Questions tagged [physics]
For questions about the physics of a fictional universe. Questions purely concerning real-world physics are off-topic. Always use in conjunction with the specific work tag in question.
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What happens if a very heavy impact hits a person's Holtzmann shield?
The basic purpose of a personal shield is that it's bulletproof, transferring so little impact to the wearer that unlike modern body armour, the wearer isn't even knocked back or winded.
But ...
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Do Babylon 5 Starfuries shoot out radially?
I was rewatching some good old Babylon 5 episodes at the weekend and realised something I never thought about before.
It looks like the Starfuries shoot out radially from Cobra Bays at launch, like ...
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The Lost Fleet's descriptions of trajectories as 'curves' at 20% of light speed
I find it strange when reading descriptions of trajectories/fleet movements in The Lost Fleet that they're commonly described as curves.
A few examples
From Relentless, chapter 2:
On the display, ...
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How high is the Death Star above Endor?
This is part of the answer to How did the Death Star 2 stay in orbit above Endor when it did not have functional ion engines nor a functional hyperdrive system?. The answer is so large I decided to ...
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The Expanse: Sustained Gs during space travel
In The Expanse series, characters experience sustained Gs during space travel, not just during acceleration, which doesn't make sense. For instance, here's several passages from Leviathan Wakes, the ...
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How high over the floor/streets is the overhang of rock over Ilirea/Urû'baen?
What the title says.
Image of the city from The Official Eragon Colouring Book
Assuming that in the image the scales are a bit exaggerated, how high do the books say that the ceiling of Ilirea is ...
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Physics of Kryptonite -- atomic number, half life, etc.?
How deeply have the comic books gone into what sort of radiation Kryptonite emits, whether it decays, and its useful properties besides injuring Superman. I saw that its atomic number is 126, so it is ...
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In Interstellar, how did Cooper and TARS provide momentum while detaching from the main ship?
Cooper refers to Newton's 3rd law while detaching. I didn't understand the physics behind this scene.
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Is time dilation ever mentioned in Star Trek? [duplicate]
I am pretty sure that in the original series, not movies or novels both of which I am less familiar with, Special Relativity is simply not mentioned — Einstein himself makes appearances in later ...
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Wouldn't a lightsaber melt/blind a wielder? [closed]
This question wasn't identified anywhere else on the site, so I thought I would ask it. Lightsabers are (seemingly) closely related to plasma, which would be the closest tangible thing to a lightsaber ...
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How does Miller survive the acceleration in The Expanse?
In The Expanse, when Miller is
we can guess there's a fair bit of acceleration and plenty of G's
yet Miller is unaffected by this acceleration. Why? Is it
that's able to dampen inertia?
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Why are ships drifting toward Ilus/New Terra in James SA Corey's Cibola Burn?
In Cibola Burn the ships Edward Israel, Barbapiccola and Rocinante started drifting toward Ilus/New Terra once their reactors stopped working.
But if they had enough velocity, shouldn't they be able ...
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Why does 4D navigation work like this?
At one point in Cixin Liu's novel "Death's End", humans enter a bubble of four-dimensional space.
The author explains that, as their equipment is only designed for three dimensions, they are ...
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Has Star Trek ever addressed the issue of superluminal communication and time travel?
With our current understanding of space-time and SR (presumably, the understanding shared in the Star Trek universe), superluminal travel can lead to incidental time travel into the past. See this and ...
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How did Han Solo use the Maw Cluster to beat the Kessel Run? [closed]
We know that Solo made the Kessel Run in a shorter distance by skirting close to the Maw Cluster (with the help of his Class 0.5 modified hyperdrive and navicomputer), but how exactly does the physics ...
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