Questions tagged [life]
For questions about the characteristics of living beings in different settings. This tag is not for questions about the daily life of characters.
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Is a desert planet with a small habitable area possible?
My world takes place on a desert planet, but there is a small habitable forest with water and life. My main inspiration for this is Halem'no from star trek, but without a weather tower sustaining the ...
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Could we have a humanoid life-form that requires CO₂?
How would an heterotroph alien life form exist if it purely needed to inhale CO₂?
Would it be lazier and bulkier that carbon based life forms who require oxygen, like us humans?
I am trying to ...
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What is the maximum survivable gravity for humans for say 8 months
I know the human body can survive multiple g's for short periods - like fighter pilots or F1 drivers. But what is maximum survivable gravity for more than just a transient moment? Could a body live on ...
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Could a civilization have existed on earth when our planet was much smaller, and as earth gained more size could it have grew around and above them? [closed]
I want to create a civilization that were living on earth when the planet was a much smaller protoplanet or a planetesimal. If earth grew over billions of years, could a civilization have existed ...
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Regarding silicon-based life, how would using silane instead of silicone in chemical compounds change how the lifeform works? [duplicate]
All I currently know is that they require cryogenic solvents, cold temperatures, hydrogen to breathe, and only inhale. What else should I know for using silane in silicon lifeforms?
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Can a planet with rings support life?
Is it at all possible for complex life to evolve and exist on a planet with rings?
I assume the rings would have to be rock, since if the planet is to support life, it will have to be in the habitable ...
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Could a planet with an unusually high heavy metal content sustain life? [closed]
I'm playing around with the concept of a planet containing unusually high heavy metal content, due to being born in a nebula that resulted from a neutron star merger. What conditions would this planet ...
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Is it possible to live without killing?
Hooray! Aliens are discovered, the alien community is out there, and we want to join them.
However to join their illustrious organisation, the Galactic Federation, it is a deeply moral group, and the ...
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Gas giant ecologies with more realistic weather. Sky anchors
I've always enjoyed stories that explore ideas about life in the clouds of gas giants. The Algebraist by Banks is my favorite. Though one thing that never quite rang true to me about stories like The ...
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Life in the vacuum of space: What if we looked in the wrong places?
Forget space whales, forget star-trek-style creatures like the crystal entity, forget space creatures so massive that they have their gravity to hold on to an atmosphere around them. The issue with ...
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Planet orbiting a star orbiting a black hole - can there be life?
Sagittarius A* is a black hole at the center of the Milky Way with at least 45 stars orbiting it. It weighs in at over 4.2 million solar masses and is likely rotating, which has interesting effects on ...
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Could Megaflora Sustain Permanent Settlements?
So, a setting I'm brainstorming is basically a tribal world, with Hunter-gatherers, animism, and the like.
One of the features I want to add, to make it stand out from our own world is the existence ...
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How can I make my insect life cycle time system more accurate
In my world, there is not day or night, only dusk and dawn. Their time system is based on an insect called an Ersen which follows a very mechanical and strict life cycle which is synchronised ...
CommunityBot
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Must a planet's magnetic poles be coaxial with the axis of rotation?
I have this idea for a planet whose magnetic field is not aligned with the axis of rotation as is the case for Earth (I know they're not exactly aligned, but hear me out). How plausible is this, and ...
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Could there be an alien life form (a complex animal) that lives hundreds of thousands of years, or even millions of years?
On earth, most animals live decades, and only a handful over 100 years. What has led to such a 'short' lifespan across the board?
Assuming there may be other carbon-based life forms similar to that of ...
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Could two planets located in the habitable zone create life and in turn intelligent life around the same time?
I have two planets located in the habitable zone of a 1.02-mass Star(Class: G1.7V).
The first planet is located 1 AU away from the Star and the Sun is 1.08 times brighter than our sun to anyone on the ...
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Would My Planet’s Blue Sun Kill Earth-Life?
I’m creating an Earth-like world where the sun appears blue to people from the planet’s surface. I think I’ve narrowed down the cause of this effect to the presence of 1 micron particles in the ...
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On a planet with larger gravity, would aquatic creatures be larger or smaller?
It is somewhat common knowledge in the worldbuilding community that larger planets leads to smaller land creatures, because larger planets means more gravity gets bigger and that makes it harder to ...
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Would this unorthodox planet be habitable by carbon based life forms?
While researching volcanoes, it’s very clear super-volcanic eruptions are not only dangerous to life in its vicinity, but the entire planet as it can decrease global temperature and cause long periods ...
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What adaptations would be needed for life and water around a blue star?
Of course it's very obvious that blue stars are insanely hot and would boil away most things if they got too close. BUT I'm curious if with just the right adaptations and fiddling, could there, ...
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Iron based life
Lately I have been thinking about possible forms of life on planets that would have radically different experiences than here on Earth. I was wondering if life based on transition metals was possible ...
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Could this animal exist on my planet
Im working on a project where I'm designing a theoretically possible planet with life and I had an idea for a massive sea animal (500-550 meters in length). Water animals get help from buoyancy but ...
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Fire Planet as a light/heat source for my planets
So, basically, I was looking for a alternate light/heat source for my science-fiction novel which I am planning to write. I didn't rely on stars due to some reasons that I omitted from the original ...
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Could a planet support life if its only energy came from antimatter striking its atmosphere?
This planet is a rogue planet without any star or without being volcanically active. Antimatter continually collides with the planet, and annihilates with hydrogen in the upper atmosphere. This ...
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Could an ecosystem exist where no rain falls (only snow and ice)?
I am trying to create a boreal, alien ecosystem loosely based on Northern Siberia. Liquid rain never falls here, since snow and hail fall instead for most of the year, and the short, hot summers- the ...
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Could a moon of Epsilon Eridani b Have Surface Oceans of Liquid Water?
Specifically, the gas giant Epsilon Eridani b, and a moon that has a mass of ≥0.25 Me. If there's no feasible way the moon could have oceans at a distance of 3.52 AU from a star that emits 0.34 times ...
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Why is overpopulation not an issue on a floating island where people can live for a long time
In my setting there are large floating islands and much smaller floating islands that flow in random directions. Smaller ones sometimes contain mini ecosystems or ore veins that are extremely useful ...
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Organic reactions in alien peat [closed]
So imagine there's a peat composed of a mixture of partially decomposed polypropylene and polyethylene. Another girl and I worked out the reactions for polyethylene and its decomposition byproducts, ...
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Superactinide Incorporating Biochemistry
Alright so as it is known, trans-uranic elements are universally unstable. However, in this setting, I'm using forms of quark matter that can imitate the nucleus of transuranic elements at least mass ...
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Biosolvents for Life
What biosolvents could, in theory, permit the emergence of life on other worlds? I have been recently looking through possible biosolvents and I have found a good number, but I am specifically looking ...
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