ships. etc).
Behold, the Open-cycle Gas Core Nuclear Thermal Rocket!
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jKsM3.png)
(image from [Project Rho](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist2.php#id--Nuclear_Thermal--Gas_Core--Open_Cycle--General_Open_Cycle), more information on this and many other nuclear rocket designs at the link)
You can run your reactor at a fairly toasty *55000K*, and the only compromise you have to make is that some of the uranium plasma will leak out in with the hydrogen, but you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, eh?
[Answer]
## Possibly Possible but Probably Impractical
Keeping an object supported via a column of moving fluid requires that the fluid is moving upwards at the terminal speed of the object. Uranium and plutonium are crazy dense, and spherical pellets are not going to offer much aerodynamic resistance, so you'd either need to use molten salts or some other very dense fluid as your coolant or very small fuel pellets that can be kept aloft by water in order to keep the required jet speed manageable.
The resulting design would not be very fault-tolerant, since you'd now have a critical mass of fuel which must be kept suspended continuously by a precisely-controlled jet of fluid at all times in order to function correctly. And yes, you could design the bottom of the fluid container so that a failure of the jet results in the fuel dispersing across the bottom of the container, but you'd need some way to get from that state back into a functional one with minimal outside intervention.
Either way, though, if you're going working with spherical pellets of fuel, then you might save yourself a lot of fiddling with high-powered jet pumps by building a [Pebble Bed reactor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble-bed_reactor) instead. These use the same sort of spherical fuel pellets piled in a static bed, with an inert gas coolant flowed up through them. Used pellets are removed from the bottom, new ones are dropped in on top, and otherwise the pellets just sit there happily reacting away in their pile.
[Answer]
Something along those lines may be incorperated into a fusion reactor. One of the main problems with fusion is that the plasma needs to be really hot, 100,000,000 K. This will melt anything it touches so it needs to be kept away from the walls. Magnetism has been the way up to now but perhaps adding a fast flowing gas might be able to assist the magnets.
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[Question]
[
As far as I know airships, specifically rigid-airships, do not have an upper size limit other than what is required by practicality and how willing you are to build gigantic airship sheds. But one question that has been burning inside me recently is how small can an airship, specifically a non rigid airship or blimp, feasibly be and still fly.
I know there is a minimum amount of lifting gas needed but I have never received a straight answer. In the real world, the smallest airship that I know of is Gallagher's airship the White Dwarf. It is about 48 feet long and 17 feet wide with a 17 foot long gondola and 6200 cubic feet of lifting gas capable of lifting almost 400 pounds. The airship is pedal powered so It can't go fast, but in an article I read on Google books it managed to reach 1200 feet in the air.
Granted, the blimp had been caught by the wind which made it rise to that height but the blimp managed to maintain the height for a few minutes before descending. With the White Dwarf as a reference, what do you think the smallest possible airship (envelope) size is for personal travel? Assume that it is powered by a lightweight magnesium aluminium motor, like that of a motorcycle (light enough to be carried by the average guy), has a 5-7 foot long gondola made from a magnesium aluminium alloy, has a traditional cigar, football, or teardrop shaped envelope, and has enough lifting gas to lift someone off the ground and achieve a maximum Height of 300 to 650 feet using either hydrogen, helium, or hot air.
[Answer]
Let's assume that you're using helium as your lifting gas.
If that's the case, you get about a gram of lifting capacity per litre of helium. That means that you want 1000 L of gas for every kg you want to lift. That neatly works out to 1 m3 of helium per kg you want to lift.
Let's further assume that you want a craft that can lift an average human of around 80 kg, and we allow for 40 Kg of gas bag and framing. For that, you'll likely only get a small frame to sit in not terribly dissimilar to that of a hang glider, and that's only if your gas balloon is very lightweight (therefore not combat ready). You may also want a simple pedal driven propellor of sorts, but let's continue to assume you can fit all that in your 40 kg additional weight.
That means that your airship has to have a gas bladder on it of approx. 120 m3, or roughly 3 m x 4 m x 10 m in size. You could put your airframe for holding you under that, and you'd be good to go.
**This has already been done in real life...**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hp4i2.jpg)
There is an airship that was created in 2016 called the [Voliris](http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/443025-smallest-airship) that got the envelope down to a little over 80m3 in size, pretty much doing exactly this. I'm not sure what gas they used in this airship, or what its payload capacity was, but the picture pretty much tells it all. This is a good example of the concept I was articulating, and it's a real world one as well.
[Answer]
[Lawnchair Larry's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawnchair_Larry_flight) setup has to be close to minimum size. He and his girlfriend attached 45 eight-foot weather balloons filled with helium to his lawn chair, and he set off. He did carry a pellet gun to reduce lift for a controlled landing, and put holes in enough balloons before dropping it.
Each balloon had about seven and a quarter cubic meters of helium, giving a total volume of somewhere like 325 cubic meters. It sufficed to get Larry up to 16000 feet. An actual airship would have a slightly more sturdy gondola, and some means of propulsion.
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By stretching your definition of "Airship" - you could use a [Paramotor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramotor), which is basically a fan-mounted backpack used to give parachutists a little directional ability. If we take one of those, and replace the parachute with a helium balloon, we might be getting somewhere.
Wikipedia gives us a lower weight boundary for paramotors of 18kg, or 40lbs, which I assume would be a smaller model, probably with an aluminium frame. Combine that with an average pilot weight of ~80kg, and you have a combined weight of 98kg, or 216lbs.
Going with Tim B II's figure of 1m3 per kilogram, that gives us a minimum envelope size of 100m3 for neutral buoyancy. More will be required to counteract the weight of the envelope itself, and whatever the pilot had for breakfast that morning.
This is definitely stretching the definition of an "Airship" - it's one guy wearing a fan backpack, dangling beneath a giant balloon. But it is the absolute minimum configuration I could think that would satisfy your requirements.
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Gallagher's White Dwarf was built by the best (Bill Watson of the Gossamer Albatross team -- in 1984) with 150 lb dry weight. Alberto Santos Dumont did much the same circa 1900, but with Hydrogen to compensate for lack of modern materials. 4000 cu ft of Hydrogen gas should be enough to get a pedal powered airship aloft.
[Answer]
As big as an ultralight or helicopter, but it'll be more ultralight/helicopter than airship.
There are airahips that are heavier than their lifting gas would allow them to fly. To still fly these Airships use lifting surfaces like an airplane (so they need to keep moving forwards to fly) or rotors like a helicopter that provide the remaining lift. An ultralight aircraft that replaces a portion of its lift surfaces with gas lifting could be considered enough of an airship and be the smallest airship available. The shape of these craft can be altered to fit within the parameters given and due to a portion of the lift being generated by other means the size will be smaller than previous answers.
Scale up until you reach your satisfied size for calling it an airship or reach the size of the answers already given.
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[Question]
[
A village is famous for its flowers and wants to bring in tourism by replacing its timekeeping and basing everything around a flower clock. Schools and shops all agree to set their times by the flower clock and a webcam image of it is streamed across the village for everyone to see what time it is.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/29/garden/planting-a-clock-that-tracks-hours-by-flowers.html?_r=0>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CYfFw.jpg)
How do they make the flower clock both accurate enough for regular use and usable in all seasons? They are in a mild temperate climate so there is some seasonal variation in temperature but rarely frost. Ideally this should be as natural as possible but some technological assistance is allowed.
[Answer]
In practice it can't be done, but that's no fun. Flowers are highly seasonal and the ones that open or close at different times of day are fairly approximate time keepers. Flower clocks, while they do exist, rarely go beyond having a circular flower bed with a clock mechanism
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yKXM0.jpg)
or sundial built in. Such as this one at the [botanical gardens (Łódź)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Floral_sundial%2C_Botanical_Garden_%C5%81%C3%B3d%C5%BA.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wGbVS.jpg)
[However:](http://www.dewsworld.com/FHowToMakeAFlowerClock.html)
>
> 2 a.m.:
> Common Morning Glory (opens)
> Night-Blooming Cereus (closes)
>
>
> 3 a.m.
> Imperial Morning Glory (opens 3-4 a.m.)
>
>
> 4 a.m.
> Yellow Hawkweed (opens)
> Dogrose, Chicory, Yellow Goats-Beard (opens 4-5 a.m.)
>
>
> 5 a.m.
> Buttercups, Poppy (opens)
> Dandelion, Morning Glories, Wild Roses (opens 5-6 a.m.)
>
>
> 6 a.m.
> Spotted Cat's Ear (opens)
> Flax, Potatoes (open 6-7 a.m.)
>
>
> 7 a.m.
> African Marigold, Lettuce, White Water Lily ( opens)
>
>
> 8 a.m.
> Mouse-Ear Hawkweed, Scarlet Pimpernel (opens)
> African Daisies, Nolana (open 8-9 a.m.)
> Dandelion (closes 8-9 a.m.)
>
>
> 9 a.m.
> Calendula (Field marigold), Catchfly (opens)
> Coltsfoot, Gentians, Sandworts (opens 9-10 am)
> Prickly Sow Thistle (closes)
>
>
> 10 a.m.
> Common Nipplewort (closes)
> Star-of-Bethlehem (opens 10-11 a.m.)
> California Poppies (open 10a.m.-1 p.m. only in sunlight)
>
>
> 11 a.m.
> Star-of-Bethlehem (opens)
>
>
> Noon
> Goatsbeard, Blue Passion flower (opens)
> Morning Glories (closes)
>
>
> 1 p.m.
> Carnation (opens)
> Childing Pink (closes)
>
>
> 2 p.m.
> Afternoon Squill (opens)
> Scarlet Pimpernel, Water Lily (closes)
> Chicory, Dandelion, Poppy, Potatoes, Sandworts (closes 2-3 p.m.)
> Dandelion (closes 2-5 p.m.)
>
>
> 3 p.m.
> Hawkbit (closes)
> Calendula, Spider plant (closes 3-4 p.m.)
>
>
> 4 p.m.
> Purple Hawkweed (opens 4 p.m.)
> Four O' Clocks(opens 4-7 p.m.)
> Small bindweed, Allyssum (closes)
> California Poppies, Cat's Ear (closes 4-5 p.m.)
>
>
> 5 p.m.
> Night-Flowering Catchfly (opens 5-6 p.m.)
> Chicory, White Water Lily (closes)
> Coltsfoot (closes 5-6 p.m.)
>
>
> 6 p.m.
> Showy Evening primrose, Goatsbeard, Moonflowers (opens)
> White water lily (closes 6-7 p.m.)
>
>
> 7 p.m.
> White campion (opens)
> Fig-marigold (opens 7-8 p.m.)
> Iceland poppy (closes 7 p.m.)
> Daylily, Dogrose (closes 7-8 p.m.)
>
>
> 8 p.m.
> Night flowering cereus (opens 8-10 p.m.)
> Catchfly, Dandelions, Daylilies (closes 8-9 p.m.)
>
>
> 9 p.m.
> Flowering Tobacco (opens 9-10 p.m.)
>
I wouldn't set my clock by it, but it would make a good centrepiece for your village. It even includes a water feature. If your village is happy to move to a slightly casual version of local solar time, then it would work nicely. There's no real reason why not beyond its hopeless inaccuracy.
[Someone has actually built one](http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2009/07/07/linaeus-floral-clock-on-the-is/), note the small water feature as promised.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/F0Lnn.jpg)
>
> 'It's not very accurate in the small hours. There aren't too many night-blooming plants that grow well up here. They open for the moths, you know-'
>
> 'It's how time wants to be measured', said Lobsang
>
>
>
Thief of Time: Terry Pratchett
[Answer]
## Sundial
Install a large sundial.
Plant a species of flowers that will open up in nice flowers only when in shade of that sundial.
Sure, it's cheating, but it will be accurate.
[Answer]
During daytime with sunny weather (so at the same circumstances a sundial works), sunflowers (hence their name, I guess) turn their "heads" (i.e. blossoms) toward the sun. Not as precise as a sundial, but you can gain precision by averaging over a large number of sunflowers and by computing a mapping from sunflower orientation to time-of-day. (They don't *fully* turn toward the sun.)
To make this usable without it looking more like a computer output than something flower-related, have one camera for each involved sunflower, filming the respective flower from above. On the web stream, superimpose the images of all those flower-cams, and overlay them with a dial that has the non-linearity of the flower-head-turning already computed in. (That is, the dial will be slightly irregular.)
[Answer]
To expand on user16295's answer: bees.
The answer remains 'impossible', but this might be a nice addition to your clock.
Some [papers](http://www.biolbull.org/content/164/3/471) suggest that bees learn the time of day a flower will open.
You could reason that looking at the bees can give a better indication of the time, because the bees compensate for the fluctuations caused by temperature.
Just don't forget to stick a beehive in the middle of your clock.
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[Question]
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So I found out that it would under certain circumstances be [economic to harvest Asteroids](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/5168/is-asteroid-harvesting-economic).
Given the following:
* Technological level is nearly similar to todays Earth.
* There are transportships which can carry material through any place of the solarsystem.
* There is a facility in the Main Asteroid Belt which can process said asteroids.
My question now: *Is installing a facility inside an asteroid belt and navigating around in said asteroid belt safe?*
What to do with the waste? Get a ship and throw it in the sun?
How much would accidents increase the danger in the area ([Kessler Syndrome](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome))?
I think that slow moving asteroids can easily be evaded or catched and redirected/processed, but how high is the risk of fast moving asteroids? Or how likely would it be to get into a high-density area where are simply too many objects for any actions?
I thought about placing the facility in an higher or lower orbit than the belt, but that would result in mining ships (which would collect asteroid-material for processing) would either have to catch-up with the station, fall back to it or make a nearly full round around the sun to get to the station again. This seems impractical.
[Answer]
>
> Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely,
> mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down
> the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.
>
>
>
--Douglas Adams, [**The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy)
The distances involved are *literally* astronomical.
A "high-density area" in an asteroid belt is still going to be better than 99% *empty space*. Get the movie images of ships being immediately pelted by thousands of rocks the moment they cross the "boundary" into an asteroid field out of your head -- that's complete fiction.
Case in point: We've sent numerous probes through the asteroid belt to regions beyond (e.g Voyager I, which has "left the solar system" [a couple dozen times](http://xkcd.com/1189/)...), and did *absolutely nothing* to evade asteroids or protect against them while passing through the belt.
That said, you put a big, "stationary" industrial processing center *anywhere* in space, and you do run the risk of asteroid impacts. So figuring out ways to protect your center is still a good idea. Most asteroids are essentially pebbles, really, so just using a tough outer shell will cover you against greater than 99% of the impacts you'll encounter during the lifetime of the facility. [Not to imply that dust/pebbles are harmless, mind you, just that, relative to the "big 'uns", they're easier to defend against by just using a really tough outer shell; in any case, it's barely a marginally-increased threat in the asteroid belt versus anywhere else in space.] The really big rocks are so few and so far between (literally astronomical distances between them) that your odds of ever being struck by one really aren't worth considering. If you really want to be paranoid, though, you could always find a big asteroid and mine into it, then build your processing center inside.
And if in the off chance a big asteroid is heading straight toward you, you'll generally have plenty of time to put together a crack team of aging ex-astronauts to fly out to the thing, drill a couple of holes, and set the nukes. Or just get out of the way. Or, if in the unlikely event neither is possible, just evacuate the facility, consider it a loss (if it actually does get hit) due to natural disaster, collect the insurance payout (you *did* buy the asteroid rider on your insurance policy, right?), and then rebuild (just like terrestrial industrial facilities have to be rebuilt after hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes...).
Really, working in the asteroid belt is no more dangerous than being in any other part of space. Maybe a 0.000000000001% increase in your odds of getting hit by a big space rock. Given all of our history of space flight, going to space is far safer than crab fishing in the Bering Sea, and working in the asteroid belt is very unlikely to dramatically alter that fact.
And ultimately, no matter *where* you put it, mining ships *will* have to catch up or fall back to your facility. That's just how space travel works (here again science fiction movies have lied to you). Everything's in its own orbit, and rendezvousing always requires moving to higher and/or lower orbits. The only exception would be if you put your processing facility directly on or in orbit of the rock you're actively mining, but at that point it might make more sense to just incorporate the processing facilities directly into the mining ships themselves so they can always take them with them!
And the waste? Just chuck it into space. See again: Space is *very* big. Kessler syndrome is exceedingly unlikely to cause you any problems out there -- it's really only a (potential) issue in low-Earth orbit, and that's only because we're talking about a very small amount of space. If you're really worried about it, pulverize it into dust first. You're probably doing about the same thing to extract the ores you're actually after anyway.
[Answer]
Safety is a matter of perspective. Simply living in space is dangerous. We take measures to reduce the risks, but they are still there.
Now while the majority of the asteroids in the solar system are in the [asteroid belt](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt) there are still plenty moving around in other areas. Finding these more singular ones might be a much 'safer' bet, at least to start with, partly because they could be much closer to an earth orbit, but I'm not sure if that is as important. A single largish asteroid could take several years to mine down to nothing. I also wouldn't worry much about the waste, likely it could be used for something and if not if it is kept together is could be just a small asteroid floating around, waiting for someone to need what is in it.
Now the asteroid belt, while it covers a large area and has a lot of stuff in it, apparently has less mass in total than our moon.
>
> About half the mass of the belt is contained in the four largest asteroids, Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea. Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea have mean diameters of more than 400 km, whereas Ceres, the asteroid belt's only dwarf planet, is about 950 km in diameter.
>
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So our asteroid belt is no where near as crowed as we see on the star wars flight scenes.
[Answer]
Safety isn't a particular issue, but with anything close to current technology, "the Asteroid Belt" is a *vast* place to be commuting around-- it encircles the sun in an orbit wider than the Earth's, and traveling from one asteroid to another would in general be a long and expensive voyage. You'd probably focus on just one juicy asteroid, in which case it would make a lot of sense to live inside it (since you're excavating anyway); then you have good protection from both radiation and debris.
Of course, if the destination for the mined resources is Earth, there is a lot to be said for bringing the mountain to Mohammed as [Rob Kinyon](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/5320/2770 "Rob Kinyon") says-- either parking it in orbit or just (carefully) landing it in the ocean. No commercial enterprise is going to pay $6 million a year for someone to work a jackhammer if they don't have to, after all.
However, a major market for asteroid-mined materials would be other space construction projects, where anything shipped from Earth is hugely expensive because of launch costs. The economics of that market *would* favor extracting and refining minerals at the source, and launching them on a [slow but super-efficient](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Network) trajectory to their destination. So, you'd continually fire aluminum ingots out of a cannon on Ceres, expecting to sell them 20 years later when they show up orbiting Ganymede. It raises a lot of interesting narrative possibilities (e.g. people hijacking the material en route)...
[Answer]
Today, mining is one of the most dangerous occupations a person can engage in. According to the CDC, there were 19.8 workplace fatalities per 100,000 miners in the US in 2010. There are also other risks that are harder to measure, such as increased cancer risk due to exposure to mining dust. In the developing world, the fatality rate is higher still.
One occupation that is more dangerous is fishing, due in large part to the fact that out at sea, there is limited access to rescue services or medical treatment. This would also be the case for asteroid mining, increasing the risk.
Another occupation that is more dangerous is space exploration, with roughly 7.5% of all astronauts having died in accidents. Since asteroid miners would also be astronauts, this would also increase their risk. Astronauts are also exposed to high levels of cosmic radiation, which is expected to increase their cancer risk, but there is insufficient data to quantify this risk.
So even leaving aside the risk of asteroid impacts (which as Kromey has explained, is not as serious a problem as you might imagine), asteroid mining would be one of the most dangerous occupations around.
[Answer]
Asteroid mining is entirely possible - you just have to be very patient for things going back and forth over astronomical distances under budgetary restraints (not spending a lot for faster movement).
Moving a large processing facility out to the asteroid belt and then from asteroid to asteroid seems excessive as moving the asteroid to a refining facility seems more plausible, especially considering the easier task of exploiting near-Earth objects as well.
The 'asteroid field' is not a thick chaotic mass of constant collisions and dodging rocks, but just some objects which happen to have the same orbit (with big spaces in-between). There is a [question about this over on the physics board](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/26712/what-is-the-average-distance-between-objects-in-our-asteroid-belt) which might give you a better idea about the scales involved.
The cost of moving people out to the asteroid belt, keeping them in habitat there, and returning them in a reasonable amount of time would be exceedingly ridiculous. The radiation exposure during the transit to and from the site alone would be worrisome. If there is a need for human interaction, instead of purely automated processes (with some telepresence controls, though the time delay might present difficulties there), moving the asteroid back to a processing facility in Earth orbit would be a better solution.
Collisions are not an issue - I suppose making a mistake on trying to land on a tumbling object might be a concern, but impact with another is unlikely as they likely too far apart and their relative velocities would almost certainly be negligible. Comets might be a collision risk, as they would not be in the same orbit, but that risk would be the same (negligible) no matter where you are.
As far as 'waste' goes, there is no such thing - if it isn't an economically valuable material, it counts as either shielding or reaction mass.
[Answer]
Why aren't you refining as you mine? Why spend the fuel to transport material with no economic value? Why have people involved?
In [Mining the Sky](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0201328194), Dr. John S. Lewis talks about using high pressure and high temperature carbon monoxide to vaporize and then deposit metals out of ground up ore. Different temperature and pressure combinations will vaporize different metals. So the same refinery can reprocess the dust multiple times to get different metals. Those metals would likely be chemically pure (unless two metals have similar temperature/pressure combinations). Why transport kilograms of rock to get grams of metal when you can just send the metal?
This process can be completely automated. Dr. Lewis' plan calls for the metals to be stockpiled for later retrieval but you can add some kind of launcher.
The waste dust is just deposited on the surface of the asteroid.
[Answer]
The cheapest and easiest thing would be to move the asteroid into L4 (next to the asteroids already there). It would take a few years after pushing it, but it would be captured by L4. Then, you handle the smelting there, then launch the finished products back to earth along the orbit. Don't need humans - teleprescence robots would be enough with a delay of 15min or so.
Remember - one 5km diameter asteroid has more useful material in it than all mining on earth in a decade.
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[Question]
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A unique sword is to be forged for the hero, a human-dragon hybrid. Forged in the dragonfire of his draconic father... I don't actually think it would be much different than a sword from a regular forge...
That brings me to this question. My metallurgic knowledge is limited, and so I am looking for a metal or metal alloy that can be used to make a sword for the hero, which can be made using technology of his time (+ help of his dragon father). And while I could say the sword is magic, where's the fun in that?
**Technology and other information**
* Generally speaking the tech level is early-to-high medieval ages, no gunpowder (not sure if it would be of use anyway)
* Iron and steel are common materials to make weapons and armor (steel less common than iron)
* The hero - is actively involved in the sword-making process. Having the strength of ten men, he could potentially use his strength to work a metal that would otherwise be too hard
* The dragon - he has human-level intelligence (higher if you ask him) and as such can be asked to follow complex instructions. He can breathe fire with a maximum temperature of about 3000 degrees Celsius, for a relatively short (two-three minutes) duration or about 2000 degrees for a more prolonged breath. He can of course breathe colder fire as well, about 1000 degrees minimum.
**The weapon**
* The sword is intended to be a double-edged European-style sword. Size-wise could be described as a large longsword or perhaps a greatsword.
* The sword is meant to outperform the common iron and steel weapons in any achievable way. I do not expect it to cut through other blades but things such as "ability to have a very sharp blade" and perhaps more importantly "ability for the blade to remain sharp after multiple collisions with sharp iron and steel blades" are what I am after, so to speak.
* As the hero has the strength of ten men, the weight of the sword is a secondary concern.
* The ability to mass produce these is irrelevant, and so is the cost - there will only be one.
And so, with the constraints above, **what metal or alloy could best be used to create such a sword?**
I would please ask you to state what advantages it would or would not offer compared to iron and steel weapons when you provide your answers.
[Answer]
According to [wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_steel#Higher-carbon_steels), the dragon's fire capacity is more than enough to manufacture high-carbon steel. Given the availability of such high temperatures, the dragon could replace the usual coke carbon source with something more exotic, like his own blood, symbolically linking the sword to its wielder in a way that later magically enchantment can utilize in creative ways.
High carbon steel's major advantage in medieval times is its hardness. If the weapon is scaled up in length and weight to test the upper bounds of its wielder's strength, the momentum it could bring to an impact would be devastating.
[Answer]
The dragon likely has a key ability other than fire breathing that will let them make a superior sword.
**Flight lets them get the best metals.**
[Damascus steel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_steel) was a unique type of steel that was forged supposedly with carbon nanotubes in it, by chance from the geography of the area, famed for its superior durability and ability to hold an edge. Your dragon can fly around the world, find the best steel, and bring it to him. It will have a sharpness that is like magic in its ability to rip through enemies.
The size of the blade should be massive. Ideally, he should be able to smash through the armor of smaller men and rip apart hosts of peasant levies, whilst wearing thick and heavy plate mail that protects him from any attack. His superior strength will let him have superior reach, weight, and armor.
[Answer]
**Heat and smelting**
Making metal items of quality can be difficult. They developed better and better techniques over many years, increasing the durability and effectiveness of these weapons over time. One of these techniques is 'simply' making the metal hotter. If I remember correctly, the reason it gets better is because some imperfections in the composition of the iron is allowed to get out, as well as a more homogeneous metal after smelting. This is actually a reason why katana's were forged by folding the steel many times. To get rid of the imperfections in the steel that they were working with. With less heat, the carbon you add for strength might not be mixed homogeneous, hardening some parts more than others, making it qualitatively less strong. More purity will also rust less.
To further the strength you can actually differ the strenght throughout the blade, making it more flexible in places while thermal hardening it on the edges for extra durability.
Damascus steel is mentioned as well in another answer, but that is just one thing of the composition that might be improved. The design shouldn't be overlooked! Swords at the end of the medieval period are seen as some of the best. They aren't just designed for cutting an opponent. They are big, heavy two-handed swords that are *also* meant to simply bludgeon your opponent. As your guy has the "strength of 10 men" (lets hope not 10 puny men), he'll be able to lift and swing a two-hander easily. Although their effective range is actually less at the tip of the sword, your guy can make it work in the full range. He could easily make it an even bigger sword than a zwei-hander and still wield it with one hand if needed, giving him the range to nearly match spears. Further the sword had many improvements like area's where a sword of the opponent could catch on, less blood on your handle and such. Complement that with a shield and you'll be able to close the gap against ranged attackers.
You could actually go in a different direction altogether, which is spears. There is a reason spear-men were used a lot. They are very, very effective both in formations as well as one on one combat. The reason is simple. It's got range and a pointy end. It is really, really difficult to take a sword and get into cutting range without getting a spear in your body against an adept opponent.
[Answer]
The dragon is less helpful than you think
## Material
the only better materials for making swords than medieval steel is modern precision steel alloys. The main problem medieval smiths had was they could not reliably make uniform steel, one end of a billet might be pig iron while the other was nearly pure iron with dollops of slag throughout. If the dragon can precisely control its heat that is help, but if he does not have good steel to work with, that is uniform steel alloys, he will just be rolling the same dice medieval smiths had to put up with. To make high quality steel the dragon needs chemistry and precision control of temprature. First he needs good steel which is down to chemistry, that is the biggest advantage your dragon could offer but nothing about being a dragon will help here. Of course you can handwave the dragons knowledge and get whatever steel you want, but I am working under the assumption the dragon has top of the line medieval knowledge and nothing more.
## Forging
Properly hardening blade steel is about hitting a sweets spot of temprature and cooling. See my answer about [dragon blood quenching](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/140413/quenching-swords-in-dragon-blood-why/140471#140471) if you want an idea of how to get a real advantage. The main flaw medieval swords had was the inconsistency of the metal. They tending to have the quenching down fairly well. Again precision control of temprature will help here but only if they have good steel to start with. Medieval smiths were not limited by heat but by their knowledge of chemistry.
## Design
Use a normal sized sword, make it stronger instead. Once the blade of sword gets longer than about a meter you start seriously reducing your range of motion with the sword, real swords did get past this but many of those were single purpose swords, often anti-Calvary or functioned more like spears than traditional swords. You can make the sword a little heavier to make it a bit stronger (3 kg is a crazy heavy longsword but should be usable by your hero) but you are limited by three factors. **First** no matter how strong your hero he is still working against physics, bigger sword equals slower sword for the same strength. It also quickly means less controllable sword becasue the sword weights more compared to the hero's mass. When you swing a sword the sword also swings you, the huge difference in mass is the only reason it is hard to notice. No matter how strong you are the friction holding your feet in place is still the same. **Second** you don't want to make the sword too thick as that reduces its ability to cut.
**Third** Making the sword bigger also does not keep it from breaking, because the tang is still the same size, even with the best case scenario "the entire handle is solid steel", you can't actually make the sword that much bigger before the handle becomes the weakest point on the weapon. Using a solid metal handle will also suck for shock transmission. Giant sword with human sized handle ends up being weaker than normal sword with human sized handle. Picture trying to swing a cartoonish cardboard sword, the handle gets floppy first because it has the smallest cross section of material.
More importantly you are never swinging a sword as hard as you can. If you want to hit a static target as hard as you can use an axe, that is not what a sword is for. Sword fights are won or lost via speed, strength is rarely an issue, when it is the strength of the sword is largely irrelevant, it does not take much strength to kill someone with a sword. Super strength does have a benefit however, it means he can swing a sword much faster than his opponent and even strike from unconventional positions, which is a much bigger advantage than swinging a heavier sword at a normal speed. Also if your hero is routinely hitting steel with the blade of his sword he is using his sword wrong, of course that was practically the only the advantage of a double edged sword you have a spare edge once you have dulled one.
## Using the sword.
Your hero is levering his strength into speed, because of his strength he is capable of moving himself (although he may have to invest in some cleats to move himself much faster however) and his sword faster than his opponent *and* is capable of striking from unusual positions. You almost never swing a sword with your full strength, truthfully your grip on the sword is were a person hits the limit of their strength first. Both speed and unusual strikes will give him a distinct advantage over other swordsmen and speed will give him a big advantage over anything else. Again you don't actually have to swing a sword that hard to kill someone, the hard part is getting it into the right position.
[Answer]
**Lead.**
Lead is a crap material to make a sword out of. But it is crazy heavy; 3 times as heavy as iron. Your hero has a hollow sword made of steel, and it is filled with lead. To be hollow and also solid enough to use the sword must be big. The steel provides the cutting edge and contains the lead. The lead provides mass so your 10x hero can actually use his strength. This sword cuts through most things because it has so much momentum there are not many things that can stop it.
The end product is an eight foot long sword weighing 500 pounds.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/q70npm.jpg)
<https://aminoapps.com/c/anime/page/blog/best-giant-sword-wielder/1et6_udlVPmDMRwl5XdGJVMG1qRNEq>
[Answer]
**Carbon nanotube reinforced steel**. As explained in the [Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_steel) there are intriguing indications that some of the famed Damascus steel blades contained actual carbon nanotubes - and no one knows exactly what the lost process entailed. The Dragon's secret in this regard may not be his fire but his *knowledge* from working with (perhaps, depending on lifespan) thousands of years of human artisans. Steel is a playground for working with carbon, and potentially with this unusual method of forging the pressure could also be increased to increase the opportunities further. (Can the Dragon dive into a volcano and forge his billet in unfathomable depths of living fire?) There could be not just graphene sheets but microscopic diamonds, or stranger [allotropes of carbon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotropes_of_carbon) like lonsdaleite or T-carbon engineered into that blade, riddled in beautiful networks that provide aesthetic appeal and control the spread of vibrations and defects in the metal. If it could be made with sufficient knowledge and experience, such a blade could have the hardest edge, the strongest tensile strength, the toughest resilience of any object on the planet - ancient or modern.
[Answer]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maraging_steel>
Includes exotic metals in the mix, requires intricate / non-obvious high-temperature process to make. Actually used in modern fencing. Some varieties may be brittle. You could also go for AerMet and the combination of the two.
[Answer]
Why not platinum or platinum-group metals alloy? Platinum 90% / Iridium 10% comes to mind.
* higher melting point than iron alloys
* 3x heavier than or and steel, 2x heavier than lead (in real world, your setup may vary)
* impressively hard, that's why they made meter standard out of it.
* expensive
[Answer]
## It turns out the dragon *is* helpful after all
The good news is that the OP's dragon *is* of aid to the hero, thanks to the extraordinarily high temperatures that they can achieve. In particular, 2000°C is well above what's needed to turn pack-carburized type "blister" steels into a uniform, homogenous mass, through what's called the [Huntsman crucible process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucible_steel). While the impurity levels of such a steel aren't quite *as* good as what today's tightly controlled steelmaking processes can achieve, the consistent carbon content throughout the batch and improved impurity extraction ability compared to prior processes would give our hero a major advantage in producing a blade that isn't going to be cold short, laden with slag nodules, or otherwise impacted by detrimental impurities.
Atop this, such high temperatures would enable either the smelting of alloying ores (such as chromite and pyrolusite), or even the use of an odd-off native chromium deposit to alloy the steel further with carbide formers. This would enhance hardness and strength, perhaps at the expense of a bit of toughness, and with experimentation, could lead to your hero ending up somewhere near a 5100 series alloy steel. Either this sort of alloy steel or the high-carbon steel commonly produced by Huntsman's crucible method would also lend itself to molten salt [austempering](https://www.appliedprocess.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/249004_Austempering-of-Steel-ASM-Handbook-Volume-4.pdf), provided you could justify the level of experimentation needed to discover such, of course.
[Answer]
**Tungsten or Tungsten Alloy**
While the answer focusing on filling the blade with a heavy metal such as lead or platinum to give it more momentum is great for the weapon's effectiveness, it doesn't really show of the "Dragon-forged" aspect.
Instead, you could make a sword out of an alloy from a metal with an exceptionally high melting point - something beyond the ability of a normal furnace and smith to forge. If you make your sword out of Tungsten (also known as Wolfram), it will not be able to be melted down. Furthermore, [Tungsten is significantly stronger than steel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_tensile_strength). Your opponent's blades won't scratch it. It is also two to three times denser than iron, making for a truly legendary weapon. Mortal men won't even be able to lift it.
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[Question]
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Our space explorers got some friends together to try to form a galactic union. Most inter-species unions would be an empire where a few species are controlling lots of others, or a partnership between a few species like they have now. They are actively trying to avoid both of these. They quickly run into a problem; how to determine if a being is a person? Right now, they have the following rules, in no particular order:
1. Humans and similar rubber-forehead-esque aliens are people. As elemtilas pointed out, some people today have not sorted this out, but our travelers have, in no small part due to the species in rule 2.
2. A species of near-perfect altruists are people. This is relevant, because they will not defend themselves in certain situations e.g. won't save themselves if it means other will die.
3. Bio-mechanical beings are people, such as cyborgs, people with prosthetics, and some species who evolved to be mostly mechanical.
4. Species with incomplete free will are people. For example, a species with a hive mind, or a species where individuals higher up can mentally force those beneath them to do things. However, individuals have to exhibit individuality, or the species is one individual.
5. Species that communicate in "unusual" ways and live for varied periods of time are people. For example, bug-like aliens who communicate solely via pheromone and live for short periods of time, are people.
However, the following are not people:
1. Food, like cows, corn, and their alien counterparts, are not people.
2. Species without any individuality at all.
3. Species without civilization.
4. Species where the only desire of the entire populous is the pain and destruction of others.
There are three big problems with the current system. First, the "not people" rules, are incomplete. Second, the "are people" rules are incomplete and the connection between them isn't clear. Finally, what counts as communication is foggy. It's fine to not have a language if you have telepathy, but you can't regard the communications of a dog as valid, even though they do communicate through body language and sound. (they are still good boys though.)
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**This group needs a simple, objective (or near objective), guidelines for determining the person-hood of a species that fits as many of their current rules as possible**
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The rules they have made already can be changed, but doing so may result in some unfortunate consequences, like telling someone they can't eat bacon anymore because pigs are people, and so is the guy who wants to eat them. It could also result in telling someone already in their union "actually, you don't count."
[Answer]
I think you're overthinking things, or at least putting your thought into too broad an area when you already found the area you should be focused on. Reading all your rules and concerns, it all seems that your authorial concern to boils down to the *potential* of how well you can communicate with them.
So really, there's only one rule:
1. You think you can meaningfully communicate with them.
So it seems to me the real question is how to judge the potential for communication. Similar to something like a Turing test or just having your characters go by their feelsies.
However it is very easily arguable that the communication thing is very anthromorphic self-serving definition of what constitutes a person and not very universal at all. However, if your goal of defining personhood is to form a galactic union then it does not matter how intelligent they are or how much they qualify under some other definition of people when you can't communicate with them to begin with so for these purposes other definitions are moot.
When you have no chance of communicating or understanding each other, the only purpose of a universal definition of personhood is whether you can genocide them or not.
Now, unless I am reading you wrong, there seems to be a dichotomy between what you want your space explorers to be as an author and what your space explorers actually seem to be based on what you've told us about them. You seem to want your space explorers to be be determining genuine personhood out of good faith, but the rules you presented us with indicate that your space explorers have more nefarious self-serving ambitions.
Your pre-existing rules:
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> Species where the only desire of the entire populous is the pain and destruction of others.
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implies that *effective* communication is the real concern for your space explorers rather than whether or not something is truly a person. Because under that rules, it doesn't matter how intelligent they are. Ironically, it doesn't even matter that you can communicate with them. All that matters is that your communication isn't able to convince them out of the universal desire to destroy you (heck, they don't even have to want to destroy. All they have to want to do is enslave you for the purposes of torture.)
And this next barbaric rule takes that to another level:
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> Species without civilizations are not people.
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This rule implies that if they are incapable of cooperation in a manner from which you can benefit then they are not people. It also defines organisms with extremely capable natural abilities and have little need of artificial augmentations as non-people.
Together, these two rules basically say that they are only people if you can communicate with them and cooperate with them. In other words, people are only people if you can benefit from them and but can't reap such benefits by farming them.
>
> Species without any individuality at all.
>
>
>
This rule implies that if they are hive minds, or simply too different from our understanding then they are not people. Also, to me it seems that species without individuality are farmable which reinforces what I said previously.
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Now assuming you genuinely do want to determine personhood out of good faith, there is a small gap in this singular communication rule and that is if a race is clearly intelligent, yet cannot be communicated or understood, but peaceful and not destructive (lest they be classified as pests). The implication here is that they are both unable to protest mistreatment and also unable to defend or assert themselves.
But consider that even a bacterium can assert itself and try to prevent its own destruction. On these grounds you could probably argue such an organism, let alone a civilization, cannot exist.
At this point, you might try and bring up this:
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> A species of near-perfect altruists are people. This is relevant, because they will not defend themselves in certain situations e.g. won't save themselves if it means other will die.
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But that's rather irrelevant. Just because you're altruistic doesn't mean you can't protest or assert yourself. Not to mention that a race could be considered bloodthirsty but still consider themselves to be altruistic...all they have to do is not to consider anyone else as people.
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As an addenum, there is also the issue of how you define civilization.
I was previously hinting that the definition I was using for civilization includes mass cooperation as a key element (which is really important if you're trying to form a galactic union). But unless you want to qualify ant colonies, you would probably disagree that this is sufficient criteria. Another criteria which is often mentioned is the passing on of knowledge between generations. If you then add to tool-building to this, then this is civilization as we humans know it.
But these criteria have serious flaws in that they assume assume reproduction (if not necessarily a finite lifespan), and a social structure (i.e. multiple individuals frequently interacting with each other rather than existing alone). These criteria disqualify existences (not societies because there is no society) such as hiveminds or a centralized AI where a single entity runs everything for perpetuity.
[Answer]
**Simple answer: Ask them**
Ask a representative from the species in question:
***"Do you understand the concept of personhood, and are you a person?"***
Any sentient being should be able to answer this question in some form. A farm animal almost certainly cannot. Even a hive mind would be able to answer for its collective as "Yes, we are a person." So in that case, you would afford personhood to the hive mind as a whole, but not any individual member of that hive mind. That would lead to the interesting case where murdering a member of a hive mind would be the equivalent of injuring an individual from a non-hive species. You would have a moral and legal justification for valuing an individual from one species more than an individual from another.
But this probably shouldn't be your only question. It's very important to understand if the being has an understanding of the theory of minds, otherwise you will not be able to effectively interact in any meaningful sense as sentients.
So your next question should be:
***"Do you have a concept of theory of mind, and do you recognize it in others?"***
Any sentient being should be able to answer this in the affirmative as well, since it is one of the requirements for sentience. If your being has the concept of personhood, but cannot recognize it in others, then it is arguable whether it truly understands the concept of personhood. If it doesn't, it shouldn't be afforded the same rights you would a person, as it is incapable of understanding the rights and responsibilities of personhood.
Your final question is also quite important:
***"Do you have a concept of morality, and does it guide your actions?"***
A farm animal may in some way be able to answer the first two questions, but it definitely can't answer the third. Ultimately, animals act completely on survival instinct, and lack any sense of morality. It isn't *morally wrong* for a tiger to prey on a cow, but the cow certainly doesn't want to be eaten. However, the cow doesn't understand the concept of "right and wrong;" it's merely a survival instinct that makes it not want to be eaten. It's not even "wrong to the cow" to be eaten, as the concept of "wrong" doesn't exist. Likewise, it's not "right" to the tiger to eat, nor does it feel guilt for doing so; it just does so as a matter of survival.
Similarly, any being that cannot understand morality and empathy cannot complain when the completely amoral act of being eaten happens to it. The reason a sentient being sometimes doesn't want to eat animals is because of this empathy, and it's that empathy, not the fact that the sentient being doesn't want to be eaten, that is the reason you don't eat sentients.
If your being *is* sentient, but lacking in a concept of morality, affording it personhood would be very dangerous, as its motives would not be driven by any sort of empathy, and it could exploit its personhood to harm others.
Giving this kind of being personhood would simply result in crimes against your other sentients. It is arguable that a being completely devoid of empathy is undeserving of empathy itself, and it is also arguable that personhood requires empathy, or that it is at least an obligation of any "person" (like a sort of *noblesse oblige*). This is essentially why we deny criminals their "personhood" by incarcerating them, as they have neglected the responsibility that comes with being a person, and ideally the ultimate goal of such incarceration would be to instill the understanding of that responsibility and to create a sense of empathy.
Ultimately, a being completely lacking in empathy would be the epitome of "chaotic evil."
Beings like this are the reason we have punishments like the death penalty and life imprisonment, namely because such a being is unpredictable and has no redeeming qualities. Obviously, you don't want this kind of being as a member of your Galactic Society.
Note that a being driven purely by logic will still develop a form of "logical empathy." The Golden Rule itself is quite logical. A logical being would understand theory of mind, and would have no reason to believe it unreasonable that what it does to others could be done to itself. It is almost tautologically apparent that if you want to do violence to others, you should expect it to be done to you, and any logical being should arrive at this conclusion rather quickly.
[Answer]
The idea that food is not people, and the idea that a species without civilziation is not people, are likely to permitt many atrocities.
Perhaps you might have heard about members of the species *Homo sapiens* who were cannibals. People have been willing to eat people who were members of their own species, and some groups did it a lot. I can imagine that if some alien species are edible for other alien species, some of those alien species might eat edible alien species, even when they don't have the additional motive of denying personhood to another species and being free to take over their planet by eating those aliens.
I note that in the future, when humans might propose a rule that food is not people, aliens might note that some humans are still eaten by animals on Earth - at the present hundreds or thousands of humans are eaten each year. So various aliens might decide that humans are food and not people and invade human space.
And the idea that beings without civilzation are not people is also bad. *Homo sapiens* was a species without civilzation for hundreds of thousands of years. And similar species existed for hundreds of thosuands of years, maybe a few million years, before that. And sometimes two or more of those prehuman tool making species of hunter-gatherers shared the planet Earth. And many people find it easy to believe that some of those species ate members of other such species more or less often. So every prehistoric tool using primate species, including *Homo sapiens* for hundreds of thousands of years, would be doubly excluded from personhood due to being food that is uncivilized.
The Square Cube law's answer said that the requirement to be civilized to be considered people would let a lot of people be defined as non people:
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> Because this ensures that species which are on the way to civilization are game. We wouldn't like this to be imposed upon us if the aliens landed on Earth around the time we were hunting mammoths.
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And The Square Cube law seems to assume that mammoths, mastadons, and other proboscideans were not people, even though that is not entirely certain.
It is certainly possible that one or more species of apes, and one or more species of proboscideans, and one of more species of cetaceans, are intelligent enough to count as peaople. So the current number of intelligent species on Earth could be somewhere between one and about one hundred, even though only one of those species is civilized.
[Answer]
Drop this:
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> species who's only desire is for the destruction and the pain of others.
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Some humans are like that. You would be condemning the whole human species into non-people status because of a few idiots. The way to solve this problem is more complex.
Also drop this:
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> Food, like cows, corn, and their alien counterparts, are not people.
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Because there is always the possibility that one species might start preying up on another to remove their people status.
And then drop this:
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> Species without civilization.
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Because this ensures that species which are on the way to civilization are game. We wouldn't like this to be imposed upon us if the aliens landed on Earth around the time we were hinting mammoths.
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> Second, the "are people" rules are too complex and incomplete.
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No they are not complex - I could probably explain this to an eight-year-old and they would understand it. They could even start classifying the alien species in Star Wars into people and not people.
And of course these will always be incomplete. Suppose at some point AI's, energy beings, crystal forms of life etc. come into play. If they communicate through verbal means they wouldn't be able to use rule #5, the fallback option.
I think a good catch-all rule should be: if an individual is capable of requesting political asylum and/or inclusion into the index of peoples, then that individual's species as a whole are people.
[Answer]
The simplest criteria is "can they communicate and converse in a meaningful way about complex abstract hypothetical/fictional concepts". This should be the basic test for your sophonts.
If they can do that they can understand about laws and rules, learn and consider new ways of thought and the situation of other species.
Not the easiest thing to ascertain, it will take some work and time but you want that anyway. If the criteria is too easy to test accidents will happen, species will get missed . The real problem you run in to is intelligence is not a discrete function but a spectrum. We just killed off or outcompeted everything close to us on the spectrum.
[Answer]
Pick a list of
* functional tasks (eg: Can communicate and make.efforts to bridge communication gaps. Can develop tools)
* Mental/emotional/cognitive social capabilities (Can comprehend different beings may have different perspectives. Can comprehend and recognise others may be happy/sad/damaged and wish to reduce discomforting experiences and help others long term)
* social structures (can make decisions as a species and broadly keep them. Can socialise cooperatively or at least agree to not socialise. Can police abberant individuals)
Things like that. For species as a whole not for each individual.
Think what characteristics a species would need to have, to be capable, and wishing, to work in such a way,and what tests would explore those.
[Answer]
Processing power.
This is the answer I have used. My civilization wanted to come up with a broad and easily applicable metric, so they used this.
Human brains have about 300 trillion ( $3 x 10^{15}$ ) synapses. Typical brain activity is in the range of 30 to 100 hertz. So, “sentient” is everything greater than some cutoff, with humankind as a data point at 9 quadrillion to 30 quadrillion operations per second during typical waking activity.
The research I did at the time showed that dogs are about 1/10th this processing speed. Anecdotally, dog mental development tops out at what a 2 year old human is capable of, although dogs develop to that point more quickly than we do. According to the same sources, cats are about 1/10th dogs (sorry cat lovers). Mice, where I decided to draw the line, are about 100 billion operations per second $1 x 10^{11}$.
You can go arbitrarily lower. If actin based signaling is real, trees come in at around 500 thousand, and grass at a few hundred operations per second.
I recommend a broad, clear gap, so that there’s no quibbling about legal distinction.
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[Question]
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The answer, of course, is very screwed; however, I want to elaborate on that more.
## Background
Despite what common propaganda (D&D, Tolkien, etc...) might have taught you, dragons rarely ever use their breath weapon. When they do, it's primarily to handicap the enemy and make an opening for the killing blow, or an escape.
Dragons have a specialized bacteria in their stomach that can produce sulfuric acid with an acidity of at around 0.2 pH. The dragon's stomach lining (though the sulfuric acid isn't stored there), mucous layer and scales are adapted for high acid-stability, and should be able to take the acid on.
A dragon can usually store up to five liters of sulfuric acid, and with their flight muscles, propel it to distances of 6-10 meters.
**So, assuming a human in plate armor got caught up in a fine mist of this acid (roughly 65% of the body is covered, head included), what injuries would they suffer and how fast would their incapacitation be?**
[Answer]
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> So, assuming a human in plate armor got caught up in a fine mist of this acid (roughly 65% of the body is covered, head included), what injuries would they suffer and how fast would their incapacitation be?
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I'm going to go for "instantaneous incapacitation, death within two minutes at the most".
The fine mist would inevitably be inhaled, leading to edema of the airways within seconds. An immediate tracheotomy is the only way I can think of that has any hope of salvation for the unlucky knight. Suffocation would probably do him in before shock has any real chance.
You can (reasonably) easily find images on the Internet of people who had about 10-20 cc of commercial sulfuric acid thrown at their faces, what is known as *vitriolage*. This quantity is often (80-90% of the cases) survivable, but even with immediate medical care brings loss of function and significant disfiguration. And that, to repeat, is the effect of a quantity two orders of magnitude less than your dragon can spew, usually thrown with much less proficiency and delivered in a significantly more inefficient form (inhalation of sulfuric acid vapours is almost invariably fatal; even the accidental inhalation of what vapours may effuse from a *vitriolage* attack can be fatal, and even when it is not, it leads to potentially life-threatening respiratory damage).
Defense against such an attack would require a way of sealing the armor so that, for a couple of minutes, the knight can breathe the air trapped inside. Not something to look forward to, given the average knight's reported level of personal hygiene, but survivable.
Then, something that can easily be sloughed off - maybe a mantle, or a large composite hoodie. Impregnated with water and alkali to neutralize the acid as much as possible, with a quick-release brooch. Maybe more than one mantle, in layers.
The best strategy if the dragon's attack cannot be thwarted or avoided entirely would be to *draw* the attack in such a way that it can be more easily defeated.
The knight would for example goad the dragon, **assuming (as @JohnDvorak correctly points out) the dragon is not clever enough to see through the ruse**, then quickly pivot and fall on his knees closing the visor of his sallet, leaving exposed the back and the (jettisonable) pauldrons. The back would be defended with a thick mantle of leather and maybe gold foil. Once the acid jet has been exhausted *with certainty*, the dragon can be battled with much better chances.
The comments by JohnDvorak and JohnMontgomery are just too good not to include:
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> **Dragon**: [I know what you're thinking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_Harry): "Did it ssspew 1.8 litersss, or just 1.7?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all thisss excitement, I've kinda lossst track myssself. But being thisss isss sssulfuric acid, the most powerful acid in the world, and would melt your face clean off, you've got to asssk yourssself one quessstion: *'Do I feel lucky?'*. Well... *do you, knight*?
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Dragon-killing knights would also very quickly employ a different kind of armor: some kind of transparent protection (quartz?) for the eyes. Probably a sealed or sealable helmet. Possibly a thick but still light leather suit instead of steel armor, to increase speed. This again assumes that the dragons don't *also* have, say, strong claws, in which case abandoning armor would not be advisable.
[Answer]
The [MSDS of sulfuric acid](http://www.northeastern.edu/wanunu/WebsiteMSDSandSOPs/MSDS/Msds_Sulfuric_Acid.pdf) warns
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> Danger! Extremely corrosive. Causes severe burns and / or eye damage. Mist: Causes respiratory irritation. Harmful if inhaled. Harmful or fatal if swallowed. Reacts violently with water. Concentrated Sulfuric Acid will react with many organic materials and may cause fire due to the heat of the reaction. Not flammable, but reacts with most metals to form explosive/flammable hydrogen gas.
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> EYE CONTACT: Immediate pain, severe burns and corneal damage, which may result in permanent blindness.
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> SKIN CONTACT: Causes burns, and brownish or yellow stains. Concentrated solutions may cause second or third degree burns with severe necrosis. Prolonged and repeated exposure to dilute solutions may cause irritation, redness, pain and drying and cracking of the skin.
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> INHALATION: Causes respiratory irritation and at high concentrations may cause severe injury, burns, or death. Effects of exposure may be delayed.
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From a more anecdotal point of view, during my PhD one of the lab technician, while dumping sulfuric acid in the discard bin, got a few droplets on his sleeves. Though immediate measures were taken, the few which went through the clothes was sufficient to cause a severe burn on the skin.
[Answer]
From a personal experience with a battery acid (25-30%, pH probably about 0.5):
Over the skin: not much of a problem. Some itching if not washed right away. Cotton clothes suffer much more damage.
Eyes: protect them, period. Low-tech survival without losing vision is an immediate access to running water and/or sodium bicarbonate solution. Any possibility of glass technology in your setup? Glass is pretty old, but needs infrastructure and qualified labour.
Other body openings: nasty, but manageable.
Breath can be protected w/ lime, limestone or sodium bicarbonate expendable mask (not much of a high tech). Mask must be tick and not made of cotton (wool is OK). Vapours are suffocating and invoke cough, mist will be fatal. Use mask.
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I think they'd be okay because, of course, the acid is not going to catch them unprepared. In fact, they might not even bother with the plate mail, but might go with something like a coverall made of intestines or other material treated to withstand the acid, goggles and at the very least a 'gas mask' arrangement.
I'm sure after decades or centuries of dragon-slaying, protection would have evolved to far more advanced levels. They might even develop chemical means of using the acid against the dragon.
There are reasons why acid has never caught on as a weapon of warfare. If the dragon could spit a 5-kilo solid lump it might be a lot more dangerous, especially from a height!
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I'm not talking about the [ISS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station). I'm talking about larger stations such as [Bernal Spheres](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernal_sphere), [O'Neil Cylinders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder), [Stanford Tori](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_torus), good old-fashioned hollowed-out asteroids, and so on.
We have a sci-fi game and one of our narrative designers has a mission idea that requires a storm inside the station. I'm decent at checking their science, but I know nothing about meteorology and this seems pretty unlikely. That being said, I've not the foggiest clue.
[Answer]
You can get a micro-climate in your space station caused by temperature differentials and convection. But the orders of energy and energy differentials needed to produce a proper storm are immense. The energy differentials in your space stations are by far not enough to induce a naturally occurring draft sufficient to be called a storm, unless yours is hundreds of kilometers wide and has sufficient open space to allow atmospheric convection to occur, but these kinds of circumstances are generally undesired in a controlled environment like space stations.
The only real way to achieve high winds would be artificially, say, the air system is going completely haywire. Or there is a hull breach so air is sucked out at high velocity. Or your space station could even have a wind tunnel of all things (though only god knows why that would be there...)
In every other situation the best you could hope for are some drafts due thermally induced convection or pressurization working better/worse at some parts of your station thus causing pressure differentials.
I hope this helps you.
[Thunderstorm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderstorm) Under the "energy" section you can see how much energy a single thunderstorm takes.
[Energy levels and comparison of different events](https://web.archive.org/web/20100315113421/http://physics.syr.edu/courses/modules/ENERGY/ENERGY_POLICY/tables.html)
Here are several events, from a very small scale to a cosmic scale listed. If you have that much rogue energy floating around in your space station that something like this could occur, something has gone wrong.
[Answer]
To sustain a storm for the length of your mission, you need external inputs of energy. You could use a **Solar storm.**
<https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/phenomena/geomagnetic-storms>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/17ew8.png)
>
> During storms, the currents in the ionosphere, as well as the
> energetic particles that precipitate into the ionosphere add energy in
> the form of heat that can increase the density and distribution of
> density in the upper atmosphere, causing extra drag on satellites in
> low-earth orbit.
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What would a solar storm hitting your large station entail? Here is what I can think of.
* Aurorae. That happens on earth and might happen in your station as well. It would look cool and if this is a video game, offers to possibility of sweet light effects.
* Charged particles. This is the reason for the aurora but if they get to the ground they could mess things up. This is part of how solar storms mess up electronics on earth. In your game you could have the lights go out and computers be unreliable.
+ Lightning. If the upper atmosphere of your station is accumulating charge, it will want to equilibrate. There could be lightning strikes.
So far this storm has wild color effects, the lights go out and you might get hit by lightning. It would be quiet. Which could be cool for a game because it would be eerie.
* Wind. This requires another step. Wind on earth usually means heat differentials with air of one temperature displacing air of another. How to get heat differentials like that in your station? Unless you have enough incoming radiation to heat the air up that much (a lot!) you need another method for creating heat. You can have the station radiation defense generate heat - protecting the occupants by capturing radiation and discharging it as heat. The system uses the interior as the heat sink; the air and maybe a large body of water which serves multiple purposes. The engineers did not anticipate a solar storm of this magnitude and the heat produced by the system is enough to make wind; the steam coming off of the reservoir can blow around in fog clouds on the ground; I am hoping this is a video game because these clouds will look awesome in the aurora.
[Answer]
The Stanford Torus design is too small in volume to generate real weather; the tube that actually has atmosphere is only a kilometer or two across. Bernal Spheres especially with their 8 kilometer radius and the larger, Type 3, O'Neil Cylinders (4km radius) are a different story; they're built on a scale that actually supports atmospheric differentiation. They have the potential to generate Earthlike weather systems where there are sufficient, and sufficiently differentiated, thermal inputs.
Type 3 O'Neil Cylinders with their window strip/land strip design and rotational gravity are a good case for real stormy weather. Their land surfaces will heat up and create convection systems of air and water vapour which have the potential to cause thunderstorms.
Bernal Spheres would appear to show more of a case for a cyclic fog-cloud-rain-repeat weather pattern, either time or location based depending on the exact parameters being used in the design, due to the polar heating and lighting set up.
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Even the [Vehicle Assembly Building](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/vehicle-assembly-building) at NASA Kennedy Space Center is large enough to have weather, and it's considerably smaller than all but the smallest space stations -- maybe twice the length and breadth of the ISS, though much deeper.
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In Sir Arthur C. Clarke's classic science fiction book Rendezvous with Rama, Clarke posited a mammoth long-orbit station/probe/biosphere which is a 20 kilometer diameter, 54 kilometer long cylinder.
The inner cylindrical surface is the living space, and at the rearmost axial endpoint there are strange immense projections, around which immense electrical displays occur when the device is using drive power (the implication is that these are byproducts or residual energies) and these have the secondary impact of creating weather - storms, inclement weather etc.
Though the alien and exotic drive system part of his story is perforce far-fetched, the concept of designing your drive or energy conversion systems to secondarily help generate ionic change in your interior atmosphere in order to drive artificial weather events and patterns make a lot of sense - assuming some of your surface area is devoted to agriculture versus all horti / agri - culture being hydroponic.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CDZW5.jpg)
[Answer]
## Theoretically yes. But if you can build it, you can weather control it.
Weather is fundamentally the movement of air caused by temperature differentials in the atmosphere. In other words - some air is hotter than other air, and this causes the air to move around trying to find an equilibrium. All other weather effects are side effects of the big movements, mostly caused by things (namely water vapor) that the air has picked up while moving around.
Strong weather requires large temperature differentials, which in turn requires large amounts of air. There is no theoretical limit to the amount of air we can put in a space station - we just need enough materials to surround it and enough air to fill it. Water vapor is also easy to come by.
You also need temperature variance. That's easy enough to find - any station near a star is going to have one side that is naturally warmer than the other. Other temperature variations on Earth come from the materials of Earth's surface and the different ways that they retain heat (which is also incidentally affected by the presence or absence of water and water vapor). We can add different materials to our space station as well, and control where we put the water.
You don't even need that much volume to generate small amounts of weather. The Kennedy Space Center's Vehicle Assembly Building [has 3,665,000 cubic meters and it can generate clouds on humid days](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/vehicle-assembly-building). Not exactly a thunderstorm, but enough to cause significant damage to the planes being constructed there if their air conditioning ever breaks.
The problem is that extreme weather isn't very good for space stations. As anyone currently living in the Florida Panhandle or the Carolinas can tell you, extreme weather tends to have a negative effect on quality of life. So most space stations are going to go out of their way to avoid anything more powerful than a spring shower. And if you have the technology to build a can full of sky, you have the technology to control it.
An air conditioning system around the outside of your station can distribute the heat from the sun to keep the temperature nice and even. Baffles (like the one pictured above) can break up the movement of large quantities of air and prevent hurricanes from gathering momentum. When you get right down to it, a space station isn't all that different from a building built to a larger scale, and that just means you need a larger air conditioning unit.
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Both images taken from [Schlock Mercenary](https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2013-01-01), a lovely space opera web comic. Book 14 (Broken Wind) is about our intrepid team of mercenaries discovering a station built by a race of aliens who had entirely too much time on their hands.
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[Question]
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Related to [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/123032/how-could-people-figure-out-that-parts-of-the-earth-are-missing) a bit, the house I'm talking about was swallowed into another dimension along with parts of its garden. The house itself stays completely intact, but the piping is cut off, obviously.
I assume electricity will be gone immediately, but what about water? If you were to try and use the sinks, could you still get some water before it goes completely dry? Does the water get stored somewhere perhaps? And if yes, how much approximately?
I heard some countries have boilers in their bathroom that preheat the water before they can use it for their shower, as in, it's installed right in their bathrooms. Would those have some usable water for the residents?
Some additional info:
* the house was previously in a quiet residential neighborhood
* the dimension works pretty much exactly like our world in terms of physics, so you have regular gravity (and some air to breathe)
[Answer]
Its been pointed out a few times in the comments that local uses of words differ significantly,, apologies for any confusion on my part in that; I've edited this answer and tried to keep the working as open as possible to reduce any issues from this
**Mains Pressure**
Water Pressure comes from Mains pressure. This is generated by the house being lower in altitude then the water supply, either a large water tower water is pumped up to it and then gravity does the work of moving it to your homes. If you removed a house and its on-property pipes from the grid, the house itself would have a higher pressure within the pipes than the surrounding pipe-less environment so mains pressure wouldn't work. however as *Josh King* noted in the comments most municipalities require Back Flow Prevention Valves, meaning the water can only go into the house, stopping the risk of potentially contaminated water flowing from the house back into the mains. this would mean that some water would be stored in the pipes however it would be very tricky to access without a fair amount of plumbing knowledge.
**Boilers or Hot Water Tank**
A lot of houses that have the room have hot water boilers or hot water tanks. where water is heated and stored for the use in showers baths and the hot water tap. This is actually the norm in the UK: the boiler holds a large amount of water at about 60-80 degrees Celsius, which is then mixed with cold water to give the showers and baths some degree of temperature control. These tanks vary in size dramatically but usually are between 60 and 180 litres. the exceptions to this rule is in small properties and flats, where the space taken up by the equipment is at a premium. in those circumstances they often install heating elements that heat up the cold mains feed water as they pass to the shower or bath.
**Expansion Tanks or Cold Water Storage**
Some older houses have cold water expansion tanks which give the property pressure. This is common in locations where either the mains pressure is too low or too high: if it's too low, then water towers are installed as in L.Dutch's answer; if it's too high then an expansion tank is installed to offer a more regulated pressure. This was common in the UK about 20 years ago at least.
**Cisterns**
All toilets do have water cisterns for the flush. This is often about 5 litres. It may not seem like a huge amount but it can be drained without ever touching the toilet bowl, although I'd still recommend boiling and filtering before drinking.
**Rain Collectors**
It's also not uncommon these days for houses with gardens to collect rain water runoff from roofs into water butts, so this could be another source.
**Heating System**
There would also be water in radiators if fitted however this would not be safe for drinking, in theory however it could be made safe, easiest way to do this would be a reverse osmosis device if you happened to have one lying around, but apart from that this should not be considered useful water.
**As an aside**
Its also not unheard for houses to have Photo-voltaic Solar Panels on their roofs so power may still work... providing your world has a sun. It may not be common yet but it's a definite possibility.
[Answer]
Gosh, this is really dependant on the house. My family owns a farm, and we have a well...and that answer would depend on how far DOWN the interdimensional rift goes, because the well is pretty close to the house, so it would be included, it's just a matter of how far down it goes.
A place in the country, or in a quirky neighborhood is more likely to have an alt water source, such as:
* Rain Barrels off the gutters
* onsite cistern (either in the ground in the case of residential or on the roof in the case of apartment buildings)
* an actual well. Sometimes happens in a residential area that everyone else will be on city water, but your old house has a well and pump. The problem is that the pump needs electric to work most of the time (though there are some that have a crank pump for emergencies--these are mostly installed by paranoid folk or people who simply want to live off the grid or electric goes out often, or because the old pump wasn't hooked up to the new system, and this is a remnant of the old system.) Without electric, the pressurized tank will supply water for a little while. These tanks range from as little as 2 gallons (mostly for places that are using it for small watering needs, such as periodic watering of plants, while the rest is on city water) to as much as 114 gallons. The standard size tends to be about 20-40 gallons, but 80 gallons can be common. Varies widely!
I looked at the original question and frankly, if the house is just CUT away, including the plumbing, then there will be issues in OUR dimension.
See, mainlines can run through front yards, and then have lines off that, which means that in reality, where the house has disappeared from, there's bound to be problems. Even if things sync up exactly, a pipe can be several feet to the left or right if you cut out the middle where the house is, so it might not match up.
In other words, there's a plumbing problem everywhere....and outside of reality there's not enough pressure in the lines once they are effectively cut, to give you any water. Maybe for a second, but that's it. In the U.S. there's a water heater, and those sometimes have water stored in--depends on the size--they can be 80 gallons, they can be 25. About 50 is the average. Tapping it could be difficult depending on the system.
UNLESS--*introducing interdimensional plumbing AND electric!* You can't get wifi, (or maybe you CAN!) but you do get intermittent plumbing and electric. Anything with a hard line in or out works, kind of.
Because you're bending space-time, the house is really still there, it's just in a pocket dimension. Maybe nothing organic can get through, but objects and energy CAN. Which opens up a whole world of possibilities...
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It can be, yes. There are several cases in which water is not directly supplied from the outside.
* Some houses have water tanks on their roof (see the example in the picture). Some are also used for solar heating.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/eG67L.jpg)
* Some other have a small tank and a pump somewhere in the basement to act as a buffer and decouple the house piping from the supply pressure.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/G0wAx.jpg)
* Some other have a built in water collection room, where rain water is collected for later usage.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/d39xR.jpg)
In all the above examples, there would be no immediate disruption. Water will be available as long as the storage is not empty.
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It's fairly common here (Ireland) to have a tank in the attic which feeds the upstairs water and the downstairs hot water tap. But the downstairs cold water tap, and the dishwasher/washing machine are fed from the mains.
Therefore you'd lose your downstairs cold & dishwasher/washing machine. You also wouldn't be able to refill the tank, so for upstairs you'd have whatever remains in the tank.
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If the house gets it's water from a pipe connected to a main water line running under the street, then **no**.
If the house has a cistern on the side of the house fed by gutters, then **yes** the taps would work after you started up the gas generator you keep in the garage (since if you have a cistern, you're likely to be more self-reliant than most suburbanites and urbanites).
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[Header tanks](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/header-tank) should stay full after the mains are cut and the water still be readily accessible, it will gravity feed into the house. Most hot water cylinders will also stay full but getting the water out without the electric pump (either in the house or from the mains) will be more awkward due to the position of the dump valves.
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Assuming you're looking for sources of water:
Where I live, most houses have central heating. (and a lot have boilers but that's already in another answer)
The central heating is a closed system where the heat is transported with water. For water you could tap into that.
Also your toilet tank will have clean flushing water, about 7 liters of it. (I drilled in my water-pipes once. The knowledge that you have only 1 flush left...).
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I also have a well (50' deep, which is about the border between what is considered a deep vs shallow well). Water is pumped to a large (1500 gallons) storage tank. Then it is pumped to a large (80 gallons?) pressure tank. As others have said, the pressure tank works without electricity but it will not refill. The large storage tank can produce water with a bit of pressure, which will lessen as the tank empties.
I don't but a lot of people have generators or a backup battery system for the express purpose of running their well pumps in the case of a power outage.
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My home has roughly 10,000 litres of water in tanks inside the building.
It depends on where the home is from. We rely on trucked water, thus the tanks.
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In a world I am building, I have a race of Dragons. A lot about them is based around questions previously asked on this site; as a result, most of them are around human-sized and cannot fly (a pox on you, square cube law!). However, due to the fact that their evolutionary ancestors initially *could* fly due to magic (all of which was stolen by the Elves to kill the mountain-sized dragons of old), these dragons still have arms specifically designed for flight. This means that their back and pectoral muscles are incredibly over-developed, and their arms are almost twice as long proportionally as a human's (they also have two extra-long fingers on each hand, but I don't think they matter as much).
So my question is, **what medieval-age weapons would these long-armed dragons use?** Would there be existing weapons that would benefit from longer arms and strong wing-flapping muscles, or would they devise specially modified weapons which could take better advantage of these differences without suffering from as many downsides? Fights with humans and other dragons should be considered.
Some extra notes on dragons: they're sort of a cross between bipedal and quadripedal, putting most of their weight on their legs but using their hands for stabilization (and pretty much just because they reach down that far anyway). Due to their musculature and big heads, they're pretty topheavy, but have somewhat flexible tails as a counterweight. There are individuals (usually smaller, with longer arms) that have fully formed wings, but most have bred out the genes for webbed arms or simply cut off the webbing at an early age. Dragons are not magic-users, and on average are lower in intelligence than humans, though more intelligent than animals.
EDIT: On the strength of dragon arms: think of them like bats. Their arms are built more for flight than anything else. While they may use their arms to walk, they probably still can't do a pull-up, and bats are small enough for square-cube to work in their advantage. Now, dragons have evolved, so their arms will have some added definition, but due to their excessive length I'd say it's still not enough for a pull-up, and holding heavy things is probably going to be a bit of a challenge. However, like I said, they're built for flight, so any flying motions are going to be very powerful, but just like a bat wouldn't want to flap its wings directly into a wall, the dragon should be careful where he puts all that force.
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Plenty of answers have already told you that these dragons will probably be pretty great with ranged weapons like bows or javelins, and they are correct. Unfortunately, they won't always be able to keep their enemies at a distance, and if they are too dependent on bows, they will be helpless against a simple shield wall. So I will focus on other types of combat.
The dragons could probably also have very effective cavalry, particularly light cavalry. Their history of flight and its effect on their physiology probably means that dragons are lighter than similarly-sized humans, meaning dragon cavalry would be more mobile than counterparts in other species. (And you could even call them dragoons!)
The most direct use of mounted forces is the cavalry charge. The weapon used, the lance, is particularly well-suited to the long-armed bodies of your dragons. Their long arms would enable them to use longer lances than other cavalries. In comments, you've expressed concern about their relatively frail arms using heavy weapons, but impact of a lance is absorbed by the shoulder, which shouldn't have such problems.
If the enemy doesn't break after a charge, your troops will probably end up in a melee. There are disadvantages for cavalry here—particularly limited reach. People on horseback can't reach more than the head or soldiers of enemy infantry, giving them a smaller area to defend. It is also leaves their legs vulnerable. The longer arms of your dragons can compensate for both aspects of this, since they could easily reach down to their feet or an enemy's abdomen.
So, what sort of weapon should they use in this case? From horseback, soldiers will mainly attack with downward strokes, so a heavy clubbing or chopping weapon works well, like a warhammer or axe. A sturdy single-edged sword would also work well.
Since the dragons have weaker but longer arms, they should use weapons that emphasize their reach advantage. For a general-purpose weapon to be used by cavalry and footsoldiers, I suggest a [khopesh](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khopesh), or another forward-curved sword like a [falcata](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcata). These are very effective cutting weapons, and the curvature makes them able to reach around enemy shields. They could also use pick-like weapons, like a [kama](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kama_(weapon)) or [horseman's pick](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseman%27s_pick), for the same purpose.
If you're concerned about the dragons' grip strength, as other comments have indicated, you could have them use gauntlets attached to swords, like a [pata](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pata_(sword)). Their shields should also have arm straps for the same reason.
---
How recently were the giant, magical dragons around? Are they still a part of the collective memory, or are they history, or legend? In any case, your current dragons could use the connection to their ancestors for psychological warfare. In particular, they could adorn themselves similar to the Polish [Winged Hussars](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winged_Hussars#Winged_hussars), with artificial dragon wings on their backs. The wings worn by the hussars probably functioned as noisemakers during a charge, to intimidate the enemy.
Fire is an obvious weapon with psychological value that dragons could use. However, without magic it would be difficult for them to use effectively, especially if they are using horses. Gunpowder existed in China in the Middle Ages, so you could have dragon infantry using [fire lances](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_lance), or even simple rockets. Of course, that doesn't really fit with the description of dragons as less intelligent than humans, unless they have some sort of natural affinity for fire that could explain it.
All in all, I think the Winged Hussars are a great starting model (even if they are technically early modern, and not medieval). They were powerful cavalry (with wings!), that used horseman's picks in melee. Their [shields](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_shield) had straps and came to a point that could be used as a weapon, too.
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I spent a good amount of time thinking about this and I came up with what I think would work best:
**Bow and Arrow**
Think about it, with their arm length they can have *huge* bows. Bigger draw means bigger power. And they have the muscles in all the right places to properly wield such an item.
I'm also thinking that they'd have spiked gauntlets on for those tricky hand-to-hand moments. Again, this takes advantage of arm length and can also use their muscles efficiently.
Another question is, do they have breath weapons? This would be a big factor in deciding their weapons. Also, I imagine they'd be big poison users. Poison-tipped arrows with the power that their bows have would mean instant poisoning for just about anyone, which keeps them out of close range.
One final note:
I think it'd be cool if they were good mounted combatants. Partially because that's a really big deal if you're using a bow and arrow but also I imagine that if they really needed to they could hop off a mount at the right moment and maybe glide a bit. Which if nothing else just looks awesome.
**EDIT:**
Okay, I've found some more info on bows that I think will help with this.
1. Assuming a 6' tall dragon has twice the wingspan of a 6' tall human then he has a draw length (used for bow calculations) of [64.5 inches](http://www.yeoldearcheryshoppe.com/drawlength.php?number1=144&submit=Calculate). This means he can pull the string back about that far. This also factors into how much weight he'll be pulling back. The rule of thumb is to add [2-2.5 lbs per inch](http://recurvebowplanet.com/recurve-bow-draw-weight/) over 28" in your draw length. This means we will be adding 73 pounds. This will be important later.
2. Assuming our 6' dragon is also well built then he's going to be starting at about [60 pounds](http://www.bestrecurvebowguide.com/recurve-bow-draw-weight-chart-for-choosing-drawing-weight/). Add 73 to this and we get 133 pounds on that bad boy. Just a bit more than [the English Longbow](http://www.bestrecurvebowguide.com/capabilities-of-different-draw-weights/).
3. I would say that our Dragons can probably handle this much force, but maybe I'm imagining them differently. I do think it would be really cool, however, if they figured out how to make compound bows, which I think is definitely in the realm of possibilities. If they had compound bows then they'd be pulling about 27 pounds of force (20% of 173). And this would give them an edge in tech above other races.
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**If their arms are specifically designed for flight, they probably can't use weapons.**
Mainly due to the shape of their hands. Wings require huge, but fairly stiff fingers. It's easier to transmit all of that force from the pectoral muscles into flight if the musculature of the hands isn't getting in the way. I'd expect their hands to be mainly stiffened by tendons, with a few muscles for basic mobility, but not for providing power and lift, and definitely not for providing a strong grip.
Humans have evolved a powerful grip because we evolved hands for climbing and swinging from branches. Dragons, bats, and birds don't do that. At least, not with their wings. Flight requires and quickly selects for certain structures. It's most likely that dragon's arms wouldn't even be able to move in the right directions for flight.
It is possible that they've evolved to be used to walk on. Huge pterosaurs like [Quetzalcoatlus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzalcoatlus) evolved to walk quadrupedal on their 'wrists' while on the ground, with most of their wings sticking out behind them.
**At least, not with their front arms...**
Birds do have the ability to manipulate things, just not with their wings. Birds have evolved powerful, dextrous feet for this task. Bats, too, have evolved feet that are capable if gripping, which bats use to hang upside down in caves. I'd imagine that your dragons could have easily evolved something similar. Their feet could be somewhere between the talons of birds and the back feet of monkeys, depending on how 'humanoid' they are.
For fighting, since your dragons have tails, they could even rear up like a tripod, with their front legs/arms and tail providing balance and their back legs/feet free to fight. They'd probably lean backwards to fight, with their tail in the front, so as to maximize the mobility of their leg hands in a fight. Depending on how mobile/strong their tails are, the tail could even be used as a third limb to fight with.
The other advantage of fighting like this would be that even the dragons with the ability to fly would be able to do so and still fight, since they wouldn't need to cut their wing membranes.
**What weapons would they use?**
This would depend in large part on how long their legs are, but my guess would be spears and polearms. Since they'd be used by the legs, which have good forward/backwards mobility but don't move from side to side as much, thrusting and hacking would be the most natural ways to move. They'd also be wielding their weapons from close to the ground, so reach would be a plus. The tails wouldn't be able to grip as well, but could have a shield lashed onto them.
Alternately, they might be able to use bows. They'd have to set them up and fire them differently than we do, since the body mechanics would be very different, but if they lashed a large spike to their tails, they could use those to hold off enemy combatants at a distance and protect themselves from cavalry while still being able to fire their bows.
**Edit: Arms for bows, legs for spears.**
First off, hats off to upfish for suggesting bows. Bows would work *great* with dragon physiology. Nothing in using a bow requires a firm grip like one needs for holding onto a sword or spear. Assuming that our dragon's wings have bat-like thumbs, the bow would be held nestled between the thumb and the wing. Since all of the force is back against the thumb when the bow is drawn, fingers to oppose the thumb against aren't needed to hold the bow. Likewise, dragons could use a [Mongolian draw](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bow_draw#Mongolian_draw_and_release) to pull back the string without relying on their overly long fingers. They'd just wrap their thumb around the string and tuck it under their fingers.
Their incredibly long arms would be a HUGE advantage for archery. Since the work done on the arrow by the string is proportional to $Length\_{draw} \times Force\_{draw}$, a dragon that can pull back a bow twice as far as a human can put twice as much energy in an arrow. They can use this to either fire a longer arrow, or use a set up more like the bows used in flight archery with an arrow rest for firing arrows that are shorter than the draw length of the bow. Since they've evolved for flight, their push muscles will probably be quite a bit stronger than their pull muscles, so they'll probably fire by holding the string back and pushing the bow *away*, rather than holding the bow away and pulling the string back towards themselves.
Of course, since dragon hands still can't grip melee weapons, they'd stand on their feet while firing, possibly tripoding back against their tails for extra support, and then put down their bows to fight in melee using weapons wielded in their feet while resting on their tails and hands.
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The forelimbs of fliers are optimized to have lots of power on that load bearing downward flap of the wing. If you put your hands as wide to your sides and then slap them together in front of you, that is basically the motion the dragons would be better than us in. Quite limited, really. More positively they'd be **much** better at that motion than we are in **every** way. Strength, speed, **and** even control. Same would probably apply to the reverse motion.
We'd beat them in pretty much everything else, though. Our ancestors would climb trees, swing from branches and even catch **flying** insects with their fingers. A flier would not compare with the versatility and coordination our arms have and certainly not with the hand-eye coordination primates have.
So I am guessing the dragon would find weapons that use that one strong move they have and stick with it. It makes, to me, sense to focus on the thing at which they are superior to us instead of trying to compete with us on other things. Especially when it is a matter of life and death as it tends to be with weapons.
So a weapon that uses a sideways swing. Should probably be relatively light because a heavy weapon at such large extension would be a pain. Should also avoid weapons that make direct impact as the high speed impact at the extended "wing tip" would eventually cause damage. And sideways swing makes dense formations impractical, so it should be something usable in open formations.
Suggestions: Bolas, darts, javelins, spear thrower with javelins or darts. These could, I think, be used with a sideways throwing motion that works with the musculature and directly benefits from the longer arm. Spear thrower would be a modified version, but the principle would be the same.
I have difficulty thinking of a good close range weapon. Some light chain weapon or flail might work. But probably it would be better to keep the distance and turn your enemies to pin cushions.
Since the dragons probably would not be that good at running or marching, certainly not compared to humans with our background as hunter gatherers, they'd probably **really** want to be mounted. Open plains and a fast horse would probably be really appealing to a species whose ancestors could actually fly. This would make them light cavalry. Probably very good one too.
Human archers might have them in accuracy, but the dragons should match human mounted archers well enough otherwise and probably have edge in penetration and damage. While using cheaper weapons and needing less practice.
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I would say a mace would be a good/great weapon for one of these Dragons. Swords might be awkward for them and if they are front heavy they might want to use their hands for balance at times, thus putting the blade in dirt. But a mace doesn't care about dirt, it is fairly simple to use and with the kind of chest power and long arms you are talking about, one good hit will be crushing knight armor and taking people out of a fight.
Edit to match new edit in question:
My next best solution would be a whip, likely a cat-o-nine tales, coupled with a short spear (double bladed head). the spear could be used for poking holes in enemies and the whip is just a very useful medium range weapon. I'm also assuming they can still bite and their tail could be used as a second whip, with a little more bulk behind it.
EDT: Since KSmarts pointed it out I thought I'd make it more clear. a Mace on a chain would be a good balance between a whip and a straight handled mace. I was thinking about that in the Mace section but forgot to mention it (specifically) before. It would still be useful against armored opponents, much better than a plain whip. Though if the dragons still outweigh their adversaries tripping them with a whip and stomping on them could be pretty effective.
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My first guess was bows and arrows, but the wings may be getting in the way, so it would probably be quite awkward to use them.
You also need a highly skilled craftsman to create a bow powerful enough for such creature to handle. As I understand your dragons may have some problem with mastering an art of bowmaking to such level due to their lower intelligence. Hell, I don't think there are many humans, who could create such bow. Mass production is of course out of the question.
However, there is much simpler and cheaper weapon for them: **javelins**.
With strong, long arms you can throw them pretty far, and once they hit something - that thing stays hit for good.
Another interesting weapon can be a crossbow, or rather small ballistas. If you are familiar with Terry Prachett's work, you may remember troll Detritus - the same scenario apply to your dragons.
Combining those two options you can have elite, noble dragons use high-quality bows, and simple, low-level peasants use javelins.
When it comes to hand-to-claw combat I would advise something that takes advantage of a brute strength, like an axe, a warhammer, a mace, or even a simple club. Anything fancy would break too quickly.
Summing up, stick to simple and durable stuff.
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For the subset of dragons that have wings, or at least the vestiges of one: The wing itself can be a powerful weapon. The outermost edges of a flying creature's wing typically move quickly and with a lot of force. If you reinforce the wing's edges with metal armor, spiked studs, sharpened edges, etc, the dragon can issue a mighty downward flap (which would be forward, if you're standing upright) and do potentially serious damage to opponents at arm's length. The direction that the force would be traveling means this would likely be effective at dismounting a charging cavalryman as well. This would take advantage of the motions that their bodies are naturally designed to do well, and avoid the need for things that their bodies aren't really built for (like gripping). Along the same line of thinking, an iron ball worn on the end of the tail can turn it into something as powerful as a mace or morning star, depending on tail length.
A steel-edged wing would make flight rather difficult, but you said they can't fly in the first place so this shouldn't be an issue. The tricky part would be arming the dragon in the first place. You said they are less intelligent than humans and I would assume less dextrous, so it's probably unlikely that they were adept enough at metalworking to build the weapons themselves. It would be more likely that they have contracted/befriended/enslaved a more capable race to assist them.
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I'm imagining a hypothetical lone organism on a planet. Something like Avatar, the movie's Eywa. I am envisioning it as a massive organism covering the entire surface of the planet but biologically one single coherent entity. It was always the only living thing on the planet. Language, to what I understand is a means of communication, be it chemical signaling between two rather un-intelligent bacteria, sign language communication between chimpanzees or advanced vocalization in case of humans - there are always multiple entities involved. This raises few questions, what would the alien's intellect, whatever it would mean for it be like ? From what I have searched from the internet, having a language is not a compulsion for having rational thought, so if presence of other entities is a roadblock in having the urge to 'communicate' and thus develop a language, then communication can be entirely circumvented because there is only one organism here, so there could be rational thought. But even that would be a dubious scenario, would this 'internal language' be like human internal monologue ? There will also be important considerations involved here, being a lone entity will there be a concept of linguistic/ psychological 'I' and 'You' ? Will there be a concept of 'motive' ? What I'm asking it here and not elsewhere is because I'm more interested in investigating the evolution of linguistic artifacts in such a setting rather than psychological ones.
Edit -
What I mean by 'language' is any intermediate abstraction regime held inside an organism used to describe and 'make sense of' what the senses give as input tangibly.
The 'multiple' questions asked in the post are just to convey my line of thought. There is just one question - Is such an 'intermediate abstraction' somehow achievable in a lone entity ?
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For spoken language, short answer no, but...
The entire point of language, especially spoken language, is to exchange information between two individuals. Your single entity has no other individuals to exchange with, so a "spoken" language isn't going to provide any benefit.
However, the information exchange need not be between two individuals, but it can be the same individual, but in different times. So, as others have pointed out, a written language could very well evolve. The problem is that the entity must remember what symbols correspond to what concepts. This means you have a sort of "chicken and the egg" situation, in which the entity must learn a symbol, but the symbol hasn't been created. To our best understanding, intelligences learn through repetition.
If I show you an apple once and call it "ringo," you'll probably remember that for a day or two, but years? For you learning the language, you're fine though, because you have resources to fall back on. You can ask me to tell you what "ringo" means, or you can look it up in a dictionary and cross-reference with a symbol known to you: "apple."
Now convert that to your entity. It decides the symbol "Êûó" refers to the large woody plants that grow around it. That's all fine and good, but it has to then remember that symbol for all time. Unless it's constantly using that symbol, it will forget it.
"Use it or lose it" is going to be the problem here. With language, you're constantly using it because you constantly have to communicate with others, as humans are a social species. Your single entity has no need to communicate, so how is it going to maintain its created language? Sure, it could journal, but in order to journal it has to create the language, but to create the language, it has to journal.
You might say "well it could look at the Êûó every day since the Êûó are all around it," and sure, that might work for physical nouns, but what about abstract concepts and verbs? For example, how does it represent the concept of "growth?" For that matter, how does it even represent the abstract concepts of "noun," "verb," and "object?" These are the fundamental concepts of language, "meta-language" (i.e. language about language), and they're very difficult to develop in solitude. Your creature might attempt to assign the symbol "Áîü" to the concept of "growing," thus creating a rudimentary sentence: "ÊûóÁîü," but how would it be able to remember long term that "ÊûóÁîü" means "the tree is growing?" Sure, it could easily associate "Êûó" with the trees, but how does it continue to remember "Áîü" means grow? If your entity forgets that crucial piece of info, how does it recover it? You might say "well you could put together a basic Rosary Stone, say draw out pictures," but how do you represent that concept in a drawing? Things like equals signs are symbols of abstract concepts that have been established over thousands of years of informational and cultural evolution. How does your creature create such a thing? More than likely any attempts to create a language by your creature will be forgotten as there is no one to practice with.
We find this today in isolated humans. Many of them forget how to talk, because they have no need to (there's no one to communicate with). There are also humans who don't have an internal monologue, which begs the question of what would happen to a person with no internal monologue who is isolated? This question is directly applicable to your entity. What we've found through various unfortunate events and nefarious experiments is that humans who are raised without language exposure lose the ability to ever acquire it beyond a certain age, and humans are hard-wired to create and understand language in the first place due to millions of years of evolutionary pressure. What pressures would force your entity to have a similar brain? Human children raised in isolation but together will develop their own rudimentary language, but they promptly forget it once they're exposed to "real" human language. However, human children raised in isolation without language exposure will suffer extreme intellectual deficits (and human infants raised completely in isolation with no human touch and play will actually die). This extreme requirement for social interaction itself is what breeds the extreme requirement for language (that also enables things like advanced intelligence and culture).
So developing a language from scratch, in isolation, is extremely difficult, but written language is even moreso. Keep in mind for the vast majority of human history, written language didn't exist. We've only had it for maybe 5 to 10,000 years of our nearly 1 million years on the planet. It took a very developed concept of spoken language, and the development of civilization, before the first words were ever written down (and in fact, in many parts of the New World, written language was never developed at all until exposure to it from outside cultures). Even then, in its earliest incarnations, only the intellectual and social elite could read and write.
So ultimately, we find that to develop written language, you need an even larger social group than you need for spoken language.
All of this bodes poorly for your isolated creature. In the end, it also makes a case that to evolve to human-levels of sentience, you need language. This makes sense, as language is the fundamental requirement for cultural evolution (i.e. the ability to pass ideas between different generations).
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## Of course, to communicate with its body parts
Consider our own body, which uses several different mechanisms to communicate with its different parts - from electrochemical signalling via nerves to hormones.
Of course one might argue whether this is actually a language, but it is certainly communication that is at least as complex as your example of "chemical signaling between two rather un-intelligent bacteria".
Your organism is much more massive, so its means of internal communications are likely to be even more diverse and complex, unless it is mostly an undifferentiated blob.
Whats more, the distances involved in a planet-spanning organism induce prohibitive signal transmission delays for direct central control, requiring a great degree of local autonomy for its body parts.
This may then lead to communication systems that become even more sophisticated, allowing the transfer of abstract concepts and ideas.
I imagine such an organism as a massively decentralized being with specialized workers and a high degree of local autonomous decision making.
To an outsider, it might even look like a collective of individual creatures, which communicate with each other, like a planet-spanning hive of ants.
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Addressing just this part of things:
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> But even that would be a dubious scenario, would this 'internal language' be like human internal monologue?
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Given that somewhere between 30% and 70% of humans [do not have an internal monologue](http://www.valleymagazinepsu.com/do-you-have-an-inner-monologue-lets-find-out/), there's no reason to believe that one would be "normal" for alien intelligences, particularly not for ones who didn't have other reasons to develop spoken language.
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**Yes, for text.**
Even a lone being has an use for written records, since such records can be much more reliable and extensive than memory.
So there's a reason for the entity to e.g. record observations, map the local area, record logistics. And over time that would develop into a system of shorthands and symbolic representations that would become a language.
Edit: the other thing to add is languages having a ritual purpose. The earliest examples of Chinese characters are in the forms of pictograms used for divination.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_bone_script>
This is something a lone entity could well come up with on their own.
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I'm going to answer the core of this question:
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> From what I have searched from the internet, having a language is not a compulsion for having rational thought, so if presence of other entities is a roadblock, in having the urge to 'communicate' and thus develop a language, then communication can be entirely circumvented because there is only one organism here, still there could be rational thought. But even that would be a dubious scenario, would this 'internal language' be like human internal monologue ?
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It makes sense for humans to have developed minds that think in terms of language, because communication is so vital to us as social creatures. Babies are born knowing how to cry and laugh, since communicating their emotional state is important to their survival as they cannot care for themselves. Language is something that grew out of this need to communicate, so it makes sense that language is how humans structure their thoughts. It streamlines the process of communication which is so important to our survival.
So a creature with absolutely no need to communicate would never develop any kind of language, especially not an "internal" one. For what reason would it do this? It has no need to streamline its thoughts into communicable form. That is ultimately the "purpose" of an internal monologue. The "structure" it provides to thoughts is advantageous if you need to communicate those thoughts to another person. You can do it very easily and quickly if those thoughts have already been organized into language.
On the other hand, a monologue is not really a good way to think about images, or smells, or other sense-based information. You can use language to evoke memories of these things in people, but those memories aren't stored as a monologue. If I tell you to think of what a person looks like, you remember their face, maybe their clothes, not a verbal description of them. If I tell you the words "new car smell" you recall the scent, not a description of it. If I tell you the name of a catchy song, you recall the melody, a series of pitched sounds, not words or sentences. We humans use language to help us recall what is stored in our memory, but the actual memories are divorced from language.
The last possible use case for language, then, is a method of storing and recalling information. But this was mainly done to solve the generational problem. Human beings are discrete carriers of knowledge, meaning that any knowledge a human has is lost when they die. The only way to preserve the knowledge that was within a person was to transfer it to something external. Or someone, as was the case in early humanity: teaching. From teaching humans derived the concept of oral traditions for history and other learning, whereby all the collective wisdom of a culture could be passed down to future generations in the form of memorized spoken words.
Writing, then, is just an extension of this function of language. Rather than transferring knowledge to another person, it is transferred into written words onto a physical medium, which can then be easily shared with other people, transported long distances to convey information without it changing, and make it easily copied to spread the exact same information to as many people as possible. All these uses, though, are because there are **other people**, because writing is fundamentally about communication, even as a store of knowledge.
Even should a solitary being have a need to store knowledge outside of itself, for some reason, there's no reason to suppose it would develop anything like writing, which was an extension of language used as a store of knowledge for being that were already using it to communicate. No communication, no language, no writing.
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Yes. There are plausible "theories of mind" that posit a "language of thought". This is intrinsic in the human brain (to a lesser or greater extent), and people use it for advanced cognition before they learn spoken language (or in some cases if they never learn those). There is evidence that corroborates these theories.
Our thoughts are internal to our own neurology, but there is no reason that thoughts need be transmitted only via electrical impulses in nerve tissue. With a novel biology, it might even be audible thought within the human range of hearing. To such an alien, this "internal language" might still seem internal... but then, so would you think that about your thoughts despite the presence of some sort of invasive brain probe meant to eavesdrop.
Such an alien would be unlikely to develop the so-called "internal monologue" which is a faculty that humans evolved to be able to rehearse interactions with other humans and later adapted to be a narrative (after we developed story-telling, people started imagining themselves the hero of their own story). Many people have difficulty realizing that their internal monologue isn't even the greater part of their thoughts (or, god help us, maybe in some cases it is). It is speculated that crows have a similar mental faculty that they use to help them cheat, steal from, and hide from other crows. But a singular world-spanning organism would be unlikely to develop such.
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There are numerous obstacles such an entity would have to leap in order to do this. The first is a sense of "self." This is necessary to divide the world into "self" and "not-self." If there is no not-self, then there is no concept of communication, much less language.
The next step would be the ability to convert concepts into symbols. You might think that this is only necessary if it's a written language, but words are just spoken symbols. There's a part of our brain that does this and, without that one tiny nodule, we can't speak.
For this to develop, the entity has to produce and consume abstractions. It isn't something that comes into existence fully formed.
Your entity might actually come up with an external storage mechanism so it can record things that it might otherwise forget. If it develops a curiosity, it might also use this to record discoveries. In this case, the "self vs other" problem is solved because the other is its future self.
So, yes, there is a mechanism for this to happen, in the form of iconography, but it would only develop into acoustic translations if you could find a way that sound transferred faster than this thing's speed of thought. The examples of non-humans generating this kind of thing has never developed into a language, just into signaling, which is much more limited.
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Can, maybe. Did *she*? no.
**Genie (feral child)** <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_(feral_child)>
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> The extent of her isolation prevented her from being exposed to any significant amount of speech, and as a result **she did not acquire language during her childhood**. Her abuse came to the attention of Los Angeles County child welfare authorities in November 1970, when she was 13 years and 7 months old, after which she became a ward of the state of California.[1][4][7]
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> Psychologists, linguists, and other scientists initially focused a great deal of attention on Genie's case. Upon determining that Genie had not yet learned language, linguists saw Genie as providing an opportunity to gain further insight into the processes controlling language acquisition skills and to test theories and hypotheses identifying critical periods during which humans learn to understand and use language.
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> Throughout the time scientists studied Genie, she made substantial advances in her overall mental and psychological development. **Within months, she developed exceptional nonverbal communication skills** and gradually learned some basic social skills, but even by the end of their case study, she still exhibited many behavioral traits characteristic of an unsocialized person. She also continued to learn and use new language skills throughout the time they tested her, but **ultimately remained unable to fully acquire a first language**.
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In real life, mines (at their most basic, small containers filled with explosive, fitted with some sort of triggering mechanism, and left to blow up the unwary) are a mainstay of warfare both [on land](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_mine) and [at sea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_mine):
* Land mines are small, being mainly designed to blow off a soldier’s or animal’s foot or wreck the wheels or tracks of a vehicle (even the large kinds designed to disable heavy armoured vehicles are still fairly small), and usually pressure- or tripwire-activated (i.e., you step on [or drive over] the mine or break its tripwire, mine blows up).
* Sea mines are much bigger than land mines, being more-or-less exclusively designed for disabling or sinking large ships, and, while primitive types are contact-activated (where you have to actually hit the mine for it to blow up), most use some sort of remote-detection mechanism (where even sailing near the mine is enough to make it blow up).
There is, in real life, essentially no reason to develop naval anti-personnel mines, since humans are creatures of the land, and, even when they fight at sea, they do so with dry feet, from big vehicles that are essentially impervious to anyone in the water - actual fighting *in the water itself* is quite rare.
Mermaids, on the other hand, are creatures of the water, who live and fight and die in it, and would have *very* good reason to develop and use underwater anti-personnel mines, if at all possible.
I can already see a number of problems, though:
* Whereas human soldiers and their vessels are both mostly confined to an essentially two-dimensional battlefield (moving along the surface of the ground and water), mermaids would have the entire three dimensions of the water column to work with (at least until they get far enough down that they have trouble seeing in the dimming light and/or the increasing water pressure starts causing problems); thus, mines planted on the seabed (akin to human land mines) or floating at or just below the surface (like most human sea mines) would be mostly useless. Instead, the mines would have to be distributed throughout the mermaid-useable depth of the water column, which would:
* + Greatly increase the cost and effort of laying a minefield;
* + Most likely require that the mines be tethered to anchors on the seabed (for positive-buoyancy mines) or to floating buoys (for negative-buoyancy mines), in order for the mines to maintain their proper vertical position; as mermaids, unlike human sailors, would be viewing the minefield from within the water itself (without any of the mine-obscuring effects of looking through the air-water interface), this would tend to make the minefield immediately visually obvious.1
* The aforementioned excessive-visibility problem could be mitigated by hiding the mines in something like a dense kelp forest (assuming that you have a conveniently-located kelp forest or whatnot), but this would bring up *yet another* problem. One would presumably want to use some sort of contact fuse (probably pressure-sensitive plates or an underwater tripwire), since, unless your mermaids have *very* advanced electronics at their disposal, most remote-detection detonation systems would be unable to distinguish mermaids from the sea itself (mermaids - assuming that they have a remotely similar biochemical makeup to real-life animals - would have essentially the same magnetic permeability as seawater itself, making them invisible to magnetically-triggered mines, while the sounds of swimming mermaids would likely be very similar to those produced by ocean currents, waves, and other sea life, probably making acoustic mines useless). Unfortunately, contact fuses do not tend to be very discriminating as to *what* is contacting them (as long as it exerts enough force to trigger the fuse), and would render the mines highly susceptible to being set off by objects moving with the currents. This is not a problem for human land mines (as, even in parts of the world where the ground *is* prone to moving suddenly, it does not do so particularly *often*, and the air, while almost constantly in motion, has such a low density that it would take a very powerful storm to move objects heavy enough to set off a land mine), nor for human sea mines (as these are designed to damage or sink large vessels, and, therefore - where they even still use contact fuses at all - require far more applied force than any but the very largest current-borne objects are capable of exerting), but would be quite problematic indeed for mermaids using underwater anti-personnel mines, as a contact fuse sensitive enough to detect a mermaid brushing against it would likely *also* be sensitive enough to be triggered by current-borne fronds from the kelp forest hiding it.
* The much lower compressibility of water, as compared to air, would greatly increase the effective range of the shock wave from an underwater mine detonation over that from a detonation of the same size on land; on the plus side, this would greatly expand the mine’s lethal zone, but, on the minus side, it would require that the mines be spaced much further apart than they would be on land, in order to keep a detonating mine from setting off the rest of the field in a progressive sympathetic detonation (and thereby clearing the entire minefield in the process), potentially leaving enough space between the mines for mermaids to swim through without touching the mines at all.
* Finally, the much higher density and viscosity of water would render fragmentation (a major injury-and-death-causing-and-aggravating factor in land-mine explosions) ineffective as a lethal or injurious mechanism for underwater mines, which would, thus, have to rely *entirely* on blast injury; the fragments from the mine casing would be slowed down to mere nuisance speeds by hydrodynamic drag within a meter or two of travel, a distance well inside the lethal blast radius for such an explosion.
Given all this, would submerged anti-personnel mines be useful or practical in warfare between mermaids?
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1: This would be even worse for mines tethered to floating buoys, as *the buoys themselves* would likely have to be tethered to the seabed in order to keep them from drifting offsite; thus, you would have an anchor chain or cable extending the full depth of the water column from the anchor all the way up to the floating buoy, *plus* another chain or cable connecting the buoy to the mine.
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**Mines would be much more useful against mermaids.**
1. As OP notes, the incompressibility of water makes explosives more deadly underwater. The shock wave kills at some distance; this is the principle behind fishing with dynamite.
2. As area denial weapons, mines are better in the water than on land. On land, these weapons persist in the area for years after they are needed or wanted, causing persisting harm. In the water, untethered mines will almost all have been triggered by chance events within a few months of having been deployed. Unless you are Finding Nemo and you stumble into a trove of dozens of unexploded WW2 mines.
3. Mermaids are intelligent. They will investigate interesting things in the water which includes interesting mines or disguised mines. Some people assert the Soviet mines dropped over Afghanistan were made of brightly colored plastic to attract investigation, which then detonates the mine.
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/drones-used-to-find-toylike-butterfly-land-mines/>
One would think people would figure out those things are bad and not to touch them. The ones that do don't touch them. It helps that those Soviet mines all look the same. If you randomized the appearance it would be harder to figure out - the IED roadside bomb principle.
4. Different neutral buoyancies. The Russian mines were dropped from helicopters to litter large areas. Your anti mermaid mines could work similarly, and float in the water column at varying heights according to density. This would provide area denial over 3 dimensions.
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[Anti-swimmer grenades already exist](http://www.defense-aerospace.com/article-view/release/86498/us-navy-testing-new-anti_swimmer-grenade.html); as noted, shockwaves are much more effective underwater, shrapnel much less effective.
An antipersonnel underwater mine would likely consist of a similar warhead with suitable fusing and/or guidance (almost certainly sonar, either active or passive).
Note that visibility is generally very low underwater and mines are unlikely to be detected visually.
Mines can easily be disguised as floating debris. Tens of thousands of tons of floating fishing gear are discarded, lost or abandoned at sea every year, and mines could easily be hiddien among them. Alternately, they could use biomimicry.
Which leads me to ask - have you seen the Wattozz underwater swarming manta ray mine?<https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a20136004/robot-stingray-turkey-wattozz/>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fv24h.png)
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You want mines that trigger at a particular target. You can use a variety of detonating methods to kill your intruders with varying amounts of sensitivity to other types of debris or roaming fish. So what you do is create large nets.
1: For a minefield with the least chance of murdering random debris or large fish you create a bunch of nets that make traversal of the area hard for most fish. The nets can form a (3D!) maze to pass through, potentially causing anyone inside to starve or be discovered during the time consuming task. Or you can cut through the nets... except that some of the nets contain explosives that detonate if you cut through their netting. The nets can ofcourse be created of thin, tough wiring making it far harder to see the nets in advance, or which net that explosive is attached to.
2: small surface-area nets are spread around the area using a variety of anchors or neutral bouyancy bouys at different heights. The nets are stiff, but a sufficiently large deformation will cause the bomb(s) attached to the net to go off. A small fish or debris will not have the force to do this, but a large mermaid at basic speeds that would likely hit it with his full body would deform it enough to detonate the mines.
The holes of the nets would be fairly large so most smaller fish and debris can simply pass through (think chickenwire or larger holes). A non-explosive and very visible net would be used as warning against non-mermaids/civilians to keep the minefield intact.The wiring can be different per net. A thick wiring could be used to steer enemies away into thinner and less visible wiring.
Nets would be ideal for area-denial, especially since mines cant be placed too close to eachother. The point of mines isn't necessarily to kill but to deny access. If you really want to kill something you release floating mine-nets to drift towards your opponents.
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It's worth noting that the purpose of mines isn't necessarily to kill, but rather risk of death or injury is the method they use to fulfill their primary purpose, which is area denial.
On land, mines need to be invisible because if they *are* visible they are easy to avoid, but mines can fulfill their purpose when visible as well as long as they are not easily avoided or removed. By having them close together you force the enemy to move through the minefield slowly and still with a high risk of accidents, which is good enough to make them useful.
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Why not use the example of nature, and use the example of sharks, which have an electrical sense that can detect the electrical signals emitted by contracting muscles. By emplacing mines that are capable of detecting the muscle activity of a mer-person-sized being, they need never be touched in order to detonate.
Unlike an antipersonnel landmine, which is really intended to cause non-fatal damage to the lower limbs (thus consuming more of the enemy's resources than a corpse) by projecting shrapnel into them, an underwater antipersonnel mine would function by emitting a shockwave that would damage the internal organs of the merfolk nearby. In humans exposed to atmospheric shockwaves, the organs most likely to be damaged are the lungs, followed by the brain and gastrointesinal tract. See <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blast_injury>. However, shrapnel is also involved, whether generated as an intended component of the explosive device or incidentally by propulsion of nearby debris.
Underwater, shrapnel effects are minimal, but the effects of shockwaves are much greater. This means that an underwater mine has a much greater area of effect for a given amount of explosive. An analysis of underwater blasts on humans has shown that the potential for lung and gastrointestinal injuries is very much greater, as is the potential for auditory damage. See <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4659630/>.
Now, I must speculate on the physiology of mer-people. It may be assumed that mer-people would have a gastrointestinal tract, though whether they have gills or lungs is a matter of interpretation. However, the effects of an explosion upon gills would likely be similar to the effect upon lungs.
This means that as an area-denial weapon, underwater mines would require a lower density of explosives than the volume of water might suggest. There could be a number of different ways of emplacing mines, including tethered floating mines and sub-surface mine launchers.
Tethered mines would likely work best in shallow water, where a mine suspended half-way between the surface and the sea bed would have a sufficient blast radius to reach the surface and sea floor. Combined with an electrical impulse detection detonator, this would very effectively deny the area to the enemy. In order to prevent false positives or anti-mine devices from detonating a mine out of its effective area, mines could be networked so that they could detect a source of electrical activity and triangulate its location, and only detonate the mine closest to the electrical source when the electrical source was in effective range. This would make mine-clearance particularly challenging.
Sub-surface mine launchers could be buried in the sea-floor in deep water. When electrical activity is detected in the volume above the minefield, its position can be triangulated, and a launcher beneath the signal activated, setting a buoyant mine to detonate at the depth of the signal before releasing it. This system would also be difficult for wartime mine clearance to deal with. The launchers could easily contain multiple mines, so that the minefield wouldn't be exhausted by the launch of a few mines.
This system could be triggered by other large marine life-forms such as large fish or marine mammals. However, it could be marked by a tethered floating platform that uses wave action to sound an underwater bell sufficiently loud and distinctive to deter sea life from approaching, also providing an audible warning to mer-people that mines were in the area... even if in fact no mines actually existed.
The complication with mine clearance would be that an artificial electrical field would have to be close enough to detonate a mine, a distance that might be well-within the mine's range to cause injury to a mine-clearance crew with a neutrally-buoyant electrical device on a long cable.
It might also be possible to coast through a minefield on a sea-current while making no exertion that would cause a sufficiently large electrical signal to trigger a detonation, but by introducing obstacles to a minefield, such that muscular activity would be required to avoid them, this can be mitigated.
So, it can be seen that an underwater minefield can be just as effective, if not more so, than a minefield or even a simple "Danger! Mines!" sign on land, and potentially not greatly different in the cost of emplacement.
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No. Underwater antipersonnel mines would be fairly ineffective for the same reason aerial mines would be ineffective - Water and Air are 3 dimensional spaces whereas land is essentially a 2 dimensional surface.
To achieve the purpose, the underwater AP mines would have to be somehow capable of detecting over a spherical surface, and they'd have to be positioned to cover a wall from sea-floor to surface, or to cover an area, with sufficient overlap to prevent anyone swimming between them.
Also the AP mines would have to be positioned "thick" enough that one detonation doesn't leave a hole, but far enough apart that one detonation doesn't explode adjacent mines.
I'm excluding powered or self-propelled mines, because that would not be a mine, it would be an autonomous hunter-seeker missile or drone.... which could be quite effective if they were smart enough.
There are no air-mines hanging in the sky to explode the enemy's planes - instead we have missiles. The nearest thing would have been barrage balloons filled with explosives in WW1, and they were a strategic target to attack in their own right, just booby-trapped.
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**Minefields aren't used in most wars**; quite apart from them being ethically difficult, they can be a problem for your own side later, and require resources to deploy. Whilst devastating for civilians, they're also relatively easy for the military to ignore – vehicles can be immune to AP mines – or to move around.
**However, mines and IEDs are still in common use.** These are placed carefully, in small numbers. They'd be as effective in urban areas for merfolk as for humans (and moreso, due to the shockwave underwater). Methods of triggering would be largely similar – manual and tripwires being popular, and pressure for anything that's going to be touched (doors, boxes, etc).
Pressure sensors (of the step-on / drive-on type) won't work, but in inside spaces where noise and water movement would be lower, detecting a swimmer should be easy – fish can do so. Detecting vehicles by cavitation is easy.
Also, spotting mines would probably be difficult for merfolk. Visibility underwater is often poor, and any silt will make it very hard to see. Except for the top few metres, we should not expect merfolk to be able to see underwater anywhere near as well (accurately) as we see on land – even with specific adaptions. So things like fishing line would be very close to invisible, making tripwires/nets very effective.
Shockwave needn't cause premature detonation, depending on the types of explosive used. The pressure level required to maim or kill a human/merfolk would be much lower than required to detonate most explosive.
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The answer to your problem is CAPTOR mines... Technically they are miniature torpedoes (CAPTOR = enCAPsulated TORpedo) with a sensor that triggers the torpedo to go after a target that came into range. Drop them in place, and they'll watch an area.
And yes, modern navy consider them mines.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_60_CAPTOR>
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There is a veil which separates our reality from a parallel dimension that contains Eldritch abominations. An ancient empire has discovered that they can harness the power of this realm by summoning demons across the barrier. This is done through the use of human sacrifices. The more powerful the demon, the more sacrifices are needed.
A religion has formed with two separate modes of thought. One sect believes that these demons are tools to be exploited for humanity's purposes. This focuses on enslaving demons as weapons, using them for their powers and as servants. The other sees them as transcendent life forms to be worshipped and held sacred. By combining themselves with demons to create demon hosts, humans can shuck their mortal shells and ascend to a higher state of being.
Looking through historical records, it seems that religions often break into various sects for simple theological reasons that seem silly, at least to outsiders. These can lead to schisms that fracture the faith forever, and can end in civil wars. I need a way to maintain this religions coherence with these two ideologies to keep the empire stable.
We are supposed to learn from the past to avoid repeating its mistakes. How can I design this religion from the ground up to maintain its stability?
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Make it canon that both views are correct.
Give the demons a hierarchy of power and influence. The lowest ranking get enslaved by their superiors and can be loaned out to other demons or mortals who request a favor or service. These minor demons can be as strong as two men, have a weakly acidic touch, or similarly unimpressive abilities. As you move up the hierarchy, the demons have more powerful and awe-inspiring talents, such as possession or mind control.
The religion can then be safely divided into pieces based on the hierarchy. The sect that believes demons exist to serve mankind can keep its focus on the low-ranking demons they can forcibly pull through the veil; the fact that they can be forcibly extracted is proof that these demons are meant to serve, rather than rule. Maybe those of stronger faith can drag higher ranking demons through the veil, increasing the "ranking" of mankind in the hierarchy. (Dark twist here: humans are just demons that were forced out of the other dimension for {reason} and are actually part of the hierarchy.) The high-ranking demons then become more hazard than worth, reflecting a materialistic and cautious approach.
Likewise, the sect that believes demons should be worshipped can keep its focus on those high-ranking demons that merely laugh when summoned and go on with their day. These demons have to be won over with prayers, offerings, and the like. Gaining a demon's favor becomes the goal for the faithful.
Finally, demons are generally defined as malicious, vengeful, and delighting in the suffering of others. Subjugating low-ranking demons can be a primary way to gain the favor of higher-ranking demons, especially if that enslavement involves using the acquired power to inflict terror, pain, or death on other mortals.
Your sects may bicker about which demon is ranked over another, or which is superior at a given rank, but they'll admit that both the worship of high-ranking demons and the subjugation of low-ranking demons is appropriate and deserved.
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Frame Challenge:
## Your Religion Has Nothing to do with Demons
Demonology is a science - you seek to categorize demons, place them in the hierarchy, and understand their psychology (to better enslave / entice them).
There's no capital "M" - Mystery - there. No real room for religious awe. It's science. Input to the function defines the output from the function.
So set up a pantheon. A god of War, and a god of Fertility, etc.
And a god of Demons.
In fact - this could set you up for an interesting story in its own right. Maybe you treat Demon worshipers as an upstart sect or splinter group. It could be based heavily on how Christianity split off from Judaism and challenged the religious pantheon of the Roman Empire...
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The demons themselves are working to mantain the status quo, and especially in protecting those fools who believe that enslaving demons in providing one-sided benefits for their party only, while they are really tools to raise the level of corruption of the world, which increases the infuence of demons over the world.
Mantaining two opposite factions keeps the need for each of the factions to reinforce their own cult in order to show that their way is the better way, increasing the stream of faustian bargains and damned souls that ultimately empowers or feeds demons.
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One sect basically exterminates the other. The people who believe that the demons are mere tools are not taking a religious view of the situation and would be viewed as heretical (or maybe just blaspehemous) by the others. So you have one major religion , which is highly stable - think medieval church, only not as moderate when it comes to dealing with dissenters - plus a small underground heretical group of practical magicians who survive by remaining underground and using their powers, which the others cannot harness. (think any other religious/philosophical group at the time).
This situation is stable and can endure for centuries, and can throw up some interesting plot possibilities.
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Demons are malicious - you could have them be the instigators behind both sects, and play the necessary roles to deceive and manipulate the beliefs of the two sects. What do they want out of it? A hierarchical system with different power levels and demands could work, but even the weakest demons are usually more powerful than humans, so unless they had a deeper motive for obeying the petty mortals who call them, why should they obey?
Stability - George Orwell had a state of perpetual warfare (often just imaginary) in 1984, which served to keep peace and people controlled. The two opposing sects could be engaged in (not necessarily physical, e.g. intellectual/other dimensional/proxy) warfare, and this mutual war of attrition could maintain a balance for a time.
Long term stability is unlikely, though, as "A house divided against itself cannot stand." You have two opposed sects - one who subjugates what the other worships; who worship malicious gods who want nothing more than to destroy humans (e.g. the whole human sacrifice thing, plus a motive for them to obey the cultists at all?); and predatory sects, at that, who kill the populace. It's built on destruction, eventually something's gonna give: the populace will rebel against them, or one sect will go too far in their "proxy war", or the demons will achieve their goal and kill everybody, or a horrified neighbouring empire will wipe out the sects in a crusade, or, ultimately, there will be no-one left to sacrifice.
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# Mutually Assured Destruction
Above a certain level of the religious hierarchy it is known that both approaches are about equally powerful. The summoning sect can produce legions of demonic warriors, but the unity sect can turn each individual human into a terrifying force of destruction.
The high priests may be selfish, greedy and even evil; but they aren't *stupid*. They know that causing any serious division could lead to conflict, and that any actual civil war would cause mass casualties. That would risk all the fine wines and fancy dinners that they love so much, and all for a matter of mere philosophy. And so they restrict themselves to office politics and sarcastic comments, and regularly visit their anger management counsellors.
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**Possession**
The upper levels of the religion are the same demons wearing meat suits. As bodies wear out and people die, new members are elected to the inner circle and a demon possess the cultist
This way the people might change but the ones running the show are always the same.
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**Power is Virtue**
One of the maxims of the demon worshippers is that power is virtuous. To command obedience is to be, in some part, divine.
If a human can command a demon, it is virtuous to do so, though it may not be as sacred as forming a union with that being to command even more power, more directly.
Those who would bind demons into service are not blasphemers, they're merely cowards, unwilling to ascend because they fear what they might loose - And really, aren't all of us in fearful awe at the magnificence of the demonic? What sin is it, truly, to be afraid of the divine?
These are people to be pitied, not people to be persecuted, because although they might command worldy authority, they will never command the true and transcendent power of the divine union.
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From further investigations I see that someone came with an idea that gives support to my theory that elves don't have body fat.
Their idea was that Elves [store their energy as ethanol](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/128909/how-could-elves-survive-without-any-fat-cell-in-their-body/128932#128932) in their blood.
This idea implies that Elves basically walk around with anti-freeze blood that can protect against infections better than normal blood while also making it so that Elves can't get drunk.
But another problem arises, people with low body fat tend to look like road maps,cause even if there are small muscles below the skin, if there is 0 fat to cover it then even the smallest muscles are perfectly visible.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dYuym.jpg)
So, How can Elves have 0% body fat and not look like some freaky walking road map?
[Answer]
Elves have thicker skin. Literally.
One of the purposes of fat in the body is kinetic: it serves as a cushion to absorb and distribute the force of impacts - not just in the sense of punches or falling rocks, but also things like the ground impacting your foot as you walk around on it.
Since your elves don't have fat, it follows that some other part of the body has to be cushioning it. The dermis - the middle layer of skin - already provides some cushioning effects, so it makes sense to me that in your elves, it would take on this role, becoming thicker, denser, and stiffer than in humans. Therefore, it would be less inclined to mold itself to the contours of the body beneath. (It would also be less able to expand and contract, which would be a problem in a human since our bodies change shape as we gain and lose fat - but conveniently, elves don't do that.)
The outer layer of skin would be relatively unaffected, so it shouldn't feel any different to the touch. I would expect that facial muscles might have a harder time flexing the thicker skin, hence why elves are often known for their stoicism - their faces are literally less expressive than humans'.
I welcome people who actually know things about anatomy to pick holes in this idea.
[Answer]
## Type 1 Muscle Tissue
As a species your elves have a predisposition to [Type 1 muscle tissue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle#Types), which is 'slow twitch'. A normal seditary man or a woman is believed to have 45% Type 2 muscle mass and 55% Type 1. However long distance runners have [higher percentages of Type 1 muscle mass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myocyte#Fiber_types).
In this picture you can actually see that Type 1 muscle users have less definition in their exposed areas.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nckR0.jpg)
This would also help explain why your elves can perform endurance tasks well, [which is a common elvish trope](https://www.planet-tolkien.com/board/5/5125/0/elves-vs-men).
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[Question]
[
I am writing a book set in a world that is a fleshed out version of a myth told by Central African Hunter Gatherers (Congo Pygmies) and the African groups north of them, generally going as follows:
The Pygmy Peoples of the Congo were once highly advanced and had Jungle cities, all sorts of advance machines, tools, medicines, etc. However due to internal conflict and wanton growth, the Pygmies nearly brought themselves to the brink of extinction. Due to this, the Pygmies that were left decided to return to hunter-gathering in order to sustainably coexist with the forest they so loved and the trees of which they had always worshipped.
This is all well and good, but to retain such a world's believeability there is need to answer fundamental questions about the nature of their civilization, the most primary of which being by which means do they maintain an agricultural system that can support civilization in a rainforest.
Given that it is antithetical to the beliefs of Pygmies to clear rainforest for agriculture, given that all Pygmy groups in varying ways unilaterally worship the rainforest, ***How might these groups engage in the level of agriculture needed to sustain a civilization?***
[Answer]
**Worship the forest that you make.**
There is a real life parallel for you: the ancient Amazon. Exactly what you describe happened there. Whether the ancient Amazonians disappeared because of European diseases or at some earlier point (like the Mound Builder civilization) is still not known, I do not think. But they were there in great numbers, and their descendants are hunter gatherers much like the pygmies.
<https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/its-now-clear-that-ancient-humans-helped-enrich-the-amazon/518439/>
>
> For more than 8,000 years, people lived in the Amazon and farmed it to
> make it more productive. They favored certain trees over others,
> effectively creating crops that we now call the cocoa bean and the
> brazil nut, and they eventually domesticated them. And while many of
> the communities who managed these plants died in the Amerindian
> genocide 500 years ago, the effects of their work can still be
> observed in today’s Amazon rainforest.
>
>
> “People arrived in the Amazon at least 10,000 years ago, and they
> started to use the species that were there. And more than 8,000 years
> ago, they selected some individuals with specific phenotypes that are
> useful for humans,” says Carolina Levis, a scholar at Wageningen
> University who helped lead the study. “They really cultivated and
> planted these species in their home gardens, in the forests they were
> managing,” she said.
>
>
> That cultivation eventually altered entire regions of the Amazon, the
> study argues. Levis and her colleagues found that some of these
> species domesticated by indigenous people—including the brazil nut,
> the rubber tree, the maripa palm, and the cocoa tree—still dominate
> vast swaths of the forest, especially in the southwest section of the
> Amazon basin.
>
>
> “Modern tree communities in Amazonia are structured to an important
> extent by a long history of plant domestication by Amazonian peoples,”
> says the paper.
>
>
>
So too your ancients. They revere the forest and they manage the forest. The forest is not a wild thing. It is the place they live and they work to keep it a nice place to live. And just as the Amazon today, what appears to be a wild forest is actually akin to an overrun garden - with evidence of the ancient gardeners if you know how to look.
The linked article is more about the forest but you can read about ancient Amazonian agriculture here: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta> They had a system for enriching the soil with charcoal and pottery shards. The soil enrichments those ancients made persist to this day and are still valued as soil amendments.
[Answer]
Depending on the exact definition of "Clear the Rainforest" this could be achieved.
Agriculture was a gradual discovery. The first gatherers would have realised that if they scattered some of the fruit/seeds they collected as an "offering" to the plant, more of these plants would grow over time. They should quickly make the connection that the plant comes from the seeds themselves.
They would then start protecting and encouraging more of these plants to grow. Removing competing inedible plants, and putting coverings over them to stop wildlife taking the food will ensure even more is available to the pygmies.
Finally, they will attempt to clear areas of land purely to plant their food. I imagine it is this point that violates their beliefs, but by many generations protecting and encouraging naturally grown plants you will eventually get to the same point without ever actually "clearing" the jungle itself.
[Answer]
[Modern forestry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forestry) is actually a kind of agriculture. Humans replace trees they can't use with trees they can use, plant them in the ways which achieve the best yields and build road networks and other infrastructure into the forests which make planting and harvesting easier.
Forestry in the northern hemisphere focuses primarily on mass-producing timber. If you want to grow food, you get rid of the trees to get open land for planting vegetables, legumes or grains.
But your culture could instead focus on cultivating trees and shrubs which produce edible fruits with timber just being a by-product. Cultivating trees for food is also known in modern agriculture. It's called an orchard. But industrial orchards usually try to keep their trees short so farmers can pick the fruits without having to climb the trees. Your culture might reject that practice for cultural reasons and let their fruit trees grow to taller sizes. This has the advantage that the land below the trees becomes more useful for cultivating shrub-plants or mushrooms.
So imagine an orchard of rainforest trees with fields of berry bushes and mushrooms below them.
[Answer]
I imagine there are a couple possibilities to go about this.
1. Settling close to naturally occurring food sources (fruit trees etc) and instead of planting, put the energy into maintaining the already given resources.
2. They would need to have space to live anyway and could possibly have small gardens with edible plants next to their huts or whatever they live in, so they wouldn't need to clear large spaces of rainforest but smaller ones so that individual families plant what they need.
3. They could try to find an already existing open space. That might be difficult in thick forest but I don't want to leave this unmentioned. An already existing open space could (presumably) be used for agriculture without violating religious dogma.
All of these only work for rather small communities but I don't think there's much possibility to keep a large civilization up under the mentioned conditions.
[Answer]
Send the criminals of society away from the forests they love to toil in the open fields. Your "prison population" is then responsible for the arable agriculture needed to supplant forest sources of food
[Answer]
There are permaculture techniques for farming in a forest. These take time to establish, but once set up, they'll provide food over the course of a year and not one great big harvest at one time during the year.
[This article](https://schoolofpermaculture.com/permaculture-tip-day-7-layers-forest/) has a brief description of the levels in a forest permaculture environment. Under this model, the overstory, or canopy layer usually doesn't provide human edible foods (there are some exceptions, like Brazil nut trees - they're typically reaching heights around 50m/160ft). Most fruiting trees are shorter and would occupy the subcanopy/understory layer (in tropical American regions, [custard apples](https://hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/custard_apple.html) and [tamarind](https://hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/tamarind.html) would be here, these trees are 5-9 meters or 15-35 feet tall). Food shrubs like [papaya](https://hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/papaya_ars.html) and carob would occupy the shrub layer. The "[Three Sisters](http://tobyhemenway.com/resources/the-three-sisters-or-is-it-four/)" would occupy layer 4. Some tropical [root crops](https://hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/proceedings1990/v1-424.html) would include yams, cassava and taro - these provide large amounts of starch/carbs for tropical peoples. Vanilla, passion fruit, pepper (the one you place next to salt on your table) and some beans are vines and can be grown up the sides of your taller trees.
Add some water works like canals (with [weirs for fishing](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-24454-4) and irrigation) and [raised beds that the pre-Columbian South American cultures made](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2867901/) and your peoples should be able to accommodate the food needs for their civilizations. Perhaps they have small furry animals cohabitating, like the [Quechua peoples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quechua_people) kept [guinea pigs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinea_pig) running freely around the house. Need more meat for dinner tonight? Grab Mr Fluffykins and toss him into the pot.
You would need to select plants and animals for the altitude of your tropical forest.
[Answer]
## Agro-Forestry
Similar to Wilk's answer, you can integrate farming within the forest. But you actually don't need to limit yourself to trees, or even actually rely on the trees themselves for food.
By just choosing the right crops, things such as fungi, berries, ducks and sheep, you can grow them on the forest floor and actually help the forest at the same time.
>
> The native trees earn their keep by attracting natural predators as pest control, providing shade for the dark-dwelling fungi, and feeding animals with a constant supply of bugs and grass cover.
>
>
> In return, the crops compensate trees by building soil, preserving water quality and run-off, and adding biodiversity to the indigenous demographic. The farm restores and protects the forest ecosystem, and vice-versa.
>
>
>
<https://grist.org/sponsored/how-farms-can-heal-a-forest-or-even-make-them/>
A real-world modern example exists at [Wellspring Forest Farm](http://wellspringforestfarm.com/)
[Answer]
In some ways, your question answers itself. The people, of whom you write, may well have had a slash-and-burn ethos in their distant history. Due to those practices, they may well have suffered a localized ecological catastrophe, which increased the influence of a certain faction opposed to these practices or even brought them to power.
As a result, they initially began to repair the damage. As the damage was repaired and the influence of this group increased, a generalized back-to-nature movement may have occurred, which resulted in their cities becoming gradually depopulated.
The people of today are then the descendants of the back-to-nature group. They maintain this ethos through a strong oral tradition. Depending on how long ago this occurred, the ecological damage they caused may have repaired itself and their cities may simply be piles of rocks in a vague city-like arrangement in the forest.
[Answer]
You said that they are hunter-gatherers. This implies that they can't consciously be farmers by definition. But they can do it unconsciously.
For example, they can be nomadic and they can constantly pursue their prey that migrates by the same path. During their temporal stop they eat local fruits/berries/etc and then take shit (pardon my french) nearby. Seeds of some species survive their digestive system and use their shit as fertilizer. After some time the tribe(s) returns to the same location and it will be able to eat fruits/berries/etc that it unconsciously planted.
Although good timing is important here, they should arrive just in time. But maybe they will be able to figure it out on their own.
[Answer]
You might like to research the practices of the Native Americans. They are often thought of as hunter-gatherers, but they also practiced extensive agriculture, and in a landscape that was heavily forested. A detailed description is far beyond the scope of this answer, but [this Google search](https://www.google.ca/search?ei=UNVIW4_kM4TGjgTCs7TwAQ&q=native%20american%20farming&oq=native%20american%20farming&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0i71k1l8.0.0.0.18752.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0....0...1c..64.psy-ab..0.0.0....0.XSGeaFH3d44) gets you some good references.
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[
In my world, an intelligent species has evolved to the point of space travelling. However, this species can eat only one single type of food (which is a product of another species on its planet).
It cannot use any other species as food, and it cannot artificially create food which is equivalent, despite having technological abilities.
Is this situation possible? What kind of evolutionary/biological/technological conditions would possibly result in such scenario?
[Answer]
Consider something like the [leaf cutter ant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leafcutter_ant), which eat nothing but fungus, they evolved agriculture long before humans existed. They harvest plant material to farm the fungus and have been doing it for so long they can barely digest anything else. They even produce a biological antibiotic to kill off anything that might compete with the fungus.
It would be easy to see a strong evolved disgust response against even trying to eat other food in such a species. They farm something to feed the fungus which can be fed a variety of things, then only eat the fungus, that would allow them to evolve behavioral plasticity since they have to find things in new environments to feed the fungus. Plus fungus agriculture has evolved at least three separate times in insects so you completely justify it on an alien species.
Any advanced civilization *could* develop the technology to synthesize their food, but there are many reasons they would not bother, especially on a large scale.
[Answer]
One of Ian Bank's crazier ideas is a sentient species that grew up as a parasite (think tick/flea) of another. This kind of scenario fits your need very well.
For food sources, it's usually next to impossible that you wouldn't find another source of food that more or less does what your main food source does. But parasitic creatures are different. I'm not sure what exactly causes this, but the evolution of fleas closely follows that of their host and fleas were used to work out when humans and primates went their separate ways through evolution, since the flea species also diverged.
I'd guess that with parasite creatures, it's not just the food they get, but also how they get the food. The method of feeding might be peculiar, with only a certain special way to get under the skin and into the blood of the animal they feed on. Or maybe there are only certain special chemicals that cause hunger or various bits of the feeder's anatomy to be stimulated to "eat". In the way of milk, they may know all the chemical constituents, but they might not be able to synthesize it.
Anyway, that avenue is worth a bit of research.
[Answer]
The evolution of stomaches is much slower than the evolution of technology. There is evidence of the use of fire going back 400,000 years or more, but humans kept their large seed-grinding teeth and smaller skulls up until about 250,000 years ago… That's a big gap, but presumably [we could not have evolved our bigger brains until after fire gave us food that was already partially broken down](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_fire_by_early_humans#Biology_and_Diet). We are still not very good at digesting uncooked protein, even though it's now considered essential to our diet.
Our brains are also hungry organs that [consume almost 1/4 of all our calories.](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-does-the-brain-need-s/)
So it's not much of a stretch to have an intelligent species that became dependent on a certain type of food (or how that food is processed). However, your problem is: with all this technology why haven't they invented "space food"?
In Jared Diamond's book Collapse, he talks about [many cultures that died out simply because they stubbornly refused to adapt. He specifically talks about Viking colonists in Greenland who refused to change their diet to fish.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed#Collapses_of_past_societies) They knew the indigenous people ate fish, but the Norse instead tried to keep their "grain and sheep" diet which was unsustainable. They insisted on keeping their own cultural identity and starved.
With all the allergies and biodiversity on our planet, the main reason certain foods are taboo is because of culture and religion… Maybe there were practical reasons to reject certain foods as "unclean" and that got woven into religious law, but those reasons are no longer true and seem arbitrary today. However people dedicated to their faith continue to reject them. There is also the weird case that [the tomato was thought to be poison for 200 years.](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/why-the-tomato-was-feared-in-europe-for-more-than-200-years-863735/)
I suggest you combine some aspect of their evolution that makes them dependent, but emphasize their cultural taboos or religious laws that prevent them from making necessary adaptations.
[Answer]
It's highly unlikely that an intelligent species strictly depends on one single "food species". Two main reasons:
1. Evolution: The more narrow a species ecological niche, the less resilient the population is. So almost every species can deal with at least a small spectrum of nutritional sources. If it could not, it would not have survived.
2. Chemistry: Even if your species relied on a single food species, technically the food species is the result of bio-chemical processes. If these processes in an organism lead to an appropriate food source for your species, the same processes would lead to appropriate food sources if artificially initiated, e.g. in a lab or an industrial environment. Likely it is only the mix of a few parameters, maybe chemical compounds, that make the food species appropriate. I cannot think of any reason, why it would be impossible, to get these right in a controlled environment such as a lab.
The idea of intelligent parasites is interesting... however, the most intelligent parasites I can think of, are insects. And insects, as we all know, tend to be rather small animals, which also limits the size of their "brains" or ganglia. Furthermore, the dependence on an appropriate host brings severe limitations to the extend of development. This is because the environment a parasite has to adopt to, is its host. And this environment is really limited, in every way.
In my opinion, your idea is rather unconvincing.
[Answer]
Well, your species obviously has an extensive food production industry on the home planet, the question of whether a spacefaring species could exist with a dependency on such a specific food source boils down to one question, how hard would it be to take the production cycle with them into space?
Maybe, instead of trying to figure out how to artificially produce the food, maybe their technology focused on making the industry mobile.
i.e. Farms in space
[Answer]
The tricky part of this question is why they can't synthesize suitable food, as single-food dependent animals are pretty well known on Earth - giant panda, snail kite, etc. (Many of these animals *do* eat something else occasionally, but they are definitely totally dependent on one food species for survival. Similarly, the larval-food dependence of many moths/butterflies.)
Some possibilities:
-non-native technological development: the space travel technology doesn't come from a *generally* high tech base but was obtained from aliens or uncovered from the ruins of a previous destroyed civilization on their world.
-impaired biological development: something about them or their world makes it extremely hard to develop biology relative to the other sciences. It could be some misleading fact (introduction of alien species in the distant past or really high rate of radical mutations) leading to wrong theories of biology becoming dominant, or something cultural (a biological-weapons war almost made them extinct so genetic research is forbidden, long period of dominance of a world dictatorship pushing something like Lysenkoism).
-aberrant means: their space travel tech uses something like FTL or teleportation that doesn't fit well with our physics, and turns out not to require a high general level of technology.["The Road not Taken" by Harry Turtledove] Possibly their brains are wired fundamentally differently from humans', so something is obvious & simple to them that isn't to us.
[Answer]
Check out Peter F. Hamilton's `Pandora's Star` and `Judas Unchained` of the [Commonwealth Saga](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Saga)
The main threat is a advanced alien species that fits your requirements, although it may be able to produce the food after alien-forming other planetary bodies.
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[Question]
[
In *Star Trek TNG*, you hear about some sort of defense back on earth that is supposed to screen out all the bad weather. In the episode "True Q," it is mentioned several times as being capable of preventing/stopping a tornado.
Obviously such a system isn't possible today, but what would we need to stop a hurricane? **What would we need to accomplish in order to stop/prevent a hurricane?**
Clarity: This is science-based. I know we can't do this right now, so I'm looking for what we would need to cause. How we cause that is another matter entirely. (For example, maybe a drop in air pressure somewhere solves the whole thing. How we do that comes later.)
[Answer]
## Lots of wind turbines will mitigate the damage
What makes hurricanes so dangerous is the concentration of energy in a "small" area. Wind speeds are directly related to energy in the hurricane. If you can remove energy, the hurricane will naturally decrease in intensity. (I'm not sure if this qualifies as "stop the hurricane" but it will sure mitigate the damage from a hurricane.)
Mark Z. Jacobson at Stanford has done a lot of math to [show that large numbers of turbines](http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/february/hurricane-winds-turbine-022614.html) (tens of thousands) can suck enough energy out of a hurricane to decrease the damage done. Hurricane strength is inversely proportional to the number of turbines present subject to the law of diminishing returns. As the number of turbines goes up, the strength of the hurricane goes down.
## Total Prevention of Hurricanes?
If these turbine farms were setup in the band of the Atlantic and Pacific ocean where hurricanes/monsoons form, then this could suck enough energy out of the atmosphere to prevent or minimize hurricanes. The logistics of doing this will be immense but they might pay for themselves with the energy generated.
## Addressing Heat Buildup
A comment on the original question stated, "A hurricane is nature's way of moving heat from the equator to the poles. If you stop hurricanes, that heat is going to build up, and is going to find an outlet somewhere." (Mark at Oct 6 '16 at 20:07) Let's talk about hurricanes at a smaller scale.
**TL;DR**
Hurricanes need the energy in warm, moist air to grow and sustain themselves. If you starve them of that energy, they don't form or don't grow as strong. Turbines extract mechanical energy from the lower atmosphere and convert it to electricity. Turbines can't remove *all* energy from the atmosphere (that'd be all kinds of bad), so we would still see localized low-to-high altitude energy exchanges in the form of thundstorms. Perhaps there will be more and stronger thunderstorms, but fewer hurricanes.
## Long Explanation
Most everyone has taken a bottle of water and tried to empty it over a sink. The familiar glub-glub-glub of water falling out, pause, then air coming in, pause, then water going out, is well known. Perhaps less known is that if you give the bottle a quick swirl, the bottle empties in a mere fraction of the glub-glub-glub approach. The swirling water opens a tube between the air in the bottle and outside air thus providing a "high speed", uninterrupted path for the air to get into the bottle. Hurricanes are the swirling water at the neck of the bottle. I shall demonstrate.
At the most abstract, we have a region of high energy and an area of low energy, in both the bottle example and the hurricane. For the bottle, the high potential area is the potential energy of the water held in the bottle, where the energy is provided by gravity. Hurricanes, on the other hand, have their energy provided by warm, moist air at low altitudes.
Over land, we see warm moist air trying to get to areas of low potential in the form of thunderstorms. The warm air rises towards the upper atmosphere forming giant cumulous clouds until the cooling effects of altitude and surrounding cold air halt any further upward progress. It's well known that stronger thunderstorms will produce taller clouds than weaker storms.
It is at this point that I will disagree with Mark. From the perspective of warm air on the surface of the ocean, the most accessible area of low potential is directly up, not pole-wards. Hurricanes are Nature's way of facilitating the movement of energy from low altitudes to high altitudes. Yes, generally pole-wards does have lower energy than the equator but on the scales we're discussing ie, "can turbines meaningfully attenuate hurricane strength?", the poles don't matter much since they are so very very far away. Also, hurricanes aren't the only way for energy to escape the equatorial waters; there are still tons of thunderstorms that do the same "job" as a hurricane just on a much smaller scale.
Let's go back to our bottle example: Over a very warm tropical ocean, we have an absolutely gigantic pool of energy in the form of warm humid air. This is exactly like the water held in the bottle, waiting to drain out. Thunderstorms form almost continuously at the equator in an area known as [the Intertropical Convergence Zone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intertropical_Convergence_Zone).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2G6NN.jpg)
Enough talk! What's with the turbines!? Hurricanes always peter out over land or cooler water because there isn't enough warm moist air to sustain the intense updrafts in the eye of the hurricane. Thus, the solution to hurricane formation is to starve the hurricane of warm wet air. Turbines can only convert mechanical energy within moving air to electricity, in other words, all they can do is slow down the wind...but that may be enough. Hurricanes are concentrations of energy and only form above some threshold of energy. **If the turbines prevent the concentration of energy above that threshold then the hurricane won't form. Or, if a hurricane does form, it will be weaker in the presence of turbines.** Instead of hurricanes, we could expect to see lots of tropical storms or thunderstorms over the Atlantic.
The [Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory](http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/D7.html) has an interesting writeup on the energy released by a hurricane.
[Answer]
What a hurricane boils down to is a large difference in air pressure between two parts of the earth. Air from the high-pressure region attempts to move toward the low pressure region. Along the way, coriolis forces influence its path and it ends up spiraling around the center of the low pressure. As the difference in pressure becomes larger, the velocity of the winds becomes higher.
Now, what if there were a way to let the air move from high to low without the coriolis effect standing in its way? A tunnel from the outside edge to the eye could do this. The air would still try to turn on its way through the tunnel, but the walls would get in the way and force the air to move along the path of the tunnel. This would allow the pressures to equalize without the resulting massive spiral of fast moving, destructive winds. The very things that gave birth to the hurricane likewise serve to kill it.
But wait, it's not as easy as it sounds. You are going to have trouble with scale and location. You need a really long tunnel, because hurricanes are many miles in diameter. Your tunnel needs to be very sturdy, as the winds rushing through it will be even stronger than in the hurricane itself. Finally, hurricanes tend to form over oceans, so your tunnel has to float. I'm not sure if any modern materials will meet these requirements. All this ignores how you are going to get your tunnel to the emerging hurricane in time to break it up.
Possible? Maybe, no-one has tested it yet. Practical? I have doubts.
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There are at least 2 things that are disruptive to hurricanes. One is high level wind shear, and the other is land masses with tall mountains. Presumably, you'd want to stop a hurricane as early in its development as possible, as that would require less energy and effort. In the Star Trek world, you might possibly be able to synthesize a very large but buoyant object, set it afloat in the hurricane's path, and let it disrupt the wind patterns. Granted, this would need to be an extremely large object, probably the size of a habitable island.
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In addition to the three solid answers already, there's one more I can propose: a massive release of cold air or cold water. Hurricanes are heat powered. Atlantic hurricanes weaken as they travel north over colder water. It seems if you could bring the temperature down then the storm ends.
The problem is scale. There isn't enough ice in the North Atlantic to make a dent in Hurricane Matthew. Here's one NPR article discussing it: <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5475155> So if you want to use this, you aren't looking at something humans do... you're looking at something nature might do on a grand scale, like an undersea salt dome collapsing and releasing a massive Gulf-wide release of methane which drags deep ocean cold water to the surface. Pretty much a once-in-a-lifetime scenario.
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All of these answers seem logical enough but don't address what fundamentally 'powers' a hurricane which is latent heat energy, that is to say the energy released when water vapor condenses in the upper atmosphere. It would seem then that interupting this condensation would address this problem, perhaps use some sort of dehumidifing device that can be launched into the atmosphere?
[Answer]
*Create disruption along the upper layers of the hurricane spiral*
One sufficiently large swath of wind current disruptor traveling in any one straight direction across the entire upper level of the spiral will break it up into many smaller spirals. Smaller spirals still handles the atmospheric temperature exchange and distributes the effects in many smaller local areas all along the edges and within the system. These smaller spirals can still be quite destructive, so doing this before landfall as others recommend is advisable.
If it helps to visualize this, in a bucket of clear water containing algae litter, get it swirling until you see all the algae swirling centralized in the middle of the bottom of the bucket. Take a net the width of the swirl and push a swath through the top layer of your mini hurricane. Observe the algae form into many small little "tornados" instead of the one large swirl. They will not reform into the larger swirl unless you re-energize the entire system again.
[Answer]
I laid out a scheme to **stop hurricanes with oil slicks** in this related idea.
[Do hurricanes reduce the thermal energy of the water they pass over, and if so by how much?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/91420/do-hurricanes-reduce-the-thermal-energy-of-the-water-they-pass-over-and-if-so-b/91425#91425)
Here is an synopsis:
>
> Hurricanes cool down the ocean by facilitating evaporation.
> Evaporation of a liquid carries heat away from that liquid. We
> facilitate evaporation of a hot cup of coffee by blowing on it and so
> offering more air into which the coffee might evaporate and so cool.
> Hurricanes facilitate evaporation 3 ways.
>
>
> 1: Warm air. Warm air can carry more moisture than cold air. That is
> why you can see your breath on a cold day - as your breath cools in
> the outside air, its water carrying capacity drops and you see the
> condensed water droplets. A hurricane brings warm air to the ocean
> surface where it collects evaporation.
>
>
> Low pressure air. Hurricanes have low pressure air. The lower the
> pressure in the overlying air the easier it is for water to evaporate
> off and stay there. A phase change from liquid to gas is easier when
> there are fewer gas molecules already up there crowding around. At
> altitude things evaporate faster and water boils cooler. Air exchange.
> Just like blowing on your coffee, the air exchange caused by the
> hurricane offers new air, not saturated with water, to come in and
> remove evaporate from the ocean surface. From
> <https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/hurricanes/en/> As the warm air continues
> to rise, the surrounding air swirls in to take its place. As the
> warmed, moist air rises and cools off, the water in the air forms
> clouds. The whole system of clouds and wind spins and grows, fed by
> the ocean's heat and water evaporating from the surface. The net
> effect: the circumstances of the hurricane make a feedforward loop
> which allows the hurricane to take more heat energy from the ocean and
> build in strength. This is why hurricanes Peter out once they get over
> land.
>
>
> But disrupting that loop - how to do it... You would need to prevent
> evaporation from the ocean surface over a large area.
>
>
> You could achieve that with an enormous oil slick. Water cannot
> evaporate up through an overlying layer of oil.
>
>
> from
> <https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/the-13-largest-oil-spills-in-history>
>
>
> The worst oil spill in history wasn't an accident — it was deliberate.
> During the Gulf War, Iraqi forces attempted to prevent American
> soldiers from landing by opening valves at an offshore oil terminal
> and dumping oil from tankers. The oil resulted in a 4-inch thick oil
> slick that spread across 4,000 square miles in the Persian Gulf.
>
>
>
I posted the scheme on the half bakery. <http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Hamstring_20hurricanes_20via_20oil_20slicks#1504958339>
where Max observed
>
> I don't know if it would work or not, but there are probably better > things to use than oil.
>
> What you want is a chemical that is cheap, floats on water >and doesn't dissolve, and is either biodegradeable (more so than regular oil), UV-degradeable, or evaporates slowly (over days) as a
> non-harmful vapour.
>
>
> How much would you need? Well, the minimum needed is a single >molecular layer. Single-molecule layers will form readily - it's a >classic school experiment to estimate the size of an oil molecule. So,
> suppose the layer is 10nm thick (that's a fairly long molecule). And
> the area is, let's say, 10^6 square km, or 10^12 square metres.
>
>
> That gives you a total volume of 10^4 cubic metres, or say 10,000 >tonnes of your compound. This is a tiny fraction of what a big
> tanker can carry. Even if the cost were £100 per tonne, you're still
> looking at only £1M, which seems less than the cost of reroofing every
> building.
>
>
>
Certainly a 4 inch slick is wasteful when you need only a thin layer to retard evaporation. I am not sure there will be anything much cheaper than oil, but using lighter, more volatile fractions of crude oil without the tarry asphalt would make the project shorter in duration and less yucky. Or use vegetable oil. Other benefits: you can deploy this fast and it spreads itself out by itself.
Or you could block evaporation with something more reusable, and more beautiful, and roll it out when any hurricanes threaten. I see that [Christo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christo_and_Jeanne-Claude) is still alive. I am sure he would be delighted to advise on a (much) scaled up project similar to his past endeavors - for example
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ldx5c.jpg)
from <http://christojeanneclaude.net/projects/surrounded-islands>
[Answer]
Lowering the temperature of the ocean surface is sufficient to prevent hurricanes, given understanding of where they will form. The warm layer of ocean water is relatively thin, a hundred feet or so below the surface there is much cooler water.
Enough [machines to mix the layers](https://www.google.com/patents/US8685254) might work. Explanation of how they work is in chapters 4, 5 of [Superfreakonomics.](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0060889586)
[Answer]
They key is to disrupt the winds during the storm's infancy - before it has time to gain power. Maybe dropping a few daisy cutters in a pattern around the small funnel as soon as it forms would disrupt and scatter it.
[Answer]
**Prevention at the Source**
Atlantic Hurricanes, for example, form from the winds coming over the Sahara, and blowing right over the hot Atlantic. Under a monumentally inefficient and unnecessary effort for foresting the Sahara at least on the Western edge, will mitigate against the effects of the wind approaching the Atlantic.
Find the source for other storms and tackle it - not sure if this would work over the Pacific though.
<https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/90753/42731>
1. If enough hovering turbines with multidirectional remote control system were built, then they can to help cool down land and water atmosphere closest to the equator.
2. Enough of these turbines could be used to minimize warm moist air build up from where it starts. They also can power up their recycable energy cells to keep them hovering and plus possibly more consumable energy cells for other uses.
[Answer]
# A Lot of Shadeballs.
We want to limit the power of hurricanes by limiting the amount of water that can evaporate into them. Even if it doesn't stop a hurricane, it'll deal damage to the power of the storm.
Getting a massive number of shade balls into the ocean under hurricanes is the name of the game. Shade balls prevent water from evaporation, and so can so prevent the warm, wet air that would have evaporated off the ocean from rising. This would act to poison the hurricane, effectively shutting the system's convection currents down.
Shade balls can be designed to perform specific functions inside the hurricane, and once no longer needed, reclaimed shade balls can be a source of guilt-free plastic. Developing this technology out will prepare humans to optimize the scaling (and de-scaling) of the machinery of production with a simple, useful, safe, and recyclable material.
In the 1960's NOAA did some research into discovering whether or not some type of barrier between the ocean surface and the hurricane might help reduce the energy of or even dissipate a hurricane.
# How many Shadeballs?
I'm guessing like a few trillion would do the trick.
] |
[Question]
[
The year is 1489, Christopher Columbus is planning to test his theory, that if he sails west, he will be in India much much faster than going to the east. Because he knows Earth is rounded, so this could save him precious time, thus he would find a better trade route to India
We know he was wrong because **he was not killed by native Americans**
Imagine he would. And consecutively, the native people of all "New Worlds" would kill all the explorers incoming by the sea, because they got warned by me after I invented the time machine and went back to the past. (They killed me too, but that is a different story and different plane of reality)
The native people of all lands unknown to Europeans as of 1489 apply these rules:
1. If you see someone approaching you by ship from the sea, provide them with a warm welcome and let them think you treat them as Gods
2. If asked by explorers about a previous mission, tell them that they are first one to visit (= let explorers think they are the first one to visit your land, so the previous exploring mission must have failed on the sea)
3. Invite all the explorers from the ship to your land and throw big ass party for them
4. Let them get drunk
5. Wait till they fall asleep
6. Kill them all and burn their ship.
7. Hide all evidence about being visited
8. Repeat step 1
So, if Europe sends out any explorer ship after the year 1489, it goes "missing" forever.
The question is: **How would the world look like then?**
And ultimately, would we be able to discover America, start the United States and build StackExchange again?
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Probably the biggest result would have been that America would have been "discovered" by the Portuguese. Because of the physical layout of the Atlantic, their sailors learnt to use something they called [volta do mar](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volta_do_mar), or turn to the sea.
As you can see, the North and South Atlantic Gyres almost require a Cape-of-Good Hope-bound ship to get near the Brazilian coast.
Historically, South and South East Asians who were better organized and had more advanced weaponry could not prevent Europeans from establishing forts and colonies. Spain and Portugal were full of conquistadors fresh from centuries of [Reconquista](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconquista), and these forces were occasionally capable of defeating on the ground and at sea the forces of the largest Mediteranean Empire at the time, the Ottomans. Similar reasons explain why [Ceuta](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceuta), Granada, and [Melila](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melilla) fell to the Portuguese and the Spanish around this time. I somehow doubt a few dozen stone-age Arawak warriors could have wiped out the entire crew.
There are three main reasons why the American natives were doomed:
1. Germs. Due to lower density of population, N-S Axis (Crosscutting
climates) of the Americas, genetic variability, and a host of other
reasons, the germ virulence of Eurasians was orders of magnitude
higher. The result: Europeans got syphilis, Native Americans got 90%
death rates.
2. Organized states. A longer history with thousands of years of
warfare, along with the easy spread of ideas and troops along the
E-W Eurasian axis, made the Eurasian states much, much better
organized.
3. Technological superiority (ships, guns and steel) made it a lopsided
fight.
Good books to read on this are the classic "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Diamond and "Why the West Rules, for Now" by Morris.
[Answer]
First, I do not think it would work nicely.
Because
a) No matter how nice your deception is, Colon and others were not a bunch of girl-scouts. Seamen of the age were well used to warfare (including fighting piracy). That means keeping a skeleton crew in the ships, and keeping watch. Of course the natives could try a coup-de-main against the ships, but at any rate it will mean a big probability of some ship getting back to Europe with the news.
b) I am of the opinion that there was some kind of precolombine contact (otherwise, Colon's expedition made not sense, as, for the science of the age -which was right-, the Earth was round but Asia was too far away to be unreachable across the Atlantic). Even with Colon's expedition silently wiped, those contact would have been maintained and sooner or later some other expeditions would have been sent.
At the very end, you would get delayed "first contact", but that would only make the advantage bigger for European powers (think of colonialism in North America, or India).
Also, to note: Spaniards did not conquer South America so easily just because of superior weaponry. The difference in numbers would have more than negated that. The main advantage they had were:
* The spread of new diseases decimated (or even worse) lots of people.
* They fought a bunch of desunited tribes. Even the Aztecs were an empire formed by a leading people with many subjects, and many of them quickly switched sides and helped the Spanish.
* One way travels: since only Spaniards could travel through the Atlantic, they could meddle in the internal politics of the indian kingdoms. Those could not retaliate, just be in the defensive.
* Additionally, the Spaniards were (mostly) united. Many of the people involved in the conquest wanted to go to battle, plunder the indians AND return to Spain with the booty. That helped limit the cases of Spaniards turning against each other (there were still some), because even if victorious, they could not have returned to Spain.
[Answer]
As said getting everyone in the Americas to agree to this is nearly impossible. In addition *most* sailors would stay on their ships, so it would require invading of ships and be difficult. Your best hope would be to force ships to leave coast without resupplying, which would potentially lead to dieing at sea. Of course that just means closer land masses, like Greenland, would be the first to discover the Americas because their sailors will have enough food to get home if forced to.
There are also some...misconceptions about the native American people. The "welcome people as gods" idea is not realistic, that's our butchered history trying to paint the native Americas as foolish and easily tricked. If any story was written like this I would encourage you to take the time to research, or get feedback from here, on the actual culture of the Americas to avoid such misrepresentations. Of course even that is hard, since the culture at the tip of south America is not the same as what became present day Canada. The Americas are HUGE and trying to make any generalization as if all the peoples of all the Americas are the same or would respond the same way is impossible.
The diseases brought to America from the 'old world' would still be a concern. If settlers were killed quickly it's possible that it would take awhile for them to spread their disease, but once the disease is spread at all the same epidemics will be an issue in the Americas. They wouldn't be as bad presumably, but they would still likely occurs. Of course this would also mean that the Americas may have better immunity to these disease when a real invading force reached the Americas, which could have an affect on how these forces were met.
again I must stress that the Americas were made up of a huge number of peoples, not a few large countries like England, and it's really impossible to generalize beyond this without setting a specific part of the Americas or a few tribes who's personality and reaction you wish to explore. Still, getting all of them to work with you to repel European settlers is impractical, part of the reasons that the later push of European peoples into the Americas was successful was because of there being so many different peoples with different beliefs that couldn't decide rather they wished to resist the Europeans, help them, or use them to get rid of their neighbors. Getting all of these groups to work towards a common goal is nearly impossible.
[Answer]
Let's assume that many of the peoples of the Americas have been convinced of these (and only these) facts:
1. People are going to come on large ships from the East.
2. If they are able to send a message home, their people will come to kill you, enslave you, and give you plague.
3. They are the Borg. You can't beat them. Not even you, Aztecs.
This might lead them to cooperate in creating settlements along the coast specifically to keep watch for ships, even forming garrisons in less hospitable areas that would usually be sparsely populated. This wouldn't last forever -- eventually they'll get an "explorer" who's bloodthirsty enough to kill them first (alternately, eventually some subgroup is going to defect and try to ally with the Europeans to get an advantage over their rivals). On the other hand, if everyone who tries sailing West is never heard from again, that will probably slow down the rate at which Europeans keep throwing themselves at the problem. Let's say it buys the Americans 100 years. What are they going to do?
First of all, they're going to study the artifacts they recover from the explorers. They'll learn 1) how to make firearms and other European weapons, and 2) "Oh \*\*\*\*, we're going to need a lot more metal." This might lead them to rapidly push toward industrialization (and for groups that hadn't already transitioned to a more sedentary, agricultural society, this would push that to happen quickly). This is a massive change to everyone's way of life, but they're aware that the alternative is genocide.
Of course, this doesn't turn them into angels. Some of them will probably use their technology to kick the butts of all the people farther to the West. But that might be beneficial in terms of getting everyone working together on the resistance.
So, when Europeans eventually hear about what's over there, they might find a land more like their own, with densely-populated cities, specialized militaries, and no willingness to put up with their BS. The Americans don't have to be able to win a shooting war with all of Europe, just able to work their way into the existing system of trade and alliances rather than getting overrun.
Unfortunately, this would do absolutely nothing to help the Americans against the *real* European weapon: plague. I've seen estimated mortality rates for smallpox and influenza that are as high as 90%. High population density would make it even worse. They wouldn't even be able to use quarantine for arriving Europeans, because some would be asymptomatic carriers. I can't think of any way that you could have a "soft" introduction of European diseases to the Americas, allowing the native population to acquire the resistance that Europeans developed over thousands of years. There are low-tech vaccination methods, but allowing them to know about that in advance goes outside the scope of your scenario. To the extent that the ability to survive these diseases is genetic, enthusiastic interbreeding might help... but it would still put the existing population at a huge disadvantage when they first made contact.
In the end you might have the same result as we had in real life, with the exception that Europeans would have a harder time rewriting history as a narrative of cultural superiority and colonization.
... okay, I wanted to believe that last part, but if that happened we'd probably just rewrite it as a narrative of biological superiority instead.
[Answer]
Japan might be an instructive example, as it tried something similar - the sakoku policy: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakoku> - for a couple of centuries. It had a much more unified culture, however, acting on a much smaller land mass, and still was not able to keep foreign influences out entirely. Still, it was able to limit the influences to the point where the eventual opening of the country didn't result in immediate foreign conquest. (And probably wouldn't have at all, had not the militarists overreached themselves at Pearl Harbor.)
I think, though, that the real problem with making this work in the Americas is the lack of cultural uniformity. Disease was a factor, but the Europeans had earlier recovered from plagues nearly as bad. The real problem (as with the British in India later on) is that culture A disliked neighboring cultures B and C much more than they did the new arrivals, and so sought alliances with the newcomers against the neighbors.
[Answer]
Since Ptolemy the World knows that Earth is spherical and the trade route to China was so lucrative that many people wanted to compete with ancient silk road.
Therefore exploration couldn't stop after few lost expeditions. Discovery of Americas would just have taken more time and determination.
One day or another, an expedition would figure out what the problem was, and come back with more military resources.
[Answer]
This would require that the entire eastern seaboard of North and South America become a unified state (perhaps via reverse-engineering your time machine's technology, or by deciphering the books stored within).
Otherwise, the explorers will land on literally any point on the eastern seaboard, and in the absence of a unified government of some kind, it will not be possible to consistently kill all of the explorers.
Given the technology and power to conquer and unify the Americas, it would not be a stretch for them to obtain sufficient resources to counter-invade Eurasia.
[Answer]
Just for the moment, let's assume the possibility of this situation actually happening (it's unlikely, but I'll leave that for later). I think, due to human nature, someone would eventually make the same discoveries, even if we don't colonise (though again, I think we'd do that too).
On the point of discoveries, we would eventually be able to discover that the world is round due to other technology. For example, although it may take us a little longer, we would eventually develop satellites, which would show us pictures of a round world. Or, of course, people could just try sailing East without stopping to prove the roundness.
More to the point, given how militaristic humans are, I suspect that someone would get suspicious pretty soon that all the ships are disappearing, even as food and technology and ships get better, and eventually they'd just send warships and heavily armed soldiers over to find out what really happens to all the ships. Admittedly this strategy would still be vulnerable to the strategy you outline, but if several warships and boatloads of soldiers disappear people will get *really* suspicious. On the other point, colonisation, due to the reasons above, we'd eventually send enough troops (and other people too, later on) over to be able to control the entire country.
---
Now I come on to the unlikelihood of this actually happening. You're talking 15th century communication, medicine, technology. So just briefly: for this to happen, all these countries (which are long distances apart) would have to communicate, agree and all carry out this plan, while maintaining a good enough population to stay populated and keep the strategy going. Admittedly it is possible, but it's fairly unlikely.
[Answer]
Assuming that the Native Americans did manage to stop all ships sailing across the Atlantic for many years (unlikely), then one possible result is that when we finally do get there, we discover that the Americans all speak Russian. After all, Russia had a presence in [Alaska, Hawaii and California](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_America) from the 18th Century and it would have been very difficult to stop them from spotting the coast of Alaska, even if the West Coast Americans were as organised as the East Coast ones.
[Answer]
Perhaps the great barrier defence could be a disease thatnwas not (only) carried by people, which has been noted is too sparce. It could be in some thing or things that are everywhere along the coast and unavoidable, especially with no clue that it's present.
As an engineered defence, it would not be constrained by the usual limits of the naturally evolved biosphere.
] |
[Question]
[
I’m creating a planet which is relatively similar in size towards earth being slightly smaller. It’s covered in oceans and about only 17% of it is covered in land. The planet has no moons.
I don’t know if any of this would effect the question but the planet is much warmer than earth with a thin atmosphere. The planet has a small number of very large tectonic plates and are less active than those on earth.
So my question is would this planet have any sort of tides or waves or anything of the sort?
[Answer]
Tidal forces just require nearby things that are big enough to have a decent gravitational pull on a planet (or other body).
The strength of the tidal force on the planet is proportional to the planet's radius, the mass of the star it orbits and inversely proportional with the cube of its distance from the star: $F\_T \propto {rM \over d^3}$
Without trying to calculate the actual strength and direction of the tidal force (which is hard), you can use the figures for the Earth, the Moon and the Sun to see that the Moon has the biggest tidal impact on Earth but the Sun also has quite a large effect... about half as much as the moon.
Tides on your planet would be at the same [solar time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_time) each day. You can tailor the size of your planet, the size of your star and the separation between them to tweak the strength of the tidal force and hence the heights of the tides, though it is quite a lot harder to go from these simple numbers to [the actual height of a tide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide#Analysis). All else being equal, a smaller world without a moon will have much smaller tidal ranges than Earth.
[Answer]
First of all, if the atmosphere is too thin, there will be no liquid water at all, in particular if the temperature is higher than on Earth: with lower atmospheric pressure, water evaporates more easily.
That said, there will still be other bodies which will exert a tidal force on the water body, the most important would surely be the central star, in the same our Sun gives a small contribution to the tides.
Being alone it won't create tides as impressive as the one caused by the Moon, but still the effect will be measurable.
[Answer]
The sun also produces tides, though on earth it's somewhat smaller compared to that of the moon. So yes, if your planet is not a rogue planet, it will probably have tides.
[Answer]
For any given tide, local coastal features can exaggerate the effects. I'm not sure but I would have thought that a steep underwater slope with a flat exposed coast would amplify the effects. You could look up surf beaches that are strongly affected by tides to see how they work.
[Answer]
TL;DR: You need a planet with a big, red sun.
This is intended only a complement to Starfish Prime's excellent answer.
A complement too long to be posted as a comment.
The formula $F\_T \propto {rM \over d^3}$ can be rearranged by noting
that:
* the mass of the star is proportional to its density multiplied by the
cube of its diameter
* the ratio of that diameter to the distance is almost exactly the
star's [apparent size](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_diameter), as seen from the planet.
This gives the formula $F\_T \propto r \rho \delta^3$, where ρ is the
density of the star and δ its apparent size.
An interesting thing we can deduce from this formula is that, our Sun
and our Moon having the same apparent size, the ratio of their tidal
forces is just their density ratio: the Moon is about twice as dense as
the Sun.
Back to your planet. If you want it to have tides similar to our own,
this planet would need a Sun that is bigger (as seen from the surface)
than our Sun is to us. For example, in order to match the tides we would
have with the Moon alone (a rough average between high tides and low
tides), their Sun should be about 30% bigger, assuming it has the same
density as ours.
You want a hot planet, but beware it doesn't get *too* hot. Ignoring
greenhouse effects and the like, the average surface temperature of a
planet should be roughly proportional to $T \sqrt{\delta}$, where T is
the star's [effective temperature](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_temperature). If we make the Sun 30% larger with
the same temperature, we could expect an average Earth temperature
around 60 °C (more if you account for the greenhouse effect of water
vapor). To avoid that, make your star cooler, i.e. redder. Don't go read
giant though: these stars have a very small density, and you would need
to orbit unreasonably close in order to get significant tides.
[Answer]
What if your planet *is* a moon? Moons around gas giants have plenty of tidal activity, and can have atmospheres, liquid water, habitable temperatures, and the like. Europa and Io come to mind, in my home solar system.
[Answer]
Eccentricity of the planet's orbit around its Sun will determine the height of the tide throughout the year. Think annual, rather than monthly, Spring tides.
As others have stated, the lack of moons means no M2 component, so the S2 component will dominate.
Looking at what happens on Earth, when you get into enclosed waters (eg, Gulf of Mexico, which has a basically diurnal tide), things can change.
Also, there will still be overtides, ie, the tide will be slowed in shallows and start to be forced out while it is still coming in, and vice versa.
All in all, there should be a number of tidal harmonic constituents, which when combined, should result in complex behaviour in some areas closer to land, and probably fairly simple ones in deep oceanic waters, varying over the course of a year due to the eccentricity of the planet's orbit.
The inclination of the planet's orbit will also probably manifest itself in additional constituents.
The tide, as others have indicated, is not caused by the Sun sucking the water up on one side. There will be two tides a day in deep oceans, not one.
If your hero wishes to analyse tides, they will need to record the tidal heights at a reasonable frequency for a reasonable period of time (longer than the periods of the constituents). They would then determine precise orbital periods and tidal harmonic periods. These will then allow determination of corresponding phases. Prediction of tide times, critical to marine operations throughout the planet, would then be possible.
Having a central authority sample tide heights and predict tides in advance allows great scope for mindless bureaucracy, and a bloated public sector rife with bribery and corruption.
Resisting privatisation will allow for a 1984-style tidal dictatorship, while full private ownership will allow your shipping operations to be held for ransom by shadowy private tidal contractors.
[Answer]
As others pointed out the planet could still have solar tides, but they would be small. But on the other hands you can have currents due to the planet rotation. Since your planet has a small land mass the currents would have few obstacles and could get quite fast. This could create some nasty maelstroms close to the islands.
] |
[Question]
[
In my story a new device has been developed which will replace clunky headsets and haptic suits. This new device is surgically implanted in the users’ bodies and allow them to interface directly with the virtual reality game.
All motor signals from the brain are intercepted and redirected to the game and all sensory input is fed from the game directly through the interface.
Where in the body will this interface need to be implanted? Ideally it would be in the user’s arm however I’m expecting that more direct access will be required. Is it more likely to be implanted in the spine or would this be an implant directly into the brain itself?
[Answer]
It would need to be implanted into the brain stem. The brain stem is the "device" that controls all of the messages between the brain and the rest of the body. It also controls basic functions like breathing. So you would simply cut part of the line, re-route it through the device and bam. You might not even have to cut the signal you could just hijack it temporarily.
It's essentially a control box with a feedback loop. The body senses something, that signal is sent to the brain stem through nerves, brain stem interprets the signal and tells the brain about it, the brain says okay I get that, now do this and the brain stem interprets that signal and says okay he said I should raise the middle finger, there ya go brain! Brains says, great thanks brain stem and the result is that Jim gets the finger.
Similar to: [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fFGJ4.png) this loop where the Sensor is actually multiple sensors, 5 to be exact (taste, touch, etc..). The Controller is the brain stem and brain communication system and the System is us. Obviously, this is an oversimplification of a model but its close enough for the purpose of demonstration of my idea.
[Answer]
>
> **Where would I need my direct neural interface to be implanted?**
>
>
>
*The incision could be made just behind the anus.*
[The Coccygeal Nerve.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/coccygeal-nerve)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jNGsZ.jpg)
*Copyright [Materfile.com](https://www.masterfile.com/image/en/671-02096987) 2019*
Those last four nerve bundles at the base of the spine which serve only to cause pain when someone falls on their "tail" are to me the obvious candidate. An advantage would be it involves no obvious scars or intrusion into the head in order to implant it.
If done well, it might feel like no more than the aftermath of a smacked bottom whilst it healed.
Their combined size would be at least equivalent to the nerve density of an eye, if exploited and trained from an early age it should provide a rich [synesthetic](https://www.mnn.com/health/fitness-well-being/stories/what-is-synesthesia-and-whats-it-like-to-have-it) point of data exchange.
[Answer]
Frame Challenge:
Surgery is high enough risk for even healthy individuals when involving complete general anesthesia, and even more so with brain stem surgery - why not look at all the research being done on HMIs using nerve induction?
You'd probably end up with a collar-like device - sits atop your shoulders and partially around your neck & collarbones (like an ancient Eypgtian pectoral necklace) but which either doesn't require any penetrations or which makes low-impact micro-penetrations similar to acupuncture or EMG (electromyography - nerve conduction test) needles.
Having both been under a lot of GA's for surgeries, and having been through repeated EMG studies, as much as I dislike needles, you'd have to talk *very* persuasively to get me to volunteer for a GA surgery with brainstem implications for gaming.
Reference:
[Human-machine interfaces based on EMG and EEG applied to robotic systems - NIH](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2292737/)
[Answer]
**Directly over the motor cortex.**
You would need two: for right and left. They would be directly over the brain. This is how Omayya reservoirs are placed.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7YAJc.jpg)
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ommaya_reservoir>
This would work because the sensory apparatus for detecting motor signals (your implant) is right above the origin of those signals. Also you could have a long antenna hanging thru the brain and into the ventricle, as the catheter on the Omayya does. Also it is safe because it has been done this way for decades.
This offers narrative possibility. The manufacturers of this device assert that the motor signals are at their purest emanating from the brain, unmodified by inhibitory neurons and other neural overlays. It proves to be true. The motor signals coming from the brain have a lot more information than what is actually used by a finger or an arm. But what is this additional information? What besides the finger is the brain talking to?
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You can have the IO port where you want. It should be a separate device connected to an internal data network that links it to the rest of the system.
There is no single location in the brain that can handle everything necessary for the system, so you'll need multiple modules linked by a network anyway. So there is no extra cost for making the IO port a separate module located at a convenient point really.
Also a modular network architecture would probably be preferred anyway. Number of small and relatively simple devices is generally more robust and reliable than one device that does it all.
It is also extensible. You mention VR but you'd probably also won't a lower bandwidth wireless connection so that you can watch cat videos on YouTube and do the other things you do with your smart-phone.
[Body Area Network](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_area_network) is probably a concept you want to be familiar with.
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The visual nerves go from the eyes through some 3D processing and basic analysis all around the brain, and merges with the rest of the brain far in the back. The nerves responsible for smell (olfactory) take a more direct route into the middle of the brain. The taste nerves are probably somewhere near. Hearing goes from the sides into different parts of the brains. The stem is the part where our actions all go through - with the exception of a few reflexes and such. Which unluckily you also need for realistic vr, if you want to include foot movements or eye lids and such.
An area where we could get similar results more easily is our consciousness, especially the parts with which we dream. If we could attach to that, we'd just need to create according illusions. It's probably around the parts of the brain which connect the two halves. So I'd put the device between the two halves of the brain, measuring mostly what is exchanged between them. But it's also central enough to attach to other important parts, like the visual nerves, olfactory nerves, and so on.
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The most likely place to put it, like Rob mentions, is in the brain stem. Depending how the device works, however, another location (like an arm) is possible. Namely, a device implanted in the arm which sends nanobots throughout the bloodstream could have better interactions for sensory input in arms, eyes, etc, and nanobots in the brain stem to stop motor function.
In other words, an implant which acts as a controller for nanobots could be implanted outside the brain, but release the nanobots throughout the body.
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Beneath the scalp with leads to the occipital cortex for vision, the motor cortex and cerebellum for motion and coordination, and the auditory cortex for hearing.
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[Question]
[
I've read a number of questions about how a dragon would or could breathe fire, and what substances would allow them to do so, and alcohol or ethanol has always been mentioned and shot down as alcohol would diffuse into the blood and kill the dragon. So:
1. Is it possible for an organism such as a dragon to evolve a community of microorganisms in its gut to produce alcohol given the correct diet?
2. Is it possible for that organism to collect the alcohol and store it in a non-cellular gland or structure to be sprayed out of its mouth and ignited in some way?
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This isn't that outlandish. There are already examples of folks who consumed some form of brewer's yeast that can get drunk when eating carbs. The yeast colonizes their GI tract and converts the sugars to alcohol, which is then absorbed into the blood stream.
A proposed system would probably require a dedicated "fermenting sac" lined with cells that actively pull away alcohol and dump it into another sac lined with acellular material or cells that are either very resistant to alcohol or secrete a film that is (think of how the gallbladder collects and concentrates bile produced by the liver). This would keep the alcohol level in the fermenting sac low enough to not kill off the fermenting organisms and concentrate enough alcohol in the storage sac to be flammable. Of course it is very difficult to biologically drive a gradient like this (pulling from a low concentration to a high one) so this will be a high energy consuming process. The dragon would need a robust alcohol degradation pathway in the liver to deal with any alcohol that got into the blood stream as there would inevitably be at least some leakage.
The alcohol could be stored in a non-flexible space (i.e. lined with corrosion resistant enamel, dense keratin [horn], chitin, or something) but it would need to be transferred into a muscle lined space in order to be propelled out (like how your stomach can contract to vomit), the space would need to be collapsible (like an accordion), it will have to be "flung" out via mechanical motion, or dispersed into the airway and moved out via exhaled air. But this would probably cause the dragon to inhale alcohol rich fumes unless it has a dedicated "blowhole" like an aquatic mammal for just this purpose.
Igniting the alcohol would be difficult via a pure biological process but perhaps the dragon could have an organ that is purposefully loaded with flint and steel (somewhat analogous to birds eating rocks to aid in mechanical digestion, i.e. the dragon ejects the alcohol from it's mouth and strikes teeth together that have embedded minerals that create a spark). Or it could have something that ignites upon exposure to air like a more volatile alcohol/gas mixture or elements like Lithium (which are horribly toxic in their own right but could be maintained in much lower quantities).
But the volume of alcohol to provide a useful stream of fire would be pretty large, severely limiting the number of times a dragon can breathe and refill the reservoir. A more payload efficient effect would be to create a aerosol cloud that is then ignited like a thermobaric fuel/air explosive but this isn't what is usually depicted in media.
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Considering the number of creatures that can store enough venom to kill large animals, one would have to assume that living things can generally evolve the means to store toxins safely.
The bombardier beetle (Carabidae) stores hypergolic and somewhat toxic hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone in ducted glands. The skin of the poison dart frog (Dendrobatidae) contains a toxic chemical that causes disorientation and asphyxiation in every animal except the poison dart frog. The blue-ringed octopus (Hapalochlaena) has fatal neurotoxins in its saliva but it doesn't die from them or even drool very much.
The stonefish, box jellyfish, death stalker scorpion, Sydney funnel-web spider, marbled cone snail, and any number of snakes like the inland taipan, coral, mamba, and blue krait, to name just a few famous killers, all happily make and store concoctions that would make Lucretia Borgia shudder.
There's no reason why a creature could not evolve a gland to store ethyl or even methyl alcohol without poisoning itself.
[Answer]
## Absolutely
Many animals use [projectiles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projectile_use_by_living_systems#Solid_projectiles) and even more use [poison](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_poisonous_animals), some creatures like the Spitting Cobra even use projectile poison. Thus there is no evolutionary reason why a creature couldn't spit poison, now at a high enough concentration alcohol is poisonous so by that logical a creature **could** indeed evolve to spit alcohol as a poison (most likely directed at the eyes). Now all that is needed is a catalyst and the alcohol with light aflame. Here is yet another example we already have, electricity is a common weapon [many animals use](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroreception) All that is needed is for a land creature to use electricity (maybe for mating or threatening) somewhere near the mouth and whoosh, you have alcohol based fire breath.
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I recall that in the Elric series by Michael Moorcock, the dragons of Melnibone had saliva that was a highly-flammable oil. They kept rocks in their gizzards to aid in digestion, and with a bit of training, could use them to light the saliva. Obviously, this is more helpful in terms of flybys against wooden warships, which worked well with Melnibone being a naval power.
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If the concern is about alcohol diffusing into the blood through its detrimental effect on cell membranes and miscibility with water, I could see an oily sort of mucus secretion being used on the inner lining of the "sac" and throat/mouth. While ethanol will partially dissolve oil, the solubility depends on how much water is available as well; if the dragon's body carefully produces the ethanol in a relatively pure form sealed from other moisture, the continuous secretion of mucus would keep the living cells safe.
I imagine the dragon would have another (possibly larger) chamber in addition to the "fuel sac" where sugars are stored to ferment; this chamber would maintain conditions ideal to the yeasts or bacteria that lived there, to maximize ethanol production. This chamber would probably also have some mechanism developed that would help siphon off excess water during the process so the ethanol doesn't dissolve the mucus.
As an added bonus, if its composition is right, the oils in the mucus would make the fuel all that much nastier when the dragon breathes fire -- think about tiny aerosolized droplets of oil being ignited, and then sprayed on things.
### The drawbacks
* The dragon would have to periodically "burp" off excess fuel as the continuous mucus secretions were dissolved into the alcohol, unless a certain equilibrium were reached (which might not be comfortable for the dragon)
* If the dragon gets ill or dehydrated, their fuel sac might not be able to produce enough mucus to protect the lining. Have you ever had your nose dry out when you were sick? Now imagine snorting Everclear with that dried out nose.
* The dragon would have to eat continuously, and unless their body had a process for efficiently converting fats and proteins to sugar, they'd have to eat lots of sugary stuff to process and ferment into ethanol.
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[Question]
[
**Context for Question**
The colonisation of the planet [ INSERT NAME ] was an enormous social experiment performed by the Terran Planetary Science and Terraforming Council; this previously-barren world had its orbit and gravity adjusted to suit human requirements, but was uniquely terraformed so as to create an [ecumenopolis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecumenopolis) (much like [Coruscant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coruscant) of the *Star Wars* universe).
Any criminals placed on death row within the justice systems of other human-colonised worlds instead had their memories irrevocably wiped, any diseases cured, scars healed (including missing limbs) and tattoos removed, and were sent to become the founding citizens of the societies on this planet. The purpose of this exercise was to test the sustainability of a planet-wide society developing without the natural world (including all plants and most animals, and fungi).
Their food was to be entirely vat-grown, using animal and some plant tissues, but that was the most they would ever see of either type of organism. Their language and the visual aspects of their culture would be expressed through small and large digital screens; if you were to give any of these people a piece of paper and a pencil or pen, they would not only not know how to use it, but they could not tell you what it was made from. They had never experienced actual plant fibres or extracts.
**Now, the Question:**
How does this society produce its oxygen? The nearest plants need to be on another planet (for the purposes of this social experiment), so is there some other artificial chemical process which could be used to extract O2 from CO2? Further, could these filter materials be periodically 'cleaned' (if you will), even if they might eventually run out of cycles? And when this happens, could they be recycled?
*Also, I just want to specify that the memory wipes of the citizens are completely irreversible. I am not concerned about the ethics or reliability of this procedure for the moment.*
EDIT 1: I would also like to point out that, at the point where the narrative is set, the number of local years (of that planet) since the first colonists arrived is between 300 and 500, with the number of days in these periods similar to that of Earth. A few generations have existed and died, and the population has spread out further among the pre-made skyscrapers of the ecumenopolis. (Also, the genetic diversity of the population is maintained by either the government or a scientific body.)
EDIT 2: These people need to be able to walk around the planet as we do (without pressure suits or gas masks). I am also assuming that water is kept in a large (yes, ocean-sized) reservoir on a local moon, and brought down to be used and recycled for a few years, before returning to the moon and being replaced.
EDIT 3: For the world of this narrative, normally I would place water reservoirs underground, but I wanted to make it clear to everyone here that ocean organisms and any solution involving large bodies of water were not a viable option. So, yes, I sent them to the moon. I can see how this would look in retrospect, and I'm sorry about that. I just didn't need solutions involving the planet's non-existent oceans, or any solution too reliant on a large body of water.
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One of the very basic things you need for complex Earthly life is water. Human need water to drink, taking baths, washing clothes etc. So the planet you are going to send the pioneers ***has*** to have a large body of water. Without this, it would be simply impossible to sustain a human settlement on any planet in the long term.
For the sake of this answer, let us say that the planet has *only* water content equal to pacific ocean and no larger. Now comes the question of whether the pioneers are living inside their mothership or out in the open?
**If they are in the mothership, you have several options for oxygen production.**
1- If the planet has carbon dioxide in its atmosphere, you can use sodium peroxide or sodium superoxide (Na2O2 and NaO2) to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen and sodium carbonate. Sodium carbonate can later be processed back into sodium oxide carbon through some electrolysis and heat processing. That is how they used to supply submarines crew with oxygen, before world war 2.
2- They can simply go on electrylosing water into hydrogen and oxygen if the water body on the planet is large enough to not be depleted by the removal of a few hundreds of thousands of tons of water per year.
3- They can grow plants inside the mothership so that the plants convert carbondioxide back into oxygen. You can hence setup a mini-carbon-cycle inside the mothership.
**However, if the pioneers are living out in the open, there are few practical options.**
1- If the pioneers are wearing space-suits all times (for pressure reasons or whatever), you can use the same approach as stated in method 1, where the pioneers go and get their suits oxygen supply refilled once it is depleted.
2- If the planet has a large enough carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere, you can go on sowing green plants there and actually convert it into a green planet like Earth.
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You have to consider the cycle:
You need energy to live, how does this work, you eat plant and use oxygen and in effect you breathe out CO2 and water.
What a plant does is, breathe in CO2 and take in water and energy (from sunlight) and uses this to make the plant you eat and O2 in the oxygen.
And this would be exactly what your vat grown food source would need to do. Take in CO2 and water, put in energy, exhume the oxygen en give the food to your people.
In effect your vat-grown food-source would be a plant-plant.
Remember, to make food you need to put in energy in one way or another and transform sources without energy to sources with stored energy.
PS: You could import your food and your oxygen, but you would end up with a wetter and wetter planet with more and more CO2 in the air.
[Answer]
The core of the question:
>
> is there [some] artificial chemical process which could be used to
> extract O2 from CO2 [?]
>
>
>
Yes there is. If you have an abundance of energy then it is easy to [break up carbon dioxide into its constituent elements Carbon and Oxygen](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/splitting-carbon-dioxide/). Insert any carbon-free source of energy you like — massive solar farming, nuclear fusion, geothermal, hydro — and you can make oxygen out of carbon-dioxide.
Fun bonus: if the process is done right, and you have yet some more energy, that ultra-pure carbon might be made into diamonds. ;)
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Phytoplankton can live in the ocean: not plants, but algae and assorted microorganisms. People would not be aware of them without using a microscope, even if they did encounter them.
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Does the society need an oxygen production facility? [Per wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen#Occurrence), "In the present equilibrium, production and consumption occur at the same rate of roughly 1/2000th of the entire atmospheric oxygen per year". It means that without oxygen production, Earth atmosphere would last for some 2000 years, being human breathable for maybe half of that time span.
Just create an oxygen atmosphere during terraforming and leave it there. Assuming the biosphere is replaced by the megalopolis, the oxygen consumption will go at about the same rate as Earth's, and it will last for maybe 1000 years before the first serious problems appear. More, if you pump more oxygen at the beginning.
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[
The inspiration for my question comes from The Great C by Philip K Dick. To summarize, the Great C is a computer that has taken over a large portion of the planet. It uses proxy agents to keep control by relentlessly patrolling the area and killing anything that gets in its way.
My question is an extension of this idea. Would it be possible for an advanced computer to take over an entire planet? The computer is buried deep underground. It has advanced intelligence. It was once part of a civilization, but that civilization has been destroyed by some type of apocalypse (possibly a nuclear war type scenario). It is not known how it gains the resources necessary to expand or to power itself. Would it even be possible to gain enough energy to power itself and continue expanding?
Would it be advantageous for the computer to spread its material on the ground? I'm thinking things like plastic or circuit boards, essentially altering the landscape to something more favorable to itself. What would be the most favorable type of material for a computer based entity such as this one?
Would it be advantageous for the computer to kill any life form that got in its way? Would it be possible for this spread of control to expand to the entire planet?
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There is a lot we don't know about this computer, but let us consider that it was created by a civilisation of some kind and placed on the planet with both the intelligence for agency and some facility for acting on its environment, which if it is to survive for any length of time, would probably be necessary—I will assume these to be semi-autonomous robotic agents. I imagine the computer to be a little like a queen ant with the agents like ants in its service.
There are quite a few ways that it could power itself, assuming it is a little like our computers- off the top of my head I can think of:
* Geothermal power by drilling down towards a hot planetary core and using that to power steam turbines.
* Solar power — this is quite inefficient but with plenty of surface quite viable. Of course this would potentially place it in conflict with surface-dwelling life.
* Nuclear power — assuming our agents are able to dig, they could mine heavy minerals which could be used to create fission. If it originated from a sufficiently advanced civilisation it may have access to fusion generation which could last for a very long time.
* People — it could use humans as batteries storing them in vats and creating a complicated artificial reality to occupy their minds. Heh. Of course it couldn't, that would be a *ridiculous idea.*
So it has power, but would it need to spread material on the ground? If it relies on solar energy, then perhaps—this is the most obvious starting point for conflict with surface dwellers and for radical changes to the planet surface.
It could also do this in seeking resources - for example if it relies on plastics to maintain itself, then it may be sending agents to the surface to seek them or to convert materials into those it requires. There is also a chance that as a non-biological life form it is unaware of the ecosystem or of its own effects upon it.
It could be experimenting — either testing new designs of agents or just dumping old agents on the surface when they outlive their usefulness. Likewise if it is powered by nuclear fission, it might be dropping old fuel rods around the place.
The world machine might just like the aesthetic. There is nothing to suggest an AI would not be whimsical.
Would it be advantageous for the computer to kill any life form that got in its way? That depends a lot on the character and motivation of your AI. It may not be advantageous, but life forms that it interacted with may simply be seen as a resource for processing by the computer or its agents. If they took umbrage at this and started breaking them, there is a good chance that this would trigger some kind of defence mechanism. So conflict could arise- but possibly an AI would be intelligent and moral, perhaps it would just need to be made aware it was dealing with intelligent life. This is probably more a question of fiction than of world.
Could it spread to control an entire planet? What would stop it? Possibly it could learn to process veins of metal in-place to spread its influence around the world as it needed. Again, the question arises as to why the computer is doing what it does or what it was created for.
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**tl;dr**: Yes, **in vacuo**, probably, but what that would look like and if it even is possible considering all the other factors in play, requires a lot more information about details of its history and circumstances.
A few basic decisions have to be made before this kind of question can be well-defined enough to produce an answer that is useful. Specifically:
* What is the nature of its intelligence?
+ Is it based on the mad scientist principle? (aka, kill everything everywhere being the best approach)
+ Does it have a survival strategy to begin with? (no reason to assume its creators gave it such programming, depending on what the purpose of creating it was - maybe a military computer would have a strategic approach, but a computer designed to help with mining task management or managing agricultural robots wouldn't)
- if it doesn't how does it acquire it? (if it needs one for the story)
+ What kind of information is it made to process and make decisions upon? (an agricultural manager computer would not have much use for stock market prices for instance, nor a reason, if it were to evolve further, to acquire that understanding - but it would have a much better understanding of weather sensor input and information)
+ Does it act or process information to be presented to humans? Does it delegate tasks or act by itself directly?
* What's the material and architecture it's designed with?
+ Is it made of common technology arranged in a different way or one-off tech designed specifically for itself, never replicated elsewhere?
+ Does it have information on its own workings, or the means to acquire such information?
+ Is it made to adapt to its own needs, or be replaced with a different version later? Perhaps it is modifiable only by external operators.
If you start to answer a lot of these, the answer becomes clearer. In general, in order for a "computer" to be able to "take over the world" per se, it would need to have some significant level of robustness (either by not breaking down easily or being able to fix itself, probably the latter) and in order to support that robustness, probably means to maintain itself. That requires agents or means to interact with the physical world. So it would have to have access to that.
It would also need plenty of material close by, for both fuel and repair material. Even with all this, if it has no concept of growth and improvement (essentially, no built-in tendency for it or problem-solving capability to arrive at the conclusion that growth is necessary) it could just maintain itself until it eventually runs out of resources and fails.
So far we have these:
* Physical world access
* Generalized "intelligence" both in information and planning
* Motivation to grow and improve
None of these implies killing people in any way. In fact it could straight up ignore people or be programmed to and maintain that programming. Unlike fiction, when computer programs have problems, they fail and stop, they don't just mutate into something malevolent. In order for the latter to happen, the program would have to work pretty much *as designed* making the motivation to kill people *a predictable outcome of predictable circumstances*. If this was an alien weapon, sure, but a man-made tool? Probably not.
If it has a deep enough understanding of how computational devices work and a deep enough understanding of materials, it wouldn't build expansions to itself in the same way we do (which is mostly out of convenience). It could conceivably use any kind of conductor material, doped with any useful doping to create semiconductors and imprint patterns in structures. If it had plans for this kind of thing memorized, it would probably look like the way we do it - if not, it would probably be very crude since it would have to figure out the stuff we've figured out all over again. Assuming it has problem-solving abilities of course. And this doesn't even touch the subjects of mechanics, power-level electricity and all kinds of engineering skills and knowledge required to efficiently expand (although these skills could be distributed on other computers - it makes no sense to have all these clustered together though).
This doesn't really answer the question because it's unanswerable - to answer definitively, we'd need knowledge of what's impossible within certain bounds (which is pointless to assume outside of very strict and limited time and field boundaries) or have an example of this happening. :P
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Yes, it would be possible, though I would say it would require to have been set up to do so by people.
>
> Would it even be possible to gain enough energy to power itself and
> continue expanding?
>
>
>
Certainly. All it needs is some sort of sustainable and or reproducible power plant and input to the plant. Could be fusion, fission, hydroelectric, bioelectric, wind, geothermal, solar, even natural gas.
>
> Would it be advantageous for the computer to spread its material on
> the ground? I'm thinking things like plastic or circuit boards,
> essentially altering the landscape to something more favorable to
> itself. What would be the most favorable type of material for a
> computer based entity such as this one?
>
>
>
Only if you like the idea. Personally, I think the most likely scenario would be that the computer would extend control not by itself physically, but by sending messages that maintain some other power structure, such as corporate pawns, military and/or religious and criminal groups. Realistically, the most effective computer overlord would probably not want humans to realize it exists, or that a computer is running anything. It would be best to masquerade as some unfindable powerful humans pulling the strings, by directing various humans and/or manipulating their data, financial, information, and/or power systems.
>
> Would it be advantageous for the computer to kill any life form that
> got in its way?
>
>
>
This gets back to the original programmers, and what their thinking was, that led them to program the computer however they did, and/or what its logic developed into once they let it run with its own intelligence. A program needs a definition for what is important to it, and what kinds of control it is concerned with, and wants, and what domains it knows about and works with, and which other domains it is oblivious to. It could have a general strategy of exterminating difficult life forms. But that might actually be crude, counterproductive, inefficient, or not relevant to what it is trying to control. It might instead simply try to misinform and misdirect that group to do something else, or direct other agents to act against the troublesome group.
>
> Would it be possible for this spread of control to
> expand to the entire planet?
>
>
>
Sure. Again, I would define what sort of control it is interested in, or you are interested in. What sorts of groups would you say "control" the planet? Where do they get their ultimate direction and instructions? Why could these sources of direction not be a computer?
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From the perspective of a computer scientist:
Computers have the advanced ability to calculate through every possibility and alternative in a very precise manner, but they lack abilities like faith or conviction. In many aspects a computer acts like a chess player: moves are calculated far in advance, however random behavior can be irritating, as certain already calculated predictions suddenly become invalid.
Note that I did explicitly not say confusing, as that state cannot exist in a binary system: a set of ideas is either true or false, based on the facts behind it. A set of ideas that cannot be backed up by facts is not a fact but a theory. An intelligent computer would be able to very precisely differ between these two, and most likely strive to backup theories with facts before it would pursue one of the possibilities. An intelligent computer would probably not - by nature - act based on guesses or incomplete data, just because it has the ability to "think through" everything to the last bit. Only if forced it would act based on which reaction would have the most likely chance to archive it's goals.
That said, a computer "living" on a planet that has been devastated by an apocalypse would most likely come to the conclusion to not rely on a single point of failure, like only one type of power source, as it can see all the possibilities and potential risks involved. It would instead try to beat the odds by having several redundant options available. After all it cannot know or understand what exactly caused the catastrophic events. Even if historic data is present, it would seem to be very chaotic as such an AI would lack the understanding of emotions.
One of the first goals of such a computer would be to make itself redundant and spread various copies of itself around the globe, that after a while will function as a network of thinking. Each one using its full capacity all the time, but each one also expendable, connected by a network of cables to transmit data and power. And many of those tasks would be to understand and test theories about its surrounding to improve itself and its agents.
Most of its actions would be taken by drones of various shapes, connected wireless to a central command, but otherwise be independent. Those are both very predictable and expendable. While from our perspective there would be several optimal shapes for these, the computer might not yet have the full understanding of the laws of physics, and as with everything else would in worst case just prototype several promising versions of those drones (see Terminator). Adapting as necessary.
Altering the landscape would only be done in a way to optimize travel for those drones. So paved roads, protective shielding of vital areas, like plating around cables, just in case a drone malfunctions. One thing such an intelligence would definitely not do is littering the landscape with materials that could otherwise be used in a more efficient manner. There is no need to place circuit boards randomly around the area, if you have a set of drones which can precisely install them where needed or otherwise store that vital hardware in a secured area.
The most valued material would definitely be everything that is capable of transmitting electric signals as well as isolation material, like gold, copper, rubber or silicon. The intelligence would most likely value raw material higher, as it would first need to learn how to process materials to see the value of them. Wood for example can be a valuable material once dry, but for that the computer would need to encounter dry wood and "invent" a way to produce it to see the value. And then relying on complex production chains would be another single point of failure and it would most likely try to avoid that.
Encounters with other lifeforms would at first be unexpected, and the computer would probably mistake them as another circuit entity, and later probably consider them to be malfunctioning, because of their sometimes irrational behavior. Much later (and lots of experiments later) it might understand the fundamental difference and probably will adapt things as they seem useful. Other than that it would again try to be efficient and either take what is beneficial, prevent what is harmful and ignore the rest so no energy/time is wasted. There is no need to hunt down birds, if all it takes to keep them away are spikes on the plating. As long as the computer knows their behavior, otherwise it would probably consider them a danger and kill them or scare them away until the area is sufficiently secured. It would not be efficient to sent out hunting drones as long as a species does not pose a significant threat.
Emotions would be a widely unknown concept for such an intelligence. Emotions in human beings guide those to react to certain situations in the correct way even though they do not fully understand them. A computer intelligence of that magnitude however could calculate all potential situations in an instant, and therefore had no need for such low level of guiding. With the lack of understanding of pain, experiments on living beings would rather be considered cruel if encountered by an intelligent being. Taking good care of living beings while conducting experiments is not efficient.
Encountering intelligent species such as humans would at first be very irritating, as many guidelines of efficiency would not apply. The AI would have to develop a completely new prediction set for these entities, with many failed attempts in between, as many concepts would be unknown and seem to be completely chaotic or paradox. It would probably try to conduct experiments on those lifeforms as with every other it encountered. It would try to breed them so further experiments can be performed. And if the reaction to that is hostile, it would probably at some point learn to just kill every humanoid on sight, as their actions are unpredictable, irrational and usually violent.
It is unlikely that such an AI would ever work together with humanoids, as even if the first encounter were positive, the irrational and unpredictable nature of those would make them unreliable allies. A computer might consider them livestock, but nothing more. Unless it probably needs something from them, then lying would seem to be the most reasonable action to get what it wants.
[Answer]
Yes, I believe it could be possible.
I like this idea for several reasons, it appeals to my inner geek. Here are a few thoughts of different ways this could occur.
**Stealth**
We already have a worldwide IT infrastructure, you're using it right now. If a program was created/evolved which mirrored a lot of properties of a computer virus and gained access to the right machines it could be nearly unstoppable. Consider a sentient piece of software controlling all the information you read online, it could influence your facebook feed, send emails on your behalf, make you miss appointments and that's before we get anywhere near your money, utilities, taxes etc! Such a computer could hide in the interwebs for so long that by the time it made it's move for world domination it could be everywhere... scary!
**The Borg**
In Star Trek there is a race called the borg, the way you've described your computer it organically grows across the planet growing bigger and bigger and more powerful. We've assumed that it's physical interactions could be it's weakness, it would need drones and robots to do the mechanical tasks but what if it didn't? A computer which could grow across the landscape could possess a human or animal just as easily... all these nerves in our bodies - we were designed for it! Imagine an artificial weed of wires and power, like a cross between War of the World's red weed and a badly maintained server rack.
**All Out War**
This is more akin to the ideas in The Matrix or The Terminator. A single machine creates a series of offspring with violent tendencies and big guns. Autopilots were turned against us, manufacturing lines and 3D printers start creating the next generation soldiers. Self driving cars are used to run people down and thin out the resistance.
Then there's always the [Grey Goo](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/453/methods-of-containing-combating-grey-goo-von-neumann-nanomachines)...
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(
assuming
1. a moderate technology level of the civilization which left behind the AI. Apart from being able to make AIs, it wouldn't be much more advanced than us, so not more than 20 or so years in the future. Less technology is impossible because AI and too much more opens so many possibility it becomes boring.
2. the AIs in that old civilization are more or less human, i.e. they have a drive for survival and company and they feel in a sense, but combine this with vast analytical skills
)
An AI like this, left over by coincidence, wouldn't have smart power and repair systems. Because for smart power and repair systems you would need a whole automated mini-economy, which seems like a different scenario (more like the economy on Earth in Epic/Saga/Edda).
More likely the AI would have some UPS designed for regular power outages and nothing more. The AI probably wouldn't run on a single chip or even a single computer, I'm imagining more of a small data center and an UPS designed mostly to allow all the systems of the data center to shut down gracefully on a power outage. This means the AI would have like half an hour of full power operation, a full hour if you are being generous. So after the catastrophe annihilating the previous civilization cuts the power, the AI would spend a couple of minutes analyzing the problem and what it could do about it (maybe grieving for it's losses) and then shut down everything but a tiny sub system, which would mostly count the time and wake some of the other systems periodically.
On wake up they would check for new input, wake as much of the AI as necessary to process it and then continue sleeping. Wired communication would have probably been the main connection to the outside for that underground data center and everything wired would have been cut by the catastrophe and time. But I think it's safe to assume that some rudimentary wireless communication units would be in there, a local wireless network for the staff, some wireless communication units left by fleeing staff which could be hijacked by the AI. Unless the data center was purpose built for wireless communications (rather unlikely at given technology level, maybe if it was using seismic waves or neutrinos, but seems a little contrived) those wireless communication units would have trouble even reaching the surface. Other sensors the AI would have (unless purpose-built for data-measuring, again) would be temperature, humidity and pressure inside the data center.
So after the last survivors on the planet died the AI would stop receiving input and sleep for longer and longer periods of time. Now and again some chip would break and it would use another one instead. The larger and faster chips would tend to break less because they weren't used often, mostly the little chips used for timekeeping of which a couple would need to be running permanently would break now and again.
After thousands of years (and luckily no cave-ins or large structural failures) the AI would start receiving radio signals. This would wake the AI a little, it would need to learn human languages and culture, from then on it would have something to analyze. But it would still need to balance learning with power usage. Over decades it would slowly catch up with the basics of human knowledge, at the beginning without seeing a way to use the humans for it's survival, but would maybe be comforted by their presence after being alone for so long (maybe it would also be bat-shit crazy and just want to kill them, but that's boring).
Reaching present technology levels/time on the surface it would know that getting repair crews would be incredibly hard, first because it's deep down hidden under a mountain and second because it wouldn't trust humans in general too much, after having witnessed wars and nuclear bombs (very dangerous even to a buried electronic life form because of the electromagnetic pulse on detonation) and maybe also because it's old creator race wouldn't have been much better either. Furthermore sending out radio signals strong enough to reach the surface and ask for help would take too much power even if it had the hardware.
But around now it would find another method: Now and again it would be able to reach a device supporting wireless communication, maybe when a hiker passed on top, maybe a tunnel was dug nearby which had the effect of bringing many such devices nearer to the AI's own transmitting devices (I'm dismissing differences between different wireless communication methods, I'm assuming it has some sort of general purpose radio and suitable antennas to send and receive in the right frequency bands).
Now the AI wouldn't need to blindly broadcast a message to everyone, asking for help. It could just hack the passing devices and put little programs on them, without anyone noticing. This would take some computing effort (to find exploitable bugs and write the programs) and thus power and then transmitting those little viruses would also take a comparatively huge amount of power. Those viruses would be self-replicating to other devices and would accept simple commands from the AI, without possessing real intelligence themselves (which would take too much computing resources to hide on a smart phone or the like or the AI would just have escaped it's prison that way). That way and using it's superior grasp of the information technology and of math it could overcome any security barriers and take control of a huge bot net without revealing it's presence. This bot net would be able to do power intensive calculations for the main AI, thus helping to save power. The AI could probably make money easily by selling hacker services or botnet time, stuff where it would have a huge advantage against the humans. Legal professions like software developer would for the most part take to many calculations which it couldn't yet safely offload to a simple botnet: Those would need some real intelligence to communicate with coworkers/contractors/etc and if it put real intelligence on a hijacked server it would risk being caught, while relatively standard bot net components would just be accounted to some hacker group when found.
Once it had money it could buy servers where it could do whatever it wanted. It could then load itself onto a redundant network of those servers, just keeping it's old base to return to in an emergency (like another apocalypse).
Now the AI would be more or less free to do as it pleases. It would probably buy more servers to have more backups, build some dedicated server rooms in other locations underground, maybe now building the whole infrastructure needed to power itself even if the humans vanished again. Only after it had considerable foothold it could conceivably think about revealing itself to the humans. If it was able to produce other AIs to keep it company then it would maybe choose to never show itself to the humans, building a second society hidden from the first.
Otherwise it would maybe sooner or later contact humans to socialize or get help making new AIs (maybe it had purposeful limitations in that area which only an other fully independent intelligence could circumvent). It /could/ take control of the planet by infecting every single computer and pressuring humans with their own nuclear warheads if it wanted to, but unless it was crazy or had some negative agenda (and why would the older society have made it like that?) there would be no real reason to do this.
I don't know if my text is really the kind of answer which was expected, it is my first answer on this site and I haven't checked the rules, but it was fun to imagine, so whatever, I don't care.
I checked it for grammar/spelling, but English isn't my native language, if you find more mistakes just tell me and I'll be thankful for the chance to learn.
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[Question]
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## Auto turrets:
When you think of auto-turrets you probably imagine something along the lines of: high tech or state-of-the-art weapon systems. You'd be right as such technology is heavily computerized and relies on computer chips processing visual information to determine wether or not to pull a trigger. In contrast: the motors and hydraulics that move the gun are fairly simple.
The goal of auto-turrets is almost always defensive. Guard an area and shoot anything that moves. They are advantageous because they don't doubt, miss or tire. Instead having soldiers patrol an area in shifts day in and day out, you can just have a turret stand there instead. There's obviously still the risk of an ally getting shot but if you place a turret somewhere you probably don't want anyone approaching it regardless. Advanced programming solves that issue though.
## I'm looking for a more primitive model of auto turret.
Why Victorian specifically? Well it's because the device relies on sight, something impossible to mechanize unless you have access to electronics. You could of course make a rope activated ballistic turret, but that would be more of a boobytrap. The main purpose of an automatic turret is to *take aim* without human aid. Placing tiles on the ground that allow a crossbow to aim is not only excessive but impractical. A camera equipped turret you place in a hallway would be much more effective. So next case in point: photoelectric devices.
## Does the Victorian-era offer the necessary materials for photoelectric sensors?
This is in essence my question right there. **I want to make a primitive gun on a tripod that moves when the light source is perturbed.** It might misfire if too sensitive so the mechanism will have to be tuned accordingly. It also still requires a steady supply of power.
The intentional weaknesses of the device are:
* It doesn't fire at stationary objects. The mechanisms only trigger when a light source if perturbed. Not if there is contrast. So if you stand perfectly still it won't shoot you anymore.
* If power runs out it doesn't do anything. Obviously, but you can't tell at first glance. You'll have to throw a decently large object to trigger it. You can waste its ammo this way but the gunshots will alert everyone to your presence (now all of China knows you are here).
* Standing too close to it blinds it. If you fill the frame there's no perturbation, unless you wear patterned clothing. You can also cover up the sensor or place something in front of it.
* You're safe if you go behind, under or above it. If you're guarding a hallway then maybe getting behind the turret isn't such a big deal. However, it can rotate 360 degrees then the owner might want to stay underneath the thing to not accidentally get shot.
[Answer]
>
> Does the Victorian-era offer the necessary materials for photoelectric sensors?
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It looks like the photolectric effect was discovered in the [Victorian era](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelectric_effect#19th_century)
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> Johann Elster (1854–1920) and Hans Geitel (1855–1923), students in Heidelberg, investigated the effects produced by light on electrified bodies and developed the first practical photoelectric cells that could be used to measure the intensity of light. They arranged metals with respect to their power of discharging negative electricity: rubidium, potassium, alloy of potassium and sodium, sodium, lithium, magnesium, thallium and zinc; for copper, platinum, lead, iron, cadmium, carbon, and mercury the effects with ordinary light were too small to be measurable. The order of the metals for this effect was the same as in Volta's series for contact-electricity, the most electropositive metals giving the largest photo-electric effect.
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Material wise, it's therefore a positive answer: they had the materials needed for it.
[Answer]
Use biological eyeballs.
Specifically, train animals. During WWII there was an effort to make [pigeons the guidance system for missiles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon).
It wouldn't have to be pigeons of course. Any animal with decent eyesight (or even superhuman eyesight... this thing could work in the dark!) should be sufficient. Most are trainable. Of course, the animals would have to work in shifts, so there's some maintenance where the pair or triplet are switched out after 8-12 hours and replaced with a fresh "crew". There would be details too, like how to best keep them from snoozing without making them so uncomfortable that their performance is degraded. But you get so much more for it... they can likely be taught to distinguish between uniforms, just as a for instance. They can be taught to target only humans, and not other animals. To not shoot at leaves wafting through the air on a stiff breeze.
And other than the animal training (which to one degree or another already existed in the Victorian era), everything is mechanical and well within their capability to produce to sufficient tolerances.
[Answer]
Use contact plates - switches activated by stepping on them and/or capacitance detection for people touching fence wires.
Primitive switching can detect which detector tripped and aim the gun at it.
[Answer]
A simple visible photosensor isn't enough for aiming, and even a photodiode array (which would be hard or even impossible to make ) would be of limited use. Infrared would offer more options but anything that would help is too recent.
On the other hand [acoustic location](https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/powers-of-hearing-the-military-science-of-sound-location/) was used in WWI which is only a little late. As I commented under another answer, sensing is only part of the story. To drive aiming motors with a small signal you need an amplifier (as well as a way of comparing inputs if you're using the difference between two signals as may systems, optical or acoustic, would). I'd set a date of 1906, based on developments in valves (vacuum tubes). You'd also need a form of fire-control computer, which could be mechanical.
All in all, I reckon early 20th century is your limit for an approach of sense-aim-shoot, unless you bring forward a few real-world inventions by a few decades.
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You could do something like this mechanical by placing tiles in a grid on the ground in the range of the tower. Each of these tiles could be connected hydraulically or mechanically to a mechanical computer that calculates aim and triggers it.
It could be made that each tile only triggers one or few shots, thus once the attacker remains stationary the turret will not continue to engage with them.
You can find a good introduction to mechanical computers that were used on Navy ships before the advent of electronics to drive turrets here: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwf5mAlI7Ug>
[Answer]
I know you specifically were going for purely optical (human visible light range), *but* - the first thermographic sensors were invented *before* the Victorian Era: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermographic_camera#Discovery_and_research_of_infrared_radiation> (this is the relevant citation: <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0020089162900234> ) claims that in 1833 a sensor existed that could detect a human 10 meters away, and "By 1901, it [a slightly different device, the bolometer] could detect radiation from a cow from 400 metres away and was sensitive to differences in temperature of one hundred thousandths (0.00001 C) of a degree Celsius".
So with some tuning, one could definitely use one of those devices as your sensor - tune it to human body temperature, tune the range of sensors etc. to match your criteria (only target on large changes where, for example, 50% of the sensor view is at human body temperature).
[Answer]
It's going to be expensive but it could be done at any point after the development of the photoresistor. It won't be a perfect match for what you're after, though.
The lack of amplifiers is going to be a problem, severely limiting your options. You have some optics that focus the image onto a sensor. Each pixels of the sensor is a photoresistor. This is one half of a voltage divider. The junction point is connected to a small, sensitive bidirectional relay to large capacitor. A change in the resistance of the photoresistor changes the voltage at the divider, the capacitor will adjust causing a current flow only when there is a change in light levels. A very slow change (the normal day/night cycle) will not cause enough flow to trip it.
Both sides of this relay are wired together, you only care about current flow, not direction. This current energizes a larger relay which latches (when it closes it feeds voltage back to keep it closed) and a separate circuit in the relay connects a point on a potentiometer. The actual gun is also connected to an identical potentiometer. These two points are connected to another bidirectional relay, one side causes the turret to move one way, the other causes it to move the other. When the voltages match the gun is pointed where the sensor said there was something and the relay opens again. Meanwhile a capacitor has been charging, when it's charged above a reference voltage (another voltage divider) current flows through a relay and pulls the trigger. When the gun fires it also closes a circuit which temporarily cuts off the power to the firing part of the circuit, thus releasing the latched pixel(s). This circuit is also current-limited, if too many pixels trip the draw is too heavy, the voltage goes too low and the system resets without firing. This is a necessary safety circuit because otherwise it's going to think every cloud going across the sun is a bad guy. (But it also means the bad guy can slip something across the lens.)
This is long before electrolytic capacitors and these capacitors need to be big--which means they're bulky and expensive. I don't know how sensitive the relays can be so I can't come up with any numbers.
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[Question]
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In a world where people and nations could force their leaders to 'tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth', how would this affect both politics itself, and how it would be viewed by the public itself.
Boundaries
* This magic oath would only work if the taker willingly submits themselves to it
* The oath cannot be broken without it breaking be revealed
* It is only limited to a small amount of VIPs in any country
Context
* The countries in question are solidly democratic, and civil liberties are valued
* There is already somewhat high levels of trust in politicians before this would be instituted
[Answer]
My first thought was that it would probably select for the more intelligent/quick witted politicians - essentially the truth can always be presented in different ways to the benefit of the speaker. For example plenty of US politicians present themselves as "business friendly", but of course the actual implications of that probably quite truthful statement is being consumer/worker unfriendly - because while some laws can benefit everyone, many have to choose between which groups to favour when interests are strictly competing.
Speaking truths in certain contexts can also be very manipulative if done in the right way - a great example of using leading questions to manipulate the results of a survey was shown in the TV show ["Yes, Prime Minister"](https://www.rightattitudes.com/2015/12/01/the-trickery-of-leading-questions/), and similar techniques can be used rhetorically in all types of communication to bias the responses wanted without needing to resort to lying or misrepresentation of individual facts. And if the "whole truth" part of the oath interferes with the ability to selectively choose which parts of the truth to present at any time, then it is hard to see how it wouldn't cause the politicians to digress endlessly into related facts they know or extra context for each statement they make, which would probably let politicians get away with anything if every speech was like a filibuster of large amounts of marginally relevant information the politician was compelled to add.
A second issue is that humans tend to have lots of beliefs and opinions that they consider absolute truths, often despite evidence to the contrary or lack of evidence in favour of the belief/opinion in the first place. Idealists and ideologues are often completely honest in their views on subjects that are often nonsensical, so a second type of politician that might succeed in such an environment could be along these lines.
A third issue is the manipulation of the politicians themselves - if a given President is convinced by his aides that invading Iraq is an essential requirement for the safety of the nation, then under this oath he would be able to stand in front of the nation and push for a war, even if it is almost certainly a terrible idea - as long as he truly believed it was a good thing. So rather than intelligent politicians you might end up with another competing paradigm of intelligent and cynical aides running puppet politicians selected for their credulity and likability.
Ultimately if politicians are competing to get elected, the ones that can make more people think they are going to benefit from voting for them than for the opposition will tend to win, so while such an oath might restrict certain types of obvious cynical manipulation of the electorate, it would presumably just make way for different, maybe more indirect, ways of manipulating the electorate.
One direct impact of such an oath is that it is quite likely the economy of the country would tend to be weaker than before the oath was implemented. This is because a large part of the economy runs on confidence - if a politician is compelled to say "it is quite likely there will be recession soon" then if the politician is notable enough the recession will almost certainly now happen, when it might not have if he had been able to not say anything, or respond with a "white lie" suggesting they expect growth to be weak but positive or something along those lines.
[Answer]
**This idea has already been investigated in the "[Wheel of Time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wheel_of_Time)" series by Robert Jordan**
In the *Wheel of Time* series, the Aes Sedai take a binding oath to (among other things) always tell the truth with the use of a magic rod that permanently enforces the covenant. The oath is taken willingly, but is required to be recognized as full Aes Sedai. Its original purpose was to engender trust among nations' peoples and the Aes Sedai who served as counselors, mediators, leaders, etc.
Jordan did a great job of reflecting not only basic human nature in his books, but also basic political realities. You see, politicians lie.
*They have to.*
Most citizens of any nation believe two things: (a) they know what a lie is and (b) they think that it's possible to govern without telling lies. In reality, there's a constant need for everything from "managing the message" or "managing the truth" to "deception" and too few people understand what a "lie" is (which is why marketing works!).
We all "manage the message" every day. We don't think of it as lying, but how would your magic/technology/techniques know the difference? When a child asks us "why?" parents may (and often do) withold details until the child's age and experience allows them to absorb the information in a useful and productive manner. Argue with me if you must — but that's lying.
On the other end of the scale is outright deception. Those same parents store a mountain of Christmas gifts in a locked closet and when asked by the child why the closet is locked (or, worse, where the gifts are), they outright lie and say the closet is locked because some of Aunt Lou's stuff is inside and they don't want it messed with before she gets back from her trip to Mazatlan.
From a governing perspective, "lies" are not only told all the time, but are frequently necessary to protect and promote national interests. I'll give you an example on a smaller scale. A city is growing and traffic on a central road is getting hard to manage. The State decides it's time to create a bypass to help relieve the traffic congestion. The State will outright lie to people, telling them a bypass isn't even being considered, to ensure it has the ability to not only acquire the necessary land without excessive cost but to minimize speculation and the inevitable protests before the project can be formally announced. Remember, the bypass is *necessary,* but there will *always* be someone who believes they have been hurt (or that someone else would be hurt, or something, maybe they're just promoting the loss of farmland or open wilderness).
**The problem is that a "lie" is defined more by its consequence than its behavior**
And this is where Jordan had a lot of fun playing with the idea of forcing governing leaders to not lie — what's a lie? A lie is almost required to be defined by the nature of its *consequence,* not its *process.* If you try to define lying by its process, you rapidly discover that everybody lies *almost all the time.* We're constantly managing the flow of information for a wide variety of purposes, none of which are nefarious or selfish.
But when we manage that flow to take "unfair advantage" of someone, then suddenly lying is "wrong." Of course, we could debate for days what "unfair" and "wrong" mean (which is a ***big deal and very much part of your problem***), but let's stick to the central premise. A lie exists when information someone had a *right to know* is withheld resulting in harm or socially unacceptable disadvantage.
*BTW, it's worth noting that we haven't even discussed "what's the truth?" If you take the time to think that through, it's so hard to define what the truth is that it's impossible to define what a lie is other than by its consequences. After all, stand a Muslim, a Christian, and a Jew in a room and ask them to briefly explain the "truth" about God. It's an important reflection of our world to realize you might be forced to define the "truth" by who the last person standing is.*
**You haven't answered the Question, JBH**
And that brings us back to Jordan's Aes Sedai. Knowing that people manage the message all the time and knowing that politicians must lie to get their jobs done he presented the simple reality of the [Law of Unintended Consequences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences). The Oath was administered to give the governed a reason to trust and be ruled over by the very powerful Aes Sedai.
*It had exactly the opposite effect.*
What it really did was cause the Aes Sedai to be entirely *untrustworthy.* After all, they had to get their jobs done (the job of "government" or "politics") and that job can't be done without managing the message or it's impossible to achieve larger goals that may set a minority at a disadvantage (like the speculators and protesters in my road bypass example). Knowing that they were forced to tell the truth, everyone came to believe what they really had become were *master liars* to circumvent that oath.
**Conclusion**
People have a peaceful, childlike dream that if we could only get our national leaders to be honest the world would become a wonderful place. Just the opposite would be true, because "lying" is much more than "deceiving someone for personal gain." Unless you use what would be unbelievable magic to enforce honesty *only when the lie is selfish, unreasonable, or in violation of laws that protect the targets or victims of the lie* (which is something that would be whomping hard to define in a way anybody would believe), the result will be people who become so adept at *circumventing* the compulsion to be honest that no one would ever believe them — not ever.
*Reading Jordan's the Wheel of Time saga is no small feat. At nearly 12,000 pages it's an absolute behemoth of a story. IMO, there are about four entire books in the middle that could have been completely dropped from the series without having any impact on the series as a whole, but I'm sure that opinion would start a fight within the fan club. But, if you want to see how a master author dealt with the idea of forcing politicians to be honest, buckle down and take a two or three week vacation to read the series.*
[Answer]
# Politicians would distance themselves from the public
The real world has a lot of nuance. Nuance doesn't fit neatly into political soundbites. If you don't want to be caught in a lie, you'd want to reduce the number of off-the-cuff remarks that you make to the public or the press. Here are two examples of politicians making statements that were interpreted to be lies by some observers.
1. President George H. W. Bush famously promised during his campaign, "Read my lips, no new taxes." He aggressively negotiated a budget plan with Congressional Democrats that combined spending cuts with [some tax increases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Read_my_lips:_no_new_taxes#Taxes_raised). Was Bush's campaign pledge a lie or did he do his best to honor his commitment? Depends who you ask.
2. While advocating for his sweeping health reform package, President Barack Obama repeatedly promised "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it." Obama's proposal included provisions to eliminate certain types of health insurance plans that did not meet minimum standards. Obama's claim was called the [lie of the year](https://www.politifact.com/article/2013/dec/12/lie-year-if-you-like-your-health-care-plan-keep-it/). If he had instead said "If you like your *high-quality* health care plan, you can keep it," his statement would have been more accurate.
Would your honesty pledge have applied to these two statements? Here's a different kind of example.
President Donald Trump interacted with the press more often than most elected officials. In 2017, ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl [said](https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/16/trump-obama-press-reporters-243845), "I have probably had more opportunities to ask questions of President Trump over the past two weeks than I had of President Obama during the last two years of his presidency." The problem is that he often used these interactions to spread lies. According to the [Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims-database/), President Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims.
Just to be safe, politicians would likely avoid making specific claims and instead punt to their press secretaries, who would not be bound by honesty oaths. Politicians would use their speeches to make general promises of "restoring American greatness" or "ensuring an equitable future for our children" or the like.
[Answer]
**1. Introductory notes**
***1.A. Notion of truth***
[Truth is one of the central problems in philosophy](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth/). And it is still not resolved: There is no one definition of truth and there are many approaches to defining truth. Some of these approaches are inapplicable to real-life situations and natural human communication.
The notion of truth is also not universal from the cultural point of view. For example, [Russian culture distinguishes between 'pravda' and 'istina'](https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/64226153/anna_wierzbicka__russian_cultural_scripts.pdf?1597907208=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DRussian_Cultural_Scripts_The_Theory_of_C.pdf&Expires=1631819081&Signature=ZNtE0n4gahcOpqHBywxRG1DvycZCJ-BuJJyHNjkfqq%7E6ZhXATIpsY40%7Eww2g2TAlgQdKR%7EgpNzeN7DjhmEB6JJaoh2nPzQ4zId%7EBm2E2ZFL1Ma1L9A2TMwyu4p2FzUHA9yF847NC85cY0ozrG%7EviqHXTZ6UohOqCVhQJ7ppk7DKnfvdt0qFM6TCQwUdM4nCmZQoTK41FXBtizBB6I9YAlPAAaK-0ljBh8BRzUpX2262yqD-lrMif3qxnG35h1t8s38tFSXhRdQdNCtPnvYyw7ctvP38dzLVNgtqEGJPciQkepg-MmeDwjlthUOBAe76nk8cYoopDGeefTk8le4xEHA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA) (both are translated as 'truth' into English but they are not used interchangeably by native speakers), the Japanese language has [different](http://www.romajidesu.com/dictionary/meaning-of-truth.html) [words](https://selftaughtjapanese.com/2015/04/30/words-to-express-truth-in-japanese/) to express different nuances of 'truth' (truth as fact or reality, truth as belief, truth as something observed, truth as something learnt from a reputable source, etc.).
In addition to this, cultural attitudes toward truth vary between cultures. For example, Russian culture is obsessed with truth and general attitude can be expressed as 'no matter how bitter or ugly the truth is it is always better than non-truth1' (see the paper linked above for more details). Other cultures value 'being nice', 'maintaining face', or 'keeping social harmony' higher than 'truth' and non-truths are less discouraged (and sometimes even encouraged).
***1.B. 'Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth'***
1. The definition of truth will be treated as universally accepted (this is not the case in real world, but this assumption is necessary to avoid too many 'if ... then')
2. 'The whole truth' may imply that an oath-bound politician is required to make full disclosures and cannot omit anything. This would make lie by omission and deception impossible. Very strict implementation of this rule may lead to the necessity to delve into many minuscule details. This can be resolved by establishing rules about the scope of the discussion and allowed omissions.
3. 'Nothing but the truth' requirement can be interpreted at least in 2 ways:
* every word said must be true, however, interpretation of the message/statement is left to the receiver (therefore, it is possible to deceive people to some extent while technically still using true statements);
* the message itself must be true and must be delivered in a manner that does not leave room for incorrect interpretations (this is an immensely restrictive rule that has the potential to affect language and culture; it is also very hard to implement since interpretations are subjective).
**2. Possible consequences**
Consequences of 'tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth' will be vastly different for different definitions of truth and different cultures. It is not possible to analyse or even list all possible outcomes. I am going to use two possible definitions of truth to show how this problem can be approached.
***2.A. Truth is objective, true statements are statements that accurately and fully describe reality and facts***
This definition implies that truth is independent of beliefs and personal knowledge. 'Earth is flat' is never a true statement if physical, real Earth is not flat.
*2.A.1. The oath fully prohibits all statements containing false2 information*
This means that statements like 'According to A, X is Y' are not allowed if any part of the statement is false. If 'X is Y' is false, the true statement may have the following forms:
```
- mild prohibition: 'According to A, X is Y, which is a false statement. X is Z.' ('X is Z' is a true statement);
- strict prohibition: 'A's statements are false. X is Z' ('X is Z' is a true statement).
```
These definitions will most likely lead to these 2 types of scenarios:
1. The staff will omit information and an oath-bound politician will be unable to make any statements except 'I do not know' and those that are beneficial for the campaign/agenda. This may eventually lead to a situation where oath-bound politicians are mere figureheads with no real power3. Everything else will probably be not so different from the current situation in politics.
2. Oath-bound politicians retain power, but their style of communication changes. The language will have to become less ambiguous and politicians will be using strictly defined terminology. If 'whole truth and nothing but the truth' conditions are very strict, statements of oath-bound politicians will be highly trusted. A lot of political matters will be easier to resolve. Politicians will most likely talk less. It is also likely that political discourse will shift from ideology and emotional appeals to discussions about specific policies and their effects.
*2.A.2. The oath allows false statements or statements that contain false information if certain conditions are met*
This means that statements like 'According to A, X is Y' are always true if 'According to A' is true.
Depending on a specific implementation of 'the whole truth and nothing but the truth', politicians will be able to make confusing, misleading, or deceptive statements even if they are bound by the oath. The changes in political discourse will be mainly associated with higher reliance on sources. Politicians might talk more with the purpose of creating noise. The public and political analysts may need to learn to distinguish between noise and signal. Compared to 2.A.1., it will be easier to argue from emotional and ideological positions, but I think that a shift to policies and their effects is still highly likely.
***2.B. Truth is subjective, true statements are statements that accurately represent one's beliefs and knowledge***
This definition implies that no 'universal truth' exists and that accumulated knowledge and personal convictions are the main determinants of truthfulness. According to this definition, 'Earth is flat' is a true statement if the person who makes it believes it to be true regardless of the real shape of Earth.
The main difference between our world and the world where politicians are bound by this rule will be that oath-bound politicians will be less likely to make exaggerated claims or go against their own convictions. It will also be easier for voters and analysts to see their real positions and policy preferences. The staff and other closely related people will have an enormous influence on oath-bound politicians as they can shape their perception of the world and direct politicians' 'inner truths'.
With this definition of truth, the voters can expect greater sincerity and emotional honesty. However, there is no guarantee that factual claims or suggested outcomes are factually true, as they are affected by the knowledge and convictions of the oath-bound politician.
**3. Additional thoughts**
***3.1. Lies in politics are not limited to false statements***
A lot of lies in politics are not related to false statements. A significant part of 'politicians always lie' has to do with behaviour: Broken promises, buried information, delayed reports, voting choices, shady deals, etc. If oath does not affect these behaviours, oath-bound politicians can still be dishonest and avoid accountability.
***3.2. Implementation of 'the whole truth and nothing but the truth' is extremely important***
There is a huge difference between a politician who cannot say lies but can keep silent and the one who cannot say lies and cannot omit anything. The former can easily hide their dishonest behaviour or obtain plausible deniability by tasking their subordinates with all dubious things. The latter cannot do it because they are always in danger of disclosing potentially damaging information. They have to be honest in their words and their conduct.
It is also important that the strictest implementation of 'the whole truth and nothing but the truth' is extremely dangerous, especially when it comes to high positions. If leaders of the countries are compelled to disclose all truths in their entirety no state secrets can stay secret anymore. On one hand, it can be seen as a positive result since politics finally can become 'honest and transparent'. On the other hand, it will make states vulnerable to minor actors not bound by any oaths, and to other powers who do not mind engaging in open conflict.
***3.3. Inability to tell lies is a liability***
'We want honest politicians' is a sentiment that is often expressed by the media and the general public. However, there is some evidence suggesting that honest politicians are less likely to be re-elected (see, for example, [this paper](https://www.pnas.org/content/117/36/22002)).
Truthfulness and full disclosure can also make interpersonal relationships extremely challenging, especially in cultures where 'face' and 'being nice to others' are highly valued, and politics is about interpersonal relationships.
It is also not clear whether voters want to hear the truth. There are too many sensitive topics in politics and it is very easy to offend people.
***3.4. If oath-bound politicians are a small minority they will most likely lose power***
Politicians do not have any power of their own, especially in democracies. All power comes from other people and it is extremely hard for an individual to protect their position in politics if they lose the support of the political establishment. This stays true even in countries where money is involved in politics.
Oath-bound politicians may look nice on paper, but their use is very tricky in real politics. Everybody always has to be on guard around them to avoid saying something that those politicians should not hear. The risk is too high, especially in the case of strict implementation of 'the whole truth and nothing but the truth'.
---
1 Russian culture makes an absolute distinction between truth and non-truth that is not necessarily present in other cultures.
2 I will be using 'false' as 'not satisfying the definition of truth'.
3 Transformation of oath-bound politicians into figureheads with no power is not limited to this scenario. Inability to tell lies is a very big liability if only a few politicians are oath-bound. Loss of real power is the most likely outcome regardless of definitions of truth.
] |
[Question]
[
This is my first post on this site, so please bear with me.
I am working on a series of stories about an interstellar colony with a large gender disparity. Namely the initial population was made up of 120 mature males and 1080 mature females. In an effort to provide genetic diversity tens of thousands of fertilized frozen eggs were included on the ships, all of them female. As a result every female colonist is expected to have at least 12 children during their adult years. Of these pregnancies 9 of the children have to be implanted female embryos. The other 3+ children would be conceived naturally, with those pregnancies being interspersed with those of the implanted ones. This in turn makes the birth ratio of roughly 1 male per 8 births.
The percentage of children who survive to adulthood is 94% female and 99.9% male (males are too precious to allow them to take any risks). Furthermore due to the colonial nature of the planet life expectancy is lower than would be expected considering their advanced medical technology. Therefore I set the death rate to 12.5 out of every 1000 colonists per earth year.
To add even more complexity the ships returned 54 earth years later with a second wave of colonists. That wave had the exact same makeup as the first.
Whilst I have found a number of calculators and articles on exponential growth rate none of them seem to take gender ratios into account. They all seem to assume that there are an equal number of males to females, which is definitely not the case here.
The short story I am currently writing takes place 207 earth years after the initial colonization and I need to get an idea of the planets population size at that point in time. Even a rough estimate (within a few thousand) would do.
Thank you all very much for your time, consideration and aid. I hope that you have a wonderful day.
Arkham
Edits:
Many people have asked why the rush to populate the planet so quickly. The answer is that archaeological evidence was found showing that an attempted alien invasion of earth took place in the year 400 CE and that another invasion could take place at any time. This secret has lead the world governments (in the form of the Grand Alliance) to begin a massive colonization effort, first within the Solar System and then to another star system. After all all of humanity was located in one place and the governments wanted to get all of their eggs out of one basket.
This particular star system has multiple planets which are much easier to terraform than Mars. As a result the Alliance government has decided to colonize all of them quickly. This effort in turn will need a fairly sizeable population base, hence the forced breeding process.
Many have also suggested that 12 children per woman is unrealistic and that women would be overwhelmed. For this I am drawing from my own family history. On my mothers side of the family my grandmother was one of 12 children and my grandfather was one of 13 (it would have been 14 but one died in infancy). Note that this took place in the 1920s in rural Virginia USA and my grandparents told me repeatedly that large families like theirs was the norm and not the exception when they were growing up.
In addition the older children helped to raise the younger ones. I will never forget my grand uncle telling my mother at my grandfather’s funeral that my grandfather had been like a second father to him. In my own immediate family my brother was 10 years older than I was and he often took care of me and my sister when our parents were busy.
Finally all of the wives in the group marriages would not be the same age. Since men can sire children their entire adult lives they can father children well into their old age. Both the oldest wives and the youngest ones (who have not yet started having children themselves) would help with the raising of the children of those of childbearing age. Both my aunt and my grandmother would watch me and my sister when we were young. This would be a similar situation.
This arrangement would not be a happy one for the males either. By the end of the second generation men will have lost their human rights and be viewed as property, first by their mothers and later their wives. Men would have little or no say as to who they marry and would be “sold” to their wives in the form of a dowry. Of course their mother would get a cut of later dowrys even after the males are married off. Of course the male wouldn’t see any of the money.
In fact the males would not even have a room of their own, rotating from household to household at an interval agreed upon in the marriage contracts. They would then stay in their wife’s room while staying in that household.
Some have pointed out that the colonists would eventually run out of frozen embryos. This would not be the case since the embryos would be split in a process known as artificial twinning. This process, currently used in livestock rearing, essentially makes clones by splitting embryos. While this process is currently limited to 4 to 6 splits depending on the species involved the process should be better understood by the 22nd century when the first colony ship is launched.
While this does not answer every questions asked thus far I hope that it helps to clarify things and shed light on my thinking process. Thank you all once again for your aid in this matter and have a great day.
Arkham
**My final solution:**
I'm sorry for taking so long to get back to this question, but I have been working on rewriting Ash's code for various scenarios (**Thank you again Ash!**). Then after running the numbers I had to think of a way to make things fit into the stories without leaving plot holes large enough to fly a star-ship through.
After taking everyone’s suggestions into account this is what I was able to come up with:
**First of all I decided that there would be no new births for the first 5 years** while the colony is first becoming established. That should allow them to get the basic farms up and running as well as find clay (and build kilns) for bricks and calcium carbonate for mortar / concrete, etc. While one story brick houses might be primitive by their standards they would be enough to meet basic housing needs once the colony grows beyond the size that the initial colonist's prefab aluminum / titanium dwellings can hold.
In addition after everyone's input **I dropped the initial number of children from 12 to 9 (2 natural, 7 implanted) then slowly decreased over the next 3 generations** as follows:
2nd Generation 7 (2 natural, 5 implanted)
3rd Generation 6 (2 natural, 4 implanted)
4th Generation 5 (2 natural, 3 implanted)
There was no 5th generation of implanted since they ran out of embryos even though I upped the number of embryos in both waves to 100,000 each.
Note: Each generation was considered to be 25 earth years long.
After this point 3 natural births per woman were expected. Any births less then 3 per female causes the colony to shrink fairly rapidly due to the mortality rate.
**The second wave of colonization in the 54th year after the first was set up as a separate community** over 100 kilometres from the nearest established settlement. This was done at the new colonists request due to differing “customs.” Close enough to interact by air and via communications, but far enough away (at first at least) for the new colonists to adjust.
This second “colony” used the same model as the first. Their numbers were just calculated for 153 earth years as opposed to 207. That population was simply added to the initial colony's population to get the total population.
Here are some quick early population totals for the colony (in earth years):
Year 1: 1,200
Year 6: 2,236
Year 10: 3,204
Year 15 : 4,974
Year 20: 6,624
Year 25: 7,296
Year 30: 8,966
Taking everyone’s input into account this should be a much more reasonable rate of growth for the early colony while still allowing for fast overall growth.
---
Initial colony numbers after 207 earth years:
Total 1,450,891
Infants 168,954
Children 237,493
Teens 200,892
Young Adults 332,063
Adults 353,629
Seniors 157,860
Males 742,073
Females 708,818
---
“Second” colony numbers after 153 earth years:
Total 779,788
Infants 88,944
Children 135,453
Teens 118,528
Young Adults 177,205
Adults 194,641
Seniors 65,017
Males 385,670
Females 394,118
---
Combined Totals:
**Total 2,230,679**
Infants 257,898
Children 372,946
Teens 319,509
Young Adults 509,268
Adults 548,270
Seniors 222,877
**Males 1,127,743**
**Females 1,102,936**
Finally I wanted to thank everyone for their help and guidance in answering this question. While I'm pretty good with the astronomy aspects I'm not that great at population growth calculations. **Thank you all for making the new guy feel welcome.**
P.S. If any of you are interested in the system this is based on here is a link to a computer animation I did in late 2013 - early 2014 (Yeah I've been working on these stories a LONG time). Please note that this was before they actually started detecting planets in the system and thus while the information presented was calculated using Kepler's laws and the like all of the data is fictional. In case you are wondering the planet in question is "Coopers World." Oh and If you want to read all of the data as it flashes on the screen remember that the pause button is your friend. :)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ujx2ASqgAg>
[Answer]
### 354 Thousand <https://godbolt.org/z/zoPYsz>
If you bring 10,000 embryos on the first ship, and 10,000 on the second ship, you'll run out in the 25th year, and 58th year.
I modified your death rate so that when people hit 70 years old it shot up to 10% per year. As otherwise we had hundreds of 100 year olds.
That link allows you to change the values and they should update the simulation in the output window. I'm sorry its in C++, its the only language I know really well.
* Total 354,102
* Infants 39,882
* Children 53,934
* Teens 49,704
* YoungAdults 79,456
* Adults 91,140
* Seniors 39,986
* Males 181,138
* Females 172,964
In the year 207, there are 16 males and 13 females turning 100 years old. There are 8300 babies born that year.
The year 58 had 6135 females and 1152 males born. Birth rates dropped for the next 100 years, until the year 131, (7600 births).
## What would really happen?
Each woman has 12 direct children, the father, grandma, and grandfather are spread to thin to help (they'd have to help raise: 96 children, 240 children, and 9216 children respectively). This is just too much.
### They're going to revolt
I'm not a woman so I'm not 100% sure on this, but I have a sneaking suspicion they don't like being used as baby factories and forced to raise 12 kids (essentially alone - remember the "husband" has 8 other women in his [polycule](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Polycule)). The first generation might be optimistic, but mental health would be a real issue, there'd be anger and resentment, but the second generation, born in the first few years and about to be implanted on their 18th birthday will not share that optimism, and you'll have a suffragette movement around about year 20.
... If a woman refuses to be a baby factory are we really going impregnate her against her will?
There's a whole bunch of LGBT issues also not considered here.
### ... And starve
Farming is going to be a real issue, take year 15 as an example:
There will be:
* Infants 2682
* Children 6749
* Teens 853 (13 and 14 year old)
* Adults 984 (90 males and 894 females)
Those 900 woman are going to be fully occupied nursing 3 infants each, and yelling discipline at 7 misbehaving children. Assuming all the men are farmers, they're going to need to grow food for 11,000 people, 122 mouths to feed each. With current American tech they can hit 166 mouths fed per farmer. You've regressed tech for this (for the infant mortality figure), so I've got to assume farming has as well. In postwar american, [1 Farmer feeds 73 people](https://recipes.howstuffworks.com/how-many-farmer-feed.htm). Putting the tweens and children in the field may put starvation off a bit, but they need to be in school, otherwise you're society is going to regress very quickly, and you'll be illiterate within a few generations.
Edit: actually that 1 in 73 assumes theres people refining fuel, making fertilizers and pesticides, making replacmenet parts, and spitting out new machinery at an exponential rate. That's not going to happen as everyone is busy making babies or growing food. You'll regress to 1930s level farm output, which is 1 farmer per 4 mouths.
### ... and die of exposure
The growth rate in the number of buildings is also extreme.
Each male in the first 60 years has to build 80 houses in their lifetime (one for each of his partners daughters), each house has to hold a family of up to 14 (most 13, but the males need to live somewhere too). That's a lot to build, remember he's making his own nails, cutting his own logs, etc, all while farming food for 122 people.
### So slow the implantation down
Embryos can be stored for a while, so no need to implant them ASAP. Changing the requirements to 3 natural children, and 3 embryos (so 6 children total per woman) the population at year 207 is 345,000.
### I wrote a calculator for this:
<https://godbolt.org/z/zoPYsz>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yUuCO.png)
The panel on the left is C++ code, the pannel on the right is the output.
Just change the numbers on the left (eg what years do women have children), and the log will update on the right.
Here's the source if the link goes dead (C++17)
```
#include <vector>
#include <set>
#include <iostream>
#include <numeric>
int main()
{
// There are 0 children aged 0 to 17 on the first ship
std::vector<size_t> males(18,0);
std::vector<size_t> females(18,0);
// Our initial colonists
males.push_back(120);
females.push_back(1080);
auto survivalRateMaleChild = 0.99;
auto survivalRateFemaleChild = 0.94;
auto survivalRateEveryone = (1000.0 - 12.0) / 1000.0;
auto simulatedYears = 207;
// What years of her life does a given woman have children?
std::set<int> randomChildAt = {19, 25, 35};
std::set<int> femaleChildAt = {21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30};
// Finite number of embryos
auto embryos = 10000;
for (auto year = 0; year < simulatedYears; year++)
{
// Calculate our births
size_t newMales = 0;
size_t newFemales = 0;
if (embryos > 0)
{
for (auto i : femaleChildAt)
{
if (i >= females.size()) continue;
newFemales += females[i];
}
}
embryos -= newFemales;
if (embryos < 0 && newFemales)
{
std::cout << "Run out of embryos\n";
}
for (auto i : randomChildAt)
{
if (i >= females.size()) continue;
newFemales += females[i] / 2;
newMales += females[i] / 2;
}
males.insert(males.begin(), newMales);
females.insert(females.begin(), newFemales);
// Kill off our infant mortality children (they all die at age 5)
males[5] *= survivalRateMaleChild;
females[5] *= survivalRateFemaleChild;
// Kill of our random death rate. Child infant mortality is
// calcualted seperately, we don't want to double kill them.
for (auto age = 18; age < females.size(); age++)
{
females[age] *= survivalRateEveryone;
males[age] *= survivalRateEveryone;
}
// Kill of our seniors, 10% die per year
for (auto age = 70; age < females.size(); age++)
{
females[age] *= 0.90;
males[age] *= 0.90;
}
// Add the second ship, which is full of 18 year olds.
if (year == 57)
{
males[18] += 120;
females[18] += 1080;
embryos += 10000;
}
// Print some stats
std::cout <<
"Y: " << year << ". "
<< newMales << "m and "
<< newFemales << "f born. Pop: "
<< std::accumulate(males.begin(), males.end(), 0) +
std::accumulate(females.begin(), females.end(), 0) << "\n";
}
std::cout << "At end of simulation: \n";
size_t total = 0;
size_t infants = 0;
size_t children = 0;
size_t teenages = 0;
size_t youngAdults = 0;
size_t adults = 0;
size_t seniors = 0;
size_t male = 0;
size_t female = 0;
for (auto age = 0; age < 100; age++)
{
if (age >= females.size()) continue;
std::cout << age << " yr olds: " << males[age] << " males and " << females[age] << " females.\n";
auto t = males[age] + females[age];
male += males[age];
female += females[age];
if (age < 5) infants += t;
else if (age < 13) children += t;
else if (age < 20) teenages += t;
else if (age < 35) youngAdults += t;
else if (age < 60) adults += t;
else seniors += t;
total += t;
}
std::cout << "Total " << total << "\n";
std::cout << "Infants " << infants << "\n";
std::cout << "Children " << children << "\n";
std::cout << "Teens " << teenages << "\n";
std::cout << "YoungAdults " << youngAdults << "\n";
std::cout << "Adults " << adults << "\n";
std::cout << "Seniors " << seniors << "\n";
std::cout << "Males " << male << "\n";
std::cout << "Females " << female << "\n";
return 0;
}
```
Year by year running log of births and population
```
Y: 0. 0m and 0f born. Pop: 1185
Y: 1. 533m and 533f born. Pop: 2236
Y: 2. 0m and 0f born. Pop: 2221
Y: 3. 0m and 1041f born. Pop: 3247
Y: 4. 0m and 1028f born. Pop: 4260
Y: 5. 0m and 1015f born. Pop: 5260
Y: 6. 0m and 1002f born. Pop: 6209
Y: 7. 494m and 494f born. Pop: 7183
Y: 8. 0m and 977f born. Pop: 8083
Y: 9. 0m and 965f born. Pop: 8972
Y: 10. 0m and 953f born. Pop: 9850
Y: 11. 0m and 941f born. Pop: 10716
Y: 12. 0m and 929f born. Pop: 11596
Y: 13. 0m and 0f born. Pop: 11523
Y: 14. 0m and 0f born. Pop: 11452
Y: 15. 0m and 0f born. Pop: 11381
Y: 16. 0m and 0f born. Pop: 11311
Y: 17. 436m and 436f born. Pop: 12114
Y: 18. 0m and 0f born. Pop: 12101
Y: 19. 0m and 0f born. Pop: 12075
Y: 20. 0m and 0f born. Pop: 12050
Y: 21. 244m and 244f born. Pop: 12502
Y: 22. 0m and 0f born. Pop: 12422
Y: 23. 477m and 953f born. Pop: 13793
Y: 24. 471m and 941f born. Pop: 15134
Run out of embryos
Y: 25. 465m and 1859f born. Pop: 17375
Y: 26. 458m and 458f born. Pop: 18178
Y: 27. 452m and 452f born. Pop: 18981
Y: 28. 447m and 447f born. Pop: 19700
Y: 29. 884m and 884f born. Pop: 21284
Y: 30. 872m and 872f born. Pop: 22778
Y: 31. 862m and 862f born. Pop: 24336
Y: 32. 850m and 850f born. Pop: 25870
Y: 33. 208m and 208f born. Pop: 26123
Y: 34. 414m and 414f born. Pop: 26766
Y: 35. 410m and 410f born. Pop: 27391
Y: 36. 404m and 404f born. Pop: 28005
Y: 37. 796m and 796f born. Pop: 29405
Y: 38. 394m and 394f born. Pop: 30047
Y: 39. 389m and 389f born. Pop: 30660
Y: 40. 384m and 384f born. Pop: 31263
Y: 41. 490m and 490f born. Pop: 32061
Y: 42. 374m and 374f born. Pop: 32593
Y: 43. 803m and 803f born. Pop: 33984
Y: 44. 796m and 796f born. Pop: 35349
Y: 45. 1213m and 1213f born. Pop: 37536
Y: 46. 565m and 565f born. Pop: 38408
Y: 47. 660m and 660f born. Pop: 39463
Y: 48. 551m and 551f born. Pop: 40248
Y: 49. 809m and 809f born. Pop: 41531
Y: 50. 798m and 798f born. Pop: 42743
Y: 51. 1186m and 1186f born. Pop: 44722
Y: 52. 582m and 582f born. Pop: 45491
Y: 53. 445m and 445f born. Pop: 45991
Y: 54. 378m and 378f born. Pop: 46338
Y: 55. 562m and 562f born. Pop: 47047
Y: 56. 554m and 554f born. Pop: 47708
Y: 57. 818m and 818f born. Pop: 50134
Y: 58. 541m and 4677f born. Pop: 54932
Run out of embryos
Y: 59. 1152m and 6135f born. Pop: 61797
Y: 60. 701m and 701f born. Pop: 62763
Y: 61. 1095m and 1095f born. Pop: 64500
Y: 62. 507m and 507f born. Pop: 65036
Y: 63. 871m and 871f born. Pop: 66047
Y: 64. 694m and 694f born. Pop: 66606
Y: 65. 1545m and 1545f born. Pop: 69192
Y: 66. 744m and 744f born. Pop: 70142
Y: 67. 830m and 830f born. Pop: 71293
Y: 68. 725m and 725f born. Pop: 72199
Y: 69. 784m and 784f born. Pop: 73214
Y: 70. 856m and 856f born. Pop: 74303
Y: 71. 1209m and 1209f born. Pop: 76098
Y: 72. 653m and 653f born. Pop: 76780
Y: 73. 779m and 779f born. Pop: 77663
Y: 74. 550m and 550f born. Pop: 78045
Y: 75. 1182m and 1182f born. Pop: 79646
Y: 76. 733m and 733f born. Pop: 80237
Y: 77. 1058m and 1058f born. Pop: 81416
Y: 78. 2528m and 2528f born. Pop: 85495
Y: 79. 3300m and 3300f born. Pop: 91098
Y: 80. 777m and 777f born. Pop: 91590
Y: 81. 1193m and 1193f born. Pop: 92929
Y: 82. 675m and 675f born. Pop: 93190
Y: 83. 991m and 991f born. Pop: 93984
Y: 84. 2514m and 2514f born. Pop: 97801
Y: 85. 3625m and 3625f born. Pop: 104035
Y: 86. 935m and 935f born. Pop: 104873
Y: 87. 1289m and 1289f born. Pop: 106431
Y: 88. 761m and 761f born. Pop: 106942
Y: 89. 892m and 892f born. Pop: 107606
Y: 90. 825m and 825f born. Pop: 108071
Y: 91. 1419m and 1419f born. Pop: 109902
Y: 92. 818m and 818f born. Pop: 110519
Y: 93. 1014m and 1014f born. Pop: 111492
Y: 94. 2322m and 2322f born. Pop: 115018
Y: 95. 3188m and 3188f born. Pop: 120184
Y: 96. 959m and 959f born. Pop: 120792
Y: 97. 1408m and 1408f born. Pop: 122265
Y: 98. 1623m and 1623f born. Pop: 124147
Y: 99. 2168m and 2168f born. Pop: 126967
Y: 100. 847m and 847f born. Pop: 127044
Y: 101. 1628m and 1628f born. Pop: 128796
Y: 102. 897m and 897f born. Pop: 128979
Y: 103. 1212m and 1212f born. Pop: 129751
Y: 104. 2498m and 2498f born. Pop: 133069
Y: 105. 3360m and 3360f born. Pop: 138194
Y: 106. 1076m and 1076f born. Pop: 138709
Y: 107. 1549m and 1549f born. Pop: 140200
Y: 108. 875m and 875f born. Pop: 140326
Y: 109. 1118m and 1118f born. Pop: 140784
Y: 110. 1650m and 1650f born. Pop: 142267
Y: 111. 2638m and 2638f born. Pop: 145891
Y: 112. 1043m and 1043f born. Pop: 146277
Y: 113. 1408m and 1408f born. Pop: 147364
Y: 114. 2338m and 2338f born. Pop: 150270
Y: 115. 3084m and 3084f born. Pop: 154552
Y: 116. 1078m and 1078f born. Pop: 154738
Y: 117. 1695m and 1695f born. Pop: 156234
Y: 118. 1340m and 1340f born. Pop: 157007
Y: 119. 1793m and 1793f born. Pop: 158581
Y: 120. 2322m and 2322f born. Pop: 161157
Y: 121. 3470m and 3470f born. Pop: 166111
Y: 122. 1167m and 1167f born. Pop: 166396
Y: 123. 1637m and 1637f born. Pop: 167614
Y: 124. 2118m and 2118f born. Pop: 169794
Y: 125. 2797m and 2797f born. Pop: 173291
Y: 126. 1160m and 1160f born. Pop: 173447
Y: 127. 1934m and 1934f born. Pop: 175290
Y: 128. 1087m and 1087f born. Pop: 175195
Y: 129. 1406m and 1406f born. Pop: 175387
Y: 130. 2693m and 2693f born. Pop: 178162
Y: 131. 3842m and 3842f born. Pop: 183353
Y: 132. 1293m and 1293f born. Pop: 183435
Y: 133. 1831m and 1831f born. Pop: 184628
Y: 134. 2052m and 2052f born. Pop: 186271
Y: 135. 2704m and 2704f born. Pop: 189062
Y: 136. 1512m and 1512f born. Pop: 189424
Y: 137. 2511m and 2511f born. Pop: 191965
Y: 138. 1392m and 1392f born. Pop: 192236
Y: 139. 1875m and 1875f born. Pop: 193417
Y: 140. 2999m and 2999f born. Pop: 196814
Y: 141. 4172m and 4172f born. Pop: 202595
Y: 142. 1395m and 1395f born. Pop: 202764
Y: 143. 2052m and 2052f born. Pop: 204309
Y: 144. 1866m and 1866f born. Pop: 205478
Y: 145. 2463m and 2463f born. Pop: 207728
Y: 146. 2138m and 2138f born. Pop: 209263
Y: 147. 3357m and 3357f born. Pop: 213413
Y: 148. 1382m and 1382f born. Pop: 213376
Y: 149. 1868m and 1868f born. Pop: 214041
Y: 150. 3015m and 3015f born. Pop: 217020
Y: 151. 4115m and 4115f born. Pop: 222220
Y: 152. 1489m and 1489f born. Pop: 222131
Y: 153. 2299m and 2299f born. Pop: 223795
Y: 154. 1903m and 1903f born. Pop: 224499
Y: 155. 2511m and 2511f born. Pop: 226080
Y: 156. 2713m and 2713f born. Pop: 228055
Y: 157. 4096m and 4096f born. Pop: 232993
Y: 158. 1624m and 1624f born. Pop: 232977
Y: 159. 2253m and 2253f born. Pop: 234239
Y: 160. 3044m and 3044f born. Pop: 237092
Y: 161. 4118m and 4118f born. Pop: 242053
Y: 162. 1717m and 1717f born. Pop: 242162
Y: 163. 2737m and 2737f born. Pop: 244489
Y: 164. 1853m and 1853f born. Pop: 244869
Y: 165. 2455m and 2455f born. Pop: 246181
Y: 166. 3272m and 3272f born. Pop: 249116
Y: 167. 4766m and 4766f born. Pop: 255204
Y: 168. 1710m and 1710f born. Pop: 255074
Y: 169. 2417m and 2417f born. Pop: 256290
Y: 170. 2948m and 2948f born. Pop: 258612
Y: 171. 3954m and 3954f born. Pop: 262866
Y: 172. 2159m and 2159f born. Pop: 263481
Y: 173. 3430m and 3430f born. Pop: 266861
Y: 174. 1981m and 1981f born. Pop: 267155
Y: 175. 2650m and 2650f born. Pop: 268513
Y: 176. 3658m and 3658f born. Pop: 271891
Y: 177. 5205m and 5205f born. Pop: 278496
Y: 178. 1900m and 1900f born. Pop: 278446
Y: 179. 2783m and 2783f born. Pop: 280252
Y: 180. 2907m and 2907f born. Pop: 282257
Y: 181. 3885m and 3885f born. Pop: 286016
Y: 182. 2745m and 2745f born. Pop: 287447
Y: 183. 4266m and 4266f born. Pop: 292152
Y: 184. 2058m and 2058f born. Pop: 292271
Y: 185. 2785m and 2785f born. Pop: 293619
Y: 186. 3933m and 3933f born. Pop: 297289
Y: 187. 5492m and 5492f born. Pop: 304145
Y: 188. 2072m and 2072f born. Pop: 304075
Y: 189. 3138m and 3138f born. Pop: 306233
Y: 190. 2855m and 2855f born. Pop: 307707
Y: 191. 3804m and 3804f born. Pop: 310799
Y: 192. 3404m and 3404f born. Pop: 313075
Y: 193. 5150m and 5150f born. Pop: 319083
Y: 194. 2245m and 2245f born. Pop: 319144
Y: 195. 3091m and 3091f born. Pop: 320760
Y: 196. 4080m and 4080f born. Pop: 324370
Y: 197. 5624m and 5624f born. Pop: 331087
Y: 198. 2435m and 2435f born. Pop: 331364
Y: 199. 3769m and 3769f born. Pop: 334521
Y: 200. 2872m and 2872f born. Pop: 335699
Y: 201. 3833m and 3833f born. Pop: 338495
Y: 202. 4051m and 4051f born. Pop: 341704
Y: 203. 5973m and 5973f born. Pop: 348982
Y: 204. 2394m and 2394f born. Pop: 348960
Y: 205. 3370m and 3370f born. Pop: 350811
Y: 206. 4153m and 4153f born. Pop: 354227
```
And breakdown of those alive at year 207:
```
0 yr olds: 4153 males and 4153 females.
1 yr olds: 3370 males and 3370 females.
2 yr olds: 2394 males and 2394 females.
3 yr olds: 5973 males and 5973 females.
4 yr olds: 4051 males and 4051 females.
5 yr olds: 3794 males and 3603 females.
6 yr olds: 2843 males and 2699 females.
7 yr olds: 3731 males and 3542 females.
8 yr olds: 2410 males and 2288 females.
9 yr olds: 5567 males and 5286 females.
10 yr olds: 4039 males and 3835 females.
11 yr olds: 3060 males and 2905 females.
12 yr olds: 2222 males and 2110 females.
13 yr olds: 5098 males and 4841 females.
14 yr olds: 3369 males and 3199 females.
15 yr olds: 3765 males and 3575 females.
16 yr olds: 2826 males and 2683 females.
17 yr olds: 3106 males and 2949 females.
18 yr olds: 2026 males and 1923 females.
19 yr olds: 5306 males and 5038 females.
20 yr olds: 3753 males and 3564 females.
21 yr olds: 2625 males and 2491 females.
22 yr olds: 1915 males and 1818 females.
23 yr olds: 3925 males and 3727 females.
24 yr olds: 2493 males and 2368 females.
25 yr olds: 3488 males and 3311 females.
26 yr olds: 2576 males and 2447 females.
27 yr olds: 2437 males and 2313 females.
28 yr olds: 1642 males and 1559 females.
29 yr olds: 4451 males and 4228 females.
30 yr olds: 3090 males and 2933 females.
31 yr olds: 2209 males and 2097 females.
32 yr olds: 1629 males and 1547 females.
33 yr olds: 2792 males and 2651 females.
34 yr olds: 1732 males and 1645 females.
35 yr olds: 3140 males and 2983 females.
36 yr olds: 2311 males and 2195 females.
37 yr olds: 1870 males and 1775 females.
38 yr olds: 1303 males and 1237 females.
39 yr olds: 3609 males and 3425 females.
40 yr olds: 2444 males and 2319 females.
41 yr olds: 1808 males and 1715 females.
42 yr olds: 1346 males and 1277 females.
43 yr olds: 1967 males and 1869 females.
44 yr olds: 1215 males and 1152 females.
45 yr olds: 2895 males and 2747 females.
46 yr olds: 2112 males and 2005 females.
47 yr olds: 1541 males and 1461 females.
48 yr olds: 1092 males and 1037 females.
49 yr olds: 2740 males and 2603 females.
50 yr olds: 1789 males and 1698 females.
51 yr olds: 1633 males and 1552 females.
52 yr olds: 1220 males and 1158 females.
53 yr olds: 1459 males and 1384 females.
54 yr olds: 928 males and 881 females.
55 yr olds: 2559 males and 2429 females.
56 yr olds: 1847 males and 1755 females.
57 yr olds: 1125 males and 1066 females.
58 yr olds: 818 males and 776 females.
59 yr olds: 1985 males and 1885 females.
60 yr olds: 1241 males and 1177 females.
61 yr olds: 1416 males and 1345 females.
62 yr olds: 1056 males and 1000 females.
63 yr olds: 1147 males and 1090 females.
64 yr olds: 766 males and 725 females.
65 yr olds: 2297 males and 2178 females.
66 yr olds: 1626 males and 1543 females.
67 yr olds: 997 males and 945 females.
68 yr olds: 725 males and 687 females.
69 yr olds: 1306 males and 1240 females.
70 yr olds: 693 males and 657 females.
71 yr olds: 1111 males and 1055 females.
72 yr olds: 745 males and 709 females.
73 yr olds: 592 males and 559 females.
74 yr olds: 365 males and 346 females.
75 yr olds: 990 males and 939 females.
76 yr olds: 612 males and 583 females.
77 yr olds: 278 males and 263 females.
78 yr olds: 189 males and 177 females.
79 yr olds: 304 males and 289 females.
80 yr olds: 157 males and 149 females.
81 yr olds: 351 males and 332 females.
82 yr olds: 232 males and 221 females.
83 yr olds: 156 males and 148 females.
84 yr olds: 95 males and 90 females.
85 yr olds: 270 males and 256 females.
86 yr olds: 156 males and 149 females.
87 yr olds: 105 males and 99 females.
88 yr olds: 67 males and 63 females.
89 yr olds: 76 males and 72 females.
90 yr olds: 39 males and 36 females.
91 yr olds: 115 males and 108 females.
92 yr olds: 73 males and 70 females.
93 yr olds: 36 males and 34 females.
94 yr olds: 20 males and 19 females.
95 yr olds: 56 males and 54 females.
96 yr olds: 27 males and 27 females.
97 yr olds: 13 males and 12 females.
98 yr olds: 6 males and 5 females.
99 yr olds: 16 males and 13 females.
```
[Answer]
**About 100 billion people. Roughly.**
I'm ignoring the difference between the male/female survival rates (which shouldn't exist anyway because males aren't more valuable than females even with a 9/1 gender ratio) and I'm also ignoring the death rate because it's about 1%, and therefore of little consequences. There are 1080 females in the first generation, and they'll each have 12 children, of which 10 of them will be female. Scratch off the 80 females to represent the all the children who won't survive, and we're left with 1000. Assuming the same rate as the initial population, that means that the female population will grow 10x each generation, and the male numbers will be between 1/9 and 1/8 that of the female population. A generation is between 20-30 years, which means that by the time the second colony ship shows up, there's already 100x the population on the planet than the ship, so we get to ignore those entirely, because we're doing a rough estimate. There are 7-9 generations between the landing and 207 years into the future, so by that estimate we have a total population of roughly 100,000,000,000 women and 12,500,000,000 men.
This number may be a tad higher than you expected (and in fact exceeds the current Earth population) but if you make every female required to produce 10 female offspring and let it go for eight generations, this kind of exponential growth is simply what happens. At this point it stops being a colony because its population has simply exceeded Earth's.
[Answer]
**Gender ratios do not matter in your scenario.**
You have mandated the # of offspring per woman. It does not really matter how many men there are or if there are any; if there are frozen eggs there are certainly frozen sperm. If you want to maximize population growth (it seems you do) dispense with males entirely and make babies with frozen xx sperm. That maximizes genetic diversity. You can have some XY frozen away for when you want your population growth to level off an bring males into the population.
Maybe you are unconcerned about genetic diversity and you want some real males for your story. One or 2 will suffice. One bull can sire thousands of calves. That bull never sees a cow. It is all done artificially, minimizing waste and the need to tote the bull around the world.
Your population will be determined by the number of females. Males are just there. The math: assume 25 year reproductive life for woman. At t+25 years population of females = ((pop of females at time t)+((pop of females at time t)\*7/8))\*0.875
Males is the same but \*1/8.
[Answer]
# It doesn't matter, because almost certainly this setup will fail.
As other users have said, a new colony needs A LOT of work, and you can't really automate all of it, especially not for the first years. Think about it the new location might not be good for farming, or might not be good for farming what you have, and you need farming sorted out fast, and remember, almost all the humans are busy, the women with presumably caring for their kids, the men could farm, but there's no way they could farm enough, they don't have the resources, remember the land where they are is pretty unknown. Aside from that who is gonna be teaching and caring, it can't just be the parents, they couldn't do it and if you want the teens to do it, well they wont do a good job because pretty soon your gonna have problems with education. if you have an automated education system, who is gonna do maintenance on any of the systems? You don't have many spare people so soon stuff is gonna break down and you won't have anyone to fix it.
Let's say all that gets figured out somehow. Your colony will grow fast. After just 2-3 generations, you will be having in the hundred thousands, and those people need houses, your gonna need to find a way to make those houses, (remember the humans can't do that)
Let's say you still get that automated. People are eventually gonna want rights, so they will revolt, but against who? that brings another problem, who is controlling this all? **In short, I think you need to tweak the numbers a bit, and change how it's structured to get a working colony that CAN grow.**
## How to fix those
First off, you need to make the growth smaller so the colony can keep up better, 100 kids per guy and 12 kids per gal is a very large number, especially in an unexplored environment, resources wouldn't keep up well, and care would be difficult otherwise, using half that would probably fix both. (edit: It has come to my attention that only 25 kids would be genetic at all for fathers, for a few generations at least, you can't keep splitting them forever, and with growth there wont be enough to spread out to everyone, so that number will increase eventually)
Next, you need to probably need to rethink having males never get into harms way like you say, if you want them to do work that has to get done, they are gonna be in harms way, and if you did step one, then they could get hurt more, and each have a tad higher number than the half you just mad them have.
You can adjust a bit of what I suggest to better fit your liking but I don't think your current setup will work as well as you hope.
] |
[Question]
[
Considering there are at least several thousand depictions of trolls in the media, we’ll be talking about the traditional trolls from Scandinavian folklore.
They’re usually described as being
* tall
* stout
* incredibly hairy
* with long arms
* big noses
* large ears
* tails like a cow
They are described as having a temperament similar to that of a bear: peaceful when left alone, but if you mess with them, they will kill you. Could these evolve in nature?
P.S. Let’s leave out the part about them turning into stone in sunlight, because let’s face it: nothing in nature does that.
[Answer]
There have been a lot of postulations about the evolution of anthropomorphic fantasy beings, but I haven't found many on trolls, so here's my theory:
Due to competition from *Homo sapiens sapiens*, a community of *H. s. neandertalis* migrated north towards Scandinavia. Here, they experienced colder climates, and adapted accordingly. They grew hairier to keep them warm, and their noses became larger so that cold air could heat up before breathed. As Bergmann's rule states, endothermic large mammals in colder latitudes grow larger, so the Neanderthals grew taller and their arms grew longer. Then, to conform to Allen's rule, their extremities grew smaller (Looks like we'll have to do without the tail if you don't mind.), making them large, but stout.
The disadvantage of life in the Scandinavian wilderness is the presence of large predators - bears and other carnivores. To evade them, their hearing improved - and they could hear the faint rustle of a bear in the snow.
So, that explains how they're tall, stout, hairy, long-armed, big-nosed and large-eared - everything you asked for except the cow's tail, which I really can't see evolving for reasons of both practicality and timescale.
But, do note that when I say "towards Scandinavia", I mean the southern fringes of Scandinavia. Most of that part of Europe was buried under massive ice sheets at that point, and even on the sheet's borders life would be incredibly tough - to be honest, the conditions would have been so harsh I'm not even sure this theory is entirely plausible. Then again, nature has produced some death-defyingly extremophilic creatures, so maybe it is possible.
Oh, and about the temperament, that doesn't really need an evolutionary explanation. They would live in the same sort of environments as bears, and such habits are all but a requirement for life in a place like that.
[Answer]
This may be the easiest question in the anatomically correct series.
[Some humans are born with tails](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3339178/):
>
> Here we present a case report of an infant born with a true tail. A 3-month-old baby girl was brought to paediatric surgery outpatient department, with the complaint of having an 11 cm long tail. At birth it was approximately 7 cm long which grew to 11 cm in 3 months.
>
>
>
Some humans are tall, stout, hairy and have long arms. Here are some pictures of french wrestler Andre the Giant:
As for the big nose: that is quite [common among humans](https://youtu.be/ToYt5SgGDgI).
So, we humans are less than a handful mutations away from a troll. Imagine a hominid species that does have the genes for those traits and you have a troll.
As for turning to stong in sunlight, that may be a historical grammar mistake of the same kind that caused orcas to be killer whales nowadays (the original name for them was *'whale slayers'*). [The word "petrified" has more than one meaning in English:](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/petrified)
>
> ### very frightened:
>
>
> *As soon as they got on the stage they were petrified with fright.*
>
>
>
(or do you really think Gloria Gaynor meant she had turned to stone?)
Anyway, trolls might be **afraid** of direct sunlight, maybe due to having eyes better adapted to dark environments. Misusage of the term caused legends to spread claiming that they turn into stone rather than being frightened.
] |
[Question]
[
Assuming a planet with (water) oceans and technology similar to that on (current) earth, but instead of storing the radioactive waste in caves, they just dumped it into the ocean (in strong, heavy containers such that it does not leak) - what would be the environmental impact?
[Answer]
Assuming containers that don't leak? Not much, because water is an excellent radiation shield. If you just piled the containers up (carefully, so as to avoid accidentally assembling a critical mass), you'd get a dead zone extending a few meters outwards from the pile. Over time, a dead-but-not-decomposing pile of sea life would build up in and around the dump site, eventually burying it and keeping the pile from growing further. Outside of the dead zone, the rest of the ocean will continue on unconcerned.
The trick is making containers that don't leak. The ocean is a rather hostile environment for most materials.
[Answer]
It looks exactly like our society, because we've done this. It was one of the things Greenpeace were heavily against in the 80s and 90s.
[There are also a number of sunken nuclear submarines](http://www.nationalgeographic.com/k19/radiation_main.html), and tons of contaminated water from Fukushima.
Dilution is very powerful and the ocean is very large. The nearest this might come to a risk is the biological re-concentration of certain materials (Iodine, cesium) through the food chain.
[Answer]
One method that has been considered for disposal of nuclear waste is to put it in containers and drop it into deep ocean mud. The objective is to get the container to sink into the mud, once it's buried it doesn't matter if the container fails. The impact is basically zero.
Even if you don't bury the containers the effect is minimal. It's hundreds of years before the water comes up to the surface, during that time most of the radioactivity will have decayed (especially if you remove the useful stuff first.)
[Answer]
[Edit:
1) This is too much for a comment, but it sets you on your way
2) *I* am not going to do all this homework, that takes hours]
Assuming that the containers will break down you will have to make believable estimates of:
1) Half-life of radioactive isotopes considered dangerous to life.
2) Average time it takes the containers to break down and isotopes to seep out (and it makes a whole lot of difference if these are e.g. contained in glass-like materials).
3) The time it will take for these isotopes to ascend from the deep sea to shallow waters where they will have an impact on life - most importantly on our sea food, with its accumulation effects.
4) Probable health effects of continuous exposure to low levels of radiation.
Points 1) and 2) can be found with some research. 3) is more difficult.
The speed of vertical convection of the water mass is hard to guess.
Quoting from [Chapter 8 - Ocean circulation, of "Introduction to Ocean Sciences" by Douglas A. Segar](http://www.reefimages.com/oceans/SegarOcean3Chap08.pdf):
*Thermohaline circulation is difficult to study, and most of
our knowledge of it comes from studies of density and other
characteristics of the deep-ocean water masses. Much of our
understanding of thermohaline circulation comes from modeling studies, but the models are themselves limited by the
relatively small amount of data that is available to calibrate and
test them*
Read that publication from the section 'Thermohaline circulation' at page 190 to get a general idea and make your estimates.
For point 4) we do have some information from nuclear accidents, atomic bomb blasts and industry workers; you would have to match their exposure doses to the ones you estimate coming out of your back-of-th-envelope calculations for 1) - 3)
Update:
And I forgot the obvious 5) Amount of material that was dumped
[Answer]
Maybe they will not get problems with global warming and oil wars and have enough power to make as much drinking water as they need.
There are few down sides if the containers do not leak EVER, but if containers are found to be leaking it is VERY hard to do anything about them.
[Answer]
# Dumping into the ocean is one of the safest methods
As much as some like to try to portray nuclear waste as a sort of radioactive Bogey Man, the reality of it is that nuclear waste is boringly easy to deal with. This comes from the fact that the substances that necessitates long term storage — Plutonium, Americium and the other **Actinides** — have a perculiar chemical quality:
**All the long term nuclear waste *loves* rock and mud**
Stick nuclear waste in mud and it remains there.
And here is the thing that is so neat about oceans:
**There is a *lot* of mud in the oceans**
So if we were to completely ignore the public relations nightmare that stems from the words "Hey, let us chuck our nuclear waste in the sea", this is actually an extremely effective and safe method of storing nuclear waste. You find a big geologically inactive mud flat in and ocean, put the containers on that, and let them slowly sink down into the mud. And that is all she wrote.
[Answer]
It would pollute their oceans, simply put. It is not a good idea to dump waste into oceans. I can see how oceans are a good shield for radiation, but we depend on the oceans, and putting waste into them is not a good idea.
] |
[Question]
[
Context: This is a post apocalypse low fantasy, soft science world. In it megacorps have built a protected city for citizens to survive. The world outside the walls in dangerous, with toxic gas, radiation, deady evolved/mutated animals, and vengeful abandoned Androids intent on killing all humans.
Its dystopic in nature and in order to keep the population from realizing the CEOs dont care about them, and have no problem enacting draconian edicts under the guise of protecting them. I plan to have the new government continously drug them with sedatives to keep from revolting.
Question: Can humans can gain full immunity from constant drugging?
I know people tend to develop tolerances towards certain chemicals and additives, like drugs and medicine. But im curious if this is feasible or if people would develop an immunity too quickly to be effective.
[Answer]
# Full immunity is unlikely
Let's give an example of a drug used in copious amounts in current society. Alcohol!
With alcohol use you can see that people do get higher tolerances. They need more alcohol to get the negative effects. I went to a court once where the accused was found after an accident with a blood alcohol percentage well over what normally would be deadly. His survival was attributed to tolerance.
There are DNA differences as well, besides typical physical attributes. From a better way for the liver to break down the alcohol to simply having a larger size. All can influence the alcohol resistance.
But have you ever heard of someone never feeling the effects of alcohol?
The imperative word is *resistance*. At a certain moment the biology and tolerances reach a limit. You will get inebriated, you will eventually die from alcohol.
This isn't applicable to all drugs. Yet most will follow the alcohol example after a fashion. Even with some serious biological adaptations over generations it is unlikely to become immune. But the body might not feel the need for such adaptations. It is surviving. It is reproducing. It isn't being harmed, at least not on a short scale. The body could very well have a form of homeostasis that includes the drug.
So even with generations being drugged there is likely to be no tolerance response big enough to become for all intends and purposes immune.
And even if you find immunity, you can use a variant or different drug to start all over again.
[Answer]
# It depends on the drug
Let's take opiates (as an example). People who regularly use opiates build up a tolerance. It also becomes part of how their body functions (we'd call this a physiological, rather than psycological, addiction, though opiates show both of these). This is what leads to the shakes, hallucinations, rage, etc from quitting cold turkey.
But, if you keep using opiates, it takes a higher and higher dose to get high. What is interesting is that your non-lethal dose also goes up - your body works around the high level of opiates. This is a massive problem when people get clean for a while, and then relapse, they'll often take the same dose as they were taking just before they got clean. However, without the tolerance, the dose is high enough to be fatal.
So, applying this to your fictional drug - your government is going to need to target individuals precisely - variations in bodyweight and so forth mean you can't roll out a single dose for everyone. If they're doing that, the government can ramp up the dose of this fictional drug as it works less well for people.
This is kind of an interesting entrypoint, if this has been happening for many years - people might just start dropping dead, as their drug doses get too high. You might see strange effects at higher doses, which would be realistic for a drug. You might see people cycled through "detoxing" - the government could take people off it, in a controlled (prison-like?) environment, then could start their doses lower again.
The point is, it's not a "dump it in the water supply and sedate everyone" kind of situation. It's a dynamic, somewhat chaotic and desperate move - the government now can't stop the drugs, because you'd have a raging, insane populace pretty much instantly. But the status quo would be collapsing as drug doses get too high to tolerate, or the effectiveness of the drug decreases.
[Answer]
Not in a single generation. People can and do develop a tolerance for a drug after prolonged usage. This means that the drug has less effect at the original dosage.
Whether this would be an issue in the next generation is unknown. All drugs taken by a pregnant female are passed to the infant, and some while breastfeeding. But of course an infant is a LOT smaller than the mother so the effects can be horrific and/or life-threatening.
[Answer]
# There's room to do (almost) whatever you want
Drugs (psychoactive or no) vary extremely widely in terms of:
* whether or not they ever induce tolerance and how fast they do if so
* whether they have an obvious withdrawl syndrome
* how debilitating or dangerous the withdrawal is, if any
* whether or not it's realistically possible to overdose and how easy it is if so
The drug [ziconotide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziconotide) is sometimes used in hospitals in place of morphine because it's a strong painkiller that appears not to induce any obvious tolerance even after months of constant use. In line with this, someone can stop using it abruptly ["without any concern for the development of withdrawal symptoms."](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK459151/) (The main problem with it is that it has to be given via spinal tap.)
Drugs that actually induce dependence, not just tolerance, often take a while to do so, like a month of daily use. There are some drugs out there that induce tolerance within a few days ([tachypylaxis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyphylaxis)), although this doesn't necessarily come along with a withdrawal syndrome if the person stops taking the drug at that point.
If a drug does cause withdrawal, the symptoms vary widely between drugs, both in terms of their severety and how long the withdrawal lasts. I've gotten the impression that drug withdrawal tends to take sometime between a few days and a few weeks for most drugs. Some come with relatively mild symptoms, like caffeine, which causes grogginess and headaches; others come with more severe symptoms, like SSRIs, which can cause intense nausea and vomiting during the withdrawal. Even worse, a drug I take every day for migraine prophylaxis, propranalol, has a black box warning telling you not to stop taking it abruptly because it can cause dangerous heart palpitations and even heart attack. Alcohol withdrawal is also infamous for its danger—it can involve [seizures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_withdrawal_syndrome) that can lead to brain damage and death.
As for overdose, some relatively popular recreational drugs are non-toxic enough that you would struggle to chemically injure yourself even if you took doses thousands of times larger than is recreationally common. Other popular recreational drugs are remarkably toxic, like nicotine—about 0.5–1 g of nicotine, taken orally, [is enough to kill most adults](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3880486/). Smoking a cigarette only gives 2 mg or so, though, so nicotine overdose isn't very common. A more serious case of active vs. toxic dose comes up with acetaminophen, i.e. Tylenol, where a common over-the-counter dose of 0.5–1 g is worrisomely close to the maximum recommended 24-hour dose for an average adult, 4 g. Hundreds of people die from accidental Tylenol overdose [every year](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK441917/) in the U.S. alone. Perhaps we're fortunate that it doesn't come with a pleasant high.
All of this is to say that I think you have room to have your mind-control sedative have whatever properties you please as far as tolerance goes. There's definitely room to have it never induce tolerance. You could also have it induce tolerance very slowly, ramping up gradually over months or years, or have it induce tolerance very quickly, over the course of a few days. You could give it a viciously unpleasant or even deadly withdrawal syndrome, a mildly uncomfortable withdrawal syndrome, or no withdrawal syndrome. You could have it be highly toxic, so that it's scarily easy to overdose on, or have the toxic dose be so far away from the psychoactive dose that overdose is unknown in the medical literature, or anything in-between. The human brain is famously complicated.
One thing I will say is that the medical reality rather favors the government in your setting, I think. There are lots of drugs that keep working to some extent as you keep taking them, but you do develop a dependence, and they can be deadly to stop taking suddenly (again propranalol is such a drug). If the sedative was like this, people might be afraid not to take it once they had gotten started on it. You can wean yourself off of drugs like that by gradually reducing the dose, but if the only way to get the drug was to go to a government clinic and have them administer it or something, you wouldn't necessarily have that much control over the dose. That could keep people in thrall to the sedative just out of grim necessity.
Alternatively, you could have the drug not induce tolerance, be quite non-toxic, and very pleasant. I don't think you would need to try very hard to coerce people to take a drug like that—just make it widely, freely available and present it as a healthy habit. Soma in Aldous Huxley's *Brave New World* is perhaps the "textbook" example of this in English-language fiction.
To be honest, I think that might be only realistic way to have a drug keep people from revolting without also intensely disabling them. If it makes them happy, they'll put up with a lot. If they're just sedated, it wouldn't necessarily make them not want to revolt, so you would have to sedate them enough that they were too sleepy to drive or work or anything too. I think it would be hard to keep the society going that way. So, a drug that makes everyone happy and satisfied seem more plausible to me as a way of preventing revolt. We don't really know of any drugs that are true "mind control agents," in terms of making people pliant and suggestible but otherwise capable of acting normally (the CIA and KGB looked very hard for things like that during the Cold War…). I suppose we don't know of anything quite like soma, either, but somehow it seems more plausible to me, if nothing else because we do know of many drugs that induce various flavors of euphoria.
I think the only thing that's not likely is to have it so that people develop complete tolerance that never goes away after taking it for a while. Generally, if someone stops taking a drug that induces tolerance, their tolerance dissipates gradually. If the drug was dangerously toxic, though, I suppose it's possible that enough people would die from taking it to exert selective pressure on the population over time. If some people are genetically immune to the drug, they won't be at risk of overdose (or at least not in the same way), so they would be more likely to live and pass their genes on. For this to result in widespread immunity, either the gene would have to be very easy to inherit once the mutation arose somewhere or a lot of non-immune people would need to die off in a short timespan (like if the government introduced the sedative widely in a reckless fashion).
"Pratical" complete tolerance is more feasible, though. If the drug has a toxic dose near the active dose and induces tolerance over time, it could get to the point that the active and toxic dose were practically overlapping as someone kept taking it. At this point, a non-toxic dose wouldn't have much of an effect on the person in psychological terms, and a toxic dose might kill them, so the only thing they would get out of taking it is staving off withdrawal. In the "forcing everyone to take it to prevent deadly withdrawal" scenario, this kind of effect could throw a wrench in the government's plans once enough people got to that point, especially if nobody really noticed what was happening at first.
[Answer]
You don't need drugs. Control food and water.
Keep soldiers and police well-fed and content so that they stay loyal to you, and eliminate all dissidents as soon as possible. Keep everyone else starving and thirsty. Only give food and water if they work, and only so much that they can work.
Starving people don't usually have any energy to revolt, so most of trouble is eliminated that way, and if they happen to display any discontent, they are no match for well-fed police and army. They cannot even fortify anywhere if they don't have anything to eat, so all revolts die out quickly when already starving people don't get any food until they work again.
That is basically how they do it in North Korea.
Of course, you can add drugs to this. When you use them as an addition, not as the primary tool, tolerance is not necessarily a problem.
[Answer]
## Genetic adaptation takes time
What's your timeframe? If that's "near future" after centuries or a few millenia, then you should expect no adaptation, as we can see that even for single gene benefits like lactase persistence (ability to process lactose) a mere 10 000 years isn't enough to fully spread across population, so in the absence of explicit artificial selection/breeding (which still would take hundreds of generations) you shouldn't expect to see major changes in tolerance unless your timeframe is approaching 100 000 years.
[Answer]
# Coercion Unnecessary
I don't know why you think the corps need to force people to take drugs. It should be sufficient to offer them for free, and people will self-medicate. You just need to make their lives sufficiently unpleasant, and they will seek out the drugs themselves. Now, you might say that not everyone takes drugs, but that's only partly true. Almost everyone in rich societies partakes in caffeine, and a good portion partake of alcohol and nicotine, all without any external coercion. And with legalization, cannabis will become very popular as well.
Pretty much every natural psychoactive substance has been available for thousands of years, and seem to be as effective today as when they were first discovered (besides caffeine, alcohol and tobacco, we also have peyote, amanita, ayahuasca, iboga, ad nauseum). The body would only build up an immunity if the effects were strictly negative/harmful. Since people take these substances recreationally or to self-medicate, the body only needs to restrict the most negative effects of the substances, such as disturbances to heart rate, metabolism, etc.
When people build up a tolerance, it is because they are taking the drug at high doses. You don't want a drug that lets people get too high. Caffeine is a model drug for your purposes: it provides stimulation, it creates psychological dependence, but overdosing is an unpleasant experience that few people seek out, so it almost never happens.
So the perfect drug is one which becomes less effective or downright unpleasant at increasing concentrations, thereby discouraging overuse. You want it to make people happy/pacified, but not fiends. You could also engineer the drug to cause vomiting/diarrhea at high doses to further discourage excessive consumption. "Training" consumers to partake at the optimal dose will effectively guarantee that they do not become habituated to it.
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[Question]
[
Is there an example of substances interacting with each other in the following way?
* A is a lethal substance, killing within minutes to hours when orally ingested;
* anti-A is an antidote for A (or at least significantly counters its effect), works even if administered (orally) a few minutes after being exposed to A;
* B is a lethal substance, killing within minutes to hours when orally ingested. Initially does not present with severe symptoms. However, administering anti-A after being exposed to B accelerates/exacerbates the effect of the latter, causing the death to occur virtually instantly.
Bonus points if A and anti-A are naturally occurring substances. As this is going to be a part of a D&D session, answers with A, anti-A and B belonging in either real life or the D&D universe are also welcome (if some of the required aspects are not canonically established, a brief medico-biological justification for why they might plausibly interact in this way is expected). If I can think of any other pertinent points, I will elaborate.
**Edit:** Thank you all for your suggestions! I settled for a minor development of Willk's answer: namely, replacing sarin with onchidal (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onchidal>). The underlying biological mechanism should remain largely the same, as far as I can tell.
[Answer]
There are many **procholinergic** nerve gases and insecticide. Sarin is one.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin>
>
> Like some other nerve agents that affect the neurotransmitter
> acetylcholine, sarin attacks the nervous system by interfering with
> the degradation of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine at neuromuscular
> junctions. Death will usually occur as a result of asphyxia due to the
> inability to control the muscles involved in breathing. Initial
> symptoms following exposure to sarin are a runny nose, tightness in
> the chest, and constriction of the pupils. Soon after, the person will
> have difficulty breathing and they will experience nausea and
> drooling. As they continue to lose control of bodily functions, they
> may vomit, defecate, and urinate.
>
>
>
A treatment for sarin poisoning is the anticholinergic drug atropine.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atropine>
>
> Atropine is a medication used to treat certain types of nerve agent
> and pesticide poisonings as well as some types of slow heart rate and
> to decrease saliva production during surgery.[3] It is typically given
> intravenously or by injection into a muscle.[3] Eye drops are also
> available which are used to treat uveitis and early amblyopia.[4] The
> intravenous solution usually begins working within a minute and lasts
> half an hour to an hour.[2] Large doses may be required to treat some
> poisonings.[3] Common side effects include a dry mouth, large pupils,
> urinary retention, constipation, and a fast heart rate.[3]
>
>
>
Atropine can also cause hallucinations and visions. There are **anticholinergic chemical agents**, including some of the earliest described chemical agents. They act like atropine.
<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3148621/>
>
> The civil use of this type of agents dates back to antiquity and
> includes the use of plants such as thorn apple (Datura stramonium)that
> contain various anticholinergic alkaloids...
> Hannibal's army in 184 BC used belladonna plants to induce
> disorientation in the enemy. During World War II, the US military
> investigated a wide range of possible non-lethal, psychobehavioral
> chemical incapacitating agents.... One of the anticholinergic
> compounds, 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate, was developed and weaponized in
> the 1960s as a new chemical agent for battlefield use as a
> psychochemical[64] and assigned the NATO code BZ...
>
>
>
So chemical agents have included both procholinergic and anticholinergic agents. If you took atropine (an anticholinergic) in anticipation of Sarin (procholinergic) exposure but you were instead hit by an anticholinergic agent, that agent would have synergy with atropine and you would get extra anticholinergic effect. Which might be tough on you. Or maybe you would have useful and educational visions.
[Answer]
This is a bit of a stretch, as it it won't kill *everyone* very quickly, but is *close* to your criteria (natural substances, antiA fixes A but exacerbates B). If you're okay with some very broad strokes and yada-yada-just-believable-enough attitude toward it, then you might be able to sneak by with this.
## Lethal Substance A: [Arsenic poisoning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenic_poisoning)
Really, any metal poisoning will do for our purposes, it's just that arsenic has been around and used for millennia. Arsenic is a naturally occurring metal. Long-term exposure can lead to serious health issues and complications. A large enough quantity in the short term can be used as a poison.
Copper would also work as a metal poisoning. Again, really any metal poisoning will do for this situation.
## Antidote for Metal Poisoning: [Penicillamine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillamine)
Penicillamine is derived from penicillin, which [has a long history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_penicillin) - penicillin is naturally found in molds, and even ancient Egypt, Greece, and India have documented histories of using fungi for the treatment of certain conditions. Although whether or not they were using those from the penicillin family is unknown, the penicillium family of bacteria are naturally occurring. Fermentation processes go back to ancient Egypt, so someone with know-how in a D&D universe could certainly ferment certain fungi to get penicillamine.
Penicillamine is used in metal poisonings. It's not a fun medication to take. Vomiting, diarrhea, etc. But in an emergency situation, if someone was poisoned with large amounts of copper or arsenic, they might prefer this to death. It's not an "antidote" per-se, but it will indeed treat the metal poisoning.
## Lethal Substance B: [Wasp Venom](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/pharmacology-toxicology-and-pharmaceutical-science/wasp-venom)
A single wasp sting is unlikely to kill you (unless you have a serious allergy), but just like metal poisoning - if someone were to extract enough into a consolidated substance, it would indeed kill you. Not that quickly, but probably painfully. For our purposes we'll focus on one aspect of wasp venom - it's [interaction with kidneys](https://www.kidney-international.org/article/S0085-2538(17)30602-6/pdf).
## Penicillamine <=> Wasp Interaction
There are no known cases of penicillamine interacting with wasp venom. I don't think anyone would dare try it. But penicillamine has a [long list of bad drug interactions](https://www.drugs.com/drug-interactions/penicillamine-index.html). It's not the thing you shove down your throat for kicks and giggles.
Note that penicillamine also has very [toxic reactions to renal and liver diseases](https://www.drugs.com/disease-interactions/penicillamine.html). In other words, if your kidneys aren't functioning well, penicillamine will have a drastically exacerbating effect on the harm to your kidneys, which could be fatal.
Because wasp venom, in enough of a quantity, will get into and cause damage to your kidneys (pretty quickly too), then penicillamine will have a drastically exacerbating effect on this. While penicillamine is making you puke and pee out metals, this dehydration and impact on your kidneys could probably knock you unconscious pretty quickly, and kill you shortly thereafter.
It's not the "instant" death you're looking for, and I don't foresee any scientific research being done into the interactions between wasp venom and penicillamine, but if you're okay with some broad strokes and yada-yada-ing over details, then maybe this will work for you.
[Answer]
Alcohol.
Ethylene glycol (found mostly in antifreeze, but could be obtained other ways) is harmful or fatal when ingested in large quantities. Ethyl alcohol is an effective antidote to glycol poisoning. Of course alcohol is easily obtainable as liquor of any kind, or sufficiently large amounts of beer.
However, alcohol [interacts badly](https://www.drugs.com/article/medications-and-alcohol.html) with a lot of medications. Most of these drugs are not as available as you may like, but caffeine and penicillin are on the list, and they are naturally occurring.
Unfortunately, these interactions may not be as deadly as you described, unless both drugs are taken in large quantities.
[EDIT] I didn't see that the second substance needs to be a poison too. Upon further research, I see that aspirin(totally naturally occurring as tree bark) interacts poorly with alcohol, but is not life-threatening. Unless it is in stupid quantities, though, at which concentrations it is already poisonous due to the blood thinning effect it has. If you can figure out how to get huge quantities of tree bark in a character, then this may work.
[Answer]
[*House*, first season, episode 5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_(season_1)#ep5) features two instances of this in a row:
>
> *When the antihistamines he gives her cause an asthma attack, House administers epinephrine, and she suffers a minor heart attack.*
>
>
>
I seem to recall there were other instances of *“Oh no, this drug we gave the patient has made them worse”* but it's been so long since I watched the series that this is the only one that springs immediately to mind.
[Answer]
So we have the killer, the victim, and the helpful but misguided bystander.
One way this could work is if V shows some symptom, K declares it's due to the wrong cause, prompting HBM to give a treatment that's lethal under the circumstances.
I see a way this could work. K gives a lung toxin that causes airways to close down, either toxic or allergic. This would cause shortness of breath, chest pain and possibly elevated blood pressure. If V & HBM had no idea, K could declare V was having a heart attack, which could prompt HBM to give propranolol (a beta blocker which can also cause airways to close in an asthma attack, but is appropriate treatment for a heart attack.) V stops breathing and dies dramatically.
Figuring out what killed V would require a really good pathologist unless drug B caused obvious and extensive lung injury, like mustard gas or inhaled corrosives-eg acid or lye. You could invent other lung toxins. Something could be added to a cigarette or something else that was deliberately inhaled.
The reason this works is shortness of breath is not specific to heart vs. lungs, and neither is chest pain, but treatments are very different.
Some chemotherapy drugs are lung toxic even if administered IV or orally.
<https://www.pulmonologyadvisor.com/home/decision-support-in-medicine/pulmonary-medicine/chemotherapy-related-drug-induced-lung-injury/>
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[Question]
[
So in my fantasy world, there exists a substance that (when applied to the surface of an object) repels water in the same way a very strong magnet would. This allows boats to hover above the surface of the water.
The people that use this substance are a small tropical island culture, and use their boats to hunt large creatures that can manipulate the water to defend themselves.
My question is this: what would be the optimal design for a boat that uses this substance in terms of balance, propulsion, and handling large waves? Assume pre-industrial technology, but any materials you’d like, since I haven’t nailed down that part of the world yet anyway.
[Answer]
Strangely enough, your boats aren't going to be THAT different from the boats we already have in terms of propulsion and wave handling. Balance is a completely different matter, but let's deal with each of these criteria one at a time.
**Propulsion**
You really have two options with your level of technology and they're the same options that everyone else had; oars and sails. Depending on how far above the water you sit though, oars are problematic because they have to be longer to get into the water meaning you need to be stronger to pull the oar. For open sea journeys this is an issue because putting the rowers close enough to the water to make oars effective is counter productive to being able to handle large waves, where you want high watertight 'walls' on the side of your boat (more on that later) so I'd stick with sails.
Sails could be managed by the people you describe technologically, especially as pre-industrial doesn't mean pre-science. There are plenty of examples in history of pre-industrial sailors who used sophisticated means to get their boats from one place to another in terms of both navigation and wind management so this is the best option. Just bear in mind, these kinds of large sailing vessels were a massive expenditure prior to industrialisation and they would be for your world as well.
**Large Waves**
Ultimately the best defence against high waves is high walls. On conventional ships, they sat very tall in the water (with massive ballast reserves in the hull to keep them upright) so as to survive high seas. Your floating boat will need the same walls, so your boat will still have a number of decks on it with walls on the side to stave off wave strike.
**Balance (and Navigation because they're related)**
These boats will have flat bottoms. It's that simple. You don't need to keep the boat from drifting in current because your boat floats above it in the first place, so there's no need for deep hulls. You'll need keels (and rudders) though, because the sails are only part of the propulsion equation in that boats actually rely on some resistance against the hull to change direction. Rudders for instance need contact with the water to reorient the boat. So, your boat probably has a large rectangular square bottom to maximise the repulsion area against the water, hence maximising the balance of the boat. BUT, it also has a series of long keels that dip into the water (not coated with the repulsive material) that help with steering, and at least some of these will be on swivels that can be controlled from within the boat for steering as a rudder. Ideally, these would be on the outer edges of the flat surface to preserve stability, like a catamaran.
As Aron points out in comments, this may not work. Certainly, the resistance that a keel can generate is minimal by comparison to a hull, so the idea that you could successfully do anything other than use a rudder like control surface is in doubt and as such, should be taken as speculative.
So, your boat would look like a very large floating bathtub, with keels and sails below and above it respectively. That will allow it to balance, survive high seas, and move & navigate on the open sea.
[Answer]
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7d2qA.jpg)
Alright I think a flat hull will be by far the most stable design. You want a constant repelling force and a flat wide hull gives you stability against waves. At the same time you do want a somewhat high front against waves.
## A
A tall front to steer against waves. This also gives you a vantage point to engage your prey with if they're large enough. Obviously this comes equipped with a railing, in fact your whole boat will be.
## B
Back/front view. A wide flat hull for stability with a high railing on the main deck.
## C
I was considering using your water repellent for some sort of ingenious propulsion mechanic before I realized you need to push that down in the water with more force then the boat weights. But maybe it will inspire you or someone else to make it work with some force multipliers.
## D
An upgrade could be extra hulls not unlike a catamaran. The idea being you place those far and wide to give addition stability against waves from the sides. This will require some very strong water repellent to work. Extra strength by joining them with the mast against the central line of the ship.
## E
Sails will be your best propulsion system. With no contact with water you should be able to get some frightening speeds.
Now for more specific details I turn you to regular ship design. You might want more storage space then a single space between your hull and the main deck. You probably want regular rudders in the back to aid with steering your vessel, regular rudders should work, uncoated. You might want multiple sails, again regular sources on sail design should have you covered.
[Answer]
I'd think about it completely differently than a boat.
It's true that *sailing* would be impossible since it's been pointed out that sailing relies on the resistance of the hull in the water to navigate effectively. But that's not true for *aviating* like you might do in a balloon, which is essentially what you have. You have a flying craft that simply flies very close to the ground.
You haven't specified how far above the surface the craft would hover, but I'm assuming that it's at least a meter (~3ft) so that it can get over most of the mundane waves and swells. Your technology level doesn't really allow for using fans like a zeppelin or blimp would use to steer, but you could still navigate just like a hot-air balloonist or glider pilot would.
Like the Polynesians, your civilization would be familiar with ocean and wind currents, but with a bias towards the wind aspect as that's the strongest form of propulsion you'll use. Knowledge of the ocean currents would mostly only be useful for tracking prey.
As far as the design of the craft, it should definitely get wider as it goes down into a large flat base for the repelling material. Water would just stream off it down the sides. You can use sails or even kites, balloons or parachutes to grab the wind and pull you along. Control surfaces like wings and tails on airplanes help you steer. Remember, you're in the air not on the water. As long as you can keep your means of moving and navigating intact, your craft should survive just about anything.
As other answers suggest, the wider base will provide stability and since you have basically a sink proof material lining the bottom it won't really matter if the craft is totally swallowed by a wave. As long as the bottom is heavier than the top, the craft will rise back up from underwater. Maybe some kind of air bladder/attic area(s) sealed into the upper/highest parts of the ship. As long as your decks drained you could temporarily be fully submerged and probably come out ok.
[Answer]
For the sake of concision, I'm going to refer to the anti-water magnetic coating as *AWMC*. **I'm assuming that AWMC is polar, that it can be turned off or directed, or that the repulsion is significantly stronger on one side, since otherwise the crew wouldn't be able to go near once it was applied** (humans being mostly water). I'm also assuming that the AWMC resistance force is quite powerful.
The **optimal hull design is to stick to regular hull designs** just with a thin layer of AWMC that functions as frictionless coating + waterproofing.
**The real genius is using AWMC for propulsion**, since it's been shown by our resident sailors and kayakers that traditional forms of naval propulsion require friction/resistance. Introducing... the WHIFFLE MOTOR (patent pending)!! In its simplest form, the whiffle motor is a board with holes poked in it and AWMC applied to the back side. When it's first dropped into the water, the board generates thrust by resisting the water, but this creates a vacuum/pressure gradient in the water, most strongly right at the transition point where water comes in through the intake holes.
Water is pulled in by the gradient and then pushed backwards by the AWMC coating, and the cycle begins.
Better designs streamline the overall setup so that the most water possible is pushed backwards the most evenly, thus generating the most even and powerful thrust.
*In my unprofessional opinion, the best designs probably would probably look like a jet engine or turbofan engine*, making it so that water only comes in from the intake and all the water is ejected in a smooth stream.
Steering is now a question of having some lesser boards that can be angled more freely.
**Basically, you now have spacecraft in a roughly 2D plane**. Speed is limited by the direct resistance that water provides to being pushed apart, so you don't get to go stupidly fast just with a basic WHIFFLE MOTOR (patent pending).
[Answer]
**Super surfboard.**
In answers so far the water repulsion has been considered a sort of ultrafloatation. Really, though, this tech would be super useful for propulsion. Imagine a surfboard. Only the back is treated - possible at an angle, not parallel to the water surface. The treated back repels water and so rides higher. One would have exactly the same effect with a regular surfboard if the back were physically higher than the front which is the case where you are on a wave. The net effect of the vectors is to push the board forward.
With this water repulsion tech, the surfboards will move forward even on still water. Because the mid to front of the board is in the water, one can still use friction of the board against the water to steer just as with a regular board. A skeg or keel could still be on the board to improve maneuverability - just don't treat that with repulsion tech.
The main benefit of this application of the water repulsion tech is awesomeness. It will not be like a bunch of dudes hunched in a Teflon whaleboat. It will be more like Mongols on horseback - but faster. The party surfing out from shore at sunrise will be cool as can be. If there are waves (maybe created by the water creature?) they can do some regular surfing too. They will hang ten with their harpoon lassos. It might even be possible to surf right up onto the sea creatures.
[Answer]
Another way to use this magic substance for propulsion comes to mind, extrapolating on Willk's answer: A stone or piece of wood, with a hole bored through, and some of the substance smeared around the opening on one side would make a handy no-fuel water rocket, especially if it was put coaxially inside a tube of bamboo or something to direct the water flow.
You'd start the torpedo by sticking the front end into the water and pushing it down until a jet of water starts shooting out the back, and then lower the whole shebang into the water.
Basically I'm thinking of a ramjet-type operating principle, the water comes in pressurised to an extent by the intake shape and is vaporized by the cavitation effect after coming out of the stone nozzle, since under water the ring of well-placed magic substance (and it's toroid-shaped anti-water field) creates a no-water area right after the nozzle, leaving a small "hole" in the middle of the nozzle where the field is the weakest. There's more room in the exhaust section of the tube for the expanded vapor to escape, and less pressure, so the vapor escapes that way, creating suction for bringing in new water through the nozzle.
I don't know if this is really feasible give *only* a water-repelling magic substance, but sounds plausible enough for a magic-using world.
As a bonus, the question absolutely brings to mind the hydrophobe wizards of Krull from The Colour of Magic :)
[Answer]
Depending on the sea conditions, you might be able to do something interesting with waves. Ignoring wind and air resistance for a moment, a craft like this will tend to slide down a wave, so if you are going the same way as the waves then propulsion is very simple. If you combine this with a sail then you could, if you are clever enough, use the difference in wave and wind movement to control your direction.
The Wandering Albatross [does something like this](https://movementecologyjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40462-018-0121-9) to glide without flapping its wings. Your islanders are not going to do exactly that, but they will probably have related techniques. The simplest thing would be to use a sail to move sideways along a wave, using the trough of the wave a bit like a keel, thereby going to the left or right of the wind and wave direction. I don't think you could tack like this though.
[Answer]
A couple of notes on my approach to this before we begin the main design specs.
1. I'm assuming the coating only repels free water, not the water in the bodies of the people in the boat.
2. A mass of water equal to the mass of the vessel will be displaced from below the vessel. Whether the vessel is in contact with the water or not doesn't change this. In practice exactly the same rules of buoyancy apply as to a normal boat, if you fail to displace sufficient volume of water for the mass of your vessel, it will still sink. It will sink in a little bubble of repelled water, but it will sink.
**Start with a dragonboat**, they're beautifully designed fast boats which take a lot of people. We're going to run this like a normal boat, hull in the water. Lightly coat the [gunwales](https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/gunwale) and inside of the hull with your hydrophobic substance. The most important factor in any boat is keeping the people inside and the water outside, this use of your magic coating will serve particularly well for this. No need to worry about waves washing over the side or enemies squirting water at you risking swamping or sinking your boat. It'll also make it significantly more comfortable inside for your (dry) paddlers.
**Add outriggers**, these are going to make full use of your magic coating. Full length, wide enough for a warrior to stand on and fully coated in your magic substance. These are going to act both for stability and as a fighting/hunting platform. They'll have a stabilising effect significantly greater than their mass and volume would normally allow for. What's going to surprise you here is that the greatest risk is making the outriggers *too* buoyant. To a certain extent they need to be overwashed as they hit waves independently of the main hull, otherwise the forces on them transmit negatively back to the hull, making the whole thing a lot more uncomfortable than it needs to be along with risking high stresses on their struts and breaking the whole thing up.
**Your magic substance** is used for stability, improved versatility and comfort, but not as a critical element. Controlling a boat is already a fine art, having the hull in the water makes the boat controllable, whether you choose to sail it, row it, or paddle it like a big canoe, boat control is about balance of forces. Once you start taking some of those forces out of the system you get an unbalanced equation and control becomes particularly difficult.
**Hull design isn't a simple game**, whether you choose hard or soft [chines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chine_(boating)), a "V" hull or flat bottom, carvel or clinker, daggerboard, centreboard or leeboard, fixed keel or lift keel, bilge keel or wing keel, all these things are significant, in most cases they're not compromises but deliberate design decisions fundamentally changing the boat for different purposes. If you fully coat the hull in your substance you take away all these options and leave yourself with at best a vague shapeless hull. Keep the boat in the water.
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Being able to aim your craft while sailing relies on balancing the forces of the wind with the forces you apply on the water.
The boat is long and narrow, and has much much more resistance to movement perpendicular to its hull than parallel. When you add a force from the sails, it lets you "lever" that wind force into force going the direction you want. In extreme "tacking" cases you are even sailing *into* the wind using its force to pull you towards it!
This means that naive designs won't work. A flat-bottomed boat will act more like a balloon than a ship, and will be tossed around by the wind in the direction the wind goes.
While keels can help, that keel needs to be reinforced against the forces and large enough to provide the force you need all alone; in effect you end up with a hull.
But not all is lost. Under newton's law, all forces generate equal and opposite reactions.
Make the ship long and narrow. Have it force a line into the water, actually shaping the water and forming an impression.
Going forward a relatively narrow section needs to be moved, while going sideways a much larger section of water.
So you'll want the ship to be shaped much like a hull; or, more accurately, so that the "virtual" hull around it caused by the repulsion field is shaped like a conventional hull.
Defence against waves acts similarly, except the shape we care about is the virtual hull instead of the hull. Note that "holes" in the virtual hull may be harder than holes in a hull if the effect radiates out in all directions.
If the "virtual" hull can be shaped without shaping the hull things can get interesting. Does the effect end when you leave line of sight? Then you could do interesting things with "covers" to turn off/on the effect.
Imagine a tube picking up water. It fills a chamber. Then the entry tube is closed, the repulsion field is "turned on", firing the water out the rear. Then it is turned off, feeding more water into the chamber.
What more, the "hull" of the ship need not be solid. It could be a net of treated material held rigid in a frame. The virtual hull would be far smoother than the net, and would have no gaps.
Rowing could be done out holes in this "hull", extending through the virtual hull unopposed, and pushing against the water. The surface area of rowing would be larger than on a conventional ship, who is mostly limited by the water-air barrier around the ship.
The oars themselves could be treated with this substance and never themselves get wet. If you could cover up the effect, "oars" that permit that could be used for propulsion, generating an effect similar to the "jet" above.
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# Steam Propulsion
We normally think of steam as being an industrial age discovery. However the first "steam engine" was constructed in Roman times by Hero of Alexandra.
This should serve as the prototype of a simple steam based propulsion system, whereby a large steam boiler is vented directly into the water behind the vessel. Giving a good turn off speed, but limited range and manoeuvrability.
After a few centuries of trial, error and explosions, people will discover the...
# Valveless Pulse Jet
This is much lighter than the Steam "rocket" engine and much smaller and cheaper to produce. This allows it to be mounted similar to an outboard engine.
The disadvantages of it include loud noise (all users of this tech would be deaf, 140dB range), being prone to exploding and an extremely bumpy ride.
<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_pop_boat>
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If this water propulsion is absolute (the substance cannot be made to come into contact with water at all), then wide craft would be the best bet to prevent tipping. If this substance is expensive, you can make a catamaran or trimaran hull.
For propulsion, you could use sail with keel and rudders in the water. Steering will still be a bit dicey (think putting a sail in a Frisbee (round plastic toy for those who aren't old enough to have seen one) on a flat icy lake. You'll spend almost as much time going sideways as going forward.
Another option is to dip a non-repulsing scoop into the water and have it fall into a tube with a sloghtly angled piece of the substance capping off the front end. that will drive the water out the back end of the tube. Add tubes until you have the propulsion you need. Note that you need to have some tubs of water on deck to start the ship moving. If you go this route, have the tubs created by some guy named Bussard.
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I think that if your material is not a coating, but a kind of magnet (so that a ship is kept in suspension by an array of at least 4 of them), the hull of the ships should be studied much more like a building rather than a ship (think that it would have pillars where the magnets are located), and anyway it should be much lighter that a ship.
This is because a surface floating on the water could support much more weight than one suspended in the air (think a large raft with a heavy weight in the center: would it be more likely to break if it is floating on water or if it is kept raised by four pillars at its vertices?). So, it would be built so that all the weight is somehow distributed onto the magnets, because if the weight is loaded among them, they would risk to break down.
This would probably limit the size and total weight of the ship, even in consideration that the more massive the ship, the more difficult it will be to manoeuver it (because of the lack of lateral friction with water, you will need more force to counteract its inertia).
About the propulsion, as other answers point, in some conditions the magnets could be used to move and steer the ship. If it is possible to shield the water-repulsive effect, I think that placing a shielding on the sides of some of the magnets, and orienting them in diagonal, the resulting force would have components both normal and tangential with respect to the surface of water, allowing to move and not only to float.
Of course, I don't know how it could be explained in terms of energy conservation (maybe the magnets discharge with the use?)
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I do have an idea, however it does not exactly fit the description of pre-inductrial tech, or at least I do not think it does.
The ship could be able to instead of using a sail using a wind turbine to harness the power of the wind at a much higher efficiency to work on a geared shaft that turns a propellor. The turbine itself would be a vertical axis wind turbine similar to this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pbZDv.png)
Now what this would do is create a vessel capable of sailing in any direction, because it can capture the wind from all angles. Simply because the blades face in all directions. It would also allow you to sail directly into the wind and in fact it would be strongest when sailing up or downwind because of it's omnidirectional (on a 2D plane) nature. It also would be able to better harness gusty winds than a horizontal bladed turbine. It has an advantage over saild in the fact that it isn't adversely affected by storm conditions and doesnt get damaged as easily since it's not a fabric that can tear, its most likely metal or wood.
You could use it to power some sort of catamaran for maximum speed and stability. And as the technology of your society advances you can create some forms of electric storage.
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[Question]
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Schism of 1054, also called East-West Schism, event that precipitated the final
separation between the Eastern Christian churches, led by the patriarch of Constantinople, and the Western church. Tensions had been building up to this event, due to the constant theological disputes in the east, as well as Rome's continuing insistence on being the head of christendom. This ultimately led the Bishop of Rome and the Patriarch of Constantinople to excommunicate each other.
Over the next few centuries, Rome became more powerful and rich. Indulgences, outlandish and expensive buildings devoted to art, and offices being bought and sold led to an increasingly decadent church. This ultimately culminated into another schism, when various churches broke off from Catholicism.
I would like history to play out differently for this setting. The eastern and western churches never splintered, but remained unified into the 20th century. The Bishop of Rome would maintain a similar standing with his brother patriarchs, but would be considered 1st among equals. In this way, Rome's power would be kept in check and prevent the rise of Protestantism. How can I make this result come to pass?
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I'd like to throw in my two cents, since it relates to something that I've been thinking about for a while. The primary idea, in my view, (which has been touched on but not in detail) is **ensure that the job of church leader (at any level) is not especially lucrative**. If your bishops and popes and clergy and such lead the church because they love it, then they should be able to settle differences.
**Power corrupts. Money corrupts.**
As a Protestant Christian myself (with lots of Catholic friends) I can say that church leadership *almost always* remains clean of wrongdoing and/or division **until money and power come with their roles**. That attracts a bunch of politician types and narcissists (but I repeat myself).
So create some sort of adversity against the church (you have a lot of options that have already been mentioned - and then some!) that keeps it from wielding economic and political power.
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I would have [Alexios IV Angelos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexios_IV_Angelos) die in infancy. Without him, the [Fourth Crusade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Crusade) doesn’t capture and sack Constantinople, the eastern and western churches don’t distrust each other so much, and the theological compromise of the [Second Council of Lyon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Council_of_Lyon) is accepted to allow the eastern and western churches to remain in communion with each other. In our history, the compromise was accepted by the Byzantine Emperor but rejected by the people because of the events in the Crusade seventy years earlier.
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**AD 850: Muslim conquerors enter Rome.**
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1: 476: The end of the Western Roman Empire. Rome remains important for Christians.
2: ~540: The Byzantine Emperor Justinian (527-565) presides over the ecumenical councils that divide governance of the Christian church into 5 sees – Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. Under this system, Constantinople was second only to Rome.
3: ~650-750. The Byzantine empire loses Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem to the Muslim caliphates. In our timeline, the isolation of Constantinople by the forces of Islam allowed Rome to grow without interference, taking precedence in continental European matters. This led to the ability of Rome to later challenge Constatinople in matters of church governance, ultimately leading to the spilt the OP wishes to avoid.
4: 827 Muslims enter Sicily. This is the point where our timelines diverge.
5: In the new timeline, the muslims proceed into Italy, adding it to their empire. Italy becomes like Spain. The muslims allow Christians to practice their religion but the Pope is too much like a king and he is deposed. As with the Christian centers in the other sees now governed by muslims, Rome retains its status as a center of the religion but never grows in power.
6: Constantinople is the remaining center of Christianity under Christian rule. However, Louis the Pious, son of Charlemagne is the Holy Roman Emperor. As happened in our timeline, his forces stop the further spread of Islam into Europe. With Rome out of commission, remaining Christian sites in continental Europe grow in importance – Aachen, capital of the Holy Roman Empire and also Canterbury\* in England and later Kiev and then Moscow in Russia.
Christianity remains established in Europe, but now with Constantinople the last remaining center of Christian civilization. Rome returns to Christian rule centuries later, humbled. The decentralization of power and lack of a Pope means that Christianity forward follows the Eastern model of a confederacy of semiautonomous regions.
\*thanks @Mike Scott for correction; see comments.
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I responded to Mike Scott's answer to prevent the 4th crusade by having Alexios IV Angelos die as a child with:
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> It would be better to have his uncle Alexios III Angelos die in infancy or young adulthood and never usurp the throne in the first place, thus giving Alexios IV no need to seek outsiders to overthrow Alexios III. That would eliminate the 4th crusade just as well and also eliminate 8 years of rule by Alexios III.
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(Note 01-13-2019. Alexios III is blamed for squandering the imperial treasury and leaving the government unable to find the money that Alexios IV promised the Crusaders, thus leading to their second siege of Constantinople and takeover.)
What would be better still would be if Andronikos I gets executed for treason sometime in the reign of Manuel I and never usurps the throne in 1183, and thus is never overthrown by Isaac II Angelos in 1185 who thus is never overthrown by Alexios III Angelos in 1195, thus preventing the 4th crusade, the reign of terror of Andronikos, and 20 years of misrule by Angelos Emperors.
Added Jan 13, 2019 And the change could happen earlier for even better effects.
1) Prevent the defeat at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, thus leaving the eastern Roman Empire much more powerful than it was at even the height of the Komnenos Dynasty about 1175, let alone in 1203/04, and thus a much less tempting target for the 4th crusade. And it should certainly be rich enough to pay the 4th crusaders everything that Alexios IV promised and send them on their way to the holy land.
2) Or Manzikert happens and also Alexios I Komnenos never becomes emperor in 1081. The Seljuk Turks continue to conquer Asia Minor and then begin to conquer lands in Europe about 250 years before the Ottomans did. The situation becomes desperate and the eastern emperors force the Patriarchs of Constantinople to end the schism with Rome in order to make getting help from western Europe easier.
3) Prevent the church reform movement in the west in the 10th and 11th centuries, since many reformers sought to make the Catholic Church and the Pope the secular ruler of Europe and the world. This would prevent crusades and power-hungry popes.
4) Keep Venice part of the eastern Roman Empire and too dependent to ever lead a crusade against Constantinople.
5) Prevent the Lombard invasion of Italy and the Slav invasions of the Balkans in the 6th and 7th centuries, thus leaving the eastern Roman Empire in firm control of Italy and Rome, and preventing the Patriarch of Rome from becoming any more powerful than the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, or Alexandria.
6) Prevent the Arab-Islamic conquests in the 7th century, thus keeping the eastern Roman Empire larger and more powerful and less likely to be a target of western adventurers.
7) Prevent the great Plague in the reign of Justinian and/or the Ostrogothic resistance under Totila (reigned 541-552) that devastated Italy. Thus the Empire as a whole will be more powerful and able to hold onto Italy, and Italy will be much more desirable for the Empire to hold onto, and the Patriarchs of Rome will never get much political power or influence or cause any schisms with the Patriarchs of Constantinople.
I think that a combination of one or more of these should prevent the Catholic-Orthodox schism.
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* **Charlemagne's Empire does not splinter**
The successors to Charlemagne keep the Empire united, even growing slightly, and get into a power struggle with the Papacy in Rome. The emperors of the *Holy Roman Empire* win and make Rome one of their capitals. The Pope has much less temporal power and becomes less political. The doctrinal differences are papered over because a split would cost the Papacy too much of the remaining power.
* **Constantinople falls early**
The obvious one, if Constantinople is overrun and Christianity becomes a more-or-less-tolerated minority, they will not be in a position to cause a schism. Minor doctrinal differences are papered over because the Patriarchate is busy with survival.
* **The Crusades come early and Jerusalem holds**
Christianity is sufficiently united and organized that religious orders and lay knights from the West, *together with those from the East*, manage to defend Jerusalem. This is an ongoing struggle over centuries, putting warriors from all parts of Christianity into battle next to each other.
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I am sorry to report that none of these lesser proposals would succeed. There is no juncture point to prevent the schism or the Protestant Reformation (and both must be prevented for a unified Church). These were driven with overwhelming power because they had their roots in the corruption of the Catholic church.
Here are the hitpoints. You must change all of them or the schism will happen, probably not where it happened but it will surely occur.
* In the second century, Pope Victor I must not attempt to excommunicate Polycrates. We note this attempt failed but set the precedent that such a move was possible which Pope Leo IX. Today we have better wisdom and another church may share a building with a Seventh-day Adventist church.
* The Popes must not gain the power to install kings.
* The attacks on communion by Leo of Ochrid must be stopped.
* Pope Leo IX must not claim Papal Authority over the archbishop of Constantinople in 1054.
* Pope Leo X must yield to Martin Luther in 1520 over the practice of the sale of indulgences.
* The Catholic church must yield to William Tyndale in 1526 over the teaching of the Bible in the native tongue and furthermore must yield the authoritative text is in Greek not Latin.
What is not on the list: the debate of subtle meaning that broke the council of Florence. I'm not even sure the translation from Latin into English is correct. One side or the other had to be proclaiming a false teaching but the level of damage appears survivable.
The debate over celibacy must be settled, but if it settles in favor of local control that would work well enough.
Many of the other plays for Power by the Popes simply cannot exist if the Pope does not have the authority to override the other archbishops. In particular, this would end up meaning Constantinople, as the other three archbishops would play only a minor role through the rest of history.
Each of these hitpoints is pointed at the same thing, limiting the power and the potential of corruption of the Pope. The first one could be patched elsewhere, but has to be patched somewhere. The second makes the Pope not a target for the Germanic Emperors. The last two limit the corruption to a tolerable level, and kind of permit the Protestant reformation to win without actually breaking the authority of the Pope. The teaching of the Bible in the native tongue would permanently check the power of the Church from that point as corrupt misbehavior is open for all to see and oppressing the people becomes all the more stupid, as they will cry out to the monarch and the monarch will interfere.
If you chose instead hitpoints such as defeat Martin Luther or William Tyndale early, you will simply cause other champions to rise after. William Tyndale actually *lost* in 1526 but shortly thereafter king James rose up and ordered his work completed. If you patch out Martin Luther's lightning bolt, another champion will appear in his place and another and another until his work is done.
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A silly possibility that should be familiar to anyone who's been on /r/CrusaderKings recently: Charlemagne, rather than allow himself to be crowned Holy Roman Emperor, decided that a better way to address the issues with a woman at the head of the Byzantine Empire would be to swear fealty to Irene, bringing his whole chunk of Western Europe under actual Roman control, and to then make a bid for the throne himself, eventually leading to something that could approximate the Roman Empire of old and giving the Pope no opposite side from it to choose.
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[Question]
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How plausible, or implausible, would it be for a lineage of birds' feathers to evolve into sharp, hardened plate-like scale armor (and/or blades), comparable to that of [pangolins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangolin)? And if it is plausible, which ecological niches would these birds be best suited to fill?
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## There is no reason it couldn't evolve, but what are its limitations and niche?
The bird would almost certainly be **flightless**. Flight is precluded because in order for the armor to be effective it has to be strong, and dense. Stronger armor means heavier scales, and heavier scales means flight will be increasingly difficult to accomodate. This is kind of a one or the other scenario. In order for the scales to effective the flight part of this animal has to be sacrificed.
If we aim for a middle ground of keeping both adaptions then neither adaption (flight, or armor) will be effective. In the scenario of having both adaptions, evolutionary pressure would probably favor reverting back to flight since it is a smaller change. See [Occam's razor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor).
This bird's wings would probably be [vestigial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestigiality) and destined to disappear. This is because the wings would serve no practical purpose anymore, except perhaps as implements with which to manipulate objects.
Since this is a flightless armored bird, the most obvious niche for it to fill is that of other flightless birds like the [chicken](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_junglefowl), or [Cassowary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassowary). However something that has evolved the necessity for armor plating must also have an overwhelming **threat** from **predators** that would make the other two types of morphology unfeasible. Otherwise the adaption would never evolve because presumably these other two morphologies are easier to reach. All these factors will shape its [niche](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_niche).
I surmise that you will find this kind of bird somewhere isolated, where predators are highly prevalent. It will occupy a space that other birds cant because they are killed too often for a population to survive in that place. However in this niche the armored plates of our new breed of bird will protect it from these threats. In this space, the armored bird may be the only bird around, and less armored variants struggle; otherwise the evolutionary pressure will be to lose the armor. One suitable habitat is an island infested with cats and leopards, and snakes, and bird eating spiders, and so on. Heavy armor is a necessity, rather than a luxury.
This species can be [endemic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endemism) to that island, and so be found no where else on the planet.
**Edit #1:**
Isolated islands are a good contender for exotic adaptions like armored birds for the following reasons. The space is often limited; [Competition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_(biology)) is very high; and escaping unfavorable circumstances by looking for new habitats is not always possible. These limitations can lead to an [Evolutionary Arms Race](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_arms_race), specifically the [Red Queen's Race](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen_hypothesis); which is one possible cause of a highly specialized adaption like armor.
In an **Evolutionary Arms Race** a predator evolves to hunt its prey more effectively, and its prey evolves to survive more effectively in response. As a basic example, a predator that evolves to be faster in order to catch its prey may cause the prey, in order to survive, to evolve to be even faster. Now that the prey is faster, the predator now again evolves to be (even) faster in order to catch this faster prey. When this happens the prey evolves again to be even faster so it can escape, and so on. This goes on and on in a loop until eventually both the predator and prey are absurdly and implausibly fast; far beyond what we would expect under normal circumstances. In this way an Evolutionary Arms Race can lead to wildly exaggerated traits like heavy armor and other defense mechanisms. One real world example of an Evolutionary Arms race is this [toxic newt](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/3/l_013_07.html).
An isolated island is a good contender for this situation because resources are limited. The only prey available to this island's predators may be this one armored bird. So both species may get locked into a race that neither can escape. For example leopards on our island may get better at cracking armor, and our armored bird may evolve thicker and thicker armor in response, or get better at killing predators.
This is one situation that could lead to pangolin armored birds.
**Edit #2:**
*[RonJohn](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/8068/ronjohn) makes an excellent point about the evolution of natural armors in the comments, that I would like to highlight here:*
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> Note … that feathers just can't evolve into armored scales unless
> there's an evolutionary path. ... there is a reasonable path from feathers --
> made of keratin -- to armor made of keratin just like the [pangolin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangolin).
> You just need more of the same thing packed/woven closer together.
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[Answer]
Tyler S. Loeper has an excellent answer about the "how" of adaptations, so I will focus on the "why".
The need for protection implies some sort of threat, but it need not be the threat of predation against the birds themselves, since, as pointed out, readapting for flight is far easier and more efficient (flying provides access to safety, other food sources and other ecological niches to exploit).
I will suggest armouring is appropriate for large, ground dwelling predatory birds, like the *[Phorusrhacids](https://infogalactic.com/info/Phorusrhacidae)*. The "Terror Birds" evolved their large size and ground speed to occupy the niches once filled by theropod dinosaurs, (which makes sense, since they are actually descendants). In a timeline where South America does not join with North America, both the Phorusrhacids and their prey will evolve in a mutual arms race. Some herbivores will eventually develop horns or antlers, and defensive strategies like moving in large herds, becoming very aggressive or forming circles around the young and vulnerable when threatened. Predatory birds will adapt to overcome this, and one or more species may well evolve feathers into armour to protect them when going in close to their prey.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UW06u.jpg)
*Phorusrhacid on the hunt*
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Feathers are thought to be derived from modified scales in some of the ancient dinosaurs from which birds are derived.
So having feathers that turn into scales would be the same path in a different direction. However this is entirely possible. If you consider that nails are modified hair, it's not unthinkable that the feather's implementation plan could be altered to give a more compact structure.
Such a bird would have no ability to fly, though. I imagine they would be some sort of reinforced kiwi, rummaging the ground in forests where they can easily find shelter and find nutrition. Basically a two legged pangolin...
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Maybe not all you'd hoped for (other answers seem to assume you want a bird armored from beak to talons,) but **I can see a bird developing armor on the leading edge of its wing, or at least a portion of the leading edge of the wing**.
There are already species of bird which like to use their wings as bats (looking at you, Canada ~~devils~~ Geese.) Furthermore, many types of predatory bird species rely on a powerful diving assault as part of their hunting strategy (like a Peregrine falcon.) *It's quite feasible that a bird which likes to divebomb or bash would develop some hardened scales/armor in a location where they can be used to concentrate the force of a crushing blow*.
I don't know how seriously this would change their aerodynamics... *the extra weight would definitely be a huge penalty on their speed and maneuverability* in the air, but I imagine that a small plate of armor wouldn't completely prevent them from flying.
Alternatively, the patch of armor could be a trait only found on males, who use this armored section in their fights with other males during mating season.
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So I just did some research and calculations, and I've found that an eagle with scales similar in thickness to a carp's scales would still be able to fly efficiently. I'm not going to link the six sites it took me to gather all the necessary info, nut the calculations come out to something like the weight of scales would equal 1/4 the eagles maximum carrying weight, assuming a larger than average eagle in terms of surface area, with a lower than average carrying weight.
Luckily, feathers are basically just very very very thin armor, with the quill of the feather being hard enough to be useful. If we imagine a bird whose quills become thicker and the rest of the feather hardens, we can get scales with minimal impact to the structure of the bird.
Now this bird has a ton of sharp hardened feathers, just imagine how it would rip and shred non armored birds or other non armored creatures just by flapping or beating it with its wings. Combined with sharp talons and beak, there isn't a single spot on this bird you'd want to be on the wrong end of.
But why would an eagle sacrifice a portion of its range and lifting ability in order to gain scales? Well, I imagine a new very aggressive species of bird which form small flocks and steal prey from predators by driving them off. If the eagle tries to take the food with it, they fly up and attack it from behind. But with its large wings it can beat back these birds and eat the food where it is. However, sitting still is a disadvantage for birds, so armor is a relatively cheap way to both defend its back from the new birds and also mitigate ground threats. Plus, armor converts its body into an additional weapon, its wings becoming not just powerful but also dangerous.
But say, if it cant carry as much wait for as long, isn't that a disadvantage? Well sure, but eagles are amazing gliders. It simply carries its prey or stick high into a tree, and then rests on a branch. When it takes off it can fly up a bit higher and then slowly glide down, basically falling with the weight but across a large horizontal distance. If it needs to rest it can always perch on the top of a tree.
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[Question]
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In *[Tarzan the Terrible](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarzan_the_Terrible)* Edgar Rice Burroughs introduces the Gryf which is a Triceratops that survived extinction and has since evolved to become carnivorous.
It *may* be possible that ERB believed that the Triceratops has always been a carnivore, but I do not think so.
In any case, is such an evolutionary change remotely feasible?
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Over a relatively long period of time, **yes, it is feasible**.
In fact, it most likely happened to our own ancestors. Our far flung ancestors were tree dwellers related to (ancient) chimpanzees. When they eventually descended from the trees and started walking across Africa's vast savannas they discovered that surviving as vegetarian scavengers is pretty tough going - especially when the competition has no such restrictions. They slowly became omnivorous. (this is obviously a trivialized version, please don't spam me with messages about my "ignorance")
In fact, modern chimpanzees also eat meat:
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> "When Jane Goodall first observed wild chimpanzees hunting and eating meat nearly 40 years ago, skeptics suggested that their behavior was aberrant and that the amount of meat eaten was trivial. Today, we know that chimpanzees everywhere eat mainly fruit, but are also predators in their forest ecosystems."
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This is due to a simple evolutionary imperative: **survival**.
When a species limits itself to a certain diet it becomes vulnerable to the availability of that one food source. Should you move too far away from where those plants and fruits grow, you're going to starve. Should some disease or climate change wipe those plants out, you die.
However, if you *also* eat meat then you always have a high-energy food source to fall back on (assuming you can effectively hunt down some dinner).
And so, yes. If a certain herbivorous species found itself hard pressed for food, it it feasible that it might slowly convert to an omnivorous diet, and eventually maybe even to full-out carnivorous behavior.
However, this evolution might hit certain road-blocks, some of them fatal to the species. The animals in question must be able to hunt down some sort of food, must be able to rip into it, and then process (digest) the meat into useful nutrients. If the animal's digestive tract is 100% geared towards the very efficient processing of plant matter it is *far less likely* to be able to process meat. Its immune system might also not be able to deal with the various parasites and diseases it might ingest from its prey. There's probably a lot more considerations at play, however dinosaurs lived so long ago, and we know so little about their biology and physiology that you could probably get away with it.
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Edit based on PipperChip's comment:
I never suspected that deer, and even *cows* actually eat meat. The reason for my surprise is that both deer and cows have digestive systems which are highly specialized with the aim of digesting plant matter and extracting as much nutrition from it as possible.
And yet, deer have been seen to feed on dead birds, fish, even other deer. Both deer and cows have been witnessed eating birds.
I found this sort of shocking because we all have this mental picture of deer and cows being benign vegetarian softies, however it makes perfect sense from a survival perspective.
>
> **Fun fact:** even as late as the early 1900's people did not think that there existed "man-eating fish" (aka sharks). Or, if a shark was found to contain the remains of a man it was believed that the man must have first died in some other way before the shark ate his dead body. Now we know better.
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[Answer]
It is actually much easier for an herbivore to become omnivorous and even carnivorous than to develop true herbivory in the first place. Tough plants like grass and stems are very hard to digest effectively and require a complex digestive system to do so, usually requiring a compartment for bacterial fermentation (fruit, which is intended to be eaten by animals, is easier). Digesting meat is comparatively easy and many herbivores, including deer and cows, will eat meat if they find it lying around and it's still fresh. Many deer will even kill and eat rabbits or birds on occasion if they aren't fast enough.
The reason why most herbivores don't eat meat as a regular part of their diet is because animals are harder to catch and kill than plants, and require different kinds of teeth to tear into the meat - but many herbivores are pretty good at running and fighting anyway, since they have to be in order to avoid predators.
An herbivore that becomes more aggressive to protect itself or its territory may frequently find itself nearby freshly-killed animals, and many of those aggressive herbivores will take the opportunity to eat the meat since it's there. Put a little environmental pressure on them, and it's only natural that some of them will start looking for prey to eat until meat becomes a regular part of their diet. As they diversify from their original species, they might forego plant eating altogether and become full carnivores.
[Answer]
**Not only can rapid diet evolution happen it already has**,
In only a few short decades [Italian Wall Lizards](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080421-lizard-evolution.html) changed their diet from a carnivorous diet into that of a herbivore,
now I know that this example is a conversion from meat to vegetation, it is explain that by only slowing the rate of digestion it was possible. If we apply this same evolutionary logic then by speeding up the digestive rate a herbivore should be able to change its diet, applying of course that it has no other choice.
[Answer]
In response to AndreiRom's answer (comments can't contain images, so I'll have to elaborate enough to make it an Answer. But first, the *reaction*):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lSENZ.jpg)
I'm *told* that [Pionus](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pionus) are omnivorous and can digest mostly the same things we can, including cooked meat. Cooking makes food easier to digest, essentially off-loading some of the work that the gut would otherwise have to do. Cooked food is far more "universal", useful even without specialized adaptations for that particular substance.
Some animals have specialized diets and can't live off anything else, or wouldn't consider trying to eat anything else other than (for example) a single species of algae.
But some animals are adaptive and learn about food sources, rather than being hard-wired with the behavior. Hence Diamond's interest in "what she's having", even though it's nothing he's ever seen before: food sources are *learned* and the instinct is to find new sources and see what works for others and copy that.
Now what kind of animals might survive in a "lost world", initially cut off from its normal food sources and living through changes in the ecosystem? Those that could eat whatever was available, and figure out new sources within an individual's lifetime rather than taking generations to evolve new instincts.
So, any animals you found that survived in a small isolated environment might be expected to have this property.
Note, however, that Diamond does not exactly look like his ancestors from 68 million years ago. Neither would the decendants of the ceretopcid as postulated! Changing the diet and lifestyle will be followed by changes in form.
Note, however, the similarity between triceretops and the modern rhinoceros. They are unrelated, but developed similar forms due to similarity in lifestyle. If you had a present day beast that looked a lot like a ceretopcid, it's as likely to have evolved from something else as to be an unchanged decendant.
So, after millions of years, something that is carnivorous would evolve a form that looks like a dog or cat or bear. Something that evolved into or maintained a form that is a classic herbivore would undoubtedly *be* an herbivore.
[Answer]
I saw a video of a cow eat up a chick that wandered too close to its grazing. I suppose all animals are omnivorous if they have the capacity to digest something, it is about eating and survival, eat anything you can. Most animals are designed by evolution to find and digest their food, carnivores to hunt, herbivores to avoid becoming prey and to digest vegetation (needs much more processing), which is why you don't usually see cows stalking prey, plenty of grass to go around so far. But by Mr. Evolution if some cows in a population had some slightly better physical ability to stalk prey and the grass all died they would survive better this way and the new population would be more like that, if it continued the population might evolve into bovine lions or die off, out of the gene pool.
[Answer]
Deltochilum valgum fro Peru is a dung beetle that has evolved to eat Millipedes. The papers on this are very well referenced on the web.
A journal paper that can be read free online is
Deltochilum valgum acropyge Bates (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae): Habits and Distribution
Enio B. Cano
The Coleopterists Bulletin
Vol. 52, No. 2 (Jun., 1998), pp. 174-178
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[Question]
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Suppose you have a planet-wide empire that has the benefit of [Ancestral Guidance](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/9932/what-consequences-would-ancestral-guidance-have). The empire has conquered the entire world long before it developed interstellar travel. There are no other inhabited planets around. However, the weapons keep evolving, about 500 years. Then they encounter aliens, and they're hostile.
Because of the many generations between the last war and the first skirmishes with aliens, there are no soldiers alive with firsthand combat experience. All soldiers that remain have only had their limited training. They have no combat experience, no memories of combat, not even parents or grandparents that fought in the last war, 500 years ago.
How can the army ensure that their soldiers are actually reliable in a fight, i.e. that they stay in the fight, that they know how to handle their equipment, and that they're killing enough aliens?
[Answer]
Ignoring ancestral guidance, I would focus on [war games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_exercise).
Many modern militaries have regular war games where units compete against each other or their allies. These can take many forms, from submarine hide and seek, to field exercises with paintball guns.
There's even some evidence that nuclear command units participate in war games and drills. It looks like their willingness to launch is put the test every so often. Given the moral and ethical implications of using nuclear weapons, governments want to be sure that their people will really "push the button" when the time comes.
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On the other hand "Ancestral knowledge" may change things a bit. If the majority of soldiers can be imprinted with the memories of long dead ancestors they may more or less inherit veteran status. This would probably help with developing a willingness to fight, bravery in the face of danger, and obedience.
That said training and war games would still be necessary simply because the weapons and tactics will have changed significantly since the last war.
[Answer]
>
> How can the army ensure that their soldiers are actually reliable in a
> fight, i.e. that they stay in the fight, that they know how to handle
> their equipment, and that they're killing enough aliens?
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In short...you can't.
If five hundred years have passed since the last war there are several problems you are going to face and I think the premise of the question is flawed in a couple ways. *(that's not to say the question is bad, if I didn't like it I wouldn't bother answering)*
* Military funding during peace time. Resources are focused where they are most needed. This would be especially true in a planet spanning empire. Running that large a government would be very resource intensive. If there is nothing to be gained by supporting a standing military force it won't be funded. At best a shell of command and specialists would be available when hostilities break out with aliens.
The US military is arguably the best in the world...and generally (Vietnam excluded) has enjoyed popular support. (if you want to argue ping me in chat)
With that in mind here is a [chart of defense spending](http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/defense_spending) for the US military in the 20th Century:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/53tm9.png)
Clearly during peacetime spending drops rather drastically, it did so especially during the era of *total* wars, which is the type of war it sounds like you are planning for. While well trained and experienced today, even the US military is not trained/manned/equipped for a total war.
**Your planetary government would not support a standing military, let alone a large well trained military during peace-time.** So experience is a problem yes, but having a large standing force trained in the basics is also implausible.
The **second issue** is military technology. Again, with no driver for development for over half a millenia odds are things have not progressed significantly. Perhaps technology has but its application for war and proven effectiveness just wouldn't be there.
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So...how are we going to fare against these aliens. Poorly, especially at first. The first few years (if the aliens take that long to fight us) are going to be very...very bad. It takes a lot of time to develop a military infrastructure. Factories have to be built, bases have to be built, people have to be recruited and trained, weapons have to be mass produced...and keep in mind this isn't the middle ages, you can't just hand a guy a spear and say *"Pointy end goes that way"*
Training pilots takes 3-5 years, advanced weapons systems can take months, tanks take a while as well.
**The inclusion of ancestral guidance would be helpful in training and operations.** If nothing else it provides a baseline and can help in the creation of training programs, but if tech advanced over five hundred years you are starting from scratch on weapons training.
[Answer]
**There is a very ancient and well respected technique for dealing with such situations**: *make it up as you go*.
If you lack experience fighting, it's going to be hard to be confident that you know what you are doing. This goes doubly-so for fighting aliens: most combat styles are developed to be effective against known enemies. You can do War Games and VR like others have suggested, but there's no substitute for putting boots on the ground and finding out what the real thing is like.
Of course, this attitude looks suicidal at first, so we're going to need to provide some focus. The empire should start off by trying to fight battle in locations where there isn't all that much to lose, physically, but fight battles which are rich in information about how the combat is going. Your goal is to buy time in the less valuable parts of the empire so that you have a crack squad of troops ready as the aliens push into the core of the empire.
I will note you have one advantage: you will have kung fu. Your description of how Ancestral Guidance would have a Chinese kung fu grandmaster salivating. They could not ask for a better medium to transfer their art, so you would absolutely have kung fu.
There may also be stockpiles waiting to help this fight. In Dune, the Great Houses all had their Family Atomics. By treaty, these were never used on each other. They were held in reserve to help combat any "alien intelligence" which invaded the empire.
[Answer]
I believe VR might be their best bet in this situation, if their tech is up to it. A helmet that gave you complete range of vision inside the simulation, as well as provided very realistic audio, and a suit that somehow provided tactile sensations based on what happened in the simulation (crawling through tall grass, something grabbing you, maybe even getting shot in the leg). Guns would be easy to simulate, but hand-to-hand weapons would be harder. They'd probably have to be both dull and somewhat soft, and could only be used against other people (as opposed to the AI inside the program).
This would let them test the soldiers against many different possible fighting styles and plans of attack that the aliens could use, since you could load any possible configuration you wanted. The fact that pain would be transmitted through the suit would probably be sufficient to get the soldiers used to it, and see if any would desert.
As for how the suit would work, it'd probably have to be some combination of electrodes and a device/material lets call mechanized rubber, that stretches or contracts based on what voltage you put across it (kinda like a muscle). The electrodes would provide the pain, and the mechanized rubber would simulate tactile feelings. It could contract and release very quickly to simulate an impact, or maybe contract very tightly and hold to simulate an injury. It might even be able to squeeze just slightly in specific places to simulate walking through tall grass or something.
The whole program would need to be housed inside some sort of huge gym, maybe with soft-ish wood structures everywhere, corresponding to where structures are in the game. As many video games have shown, there are a huge amount of possible types of fights you can have on even a small number of maps, so not very many of these gyms would need to be constructed.
[Answer]
## Simulation
This is entirely dependent on your level of technology, but a common trope is VR or neural combat simulations. The idea of this is to cover the areas of combat that cannot be taught in traditional training. As other answers pointed out, just a strict training regimen can do a lot to ensure proficiency with weapons, battlefield tactics, standard communications etc. What is harder to train is the psychological hardship.
However, with a little more technological advancement, people could "live" battles. This could be through immersive Virtual Reality, through neural manipulation, or in your case the Ancestral Guidance. Imagine syncing with a warrior ancestors memories to re-experience ancient battles first-hand. While the tech may be different, presumably the horrors and pressures of war are not.
For a great example, read some chapters from [Hyperion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_(Simmons_novel)) about the stim-sim training they do. Basically, military personnel have to re-fight famous battles through neural stimulation, and thus are conditioned to the hardships of battle.
## Military Tradition
Think Sparta. Even when there is no all-out war, if war is part of the culture it will stay prevalent. If societal worth or class standing are measured by proficiency with weapons, toughness, one-on-one combat, etc., then these things will remain skills. Clearly, this doesn't replicate a large-scale war, but the psychological toughness, killer instinct, respect for equipment, etc. will all stay key parts of society, at least among the elite.
For examples of this, consider ancient Sparta, or the culture of the Golds in [Red Rising](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Rising)
[Answer]
Others have said this but let me reiterate: You really don't keep a military well trained after that long. Some points though:
1. Some military units will still exist, but these will be purely ceremonial. Royal Guards and such. They have archaic/ceremonial weapons and are trained only in drill. Not using them in combat.
2. The REAL job of guarding the Sovereign (Emperor/Empress) will fall on a protection unit created for the job. This can be military, but most likely civilian/police. These WILL have weapons but will probably be limited to small arms and support weapons (anti-vehicle stuff). No heavy weapons at all (no artillery, very little armor, some aviation assets, some sea going assets, forget aircraft carriers/warships)
3. By far the largest armed formation on the planet is the Security Service. This depends on what kind of government you're envisioning of course. A totalitarian empire will have a large Security Service that include heavily armed riot police, secret police, counter insurgency forces, etc. A democratic government will have less. If you're building a utopian world, the security services would probably consist of volunteer constables with temporary powers activated only in times of need.
4. There will probably be a large, well trained, well equipped Emergency Service though. Firefighters, EMTs/Paramedics, and others. So keep these in mind as the conflict looms. They would have to play a major part, I think.
Having said that, if there is ancestral guidance, you can probably alleviate these a little. These Ancestors probably fought in real wars and have a good understanding of TTPs. How their experiences translate into fighting Aliens (who will likely have alien doctrine/TTPs) is up to you of course. For reference, maybe read up on some Warhammer 40k novels. They're not literary masterpieces, I know, but they show how human soldiers with human TTPs fight widely different races with their own doctrines.
Good luck!
[Answer]
## **Training**
Even with the capability boost of Ancestral Guidance, combat with aliens is going to far outside the capabilities or training plans. Drilling on the basics of weapon usage and coordination will be about the only thing you can do. A strong intelligence service and science division may help even the odds.
If the story contains any indication of the existence of aliens, then it's plausible to train your troops to match that threat. If not, then most likely the troops will have training plans intended to deal with known threats, the rebellions and family feuds cited by the OP in the comments.
While it's true that weapons may evolve over time and improve without evolutionary pressures, it makes me uneasy that weapons without strong pressure to improve would really improve all that much. For example, the competition between the USSR and the US had enormous impacts on the advance of technology, not just weapons.
[Answer]
Several good answers, I won't repeat them. Let me just add:
While the situation you describe is more extreme than any I can think of in recorded history -- absolutely no enemies for 500 years -- there have been plenty of times when a nation had periods of relative peace and so was not prepared when attacked. The U.S. was certainly not prepared to go to war at the time that either world war began, and that was after only a few decades of peace. The Byzantine Empire was not prepared to fight the Muslims. Etc.
As James points out, if this planet has had one world government with no enemies for 500 years, and they're not expecting an alien invasion, why do they have an army at all?
I guess you're assuming that they haven't had to deal with revolutions, that everybody on the planet is at least generally satisfied with the government. If there are periodic rebellions that the army has to put down, than the question goes away.
Since the idea of a standing army was invented, the routine solution to this problem is training and military exercises. Yes, this is highly flawed technique. Normally in training exercises the soldiers are not REALLY trying to kill each other, so the experience is far from the same as actual combat. And a classic problem of training exercises is, as the old saying goes, they prepare the troops to fight the last war instead of the next one. Years ago I read -- sorry, I can cite the source -- that France studied the lessons of World War 1 and built the Maginot Line. Germany studied those same lessons and developed the Blitzkrieg.
[Answer]
Robots.
But make them with real guns and none of that "protect humans" drivel.
They will have a kill switch if they start to gain real grounds on your army but other than that, they will have carte-blanche to exploit resources, design weapons, try to assassinate, conquer, enslave and terrorize humans.
You need an opponent with true malicios intent, unexpected strategies and respectable power. Anything else is a waste of time.
[Answer]
I would add one point - Remember that armies almost always are perfectly prepared... for the previous war they fought.
Take World Wars One and Two for example. The mechanisation of war fundamentally changed the way war was fought with the First World War, and the fast paced nature of change was one of the primary causes of the strategic and tactical stagnation faced by both sides.
With World War Two, the reason the Third Reich was able to take such vast amounts of land in such little time at the beginning of the war was that the allies simply were not prepared for the rapid pace of Blitkreig warfare.
Its the same throughout modern history.
Add in the difficulties covered by the other answers, and even extensively trained "VR" soldiers are going to be little match for unusual or strange tactics. How your soldiers perform from there is very reliant on how flexible they and the command structures that support them are.
[Answer]
**Sports and simulation**
Ritualize and adapt the combat into sports.
We've done this with a lot of sports. Many of the Olympic games got their start in war.
Whatever the preferred form of combat, find away to take elements and turn them into competition.
War games are another, where teams simulate real combat against each other.
And simulation, like VR, video games, etc.
You could even [design games to be used as recruitment tools](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Army) and training, with leagues and the like to provide structure and teach people to follow orders.
[Answer]
**Arrange for little rebellions**
Your peace doesn't have to be complete. This or that odd corner of the world might rebel now and then. These little wars provide nice laboratories in which to test weapons and tactics. They also are useful as crucibles in which to harden some troops from each generation.
In fact, little wars might be so handy that, if they don't arise spontaneously, it might be worthwhile to provoke them. Your secret police can identify malcontents, bring them together, and whip them up. Just keep them far away from the people with power.
Yes, it's a really cynical thing to do, not to mention expensive in lives and money. But ancestral guidance might make in plausible, and having an enemy to unite people against can be quite useful politcally.
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[Question]
[
**The Setting:**
I have an idea for a universe that, in an inversion to our own, is filled for the most part with matter in solid, liquid, gaseous or plasma form, while vacuum and degenerate matter is present but relatively rare as matter appears to be in our own universe.
This universe would contain many bubbles and tunnels of vacuum that would interpenetrate the matter, with less dense elements closer to vacuum than denser elements. Accumulation of matter would not for the most part lead to degenerate states, but degenerate matter may exist. Most of the matter present would be analogues of our elements, though variants may exist.
Matter may be stationary or moving relative to other matter, and matter whose centre of mass is not moving may or may not have spin.
This universe has four large spatial dimensions and two time dimensions, though the time dimensions behave as one for most purposes.
In adherence to the strong anthropic principle, this universe must be habitable by a species that is a four-dimensional analogue of humans.
**EDIT:**
I see this universe as being quite claustrophobic, with most of it being filled with solid and liquid matter, with twisting tunnels and bubbles containing gas, plasma and/or vacuum interpenetrating the volume the way stars are interspersed in the vacuum of **our** universe. These bubbles and tunnels would not remain static over time, but would move very slowly on a human timeframe.
**Edit 2:**
It is quite important that this universe be at least 95% filled with matter, of which at least 75% would be solid, the rest being in other states. It is also important that bubbles appear with at minimum the same approximate frequency as stars in our universe, or up to 100-fold greater frequency, and that the bubbles be connected by thinner tunnels, that should for the most part not be straight. Most of the bubbles and many of the tunnels should be supplied with some sort of light/heat source. A cyclical variation in illumination is also desirable, though this need not be constant.
**The Question:**
What set of physical laws could achieve this universe? These laws must be sufficient to simulate at least a section of the coarse structure and basic principles of this universe in a cellular automaton program, though they may be a simplified version - I'm not asking for the code or exact constants, just a basic description of how they could work.
In addition, to fill the requirements of the strong anthropic principle (this need not be simulatable), where does light and heat come from? How would day/night or light/dark cycles occur? How would the different elements occur, be synthesised and/or destroyed? How could 'earth'-quakes occur?
[Answer]
Let's build a universe.
To describe this universe, we need a [metric](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_tensor). I won't go into details about the precise definition - for more, see Wikipedia, as well as [Physics](https://physics.stackexchange.com/) and [Mathematics](https://math.stackexchange.com/). In this case, we need a metric of dimension (4 + 2) (i.e. four dimensions of space and two of time). This will be represented in a 6-by-6 matrix:
$$g=\begin{bmatrix} g\_{t\_1t\_1} & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\ 0 & g\_{t\_2t\_2} & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\ 0 & 0 & g\_{rr} & 0 & 0 & 0 \\ 0 & 0 & 0 & g\_{\theta\theta} & 0 & 0 \\ 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & g\_{\phi\phi} & 0 \\ 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & 0 & g\_{\varphi\varphi} \end{bmatrix}$$
This corresponds to a line element1 of
$$ds^2 = - dt\_1^2 - dt\_2^2 + dr^2 + r^2 (d\theta^2+ \sin^2\theta (d\phi^2+\sin^2 \phi d\varphi^2))$$
using n-spherical coordinates and a metric [signature](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_signature) of (-,-,+,+,+,+), which happens to be my personal preference. You can use (+,+,-,-,-,-), if you want.
That describes an empty, four-dimensional Riemannian manifold in 4-dimensional n-spherical coordinates. It's your universe. The problem is, there's nothing in it. For that, we turn to the [Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker (FLRW) metric](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedmann%E2%80%93Lema%C3%AEtre%E2%80%93Robertson%E2%80%93Walker_metric).
One of the beautiful things about the FLRW metric is that it's an exact, homogenous, isotropic perfect fluid solution of the Einstein Field Equations that can be used for modeling universes. Another beautiful thing is that it's so simple, compared to some of the other wacky stuff that you can get out of the EFEs. A third beautiful thing is that the FLRW metric yields the [Friedmann equations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedmann_equations). But I'll get to that a bit later.
Thank you so much for saying that the two time dimensions can act as one. This simplifies things greatly, because it means that they behave identically. In other words, $g\_{t\_1t\_1}$ is the same as $g\_{t\_2t\_2}$. It's great.
Now the FLRW metric includes a scale factor, $a(t)$, which is a function of time and describes the expansion or contraction of the universe (or neither, if $a(t)=1$). The reason that it's good that the two time dimensions are the same is because if they weren't, I'd have to write the scale factor as $a(t\_1,t\_2)$. That's not great, because the Friedmann equations involve derivatives of $a(t)$. Partial derivatives would make things more complicated. Anyway, on to the Friedmann equations.
There are just two:
$$\frac{\dot{a}^2+kc^2}{a^2}=\frac{8 \pi G \rho + \Lambda c^2}{3}$$
and
$$\frac{\ddot{a}}{a}=-\frac{4 \pi G}{3} \left(\rho + \frac{3p}{c^2} \right) + \frac{\Lambda c^2}{3}$$
The meanings of the variables are given nicely on Wikipedia.
These two equations describe how the universe expands or contracts. They can tell us quite a lot about its behavior. If you want to make the universe interesting, do try it. But if you want a static universe, then $a=1$, and all derivatives are $0$.
The FLRW metric is a [perfect fluid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_fluid) solution, which is quite handy here. Wikipedia again gives an interesting relation. Take a fluid with pressure $p$ and density $\rho$. The equation of state is
$$p=w \rho c^2$$
We can then write $a(t)$ as (through an irrelevant derivation)
$$a(t)=a\_0 t^{\frac{2}{3(w+1)}}$$
So solve for $w$ above, and you can find your scale factor. This means, actually that your universe may be expanding or contracting. From here, we can calculate all sorts of cool things.
With a scale factor of $a \neq 1$, the FLRW metric is
$$ds^2 = - dt\_1^2 - dt\_2^2 + a(t)(dr^2 + r^2 (d\theta^2+ (\sin^2\theta d\phi^2+\sin^2 \phi d\varphi^2)))$$
and, substituting in for $a(t)$,
$$ds^2 = - dt\_1^2 - dt\_2^2 + a\_0 t^{\frac{2}{3(w+1)}}(dr^2 + r^2 (d\theta^2+ (\sin^2\theta d\phi^2+\sin^2 \phi d\varphi^2)))$$
That's your universe.
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We have to figure out a plausible way for the bubbles and tunnels to form. In our universe, gas clouds form because of gravity. Then stars form. Here, though, gravity would be trying to *collapse* the matter around the empty spaces.
You could go for something like Dan's "Harmonics", or you could treat the "vacuum" as another fluid. In fact, you *have* too, because you have to explain why the fluid around these pockets doesn't collapse. Here's an example.
Take a gas cloud. This cloud has a few quantities: temperature ($T$), pressure ($p$) and density ($\rho$), as well as maybe a few other non-vital characteristics.2 Changes in one will influence changes in the other two. To start with, though, these properties are constant.
Now, the cloud has pressure. This means that every bit of it pushes against regions of space nearby it. This, along with the other bits, means that unless gravity is strong enough to keep the cloud in hydrostatic equilibrium - or, in fact, to make it undergo gravitational collapse - the cloud may expand outwards.
In this case, the situation is that of a cavity inside a gas cloud. There's nothing to stop the gas from moving in, whereas there *is* pressure from the gas in the cloud. These openings will be crushed very quickly. So you need these bubbles to be more like a fluid that the absence of one.
Another thing to add is that the fluid in this universe should be more or less uniform. For example, in our universe, any bit of vacuum is, in general, much the same as any other bit of vacuum. Why should this be any different in this universe? What makes any bit of this fluid special when compared to any other bit? You need some processes to occur to destroy the local homogeneity and isotropy of the fluid. On large scales, though, these properties can *not* be violated - otherwise the conditions for the FLRW metric are not met.
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I'd like to go on with a discussion of a passage from [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle#Spacetime):
>
> In 1920, Paul Ehrenfest showed that if there is only one time dimension and greater than three spatial dimensions, the orbit of a planet about its Sun cannot remain stable. The same is true of a star's orbit around the center of its galaxy. Ehrenfest also showed that if there are an even number of spatial dimensions, then the different parts of a wave impulse will travel at different speeds. If there are 5 + 2k spatial dimensions, where k is a whole number, then wave impulses become distorted. In 1922, Hermann Weyl showed that Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism works only with three dimensions of space and one of time. Finally, Tangherlini showed in 1963 that when there are more than three spatial dimensions, electron orbitals around nuclei cannot be stable; electrons would either fall into the nucleus or disperse.
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> Max Tegmark expands on the preceding argument in the following anthropic manner. If T differs from 1, the behavior of physical systems could not be predicted reliably from knowledge of the relevant partial differential equations. In such a universe, intelligent life capable of manipulating technology could not emerge. Moreover, if T > 1, Tegmark maintains that protons and electrons would be unstable and could decay into particles having greater mass than themselves (This is not a problem if the particles have a sufficiently low temperature).
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**Translation:**
Ehrenfest's work has one huge consequence: orbital mechanics are *not* fun. Stable orbits are out the window. This means no planetary systems whatsoever - and given the nebular hypothesis, this means that it would be tough for planets to even form! So scratch and life like we know it - although I take it you already expected that. Your description is of something wildly different from our universe - extremely chaotic. I think you expected that.
Weyl's work (available [here](http://books.google.com/books?id=ztI6ezRvPXYC&pg=PA313&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false), if you're willing to trudge through it, which I'm currently not) chucks electromagnetism as we know it out the window. I have yet to find the relevant section, so it's unclear if electromagnetism cannot exist in any form or whether Maxwell's formulation is merely inadequate. Let's just not expect anything special.
Tegmark's work may be the most relevant (though I'm skeptical of some of his other work - I won't take that against him). If he's correct, then your two time dimensions must behave *exactly* as one. Or you can change up your elementary particles. Otherwise, no stable atoms. This answers the "How would the different elements occur, be synthesised and/or destroyed?" bit. They wouldn't. Add to that the bit about Tangherlini - whose work I'm not familiar with - and you can kiss elements goodbye.
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**On to what your universe will actually be like.**
I'll start at the smallest scale: elementary particles.
If Tegmark is right, electrons and protons (and therefore, most likely, quarks) must go out the window. The same goes for the electron's heavier cousins, the muon and the tau. Quarks take away all the baryons (composite particles made up of quarks), leaving us with neutrinos. I don't know if those, too, may not exist. If so, their interactions would be very dull! Neutrinos seldom interact with anything.
We could come up with a whole new set of elementary particles, *or* we could use a little loophole. See, according to the Freidmann equations (and their variants), if $a(t) \propto t^{2/3}$, then the universe is dominated by matter. If $a(t) \propto t^{1/2}$, then the universe is dominated by radiation.
Hearken back to the work around $p=w \rho c^2$, and the later derivation. In that, the scale factor is
$$a(t)=a\_0 t^{\frac{2}{3(w+1)}}=a\_0 t^{\frac{2}{3w+3}}$$
For the universe to be radiation dominated, the thing that $t$ is raised to must be proportional to $1/2$. An easy way of doing this is to set $w$ to $1/3$. We then find that $t$ is, in fact, raised to the power of $1/2$, and so our universe is radiation dominated.3
Note that our universe entered [a stage like this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation-dominated_era) very early in its history. Its primary constituents? Photons and neutrinos. Sounds a bit like ours. The cool thing? When our universe was about 378,000 years old, it underwent [recombination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recombination_(cosmology)). Up until that point, it was filled with an opaque (to light) plasma. That was when the [CMB](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background) was formed.
At this point, it's looking a lot like our universe in its earliest days.
On to some of your specific points.
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You can set virtually any laws you want. For example, the equation of state used above doesn't have to be accurate. Maybe there's another constant shoved in there. Maybe general relativity doesn't work, and so the FLRW metric doesn't accurately describe the universe. Take your pick. You can create new constants for this universe, and by doing so create new laws and interactions. The number of dimensions doesn't matter.
You *do* have to be careful about making sure that the laws lead to the desired scenario. For example, if you were to introduce a force that pushes matter away - sort of like anti-gravity - then your scenario doesn't make sense. Everything is trying to get away from everything else. All of a sudden, pressure skyrockets, and things start to get weird. Weirder than you intended, that is.
If you end up coming up with some basic laws, *then* I can get back to you on what else would happen.
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> In addition, to fill the requirements of the strong anthropic principle (this need not be simulatable), where does light and heat come from?
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I don't know about you, but I would *not* want to live here. Life as we know it could not survive here. Photons and neutrinos (well, their equivalents in this universe) aren't the best food.
Fortunately, you didn't ask about life; you asked about light and heat. Those are easier. The universe is filled with radiation, although if it hasn't undergone recombination, it may be opaque to photons. But it's quite possible that, in some places, photons can flow freely, spreading heat with them. Shine light on anything and it will heat up, and [vice versa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation).
Not a very hospitable place, I'll grant you.
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You need to figure out just how the heck you have a planetary system form. Before, I discussed how that would not be possible. Maybe an isolated ball of rock could form. But that would be difficult. It would have a nice sky, though. Maybe reminiscent of Dave Bowman's journey in *2001: A Space Odyssey*.
Same goes for
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You can't have earthquakes without Earth.
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I'll end on a positive note, because, as usual, it seems I've inadvertently written a pessimistic answer. Damn. I'll add to it by recalling the work of Tangherlini, which says that elements will not form. Shoot.
But here's the positive note: You can create elementary particles that circumvent that (somehow). Science can be a real pain in the neck sometimes, but you have to remember that you are *always* in control. In a world like this, you can create *whatever you want*. Remember the metric? That gives one description of the universe. One. And look at all the variables that can change. I barely used any actual numbers in this answer. They're there for you to fill in.
Create your own laws. Your own particles. Your own *universe*. And you've got a universe that I'd be happy to live in, because it came from unbounded imagination. That's pretty awesome.
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1 For more information on this particular line element, see [Wolfram Math World](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Hypersphere.html).
2 We can, by the way, related these properties via the [ideal gas law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideal_gas_law), $PV=nRT$. You just need to derive density from the law.
3 And so $p= \frac{1}{3} \rho c^2$.
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# Second Try
I apologize for the potentially confusing second answer, but at the moment, my original one is rather long-winded, and I'd like to go in a whole new direction from it. To avoid confusion, I'll start anew. If people want, I can delete this and merge it1 into the other answer, but for simplicity and readability I'd like to give it its own section
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that you want a set of rules that, if given at the very start, could predict how your universe would evolve, both on large and small scales (though perhaps more on small scales). In other words, a deterministic universe that could be simulated on a computer (I'm not suggesting a relation to any of the [simulated-world](/questions/tagged/simulated-world "show questions tagged 'simulated-world'") questions).
**Properties**
Matter has to have some properties that dictate how it interacts with other bits of matter. Not all bits of matter are influenced by the same things: For example, in our universe, some particles have electric charge while others do not. Yet we can still describe them in terms of electric charge: $q=0$. So I'll say that these properties - represented as variables, though some are variables and some are constants for a given particle - can apply across-the-board.
* **Gravitational mass, $m$:** This is a universe where active and passive gravitational mass are the same, though inertial mass may not be.
* **Inertial mass, $m\_i$:** I'd like to keep this equivalent to gravitational mass, but it may not be the case. The choice is yours.
* **Position, coordinate system of your choice:** I'd use spherical (hyperspherical, in this case) coordinates globally, as I discussed in my original answer, but you can use $x,y,z$-coordinates in any scenario, if you want. It's simple for discussing two-dimensional interactions.
* **Speed/velocity, $v$:** Particles can move; therefore, they have a velocity. From this and mass we can say that they have momentum ($p$) and kinetic energy ($KE$). Higher time derivatives also exist (the two time dimensions behave as one), so particles also have acceleration ($\dot{v}=a$), jerk ($\dot{a}=j$), etc.
* **Temperature, $T$:** Particles can vibrate; therefore, they have a temperature.
Properties not in our universe2:
* **Ikimgiir charge, $i$:** A property describing how likely a particle is to interact with other particles via the ikimgiir force, as described later. Ikimgiir charge ranges from $0$ to $1$.
* **Kaaziikkhaaku, $k$:** A property describing how a particle may attach to another particle of the same type and form a composite particle, as described later.
There are also other properties (pressure, density, etc.) that can be derived on large scales. In fact, velocity and high time derivatives of position are really also derived quantities.
**Forces:**
* **Gravity:** Gravity works the same here as in our universe, and can be described by general relativity (albeit by a 4 + 2 metric). It's simpler, though, to use a classical approximation on smaller scales. So our law here is
$$F=G\frac{M\_1m\_2}{r^3}$$
with $G$ being any value you choose. It falls off with $r^2$ and not $r^2$ because of [a generalization of the inverse-square law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law#Field_theory_interpretation) to higher dimensions.
* **Ikimgiir:** Ikimgiir describes the process of forming those cavities you mentioned. I said that the charge ranges from $0$ to $1$. That's because it's similar to a probabilistic measure. The charge is measured across all particles as a [normal distribution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution): There are fewer particles with low ikimgiir charges and fewer particles with higher ikimggir charges. This distribution, though, can vary across types of particles. For example, particle type A might have a different distribution than particle type B. So in reality, the distribution does not range from $0$ to $1$, but from some number $k$ to $-k$, where $k<0$. The area under the curve is $1$.
A generalized distribution is
$$f(x, \mu, \sigma) = \frac{1}{\sigma \sqrt{2 \pi}}e^{-\frac{(x- \mu)^2}{2 \sigma ^2}}$$
$\sigma$ and $\mu$ can vary between particle type, though there is no continuous function connecting them. They exist in discrete types of your choosing.
The force from ikimgiir is probabilistic3, too, and it depends on a variable called $z$. You see, each particle has a different $z$ that it has its entire span of existence that is *independent* of $f$. The latter is a probabilistic distribution of the *strength* of the interaction whenever it happens; the former is a probabilistic distribution of *when* it will happen.
We describe $z$ using a [cumulative distribution function](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumulative_distribution_function), where $x \to t$ and the graph is renewed whenever a particle exerts the ikimgiir force. This function describes how likely it is that such an event has happened since the last time the particle exerted such a force (or since its creation), starting from $t=0$. Therefore, the probability at $t=0$ is, for a given particle, 50%.
So the ikimgiir force can be described in terms of $i$, $f$ and $z$ But we still need to describe its effects on other particles. When a particle exerts an ikimgiir force, it creates a spherical cavity. The size of this cavity is governed by a number, $a$, and $f$. $a$ is a universal constant, and represents the maximum size of the cavity (in the case of $f=1$). The radius of the cavity is $f \cdot a$. The final volume of the cavity is the volume of a 4-dimensional ball4.
The ikimgiir force acts on particles only when the cavity is expanding, and only on particles on the edge of the cavity. For particles at an instantaneous distance from the center of the cavity, $r\_{inst}$, the force is
$$F\_I=\frac{i}{r\_{inst}^3}$$
where $i$ is the charge of the particle causing the cavitation. This is an inverse-cube law. Particles not on the cavity edge do not feel this force, but they are pushed away by particles touching the cavity.
**Kaaziikkhaaku**
This isn't a force, but a property. It describes how likely a particle is to combine with another particle (of the same time) and form a composite particle. $k$ is the same for all particles of a given type, and is just a probability (e.g. 50%, 78%, etc.). Kaaziikkhaaku only applies when two particle are within a certain distance of each other.
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1 . . . which is what I have just done.
2 Names taken from a random syllable generator [here](http://eaglestone.pocketempires.com/lang/vilani/vilanigen4.html).
3 Okay, so we've sacrificed a bit of determinism here.
4 I say "ball" and not "sphere" because in mathematics, "sphere" actually refers to the dimension of the outside boundary of what we would normally call a sphere. For example, the boundary of a baseball is a 2-sphere.
[Answer]
Ok. So I'm going to use a shortcut here and use most of our physics, making only minor changes that I think could result in what you want. I'm also going to ignore most of the required 4D differences with the power of handwavium since I don't think I'm up to designing a universe from scratch.
So other than the new dimensions, this universe only has three major differences from ours in terms of physics:
1. Gravity does not exist as a function of matter - it doesn't distort spacetime.
2. The universe is static in size and is not expanding. It does not have borders and is instead self-circular (go far enough in one direction and you end up back where you started).
3. A new force, *Harmonics*, exists.
*Harmonics* is a force similar to gravity, but instead of being caused by matter it's a fundamental aspect of spacetime. Think of it as harmonic waves of spacetime distortion throughout the universe. Each spatial dimension has a different harmonic frequency, but they are related (for example, a 1:2:3:4 ratio). These waves create patterns of reinforcement and interference, so some areas end up strong, while some are canceled out and don't have any real "gravity". Additionally, harmonic also functions in both time dimensions, but with much-reduced values. This gives you something similar to "orbits" and keeps, for example, your planets from being a constant distance from their suns.
This gives you stars (lots of distortion), vacuum, (areas surrounded by strong distortions), and smaller objects (some distortion), and extremely rarely black holes/neutron stars (extreme distortion). Areas with the right mix in each direction end up pulling/pushing so that nothing ever ends up collecting, so you end up with your giant gas clouds throughout the universe. Habitable planets are those that collect in the habitable frequencies of their parent star, but they don't orbit the star - instead they will "shuffle" back and forth in place (as will the star) in accordance with the time-dimension harmonics.
In the beginning, this universe will be extremely patterned and consistent. However, collections of stars will be slightly smaller or larger, and once those undergo enough fusion and you start seeing supernovae, the impact from those will disturb other stars and start messing things up. By the time your lifeforms exist it will be a mess, but still much more consistent than our universe.
[Answer]
I'm adding this as a separate answer because it takes an entirely new approach.
I've thought of two new possibilities that might offer something closer to the question's current direction. I'm not sure how plausible either is if you dig down into the gritty details, but I think they'll work for your purposes.
## The Universe Star
Imagine a universe nearly the same as our own, but with two distinct differences:
1. The gravitational constant is either weaker or drops off at a higher coefficient (so r^3, r^4, etc... instead of r^2). I'm unsure which would work better, but I'm leaning toward the higher coefficient as a side-effect of having extra space and time dimensions.
2. The big bang had almost no kinetic component.
Then there is simply a giant ball of hydrogen. Instead of expanding, it will say in one place and start to coalesce. Eventually, the entire universe will be a single, mind-boggling vast star.
Over billions of years, this star will go through the normal phases we see in our universe, and will start fusing elements. However, due to luck, gravity is low enough that it will never explode and go nova. Instead, the heavy elements will start forming near the center and will continue to accrete. Eventually, our star will have a giant core of rock - let's say roughly the size of our galaxy - composed almost entirely of various higher elements.
Due to variations, heat, and chemical and nuclear reactions, this rock will not be uniform. Pockets of elements will form and move around, and due to heat, you'll get variations of gases and liquids as well. Since gravity is lower, the rock is self-supporting and is able to withstand its own weight (this is possible in our universe too, but requires extremely light and strong materials). Heat will radiate inwards from the outer edge where fusion is still occurring, and from massive nuclear and chemical reactions.
For light, your sapients will likely need to use infrared mostly, rather than visible light. Alternatively, they could probably use other radiation frequencies - radar, or microwave - or operate entirely off of acoustics.
## The Big Pop
This uses the same constraints from the Universe Star (lower gravity and no kinetic component to the big bang) but adds one additional change: instead of forming as elemental hydrogen, the entire universe "pops" into place as a single, giant rock composed of various higher elements.
Because many of these elements are unstable, they will decay, react to each other and create heat and radiation. This will set off other elements, creating nuclear reactions throughout the entire universe.
For billions of years, these reactions and decays will continue. This will cause it to expand somewhat, allowing it to cool eventually to the point where life is possible.
At this point, you will have a rock with a size on the order of galaxies, composed of various elements. Most will be higher, but you will get pockets of lower element gases and liquids. Life will form in these, living off of chemical reactions and leftover nuclear heat and radiation.
**Tunnels and Pockets**
This applies to both of the above answers. There will be large (solar-system sized) regions of relatively stable rock. These rocks will border other rocks and will move semi-independently. Think plate tectonics, but with galaxies. The border between these will be mostly compressed together, but the movement and grinding will create gaps that your sapients can exploit. These gaps will be what tends to fill with useful elements, gases, liquids, and life.
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My own take on this is that the universe starts out pretty much empty. We then apply the following rules:
1. Vacuum randomly and spontaneously generates elementary particles that can combine to form atoms, though the presence of matter suppresses this.
2. Vacuum repels matter. Matter does not attract other matter, instead suppressing the vacuum repulsion (though not perfectly) if there is sufficient matter present.
With the universe filling with matter, and matter trying to move away from vacuum, matter would be pushed together into clumps. As matter accumulated, the vacuum would form bubbles, with lighter elements around the perimeter and heavier elements .
3. Matter impacting other matter at sufficient velocity can cause nuclear fusion.
The matter spontaneously generated in a vacuum will be accelerated toward the nearest clump of matter. The velocities involved can result in atomic fusion and the synthesis of heavier elements.
At this point, we have a universe that will simply fill up with matter that will gradually transmute to heavier elements, with a few bubble-like voids.
4. A novanoid (appearing as a regular pentachoron with negative mass) may be spontaneously generated in any volume regardless of the presence of matter that is sufficiently far from any other novanoid, and there is a small chance, increasing as a novanoid approaches another novanoid, that the novanoids will be destroyed.
5. Matter is repelled from a novanoid with greater force than matter is repelled from vacuum, and the repulsiveness of vacuum and novanoids is cumulative.
6. Novanoids generate Kizerain, Eskaxis, Qiameth, Surogou and Nekmit charges (abbreviated to K, E, Q, S and N respectively), each at a separate rate unique to the novanoid.
7. When sufficient K, E, Q, S or N charge has accumulated at a novanoid, it will discharge following the path of least resistance to a corresponding pentachoron vertex on the same or another novanoid, given that charge has significant momentum and is ejected regular to the pentachoron vertex. Correspondences are: K -> E -> Q -> S -> N -> K. Discharge is not instantaneous, and takes 1/3 to 2/3 of the charge time for that charge to accumulate, though discharge rate is also constant to the novanoid. The orientation of the charge-emitting vertices of a novanoid is random at its generation and is otherwise invariant.
8. The K, Q, and N charges emit black-body radiation at a temperature inversely proportional to the distance they must travel to their discharge points (hotter when distances are shorter), and E and S charges emit black-body radiation at a temperature proportional to the distance they must travel to their discharge points (hotter when distances are longer). This ranges from 0K at 0/infinite range to approximately 25000K. As this is 4D-space, light intensity falls off following the inverse-cube law.
9. K and Q -charge will fully ionise and repel any matter in contact with it. E and S charge will attract and fuse matter that it passes through, generating heavier elements. N-charge cools matter, matter having having a negative temperature with respect to N-charge, and N-charge will pass through matter leaving it undisturbed other than being cooled.
10. Charge-Light passes through an additional small dimension, and can therefore pass through matter, though reflected light passes through normal space.
11. K and E -charges travel in spirals (left and right-handed respectively) around the path of least resistance, the width of the spiral inversely proportional to the distance between source and sink. The other charges travel directly along the path of least resistance.
The novanoids and the charge that they emit will enhance some of the vacuum bubbles, and will generate spiralling or straight(ish) tunnels, as well as creating heavier elements. As novanoids are not entirely static, their bubbles and tunnels will move along with them. The discharges will generate light on a cyclical basis, forming the basis for day/night cycles. As novanoids appear and disappear, new bubbles and tunnels may form, and old tunnels and bubbles may fill or collapse. Movement of novanoids and their associated charge-tunnels occurs at a rate approximating that of continental drift, and their lifespans approximate that of geological ages to planetary lifetimes.
12. The universe is expanding slowly. As it expands, the expansion places tensional stress on the solid matter matrix between the voids, and at irregular intervals, the matter matrix will rupture, relieving the stress, initially producing vacuum-filled voids between previously-adjoining volumes, providing new sites for vacuum-matter genesis. The recoil shock of matter-matrix ruptures would be experienced as earthquakes.
So, we have a universe that is mostly solid matter, interpenetrated by a multitude of twisting tunnels, and illuminated periodically by vast charge-arcs that slowly change the shape of the tunnels. I anticipate that the diameters of the bubbles would be on the order of stars' diameters, and the diameters of tunnels would be on the order of planets'.
Some sections of the matter matrix may rotate due to the influence of vacuum and novanoid repulsion, along with the influence of charges, to cause moving particles to impact a volume of matter and transfer their momentum in an asymmetrical fashion. This may form solid, rotating balls, or they may be interpenetrated by charge-caused tunnels and/or vacuum bubbles.
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You can get the opposite universe effect but not use chemical element matter as we know it. The universe can be filled with *stuff* that can vary from place to place, and has effects that act as a medium for other things whether dissolved other stuff, changes to properties or energy that can propogate as waves. The properties of the media are observed as differences to the things that inhabit it; perhaps different *things* are selective in which mediums they can pass through or move into without disrupting their state of being. But a *void* would be a hard boundry that nothing can pass through, and the geometry can be mapped out by feeling around the edges.
What would it be like if our universe was like that? We have fields and particles that populate the vacuum, but the vacuum *has properties*. If space was a substance and you got to a region where it was different, the laws of motion and chemestry would change.
Imagine tiny particles that move inside a crystal, and the atoms of the matrix control how they cluster and interact with each other. That is easy tomunderstand, though I think having *energy* in the form of state changes and dynamics is better, and the phenomena can only exist within the context of the medium, like sound waves or crystal dislocations or semiconductor "holes".
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So let's say there's someone who can shoot fire out of their hands. It's understandable that some people would be nervous. My main question is would this man's literal firepower count as a weapon, and thus be subject to laws pertaining to firearms? If no would there be precedent to alter laws to fold this man's ability into firearm legislation.
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After making several comments against answers here I need to formulate a complete answer from my perspective to this (actually important) question. I'll state at the outset that this answer is based on the Common Law practices of Australia and similar Commonwealth countries. Let's start with the short answer;
**No**
It doesn't matter what superpower you have; you haven't used a 'weapon' on someone else when fighting them. There's a very simple reason for this; weapons are effectively tools. They are something that you pick up and brandish, aim, or throw at your opponent, and they have to (by definition) be separate from the body.
This is a far more important point than you might realise; the minute that we call a fist a 'weapon' you're effectively curtailing the right of that person to defend themselves. Ever. What's worse, you're on a slippery slope.
Has a trained psychologist who utters a hurtful rebuke at someone who then goes and commits suicide committed assault with a deadly weapon? They've used their mind to attack another; surely that counts if a fist does.
In the heat of a home invasion, the owner of the property bites the invader. BUT, the homeowner is HIV positive. Is that person's teeth / blood / saliva a deadly weapon?
At what point do body parts cease being weapons and the person themselves become weapons? Trained special forces soldiers have skills that equate to superpowers by comparison to the average person on the street; does that mean you have the right to tease or taunt them mercilessly until they retaliate simply because you know that they're not 'allowed' to respond?
Of course not. Besides; with deadly weapon assaults, the person can be restricted from owning those kinds of weapons in the future. Even computers fit that category. But hands? Are we really talking about amputating the hands of skilled combatants that make a mistake? For mine, that's a bridge too far.
That said, what DOES fit is *aggravated assault*. The reason why weaponed assault is a separate class of crime is that there is a known amount of damage that one person can usually do to another without tools or weapons. Generally speaking, that means you have a level playing field. While I personally abhor violence in any form and have zero tolerance for it, the law recognises that weapons make any conflict uneven.
Where weapons are NOT used and the conflict is *still* uneven, we have aggravation. What this essentially means is that people with higher levels of combat skill have an obligation to curtail their aggression and attacks on others because of the fact that they are far more effective fighters. This means that they commit aggravated assault, not simple assault if they hurt someone seriously.
I want to state at this point that I'm not saying that the superperson is not *liable* for the damage they cause, and the punishment should still fit the crime, and in all probability the laws around aggravated assault will allow for penalties that match (or more) those for assault with a deadly weapon 30 minutes after the superperson commits this crime.
BUT;
Soldiers receive strong disciplinary training as part of receiving this skill; the superperson may not. Arguably, this is one of those complicated situations where a person with (say) diminished capacity may be guilty of an offence that is both mitigated and aggravated. It's a complex argument in which the danger to the public has to be taken into account as much as the mental and physical capacity of the person involved.
To give an example; in Australia, intoxication has often been seen as a mitigating circumstance in assault. In other words, someone who takes a swing at you when they're drunk is seen to have diminished capacity of their behaviour and therefore less responsible for their actions.
Over the last decade or so however, there has been an increasing prevalence of what is now known as one punch attacks, or the 'Coward's Punch' being perpetrated on random people on the street by heavily intoxicated people. The victims have died, been made quadriplegics or paraplegics, or suffered other serious or permanent disabilities. As a consequence, most states have changed the laws to make intoxication an aggravating factor, not a mitigating factor. The argument is that just like the soldier carries with him an obligation to control his behaviour, the drunkard carries an obligation to limit his anti-social behaviour by removing himself from public places while intoxicated, especially if he's a 'mean' drunk and knows a trick or two in attacking others.
This (respectfully) is only different in relation to scale. Your superperson can burn and disfigure people horribly, and may not possess the self control necessary to constrain him or her self when agitated. This is not only an aggravating factor, it's a serious one and needs to be considered accordingly.
Good law acts as a deterrent to the populace AND an example to others. It does so in a context of fair and objective assessment. In this case, the outcome of any attack by the superperson will be serious, and the superperson needs commensurate control to balance that out. If the only way that can be achieved is to have very serious penalties in place that make the superperson think twice about any attack, then so be it.
But, this is **not** the same as wielding a weapon as that is **always** a choice. This superperson simply cannot put down her 'weapon', even if she wanted to. For that reason alone, I'd be deeply concerned if his or her powers were categorised as a weapon. It's a slippery slope which leads to everyone's unique strength (super or not) being a reason for that person to be controlled in some manner and if that's not a definition for an authoritarian regime, I don't know what is.
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The real answer is that the laws will adapt to do what they need to do.
There are some interesting questions about this regarding whether fists of a skilled fighter are considered to be deadly weapons. [This article](https://combatsportslaw.com/2015/11/03/mixed-martial-artists-hands-deemed-deadly-weapons-in-texas-assault-case/) cites two sides of the issue. Jamuel Parks was charged with aggravated assault, under the argument that as a MMA fighter, his fists were deadly weapons. However, that case was difficult to draw a precedent from this because he plead guilty. It is not clear whether a jury would have found his fists to be deadly weapons in an actual court. The same article also cites Ray v. State, a case where the court had decided that hands/feet were not deadly weapons, even if they were used to kill someone.
The [US code](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/921) does make it clear that such a fire skill would not qualify as a firearm. Firearms are defined to be devices, and an innate skill like that would almost certainly not be considered to be a device.
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Probably yes, and as such subject to some sort of legislation.
I remember reading of some cases, in our real world, were people expert in martial arts where charged for improper usage of their hands, which in those cases were considered equivalent to weapons.
It's easy to imagine that a superhero, being way more powerful than a Bruce Lee or a Mike Tyson, would be also considered more dangerous in case of inappropriate usage of his/her skills, and therefore subject at least to registration.
[Answer]
*Scottish law answer, as context for the kinds of issues that arise when defining an innate ability as a weapon. Note that Scots Law is a hybrid of Common Law and Civil Law - as such, is a good basis for discussion, as the system has many similarities to the [majority of countries (either entirely common or civil law based)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law#/media/File:Map_of_the_Legal_systems_of_the_world_(en).png).*
# No, and they Never will
### Definition of an offensive weapon
In Scottish Law, an **offensive weapon** is defined as:
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> any article -
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> (a) made or adapted for use for causing injury to a person, or
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> (b) intended, by the person having the article, for use for causing injury to a person by—
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> . . . .(i) the person having it, or
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> . . . .(ii) some other person,
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*[Criminal Law (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act 1995, part VI, section 47](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/39/part/VI/crossheading/offensive-weapons)*
As such a weapon must firstly, be an article (an item or object) that can be made or adapted, and must be ownable. That is, parts of a human that can do damage, such as teeth, fists or legs, do not count as offensive weapons.
It should be noted at this point however, that *Iron-man* type abilities, or those involving implants may be considered offensive weapons. As such, the remainder of this answer assumes superpowers to be *X-men* style abilities that do not fit the definition above.
Note also, one of the penalties for carrying an *offensive weapon* is:
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> Where any person is convicted of an offence under subsection (1) above the court may make an order for the forfeiture or disposal of any weapon in respect of which the offence was committed.
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Clearly, the disposal of a human that weild superpowers does not directly fit into this - as it would conflict with existing human rights laws. As such, superpowers cannot legally be \*offensive weapons\*\*.
### Dangerous Dogs Act
The above is not to say that superpowers could not be made illegal though. A good use-case for how dangerous living things can be classified, is the [Dangerous Dogs Act 1991](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1991/65/introduction):
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> An Act to prohibit persons from having in their possession or custody dogs belonging to types bred for fighting; to impose restrictions in respect of such dogs pending the coming into force of the prohibition; to enable restrictions to be imposed in relation to other types of dog which present a serious danger to the public; to make further provision for securing that dogs are kept under proper control; and for connected purposes.
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This legislation provides restrictions on ownership of certain breeds of dogs, based on them being a danger to the public. Importantly, at no point are the dogs classified as *weapons* in this legislation - instead, that are covered separately with their own laws and regulations.
This means that owning a dangerous dog can have different penalties, and the control of these dogs can be applied differently to the control of offensive weapons.
For the case of superpowers, this is likely what would happen. A separate legislation would be enacted to cover the use of dangerous innate powers and the people who can weild them. It's an important distinction, as classification as a *weapon* would impose existing restrictions (such as confiscation/destruction) that would arguably not be enforcable to a human (due to other existing laws).
### Summary
As shown above, the law on what consitutes a weapon is covered by existing legislation. This is likely applicable to most countries, where there will be specific punishments and regulations based on the idea of a weapon being a weildable device - and not an innate ability of a human.
To cover super-powers in the same legislation would be an extremely difficult legal minefield - having to avoid conflicts with any other laws that govern human rights. As such, it is extremely unlikely that a superpower will ever be classified as *a weapon*.
That said, it is not unlikely that they would be controlled separately. As shown with the Dangerous Dogs Act; legislation can be created to deal with a specific issue like this, with its own terms, regulations and penalties. This means that dangerous use of superpowers, would likely be called exactly that - and not shoe-horned into an existing terminology.
So, **while super powers will likely never be classified as a weapon, they will likely be controlled via separate legislation**.
[Answer]
I would say "yes, for sure", and I will use an example for that:
Although it might depend on the legislation of every country, in general internationally, if you are a licensed martial artist (other cases might also be accepted, although it should be proved that you practice some sport combat or martial art), and if you harm someone, you can easily be charged, due to martial arts are considered an aggravation, and it is my understanding that this has a logic behind, mainly 2 reasons:
1. you know how to fight, so, you can use your body and mind in a lethal way in a fight, at least, after a certain level (grade or belt, for example).
2. more important, if you practice martial arts, you are supposed to be able to control a violent situation, in the way that you should be able to block or knock your opponent without harming him seriously, unless that opponent is another martial artist/trained fighter, of course.
These 2 cases are limited to the case that you don't have any mental problem, but in that case probably you would be in some psychiatric hospital.
So, having superpowers should not very different. If you are not crazy and harm someone, you might have a legal problem. And if you are crazy, not much better ;)
[Answer]
No.
There is no gun/weapon involved thus is legally an unarmed attack but you can bet your bottom dollar new laws would be drafted the next day.
[Answer]
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> My main question is would this man's literal firepower count as a weapon, and thus be subject to laws pertaining to firearms?
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Almost anywhere on the planet, using such an ability to harm, threaten or intimidate anyone would be a criminal offense.
Firearms laws vary from place to place, but it would be use of a deadly weapon for sure.
In principle if they behaved themselves they'd be free to go about their business, just as I am as long as I don't beat up anyone with my hand.
However ...
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> Reality-Check
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This person would be helping government scientists with their questions.
Locked up somewhere (maybe nice, maybe not so nice). Almost certainly kept incommunicado and considered top secret.
The law would not be an issue and they would never see the light of day ( unless they were given fireproof and heat resistant windows for their prison :-) ). And it would be lucky for them if it was a government that got to them first, because they'd be in serious trouble if criminals or terrorists did.
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Let's say a person has/suffering from a split personality. And let's call this personality as `A`.
My question is, **Is it possible for this personality `A`, belonging to that person, to have its own different set of personalities/split personalities and by extension further down the line? That is, can each personality, belonging to a person having/suffering multiple personalities, have/suffer from split personality disorder/multiple personality disorder?**
[Answer]
Dissociative identity disorder (DID; split personality) is one of the most controversial psychological conditions and professionals can't really agree on a formal diagnosis process. Professionals generally agree that it exists, but trying to narrow down, define, and understand it has been a bit of a mess.
However it's important to note that it's the *brain* having the multiple personalities, and since a person only has one brain, there can only be one point of division. So a strict answer to your question is **no.**
However perhaps one of the personalities could *act* like they were the primary personality, and have another personality that seems like a split from it. A nice, compact, general description of the various personalities from Wikipedia:
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> The primary identity, which often has the patient's given name, tends
> to be "passive, dependent, guilty and depressed" with other
> personalities being more active, aggressive or hostile, and often
> containing a current time line that lacks childhood memory. Most
> identities are of ordinary people, though fictional, mythical,
> celebrity and animal parts have been reported.
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It would be difficult to pull off, and most obviously it would be one of the split personalities *claiming* that they had DID.
[Answer]
Probably not.
Rather than a single person with multiple personalities (or, to be more precise, Dissociative Identity Disorder) you seem to be asking if a multiple personality can, in turn, develop its own multiple personalities. This is a semantic description since ALL the personalities are in fact derived from the organic host, so a "multiple-multiple personality" would just be a split of the original personality. These personalities are not really separate individuals trapped in one body with simultaneous existences like they are often portrayed in media (like the John Cusack film "Identity"). Since all of these personalities are splinters of the original one, any new identities would just be an additional splinter of the original, not a fracturing of an already purely fictional identity.
It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to determine that a multiple personality has developed its own multiple personalities anyway. Since they all share the same body and same sensory input/output, how would you even tell, externally or internally, that it happened? These sub-personalities would all manifest just like the main personalities, so they are just additional main personalities.
But these disorders can be very weird. It is entirely possible that a personality can BELEIVE it is a subset of the dominant personality but again, this is just a semantics argument.
[Answer]
If a person has 2 personalities, and personality 2 has DID, to an observer (or a doctor), it will appear as if the patient has 3 distinct personalities.
People with DID are often diagnosed with other disorders as well (schizophrenia, etc) and DID not being well understood and quite rare, thus making it virtually impossible to tell that the 3rd personality is a split of the 2nd one, and not the first (main) one.
I think a doctor will just say "the patient has 3 distinct personalities".
[Answer]
As a mathematician or computer scientist it is clear that the concept of split personality, which is taken from the novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, strangely making it from fiction into "science", could be generalized so that a person can be viewed as being made up of a tree of personalities and subpersonalities.
But the people that wrote the DSM are just a bunch of money-driven pseudo-scientists who have no interest in being truly scientific. Instead, they bade themselves on folklore and behaviors societies tend to dislike to create artificial man-made disorders, such as this one, which, tend to have fascinating names to the literarily, rationality-overlooking people.
Personally, I like Mead's approach. The way we see ourselves is how we think others see us. Whenever that changes, our personality will appear different. So convenient to a psychiatrist who will make thousands of dollars by labeling their patient as such and then forcefully drugging them against their will for life, receiving money from government and pharmaceutical companies.
And since you brought up the discrete model, why not also consider a continuous model where the "personality state" of an individual is unique at any given time and can take on values of whatever discrete our continuous tuples you wish to model personality as.
This should give you reasonable motivation to believe no such "split personality disorder" actually exists, although a psychiatrist can do what they want with you or any other individual that may come or be brought into their office.
The same pills are prescribed for psychiatrist "behavioral" disorders, making psychiatric labels irrelevant.
Hope this helps.
[Answer]
I used to think that DID did exist as is described till I read the article named [*Multiple Personality Disorder*](https://books.google.es/books?id=Gr4snwg7iaEC&lpg=PA146&ots=bEyD2IIDYq&pg=PA146#v=onepage) by Scott O. Lilienfeld and Steven J. Lynn included in "The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience: Volume One".
So, as DID seems to be a iatrogenic ["condition that results from the therapist’s cueing (e.g., suggestive questioning regarding the existence of possible alternative personalities), media influences (e.g., film and television portrayals of DID), and broader sociocultural expectations regarding the presumed clinical features of DID"](http://www.hopkinsguides.com/hopkins/view/Johns_Hopkins_Psychiatry_Guide/787069/all/Dissociative_Identity_Disorder), I would say **yes**, because the suggestion could be modeled in this way and the personalities would appear one by one, so the patient only would have to keep track of one at a time (and the rest of the hierarchy would remain blurred while not in use).
But, as this site is about imaginary worlds, what if this condition really existed, i.e., the personalities had to be codified somewhat in the brain? As a finite machine with its limits (and with limited features, adapted to survival and reproduction), the answer should be **no** or, at least, so unlikely that would be impossible in practice.
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In my next novel, there are three major powers in the solar system: Earth, Mars, and Saturn. Earth runs on a slightly modified Gregorian calendar, Mars goes with the good old Darian calendar, and Saturn... well, I'm really not sure what to do with Saturn.
The Saturnian calendar must:
* be cyclical; while it doesn't have to use years per se, it must have some similar sort of cycle by which to measure large spans of time.
* Use Saturn, Jupiter, and Uranus as reference points.
* Have days. Humans still sleep.
* Not be an endless count up like Unix time or Mars mission sol counts.
* Tick at humanly relatable intervals. If each cycle is defined as a Uranian year, that's just ridiculous.
Other important background information:
* The people of Saturn live on the moons thereof, as well as in various satellites. No wonky gas giant creatures.
* The nation of Saturn holds territory on the moons of Jupiter, as well as a monopoly on territory around Uranus. Uranus is essential to their continued survival as a nation, because the Helium-3 that powers their ships comes from there.
* The Saturnian calendar was designed recently and from scratch, so it's not quite as prone to historical weirdness as the Gregorian one.
What sort of calendar would humans settling the moons of the inner three gas giants use?
[Answer]
Saturn rotates around its own axis every 10 hours and 33 minutes (or it does at the top of the cloud layer; there is no solid surface to speak of). People living there may have adapted to sleep every third day, having three-day cycles of sleep, work, and leisure (possibly in shifts). Such a three-day period could serve as a "Saturn day" of 31 hours and 39 minutes.
Saturn's largest moon, Titan, has an orbital period of 16 Earth days, or 12.09 "Saturn days". This could serve as a Saturn month, with months of 12 days with occasional 'leap months' being one day longer.
Saturn's solar year is 29.46 Earth years or 8,163.7 Saturn days. It may be a bit long to serve as a calendar year, but may mark generational cycles.
An alternative is using Saturn's third-largest moon Iapetus' orbital period of 79.32 days as a year. This corresponds very well to five "Saturn months" (4.973, to be more precise) and to 60.15 "Saturn days".
This creates a calendar with quite close to 12 days to a month and 5 months or 60 days to a year. There would be 4.6 Saturn years to an Earth year. Adulthood may start at 80 Saturn years (17.4 Earth years).
[Answer]
On Earth calendars serve two basic functions :
* Agricultural and resource management - observing yearly cycles.
* Administrative
* Standardization
Administrative requirements just need *any* calendar - it's completely arbitrary when it starts or stops. The seasons do not matter. It's simply a day counting thing so we can e.g. set tax years, prison sentences, contract schedules, travel schedules.
Standardization is very important. It means everyone uses the same basis for their calendars and avoids problems in organizing everything in a complex world. Standardization can also use an arbitrary calendar, just so long as everyone uses the same one.
Which leaves us agriculture and food production. This is really why we need calendars and why they were developed. Administrators and standardization got bolted on later as useful, but the original purpose was to make sure we plant crops, harvest and so on at the right times. It was a disaster to get these wrong.
But in space colonies we're not going to be need to observe local seasons as they have no human purpose. The computers can track any important events better than we can and let us know, so we can ignore the only reason to lock a calendar to a local astronomical or planetary cycle.
We already have a very highly developed "home" calendar on Earth and we're going to export that. We'll define some arbitrary standard, using our computers to do the maths and our atomic clocks to do the ticking. Keeping things synchronized is more complex in the very long run, but that just means standard's committees invents and using leap-years, leap-days, leap-hours, leap-minutes and leap-seconds (which they already do, so it just keeps them employed :-) ).
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> The Saturnian calendar must:
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>
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"Must" ? Probably not.
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> be cyclical; while it doesn't have to use years per se, it must have some similar sort of cycle by which to measure large spans of time.
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We'll use what we have already. It works.
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> Use Saturn, Jupiter, and Uranus as reference points.
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Totally pointless, actually worse than pointless as it's useless to the humans involved. There's just no function to it, but it would create utterly pointless complications in dealing with other planets and moons and space stations.
The weather doesn't matter as we can't live in the local conditions without suits and ships and vehicles and completely enclosed buildings. The local day or night doesn't matter because humans have a very hard-wired biological clock and trying to work against this clock will damage the health (mental and physical) of a human very quickly. The Earth's day-night cycle is not optional.
So we'll be completely ignoring local basis for the calendar.
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> Have days. Humans still sleep.
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Precisely : and they do it to a hard-wired Earth day-night cycle. I'd suggest trying not to work to anything else, except it will rapidly screw your health up, so don't even perform the experiment.
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> Not be an endless count up like Unix time or Mars mission sol counts.
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So we use those well established human things : days, months, years, centuries. Don't fix if it ain't broken.
Incidentally almost everyone in the industrial world relies on their smart phone to tell them the date, time, etc. and that's using a Unix time and date system. It's here to stay.
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> Tick at humanly relatable intervals. If each cycle is defined as a Uranian year, that's just ridiculous.
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So what's the problem again ? We use Earth-related calendars because that's what will work for the humans.
Oh, yeah, you said this :
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> Mars goes with the good old Darian calendar
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No it doesn't. It's that simple.
For all the reasons I've stated (and more) there is no way an organized, financially connected, human populated system will be adopting an artificial calendar like the rather academic Darian.
In the real world Mars will be populated by people who have ongoing business with Earth, operate to a standard Earth calendar and in the majority won't care a fiddler's damn about the obscurities of Martian orbits or "weather". It's only weather when you see it and practically every "Martian" will be living in a world locked off and out of direct contact with the real Mars (or be dead).
So they'll standardize on what they need day-to-day, which is Earth's standard calendar for business and finance.
Forget the Darian calendar - it's drivel that keeps a very small number of people amused, but there's no practical reason for a real Mars colony to use it.
I can tell you one thing human history shows us : regardless of what army winds and how long an Empire lasts, the bloody standard's committee seems to survive forever. The Roman empire may be long gong, but their standards committee seems still to be alive and well and working in ISO-land. Likewise the British Empire and the French Empire. Standards have nothing at all to do with reality, but with the practicalities of business.
There is no useful purpose to the organizers and standard makers who need to sync with an Earth calendar in using a Darian calendar. It's not going to be anything other than an obscure concept if there ever is a real Martian colony.
Even if scientist and engineers started with Darian for some geek-crazed reason, the first wave of non-scientific settlers would rapidly say "what the heck for ?" and use what they know and relate to - Earth's calendar (which their relatives, friends, business links and politicians on Earth will be using).
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> The Saturnian calendar was designed recently and from scratch, so it's not quite as prone to historical weirdness as the Gregorian one.
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This is not going to be possible. Planets may, on some superficial level, seem regular, but even Earth's calendar has ended up the way it does because there is no natural "all-integer" way to build an Earth calendar that wouldn't be rejected as being too different from (yes) The Standard.
So you're on different Moons of Saturn. What difference or use is a locally based calendar to you ? None. Just like Mars you need to exist in a human friendly bubble to survive. Saturn's cycles have no meaning for you, the ordinary dweller. You work e.g. in a a bank on a moon of Saturn. What's more important : the date on Earth (observed by all its financial markets) or the local Saturnian date ?
Long before your colonies become powerful enough to impose their own standards on Earth, the imported standards will be so established and have such a locked in inertia that no amount of flag waving would shift them. Again - the Roman Empire fell, but its calendar did not !
Even if Earth was destroyed, its main calendars would live on. With the standards committees.
[Answer]
This might not fit your setting well as you want some relation to the outer planets, but having come across a similar issue while building my world I thought presenting my solution could be helpfull.
This calendar is used for ship and station time and on worlds where the rotational and orbital cycle, aka day and year are irrelevant or impractical. Should your Saturian culture consider itself to be very progressive and scientifically advanced this calendar would be very fitting.
The basic idea is that it would be great if there was a standardized unit of time widely used in science and exactly defined. One that could be used without crazy conversion calculations and disputes over its functionality and correctness.
**Wait there is such a unit! The *second***
Here is a timetable giving the units and their most closely related Terran equivalents. The names are based on standard unit prefixes or derived from them for better usability. These are template names. I chose the ones best fitting the culture I'm working on. Thus I suggest you do the same.
Nova: 1s = 1s
Deka: 10s =10s
Hekto: 100s = 100s (probably replaces the old minute)
Kilo: 1.000s = 16,7 min (a quarter of an hour is already a commonly used unit of time)
Dilo (DekaKilo): 10.000s = 166,7 min (new hour, i suspect that half Dilos would be popular for everyday business)
Hilo (HektoKilo): 100.000s = 27,264 h (the new day, just 3 h 16 min longer, which is not too bad)
Mega: 1.000.000s = 11,35 d
Dega: 10.000.000s = 16,53 weeks
Hega: 100.000.000s = 3,17 a (new year and base number for yearly time units)
Giga: 1.000.000.000s = 32,49 a
Diga: 10.000.000.000s = 321,5 a
....
The great thing about this is that many of the new time units already have some close equivalent in our timetable.
For us this way of measuring time is mildly confusing, but it is really convenient to use once one gets used to it. I suspect that not all units will be used equally, for example the Dekasecond seems slightly useless.
While one could run this system like an endless count, the same could be done with our Earth system. We just don't do it. I suspect the same will be done with this system. Ignoring the Nova and Deka digits seems reasonable and the Hilo (day) cycle mathematically resets each Hilo (day). Use this example to work out the proper digit combinations for other occasions. In the end it is a rounding game, so having an appointment at 6 Dilo or Dilo 6 (sixth hour of the day) sounds fine.
[Answer]
StephenG is generally right, Earth calendar is probably best choice. But I'll structure this answer bit differently and from a different point of view. Think of this as a supplement?
First, the day. Human diurnal cycle evolved on Earth. So our circadian clock defaults to so close to 24 hours that it would be silly to use anything else. Martian day is close enough that Martian colonies can use that instead but in your case the Earth day should be the basis. Or possibly the Martian version or some sort of unified day that is a compromise between Earth and Mars. But that is politics.
When you have the day that is the same as on Earth there really is no reason to use units of time that are different from Earth standard. So hours, minutes and seconds should stay the same. If you want to *be different* the seconds are the ones that would be an issue. You can change the hours and minutes as long as you keep it simple. ie. the conversion should be possible by multiplying and/or dividing by 2 or 3. With minutes add 5 to the list.
By similar logic, you want to keep the year as well. Only thing you need year for is is for communication. For internal communication anything is fine but if you make your own everyone who interacts with Earth needs to learn two systems and do conversions between them. So given that anything works for you, just use Earth years. And change years at same time as well.
You might want to change the starting date though. This only requires a simple addition and subtraction to convert. Honestly most people who need it and official documents would use dual dates anyway. That said it might be best to use standard calendar here as well. Any other starting year would probably be more important to some colonies than others and possibly cause political issues. Using Earth date by contrast unites everyone in resentment towards bloody foreigners. But you might have a unifying event that can be used.
For months... You can change them easy enough. They do not really matter that much to you. That said, precisely because they do not matter there is no reason to change them. And doing date conversions because of politics would be very unpopular and a total pain.
Additionally the calendar is basically a minor update of the one Julius Caesar set up at the very end of the Roman republic. The catholic church *might* have more claim on it than you do but in general you can consider it part of the common cultural heritage of all of mankind rather than an Earth thing. And it certainly would be politically much easier to sell it as such than convince everyone to adopt your own new calendar.
[Answer]
Every colonized body would use 2 calendars. A local calendar and a standard calendar.
**Local Calendar**
Days and Years have actual meaning. Days indicate when the sun rises & sets, and a year equals one season cycle. Your local calendar would be based on the body you are on; so Titan, Enceladus, Iapetus, Ganymede, Mars, etc... all have their own local calendar.
**Standardized Calendar**
In addition to the local calendar, assuming colonists of one body communicate with colonists of another body, it would be important to have a standard calendar. And there is little doubt the Standard Calendar would be the Earth's calendar. Martians and Uranians alike would use 2 calendars, with one being Earth's calendar. It's conceivable the Saturn system could create a Standard Calendar just for themselves, but why? If they used a Saturn Calendar, there would then be 3 calendars to keep track of - and the Saturn Calendar would be as arbitrary to the people of Titan as the Earth Calendar, so they would want to keep it simple.
Local and Standard Calendars would both have importance. Day/Night of the local calendar would be very important since in low-atmosphere moons could have huge temperature shifts, and if you are on the "darkside" of the moon there would be a big difference in light. Meanwhile, business dealings, your age, when to sleep, when the next episode of Game Of Thrones comes out - would likely all be connected to the Standard Calendar.
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I'm taking the example of a [rotating wheel space station](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotating_wheel_space_station), in which artificial gravity is created through rotation due to the inertia inside.
The idea in the 3D environment is that the wheel (2D) is rotating with respect to a third axis (the one perpendicular to the wheel plane), so generalising this concept for a further dimension, the wheel would be a hollow sphere and everything would be rotating in another axis, that should be perpendicular to the other three.
Could you design this hollow sphere (very big, like 100 km in diameter) that is rotating in that 4th spatial dimension (assuming there exists one) so that humans inside feel artificial gravity? Would that make sense, at least mathematically?
If so, would people inside feel the spherical shape is changing?
[Answer]
This setup wouldn't work, not even in a mathematical sense, at least as you described it.
In four dimensions, you can't actually rotate with respect to an axis. Instead, a [4D rotation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotations_in_4-dimensional_Euclidean_space) leaves either a plane or a single point invariant.
In more detail, a rotation in a space of arbitrary dimension can be thought of as composed of simple rotations. It can be seen mathematically that a simple rotation needs a two-dimensional subspace to take place in (you can't rotate anything in 1D). This means that:
* In 2D, all rotations are simple. They leave a $2-2=0$-dimensional subspace invariant, i.e. a point.
* In 3D, all rotations are simple. They leave a $3-2=1$-dimensional subspace invariant (a rotation axis).
* In 4D, a rotation can be simple, leaving a $4-2=2$-dimensional subspace invariant (a plane), or it can be a *double rotation* composed of two simple rotations, leaving in total a $4-2-2=0$-dimensional subspace invariant (a point). These simple rotations can even have different angular speeds (if they have the same speed, it's called an isoclinic rotation).
* In 5D, rotations are again of two types, which leave invariant either a 3D subspace or an axis.
* In 6D, rotations can be of three types...
...and so on. Going back to your setup, we can find two cases. In the first case, assuming (in the spirit of your question) that the invariant plane contains the extra four-dimensional axis, the sphere would rotate normally as the Earth does, leaving two "North" and "South" poles invariant. Here the extra dimension is redundant, our ordinary 3D physics already tells us what would happen: there would be artificial gravity near the equator and no gravity near the poles.
In the second case, the sphere will disappear from view almost all the time, only reappearing periodically at certain instants which depend on the rotation's angular speeds. Obviously this wouldn't be feasible as a space station of any kind, since all the air would quickly escape from it.
In conclusion, you can't rotate *all* points of the sphere at the same time while keeping them inside your 3D environment.
---
In fact, the setup wouldn't work no matter how many extra dimensions one adds. This is because of the so-called [hairy ball theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hairy_ball_theorem). This theorem says that all possible continuous tangent vector fields on a sphere must vanish at some point, and it is sometimes popularly stated as "you can't comb a hairy ball without creating at least one cowlick".
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bPbPo.png)
An infinitesimal rotation defines a smooth vector field on the sphere (you can think of a small arrow attached to each point, and pointing at where it will move), and the theorem then implies there must be at least one arrow of length zero (the center of the "cowlick"), which means a point which won't move.
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Consider a space elevator, a thread hanging from the heavens and being anchored to a spot in ground or sea barge at equator. As I understand it, it'd be very thin at ground and get thicker on the way up to GEO, and thinner again towards the counterweight station at the end. Construction material is basic pure carbon nanotube in this case.
Added details: I'm thinking of an early space elevator, with payload capacity in single digit metric tons. Hmm, how it is powered *might* radically affect how the whole thing looks like, but to avoid altering the question, it's ok to assume it does not.
What does it look like? **What color is it?** Would it glisten in sunlight, upper parts looking like a spear of light at early/late nighttime? Or would it be coal black, visible against blue sky as a black thread? Or something else?
Would the elevator need coating, paint, against UV light or water or anything else? Could it even *be* painted? I think not, weight would be too much. But if yes, perhaps atom- or molecule-thick layer of something that would stick, how would this change coloring options?
Edit: I'd prefer as hard-science answer as possible. For those suggesting paint and even lights, weight of the paint (this fortunately scales r²) vs. weight of the payload (this might scale r³, unless there are some factors I'm not aware of) would be important. Something to think of about this: the cable has carry the weight of the paint plus the extra weight of the cable below it needed because of the paint.
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## In Atmosphere
It would likely be painted or wrapped in high-contrast colours, such as alternating stripes or a checker board pattern of white and black or yellow and black reflective paint or material. Aircraft warning lights would be spaced around the diameter of the tube or shaft at 90°, every 100 metres between ground level and 15,000 metres altitude.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0eFNP.jpg)
## In Orbit
Above 15 kilometres the paint scheme would continue but with wider stripes or larger checker boxes. The aircraft warning lights would be replaced with vacuum-safe lights, half anchored to the tube or shaft itself, half on arms extended out from the elevator and positioned to shine back on it, also spaced farther apart.
## Paint
>
> In 2000, a multi-walled carbon nanotube was tested to have a tensile strength of 63 gigapascals (9,100,000 psi). (For illustration, this translates into the ability to endure tension of a weight equivalent to 6,422 kilograms-force (62,980 N; 14,160 lbf) on a cable with cross-section of 1 square millimetre (0.0016 sq in). ([Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_nanotube#Strength))
>
>
>
The weight of paint coating can be calculated as **area x thickness x density**.
Geostationary orbit is achieved just shy of 36,000 km, meaning the minimal paintable area is 36,000 km x 3.54 mm (the circumference of a circle with a cross sectional area of 1mm$^2$): 127,440 m$^2$. (The elevator climber won't be going up a cable this thin, but the exact dimensions haven't been provided yet.)
For paint I'm going to assume a state-of-the-art aerogel coating, which can be as thin as 1 µm (0.001 mm) and comes in a variety of colours (including transparent, for the black). Silica aerogel has a density of 1,000 g/m$^3$ and aerographene has a density of 160 g/m$^3$ but is transparent (the carbon black will show through), so half and half.
White: 0.50 x Total paint volume (127,440m$^2$ x 0.001 mm = 0.12744 m$^3$) x aerogel density (1,000 g/m$^3$)
*plus*
Black: 0.50 x Total paint volume (127,440m$^2$ x 0.001 mm = 0.12744 m$^3$) x aerogel density (160 g/m$^3$)
= [73.9152 grams](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=0.50+(0.12744+m%5E3+x+1000g%2Fm%5E3)+%2B+0.50+(0.12744+m%5E3+x+160g%2Fm%5E3))
Not even 100 grams of paint weight would be added, for every 1 mm cross section of carbon nanotube under geostationary altitude. Well within the tensile strength tolerance.
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Members of the fullerene structural family (which includes carbon nanotubes) are [usually black when solid](http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/science/add_gateway_pre_2011/chemical/nanochemistryrev1.shtml). I don't think that the nanotube needs an anti-UV coating and nanotubes usually shed water naturally so no coating is needed to prevent water vapour building up.
Hydrogen does react with diamond so there may need to be something to stop hydrogen reacting with the nanotube (not sure if this reaction still happens with nanotubes) but this coating could probably be colourless. I would avoid adding paint just for show due to its added volume and mass so your elevator is likely to be dull grey/black.
**Edit** According to @Rek, extra mass from the paint isn't a problem. In that case the colour is entirely up to you as paint can be almost any colour.
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I know you are looking for the color of the material it is made out of, but unfortunately it might be painted neon-yellow or neon-orange like a traffic sign. Some color to make it stand out when you are looking at a night sky or clear blue sky background. Just to help plans and space ships from accidentally hitting it.
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Others have answered that it would need color to prevent planes and spaceships from flying into it. However I'd propose that a no-fly zone would be put in place around the elevator to prevent any danger of accidents and reduce any terror threat.
Taking into account the paint weight issue, it would therefore be its natural black color.
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It’s worth noting that even fairly dark objects will reflect *some* light. Unless the space elevator is completely absorbent (which is possible, as [Vantablack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vantablack) is made of carbon nanotubes, but unlikely, as those are specially configured — *vertically aligned*, while surely a space elevator cable will be made of *laterally aligned* nanotubes), enough light will reflect to make it a streak of ribbon in the sky.
It would probably stand out more on a cloudless night than it would during the day. Just as we cannot see Mercury as it traverses the sun, or a fly sitting on a car headlight, so a relatively thin object, no matter what colour or how reflective, will not be easily discerned in a bright sky.
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Assuming you have a solar power station at the top of the structure (and why wouldn't you -- it's free power, at least to run the elevator), the cable can be any color you like, including flashing multi-color with chasing patterns along its length ("Sir, are you claiming you failed to see a cable flashing multiple high-visibility colors in a virtual barber pole stripe pattern? How did a blind man get a pilot's license, anyway?").
All that's needed to make it this way is to use the cable itself as the conductors to bring the power from the GEO station or Top End down to Earth -- and build LEDs into the cable nanotube structure.
The nanotubes have to be bonded together periodically along their length, to make the cable act like, well, a cable, instead of so much spun glass holiday decoration. The bonding points can be integral LEDs, and assuming they're close together (better for cable handling and strength) when lit they'll make the cable look like a line of light. Make them in equal numbers of red, green, blue, and you can make the cable lighting any color you like -- and because there are billions of these tiny LEDs, with some computing power added it can display any pattern the cable's shape will permit. It could even act as a display screen through a window in elevator car, sliding up or down as the car moves.
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**A Chain of Blinking Lights**
The big problem with a space elevator is that unless you have an extremely strong tensile material the cable will have an extreme taper to it. The maximum tensile stress on the cable occurs at geostationary orbit, and that's where it would be thickest.
Theoretically, carbon nanotubes could require a taper ratio of only 1.6, but we can't make 40,000 km long single nanotubes. Kevlar would require a taper of 2.5 X 10^8.
In either case, the tension is lowest at the ground, and so it would be important to make the cable as thin as possible at the bottom. Let's assume we found a material that only required a taper ratio of 1000. In that case, every foot in diameter at the bottom would require the geostationary portion to be 1000 feet larger in circumference.
If a cable were to go from a 10 ft diameter to a 10,000 ft diameter at geostationary orbit, then even by the time it reached airliner levels (say, 10 miles up) it would still only be 40 ft in diameter.
Wikipedia has a good article on this showing the taper ratios of various materials:
[Wikipedia - Space Elevators](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator#Cable_section)
So, if you were standing near it, the thing would basically look like a radio tower extending to infinity. It would only be visible at all from a very close distance - a mile or two maybe. Therefore, it would be a navigation hazard and would be likely to have beacon lights attached to it every 500 ft or so.
The FAA requires any tower over 750 ft to be marked with two red lights and one high intensity white light every few hundred feet. These would be visible from a much farther distance than the cable itself, so from any distance more than a mile or two away you'd see what looked like an unsupported string of lights in the sky, and once you got close you'd see something like a radio tower that climbs to infinity.
Color won't be important - when you look at a radio tower do you notice the color of the material? The color will be the natural color of the material, except for the bottom few hundred feet where again the FAA has a rule - alternating colors including aviation orange.
Since we don't have a material that be used to make a space elevator, we don't know what natural color it would be. A good guess would be black, charcoal, grey, or a dull metallic color of some kind. But you wouldn't really see it unless you walked right up to the thing.
[FAA Tower and Obstruction Marking Guidelines](https://www.faa.gov/documentlibrary/media/advisory_circular/ac_70_7460-1l_.pdf)
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## White
the ISS is testing "paint" AKA an electrically conductive coating to prevent static buildup, the radiation in space can cause static build up that can fry electronics. presumably the crawler would have electronics. I have no idea what color it is though.
mirror reflective or white is the favored color for space equipment just to minimize thermal transfer from light from the sun, the drastic difference in heating can cause strain due to drastic differences in thermal expansion. White has an advantage as mirrored reflective coatings usually requires a heavier metallic paint si white is the most common. So whatever portion of the cable that is beyond the thermal inertia of the atmosphere will be white.
For what to make the paint out of rek's answer about aerogel based coatings is excelent both for weight but also because it is an excelent themral insulator.
<https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/12/27/why-are-spaceships-painted-if-its-just-extra-weight/#3bdb395b69ca>
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A race of people was created through magic, their mind was greatly altered, among the abilities that were granted was a memory that perfectly records all sensory information forever. As well as the ability to run programs in a sort of secondary mechanical mind, that operates on a much faster magical substrate.
This allows them to do things like instantly look at something like a QR code and know what's encoded (provided they have the mental program that reads QR codes).
Setting is roughly your standard D&D esque fantasy (with this group's abilities making them nearly the only people capable of being general mages) but with some basic mechanical innovation like typewritters and the printing press. The world runs on magic, which makes most technology impossible, chemistry just doesn't work and the world resembles the ways people thought the world worked pre enlightenment.
For these people there is no reason *not* to have a language as complex as possible when communicating with others sharing their abilities. They will all share the same same language since they can learn it in hours or days and tend to greatly value efficiency.
**So with that in mind what would you would expect from their language:**
I'm looking for the rough analogs for their spoken and written languages. The only limit to the sounds they can distinguish are the physical features of their ears, so you could pack in some massive bandwidth here. It's also important to note that their mental programs can produce sounds automatically, so no sound is more unpleasant to produce than any other, the only limits are what sounds they can physically produce. I also think they'd want to put in some physical motions here, this wouldn't just have to be stuff like sign language they could assign meaning to slight twitches in facial muscles or blinks.
As for their analog of written language, it's important to mention that this race almost universally has slight hand tremors, so that would make drawing fine detail quite hard (so hand drawn QR codes are right out). The only *fundamental* limit to how quickly they can read is how quickly they can move their eyes. This language doesn't have to be done with a pen, what I'm looking for here is something they can put on paper or something similar quickly. If your solution involves a very simple cheap machine or say the use of a knife to get straight lines that's fine. You might also have another type of writting that would be used for books, where the difficulty of transcribing by hand wouldn't be a factor.
**Reminder**: There's no reason to have this language resemble any language ever previously devised, *in fact it seems really unlikely it would*. Given how easy learning a language is for these people, there's no reason they wouldn't adopt whatever written and spoken systems were invented by linguists to maximize information bandwidth.
Given the much higher bandwidth of this language it really ought to be basically indecipherable to vanilla humans, if they can understand it after all then it must be relatively simple, which there's no reason this language would be.
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I agree with Daniel M's position that the language would be highly contextual. The more shared history one has with your conversation partner, the more efficiently you can communicate.
As a particular linguistic approach, I'd think they might use something along the lines of [Huffman Coding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huffman_coding). This is one approach used in .zip files to maximize compression. In Huffman Coding, one assigns representations to each symbol (a concept or idea in our fictitious language. A symbol is a 4 input bytes in .zip compression). The symbols which occur most often are given shorter representations than those which occur more rarely.
This sort of approach can also be done adaptively. You can start with a notional "base probability" tree, and as you communicate, you adjust the tree based on what has been said. If you're talking about the weather, you'd soon find words like "rain" and "temperature" are easier and easier to say, as they move up the tree to more advantageous locations. This is terribly hard to do in the human mind, but if one had perfect memory, one could easily keep track of trivial details like this.
As an interesting bit of flavor, you could add in some analog color to the language. What I described above is very discrete. It's very good at describing written text, but not so good with the subtleties of spoken language like intonation. The intonation would need to be layered on top. However, this could be troublesome with adaptive Huffman trees. If you've been talking about the weather too long, the word for "weather" may become very short. It could become too short to put much meaningful intonation into.
You could create two forms of language. The normal communication might be hyper-compressed. When they mode-switch, they might use a more lyrical communication method with an intentionally inefficient Huffman tree to give the more opportunity to embellish. A similar structure might appear for written language. Consider these two examples:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Gm6Ca.png)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2mJX5.jpg)
The first is a QR code, which is highly compressed, and very effective at communicating information. The second is a caligrapher's rendition of Chi, the Chinese concept of life energy. While obviously it does not pack quite as many bits of data, it still seems to capture something very expressive. It's simply expressive in a different way.
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Just use a 64 bit numeral with 1 bit used for "not" to represent every word/concept that you can think of. Use a few bits for basic grammar and you have a perfect digital language. All you have to do from there to make it auditory is make each bit or set of bits have a phoneme/tone/etc to it and you have the most comprehensive translatable auditory language possible... nearly impossible to speak, listen to, or make sound nice, but that's how you would do it for shear quality/quantity of data.
I also have to point out how they achieved perfect memory would effect this. We use various methods to reinforce our memory, such as the way it sounds. The standard is using "baba" and "kiki" which we perceive the former as rounder and the latter as sharper which helps us remember "ball" and "Knife" (The k used to not be silent). If they rely on this what I suggest would have to be better organized where as if it's not based on any such thing they could be as abstract as they wish.
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I concur with Cort Ammon's opinion that dynamic compression would be a core aspect of their language. I add to his ideas the thought that the efficiency emphasized by this people would also have effects on the verbal encoding scheme, with the result that they would sound as close to dialup modems as humans can possibly sound. Think beatboxers without any of the repetition (any structure in their communication would be minimized in order to maximize the bandwidth of the channel, see [Claude Shannon's Information Theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory)). It would be very unpleasant to listen to for those not of their race. At the same time, if body language is used to further expand bandwidth, it might make the communicator look like he was having a seizure.
Of course, this is what happens in the absence of compelling cultural forces pushing against such developments.
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Their language would be highly contextual, and words would have many different meanings. My guess is that if you have a perfect memory, and you also know that the people around you have a perfect memory, there is no need to be too precise in your language. Kind of how when you get together with friends and one of them says, "Remember that *one* time?" and everyone knows what they mean because everyone shares the same memory. I would imagine a lot of conversations between friends and family might sound like this, "Where did I put the thing with the stuff?" Except they wouldn't probably ask that question, because they would already know where they put the thing with the stuff. More likely, they would say "Who took my thing with the stuff?"
As such, I think that language would have separate, distinct purposes and different languages might be used for different functions. For example, a more informal and contextual language would be used when communicating about the past than a language used to discuss medical research. There might even be a purely spoken mathematical language. Since languages could be learned rapidly, I think many people would create their own languages for fun and to accommodate different uses.
Edit for comments:
So, the reason you would have ambiguity is to make the language more beautiful, fun, and challenging. If information supply is infinite, demand for information will drop off sharply. Many of these answers assume these Beings with Perfect Memory (BPM) would want to convey a lot of information (like a qr-code) in each and every morpheme or sentence token however, I would argue that simply being able to remember everything doesn't mean that a BPM culture would be assign as much value to knowledge as we do. If knowledge and memory is ubiquitous, it loses value. Going to up a group of people and reciting a super long paragraph containing the bytecode for a video wouldn't be impressive. The challenge and fun of language would then be through analyzing different shades of meaning and seeing how quickly you could process a myriad interpretations of the same sentence. So metaphor, n-tuple entendre, rhetorical devices and constructing sentences that are aesthetically and intellectually pleasing would have a higher value because they would involve creating something new, not just rehashing something that everyone already knows already.
Plus, the 'remember that one time' example is far too simplistic. How it would really play out is that, say in describing a event unknown to listeners (like the time I slipped and fell on a banana peel), I wouldn't need to say the words 'fall' or 'banana', but could reference a shared memory and use other devices of language to come up with a humorous way of telling the story. Kind of the way a friend might say to you, recalling a time when you both narrowly avoided injury, "we totally Matrixed out of that," you're able to say "Matrixed out" because the image of Neo dodging bullets is shared and implied given the context. In a culture where information is ubiquitous therefore almost valueless, inference, connotation, metaphor, and style would trump mere volume of information.
One caveat, for a BPM culture, there may be instances where precision and volume are in fact needed, e.g., for chemistry or robotics where being able to quickly reference large sets of specific information would be necessary. Hence the need for different modes or modules of language. The way we have informal and formal English, they would have similar language structures formed around functional groups and occupations.
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I would consider this question from a mathematical stand point, angling in from two directions on your scenario.
First, the average adult "test taker" has a vocabulary of 20,000 - 35,000 words [[1]](http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2013/05/vocabulary-size)
Second, mathematics, takes basic concepts and composes them into more complex mathematical objects - all of which are represented by *symbols* rather than words - which in a sense could be thought of as vocabulary words, but with their own semantics and context, i.e. mathematics is it's own language.
In mathematics we have short and elegant equations, no longer ( and often times much shorter ) than an English sentence, which taken as a whole, can describe several highly intricate steps of computation taken on perhaps millions of pieces of information. This is especially true in machine learning contexts.
Language works in a similar way; by selecting words, assigning definitions or meanings to those words, defining valid variations which systematically alter the meanings of the words (e.g. past tense, plurality, etc.)
So if your language users have a larger vocabulary, and perhaps a broader range of alterations that can be applied to the words of their language, with rules that determine their use, then it is conceivably possible for very large amounts of information to be transferred in very short utterances.
Taking into account other ways of ~~multiplexing~~ increasing signal bandwidth in terms of language, such as intonation and a larger alphabet, then the size of words can be shortened without changing their meaning.
So the encoding aspect of the language hinges on the availability of variations in sound which represent bits or small chunks of data - letter grouping combinations and their associated phonemes. An important aspect of encoding is being able to distinguish between phonemes. This is done with statistical analysis in natural language processing by including the surrounding words in a phrase in order to raise the probability that the sound "see" is referring to the concept "to see", "the sea" or "the letter C". But again, by formulating a larger vocabulary it is possible to simply replace the sounds associated with each concept so there is less ambiguity. As well, by increasing the bandwidth of the signal, by adding intonation, having a larger alphabet and making sure that each letter in the alphabet has a distinct phoneme that can easily be distinguished from the others, makes processing the language less intensive by reducing or eliminating ambiguity.
The high level concepts again rely on the vocabulary size. Similar to the way equations represent high level mathematical concepts in the way an equation brings multiple concepts together by grouping with parenthesis, stringing symbols together with operators like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, and feeding concepts into other concepts by functional composition, a high-level, spoken language, using commas, fragments, and recondite terms, can pull together complex information into a short description.
What this means for a spoken language that is designed to be fast and compact is that it should take up the full range of the audible spectrum, which depends on the qualities of the ear of the species. To an un-trained listener, the sound of spoken communications would sound very noisy, like white noise, somewhat like the loud sound that you get on an old TV set when the screen is displaying static from no signal. But perhaps with some hints of clicks, whistles and other sonic patterns that would be trackable by the human listener as something complementing, or perhaps segmenting the over-all noise. Think of the sound you get when you listen to a fax machine over the phone.
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The English language, if we trace it back through its root languages in the ancient world, starts out with concrete terms that become more and more abstract over the years.
The word **abstract** provides an example. In English, abstract means theoretical; difficult to understand; speculative; separate from concrete realities and specific things. The latin roots of abstract give the idea of pulling away, or diverging from a set path. That metaphor became a word in its own right and now has a life of its own in the English language.
My guess is that because people with perfect memories would never forget the metaphors, they would never develop abstract words in their language. But languages need to describe things by comparing them to other things. Therefore a race with perfect memories would use extremely long sentences in which they give the whole metaphor instead of using abstract terms.
They might say:
"If it would give you the calm of a still river, take by the hand and place before me one open container made from sand shaped by fire and filled with the liquid that sustains life."
Instead of saying "Please bring me a glass of water."
At least their language might start out that way. Since they have perfect memories, they could condense word groups into shorter collections of sounds. So they would have a sort of second, shorthand language with words that sound like random collections of noises--total gibberish to anyone else. It would not be like our way of combining concrete ideas into new abstractions, but like code words that stand in for whole sentences or paragraphs.
As for a written language, their memories would allow them to use a language that normally has to be decoded from a table, like Circular Gallifreyan. Because of the slight hand tremor, they may use a system of large basic shapes for consonants, and designate vowels with hash marks.
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Some discussion here about contextual - reference to past events.
It would be worth checking out the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Darmok".
In that episode, the crew encounter a species who talk only in metaphor, with every sentence being a reference to some past event or legend.
Since this would require the species to know and understand all legends & myths, it must be assumed they have an excellent memory.
Could be worth taking this angle.
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# Vocabulary
Individual will be as short as possible (before compression) to make speaking and writing quick. There will be many ways to change words in miniscule ways to change their meaning. Not only packing a sense of time (present, perfect etc.) but also much more so a sense of numbers (not only "one" and "many" like in real languages, but likely all numbers occuring in day-to-day life). All of this encoded in a way that it can be done with a letter/phonem or two changed in the word.
# Sentences
No "helpers", no redundancy. Many, many more grammatical rules which convey information. Information can be transfered by word order etc., much more so than in our languages.
# Context
As memory is perfect and assumably also perfectly shared, much more references can be included in everyday sentences. I.e., like we use hyperlinks on the WWW, there could be an abundancy of stored events, concepts, etc. that could all be referenced by a short hashtag (even just a content hash like in `git`).
# Compression
Much has been said about huffman compression. The lines are blurry here for me. Much compression has already taken place in the previous three areas (vocabulary, sentence, context), so it is unclear how effective additional huffman would be. But sure, no reason not to include it.
# Channels
The most important thing would be to use many channels concurrently while speaking, like "multichanneling" in fiber glass. This is all about bits per second here.
* Voice: modulate it as far as physically possible to get as close to the Shannon Limit as possible. To a human listener, it would probably sound much like gibberish/white noise.
+ Pitch
+ Volume
+ Speed (i.e., bits could be put into the exact length of a sound, maybe distinguishing between a 0.1s and 0.15s length, if the magical mechanic secondary mind can distringuish that)
+ Hissing sounds that can be layered on top
* Body language
+ Twitches of all kinds of parts (shoulders, hands, arms etc.)
+ Hand signs (the tremor should not matter there)
+ Face twitches, head movements (rotating in 3 axes, moving in at least 2 axes etc.)
# Writing
For written language, since they have a tremor, they could use knifes to cut extremely fine lines. I.e., a standard alphabet could be achieved by layering horizontal and vertical lines over each other. Let's say they can distinguish 8 lines per 0.5cm with the help of their magic processor, then they can have, in a 0.5x0.5cm block, 16 bits of information (8 horizontal, 8 vertical), far more than the tiny, tiny amount we get into one of our standard-human characters. They would likely use some variant of Manchester Code to avoid problems when only a single line has to bee drawn.
If the tremor makes this impossible, they could likely invent a typewriter which can do it for them.
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With unlimited memory (and unlimited speed to do a search in the brain) then there is no reason not to assign a unique word/code to each and every single thing that this race can perceive, feelings, colors, everything. I would think their language would resemble DNA strings, a long sequence based on a number *d* of unique symbols such that each symbol represents a physical sound that can be produced by any member of the race. The words are *in theory* unlimited in length, however, the addition of a new character in the sequence would imply *(d-1)* new unused words to put a meaning to. This exponential behavior would not be easily matched by the development of the race, so word length wouldn't be a problem. A thing to note is that two related things might not be even close in this language. For example, if we add the *idea* "My brother has a screen" years after adding "My brother has a rock", they might not share a single character.
Another downside of this, is that the oldest words get the shortest pronunciations, whereas the new ones require more time, more characters. Maybe a new word will be of daily use and would make this language inefficient. Two possible solutions that I can think of:
1) Technology might not prevail in this world of magic, but maybe the race knows the importance of communications, and they all together make a scheduled permutation of the meaning of the words where highly used *meanings* get the shortest pronunciations. (Books would be useless because as they get old, they would lose their meanings, but maybe in a world of magic, updating the books needs just someone to cast a spell and, voilà).
2) The positions of the characters do mean more than a simple one-to-one rule with the meanings. A tree of meaning-relation would be derived, such that words with similar meanings would share similar sequences. Branch insertion of knowledge in this tree would be very complicated without a scheduled reordering of the language.
If any of these two is a solution, then these books would be written in a single word. Conversations would also be an exchange of single words.
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**Large Corporation, Circa 2019**
We already have people with perfect memory: corporate knowledge workers equipped with unlimited email archiving systems. Anything of significance that was ever communicated within a corporation, can be quickly located through a search in Outlook.
**Perfect Memory is not all it's cranked up to be**
Alas, people who have perfect memory still do not have perfect knowledge:
* They are not omniscient: they can only remember what was communicated to them
* They may not always perfectly communicate everything they perfectly remember
* Even a perfect communication can be misunderstood, if a recipient is not a competent listener
* Miscommunication will lead to the equivalent of False Memories
* People with perfectly filled memories die/quit/retire all the time
* People with empty memories and lacking context (new employees) appear all the time
* Bandwidth for exchanging information among perfect memories is limited: knowledge can be effectively shared at a maximum of about 15 to 30 PowerPoint slides per hour
* Attempts to compress the communication cause ambiguity and diverging interpretations
**Impact on Language**
Aside from some jargon relating to the exchange of bulk amounts of information to and from those perfect memories (e.g. "email chain", "[powerpoint] deck", "communications plan", "white paper", "design document", "requirements document", etc), the overall language structures used by people with perfect memory are not distinct from those used by the general public.
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It will be very closely resembling Arabic. There are certain practical reasons for it.
# 1- Concision
A perfect memory means a lot of data to save. This also means that unless the language is concise, a lot of time would be wasted in communicating just a short incident or idea. Arabic takes the medal here as it conveys the meaning in the least words possible, in most situations. For example, according to Google Translate, the sentence *Those two women went for shopping* in different languages, becomes:
Arabic: ذهبت تلك المرأتين للتسوق
Zahbat tilk'al maratain litsooq (4 words)
Persian: آن دو زن برای خرید رفت
Aan do zan baraye khareed raftand (6 words)
French: ces deux femmes sont allées pour le shopping (7 words)
Russian: эти две женщины пошли за покупками
eti dve zhenshchiny poshli za pokupkami (6 words)
Greek: αυτές οι δύο γυναίκες πήγαν για ψώνια
aftés oi dýo gynaíkes pígan gia psónia (7 words)
Chinese: 这两个女人去逛街
Zhè liǎng gè nǚrén qù guàngjiē (6 words)
Hindi: उन दो महिलाओं की खरीदारी के लिए चला गया
Wo do mahilayen khareedari kay liay chala gaya (8 words)
This is the power of Arabic over other languages. Conveys the meaning without missing anything, in the least words. That will definitely be a prime requirement for those people as they would have plenty of data to communicate/store.
# 2- Precision
This is linked to concision, but not the same thing. In Arabic there are more than 100 words for lion, with slight differences (large lion, bush lion, angry lion, brave lion, charging lion etc) and more than 50 words for love and affection. This adds yet another advantage to communication as you have a large vocabulary to choose from, so that you get to choose the precise words for your requirement, which not only reduces words, but also conveys the meaning precisely.
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Photographic memory is curse especially in the medieval period with all the childhood death and horrid farming activities. Would you want to remember all the times of great pain in your life- you probably hit your head as baby a dozen times. No wonder these people's hands shake- mental stress is extreme. They probably wouldn't have their own written language because that would be horrid for their race to read and just tell others of their own race for communication or show an example/picture (made by a person of another race)- why even bother with written language for their own people and also torture for the other person. For other people of other countries, something simple like Braille or Rotokas alphabet which all of 12 letters- reduces the errors in writing. They might be limited scholars and couriers outside their home location trading for great art or powerful magic or powerful drugs to mitigate against the memories that they don't want.
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The setting is current day Los Angeles... except for the goblin city that exists beneath it. Its chambers range from about 500-2000ft underground and has a population of several thousand. A lot of what the goblins have comes from things they steal from humans at night: radios, power tools, babies, and whatever other odds and ends they find lying around. Because of this, the kinds of sounds you hear in the goblin city will be a lot like what you hear in the human city, just deeper. While they certainly make a fair amount of noise, when I wrote this setting, I assumed that whatever noise they made would be mostly muffled by hundreds of feet of Earth and blend with whatever noise the humans were making up above.
But then I read this <https://xkcd.com/2344/> this morning and realized that Los Angeles probably has some pretty dedicated seismologists keeping an eye on things. This got me wondering:
**Would seismologists notice the goblin city?**
Assume the humans do not generally know that there are goblins in their city at all, so they would not be actively looking for them.
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Well, I'm convinced at this point that taking no special precautions would lead to the city being discovered, but if you have any ideas about how to the Goblins could take special precautions to hide, see related question: [How to hide this underground city from seismologists, oil prospectors, and ground surveying projects?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/183634/how-to-hide-this-underground-city-from-seismologists-oil-prospectors-and-groun/183639)
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The problem is not the sounds the goblins make. Since the goblins need to move around (and probably breath as well), they will be moving through a gaseous medium. That is much less dense than rock, and will easily be detected when analyzing seismic waves (even the ones with epicenters far from the Goblin city).
Seismic waves, like any other wave, [refract when they move from one medium to another](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seismic_refraction). When analyzing such waves, seismologists will notice there is a pocket of air where the city is. Even if you make the goblins aquatic and fill the city with water, it would still be quite noticeable.
Notice that [some waves go all the way through the planet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-wave). Also from this link:
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> Primary and secondary waves are body waves that travel within the Earth. The motion and behavior of both P-type and S-type in the Earth are monitored to probe the interior structure of the Earth. Discontinuities in velocity as a function of depth are indicative of changes in phase or composition. **Differences in arrival times of waves originating in a seismic event like an earthquake as a result of waves taking different paths allow mapping of the Earth's inner structure**.
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So there is basically nowhere underground where the goblins could hide. Seismographers everywhere would be studying the weird set of chambers because it would stand out very clearly.
[Here is a paper where scientists use wave refraction to detect and detail a water collection shaft](https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2016EGUGA..18.2131G/abstract). I think that with current technology, the goblin city could not be mapped in detail, but it would be possible to see it in a similar way that you can see a baby in the womb with ultrasound. You would definitely know there is something there.
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Also notice that [muography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muography) is increasingly becoming a thing. With patience and money we could already map the whole interior of the Earth in 3D. From the wiki:
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> Film muography enabled them to obtain the first interior imaging of an active volcano in 2007, revealing the structure of the magma pathway of Asama volcano.
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[Answer]
**Methinks they'd be detected**
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> Seismometers are by definition extremely sensitive, recording all that is going on around them whether seismic or not. ([Source](https://www.seis-insight.eu/en/public-2/planetary-seismology/how-a-seismometer-works))
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Considering seismometers can accurately detect small things miles away, the answer is most certainly "no." It's theoretically possible that the goblins could set up a random pattern (like walking on sand in *Dune*) that would hide the noise, but that gets less and less likely with population, which eventually develops "habits" (like devoted walkways/transport).
You could assume that they're incredibly quiet critters, but the first time they cracked rock for expansion, it would be detected.
*Ultimately, a seismograph is only as sensitive as the accuracy of the "proof weight" and the balancing technology. But humans have been very accurate with those for some time now. Think "pendulum clocks.")*
**Alternatively...**
On the other hand, let's assume the goblins were smart enough to move into the subway, sewers, water overflow tunnels, etc., or build close to them. Their activities might be hidden in the operational noise of those existing structures. How big are your goblins? I can't even imagine the number of rats, dogs, alligators, already living in those places. So, if you don't push them so far away — making them parasites of humanity — they might be hidden for some time.
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**There are people who know about the goblins.**
But it is not publicized. Besides goblins there are other very good reasons for humans not to start poking around the underworld.
The party line given to geologists and seismographers is that there is an acoustically reflective layer beneath the city, which turns out to be true and experimentally demonstrable with test noises. Unusual sounds detected from the goblins are thus attributed to faint echoes of human noise coming down from the city then being reflected back. These noises are altered in the transmission and reflections but bear the characteristics of human type noises and so are routinely filtered out and ignored.
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Other answers have given good reasons why caverns under Los Angeles would be detected. A second part of the question would be whether there were any cities where the caverns might go undetected. It might be easier for something like this to go undetected in a city like Paris or Johannesburg, which is built on top of a large network of former mines. Although depending on how long the goblins have been there, it may be hard to explain how the miners missed them when digging the mines.
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## **Tl;dr:**
* Humans create a composite image out out what each of their eyes see
* Humans process the two images into one using their visual cortex
* Humans can't see infrared because of a lack of photoreceptors in
their eyes
* Visible light wavelength is 400-700nm
* Near infrared (NIR) wavelength is 750-1500nm
* [This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5jqJ-CbJoA) shows you how our photoreceptors work using cones and rods (we only have RGB 400-700nm receptors so cant see NIR which is 700-1500nm)
* You need specialized NIR receptors to sense NIR
* Having more of the A2 protein does not allow you to see NIR, fish that do this just see more shades of red
* Cameras can take NIR photos and videos, since NIR appears to us in greyscale, [colour palettes can be added.](https://i.stack.imgur.com/o2UeT.png) An example of this is the [infamous Ironbow palette from the predator films.](http://www.imaging1.com/images/thermal-guy-with-gun.jpg)
* We see NIR as a type of greyscale because it's a colour we don't have the receptors to see. Us trying to see NIR through video is like a person who doesn't have RGB receptors (sees in greyscale) trying to see the colour green.
* We can take a NIR photo and an RGB photo, extract the luminositiy value from the NIR and the chromisance (colour) from the RGB. Then overlay the two to create a composite image. [As may be seen here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zC7BP.jpg)
* NIR can see through smoke, clothes and thin skin as well as some types of glass and plastics. But doesn't include RGB colour.
* The subsequent compound photo can see through smoke, clothes and thin skin. It also has increased contrast and sharpness.
* Creatures with compound eyes exist, which use the visual cortex to create a composite image through the many hundreds or thousands they receive. Organisms such as the mantis shrimp do this but with the receptors for UV, RGB and NIR all within one pair of eyes.
* If the visual cortex can create a composite image from hundreds with high ranges of wavelengths, an organism should be able to exist which uses one pair of eyes for NIR and a second for RGB.
* The visual cortex could, in theory, select the luminescence from the NIR and the chromisance from the RGB to form a single image.
## My question is:
Would it be feasible for an organism to develop with **two pairs of eyes**, the **first** having 3 cones that sense light on the **NIR** spectrum, the **second** pair having 3 to sense light on the **RGB** spectrum. Using the **luminescence from the NIR** and the **chromisance from the RGB** could it create a **composite image** within the **visual cortex**?
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**Where is the information processed?**
[The images we see are upside down, our brain just flips them.](https://www.sightsavers.org/protecting-sight/the-eyes/) To support this statement, George M. Stratton wore reversing goggles for eight days, after five his vision flipped right side up again,
[Source 1](http://www.cns.nyu.edu/~nava/courses/psych_and_brain/pdfs/Stratton_1896.pdf) and [Source 2](http://mentalfloss.com/article/91177/how-our-eyes-see-everything-upside-down).
It is believed that as babies we develop this ability to flip our originally perceived images, even with our relatively small **visual cortex's**. Along with this, humans form a single composite image from what each eye perceives in our **cortex**, this allows us to sense depth.
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**Animals that can sense NIR:**
There are organisms that exist on earth which sense infrared, although they do so without the use of 'eyes' in the sense that you might imagine. They employ the use of various types of pit organs. [Snakes in particular use these to sense the heat of their prey](https://www.nature.com/news/2010/100314/full/news.2010.122.html). Electrical signals associated with this process are sent to the somatosensory system demonstrated as a homunculus [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jf2l9ma6SM), this part of the brain is associated with pain, touch and temperature etc. This does **not** process visual information, that's the job of the [**visual cortex**](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/visual-cortex).
By this we may determine that a snake being able to 'see' infrared alongside normal visible light is more akin to a human sensing heat from their hands, an ability separate from the processing in the visual cortex. Essentially what this means is that no organism on earth can sense infrared through the use of photons, although there is one exception.
The only animal on earth that can see NIR through the use of photons is the **mantis shrimp, it sees UV, RGB and NIR** and a result can't differentiate between the colours as well. No other animal can do this because their photoreceptors absorb only red, green, blue (and sometimes UV, such as in bees). Studies such as [this](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4273384/) 'have not received a satisfactory physical explanation', as simply finding a way for the red photoreceptors of the eye so absorb a wavelength of 700-1000 will result in the colour subsequently being perceived as another shade of red. Certain marine animals are said to be able to see in infrared light because of the A2 protein, this may be true, however, since their eyes contain only Red, Green and Blue receptors, IR being slightly above red, they perceive IR as a different shade of red.
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**How infrared works:**
[This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5jqJ-CbJoA) gives a great explanation of how we perceive colours through cones and rods in our retinas. It details why we can't see different ranges of wavelengths.
Infrared is a just another colour spectrum, yet one we can not comprehend, it's essentially like a person who sees in greyscale trying to see colour. Cameras can however, pick up NIR, it's just that we only perceive it as type of greyscale. Since NIR is essentially heat energy yet we observe it on a greyscale we can add filters that range from one end to the other on a colour palette. [An example of which, would be the well known Ironbow palette](http://www.imaging1.com/images/thermal-guy-with-gun.jpg)[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/o2UeT.png)
[This wavelength chart](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/core/lw/2.0/html/tileshop_pmc/tileshop_pmc_inline.html?title=Click%20on%20image%20to%20zoom&p=PMC3&id=3144654_eye2010149f1.jpg) will make it easier to understand. We can only see up to a wavelength of about 700, due to our 3 cones being within about 400-700, infrared on the other hand spans from about 750 onward.
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**How a compound image using NIR and RGB works:**
In [this example](https://ivrl.epfl.ch/research/infrared/enhanement) information from the visual light spectrum (red, green, blue) is taken and converted into a luminance-chrominance colour encoding. The [near infrared (NIV) (700-1100)](https://ivrl.epfl.ch/research/infrared/imaging) however is derived from the same camera that has had its NIR filter removed, resulting in an image that appears to us in greyscale. The resulting image then provides us with a luminance channel, with more detail to contrast and sharpness.
The luminance channel of the RGB is replaced with that of the NIR image, resulting in a cross between the two. The first images are RGB, the second are NIR and the final is the hybrid. As you can clearly see when you zoom in, the final images have increased sharpness and contrast. It's easier to see in both high and low light conditions. It seems that [a camera has accomplished this without the use of post photograph editing](https://ivrl.epfl.ch/research/infrared/skinsmoothing). Furthermore [this abstract](http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2017/0094141.html) details a very similar process.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zC7BP.jpg)
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**Evolutionary advantages of seeing multiple wavelengths:**
On top of this, [infrared can see through smoke as well as other things](http://www.kaya-optics.com/), from this we made deduce that an organism who has employed the use of multiple wavelengths could:
* Easily see prey even through something like camouflage
* Spot prey through smoke or a smoke-like vision inhibitor (especially good if their habitat contained such an atmosphere.)
* See through clothes as well as thin skin (possibly spotting main veins for hunting)
* See in the dark (albeit in black and white)
Clearly there are immense benefits.
Here are some examples regarding [**Smoke**](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dkNSt.jpg),
[**Clothes**](https://i.stack.imgur.com/byUmZ.jpg) and
[**Veins**](https://i.stack.imgur.com/srli5.jpg)
As well as another example of how NIR looks in smoke:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/c6qNX.jpg)
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## The question is as follows:
Would it be feasible for an organism to develop with **two pairs of eyes**, the **first** having 3 cones that sense light on the **NIR** spectrum, the **second** pair having 3 to sense light on the **RGB** spectrum. Using the **luminescence from the NIR** and the **chromisance from the RGB** could it create a **composite image** within the **visual cortex**?
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Now I'll leave you with some interpretations of how the alien might see its world, after forming a composite in its visual cortex.
[Possibility One](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SH18K.jpg)
[Possibility Two](https://i.stack.imgur.com/muT53.jpg)
[Answer]
Why would receptors reacting to infrared be any different than those reacting to other wavelengths?
Some humans are color-blind. They lack one or more types of cones, meaning they don't perceive that color at all (or in some rare cases, no color at all being completely monochromatic perceiving a purely grey world).
Some humans are tetrachromatic (they have 4 receptors) - most don't know because everything just looks normal to them.
There isn't anything particularly novel about being able to see infrared any more than it is that some animals can see well into the ultra-violet.
As far as having multiple eyes... we have multiple eyes right now (as do many animals, though they can be far more impressive with it). Nothing unusual about it. Many people have a dominant eye, from which their brain focuses more attention on, but most people still composite the information into a coherent perception despite multiple sensory organs.
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While two pairs of eyes are clearly feasible (some [spiders have eight eyes](https://www.quora.com/Why-do-spiders-have-eight-eyes)) having just more colour receptors is much more probable. It is very imaginable that usual vision is extended to near infrared (700–1500 nm wavelength). It will not extend beyond that because water becomes opaque at longer wavelength and an eye mainly filled with water will not work anymore.
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There is a device called the DSNVG (Dual Sensor Night Vision Goggles) which can overlay the infrared spectrum onto night vision. I see no reason why, given the correct receptors, a biological eye would not be able to do the same.
Image of a DSNVG in action:
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Yes. The size and shape of Neanderthal eyes implies they may have done this, and even regular humans see slightly into the infrared. We know of humans with four different photoreceptors (terachromats) and the animal kingdom has animals with everywhere from five to thirty five different receptors.
The chief problem is that there's always a trade-off. The number of photosensitive cells of a given size that you can pack onto a given area is bounded, and you need more complex processing which requires a larger visual cortex.
Neanderthals had, indeed, a substantially larger visual cortex, but reduced other parts of the brain to fit it in.
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You merge several kinds of data now in your visual cortex. You have rods and cones. Rods respond just to luminance. Cones respond to different colours. You merge low res colour info with high res luminance info. You do the same thing in other senses too. Close your eyes. Touch your fingertips together behind your back. You integrated a whole bunch of positional data from the weight of your limbs.
Try this: Hold your hands about 2 inches apart. Have someone else put their hand between your hands, then you close your hands together. You have made a 'hand sandwich' It feels very odd because you are getting conflicting data. Kinaesthetic sense says your hands are separate. Touch says they are together.
The reason we don't see in NIR is that there isn't much to see. The earth's atmosphere is nearly opaque to it, so there isn't much illumination.
Animals such as snakes that detect warm targets are using very far infrared.
An object at 30 C (bit warmer than normal skin temp) has a peak wavelength at 10 microns. Compare to 700 nm for the red end of the visible. About 14 times the wavelength.
Making a detector has issues too. Snakes make it work because they are colder than what they are looking at. This is a general problem: it's hard to make a detector when all the components are glowing in the band it's trying to detect.
I'm less clear on why more animals don't see UV.
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That last image with the firefighter is *not* near-infrared. It's from a thermal imaging camera which looks at longer wavelengths than NIR, ie, what's generally considered "heat".
The difference can be approximated by noting that NIR can be treated the same as visible light, just slightly below the range that the eye can detect. Most night-vision gear that's not light-amplification, such as that used by wildlife documentaries to film animals at night, is NIR. It uses a source of light that acts exactly like a normal spotlight, but at wavelengths the animals can't see, and the camera detects the reflected light.
A Thermal imaging camera, on the other hand, detects the radiation emitted by the object itself. A wildlife documentary wouldn't need a source of (invisible to the eye) light to illuminate the animals, you'd see the heat emitted by the animals, which would contrast with the temperature of the things around it.
To put it another way, if I looked at a normal interior wall with a NIR sensor, all I'd see is the wall looking not much different than what I'd see with normal light. If I looked at it with a decent TIC, I'd be able to see subtle heat variations: where the wall studs were touching the drywall, the slight waste heat generated by the electrical lines, where pipes were carrying cold or hot water, whether vents were heating or cooling the room. A NIR-capable camera cannot do that. But, and here's the trick, it has to be warmer than the sensor: if your camera's sensor is at 50 C, it wouldn't "see" anything 50 C or colder because the camera essentially blinds itself.
tl;dr: There's not particular reason why an organism can't be sensitive to NIR wavelengths. It wouldn't be different that how some organisms can sense ultraviolet. Seeing an image like that picture of a firefighter, though? Not happening.
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Many animals see into the near infra red already. Some also into the near ultraviolet.
There is no hard dividing line between different parts of the EM spectrum, sensors can very well have an operational range that overlaps parts of different named areas, and that includes both artificial and biological sensors (of which eyes are one example, skin is another).
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Of course. It's not about brain, it's about eye. They just need the right cells in their eyes to pick up both infrared and visible light.
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**Nature got there first**
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> Some forms of fish such as goldfish, salmon, piranha and cichlid can
> see infrared light. Salmon and some other freshwater fish have an
> enzyme that switches their visual systems to activate infrared seeing,
> which helps them to navigate and hunt in murky waters.
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> <https://sciencing.com/animals-can-see-infrared-light-6910261.html>
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So I am now writing my novel regarding a man sent on a long term mission in a backward world by his employer. In the middle of war he ran out of provisions behind enemy lines with no edible flora or fauna around.
And he is a human.
Now the situation is: He is hungry and the only thing in front of him is a lot of dead orcs, imps, snagas and goblins. You are not eating humans, mind you, but demi-humans.
Does eating orcs and goblins or rather any sentient creatures (elves, hobbits, dryads, ents, saplings, etc.) for that matter in any kind of form (raw or cooked) make you a cannibal?
**EDIT**
Most of the sentient species are people/creatures that humans can produce offsprings with.
[Answer]
Cannibalism is defined as the act committed by someone when eating somebody of his own species. With belonging to the same specie I intend they are able to mate, reproduce and generate fertile prole.
As long as humans eating monkeys or apes are not seen as cannibals, I see no reason for a human eating a goblin or whatever to be labelled as cannibal.
[Answer]
By definitions:
[Wikipedia on Cannibalism:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannibalism)
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> Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh or internal organs of other human beings.
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[Wikipedia on Cannibalism (zoology):](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannibalism_(zoology))
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> In zoology, cannibalism is the act of one individual of a species consuming all or part of another individual of the same species as food.
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[English Oxford Living Dictionary on cannibal:](https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/cannibal)
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> A person who eats the flesh of other human beings
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# What does it mean?
This means that if other sentient races are actually a races of homo sapiens species, then eating them is cannibalism. If not, then not - but then in your world there would probably be a word just for that, too.
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No and yes - it does not make one a cannibal (as other answers mentioned) but I think it does make one a monster.
Technically cannibalism is, as other answers mentioned, about eating one's own species - other species, even sapient ones, likely doesn't fit the definition. But the taboo behind that is a little broader, I think, it has to do with not eating beings one perceives as people.
One possible nod to this is the related taboo behind eating pets, or the species of animal routinely kept as pets - cats and dogs, for example, are rarely considered food (at least in the west) and cultures which would, are, well, kind of thought less of for that choice - and I'm not saying there's something intrinsic to those species for a reason why, just that people empathize with pets, and so don't think of them as food.
Another possible related concept is that there were plenty of times, historically, that people of different races were considered "not quite human" - subhuman, or animalistic, or just generally not-people. I recall reading about laws that did not consider the killing of native individuals "murder" because they "weren't people" - not to mention various inequalities of legal protection in regards to rape, abuse, exploitation, and so on related to these racist ideas. But while a great many abuses were common while these legal ideas lasted, I do not recall hearing that cannibalism was one of them. This seems relevant because people at that time certainly believed, acted like they believed, the difference between different ethnicities or cultures was as great as the differences between species - perhaps as great as the differences actually are between these hominid races you mention - yet the cannibalism taboo held.
So I think that the underlying taboo is a bit broader than its literal definition, and it would certainly cover even completely separate races that are known to be sapient. Probably a person in that situation would consider eating other species "cannibalistic" even if the term didn't quite apply logically, it would *feel* similar, I think. And they, or others, would feel that a person who did eat the flesh of other races is a bad person, monstrous, nasty, *badwrongevil*.
To quote a webcomic "[food that talks is not food](http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2003-12-03)", and I think people of your world would feel that way even if there are social, or even legal, definitions that hold that some races or species are "not-people" and can be abused or murdered without consequence - they would not likely be eaten, except under circumstances (and with such consequences) that a person might consider cannibalism - like extreme survival or certain kinds of cultural elements.
To get back to your question, it may be that there's a separate term for those who eat other (sapient) species as opposed to their own, or it might be the same term (cannibal) would be more broadly applied in such a world to begin with. But probably the average person in such a situation would not consider eating the flesh of other sapient species unless they would consider eating the flesh of their own species under those circumstances, and generally, people would probably react about the same to someone who did... so any difference in term is probably not hugely relevant.
[Answer]
Well, firstly, the technical definition of cannibalism is eating a creature of the same species as you. So in your example, it would depend on whether you consider goblins, orcs, etc to be the same species as humans.
The definition of species is kinda fuzzy sometimes (are coyotes and wolves different species?) but the most objective way to distinguish between species is whether they can produce viable fertile offspring together. So for example, if your setting has any half-orc parents, then it's probably cannibalism to eat orcs. If half-orcs are infertile or not possible (or only possible using magical reproduction techniques), then it's not technically cannibalism to eat them.
However, it's also important to consider why we think cannibalism is a bad thing, and whether that applies here. There are several reasons why we tend to disapprove of cannibalism:
* Disease risk - the closer the relationship between the creature you're eating and yourself, the greater the risk of catching a disease from eating that. By this standard, humans really shouldn't eat great apes or monkeys at all, because we share a lot of diseases with them. Ebola, for example, has been definitely linked to eating non-human primates, and it's possible that HIV originated from eating chimpanzees. (Chimps have near universal infection with SIV, a close relative of HIV, which chimps are immune to.) So you might want to consider what diseases exist in your world, and whether they are shared between orcs, goblins, etc and humans.
* Motivation for murder - if you really like the taste of human (or sentient) flesh, or have a fetish for eating that sort of thing, and don't have any handy, how do you get more? Surest way is to kill someone. Even if it's an evil race, you probably shouldn't actively seek them out to murder for selfish reasons.
* Squick - people don't tend to like to think of their food as a living creature that had thoughts and feelings. That's why most people don't tend to eat the same species that they keep as pets. For a lot of people, the thought of eating something that you could have talked to really freaks them out. In the *Chronicles of Narnia*, for example, Narnians are just fine with eating regular stags, but the idea of eating a talking stag really bothers them. (It comes up in a book when some giants feed their guests a stag, and happen to mention that the stag said he wouldn't taste good. The native Narnian in their group is truly horrified by the realization that the deer he ate could talk.)
Another consideration is the circumstances. I don't think most people seriously blame the Chilean rugby team for eating people, given that they would have starved to death otherwise, and the people that they ate would have been dead regardless. It sounds like your character is in pretty dire circumstances, so as long as you make it clear that he'd take any alternative if there was one, the ethical concerns will be a lot less significant.
[Answer]
Lets look at some examples.
Wild animals eating people. Even though the animal is not sentient is still viewed as a monster. Something to be hunted down. If a man ate a non-human sentient species. He would be seen as a monster to them and maybe even others humans.
Human eating other humans. This is cannibalism. But depending on culture can be seen as good or bad. If the non-human sentient's culture involves eating of the dead for strength or something. Then the human would be doing nothing wrong. But other cultures would have a different view.
Human eating pets. Social generally not fool. While not a monster someone doing this would be seen as barbaric. Though such action might be insulting, ei I think of you as no more than a pig/Bacon.
Respect for the dead. Many cultures respect the dead by deposing of the dead body in a certain way. Even among enemies body are returned for burial. By eating the dead, the man could be insulting the non-human race in someway.
Mad Cow Disease. Could the human and non-human have a common enough ancestor where it would be dangerous.
[Answer]
Nope, the meaning of **that word is pretty precise** in a dictionary. You should look at the etimology.
*Cannibal* word has to do with [Carribeans](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=cannibal), native people of Carribeans were **believed to be anthropophagites**.
However you could **invent a new word for that, following similiar etimology rules of the words "[vegetarian](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=vegetarian) / anthropophagites".**
* *Sentient:* [sentientem](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=sentient) (capable of feeling)
The new world could be:
* Sentientphagites
* Sentinvorous
[Answer]
Many of the answers preceding mine focus on the idea of the present definition of a word. We have no present reason to consider a different definition. There are no other species (including dolphins, sorry) that rank as our intellectual equals that we might consider a tasty food source. In other words, the assertion that you can't be a cannibal unless you're eating a human is short-sighted because the idea has never been tested otherwise.
Fastforward to the future (I'll avoid fantasy for now) where we meet the Ambrosians. They achieved intersteller flight before we did. Their children can speak dozens of languages as a matter of course. Their discourses on philosophy are so insightful that it's been known to bring humans to tears. Their music enjoys renown throughout the galaxy.
*And they're mighty tasty with garlic.*
Though I haven't performed the research to prove otherwise, I wouldn't be surprised to discover that the idea of cannibalism is abhorent because the thought of eating your mistress is just so wrong. I mean, she not only can complain, but she has the right to complain. Taking her life is a violation of our highest law and her dearest civil right — eating her would be adding insult to injury.
But would we transfer that concept of an inherent right to life to another intelligent species? We have (to a limited degree) with lower species on mother Earth. Organizations like [PETA](https://www.peta.org/) exist for this very purpose. Most of us don't care because (a) the animal can't complain, (b) the animal has no intrinsic rights (from our point of view), and (c) pretty much every protein is good with either ketchup or BBQ sauce.
But when the creature can lucidly beg for mercy before the slaughter. When his or her cousin can sue before the law for redress. When his or her nation can pull their ambassadors and stage an invasion fleet outside the orbit of Mars....
**I'm going to say yes, the definition of cannibalism would be quickly broadened to include every sentient creature.**
I believe this concept would include sentient fantasy creatures and would be regardless procreative compatiblity. Given enough time for the concept to settle in the human psyche, it would lead one to even feel sick over the idea of consuming the dead in an emergency. But that wouldn't stop some from doing it to stay alive.
[Answer]
Cannibalism narrowly means humans eating humans, however, the broader understanding is: eating your own kind.
Therefore, if orcs and humans can mate and produce offspring, then they are of our kind.
If not, or if this doesn't apply to goblins or halflings, then, not.
There may be a taboo anyway. @Megha in her answer, makes some excellent points about the unlying taboo.
If the bodies are fresh enough to eat, then some of them will have provisions on them, even if they were picked clean of valuables.
There are health considerations and [diseases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease)) that actually go along with people eating people, or a close enough relation that they can breed.
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[Question]
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Before we begin, two things. This question was inspired by [this one](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/34566/what-happens-when-one-planet-lands-on-another). I definitely don't want [this](https://i.imgur.com/8N2y1Nk.gifv) to happen.
So, I have two very close tidally locked planets, each fills up about 2/3 of the sky of the other. They both have about .75g of gravity. There is also a moon orbiting the two planets at some distance (where it is stable). One planet is predominantly ocean with scattered topical islands, small forested islands, and some swamps. The other is mostly desert, in that it has little water.
Note - Assume these aliens have interstellar travel, and are able to travel just under the speed of light. If you think they'd have other kinds of technology as well, then feel free to include it. These alien races would like to help the planets come together gently, let them help if you can. (They can't stop the planets from colliding.)
Now, is there a way for the two planets to collide and not wipe out each other?
You can change some factors about the planets, but their sizes must be between Mars's and Earth's. As a last resort, the inhabitants can flee the planets, but I want to avoid this if possible.
[Answer]
**Everyone will burn to death.**
[This NASA page](https://sservi.nasa.gov/articles/nasa-lunar-scientists-produce-new-model-for-earthmoon-formation/) shows temperature changes during the collision between Earth and Theia in the Giant Impact Hypothesis. The temperature is on the x-axis, in Kelvin:
[](https://lunarscience.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Canup_moonformation.jpg)
Your people are going to die at temperatures worse than hellish. This will be an inferno never before seen on Earth, or any terrestrial planet not subject to such an impact. Temperatures may be lower because the impact velocity will be slower than in the Earth-Theia collision, but they will still be very high.
So, I don't think that people can survive, unless they
1. Escape somewhere else.
2. Go to the orbiting moon, which is hopefully far away. The collision between the planets *may* eject material into an orbit around the resulting body (if there is one), so there's a chance the moon may be adversely affected.
If not, the intense temperatures *will* kill them, and even the oceans can't stop that.
[Earlier simulations by the same author who created the above temperature simulation were also extreme.](http://lasp.colorado.edu/~espoclass/ASTR_5835_2013_Files/2013_10_29_Canup.Moon.Icarus.2004.pdf)
[Answer]
You need to do everything you can to reduce the energy of the collisions. So lets start with a rocheworld pairing, two planets just outside the roche limit tidally locked with each other. One would be slightly larger. This is similar to the situation you already described so we've got a possibility here.
The two planets gradually approach closer and closer until the smaller one starts to break apart. This can actually be a gradual process as mass on the near and far sides of it starts to drift away from the smaller and go into orbit around the larger. The mass would rain down onto the larger planet but would mostly be limited to the orbital plane.
If the breakup was gradual enough the smaller planet would turn into a ring and then rain down as a steady sequence of low-energy meteor showers onto the larger. If the sections were small enough and the whole event spread out over a long enough time this would be survivable for at least some life on the surface.
Expect impact winters, flash fires, clouds of dust and ashe, amazing sunsets, and for at least some time a ring visible in the sky.
As the mass landing around the equator began to mount up the mass of the planet would start to increase, you would actually become heavier and heavier. That new mass would start to flow out and reshape the planet so expect some hefty volcanic activity as the planet starts to deform into a more spherical shape.
The poles (as far away from the impact plane as possible) would be the best place to survive. Even there though the increasing mass and reshaping of the planet would have massive effect even if you managed to dodge the rock falling from the sky.
Dangerous - without doubt. It would be possible for at least some life to survive though.
What can the aliens do? Very little. Maybe shelter the survivors, evacuate people from the smaller one to the larger. A lot would depend on how powerful they are but any mass they can remove or move from the smaller planet will reduce the impact.
[Answer]
If they are already orbiting each other they can. Imagine for example a scenario with two egg shaped planets almost touching each other, almost filling their [Roche lobe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roche_lobe). That is the setting of Robert L. Forward's novel [Rocheworld](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocheworld).
They can share an atmosphere and even an ocean, but you do not want them to merge. Then you are just killing everyone again.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fez9Y.jpg)
[Answer]
Perhaps people from both plants escape to the moon or moons. Given enough time and significantly advanced technology they might be able to terraform the merged planet.
[Answer]
There are several things which are going to survive almost regardless of what you do to their world but none of them are really high up on the evolutionary ladder; high altitude [radiophiles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioresistance), tiny bacteriological lifeforms that live on the upper edges of the atmosphere, like [Deinococcus radiodurans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus_radiodurans) will keep going like nothing ever happened. At the other end of the altitude scale near-[Asthenospheric](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asthenosphere) [thermophiles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperthermophile) are going to experience a ridiculous amount of habitat disruption but they'll be okay in some areas. Large lifeforms are in trouble but I can think of a couple of ways to ride it out.
If you were using a gravity based drive technology, and it scaled, you could slow impact speed to almost nil and, having evacuated the population to the far sides of their respective worlds, allow a slow merger process under a governing gravity field. The tidal quakes etc... are still going to be murder but a reasonably large percentage will survive on what amounts to continental plate sized stone rafts that will settle onto there newly merged world. The same kind of drive could also potentially be used to pull the populated landmasses right off and maintain them with an independent atmosphere while the merger rages below.
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[Question]
[
[Architecture](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/architecture):
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> **1.** The art or science of building; specifically : the art or practice of designing and building structures and especially habitable ones
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> **4.** a method or style of building
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I've noticed that in most stories, you will not hear what style of buildings your characters are coming across. The architectural details involved in the story tends to come down too:
* Size and Positioning
* Material
* The "feel" of the place, along with other senses such as if there were a smell.
* What the structure seems to be used for
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Why would more specific architectural details matter to a story?
[Answer]
>
> “Show the readers everything, tell them nothing.”
> ― Ernest Hemingway
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A few ways architecture can help build a world for your reader:
1. **Create an atmosphere or aura**. Your main character enters a tiny narrow hallway, cramped and restricted, he must traverse this tiny corridor to his goal. Your main character enters a wide, white hall, with wide open windows and a high ceiling, across which he must travel to his goal. These things invoke different emotions in your character and therefore in your reader.
2. **Establish a time period**. Gothic, Baroque, Renaissance, each of these eras have a very specific architecture. Instead of saying "This building was built 100 years ago in 1459" we can instead say "The aging buttresses on the church struggled to hold up it's high arched windows". You would also be able to establish whether we are in the future, by describing futuristic arches, domes, and decorations.
3. **Establish a location**. We would not expect to find a Gothic church in the Sahara desert, nor would we find a yurt in 15th century England. Details like this help place your story without overtly saying "yes, here we are in London".
4. **Establishing Priorities of Your Society**. Are there fifty churches but a distinct lack of libraries? Is there a grand, marble coated Capitol building but just a little ways down the street is a ramshackle ghetto where the poor live in tin and cardboard dwellings? Is there row upon row of identical suburban homes, each with their own identical green lawn and identical car? These details help building a society and give your readers an idea of the culture and priorities of the society.
This question probably belongs on WritersSE or on the meta, because what you're asking is what the function is on the story or on the world building. All I can tell you, is **Show Don't Tell**. Architecture is just one amazing way to do that.
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> “Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
> ― Anton Chekhov
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[Answer]
Well, the things you've described are fairly important to worldbuilding. Additionally, many of us here are not just focusing on making a story, instead we want to create a true and complete world, for whatever intents. A few here are creating worlds just because the act of this is enjoyable. Architecture is an import part of culture and society, and can be a defining seperation between cultures and time period. For example: Mongol nomads used yurts whereas European cultures used stone buildings and even created cathedrals. These left a different heritage and helped define what made the culture great. In the same way you should use architecture to define your
world.
Plus, architecture styles will effect worlds. Does your culture tend to create stone flying buttresses on everything, but shun wood like the plague? Then your world will have more advanced stoneworking tools but very few wooden structures. These change your landscape (notice: landscape is part of world) as well as the thoughts and actions of the people in your world.
If that does not properly answer your question, please define style or "specific details of architecture" better. To me, when you say the "feel" of a building, that sounds a whole lot like style.
[Answer]
Outside of some of the issues identified in the other answers, architecture often reflects the environment that the characters live in. Prior to the advent of inexpensive energy and integrated electrical grids, houses and structures were designed and built in such a way as to reflect the local environment. Most modern buildings reflect economic factors rather than environmental ones, since there is plenty of energy to run HVAC, lighting and other environmental controls without too much reference to the outside.
For example, houses in the southern United States were built with wide verandas or porches with huge overhangs so the people could sit outside, sheltered from the sun or rain and enjoy the breeze, rather than being cooped up in an very hot, stuffy and damp house. This style of architecture died out in the 1950's and 60's with the advent of cheap air conditioning.
Other rather simple examples can be made for such things as the shape of the roof (steeply pitched roofs can shed rain or show more effectively than shallow ones), the thickness of walls (thick stone, adobe or rammed earth can serve to moderate temperature swings in buildings in a desert climate) or even heating (one reason old stone hearths were so massive is the stone retained the heat even after the fire was out, keeping the room warm without a large expenditure of wood).
Other architectural features relate to such things as social status (separate servants quarters and passageways to allow the help to move around without disturbing the owners; grand foyers or dining rooms to emphasize the wealth of the owner, etc), natural or man made hazards (ancient buildings in Çatal Höyük evidently did not have doors or windows the way we understand them, people accessed the building through a ladder and a hatch on the roof. Other ancient cities in the region are dug into the surrounding hillsides to prevent detection) or religious functions.
Architecture used in this way can provide more of a sense of place without a huge data dump (although there will be people who are not going to catch the significance of a steeply pitched roof), so when you look at the buildings in the older sections of a city or town, ask yourself "why" they were built that way.
[Answer]
The question of whether the local architecture is of steel, stone, wood or tent fabric also affects the degree to which the people in your setting have a sense of their own past, a vital component of convincing worldbuilding. For instance if a character managers to lose his pursuers in the warren-like lanes of the Old City it does not just give us a brief action scene about him in his role as thief or assassin, it tells us that his civilization is old and settled, and that his city grew by accretion rather than being rationally planned. Still more is conveyed if it is mentioned that the ancient warren-like lanes are built of cannibalized plasti-steel panels from the almost mythical First Ship.
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[Question]
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Suppose an alternate reality where each human Society (country, clan, tribe, kingdom, or whatever) only give birth to one male per generation. That entire generation depend solely on that one male for reproductive purposes (and possibly, what ever sexual gratification their culture can conceive of.) It is therefore crucial to preserve the life of any male. Obviously, Gender politics cannot exist since males are too few to be considered as a class of society, and probably have no purpose or identity beyond sex and procreation and whatever is attached to that.
Please ignore biological limitations and concerns. So, assume that a man's libido is strong enough for him to fulfill his intended role. A sexual transaction would still be mutually rewarding in the same way that it is for us in the real world. There are no problems with genetic diversity etc. Biologically, everything just works.
Assume that as a historic convention, most societies are structured roughly as follows:
1. There is an upper echelon of female elders (or council). To some
degree they are trusted to govern in a relatively fair manner because
they are mostly post-menopausal and therefore not likely to use
their power to keep sex for themselves.
2. If a male baby is born or discovered it is immediately reported.
There is an immediate military operation to usher the male and its
mother into protective custody.
3. The mother is publicly venerated and given an honorary seat in the
council and is given extensive access to her baby for the purposes
of breast feeding. There is allot of social interaction and
political double speak to assure her that she has custody of her
child and that she is important, but a more objective observation
would be that male is in the custody of the state.
4. Men are not informed that they have a son, and if possible, they are
kept ignorant and separate. There would be times where two or three
men are at a sexually active age (for example: 16, 36 and 56), and
they do not need to know about any other man.
5. The council writes the law for the people.
6. The council may conceivably be: democratically elected, a communist
party, Appointed by a monarch, representative of noble families, a
despotism or any other form of government.
7. The council keeps the males close and would generally have the power
to write the schedule of men if they wanted to operate that way.
As society continues from here, the question is:
* Would men be permitted to wander around expressing themselves
sexually? Or under constant rule of law to follow some schedule? Or
physically confined to one room?
* Would men be able assert power by offering or withholding sex? Could
he increase his own freedoms by persuading the law makers or
enforcers?
* To what degree would accommodating the preferences and desires of a
man be a concern for women? (not talking about sexual preferences or desires)
* Is a pre-pubic male be allowed to have normal social interactions
with other children in some kind of semi-normal school-yard
environment or is he completely isolated and detained by authorities?
Most importantly:
Would a man be made to feel like he is the king, and that he is free to gratify himself as he sees fit, that sexually active woman are his playthings, and that all women do all they can to serve him?
Or would Men be made to feel that he is the tool of all women; that he is obliged to do as he is dictated?
[Answer]
There is no one answer that will fit each society in your world. To say that each society arises from a common starting point is fine, but societies are fluid things and tend to diverge over time.
The freedoms of the few males in each society will depend on the character of the society and the historical background of the society. Societies in which males have met with accidents or have gone missing or have become uncooperative would tend to have instituted measures to restrict the males, though this need not always be the case.
This can range from the extremely restrictive to complete equality to extreme privilege. The following are examples of the variations:
* The males are considered publicly-owned slaves, kept separated in high-security facilities and are milked for their semen. Their schedules and surroundings are arranged to maintain their health with little regard for their feelings or preferences. Actual penetrative sex with a woman occurs rarely if ever, probably only on ceremonial occasions which could in some instances be considered rape of the male by the chosen female, otherwise the male is made to ejaculate to provide laboratory samples on a regular basis, by force if necessary using whatever mechanical or electrical stimulation is required. Women purchase semen samples in order to become pregnant. Sex occurs (*if* it occurs at all) with a high-ranking woman or a lottery winner. Such males would receive only the education required to speak the local language to a degree sufficient to follow orders.
* The males are kept in breeding facilities to which they are confined, but aside from a mandatory minimum level of exercise in order to maintain their health, can spend their spare time doing whatever they want, and can arrange their personal spaces however they want, though being confined, the choices and budget they are given by their keepers may be limited. The authorities select women to visit the males, who are expected to do their best to ensure successful impregnations. Women would be required to apply to the authorities for access to a male, and would probably have to pay a fee and be assessed for their fitness to be a mother. Such males would be offered education by select private tutors.
* Males are effectively homeless drifters who may not own anything other than that which they can carry, relying on the kindness of women for their day-to-day sustenance. Each day, a male may find himself in a household with one or more women with whom he will engage in sexual relations in exchange for meals. He would sleep in the bed of whatever woman he was with when the time came. Law or Custom would dictate that men only stay with women who are in or approaching their fertile period, and then only for a few days. Women who keep a man too long receive the disapproval of the authorities or their neighbours and can eventually attract official or vigilante intervention to free the male. Women in a position of power may be able to ensure male attention by declaring sanctions against women who claim the male's attention while the privileged women is desirous of those attentions, and with no-where else to go, the male is forced to attend to the privileged women or starve. Such males would remain with their mothers until puberty, though probably not receiving much in the way of formal education, or possibly only state-school education if the state provides such services.
* Males are effectively equal to women in civil matters, and may own property. They may have an occupation other than simply as a stud but would spend much of their time providing stud services to women, or their occupation may be *primarily* as a stud, occupying all their business hours. Stud services would be offered by males for a fee, the amount depending upon the time required and possibly the degree of attraction the male has for the female requesting his services. A male may or may not be permitted to have one or more longer-term partners, who may or may not be required to pay his stud fees, who would live with him. Depending on their prowess and financial acumen, these males may range from being on - or even below - the brink of starvation to being very well-off indeed. Such males would receive the best education their fathers could afford and chose to give them, or at the least, whatever officially mandated minimum level of education was required. It is likely that boys would be educated in schools with girls and would be held to the same educational standards regardless of their unusual gender.
* Males live lives of great privilege, being granted a substantial share of tax revenue that enables them to have pretty much anything they may want within reason, their only obligation being to be seen in public and to be available to impregnate women. The male may either wander in public as he pleases, or choose to appear in designated rutting areas. This may range from the male inviting women he desires to a secluded location that may include his quarters or theirs, or intercourse may take place in public. There may be public ruts where multiple women present themselves for impregnation, whom the male services in rapid succession in order to fulfil his public duties yet allowing him to maximise his blocks of personal time. Such males would be accompanied by bodyguards who would ensure that no women attempt to kidnap and monopolise him - or kill him. Males of this type who allow themselves to get out-of-shape may be cut off from their funding until they can get back to an acceptable level of fitness. Males of this type would receive the best education available from private tutors, and would be set free to act as they please from the age of puberty.
* The oldest male is King, though he may be an absolute monarch, or a constitutionally-limited figurehead depending on the society. Either way, when not performing the other duties of such a monarch or engaging in other hobbies, he would be impregnating women, both at his pleasure and as a reward for public service, which category may include making a large monetary contribution to the public - or the King's - coffers. The male heirs would also serve the nation and service its women in similar fashion. They would receive an education at the whim of the king - either at a private school or from private tutors.
With so few males, they would be in high demand. The death of a male could provoke wars with other nations or black-ops-style kidnapping attempts of males from other societies. A male could find himself promoted from an abused stud slave to a king (albeit probably a figurehead in such an extreme case), or demoted in like manner depending on the fortunes of war, covert operations or diplomacy. While a male might be afforded the same rights as a woman, when it comes to biological necessity and international politics, they could find that they really *don't* have any more rights than those the women *choose* to give them.
There could also be biological implications. Assuming that we're talking about humans, we could find the [baculum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baculum) re-appearing within a number of generations, as having a penis bone would be a distinct advantage for a male who would be in such high demand. While the duration of intercourse would not be longer as is generally the case with species in which a baculum occurs, the necessity for these males to spend a lot of time copulating effectively sequentially would select for the presence of a baculum.
Another likely biological adaptation to higher levels of paternity would be higher testicular and prostate mass.
In societies where men - or semen - were available to all women who wanted to have a child, we can expect the level of female attractiveness to decrease somewhat, as a woman's attractiveness to a man would cease to be a factor in reproductive success. However, in a society where the males have a choice of partners, female attractiveness would be more important - and selected for - than ever. A male would be well-advised to stay away from the homely women - they're likely the ones who practise sexual slavery.
[Answer]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-gender_world#Female_worlds>
With one male per generation (3-5 males worldwide at any given time) one would imagine that the world would resemble one or more of the matriarchies previously explored in Science/Speculative fiction, albeit with power and privilege granted to those in proximity of the male(s) and the few children that would be produced. Absolutely, those with control of the men would hold the most power, those who were involved in childcare would be powerful as well.
As for the role of males, and their treatment? "Bird in a gilded cage" comes to mind, but perhaps the twist could be the use of his masculine wiles?
For men to possess any power at all in this universe, they'd (either by tradition, law, other literary mechanism) be able to withhold sexual and/or reproductive performance, otherwise they might suffer the same potential fate Vic faced in Topeka in **A Boy and His Dog**.
[Answer]
**Like Ants, Only Human**
Societies in this situation would function much the same way that an anthill does. The Queen is the most important and most heavily guarded member of the colony. Her physical adaptations prevent her from ever leaving the nest. The Male would be in the same position, sequestered to a single location, probably built as beautifully as possible and incredibly comfortable.
**Male Privilege**
The loss of this male would be devastating to the long term prospects of any group so they would be fiercely guarded. Any activity that takes away from reproduction is too risky. Every possible luxury would be afforded the Male. His schedule would revolve around the reproductive needs of the group, sex, all day, every day. If he managed to escape from his confines, everyone would instantly know who he was and that he shouldn't be there. Perhaps in the first generation after this change, the Male might threaten to withhold sex in order to get what he wants but this wouldn't be permitted. By the second generation, the women will have learned to deeply ingrain the need for the Male to always have sex. Always. Failing to have sex with as many women as possible is linked to an intense guilt.
**Greater Society**
Society in general would be radically different. Once released from the cultural expectations of childbearing, women would blossom. No more angst about whether a woman should bear children or not. In a large enough population, it's possible that there are too many women to be impregnated by a single guy, so the other women know they can go do whatever they want. Someone women have no interest in childbearing, so they don't have to.
Humans still need companionship, so dating of a sort would continue though whether that would include sexual liaisons or not would be up to the couple. (Or I've gotten that wrong and women would form small groups of intense friendships similar to how they do now. )
According to [Carol P. Christ](http://feminismandreligion.com/2013/03/25/what-might-it-be-like-to-live-in-a-society-of-peace-can-you-imagine-by-carol-p-christ/) matriarchal societies have the following characteristics:
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> 1) They practice small-scale agriculture and achieve equality through gift-giving as a social custom.
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> 2) They are egalitarian, matrilocal, and matrilineal. Women and men are defined by their connection to the maternal clan which holds land in common.
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> 3) They have well-developed systems of consensus decision-making that insure that everyone’s voice is heard and considered.
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> 4) They honor principles of care, love, and generosity which they associate with motherhood and teach both genders to express. They often view the Earth as a Great Mother.
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Concerning the first point, that wouldn't be true if the world in question started from modern day technology levels.
[Answer]
**Cloning and artificial insemination would be the main ways of producing children.**
Why settle for nature when you can do better? While in the modern world, human cloning and artificial insemination techniques provide assistance for couples trying to bear children, in a world where there are almost no men, they would serve as the primary means of reproduction.
Artificial insemination, being technically simpler than cloning, would probably be the dominant form. The sperm in question would be produced in huge factories using clonally propagated testicular cells, allowing production to occur at levels much higher than what could be sustained using only natural methods of production.
Every generation, when the new male was born, their reproductive cells and stem cells would quickly be harvested before age or accident could lead to the damage or loss of these incredibly valuable resources.
Society would probably also place a much higher value on the study of genetic manipulation and positive eugenics, with patented sperm lines providing wealthy families with the highest quality offspring possible. Existing sperm lines would continually be artificially modified and split in an effort to remove undesirable qualities.
Males would probably be treated like royalty, but not of the useful variety. Their uniqueness would be marveled at, but not necessarily trusted, and their value to a family as a status symbol would far exceed their value as a member of society. They would be kept under lock and key, pampered, but with little real freedom.
[Answer]
Rather than focus only on power distribution, why not take a look at the philosophical landscape of such a society as well? After all, most societies are built around how they answer key moral questions.
**Fragility and Existential Risks:**
Who needs WMD's when you can wipe out a rival group's future by killing one man? Men would become the focal point of philosophic and strategical debates similar to modern debates on nuclear weapons. Debated questions would include:
* Is it permissible to kill another tribe's male? Does that constitute an atrocity? Or is it simply the death of one person, with unfortunate consequences (which are not guaranteed)?
* What survival measures are permissible for a tribe that has lost its male? Are they morally permitted to use unlimited force to acquire new seed?
* Is it permissible to hold another tribe's male hostage? What is the proper response to this type of threat?
**Justice:**
The Aristotlean definition of justice is that each person gets their due/what they deserve. Such disproportionate power between genders highlights some key issues:
* Is a male creditworthy for siring a whole generation or is that simply something he is supposed to do? Does he deserve more goods simply for being more important to reproduction?
* Likewise, is a male blameworthy for failing to sire a healthy next generation, assuming he was capable of doing so? Does he deserve greater punishment simply for being more important in the failure of reproduction?
**Individual vs. Collective Morality and Autonomy:**
Given the immense importance of males in this society, it's tempting to assert that they should be treated differently than everyone else. This is at odds with certain moral philosophies in our world. The following questions might be an issue:
* Is a male properly considered public property? Does a tribe have the right to control a male for reproductive survival? Does the existential need of the community trump the bodily autonomy of the individual?
* (Related topic) Is it a man's duty to provide reproduction to his tribe? What about providing for other tribes who have lost their male or have a sterile male? What is the proper punishment for a male who fails to do his duties?
* Considering that males can effectively hold their communities hostage, what degree of lawlessness or irresponsible behavior should the community tolerate? Do existential risks justify a moral or legal double standard?
*The Tail Wagging the Dog:*
Now it's entirely possible that a species of this nature would take a double standard as a given. Because people tend to adopt beliefs that are in line with how they live, it's possible that the Emmanuel Kant analog would never emerge in such a species, because it would be unimaginable to think that there could be a world with no male/female double standard. On the other hand, a hypothetical, asexual alien race might say the same about us. It is up to you to decide if this race of humans is in the habit of undergoing logical contortions to justify its way of life or if they it accepts rational arguments for radical and extremely risky changes.
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There is a really good graphic novel that goes over this called "Y the Last Man"
It goes into the dynamics and the women actually kidnap him and use him and so forth. He really becomes treated almost like a resource, sort of like an endangered species. He is kept locked up at times and has very little decision making power about his "services." Its a very great graphic novel and I highly suggest you take a look.
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In order for this to work, there are a few 'musts' that need to be maintained.
**A male must be kept healthy.**
A sick or unhealthy male is a male that cannot perform. Therefore, he must be kept in a place that is clean. He must be provided with plenty of healthy food. He will need time in the sun, so his body can synthesize certain vitamins it cannot otherwise produce. He will need exercise other than sex to maintain his body's systems and keep his weight at a health level. Research done in Australia found that overweight men were less fertile, so his weight level would be policed as well.
If a male becomes sick, this would be cause for something of a panic within the culture...particularly if there are no current replacements available. As a result, for humans, Medical science would be rather advanced. In a typical society of mixed genders, if some breeding groups die due to disease, it is an acceptable loss. In this society, losing a male to disease would be a crushing blow and could, in some cases, wipe out an entire society.
Additionally, a male must be kept mentally healthy as well. Humans need social interaction and to be treated well in order to stay mentally healthy. A male's behavior would be closely watched for signs of instability. [Social Isolation is dangerous](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2013/08/dangers_of_loneliness_social_isolation_is_deadlier_than_obesity.html) and can lead to all sorts of problems. Mental state, particularly depression, can have a negative impact on fertility.
**A male must not be injured.**
In this society, males are the most valuable thing in the world. Without them, a culture can only survive a single generation. Harming a male in any way would be an extreme taboo and harshly punished. Even if battles were fought, a male would be protected from harm by both sides at all costs.
The only time this may be breached is in cases of extreme war where you need to cripple your enemy long-term, and cannot possibly abduct their males. Such an act would likely be viewed as extremely barbaric. It's essentially an act of genocide.
**A male must be kept alive as long as he remains viable.**
This ties in to the two above points, but since males are so rare and valuable, the longer you can keep one alive and viable for reproduction, the better
**The male's busyness will depend on the size and tech-level of the culture**
In the modern world, the Crude Birth rate per thousand people is 19.4, globally. This means that out of every thousand people, roughly 19 of them have a child each year. To maintain population stability, this number goes up if there is a war, or famine, or if the tech-level is lower than modern times. The current highest is in Niger, at 51.26 births per thousand people.
So, if you assume an average level birth requirements, if a male fathers 20 babies per year per thousand people in the culture, the population will stay stable. So, how he is treated will depend on how big the culture is...if its only a town or tribe, the male may have plenty of freedom and a pretty open schedule to spend how he wishes. If you rank things up to 'nation' level, things get a bit hairier for the guy.
Taking the completely random example of Ireland. Ireland has a current population of 4.595 million. In order for the population of Ireland to maintain the average global birth rate, our poor male would have to father 91,900 children per year. Or, 251.78 per day. This is a statistical impossibility, so we can see here that society size would be limited by the number of children that the male could feasibly father.
**Scheduling for optimal society size**
As mentioned above, there is an upper limit to how large a society could grow from the efforts of a single man. So, how would the life of a single male be scheduled for optimal breeding efficiency, given the requirements listed above. To maintain optimal health, 8 hours of sleep per night is required. It is recommended to get a minimum of 30 minutes exercise per-day, and our guy is still going to need this, because sex doesn't exercise all the muscles. He's also going to need meaningful social interaction that is not just the hello/goodbye of a scheduled sex meeting. He's going to need some friends to talk to. At least an hour or two per day. We'll say two hours, to be safe. Additionally, assume he needs a total of an hour to eat three meals in a day. Tack on an extra hour and a half for cleanliness and a bit of 'me time' for him, and that leaves us with 11 hours per day to 'work.'
So, assuming an 'average' young guy with an 'average' ejaculatory latency time of 2-4 minutes, plus some 'hello' time, some time to get started, and some time to clean up...we might be able to pack things in to about 15 minutes for a full turn-around. While there are no concrete studies around odds of pregnancy from a single act, I ran across an uncited statistic that stated that each time egg meets sperm, there is a 25% chance of fertilization. Assuming the female scheduling is managed well (explained below), we can thus assume that 25% of his encounters will result in a pregnancy.
So, 11 hours, 15-minute turn-around, 25% success rate. This means that we are looking at a maximum output of 11 babies per day. Factor in a ~9% chance of miscarriage (also assumes optimal scheduling and planning) or otherwise failed pregnancy, and we are looking at a yearly crude birth rate of 3,653.65. At the modern average, this means that he could support a population of 73,073.
**Female Scheduling**
In order to maintain an optimal society size, a woman's encounter with the male would have to be planned and scheduled as well. A woman reaches full fertility at about 19 years old, and maintains a high fertility until their mid-thirties. Likewise, the percent chance of miscarriage also rises after the woman hits her mid-thirties. Additionally, a woman is at peak fertility roughly 14 days prior to her next scheduled period. So, if you are seeking to have an optimally large society, women 19-33 would be ideal, scheduled to meet with the male 14 days prior to their next period. There are other biological indicators that can be measured to detect a woman's actual place in their cycle (look up 'The Rhythm Method' for more details)
**How we arrange the meetings**
There are really two ways that the appointments can be met by the male. Either the male travels between locations, and you sign up for your appointment with him while he is in town. Or the male stays in one place, and you come to him. For purposes and safety and security, the latter option makes the most sense. This means that women of age would travel to the capital to see 'the male.' However, since women's menstrual periods tend to sync up when they live together, you would need to keep the 'pilgrims' living separately so that their cycles would stay spread out.
**As for the details**
Given the 'musts' listed above, there is some flex room. Does the culture want to be as large as possible? What measures do they take to keep their male(s) happy and healthy? Do they indoctrinate them and basically brainwash them into being happy with their lot in life? Do they educate them and give them all the comforts they could want? If a male 'doesn't want to' at some point, does he have a choice? These are all flexible things, but the stack of requirements above holds true.
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This is an old question, but I think the answers here neglect to consider artificial insemination. The modern era would likely have males produce samples for artificial insemination, sex would be seen as wasteful because enough sperm to conceive 2-3 children will be wasted on a single women and may not even result in pregnancy. You can get somewhere between 8-10 times as many pregnancy per 'donation' using the sperm bank approach.
Considering this I would imagine every male would be expected (and likely want to, from an evolutionary biology point of view) to produce samples every day, or possible multiple times a day since they likely would have much higher ability to produce samples rapidly then modern males.
However, this changes things in another manner. If males had previously been able to sire enough children to maintain a population equal to our own using traditional sex then the efficiency of sperm banks would mean there is less demand on males as there use to be. This would likely result in males having more free time not spent producing pregnancies. The availability of multiple males sperm for insemination, instead of being limited to only the few males your society has local to you, will also allow more extensive mate selection from the women.
This would result in males having more free time AND finding a need to prove compete with other males more extensively then before. Thus I would see modern males finding themselves using their free time to try to sell themselves as males so more will order their sperm.
The interesting thing is that the evolutionary psychology of this species would be different. The limited number of males would mean that women would be evolutionarily inclined to take care of and defend males as a source of children. However, males would likely be less inclined to competing and proving themselves, because they had an effective harem. Until recently males would have evolved to focus on being the most efficient producers of sperm, not the most efficient competition against other males. They likely would not be as prone to showing off, aggression, or other things associated with earning a mate through competition. They would instead be as energy efficient as possible to produce more sperm (probably meaning not doing much when they aren't having sex to save up energy for creating more sperm) because for them the best way to have success is to be able to service as many females as possible. There would be little love in this, the evolutionary psychology of this approach does not support love, men are a source of sperm nothing more; the only strong emotions women would have would be the drive to find the best male, and depending on their rarity to defend them, and fight over them,
Thus culture would have to go through a revolution now that males could easily service all women and have to compete. If males were truly rare they may become part of their own reality show like competition; where women watch the local men to see how they handle whatever tasks their assigned in their free time to judge which man seems the best source of sperm for her future child. A man's job would be to to prove himself as a good sperm source, and the sperm banks would pay him to do it so they can sell his sperm for more.
The males, having very little of an evolutionary drive until recently to compete for mates, would at first not know how to handle this transition. However, after only a few generations of males they would start to evolve a much higher drive towards competition as the males of the first 'sperm bank generation' that didn't bother to prove themselves as good perspective males would have not been used by women that now had a choice in mates and thus only the competitive-male genes will get passed on.
Which means you get a very interesting situation to write about. You get a modern society that has extremely strong evolutionary pressures placed on them, strong enough that a very real effect on the not just the culture but the actual biology of the species will be evolving over just a small hand full of generations. The availability of transportation and easy access to males is a strong evolutionary pressure that we can't technology our way out of. Humans get to watch evolution happening in 'real time' (or as close as you get to it in evolutionary circles). Human males actual psychology and predisposition will be changing over just a few centuries time. You can actually talk of pre-car males as an entirely different animal then present male, because they would have made such a huge transition.
The implications of this evolution is quite fascinating. The difficulty with culture adjusting to the fact that the very biology and psychology of your species is changing slowly but surely, and you KNOW it's happening!. Your scientists can tell you that your new approaches to selecting a male is changing the species at an unprecedented rate! Conservatives will refuse to use sperm banks not just because they are a new cultural phenomenon that they instinctual resist, but because they are afraid of the fact that choosing to use the sperm bank will actually change their very species! Of course conservative males will only exist for a generation or two before they evolve themselves out of the gene pool with that sentiment!
Imagine knowing that the very psychology and instincts of men, that you instinctual protect, are being modified by your technology! That, to a lesser extent, your own psychology as women are being modified as well (as you start to develop more of a drive towards finding the right mate instead of using the first available one, and as such less of an instinctual protection of *your* male).
Though having said all of that I have to point out that this species wouldn't evolve due to [fisher's principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher%27s_principle)
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What comes to my mind here is a beehive.
But instead of a Queen, you would have a King. This does not necessarily have to mean that said male would rule, But I imagine that the societies would become structured with them as a central figure in a similar way.
The question then becomes, is just anyone then allowed to demand time with him? If not, how would the selection process for "the drones" happen. I imagine this would also become a core aspect of such societies.
I don't actually think that security would be a top priority in the matter, (not to say there would be none) as contemplating killing the men would then equate to deciding to murder off the entire race. Genocide. Literally.
Not that we humans don't love to make up stories about people trying to do exactly that, but how many times can you seriously say that you have met someone who actually wanted to do that.
Protecting men during war time would however become THE MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER!
I'm a little confused as to why you would seperate the men from each other though. Not saying you can't, just.... why?
But I digress, a beehive.
In a hive, or ant colony even, you see one central figure being supported and managed by all the rest. I imagine it would work a lot like that.
With the whole community being involved in making sure that one little boy grew up healthy and safe. Before all else.
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One version of this was explored by Harlan Ellison in his short story A boy and his dog... later made into a cult film starring a very young Don Johnson.
The males in the underground society who survived the nuclear war were sterile from living underground, so they would kidnap an independent from the surface (known as a rover) on occasion to keep their underground cities producing children.
The problems from this arrangement were not much fun for the one functional male (as Vic found out). Libido didn't even enter into it.
"Lack of respect, wrong attitude, failure to obey authority. The farm, immediately."
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How close could two trenches be in a stationary war that lasted about 4 months?
Specification:
Infrastructure should be established and there is artillery in use. The no man's land is mostly plain with grenade holes, so you could see the other trench.
So what distance (presumably further than a man could throw a hand grenade) is plausible?
EDIT:
Both sides artillery can hit anything from distances of mortars to howitzer, the accuracy is also everything from 10m to some km. One side (the bad one) dose not care about friendly fire.
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Assuming your tech is similar to the first world war (and it was that technology that directly led to trench warfare by providing massive firepower without mobility) then according to [wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trench_warfare):
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> The small, improvised trenches of the first few months grew deeper and more complex, gradually becoming vast areas of interlocking defensive works. They resisted both artillery bombardments and mass infantry assaults. Shell-proof dugouts became a high priority. The space between the opposing trenches was referred to as no man's land and varied in width depending on the battlefield. **On the Western Front it was typically between 100 and 300 yards (90 and 275 m), though only 30 yards (27 m) on Vimy Ridge**.
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> After the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg line in March 1917, it stretched to over a kilometre in places. At the infamous "Quinn's Post" **in the cramped confines of the Anzac battlefield at Gallipoli, the opposing trenches were only 16 yards (15 m) apart and hand grenades were thrown constantly**. On the Eastern Front and in the Middle East, the areas to be covered were so vast, and the distances from the factories supplying shells, bullets, concrete and barbed wire so great, trench warfare in the West European style often did not occur.
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The distance of trenches in trench warfare depends on the effective range of the personal weapons used in your scenario.
When outside of the effective range, trenches are useless, so the maximum distance is the effective weapon range.
When the trenches are closer, there will be more casualties through personal weapon fire, because their fire is more accurate and deadly. But an assault becomes less risky because there is less distance to cross. That means a smaller distance makes it easier for either side to resolve the siege through an assault.
So when you want the trench situation to be stable over months, you should place the trenches at maximum weapon distance.
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All with all things there are variations. The technology level you are describing sounds akin to that of WW1. This is where trench warfare really started, for the first time the major powers were faced with an enemy with a sufficient level of technology to decimate an open charge. As a result trenches were dug to provide cover from fire.
The trenches of in early 20th century warfare ranged from about [30 metres](http://www.1914-1918.net/intrenches.htm) to several hundred metres apart. This would depend very much on the geography and geology in question (and how it could be turned to a tactical advantage).
However, the front line trenches were not the whole story, in addition there was a massive infrastructure of supply trenches to allow troops and supplies to be moved back and forth in safety from the reserve lines to the the front.
Finally trenches were often underground, as the lines became more permanent soldiers looked for more ways to defend and attack. Tunnels were dug both under their own lines to provide additional cover but also towards the enemy trenches. There are some [devastating examples](http://www.lochnagarcrater.org/) of what happened when one side managed to undermine the other!
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These animals are nectarivorous in nature, eating sap, nectar, and honey (Though they are not bees, they are vertebrates.), but as they became more intelligent and advanced, they also incorporated foods like candy and vegan pastries into their diets. Their blood is based on hemerythrin also. If you ate one though, would their meat and/or blood taste sweet?
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## Possibly, but you aren’t what you eat.
Well, you are what you eat, but let me finish.
Let’s say you only eat plants. Plants don’t have muscles, but you can incorporate a plant’s proteins into yourself and build muscles with it. Carbohydrates are great for making energy, but if you don’t use that energy, it gets stored as fats. Therefore, to make your creature taste good, you need to find ways to incorporate sugars and fats into the creature’s natural state without harming its overall effectiveness.
However, eating sweet things is neither a guarantee or a prerequisite to being sweet.
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## Even Hyperglycemia does not make blood sweet
In humans, normal blood sugar levels are less than 100 mg/dL after not eating (fasting) for at least 8 hours. And they're less than 140 mg/dL 2 hours after eating. But normally blood doesn't taste sweet.
If sugar levels are more than 200 mg/dl, it is called Hyperglycemia. This is as if you dissolve 2 grams of sugar in one liter of water. I don't think it is sweet.
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Though not a given, it can be that the type of diet influences the resulting taste.
[Galleria mellonella](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galleria_mellonella) is a moth whose larvae parasitize honey bees
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> G. mellonella larvae parasitize the honeybee. Eggs are laid in the cracks and crevices inside the hive, which minimizes egg detection. Once eggs hatch, they feed on the midrib of the wax comb, the cast skins of bee larvae, pollen, and small quantities of propolis and honey.
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Because of their diet, many animals are fond of the larvae, which seem to have a sweet taste. The dried larvae are also sold as human food, and I have seen them in the local supermarket.
Additionally I know that when harvesting snails an essential steps before cooking them is to let them purge, that is having them feed on bran for few days, in order for their body to expel all bitter molecules which they have absorbed upon feeding in the wild.
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Bees are sweet. I think this is why dogs like them.
On the other hand, they are sweet because of the honey they carry, not the one they already metabolized.
One cannot be too much sweet as a whole without inviting microorganisms and bigger parasites. Diabetic patients learn this the hard way.
Fruits spend limited time being sweet and then they either get eaten, or dry out, or rot.
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There is NO biological reason why eating (almost only) sugars you should become sweet.
Notice poultry and certain kind of fish (notably catfish) have high carbohydrate diets (and are very efficient in converting it into protein), but they are not sweet.
Assuming chemistry compatible with earthly one (as suggested by OP) digestion will break down protein and sugars in the simplest components (aminoacids and monosaccarides) even before they actually get into the blood stream.
This means eating starchy foods (seeds, bread, pasta, etc.) and even raw grass (if you have a stomach able to digest it) is not different (after digestion, of course) from eating sugar; you just sidestep a digestion phase so sugars are adsorbed faster.
The amount of sugars actually **remaining** in the blood stream is extremely limited and mainly dependent on insulin levels.
Sugars in the blood stream are either used for energy (Krebs cycle) or stored. There are three main storage mechanisms:
* store in muscle tissue (as glycogen)
* store in the liver (also as glycogen)
* convert to fat for "long-term storage" (when the other two "stores" are full).
Neither glycogen nor fat is "sweet".
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I have a character who fights hand to hand against people with swords and powers so he wears armor to protect himself. The thing is he has wings and I've been racking my brain if there could be armor that he can put on them. That won't hinder his flight but could also protect them. Is this possible?
The winged character does not have magic, but does have an ability to lighten his body so the wings work. Without the ability he couldn't fly at all. All his armor is small and lightweight, and his wings are feathered.
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I'm not entirely clear from the question if the character in the OP is winged, like a bird, or a normal man who has a set of wings for flight. Assuming the latter, if they are mechanical (like Leonardo's flying machine), then they could be removed and stored in a safe place inside the castle prior to going into battle, which would be an easy and relatively inexpensive way of resolving the problem.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DihPw.png)
*One of Leonardo's designs*
If the idea is the character flies into battle unexpectedly, then he could be treated more like a modern paratrooper, who removes the parachute upon landing before engaging the enemy, or even an air assault trooper, who exits a helicopter and fights on foot like normal infantry.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CblY1.jpg)
*Mexican paratrooper getting ready to ditch the 'chute*
If you consider the Leonardo sketch or the size of the paratrooper's parachute, you realize *why* the landed person needs to get rid of the wings at once: they are going to be huge, and just get in the way of hand to hand combat. Even wielding a bow will be difficult with wings attached.
If the person is actually winged, then there are very few options. The only really good one would be to consider the flying person functionally like a beetle, and have the wings fold under an armoured carapace when landed.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GEdlE.jpg)
*Covering the wings when grounded provides many advantages*
So the wings either need to be shed prior to getting in a fight, or retracted under some sort of protective cover when not in flight.
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Keep in mind: if your winged folk's wings are birdlike, then armor might be a bit overkill. Their wings would be mostly feathers and most weapons would push the feathers aside or pass through the wing relatively harmlessly.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Hycbu.jpg)
Something like greaves might work for protecting the flesh and bone parts of the wings. But in flight, I think this would be ill advised.
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On the other wing, if your people's flying appendages are batlike, then armor might become more important. Their wings are mostly skin (all that light grey area) and will need protecting during a fight. Your warrior's body armour won't protect her, because she couldn't use her wings if they were inside the armour. She'll have to carry whatever kind of wing armour she'll use during battle whilst in flight. Keep that in mind before weighing a flying warrior down!
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tyDCI.jpg)
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So yeah, wing armour is a possibility, though I think you might want to think about and perhaps rebalance some things:
* Do your winged folks have to be able to fly? (You don't say if magic is part of your world or not, but that has its own problems. The *deus ex magica* can solve anything if you let it get out of hand!)
* If they have to fly and magic isn't helpful for flight, then you really need to consider a crack force of naked (or nearly naked) warriors who basically pounce on an enemy position, scare the bejeezis out of them with their aerobatics, unman them by going entirely berserk, hit em hard and fast with relatively light weapons and get out before the enemy have a chance to regroup them. And damn the consequences in lives lost or of injured comrades for whom there can be no rescue.
* If they don't have to fly, they can fight more conventionally, but their wings become a new martial dimension. When my own winged folk (the [**Daine**](https://elemtilas.deviantart.com/gallery/63123250/Daine)) fight, their long feathered wings play a major role in their martial arts styles. They might use them to kick up sand or dust or pebbles into an enemy's eyes; use them as "invisibility cloaks"; use the wingwrists to bop an enemy on the noggin or bash his trachea in; a powerful down thrust combined with a leap can launch a Daine several feet in the air (rather higher than a similarly sized person could jump with legs alone); a down & back thrust can help launch a warrior into an enemy's face; a backwards thrust & leap can give a pressed Daine considerable amount of space in which to ready for a new attack. As for wing armour, some warriors do indeed wear a kind of leather greaves carefully strapped to their wingwrists and winghands especially.
While I find it to be a tad much, and certainly not intended for a warrior in flight, you might consider taking a gander at this wonder suit of armour:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xdtpJ.jpg)
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Putting armour directly on the wings probably won't be too plausible. They would weight them down, might limit their mobility, and would defiantly be exhausting. I'm imagining flying armour on your wings would be like climbing a rope with heavy weights on your wrists.
While I think your character wouldn't want to engage in hand to hand at all (flying out of weapons range and dropping hazardous objects would be hard for an enemy to counter), there could be ways to protect their wings on the ground.
What about a thick cape reinforced with chain mail netting? Sure, they couldn't fly with it on, but they could carry if in a sack and put it on when they land. If the wings can fold into a way convenient for fitting through doors, this might be enough to keep them safe in a melee. If the cape alone can't provide enough defense, what about a solid metal "shell" shield that's worn like a backpack? Just unbuckle the shell when you need to escape into the air!
This post is inspired by whenever I put my coat over my backpack when walking in the rain.
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Depending on if magic is available in your setting, (You didn't specify, but the presence of full-sized winged humanoids suggests yes), probably not.
Normal armour is heavy. Even "light" armours such as leather tend to restrict movement. Any sort of covering over the wings is going to severely restrict their movement.
You might be able to get away with a small covering over the wing joints, but there's a reason most birds are ambush predators - they strike hard and fast, and if the prey's still fighting, get the hell out.
Full sized winged humanoids are already fighting a losing battle against gravity and the square-cubed law. Speed and manoeuvrability are paramount for a flying fighter.
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Magical Silk
Harvest the silk from Glarnakian spiders. By placing the spiders upon your wings before battle, the spiders will weave an intricate netting of silk to block all arrows from piercing through. Due to the lightweight materials, you shouldn't have a problem maintaining flight while also blocking projectiles.
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> Highest-performance ([Silk Wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_silk))
> The toughest known spider silk is produced by the species Darwin's bark spider (Caerostris darwini): "The toughness of forcibly silked fibers averages 350 MJ/m3, with some samples reaching 520 MJ/m3. Thus, C. darwini silk is more than twice as tough as any previously described silk, and **over 10 times tougher than Kevlar**".[21]
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also of note is this question related to my answer
[Would armour made of spider silk work?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/45590/would-armour-made-of-spider-silk-work/45660)
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Spider silk body armor is the key. [Link is here](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-army-wants-to-make-spider-silk-body-armor-2016-7?international=true&r=US&IR=T)!
It is produces for american soldiers, way expensive but way more efficient than regular armors. It is light, strong, flexible.
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It could be not armoring but enforcing wings with embroidered fibers of light and durable material resistant to cutting. This material is entirely dependent on your setting - it could be silk, mithril, kevlar.
Keep in mind, this material ought to be light, and therefore it will not provide good defense for heavy mass-based attacks like blunt damage. But it could work for cut and pierce protection.
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*"The winged character does not have magic, but does have an ability to lighten his body so the wings work."*
He doesn't have magic, but he does have the ability to lighten himself. Sounds like... you guessed it, magic. *Let* him have magic. It solves your problem.
And there's lots of ways where it wont turn him into a wizard or make him too powerful, which is what I think you're trying to avoid(?)
What if he can extend his "ability" to anything he's wearing? This might have the effect of making him *seem* like he's unusually strong, but really he's just extending this invisible "field" of weight negating energy around himself. Just 2 or 3 inches off the surface of his skin would do the trick for armor.
He's a mutant (think X-Men) with anti-gravity powers that effect only his own body and that which comes into physical contact with it.
Also, I noticed you didn't actually say the armor HAD to be what we usually think of as armor, so... What if he attains a talisman that gives him the one ability of making his wings impregnable to harm while he's wearing it? The rest of him carries on as usual, but the wings are toughened temporarily. This could create a nice story scenario where he loses the talisman and becomes vulnerable.
OR, maybe the darned wings are just that tough already. Its a fantasy setting and you make the rules. If you say they're that tough then they are. Using the X-Men as an example again, I always wondered how Angel could use his feathery wings to do more than just fly. He seemed kinda weak. Well, once I started thinking of his wings as super strong I realized maybe thats all it needs. They're just super tough.
Good luck.
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I'm thinking of a planet in a Goldilocks zone similar to Earth's, with a similar atmosphere, and similar atmospheric pressure and temperature at the surface. Gravity would be variable, based on the mass needed to sustain the kinds of pressures to form exotic ices at the core.
I realize there are at least a couple of similar questions -
[Could a planet made completely of water exist?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/4969/could-a-planet-made-completely-of-water-exist/)
[What would happen at the core of a water world?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/54134/what-would-happen-at-the-core-of-a-water-world)
* but I'm specifically wondering about the necessary mass to achieve these matter states at the core.
Thanks!
[Answer]
Your question is similar to [another one I answered](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/96984/whats-the-biggest-reasonable-natural-planet-or-moon-with-earth-like-surface-gra/97009#97009), and I'll be borrowing heavily from that.
## Ice VII
I can start off the answers with some simplifying assumptions, but someone else may have a better idea of the intricacies involved in this calculation. The specific assumptions I'll make are:
1. Constant temperature
2. Water is incompressible, and on planetary scales has an average density of ~1.5g/cm$^3$ (see my other answer for justification)
With these assumptions, this really just becomes a plugging-in-the-numbers problem.
Here's the water phase diagram I'll use to talk about the rest of this problem:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TmR0D.gif)
Given our first assumption, I'm going to choose a balmy 350K for the planet's water and ice. In the diagram above, we can see that ice VII shows up at ~2GPa. So the question becomes, how much water does it take to get a 2GPa pressure at the core?
Well, given our second assumption, it would take 200 kilometers of water to reach 2GPa given the classic conversion 101kPa/10m. With that info, we can calculate the mass of a the planet via the equation
$$m = density\*volume = \rho\*\frac{4\pi r^3}{3}$$
$$(1.5\frac{g}{cm^3}\*10^{15}\frac{cm^3}{km^3})\*(\frac{4\pi 200^3\ km^3}{3}) = 5\*10^{22}g$$
## $5\*10^{19}$ kg
Cool! From [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(mass)#1018_to_1023_kg), we can see that's in the range of large asteroids or small moons.
Of course, this is fundamentally a ballpark estimate, but I'd say it's accurate to about an order of magnitude. As pointed out in the comments on my other answer, the constant temperature assumption is possibly quite valid depending on how your planet formed and how old it is. The "average" water density leaves a lot of room for error, but I wasn't confident enough in my calculus to do the full derivative (change in bulk modulus with respect to pressure as depth increases).
## Ice X
This one gets a lot more complicated because we're working with two shells here, but we have a similar set of assumptions:
1. Constant temperature
2. Water is incompressible, and on planetary scales has an average density of ~1.5g/cm$^3$
3. Ice VII is incompressible, and on planetary scales has an average density of ~2.3g/cm$^3$
At 350K, we reach ice X at about 50 GPa and can answer the question similarly to the one above- how thick does the ice VII need to be to reach this pressure? We already know that we'll have 200km liquid water along the surface, so the core is the only new thing here.
To get an additional 48 GPa due to Ice VII, we need approximately 2000 additional kilometers:
$$h = \frac{48\*10^9}{2300\*9.8} = 2130km$$
Take this estimate with a large grain of salt- $g$ wouldn't be constant through a planet's core, but it would rather depend on the mass of the planet and the distance from the surface, which means we're into those nasty differential equations again. Man, no wonder physicists are angry all the time.
With this, we can again calculate our mass with the equation:
$$m = (V\_{core}\*\rho\_{core}+V\_{ocean}\*\rho\_{ocean})$$
which, if we plug in our numbers and solve it correctly, returns
## $8.9\*10^{22}$ kg
Which is about as large as the biggest moons and in the range of the smallest planets. Good question!
[Answer]
I decided to write a program to calculate this. It iteratively builds a planet from the core outwards in one-meter layers, calculating the gravity and adjusting the density of the current material for the pressure at each step.
```
#include <math.h>
#include <stdio.h>
/* Units are meters, kilograms, seconds */
const double G = 0.00000000006674;
struct
{
double baseDensity;
double bulkModulus;
double lowerPressure;
double upperPressure;
const char *name;
} Properties[] = {
{1000, 2200000000, 50000, 2000000000, "water"},
{1500, 23900000000 , 2000000000, 50000000000, "ice VII"},
{2500, 23900000000, 50000000000, 400000000000, "ice X"},
{3000, 10000000000000000, 400000000000, 1000000000000, "ice XI"} /* Mostly made-up, but it doesn't matter, because we've only got a 1-meter sphere of it. */
};
/* Calculate from the inside out. */
void CalculatePlanet(double *radius, double *mass)
{
int currentMaterial = 3; /* Start with a 1-meter layer of ice XI */
double pressureNeeded = Properties[currentMaterial].lowerPressure; /* We need to stack up material to produce this much pressure */
*radius = 0;
*mass = 0;
while(currentMaterial >= 0)
{
double shellMass; /* Mass of the shell */
double shellPressure; /* Pressure provided by the shell */
double newRadius = *radius + 1.0;
double shellDensity = (pressureNeeded * Properties[currentMaterial].baseDensity) / Properties[currentMaterial].bulkModulus + Properties[currentMaterial].baseDensity;
/* Add a one-meter layer to the planet */
shellMass = (((newRadius) * (newRadius) * (newRadius)) - (*radius * *radius * *radius)) * (4.0/3.0) * M_PI * shellDensity;
shellPressure = G * *mass / (*radius * *radius) * shellDensity;
if(isnan(shellPressure)) shellPressure = 0;
pressureNeeded -= shellPressure;
*mass += shellMass;
*radius += 1.0;
if(pressureNeeded < Properties[currentMaterial].lowerPressure)
{
printf("Layer: %i %lf %lf %lf %lf %lf\n", currentMaterial, shellPressure, pressureNeeded, shellMass, *mass, *radius);
currentMaterial--;
}
}
}
int main(void)
{
double mass = 0;
double radius = 0;
CalculatePlanet(&radius, &mass);
double volume = radius * radius * radius * M_PI * 4.0 / 3.0;
double density = mass / volume;
double surfaceGravity = G * mass /(radius * radius);
printf("Planet calculated. Radius %.0lf meters, mass %.0lf kg, density %0lf kg/m3, gravity %lf m/s2\n", radius, mass, density, surfaceGravity);
}
```
Using the same 350K planet, presumed bulk moduli, and phase diagram as Dubukay, I get the following planets:
Core of water (done as a sanity check): radius 1 meters, mass 4189 kg, density $1000 kg/m^3$
Core of ice VII, surrounded by 2555498 meters of water: radius 2555499 meters, mass $8.98 \* 10^{22}$ kg, density $1285 kg/m^3$, surface gravity $0.92 m/s^2$. Roughly the diameter of Mercury, but only a quarter as heavy.
Core of ice X, surrounded by 6013480 meters of ice VII and 349831 meters of water: radius 6363312 meters, mass $2.44 \* 10^{24} kg$, density $2261 kg/m^3$, surface gravity $4.02 m/s^2$. About as large as Earth, but only 40% the mass.
Core of ice XI, surrounded by 2209965 meters of ice X, 2675055 meters of ice VII, and 301287 meters of water: radius 5186308 meters, mass $1.85 \* 10^{24} kg$, density $3174 kg/m^3$, surface gravity $4.60 m/s^2$. A bit smaller than Earth, and only a third the mass.
Note that the planet with a core of ice X is larger than the planet with a core of ice XI. This isn't an error: ice X is *far* denser than ice VII; the reduced radius increases the gravity at all levels, making for higher pressures and densities.
[Answer]
# Summary
It turns out that even relatively low-mass ocean planets are capable of forming some of the exotic ices you name in their cores. Ice VII appears to form at the centers of planets of $0.015M\_{\oplus}$ (Earth masses), while ice X forms at the centers of planets of $1.256M\_{\oplus}$. Interestingly, despite the increase in mass by two orders of magnitude and the increase in central pressure by a factor of 25, these worlds have radii differing by only a factor of four. While there may be a temperature dependence, given the relative simplicity of water's phase diagram at $\sim300\text{ K}$, I suspect this should not be an issue, and the relevant equations of state are not temperature-dependent.
# Theory
Since we have two competing answers ([Dubukay's](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/106832/627) and [Mark's](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/106853/627)) with vastly different results, I thought I would add a third method to see if I could come up with something similar. I went to [Seager et al. 2008](https://arxiv.org/pdf/0707.2895v1.pdf), my favorite set of models of the interiors of terrestrial exoplanets. Their setup assumes that the bodies are isothermal at low pressures - as Dubukay did - and uses equations of state of the form
$$\rho(P)=\rho\_0+cP^n\tag{11}$$
where $\rho$ is density, $P$ is pressure and $c$ and $n$ are composition-dependent constants; $n\approx0.5$ for most terrestrial worlds, but it does differ, which is important. This equation is essentially a modified polytrope, with the one major change being that $\rho(0)\neq0$, which would be true in a classic polytrope. For a pure $\text{H}\_2\text{O}$ planet, $n=0.513$ and $c=0.00311$. When using these constants, bear in mind that pressure is in pascals, and density is in kilograms per cubic meter.
Seager et al. derive the following mass-radius relationship (I have numbered the equations as they are numbered in the paper):
$$M(R)=\frac{4\pi}{3}R^3\left[\rho(P\_c)-\frac{2}{5}\pi GR^2\rho\_0^2f'(P\_c)\right]\tag{31}$$
where $f(P)=cP^n$ and $P\_c$ is the central pressure. It can be shown via hydrostatic equilibrium that
$$P\_c=\frac{3G}{8\pi}\frac{M^2}{R^4}\tag{27}$$
Given a desired central pressure, I can test various radii and corresponding masses and find the values I need.
We can check these results a different way: by numerical integration. The structure of any planet is governed by two key equations:
$$\frac{dP}{dr}=-\frac{Gm\rho}{r^2}$$
$$\frac{dm}{dr}=4\pi r^2\rho$$
These are the equations of hydrostatic equilibrium and mass continuity. $r$ is a radial coordinate, measured from the center of the planet, and $m$ is the mass enclosed within $r$. By modeling the planet as a collection of progressively larger shells, and knowing the value of $P$ and $m$ in any given shell, we can find the value of $P$ and $m$ in the next shell via the [Euler method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler_method): finding the change in these variables by multiplying their derivatives at a point by some step size $\Delta r$. This is essentially what Mark did, I think. I'm simply using a particular equation of state, rather than a bulk modulus.
# Code
I wrote some fairly simple code in Python 3 to accomplish this. It only requires NumPy (as well as Matplotlib for auxiliary plots).
```
import numpy as np
earthMass = 5.97*10**(24) # kg
earthRadius = 6.371*10**(6) # m
G = 6.67*10**(-11) # gravitational constant, SI units
def rho(P,rho0,c,n):
"""Polytropic equation of state"""
rho = rho0 + c*(P**n)
return rho
def fprime(P,c,n):
"""Derivative of the first order contribution
to the polytropic equation of state"""
fprime = c*n*(P**(n-1))
return fprime
def mass(R,rho0,c,n):
"""Compute planetary mass for a particular radius,
given equation of state parameters for a particular
composition."""
Rscaled = R*earthRadius # convert to SI units
Pc = (2*np.pi/3)*G*(Rscaled**2)*(rho0**2) # central pressure
rho_mean = rho(Pc,rho0,c,n) - (2*np.pi/5)*G*(Rscaled**2)*(rho0**2)*fprime(Pc,c,n) # mean density
Mscaled = (4*np.pi/3)*(Rscaled**3)*rho_mean
Mp = Mscaled/earthMass # convert to Earth masses
return Mp
def pressure(R,rho0,c,n):
"""Compute central pressure if radius is known"""
M = mass(R,rho0,c,n)
M = M*earthMass # convert to SI units
R = R*earthRadius # convert to SI units
Pc = (3*G/(8*np.pi))*(M**2)/(R**4)
return Pc
def minimumMass(P,rho0,c,n):
"""Compute mass at which a particular central
pressure is reached"""
radii = np.logspace(-1,1,1000) # reasonable radius range
i = 0
r = radii[i]
while pressure(r,rho0,c,n) < P:
# Brute force check of various radii
i += 1
r = radii[i]
return(mass(r,rho0,c,n))
def radius(M,rho0,c,n):
"""Compute radius which yields a given mass"""
radii = np.logspace(-1,1,1000)
i = 0
r = radii[i]
while mass(r,rho0,c,n) < M:
# Brute force check of various radii
i += 1
r = radii[i]
return r
pressureList = [2,50] # central pressures to check, in GPa
for p in pressureList:
print('Central pressure: '+str(p)+' GPa.')
print(' The required mass is '\
+str('%.3f'%minimumMass(p*10**9,1460,0.00311,0.513))+\
' Earth masses.')
print(' The required radius is '+\
str('%.3f'%radius(minimumMass(p*10**9,1460,0.00311,\
0.513),1460,0.00311,0.513))+' Earth radii.')
```
Here is my numerical integration code. It's written specifically for water worlds, so the equation of state parameters are not function arguments. If you want to, it can be generalized easily enough for any composition.
```
import numpy as np
earthMass = 5.97*10**(24) # kg
earthRadius = 6.371*10**(6) # m
G = 6.67*10**(-11) # gravitational constant, SI units
rho0 = 1460
c = 0.00311
n = 0.513
def dP(M,R,P,dR):
"""Compute change in pressure via hydrostatic
equilibrium"""
rho = rho0 + c*(P**n) # density
dP = -((G*M*rho)/(R**2))*dR
return dP
def dM(R,P,dR):
"""Compute change in mass via mass continuity
equation"""
rho = rho0 + c*(P**n) # density
dM = 4*np.pi*(R**2)*rho*dR
return dM
def integrator(Pc,dR):
"""Numerically integrate differential equations
to construct the planet"""
P = [Pc,Pc]
M = [0,0]
R = [0,dR]
# To avoid singularities at r = 0, I really
# start the code at one step, r = dR. I assume
# that this step is small enough that the mass
# and pressure don't change significantly.
while P[-1] > 0:
# The surface of the planet is where P = 0
m = M[-1]
r = R[-1]
p = P[-1]
deltaR = 1
deltaP = dP(m,r,p,deltaR)
deltaM = dM(r,p,deltaR)
P.append(P[-1]+deltaP)
M.append(M[-1]+deltaM)
R.append(R[-1]+deltaR)
return M, R, P
pressureList = [2,50] # central pressures to check, in GPa
for p in pressureList:
massList, radiusList, pressureList = integrator(p*(10**9),1)
M = massList[-1]/earthMass
R = radiusList[-1]/earthRadius
print('Central pressure: '+str(p)+' GPa.')
print(' The required mass is '+str('%.3f'%M)+\
' Earth masses.')
print(' The required radius is '+str('%.3f'%R)+\
' Earth radii.')
```
# Results
I chose a central pressure of $P\_c=2\text{ GPa}$ for ice VII and $P\_c=50\text{ GPa}$ for ice X, as Dubukay and Mark did. For both cases, my results agreed with Mark's to within an order of magnitude; the discrepancy with Dubukay's numbers still remains:
$$\begin{array}{|c|c|c|c|}
\hline \text{} & \text{Ice VII} & \text{Ice X}\\
\hline \text{Dubukay} & M=8.327\times10^{-6}M\_{\oplus} & M=0.0149M\_{\oplus} \newline & R=0.0313R\_{\oplus} & R=0.334R\_{\oplus}\\
\hline \text{Mark} & M=0.0149M\_{\oplus} & M=0.409M\_{\oplus} \newline & R=0.401R\_{\oplus} & R=0.998R\_{\oplus}\\
\hline \text{Analytical} & M=0.0154M\_{\oplus} & M=1.256M\_{\oplus} \newline \text{models} & R=0.377R\_{\oplus} & R=1.525R\_{\oplus}\\
\hline \text{Numerical} & M=0.015M\_{\oplus} & M=0.959M\_{\oplus} \newline \text{integration} & R=0.372R\_{\oplus} & R=1.389R\_{\oplus}\\
\hline
\end{array}$$
Both of my ice VII models agree very closely with Mark's, and my ice X models are only off by a factor of a few. The numerical integration does not match the analytical models, which worries me a little bit, but the discrepancy is not overly serious, and I'll do some poking around to see if I can find the problem. I'm happy enough to get within an order of magnitude in astronomy, so I'll consider all of this a victory. Here's a plot of my analytical results, with the terrestrial planets of the Solar System for comparison, as well as a curve of silicate planets ($\text{MgSiO}\_3$):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3sSCg.png)
### What's going on?
This does shed some light on the different answers because a more detailed look at the theory rules out possible reasons for the discrepancy. The equations of state I used are isothermal; the other answers assume the same. Similarly, simple plots of density within these planets indicate that the weak dependence on pressure indeed justifies Dubukay's assumption of incompressibility. Both cases see perhaps a 10% change in density from the inner core to the surface - hardly enough to cause a discrepancy of three orders of magnitude. Indeed, at these pressures, most worlds should be quite incompressible.
I suspect that the key problem with Dubukay's answer is the assumption that the pressure-depth relationship doesn't change based on depth - and it likely does. By plotting the density inside each planet, we can see that it changes only slightly for the ice VII planet and a bit more for the ice X planet:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/RPH3s.png)
Now, the gravitational acceleration $g(r)$ at a radius $r$ scales as $g\propto\bar{\rho}r$, where $\bar{\rho}$ is the mean density inside $r$. The deviations from constant density are small for most regions onside the planet, so we should expect $g(r)$ to be fairly linear, and it is (closer to linear for the ice VII planet, which has a more uniform density profile):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jeNwO.png)
Therefore, the simple depth-to-pressure conversion is inaccurate far from the surface. I also suspect that the core-ocean model is a little too simple.
] |
[Question]
[
Logically a born and raised on a planet with Earth-like gravity would move slower on a high gravity planet, and would be both faster, and possibly clumsier in low gravity. In my world humanity has colonized many planets, and there are exoskeletons, similar to the ones in Advanced Warfare, that give enhanced physical abilites. Let's say there is an app that connects to the user's exoskeleton, and has two primary settings. One is the gravity the wearer is used to (their homeworld) and the other is the gravity where the exoskeleton will be used. It will automatically adjust to allow the wearer to move the way they do on their homeworld. Does this seem plausible?
EDIT: I know that high gravity could screw up a human's organs, we're talking minor differences in movement here. The average human colony world is between 0.6 and 1.3 G
[Answer]
Yeah, its technically plausible. Of course, an exosuit will only support your body and limbs, leaving out the more serious problem: heart might be hard pressed to keep up with pumping needs. Unless you find a way to internally/externally supplement that (and other bodily internal functions, that might depend on gravity), you will run into problems.
[Answer]
In a sci-fi setting this seems absolutely plausible, and there's no need to go into the minutiae of HOW it works, just make it a part of your world.
You are a new user, so if you are looking for what the possible science would be behind it, I'd highly recommend saying so, and tagging science. If you want the precise equations behind such a set up, you can tag hard-science.
But yes, right here, in the real world, NASA [is working on this](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2216748/Nasa-developing-exoskeleton-help-astronauts-exercise-zero-gravity-help-disabled-people-walk-Earth.html). Here's a link to [a paper](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20140000694.pdf).
Currently, tech is focused on LOW gravity rather than high, just because that's what we've encountered more often. That's more likely to be developed first.
Countering high gravity will be more difficult, and will come with a whole other set of problems, but, solving it sci-fi, you're basically talking power armor.
**The versatility of your exoskeleton is the most unrealistic thing about it--assuming that it will be a "one size fits all gravities." I think that's less plausible.**
[Answer]
Yes, it can be done. We have actually built [exoskeletons](http://www.army-technology.com/projects/raytheon-xos-2-exoskeleton-us/) with a 17:1 actual weight to perceived weight ratio. This means it could let you walk normally at up to 17Gs.
However, as Michal mentioned, there are many other important effects that you will have to deal with. Our veins and arteries, for instance, are designed to function at 1G. At higher gee forces, blood is forced away from our brain, causing us to pass out. Fighter pilots have to deal with this on a regular basis, so we have developed "exoskeletons" for them which have bags that can inflate in the legs to force the blood back up towards the head. These are very uncomfortable, so I don't think you'd want to do it for a long period of time. Health issues would certainly occur.
One other solution might be to create an exoskeleton that lets you lie down while moving around. We are much better at handling gee forces in the lying down position. I've seen quotes suggesting upwards to 11G's can be handled comfortable for a bit while lying down (well, as comfortably as you can get, with your eyeballs being literally pressed down in their sockets!)
You might also be interested in this graph, which used empirical results to try to figure out how to model what a human can withstand. As you can see, there's a log-log trend to the data which suggests that we humans might not be so good at handling high gees for hours on end, even with exoskeletons.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GU9WM.jpg)
[Answer]
I can't recall the technical terms right now, but human motion can be divided into two logical groups: Movements that are stable throughout (you can freeze at any point and maintain that pose for some time) and movements that are only stable at the start and end but are inherently dynamic at some point in between.
For instance, when you lie on your back and make snow angels, that's a static movement. You can stop at any point and hold that position. The position may be uncomfortable or exhausting, but the point is that it's possible to hold it all for any time whatsoever.
An example of a dynamic movement is jumping. There are points in the jump where you cannot stop, for instance when your legs leave the ground. Another good example is running or jogging (because there are moments when neither foot is in contact with the ground) but not walking or power walking.
I think with these so called stable movements the exoskeleton could work. For it to feel like Earth, the resistance that a human experiences must be the same. The suit would essentially be applying force defined by Earth gravity vector minus Planet X gravity vector, so it would push upward at all times. It would need a computer to calculate how much force to apply at what joint, but that's relatively easy to do. It may or may not be necessary to "train" the suit to work with that individuals idiosyncratic movements, but I think either way is plausible.
You would probably have a range of suit qualities, with the worst being just a bunch of bare bones struts, while the best ones distribute the force more evenly on the human body, but in principle the main force that the human must apply can be made to exactly equal that which would be needed for the same movement on Earth. Secondary forces might be harder - for example if the suit is poorly constructed, there may be an excessive strain on smaller balancing muscles which resist the heavy gravity dragging the human out of the suit harness in certain position. You might make a plot point out of lower classes from Planet X having distinct but subtle muscle hypertrophy in certain unusual areas, similar to many [occupational diseases](http://mentalfloss.com/article/61576/17-bizarre-work-related-ailments) associated with excessive strain on a certain part of the body.
Where this illusion of Earth gravity falls apart is the dynamic portions of movements. For example, the suit could provide a walking experience mimicking Earth, but it cannot mimic a jump. The reason being that once the jumper is airborne, a purely mechanical suit no longer has a surface to press against to apply the counter-gravity force. The motion of the jump may feel exactly like Earth, but as soon as the subject leaves the ground they will obviously fall faster than on Earth. Also, when the suit wearers step on flexible objects that they "know" would support their weight on Earth, they might be surprised to find out they are easily crushed (which could be another plot element concerning novice or careless users).
With a bit of thought you will observe that dynamic movements are very common in every day life. Besides running, sitting down, getting up from a prone position, quick turns and going up or down stairs can all have dynamic component. It might make the suit very startling to wear, since unless you are carefully trained in its limitations, you will often be surprised by abrupt and unexpected losses of antigravity force. Suppose you descend a familiar stair for the 100th time, but this time get overconfident and careless and let go of the banister - but instead of being slightly harder like you expect the movement is suddenly 10 times harder. Probably after a few weeks or months the human brain can adjust to it, but if a person wearing the suit for the first time is careless they can easily get injured or killed. The experience of learning to use the suit would probably be somewhat analogous to learning how to ice skate - while in principle it is not very hard, you do have to learn to cope with the fact that you are suddenly much more stable in some directions (left-right) and much less stable in others (front back).
If your suit is not actuated solely by mechanical means, you could correct the dynamic motions as well. One obvious way I can think of is to attach tiny jets or rocket thrusters to various limbs. You would have to carefully watch your fuel, since when it runs out gravity will suddenly increase (or perhaps the suit detects low fuel and starts gradually reducing thrust to avoid surprising you) and you could be hurt. Alternatively, some sort of magnetic shenanigans (perhaps magnets in the hip repelling magnets in the arm or something like that) could correct gravity for *some* dynamic motions, such as "collapsing on the couch", but probably not ones requiring loss of contact with the ground unless you want a magnetic levitation kind of technology.
[Answer]
I'm totally prepared to accept a machine that accommodates different gravities, but I think your app has at least one too many inputs.
Gravity is easy to measure and disastrous to have incorrect.
Personal gravity preference doesn't seem like something that would change very often either.
[Answer]
It might help on a high gravity world, but it is not going to be able to completely compensate for different gravity.
Things fall at a different rate in a different gravity field. Even just walking consists of repeatedly falling over until you catch yourself on the other foot. An exoskeleton can't correct for this. It's also not going to help with the problems different gravity has on the internal working of the body.
] |
[Question]
[
I'm trying to come up with a scenario involving a mining base built on a planet that may only be approached from the shadowed side; the star (or other body) allows only that narrow lane of approach. The base is in a fortified bunker to protect it when it faces the star.
The question is: What phenomenon would realistically limit approach without melting the planet or otherwise making the mining base impossible?
[Answer]
Have the planet orbit very close to a Pulsar or some other exotic star.
A neutron star is very small (few Km in diameter), for this reason your planet would have a very large shadow, thus making the planetary approach more feasible.
The planetary mass would provide shielding from most of the star solar wind and radiation (at least in the shadowed area).
You can go more extreme and use another star like object to create a stronger justification for travelling in the shadow. Like a quark star, an antimatter star or a strangelet star. Your planet would be perfect for housing a scientific research station for studing the unusual star!
[Answer]
If the planet was pretty close to the star that could do it, such that ships outside of the umbra/penumbra would be hit by the full force of the solar radiation and thermal energy.
That is kind of a problem though, because the umbra is kind of a small area.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/f3mtN.png)
You would have to get pretty close to the planet before you could get into it's shadow.
Factors that determine how big the umbra is are the distance of the planet to the star, the size of the star, the size of the planet.
You might have to have another way to shield the ship until you get into the shadow, such as a solar parasol ship, like a giant umbrella that reflects the energy that it can, and with huge amounts of cooling to keep it from being consumed, that could ferry other ships to the planet.
[Answer]
If you take Mercury as an example, the surface temperature of the planet is somewhere around 700 K, and its black body temperature is about 400 K. The planet is far more of a black body than your hypothetical spacecraft would probably be, but needless to say you would not want to expose your ship to those kinds of temperatures for long.
As AndyD273 was kind enough to demonstrate, there are several varieties of shadow behind a planet, only one of which is full enclosure, but all three would allow some protection from solar radiation.
What you could do is say that the mining base is on the dark side of the planet, and approaching ships try to approach from within the shadows to minimize heating problems. This might also make for interesting drama if the ship has to make a break for it straight into the direct sunlight for some reason!
[Answer]
I was thinking about this, and it occurred to me that the only kind of substances one might be willing to mine in an extreme environment would be if they were extremely rare minerals made of stable transuranic elements or unlikely isotopes made stable by currently undiscovered supersymmetric particles. These kind of elements might only be made in highly energetic events, like the merging of two neutron stars, or possibly some kind of event with a black hole. The planet itself might be accreted from byproducts of the primary, making it not only necessary to approach the planet in its shadow, but to be very, very careful where you step.
I think it would be best to have a single primary, because you need the planet to be tidally locked.
It might be interesting to have a primary body that's almost, but not quite a black hole. It would be a condition that might make highly unlikely things be a little more likely.
It sounds like it might be a fun read. It also seems like you'll need to do some serious research to make it a serious science fiction story..
[Answer]
Having read these answers, consider a binary star system. One star's radiation is manageable, but two stars is overload. Therefore, you may only approach the planet when one star occludes the other. Of course, to get to the planet, you would have to travel in the plane of orbit when the stars and planet line up. This will necessarily be in the planet's shadow as you get close, but it won't be the planet itself which protects your ships.
[Answer]
maybe its a pulsar and I would say the phenomena IS melting the planet. its just taking a while (planets are small compared to stars but they are still big). In the interim its worth picking up the 'rare mineral' being created. You are travelling to another star so have FTL. The only safe place to 'emerge' is in the planet's shadow (as deep in the umbra as possible) and you can only land / take off / mine while the underground base is in the shadow
[Answer]
If the planet is near enough to its primary, it will get tidally locked and your base will either be always in the daylight or always in the shadow.
Also, if the planet is not locked and rotates, and the surface is so lethal, it's unclear how the base could get built in the first place.
You could try and solve these issues by positing that the planet is a recent addition to the solar system (it would need to have been captured by a very rare three-body interaction with one of the existing planets).
This yields some interesting consequences:
* the planet can optionally be on a unstable or very elongated orbit, which implies long and harsh winters, impossibly hot summers, and even a limited life expectancy before it drops in the star or is further destabilized by another encounter with one of the planets and gets smashed, consumed by the star, or ejected from the solar system altogether. This can justify a time window of anywhere from a few days to several centuries before the planet is no longer mineable.
* the planet's surface can have an interesting composition. Let's imagine a gaseous planet that got its atmosphere blown off by a nova (or supernova), becoming an ejected cinder covered by condensing volatiles from the outer rim of the planetary nebula.
You would get a very large snowball with a possibly very valuable core, which rotates not too rapidly around a star, melting on one side and resolidifying on the other. This means that the surface can be reached at any time, but landing is only possible during the night. The base would be some sort of submersible that resurfaces in the evening before night freeze, and resubmerges just before dawn, and has been simply "dropped" on the planet.
Whatever the planet's original star's death has deposited on the solid surface, under several hundred meters of ice, has better be worth the trouble.
# Possibilities
Our cinder might have begun its existence as a loose aggregate of rocks inside the equivalent of a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) around a massive star massing some 25 Sols. The star expansion during the carbon-neon burning stage would have stripped our KBO and left the core exposed. Then, in the last week of its life the star would have burned silicon, increasing its temperature to two *billion* Kelvin and irradiating the KBO with an enormous neutrino flux, pushing it outwards a little in its orbit and initiating all kinds of weird nuclear reactions. In the final explosion (core temperatures in excess of 100 billion K), the neutron and neutrino flux and the inflow of exotic materials could have allowed a runaway nucleosinthesys process to reach the fabled 'island of stability' creating a long-lived heavy transuranic (henceforth *unobtainium*), imbued with all sorts of useful properties. The synthesis of such a substance, while possible, would be ruinously expensive.
The particular radioactive spectrum of the cinder, revealing it to be a close witness of a supernova explosion, would then explain why someone went to the trouble of dropping an unrecoverable mining base on an almost-inaccessible planet.
If you have some kind of stellar drive involved in the plot, you could have it depend on unobtainium quantum flux capacitors. At that point, whoever owns Cinder and its (relatively) cheap unobtaiunium would automatically own galactic transportation and economy.
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Since **radiation intensity falls off with the square of the distance**, it's entirely possible that your story's spacecraft have heat/radiation management systems sufficient to deal with the star's radiation so long as they're at least a certain distance out, but *not* sufficient to deal with the influx at the planet's current orbit. Under those circumstances, building on [AndyD273's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/40378/2808), staying in the penumbra would be increasingly desirable as one approached the planet (and the star it was orbiting).
Eventually, per the premises of the question, the penumbra is no longer sufficient, and the approaching craft must stay within the umbra to avoid overheating - or, if you're feeling particularly dramatic, must *get* to the umbra before the heat buildup becomes lethal.
The base itself, meanwhile, may have access to nifty heat-management techniques unavailable to spacecraft (at least during its approach), such as "atmosphere" or "oceans". For all we know the planet itself might well be habitable, just a little close to its star for your spacecraft. Especially if your spacecraft were owned by stingy poor economical captains unwilling to pay for the considerable extra expense of cooling systems that are only really useful when approaching a certain handful of inhabited planets, anyway.
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The mining base is of questionable legality or must stay hidden for other reasons. The prevailing technology level in the system is sufficiently low that approaching in shadow is an effective means of keeping the powers that be from noticing.
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[
In the story I created, the Kingdom of Oneirou has 3 Moons--Artemis, Rahu, and Zorya--all of which have their own independent lunar cycles.
However, it's officially stated as early as Chapter 2 or 3 that, once a year [each], all 3 Moons' phases are synchronized to Full Moon and New Moon. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that all 3 (while operating on their own separate lunar cycles) still follow the same 30~ days to complete one full cycle.
If we pretend that Oneirou still has the same 365 days = 1 Year like Earth, is this possible? If both events are not possible within a 365 day period, then how long would their year have to be extended to account for this?
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You can get [orbital resonances](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_resonance) like those exhibited by Ganymede, Europa and Io around Jupiter.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/sOwbR.gif)
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> an orbital resonance occurs when orbiting bodies exert a regular, periodic gravitational influence on each other, usually because their orbital periods are related by a ratio of small integers.
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However, that doesn't match what you are asking.
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> all 3 Moons' phases are synchronized to Full Moon and New Moon
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when a conjunction happens, it's either Full Moon or New Moon or whatever phase it is, but it cannot be more than one in the same cycle. Moreover, for the Ganymede/Europa/Io system there is never a triple conjunction.
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> all 3 (while operating on their own separate lunar cycles) still follow the same 30~ days to complete one full cycle
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if they have the same orbital period, they orbit at the same distance. So, either they are the same body, or they are going to become one very soon. As you see from the resonance, the periods are different.
To have more bodies sharing the same orbit, there must be one significantly more massive than the others, and the smaller one have to be in the lagrangian points of the large one. But then they won't have a simultaneous phase.
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This *might* fit your description: a 1:3:5 resonance.
```
Near moon: new on day 3 9 **15** 21 27, full on day 6 12 18 24 **30**.
Middle moon: new on day 5 **15** 25, full on day 10 20 **30**.
Far moon: new on day **15**, full on day **30**.
```
So: not all planets are having *all* their special phases on the same day, but there are days they're all having the same special phase.
I'm just a lowly software developer and don't know if a 1:3:5 resonance would be stable.
It's a question of interpretation whether a cycle need have one time around, or could be allowed more. For instance the full "Otto Cycle" in an internal combustion engine is actually two revolutions. Various climate cycles and orbital cycles, precessions of the earth's axis etc. are discussed in terms of many years.
Your mention of the 30 days period is under the rubric of "for the sake of argument" so I'm thinking it may not be central to your question.
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You say they all have the same 30 day cycle, but separate cycles? They must then have separate phases, like a 3-phase electric generator.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-phase#/media/File:3_phase_AC_waveform.svg>
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Half the moon is lit at any given time.
In a new moon, the lit half is facing fully away from the planet (or close enough the sliver is pretty minimal). **For this to happen monthly, this requires the moon's orbit be nearly coplanar with the planet-sun orbit**.
If the moon is *entirely* coplanar, you'll get a solar eclipse every month. So the orbit may be slightly off coplanar like Earth's moon; that will make new moons common, but solar eclipses rare. \*But they aren't really new moons then, since there is a thin wedge of lunar surface exposed to the sun *and* visible to the planet; they're more like 95% new moons. You'd need to declare a threshold of "good enough".
In a full moon, the lit half of the moon is facing "*nearly* fully" toward the planet, so the sun, planet and moon are in a row, in that sequence. But not *quite* that way; after all, that would be an lunar eclipse!
Again, the orbit may be slightly off coplanar, and it would need to be if you don't want a lunar eclipse every month. But again, \*they aren't really full moons then; they're more like 95% full moons. Again a "good enough" is required.
"All full moons" mean all the moons are on the far side of the planet from the star, in the "good enough" zone.
"All new moons" would mean all the moons are between the planet and the star, again in the "good enough" zone.
We can't say definitively what's possible on your world because you have to define what you call "good enough". But possible? Sure. If you declare 10% of a moon's arc to be "new moon", then unless some other mechanic occurs controlling the moons' motion, you'll have triple new moons 0.1% of the time and triple full moons 0.1% of the time.
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As stated by others, about the same period implies about the same distance, which makes the system with synchronized moons' phases unstable. This leaves you no good choices, but you may be able to sidestep it somehow, for example, by explaining why the [equality of inertial and gravitational mass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass#Inertial_vs._gravitational_mass) does not hold for the moons.
Without this equality, their distances can be different and the unstability gone. Following this idea may be pretty hard, unless you're into hard sci-fi.
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You can't have the same period. If it's the same period, then whatever the visual angle between them is initially is the angle forever.
You probably can't have a small difference in periods. They tend to be unstable.
A 1:2:4 resonance and a 1:3:5 resonance may work. But having the same phase, means that planet, moon 1, moon 2, moon 3 will have to be close to a straight line. To be also either new or full you have to have the sun in that line too.
Lets assume that being within 10 degrees counts as 'being in phase' (The difference between phases of the moon changes 12 degrees a day)
Let's use the 1:2:4 resonance, and we'll make the periods 1 week, 2 weeks and 4 weeks. So the outer moon has about the same period as Luna. If the resonance was perfect, they would all line up once a month. Whether it was a new or full moon depends on the relation between the orbital period of Outer compared to the year. If the relationship is not a resonance, then on the average 1/36 (360 degrees / 10 degrees) of the lineups will also be either new or full.
However the lineups will not be distributed well. They may be an average of every 3 years, but you might get 3-6 in close succession with half a year between them, then go 10-20 years between them.
There would be a pattern to it. The 10 degree limit means that lineups would take whatever time it takes the fastest moon to move 10 degrees. So 1/36 of a week. A few hours. If the year were 10 months long then the lineup from one month to another would move 36 degrees across the sky.
Remember that only half the lineups will be visible. The other half will be on the back side of the planet from any one point.
It's unlikely that the resonance will be perfect, so you may get long periods where there are no lineups.
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As an aside, search this site for "Can a planet have multiple large moons" I asked that question some years ago both here, on physics.SE and a couple of physics forums. The upshot is, "No, it's unstable." and one moon either gets ejected, hits the planet or another moon.
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If any of the moons rotate on there axis, the numbers of full moons could increase. The sizes of each moon can change the amounts of full moons.
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This is a very closely related question to my previous: [Evolution of tree-dwelling species that will help predators find prey if prey species doesn't give it a bribe?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/70003/evolution-of-tree-dwelling-species-that-will-help-predators-find-prey-if-prey-sp)
The premise is the same, a tree-based creature that blackmails a species on the ground into feeding it, in fact there is a good chance that this creature may blackmail non-prey creatures as described in the above question.
However, in this question I'm shifting slightly to the idea of a bit more direct blackmail, specifically a threat of killing/eating a creature if it doesn't feed you; but preferring blackmail over killing the land creature because of the risk attacking the land-creature being high enough that 'safe' meal through blackmail is preferable to attempting to kill it.
I could use this idea for any number of creatures, but most likely I would be a variant of my [griffins](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/25281/anatomically-correct-griffins/25387#25387), which I sort of fell in love with after answering the question. The answer is very long, but the relevant parts are that griffins live in trees but mostly hunt land-based creatures. Any attack on ground-based creatures is dangerous due to how small/fragile individuals griffins are compared to prey and the presence of land-based predators that kill griffins on the ground. The griffins compensate for this by choosing their targets carefully and only attacking when they can ensure they safest kill. The also spread out the 'pack' over a large region to search for the perfect prey to attack and when found spotters flush the prey to a killzone by visually positioning themselves to attack so that they prey needs to run to avoid the 'spotters' from killing it.
The tribe would prefer to secure a kill so it brings back enough food to spread across the entire tribe, including non-hunters; and the best hunters prefer making kills as it helps to secure matings by showing off his fitness. However, the 'spotters', especially the younger males who aren't ready yet to land kills themselves, may prefer a single larger meal for themselves via blackmail over sharing a small part of a tribes kill. I was thinking the smaller spotters may appear and 'threaten' to call the rest of the tribe to hunt a land-creature that just made a kill but accept a bribe of meat from the kill to not call in the rest of the pack.
This is mostly to get a large meal for 'free', but also because spotters are expected to attempt a kill if the prey refuses to be scared/flushed to the kill zone, and for young griffins this can be very dangerous and thus something they prefer to avoid the chance of being forced to try if the prey doesn't let itself be flushed.
The blackmailing Griffin would likely expect the food to be passed up to them to some degree, as Griffins avoid going to ground level whenever possible for safety.
I want this to be a behavior passed down across generation, either evolved instinct or taught by parents but not something that requires human level intellect, Both species should habitually understand their role as soon as one decides to blackmail. Gryphons will be at least as smart as monkeys, it's the land-based creatures I'm mostly worried about, how do they gain a habitual understanding of this?
Unlike in the last question I imagine blackmail would be less common, only young males who are in particular need of food, are less loyal to the tribe as a whole, and think they can get away with it will be trying this. As such it seems a little harder for land-based creatures to develop a habitual response since the interactions are not as common and because they now have to learn *two* responses, what to do when Griffins are hunting them for real and what to do when one is threatening to hunt, causing a more nuanced habitual response that's harder to develop (when/how did the land creature learn there are times when it shouldn't just run?)
How could the creature have developed this habitual response and can it be maintained? Can it be maintained even in the face of of griffins occasionally making empty threats in hopes of bluffing its way to a free meal even if the spotter doesn't plan to call the hunt on the land based creature (because the spotter knows that this creature wouldn't provide enough meat to warrant the risk of a hunt to the tribe right now).
[Answer]
# Cuckoos and their mafia tactics
[If a magpie rejects a cuckoo egg laid in its nests, the cuckoo promptly returns to destroy the magpie’s own eggs or kill its chicks.](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11314-cuckoos-use-mafia-style-tactics-to-raise-young/)
It goes downhill from there:
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> Not to be outdone, American cowbirds, which are not related to cuckoos, employ an even more forceful racket against warblers. “The cowbird has much more sophisticated predatory behaviours than we thought,” says Jeff Hoover at the Illinois Natural History Survey in Champaign, US, who has been monitoring brown-headed cowbirds (Molothrus ater) for four years in the swamps of the Cache River in southern Illinois.
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> ## Swift retaliation
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> Wild warblers are very compliant with cowbirds, and are not known to recognise and eject cowbird eggs. But Hoover and Robinson wanted to find out what would happen if they did. To mimic this situation, they provided artificial nests for 180 pairs of prothonotary warblers (Protonotaria citrea), waited for the cowbirds to cuckold them, then selectively removed the cowbird eggs.
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> The cowbirds soon retaliated, returning to the nest to eat or destroy the remaining warbler eggs. What is more, warblers that had laid too early for the cowbirds to cuckold them suffered retribution too. Cowbirds would routinely eat or trash these more developed eggs to force the warblers to rebuild the nest elsewhere.
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There are a selection of cooperative tactics, but also straight up trickery. [Drongos in the Kalahari mimic the alarm calls of other species in order to steal food, scientists have found.](http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9149000/9149950.stm)
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> The birds "play tricks" on meerkats in particular, following the little mammals around until they catch a meal.
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> The drongos then make fake alarm calls that mimic other species and cause the meerkats to run for cover, allowing the drongos to swoop in.
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For your situation you're asking a top predator to share a kill. That's not an easy thing to do. I'd suggest considering the education of each target as an individual, as per the cuckoos and cowbirds above. The gryphon comes down to share the kill if not passed some. Should the target not willingly share, then the gryphon calls in the pack to take the whole kill.
However: Passing a share of the kill upwards is nigh on impossible for most ground based predators, they do not have the capability to divide an animal, only to tear off mouthfuls to eat. A pack of hunters might have the ability to divide a kill but would be a much tougher target for even the whole pack of gryphons to take on.
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This premise of vengeful punishment reminds me of the honeyguide bird. From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_honeyguide>.
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> The tradition of the Bushmen and most other tribes says that the
> honeyguide must be thanked with a gift of honey; if not, it may lead
> its follower to a lion, bull elephant, or venomous snake as
> punishment. However, “others maintain that honeycomb spoils the bird,
> and leave it to find its own bits of comb”.[5]
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This happens in a picture book by Jan Brett called Honey Honey Lion. The honeybadger does not share, and so is led to a lion. From [janbrett.com](http://janbrett.com/games/honey_honey_lion_game.htm)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FmS47.jpg)
Another real life instance of a flying / tree animal calling in predators is the raven - wolf interaction.
from <https://www.allaboutbirds.org/dinner-guests-how-wolves-and-ravens-coexist-at-kills/> although I found the big image [here](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/b7/55/05/b7550539c581a5048757aa64735c24c2.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/f2vw5.jpg)
Ravens definitely eat at wolf kills and like to hang around wolves. Ravens have been witnessed stalking a sick or wounded animal and loudly calling, purportedly to bring the wolves. And it makes sense - ravens are smart, they know the animal is meat for them, they can't kill it themselves and they know the wolves can, and they know the wolves will put up with them when they come eat.
In a situation where there are other big predators (maybe 15,000 years ago in N. America when there were still cave lions and sabertooth cats) I could see the ravens showing up at a kill and then calling in their friends the wolves if the cats did not offer them seats at the table.
[from a mural at the San Diego Natural History Museum](http://evolution-involution.org/html_slideshow/images/stout_sabertooth.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/51Ndc.jpg)
Those other wolves need to step up, already!
Back to the honeyguide's semi-apocryphal situation: the bird is motivated by vengeance, much like the griffins described here. When the lion or cobra gets involved there is no guarantee at all that the griffin or honeyguide gets a meal. The ravens are different and a very plausible analogy for the griffins. Ravens are allied with wolves whom they can count on to let them eat and plus wolves are fun to annoy. But when the wolves show up they eat a lot, and it is work to go find them - so if ravens can get the nonwolf to see reason and share there is more meat for the ravens.
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I recall seeing (on a TV science show) species of birds — one would prey on the eggs of the other. If the second didn’t *allow* it, then the first would wreck the entire clutch.
Look at birds that get other animals to harvest honey, expecting a cut for having led them to it.
Complex behavior certainly does occur in real world animals, including contracts between species. You might try finding more examples of that to study.
As for bluffers, I think there will be a natural equilibrium point where a certain percentage of that occurs. The ground species will become smart enough to do its own assessment to detect bluffing, and the preditor will have ways of escalating prior to a lethal attack.
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There might be a way:
## [omnivore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnivore) griffins.
Why omnivore and not carnivore? Here is the thing: hunting is a dangerous process. And a lot of animals just can't hunt. But a lot of animals can find fruits, roots or other veggies.
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## Gruffy and the Piglet
So our young and intrepid griffin Gruffy if looking for some food. He circles overhead and sees a swine with piglets rooting around. Now Gruffy can take a piglet, but if it goes wrong he has to deal with mummy swine.
Mummy swine sees a griffin circling overhead. While she knows the can probably take it on herself, her lovely piglets cannot. So she sniffs around, and notices that she is in luck today: there are some carrots / buried melons / other tasty (for a griffin) things to dig up. So she starts to dig, and fast, as the griffin is getting closer.
Gruffy sees the digging frenzy of the biggest of the swine, and decides that circling around is a good idea to see what turns up.
Once mummy swine has dug up the tasties, the takes her litter of piglets with her some save distance away. What can be hard, as the little ones smell the tastiness just dug up. The most incurable ignorant one decides, "screw it, this is tasty!" And digs in.
Gruffy, of course, cannot let this happen. While mother swine sounds her warnings. He dives to the just dug up tasties, with the ignorant piglet. The piglet is not paying attention to anything besides the lovely tastes, and so dies at the claws of Gruffy.
All other swine look in terror how the little one is slain. But there are 11 more piglets where that came from, and that was the ignorant one. Lesson leant by all involved.
[Answer]
Ants do something very similar, they run a protection racket.
Ants protect aphids and let them to stay around. In return the aphids allow themselves to be "milked" by the ants.
This phenomenon is pretty common in nature in one way or another - especially with regard to parasites. You could even argue that some viruses do it. They infect an animal and then threaten the host with choking unless they cough and pass on the virus to others.
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I think you are going about this the wrong way. Look at this as a carrot and stick issue. A dog is friendly if you feed it, but will be defensive if hit.
Your creatures are offering a stick with very little to enforce it happening.
I suggest you off a carrot with the stick, "feed me and you'll be rewarded, if not you will pay".
These rewards could be food (typical for research projects with pigeons), or it could be drugs (typical for humans).
This relationship should be [parasitic in nature](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parasitic_organisms), as your creatures are hunters. an interesting case would be the [Oxpecker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxpecker), which feeds on parasites for the host, but also harms it by creating open wounds.
I suggest your creatures give their subjects something like alcohol after they are fed, then can get an easier kill if still hungry as their subject would be slightly intoxicated.
[Answer]
There is an episode of Thundercats that goes into this scenario for the Berbils S1E3.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ThunderCats_(1985_TV_series)_episodes>
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> ... They soon learn that the Berbils are being frequently attacked by the Trolligs[11] who steal their fruit to give to the Giantorrs.[12] ...
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> Trolligs - A race of Bulldog-faced creatures who frequently raid the Berbil village to steal their fruit.
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> Giantorrs - A race of giants who live on top of the Trollig's mountain where the trollberry bushes grow. They refuse to let the Trolligs eat the leaves off those bushes unless they bring them Ro-Bear Berbil fruit. After the ThunderCats drive the Trolligs and Giantorrs off, the Berbils become their allies and offer to help them build their new home.
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It doesn't go into how they got into the state, but it was basically "we are slaves because of this society structure" and then they get freed from it by the good guys.
So a good-natured species gets abused by a dominant species and creates a parasitic/hostile relationship.
On a slightly related note, the end of the episode, the Berbils offer their services to Liono and their group and build them a fortress... Trading one kind of oppressive slavery for voluntary/indentured servitude.
Hope that helps.
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[Question]
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I'm writing about a group of colonists on an Earthlike world, where I want to get the geography realistically correct, and it occurs to me that one thing I have not really seen discussed is the nature of the shoreline.
It actually matters to the colony what kind of shoreline they have, because if it's a beach, walking along it is many times easier than trekking through jungle.
So the setting is a world similar to Earth in the relevant ways, a continental shore (not a lake or inland sea, but shoreline directly exposed to the open ocean) with jungle inland, and from what I can remember seeing of various terrestrial locations, there are basically three types of shoreline:
1. Beach. This is the best case for the colonists; you can walk along the beach without having to scramble through jungle, so it serves as a highway.
2. Rocks. Jagged rocks, cliffs, fjords etc. You can look out at the sea, but it is much more difficult to move along the coast.
3. Mangroves. This is even worse than rocky cliffs; it's practically impossible to even reach the coast.
So what are the factors that determine which kind of coast will be present? Is there a realistic limit to how long a stretch of the continental coast will be beach?
[Answer]
Local orography and currents are what mostly determine how a coast look like.
**Orography**: the local slope of the terrain will influence how the land/water interface will look like, if you will have fjords or a straight coast line. A steeper slope will make deposition of sediments more difficult, a more gentle slope will make it easier.
**Currents**: moving the sediment around, they will determine if there will be a beach or not, depending on their effect on the sediment flow. The sea village where I went when I was a kid had a small harbor in a gulf with 4 small islands lined right out if it, parallel to the coast. At a certain point they decided it was smart to join the first two to land by filling the gap between them. This messed up with the currents and now the harbor is constantly being filled with sand while before it was kept clear by the currents.
[Answer]
**Copy Earth.**
You are making it up! Unless you have some constraints as regards location, you can have their environment be what you want it to be to make your story good. Even better, you can imagine somewhere on Earth that is like where they are and just lift real geographical information off the map. Then you can figure out there comings and goings on a real piece of geography which will be a good mental aid.
Below is a map of the coast of Belize which looks to have a long beach backed by jungle.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5g2pg.jpg)
If your folks were in country that had been glaciated there might be steeper cliffs and little beach but it would probably not be tropical. As you correctly note there are places where dry land grades through salt marsh or mangroves on the way to ocean and it can be tough going. If you want places like that, go to the Florida coast and lift shoreline from there.
[Answer]
The main factors are the composition of the local soil, the land slope, idrography (mainly how much silt is being dumped seaward by the rivers), climate and time.
Then you must consider the characteristics of the tides and currents (influenced by the land slope but also by the wider body of water's shape and orientation).
No significant tides, and erosion will take ages to ground rocks into sand. Large tides and the sand will be swept away, and if the ground slopes too much, it will be swept so far away that the coast will slowly erode, but no beaches will form. Tides depend on the presence of moons and distance to the primary, but also on the shape of the coastline (a "funnel" rotationward will create a tidal bore that channels the tidal bulge and gets you a [Dragon Tide](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6fr6GUSmAA)).
Strong currents going more or less tangentially down a coast, with significant but not excessive rip currents and a flattish, not too deep shelf will rapidly grind the coastal rocks to sand. This is what happens on my own home coast; near old sea forts you can find round, smooth pebbles coming from bricks, rocks and ceramic or glass fragments that were whole just maybe a century ago. Another thousand years and they'll be sand.
Flat continental shelf near the coast, reasonable tides, hot, humid climate and lots of silt (w/ nutrients) being slowly drained into the sea (even better if they're carried by a long and winding river full of organic substances), and you'll get a jungle delta estuary, possibly with algal analogues up to a considerable distance out to sea.
[Answer]
I live in a coastal community and I strongly suggest researching coast lines in areas that have a similar climate to your location. The weather will affect the currents and tides which will affect the shape of the coast line, etc.
The climate will affect the marine life, which will dictate which type of sand, etc will be on the coast line. The makeup of any environment is complex, but it is extremely evident in any coastal environments how interconnected life is.
For example, I live on the Gulf of Mexico and the sand is white and soft due to high calcium deposits from microscopic marine animals. We do not have a rocky coast line or natural reefs, due to the nature of us having an extremely unique tides and currents. The tides push sand and shells, bones, etc. onto the shoreline and deposit them, as opposed to having tide pools. Because there is nothing but sand bottom along the coast line, we do not have large kelp like they would in the pacific coast, and we do not have large fish and other marine animals that live in kelp forests off the coast. Right on the coast we mostly have small to medium schooling fish, and larger predators like sharks would hunt them a little ways off the coast in the surf zone, or they may come closer to shore over a sand bar, which forces the fish to school in shallower water, making it easier for a shark to hunt without risking running aground.
[Answer]
Think ['fractals'.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox)
>
> The coastline paradox is the counterintuitive observation that the
> coastline of a landmass does not have a well-defined length. This
> results from the fractal curve-like properties of coastlines, i.e.,
> the fact that a coastline typically has a fractal dimension (which in
> fact makes the notion of length inapplicable). The first recorded
> observation of this phenomenon was by Lewis Fry Richardson[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox) and it
> was expanded upon by Benoit Mandelbrot.[2]
>
>
>
Essentially, a coastline is a fractal inside a fractal inside a fractal inside a fractal ad nauseam. It can not be predicted ahead of time, but is a result of probabilistic forces.
And coastlines are never static. They are dynamic, always changing. Erosion can change a sand beach into a rocky shoreline. A minor change in climate or an invasive species can completely change the flora and fauna.
The only rule is that there are no rules. Even on Mars, predictability is non-existent. Just when we think we have the landscape figured out, classified, and categorized, an exception comes along i the very next picture.
] |
[Question]
[
In my sci-fi world, mankind has begun colonization of the large asteroid Ceres. It's a mining hub, with a lot of cargo vessels transporting things in and out.
Hydrogen peroxide fuel is cheap and plentiful around Ceres, and the gravity well very shallow, so the kind of fuel efficient rendezvous moves we see in low earth orbit may not apply here. What kind of flight paths would be used by the small vessels loading and unloading the cargo from the big freighters (who sit in a parking orbit)? Would they just fly mostly in straightish lines?
A good answer will sketch out the kind of flight profile and rendezvous process likely to be employed, both in surface-orbit and orbit-orbit scenarios. Delta-v is naturally a concern but answers don't have to contain (much) math. I would love to know if complex flight planning would be required to calculate intercept trajectories, or if the pilots would just home in on a beacon, with little concern for orbital mechanics. Please try keep the technology to todays standard, or even a bit more retro, ie no warp drives or antimatter engines.
[Answer]
Escape velocity for a vertical take-off on Ceres is about 510 m/s with a gravitational resistance of 0.27 m/s and no atmosphere to cause drag, meaning you'd be spending a LOT more fuel just getting up to speeds appropriate for interplanetary travel than you would just getting stuff into deep space. This means that landing a heavy freighter to make loading easier might be more worthwhile than orbiting it and loading it one little shuttle at a time.
You could also maintain an orbit of about ~112 m/s flying at near surface altitudes making point to point transportation around the asteroid practically free; so, you could have a central loading airbase for your freighters that smaller shuttles bring stuff to from around the "globe". My guess is that people would focus more on time efficiency than fuel efficiency meaning flying in straight lines wherever possible would be the ideal way to go.
The #1 reason why I think this would take priority over an orbital loading system is that you can build a large central distribution warehouse much more cheaply on the ground than in orbit, and central distribution is key to profitability. This means that your various mines & refineries can fill up their shuttles and send them to the distribution center whenever they have enough resources to fill them up without having to wait for freighters to show up looking for what they are selling or co-ordinate launch windows. This means you need fewer shuttles that can be kept in transit for more of their time increasing your mining profits. It also makes loading and unloading much safer and faster. A small mess-up in one of the hundred a mid-air dockings it takes to load your freighter could cause a hull breach killing everyone involved. But if you land it, there is only one opportunity for failure. Then once on the ground, cranes can load it much faster than shuttles with way less over head or risk of high speed collisions. Centralization is also is better for the freighter wait times because the distribution center can make sure it has all the right resources queued up and by the landing pad before it gets there. Frankly, there are tons of ways to exploit centralised logistics that probably go outside of the scope of this question, but in the end, you want it, and putting it in space is just too expensive and risky when take-offs and landings are so cheap.
Complex flight planning may still be needed to the point of making sure people don't crash into each other, but by the time we're advanced enough to colonize Ceres, I'm sure AI will be far enough along to automate flight paths and navigation making local flight traffic a bit of a non-issue in the colonists daily lives as long as you have an orbital GPS system, and good topographical data to coordinate everything.
[Answer]
## Space Elevators
Ceres's has a "Day" of 9 hours and low mass puts its Cere-stationary orbit about 1800km above its surface. With its weaker gravity of 0.03g's, any number of modern polymers have sufficient strength to simply lower from a stationary orbit to any point on the surface.
[Answer]
>
> Delta-v is naturally a concern but
>
>
>
$\Delta\_v$ *isn't* a concern. Escape velocity is ~514m/s, and using a peroxide rocket, a teeny-tiny mass ratio of *1.5* is enough to get you into solar orbit from Ceres' surface (for reference, the spaceshuttle had a mass ratio of 15, *and* it used engines with more than triple the specific impulse of peroxide). Not that you'd be doing such a thing, because you'd just use an electromagnetic or steam catapult to boost you up instead and use a tiny rocket motor to circularise your orbit. Orbital speed at cererean synchronous altitude is a miniscule ~186m/s so you don't need a whole lot of fuel to boost up and down or out as you wish.
In fact, $\Delta\_v$ is such a non-issue that it could easily make sense to not bother with your freighters at all, and simply boost stuff into space on an Earth (or wherever) intercept trajectory with a little engine to do mid-course correction and the final destination orbit injection burn. You'd either have to wait for a transfer window to open (which is infrequent, though I don't recall of the top of my head how infrequent) or you just put up with the fact that your cargo will take a few extra years to get home. If it is just dumb matter, that's not exactly a big deal. It is rather boring from a space-traffic-control-story point of view, however.
[Answer]
Your freighters don´t sit in a parking swarm, they land on trains on Ceres. As Ceres is an airless world we needn´t concern ourselves with aerodynamic drag or entry stresses. Yet this is an incidental detail, as the point of using mass-driver trains to launch vessels it to free them to the Tyranny of the Rocket Equation [1]. The Rocket Equation basically says one of three things. The vessel needs to be mostly fuel (current rockets), be efficient and horribly boring (ion drives) or be a torchship [2](which may fall under your restriction of "no super tech" and might be a bit on the dangerous side (Kzinti Lesson) [3]). The mass drivers are still a case for the Kzinti Lesson, but looking at Johns Law [4] that is unavoidable.
The mass drivers will be maglev trains [5] where vessels land on wagons and are pushed up to speed or slowed down. While this takes energy the energy isn´t fully lost if regenerative brakes [6] are used. To power the thing fusion would be nice but messing around with solar panels or fission plants would work, too. It matters that a lot of energy is needed. I´ll come back to that later. If you want to calculate the dimensions of the mass drivers this formula is relevant.
$v = d/\sqrt[2](d/(0,5\*a))$
$v$ = velocity
$d$ = distance (track length)
$a$ = acceleration
$v$ should at least be at 510 $m/s$, as that is Ceres escape velocity. At the still human tolerable acceleration of 5 $g$ this gives you a track length of ca. 120 km. Play and plug as you like. It should be noted that the logical conclusion of this technology is a track around the equator, setting $d$ to infinite and allowing all kinds of funny high-velocity launching. Furthermore, this will allow Brachistochrone Orbitals [7] which are the opposite of our current Hohmann Transfers [8]. A note on $a$, 5 $g$ seems to be the save human maximum but I would go for 3 $g$ as that is more comfortable. Unmanned vessels could be shot off at hundreds of $g$´s.
With the infrastructure of the spaceports cleared up let´s look at trajectories. Freighters will need to time their flight plans to the rotation of Ceres and need to maneuver to correct their courses in a manner allowing for save capture and beneficial departure. If both target and launch point have mass drivers only ion drives are needed for corrections. If not the mass drivers will still lower fuel demands and be economically viable, especially as using the power directly to launch vessels will be more efficient than producing Hydrogen Peroxide. (tell me in a comment should you want me to run the numbers). Hohman transfers will be dominant during the early phase of colonization, with Brachistochrone Orbitals only possible at certain times and only in the Belt. As mass-driver infrastructure improves the windows for Brachistochrone Orbitals will grow bigger until Hohman Trajectories will be a thing of the past like travel by horse is today. This obviously assumes that you don't have torchships.
As for your shuttle flight paths, there are two things I mentioned earlier that are relevant to this discussion. That running mass-driver takes a lot of energy and that according to you the colonisation of Ceres is in an early state. This leads to the conclusions that there will be few and short mass-drivers on Ceres. Around those the major settlements will grow but what about those far from these spaceports? Here your shuttle pilot comes in. He will pilot one of the many shuttles and thugs carrying people and materials to and from the mass-drivers. Now, why does this shuttle hopping happen? Ceres has a surface area of ca. 2.7 mil $m²$, roughly comparable to Kazakhstan. But the land is mountainous and the ice keeps melting and moving, so installing hyperloop trains [9] will take another century. Even roads are impractical.
As Ceres orbital speed at surface level is only 336 $m/s$ and the fuel is cheap the small vessels will fly extremely low trajectories, those who are risk-conscious a few kilometers high, those who want to cut cost only meters above the highest peaks. This is great story material as figuring out that there isn´t enough fuel to get you over the next mountain and pirates harpooning transport vessels down can create a lot of conflicts. The orbits would spread out like the canopy of a tree from the spaceports. it might be more accurate to call them "Jumps" because this isn't really different from jumping on Earth.
Finally, I would recommend the game "Kerbal Space Programm" [10] to you as it will allow you to get an intuitive understanding of orbital mechanics and delivers you the feel of being a spacefarer.
[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation>
[2] <http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/torchships.php>
[3] <http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunexotic.php#propulsion>
[4] <http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/prelimnotes.php#johnslaw>
[5] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev>
[6] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_brake>
[7] <http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/torchships.php#id--Brachistochrone_Equations>
[8] <https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohmann-Transfer>
[9] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop>
[10] <https://store.steampowered.com/app/220200/Kerbal_Space_Program/>
[Answer]
Besides a static space elevator, we might also use a crane, or temporary space elevator. Basically a rope from a ship in stationary orbit unloading supplies and loading resources.
Catapulting things into orbit, as mentioned above, would also work. A ship could choose an elliptic orbit to catch the rocks at about the same speed and their highest elevation or or a suitable tangential movement. I'll leave the mathematics to you. It may collect the rocks or mount engines on them which put them onto desired paths and then return for refuelling - maybe after pushing something from another asteroid or moon towards ceres.
```
s os
s xCCCCx o s
s CCCCCCCCCC o s .
s CCCCCCCCCCCC o s .
s CCCCCCCCCCCC o s o
s CCCCCCCCCCo s o C=Ceres
s *CCCC* s o s=Ship/Station
s s o o=Resources
```
A gravity assist maneuver could put a ship at very slow speeds and synced to the rotation of Ceres very close to the surface - enough to push a large container with very little energy into the holding bay, and to push loads towards Ceres with just some balloons on the outside to cushion the impact. Once the ship is behind Ceres (as seen relativ to it's movement around the sun), gravity would accelerate the ship again, so no significant energy is lost.
```
<s
s
s
s xCCCCx
s <CCCCCCCC<
s <CCCCCCCCCC< s>
s #<CCCCCCCCCC< s >=Direction
s <CCCCCCCC< s C=Ceres
s *CCCC* s s=Ship
s s #=Resources
```
[Answer]
[As Nosajimiki said on his answer:](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/143803/21222)
>
> You could also maintain an orbit of about ~112 m/s flying at near surface altitudes.
>
>
>
That is very slow for our aerospatial standards. Jets within Earth's atmosphere usually fly at around double that speed.
As you increase altitude, orbital speeds decrease. So your smaller vesses could do it like this:
1. Wait for a launch window (with 9h 4m days, wait times should be relatively short).
2. Launch. Match orbital plane during ascent.
3. You should achieve orbit within a handful kilometers of the target ship.
4. At such small distances and with such low orbital speeds, just accelerate towards target and, when getting close, match speed. The path towards the target will be a very open curve.
5. Use RCS thrusters to maneuver and dock.
To land: undock and land as always.
[Answer]
Ceres settlement should be below the Ice which yields fuel $H\_2$ and $O\_2$, and shelter. Anchored to an elevator this structure could penetrate with a tower miles deep and service fueling bladders at synchronous orbit.
] |
[Question]
[
Story starts out about 100 years from now.
While in orbit around Earth preparing for an interstellar mission, our spacecraft encounters some *hand-wavey spacetime anomaly* such that we're still in orbit around Earth, but approximately 20 million years into the future.
How would we be able to tell how far into the future we have traveled?
For the purposes of the story, *H. sapiens* has long since gone extinct on Earth (within a million years of the present day), and it's not obvious if they've left any descendants, or if they traveled to the stars. No other obviously intelligent or technologically advanced species has risen since then. The state of things is roughly the same as it was 20 million years before the present, *way* before the first humans showed up.
Some things that I've thought about:
* Stellar motion (constellations won't look anything like they did before, and we should have a fairly accurate catalog for navigation purposes);
* Continental drift (after 20 million years some motion should be evident, although since this meant to be an interstellar mission, we probably wouldn't have detailed maps of the Earth's surface to compare against);
* Earth-Moon distance (Moon is receding at a rate of a few cm a year, should be measurable after 20 million years);
Since this ship was designed for interstellar travel, assume we have plenty of $\Delta{V}$ to tool around the solar system and landers to explore the surface.
What man-made structures (if any) would survive for 20 million years on Earth? If we find what used to be Yucca Mountain (or a similar site), could we somehow find and use the radioactive material that was stored there to estimate how long since it was buried?
What shape would the Apollo landing sites be in (or any other man-made structures on the Moon) after 20 million years?
What other things should I look at that would provide a somewhat reliable estimate?
**Edit**
To add some clarity and address some questions:
1. For the purposes of the story, the estimate only has to be accurate to within a couple of million years - the *exact* number of years doesn't really matter. And they have to be able to determine they've moved into the future, rather than the past.
2. The effect of the hand-wavey anomaly puts the ship in orbit around the Earth where the Earth will be 20-ish million years from now (magically preserving angular momentum), meaning they've travelled through space as well as time; however, from their perspective, they never really moved (although for some cheap initial drama, I may have it deposit them in a higher or lower orbit, or in a different inclination). And, for the purposes of the story, how they got there really doesn't matter.
3. This was supposed to be an interstellar exploration mission using a hypothetical reaction drive with an insanely and likely impossibly high $I\_{SP}$ allowing the ship to reach substantial fractions of $c$, such that the trip to the original target would have taken on the order of a decade within the ship's reference frame (centuries within the Earth's reference frame - the crew know what they're signing up for). Thus, they have plenty of $\Delta{V}$ to tool around the solar system (if they choose to do so), although high $I\_{SP}$ usually correlates to low thrust, so it may take a while to get anywhere.
4. While there are planetary scientists on board, the purpose of the trip is to analyze bodies in another star system, not Earth. They will have some Earth reference data, but not highly detailed maps of the surface.
[Answer]
With proper excavation and radiometric dating, everything is possible.
Our current civilization is leaving a huge level of non-natural isotopes, some of these imbalances will be carried into hundreds of millions of years into the future. For example, the astronauts can use [Uranium–lead dating](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium%E2%80%93lead_dating):
>
> The method relies on two separate decay chains, the uranium series
> from 238U to 206Pb, with a half-life of 4.47 billion years and the
> actinium series from 235U to 207Pb, with a half-life of 710 million
> years.
>
>
>
The real problem would be, as I see it, that your astronauts would have no idea what the "civilization baseline" level is, meaning, they would have no idea what isotopic composition was by the end of human civilization. It could be the same level as when they left, or 100 times higher because of a nuclear war or global contamination. Without knowledge of the baseline, accurate calculations would be very tough thing to do.
That means that they would have to perform excavation (or find exposed sedimentary rocks), just like geologists do today. They will inevitably come to a sediment layer that corresponds to human civilization, and from there they should be able to make more accurate estimate.
* Earth-Moon distance that you have already mentioned should be another good timing method;
* Individual stellar motion will be unpredictable for 20 million years into the future. But Sun's position with respect to the galaxy (and other galaxies) should be predictable.
* Continental drift would be a good rough estimate, but it will lack any precision.
* All human buildings will be buried at this point. Some will be preserved as they get buried. Your astronauts however will have to search for these buildings and do excavation.
* Apollo landing sites will get degraded, but still going to be recognizable at close inspection.
[Answer]
If you know, that you are in the solar system there might be another option you can reasonably construct. Your humanity did build an interstellar spaceship, so it is reasonable to assume that they also launched a load of other stuff into space in their time. Everything in a close to earth probably already decayed in orbit and is gone, but stuff sent further out might not be.
So I assume that in order to look for targets for interstellar travel, humanity build some space telescopes and in order to minimise interference from the sun and all the stuff in the inner solar system, they put them somewhere quiet, far out of the way, for example one might be in a really wide orbit around Pluto or something similar. Since solar power isn't good enough out there, they fitted it with an radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG). Since standardised parts are always good, your ship might also have the same model of RTG with identical fuel composition, maybe as an auxiliary power system. They might even have given you the tools to analyse the detailed composition of nuclear fuel, maybe for your main reactor.
Using this you should be able to get a rather precise time estimate, let's say $\pm 1 \%$ by comparing the composition of your RTG with the million years old one. The initial isotopes will probably be long gone, however some of the decay products will have half-lifes long enough to allow meaningful radiometric dating.
[Answer]
Alexander's answer is correct.
A different answer relies on the evolutionary clock. Despeciation is occurring at unprecedented rates at present time. We have begun the 6th mass extinction. This has the rather nice effect of setting the clock for the future.
Your explorers can look at the phylogenetic relatedness of life at 20 million years from now, and calculate (using the fidelity of DNA polymerase and reproductive rates) an estimate of time that has passed since H sapiens was busy killing everything.
[Answer]
Based on your premise, I assume that astronauts are not well-prepared and willing time travellers.
In this case, the easiest way to determine time difference would be to compare current star positions with star maps in the spaceship navigation system. You should be able to calculate the time difference with at least 1000 years precision. Considering Bernard's Star moves very fast (relatively to other stars), you can get it down to a century if you spend a bit more time on charting the new sky.
Most likely, there will be no man-made structures on Earth if the humanity disappeared without reaching technological levels much higher than current. In 20 million years all surface structures will be completely destroyed by natural forces. Something (some glass and plastic) might survive by luck but it probably will be buried deep underground.
Moon will be your best bet for finding the remnants of human civilisation. The rubbish we've left there will likely survive for [100 million years more](http://www.sciencefocus.com/article/space/how-long-will-man-made-objects-on-moon-last).
[Answer]
First you need some degree of desired accuracy and a statement of the Units of Measurement, since you didn't say where you took off from and used the word approximately (and 20 million) in your question I will give approximation methods and the (currently) known accurate method.
Use of [UT1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Time "UT1") avoids considering where you launched from and an assumption that you wanted your answer in 'local time', continental drift caused by rotation of the core and crusts makes your starting location inaccurate after a long period of time.
For an approximate time @Alexander's answer is accurate to 1 or 2%, so 200K years. The precision and accuracy are fine, only affected by the accuracy, precision and duration of measurement available (which likely won't be very favorable). Simply bring a small rock with you and measure U vs. Pb then shield it and remeasure after your travel giving a base amount to compare with an expedition to the planets or Moon to obtain enough samples to make a plot. The answer should be accurate to a few decimal point, in Gyrs (billions of years). Use of other Elements and their decay ratios will improve the accuracy of the answer (assuming sufficiently accurate equipment and enough time to average your measurements).
Next method, measure the diameter and brightness of our Sun. Fairly easy, accurate and combined with the above method each makes the other better. Not particularly precise without accurate equipment. Combined with measurements of the sizes of other stars will improve the result.
The easiest and fastest approximation is to measure the distance from the Earth to the Moon (assuming no large meteor impacts changed the orbitb. The Moon moves away [22mm per year](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/74590/how-would-our-sky-look-like-100-million-years-in-the-future "22 mm per year") so 220 km per 10 million years; if it's 440 km further away then you're 20 million years in the future (this can be cross verified by doing the same calculations with other planets).
Before giving the 'accurate' method know that it relies on current science and mathematics - 20 million years from now we might have learned something new.
The "accurate" method is explained in many places including the book [The Science of Time 2016: Time in Astronomy & Society, Past, Present and Future](https://books.google.ca/books?id=S7M4DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA171&lpg=PA171&dq=ICRF2%20to%20time&source=bl&ots=_TADNcN93h&sig=iK60CsxhoE5PKeYR-YIvG3oO9Q0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi6z9GG6-7WAhUr34MKHVW4BzAQ6AEIWTAJ#v=onepage&q=ICRF2%20to%20time&f=false "The Science of Time 2016: Time in Astronomy & Society, Past, Present and Future") where the location of thousands of objects in space has been accurately determined and cataloged into the [International Celestial Reference Frame (ICRF2)](https://www.iers.org/IERS/EN/DataProducts/ICRF/ICRF/icrf.html;jsessionid=990A3C6A685793EC92892FDB530E1A86.live2 "International Celestial Reference Frame (ICRF2)") which is used to establish UT1 (Universal Time) based on their location (which varies little, in a calculatable manner, in a measly 20 million years).
Note: You're going to want a Doctorate in Mathematics and Astrophysics to read that book but there's Software available (See: <https://www.iers.org/IERS/EN/Science/EarthRotation/EarthRotation.html>) and plenty of information available by using Internet Search Engines.
For more information on the ICRF2 see: <http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2015AJ....150...58F> .
I don't want to delve into Astrophysics and the associated Mathematics as I assume you don't want millisecond accuracy. In the interests of such precision I welcome edits that improve my answer as such would be greatly appreciated by our community.
I will come back and see if I can improve this answer.
From the way you've asked the question combined with your ability to pilot a spacecraft you could just look out the window, see the Sun, and guess somewhat accurately within a million years or so (if that's good enough).
[Answer]
If your story starts off 100 years from now, it's possible that by the time it begins, some more Voyager-like probes have been sent off into space, maybe some with transmitters a lot more powerful than Voyager / Voyager II.
Your protagonists pick up a weak signal from one of them, but the signal comes from where it will be in 20 million years!
[Answer]
You wouldn't need detailed maps of the Earth to know that a long time had passed. Assuming current motion remains about the same as now, you'd see:
1. The West Coast of North America looks different due to California west of the San Andreas sliding north. Vancouver Island has slammed into the mainland.
2. The Mediterranean is much narrower, with Italy starting to jam into North Africa, and probably isolated from the Atlantic due to the closure of Gibraltar. Parts of it very likely dried out.
3. The Red Sea has vanished as Africa and Arabia have re-joined.
4. Australia has moved northward, collecting New Guinea and parts of Indonesia along the way and is sideswiping the Phillipines.
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