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[Question]
[
I plan to make this a series of questions to avoid being overly broad. Each question will address a particular fantasy species ("race" in RPG terms).
The traits will be based on the content included in this question, though the traits can also be found in this question, which lists all of the races: [Medieval politics with fantasy races](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/28573/medieval-politics-with-fantasy-races)
**World Concept:** Similar to the Percy Jackson or Harry Potter series I am envisioning a world within a world.
* Modern day setting
* Fantasy races live in secret
* An as yet undefined force/magic impairs humans when they interact with magical races/activity
**Other questions in the Series:**
* [Finding real world historic examples of cultures/organizations/tribes to represent Elves](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/126779/finding-real-world-historic-examples-of-cultures-organizations-tribes-to-represe)
+ Phonecians will be playing the role of elves in this world
**My request:** I am looking for peoples/cultures/tribes from the real world **that no longer exist**. The idea here is that x, y, z tribes that based on real world history ceased to functionally exist were actually comprised of a fantasy race passing as human. ***For example:*** The Phonecians of this world were actually elves of the magical world.
* In the past, fantasy races openly existed alongside humans
* Many conflicts we study from the past were actually conflicts between fantasy races/humans
* At some point magic was used to divide the human/fantasy worlds
* **For this question I am specifically interested in Orcs.** Your answer should provide a historic group or groups that best fit the constraints of the question and provide supporting evidence as to why it is a good answer.
**Constraints:**
* The real world tribe/culture (RWTC) needs to be from Europe/Asia/Africa
* The RWTC should have ceased to exist between 1500 BCE and 1500 CE. They can have been destroyed in battle or absorbed into a larger culture or option 3 (whatever explanation is relevant.)
* Should meet, as well as possible, the traits defined below (obviously some are magical and aren't possible in humans; I'm looking for compatibility, not exact matches):
>
> **Orcs:**
>
>
> * Orcs are big and value strength, they share a lifespan in common to humans
> * Their society is tribal, with a war chief being chosen based on combat and feats of strength.
> * Most tribes are nomadic but some are not
> * This practice leads the orcs into conflict with other races as young orcs (both male and female) must prove themselves in battle to gain honor, find a mate and for a chance at power.
> * Orcs as a race virtually never band together and regularly fight with neighboring tribes be they orc or not.
> * Orcs tend to distrust gnomes and dwarves whose small stature leads to a belief that they are sneaky and underhanded.
> * Orcs respect humans and elves mainly due to the wars they have fought with the two races
> * Few orcs are capable of using magic, those that do become shaman and are revered...until they are sacrificed to the gods at age 30.-
>
>
>
**Additional new trait for the Orcs:**
* Orcs live by a strict code of honor. The code addresses battle; how to deal with enemies, treatment of the dead, respect for honorable opponents etc and ritual combat which mainly deals with identifying a chieftain.
* Gender roles among orcs were never traditionally defined. Male and female orcs alike are expected to gain honor in combat and may gain power/leadership.
* Needs to have lived in an area within or bordering the Mediterranean since conflict with the elves will have been a part of the history. The RWTC in question does *NOT* need to have existed side by side with the Phoenicians.
[Answer]
The various [Celtic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts) cultures fit pretty much all of your Orc needs. More specifically the [Gallic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaul) tribes which had mostly been dispersed/assimilated by the 3-5th century CE under [Roman rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Gaul#After_the_fall_of_Rome).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CF132.jpg)
* ✓ Big and value strength: See [Brennus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brennus_(4th_century_BC)) above. Just look at that mustache.
* ✓ Their society is tribal, with a war chief: The general [social structure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauls#Social_structure) was tribal, led by a council of elders, a chief/king, druids, or some combination thereof
* ✓ Some are nomadic but some are not: Tribal migrations/invasions took tribes [as far east as the Balkans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_settlement_of_Eastern_Europe#Great_expedition_of_279_BC).
* ✓ Conflict with other groups: The [history section](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauls#History) of the Gallic Wikipedia page contains the following and little else: their early invasion of Rome, their repeated invasions of the Balkans, their invasion of the area of Modern-day Turkey, and [their various wars with Rome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commentarii_de_Bello_Gallico).
* ✓ Virtually never band together: There were [*a lot*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ancient_Celtic_peoples_and_tribes) of tribes and small tribal confederations, with the occasional large confederation [growing under strong leaders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vercingetorix) when the tribes are threatened.
* **-** Tend to distrust small outsiders: [Dwarves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_(mythology)) come straight from Germanic mythology, and unfortunately had a pretty high opinion of them due in part to their legendary [craftsmanship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauls#Culture).
* **-** Respect those who they fight in wars: One Gallic king reportedly coined the phrase "[woe to the vanquished](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vae_victis)", i.e. "you lost and are completely at my mercy". Since they didn't respect their foes once they were beaten, they may or may not have had respect before that.
* ✓ Magic is rare, but revered: [Druids](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druid) represented the highest social class of many Celtic tribes, imagine how popular they'd be if magic was real.
* ✓ Strict code of honor: In Julius Caesar's firsthand accounts of the Gallic Wars, [he claims](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commentarii_de_Bello_Gallico#The_Germanic_Peoples) that what sets the Gallic tribes apart from the Romans is their warring nature and the idea of true valor within that warring nature.
* ✓ Gender roles not strictly defined: Again in Julius Caesar's commentaries, he claims that women bathed alongside men, women fought with raging fury, they celebrated men who abstained from sex, and I'm sure there are plenty of other examples of non-traditional cultural roles.
* ✓ Lived in an area within or bordering the Mediterranean: As stated above, at various points in time they inhabited most areas as far west as France and as far East as Greece.
In short, and best [summed up](https://books.google.com/books?id=szTOxeqlVXgC&pg=PT130&dq=Almost%20all%20Gauls%20are%20tall%20and%20fair-skinned,%20with%20reddish%20hair.%20Their%20savage%20eyes%20make%20them%20fearful%20objects;%20they%20are%20eager%20to%20quarrel%20and%20excessively%20truculent.%20When,%20in%20the%20course%20of%20a%20dispute,%20any%20of%20them%20calls%20in%20his%20wife,%20a%20creature%20with%20gleaming%20eyes%20much%20stronger%20than%20her%20husband,%20they%20are%20more%20than%20a%20match%20for%20a%20whole%20group%20of%20foreigners;&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwihws_2yI3YAhVNzGMKHTP_A2kQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=Almost%20all%20Gauls%20are%20tall%20and%20fair-skinned%2C%20with%20reddish%20hair.%20Their%20savage%20eyes%20make%20them%20fearful%20objects%3B%20they%20are%20eager%20to%20quarrel%20and%20excessively%20truculent.%20When%2C%20in%20the%20course%20of%20a%20dispute%2C%20any%20of%20them%20calls%20in%20his%20wife%2C%20a%20creature%20with%20gleaming%20eyes%20much%20stronger%20than%20her%20husband%2C%20they%20are%20more%20than%20a%20match%20for%20a%20whole%20group%20of%20foreigners%3B&f=false) by 4th-century historian [Ammianus Marcellinus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammianus_Marcellinus):
>
> Almost all Gauls are tall and fair-skinned, with reddish hair. Their savage eyes make them fearful objects; they are eager to quarrel and excessively truculent. When, in the course of a dispute, any of them calls in his wife, a creature with gleaming eyes much stronger than her husband, they are more than a match for a whole group of foreigners; especially when the woman, with swollen neck and gnashing teeth, swings her great white arms and begins to deliver a rain of punches mixed with kicks, like missiles launched by the twisted strings of a catapult.
>
>
>
[Answer]
Tolkien's Orcs were based on the Mongol conquests.
So, to keep his tradition, I'd choose **the Scythians** (9th century BC-4th century AD)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QzCDl.jpg)
1. Scythian women trained with the bow and they fought along men, to the point they are one of the sources for the legends of the Amazons. Their women might have even worn trousers while riding according to some burial sites.
2. They had a tribal society. They allied against common enemies, but they also fought among themselves, specially the two big Saka tribes.
3. It is suspected that (as most of the peoples around them) they practiced some kind of human sacrifice.
4. According to Wikipedia:
>
> A warlike people, the Scythians were particularly known for their
> equestrian skills, and their early use of composite bows shot from
> horseback... The Scythians were notoriously aggressive warriors. They
> "fought to live and lived to fight" and "drank the blood of their
> enemies and used the scalps as napkins".
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scythians>
>
>
>
5. The Alans, a tribe related to the Scythians, were described as tall and strong.
---
Bad point: They didn't live around the Mediterranean, but very near (in the Pontic area).
Bonus point: they shared a timeline with the Phoenicians, although they didn't fight.
[Answer]
You may want to make up an extinct nilotic people. The current locals the Mursi and Suri people in Ethiopia would be good inspiration. Since you want a tribal people you are not going to find much about extinct ones since they would leave very few records but that leaves you open to add or change a few features to better suit your needs.
the following are features of the Mursi and Suri:
1. Their religion focuses on worshiping people who have died in battle so they consider dying in battle the only good way to die.
2. They are largely nomadic pastoralists (herders).
3. To be considered an adult a man must win a duel, these duels are very violent and includes the risk of death and ages are actually tiered (age grades) with several such milestones they must pass as they get older. each age grade has specific jobs and rights within the community.
4. Extensive pride in scars and use of scarification.
5. Adults are required to raid other villages and steal cattle.
6. Engage in extensive piercings including tusks and lip plates which has certainly inspired quite a bit of artists interpretations of orc art.
7. Regularly use weapons acquired from more technologically advanced peoples, and highly regard prowess with weapons.
8. Shamans are very important and highly regarded, as they are seen to petition the gods who control weather and disease. Shamanistic powers are believed to run in families.
As an aside:
It is also one of the regions in africa that has [female husbands](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-137-09009-6_9) that is is same sex couples one person takes on the opposite "gender" being treated as that gender by the rest of the tribe. So although distinct roles of men and women exist they are not necessarily tied the male or female sex. Which is probably the closest to equality you will find. A female can choose to be a man by undergoing the appropriate ritual and thus and just allowed to be but required to be a warrior.
[source 1](https://www.jstor.org/stable/3773815?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents)
[source 2](https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/33450418/Ronen.final_valcamonica_.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1539710148&Signature=K5D178tEiVgCOI982%2BtdV5fldHE%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DDaily_Life_Contribution_Towards_Reconstr.pdf)
[source 3](http://traditionscustoms.com/people/mursi)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/u4Z88.jpg)
[Answer]
## Normans
>
> Orcs are big and value strength, they share a lifespan in common to humans
>
>
>
The simplest interpretation of this means larger physical specimens than the surrounding/competing peoples. Perhaps better diet is the cause. If the orc's diet isn't actually better then superior fighting skill would equate to 'big and value strength'.
>
> This practice leads the orcs into conflict with other races as young orcs (both male and female) must prove themselves in battle to gain honor, find a mate and for a chance at power. Their society is tribal, with a war chief being chosen based on combat and feats of strength.
>
>
>
The Normans had a very strong practice of raiding. This practice provides plenty of opportunity for combat, treasure, war stories and scars. Further, scarce females, or high infant mortality rates, or slow reproduction cycles would fuel this honor/single combat mentality. A strong honor culture for males and females would be very handy social sorting mechanism.
Interestingly, Norman/Viking women appeared to have more rights and privileges than their contemporaries. Definitely, the skjaldmær or shield maidens were a thing. The duty of carrying valiant warriors to Valhalla was entrusted to supernatural women, not supernatural men. I think this clearly indicates the high standing that women had in Norman culture.
>
> Most tribes are nomadic but some are not
>
>
>
Plenty of Normans stayed in Scandanavia but many conquered then moved to northern France, England, Spain, Germany, Russia, Italy and many others. The attached map shows the extent of their spread. Some raiding groups stayed, some groups left after the raid.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tik83.png)
([source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings))
In addition, the Norman conquest of England showed how good they were at building defensible positions then keeping them. Still standing Norman forts can be found all over England.
>
> Orcs as a race virtually never band together and regularly fight with neighboring tribes be they orc or not.
>
>
>
Great geographic dispersion makes this easy for the Normans. Many tribes settled one area then fended off other Norman raids that came later. [In 911, Rollo signed an agreement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Normandy#Scandinavian_invasions) to defend Normandy from further Norman/Viking raids.
>
> Orcs tend to distrust gnomes and dwarves whose small stature leads to a belief that they are sneaky and underhanded (which is sometimes true)
>
>
>
Cultures based on single combat or combat honor tend to look down on anyone who tries to be sneaky because being sneaky doesn't require you to be big and strong, just smart. However, someone who is sneaky *and* strong is always respected.
>
> Orcs respect humans and elves mainly due to the wars they have fought with the two races.
>
>
>
Evidence of many treaties and agreements with constituent kingdoms and empires indicate respect by the Normans of other power blocs and the reciprocal respect of the orcs by those same blocs.
>
> Few orcs are capable of using magic, those that do become shaman and are revered...until they are sacrificed to the gods at age 30.
>
>
>
Limited magic ability would translate to relatively low tech levels. This one doesn't fit as well for the Normans since they had tech and or culture that allowed them to outperform surrounding groups. Perhaps the high performance of the Normans can be ascribed to cultural factors instead of outright technological prowess.
] |
[Question]
[
In the distant future, space-stations use centrifugal force to emulate gravity, effectively being a cylinder (or something similar like a wheel) spinning around a central axis at high speeds.
A spacecraft is coming up to dock, but how can it dock to such a fast, spinning object?
The possible approaches I could think of would be:
1. The dock being positioned on the side of the station, **hooks** (or tractor beams or what-have-you) **are locked onto the craft**, swinging it around at break-neck speeds while pulling it in to dock. (Doesn't sound so great for the passengers or the ship.)
2. The dock being positioned on the top/bottom of the station, **the craft nears the dock, spinning around its own axis** to match the speed of the station before closing in. (Sounds pretty plausible, since the speeds in the center would be slower. Perhaps some dizzy passengers, nothing more.)
3. Same as the previous idea, but the **dock rotates** instead of the ship. (No-one notices a thing.)
4. The dock being positioned anywhere, and the **space station transfers its momentum to another body**, causing weightlessness inside the station and allowing the craft to dock without using additional fuel. The momentum would then be transferred back onto the station, causing the apparent 'gravity' to return. (If done slowly, no-one should mind.)
5. There is a **docking structure** that doesn't move relative to spacecraft, perhaps a core around which the station rotates or additional rings rotating at various speeds.
I am particularly interested in the fourth idea. Perhaps it could be done using a sealed flywheel or something of the sorts, potentially reducing the complexity of the problem by reducing the skill required to synchronise the movement of the craft with that of the station, perhaps even reducing overall fuel consumption or other neat side-effects.
My question is one of engineering. Which of these solutions would be the most realistic or practical, based on engineering difficulty, crew safety, reliability and fuel consumption?
Should there be any inaccuracies or other approaches that come to mind, please leave them in the comments below.
[Answer]
5. The dock is static, the station spins. The cargo and passengers are spun up to station speed at an intermediate internal transition point on their way from ship to station.
This makes for a more complex station structure (though not as complex as 4.) but a much simpler docking procedure. Your priories here should be considered, the highest risk stage is during docking and hence that part of the process should be simplified as much as possible. This also allows for larger ships to dock with your station without their mass affecting the rotating mass of the station.
[Answer]
I think matching velocities by "landing" the ship on the inside part of a hubless ring station may be another solution.
Using landing gear and braking until full stop, then taxi towards closest docking port, at 1g.
This avoids engineering issues related to rotating seals.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/r4yuU.gif)
[Answer]
#2 is the gold-standard method. Observe how it is done in *[2001: A Space Odyssey](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q3oHmVhviO8)*.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BoaVk.jpg)
*Ship lining up on docking bay*
In 2001 we see the simplest configuration. Getting 1968 audiences to accept rotating space station mechanics *at all* was a big enough leap. The station has both of the docks it can possibly have. (One is full, hence the red lights).
That seems awfully sparse, but you can have *many, many more* with an **elevator**. Gravity is outward, so decks are cylindrical -- you "lower" a ship to a "hangar deck" (could have many decks, supporting many, many craft). This scenario imagines ground hostlers with tugs on each level, but Babylon 5 takes it up a notch.
Babylon-5's "elevator" can move in 3 axes of motion like the Star Trek turbolifts: down to a hangar deck, then radially and fore-aft to a specific docking station. Meanwhile, back at the docking hub, another elevator platform has slid into place, to await the next ship. So it can cycle in a minute or two. *This is in the rotating section only, I disregard any fixed docks on Babylon-5.*
Your alternate proposal is to stop the station everytime you dock. You really don't want to stop a rotating station, *ever*. The reason is water. Unfettered by gravity, the ordinary water humans use in the station will go to places you couldn't even imagine water going to. Some of it may get there via condensation. This water and the corrosion that follows it will be a maintenance nightmare.
---
The problem with #1 is that mass and balance calculations have to be very precise, and a lot of other things have to go right, or the snatch will go pear-shaped and the spacecraft will **collide with the station**. That’s *never* good. Even naval warships respond very badly to being collided with. Such a collision is certain to be fatal for the starship and potentially calamitous to the space station as well, depending on its construction standard. Lofting additional mass from earth *simply* to harden the station against docking collisions is sheer madness, it might make more sense if the materiél was mined in space.
Since the station is rotating, it itself has a great deal of stored energy, and the structure is constantly under strain to contain that energy. Significant structural damage to the station could cause knock-on effects that could tear the station completely apart.
On the other hand, "from the edge" is a great way to *launch* craft, particularly fighter craft, as seen in Babylon-5. The centripetal force assures a clean breakaway. Note the craft still land in the hub, and then elevators move them to launch position.
---
Your options 3-5 have a serious problem: you have a rotating *section* in the space station. See all the above structural threats I just talked about. This is a very large and complex hinge, akin to the sophistication of the trackways used to move the Chernobyl arch in place, except in use 24x7 and presumably airtight in places.
Any serious problem with the rotating section has the risk of grinding the sections of the station against each other, and if the mutual structures start digging into each other, it would do ever-increasing damage. It would then be a footrace between whether a) the friction of the station parts wrecking themselves brings them to a relative halt, or whether the structure of the station is damaged to the point of tearing itself apart.
Or both: as the station grinds to a halt, both sections' rotation averages by mass. This makes the rotation off-axis and out-of-kilter, and centrifugal forces act in a different direction than they ever did on the station, *including the non-spinning section that isn't built for centrifugal force at all*. The spinning sections would list like a sinking ship, with all the floors now at an angle. But **it would be pandemonium** on the non-spinning section, where anything not tied down would be slammed into the walls of each compartment, again, see structural damage. *I don't know what fuels your ships use*, but they are now smashed against the walls of the docking area... If it’s the usual binary propellant, you now have busted propellent tanks, you now have a dock fire, and by "fire" I may mean "explosion".
Spinning sections are hard, and not that practical.
---
A more practical approach would be a non-spinning space station that has a non-spinning "permanent dock" right next to a spinning one, with a cable between the two ships. Cable cars walk up and down the cable. Each station is able to immediately cut the cord and thruster away from each other in a prepared "[breakaway maneuver](https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Breakaway_maneuver_(underway_replenishment))". The cable car carries enough emergency thrusters to return to either station if it's cut loose.
[Answer]
Let's take the options one by one:
1. It's very easy to fly a ship into a dock that's weightless. It's very hard to land a rocket on something that's not weightless. This option requires the later, and gains precisely nothing. No space station designer would ever seriously consider this.
2. Sounds reasonable. However, it heavily restricts the amount of docks. You only get two docks easily, and you need some insane structures to provide any additional ones.
This also requires, that the spaceships actually can rotate at a high enough speed. That's not a given: A cargo ship would likely be only a very thin shield against micrometeorites, and some extremely lightweight structure to hold the cargo in place. It would not be designed to take large forces from the cargo in any other direction than in the direction of its single main engine. Spinning such a ship at any serious rate would just have the cargo flying away in all directions...
3. The best solution imho. You can build your docks as big as you want, you can build as many docking rings between rotating station rings as you want, and, most importantly, you can dock any kind of ship, even the most frail ones.
You only need to add transfer sections where you spin up the cargo before you pass it into the rotating part of the station, and despin it before you pass it into the docks.
4. Again, you are objecting docked ships to gravity which they may not be designed to take. You do want to allow any ship to dock and make trade with your space station, do you?
[Answer]
cmasters answer is good. But I have an extra argument for solution one: fuel efficiency.
Say the station is 1000 m in radius. Since $a\_{centripetal}=\frac{v^2}{r}$, in order to provide 1G gravity at its surface, it needs to spin with surface speed $v = \sqrt{1000\times10} = 100 m/s$
Depending on technology and orbital height, this might or might not be a significant deltaV. But if your station is really big, and orbiting far from its central body, its surface rotational speed can be similar to orbital speed of incoming and outgoing transfers. That means that by using side docks, you can spare a considerable amount of braking and reacceleration, deccelerating only to speed matching that of station spin, and smoothly dock to the hooks that appear momentarily stationary to you.
Vehicle structural integrity can be maintained if you orient it so that it recieves the loads in its thrust axis.
For fast passenger liners and military ships sporting high performance engines, the saving might not worth the extra complexity, but for bulk transport between two stations in high jovian orbit, it can mean that you can entirely leave out high thrust engines form your freighters.
[Answer]
I *think* this is option #3.
There is a problem with centrifugal gravity, rotating things want to rotate around their center of gravity; so if the weight is not distributed quite evenly around the rim, then the center of rotation moves and the "rotation" becomes chaotic. i.e. it won't work, the structure will start tumbling (albeit in place).
For this reason you need automatic compensation, massive devices that can keep the ring balanced so as people and things move around inside your ring, they move in counter-point to keep the center of gravity (the balance point) in the center of the spin.
I think your best docking solution is to dock at the center point of the ring, around which everything is rotation. Imagine a bicycle tire with thick spokes. The rubber ring is the habitable area, the spokes are both travel tubes and "rails" carrying automatically moving counter weights. The hub is the docking station.
Let us add to the hub a transfer cylinder which can spin **opposite** the direction of the entire tire spinning. Now, to those inside the hub, this cylinder appears to be spinning, but to the ship **outside** the hub, the cylinder appears to be stationary while the station appears to be spinning.
So the ship approaches the stationary-for-it transfer cylinder, and can make an airlock with it. Objects (people and things) leave the ship to enter the hub; they are weightless inside it. They take seats or are otherwise secured to the walls. The airlock is closed. The transport ship can depart.
Then, from the space station's point of view, this spinning transfer cylinder is "slowed down" until it is fully spinning with the station, has centrifugal gravity (pointing out to its walls), and the passengers and cargo can exit the cylinder into the hub proper, where they can then take an elevator "down" one of the spokes to the habitable areas. The computers for the space station will automatically move counterweights up and down the outside of the spokes to maintain the balance with the new weights moving around.
All of this, to the passengers, would seem pretty similar to the modern experience of airlines. Waiting, strapping in, acceleration, waiting, deceleration for landing, waiting, departing the aircraft, collecting your luggage, navigating through your destination (finding the right spoke, floor, etc).
[Answer]
**Space gangway.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/IWhx2.jpg)
<https://thompsen13.artstation.com/projects/d9g3W?album_id=42421>
This is not on the list, but closest to #1. It is less docking than mooring. Hooks extend radially out from the station - as far as several kilometers. \* Ships are hooked on. Then they stay where they are. Flight control is ceded to the station which controls the ship speed to keep position at the end of its line. A gangway is extended down the line and used to transport materials and people back and forth.
Benefits
1: You do not need to pull ships in. Leave them at the end of the cable. Conservation of angular momentum means a ship pulled inwards towards the station will need to decelerate in order to maintain its position relative to the perimeter of the station.
2: You do not get the ships too close to the station, risking a collision. Or damage to the station if the ship explodes.
3: You have the ships at arms length, controlling access in case there is a threat aboard the ship.
4: If the ship loses control, is hit or departs unexpectedly it will damage the cable and gangway, not the station itself.
5. Ships might be large and there might be many of them. Mooring ships at the perimeter of a circle much larger than the perimeter of the station allows more space for ships and more / larger ships.
6. You can rearrange the position of moored ships according to need.
7. Ships depart by flying out in a straight line, on the tangent of the circle they were moored too.
\*(bad geometry musings deleted here!)
[Answer]
All have their own merits and drawbacks and it would depend on exactly which devices the engineers manage to design better and various technology levels, materials available, and so on.
* For hooks to work, the cable spool could let out the cable so that the hook moves slower than the edge of the station. Once the ship is caught you can gradually slow down the letting out and start reeling it back in. Longer cables and faster rotating stations would need stronger cables. An electromagnet might also be better than a hook.
* The port will experience rotational shear stress. Ships will also waste fuel on rotating themselves every time (unless you use maneuvering gyros) - maybe it's better to have a mini hook instead. Two "arms" come out of the ship's nose and get caught by hooks from around the port. The passengers shouldn't get much dizzier than station crew unless you max out the roll jets. Just close the windows.
* Better, this way station provides the energy for matching angular velocities.
* Momentum transfer seems like it would only work for stations designed to be weightless sometimes. For a large station it would be impractical to shut down all gravity for every dock. Rotating dock is the most optimal version of this.
* Probably the easiest option, unless you want to not have a static section for some reason.
I think you also forgot:
1. Ship vectors tangential velocity to station rim to match velocities at closest approach
2. Turns sideways and coasts
3. When at closest approach burn toward station to follow orbit-like path around station
4. Quickly attach to the docking port to avoid wasting fuel
The most realistic to me seems making the ship rotate. No extra devices needed, just service the port regularly.
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I think a non-rotating hub along the axis of the station is the best option (IMHO it is likely the only option). The incoming and leaving ships don't usually have thrust to spare, and, as others pointed out, are not necessarily designed to withstand the stress of rotation. Also, this makes it possible to have several docking ports as they no longer need to be exactly on the axis as long as the only connection to the main parts of the station is via the hub.
The design challenge is then how to join the non-rotating axial hub with the rest of the rotating station. I'm not an engineer, but it may be difficult to have an airtight seam between two massive objects one rotating about the other. Therefore it may be simpler to keep the hub in zero pressure as well as zero gravity. So at some point along the axis we need a chamber where passengers can grab a choice of slowly revolving ladders and then climb down a bit (very low "gravity" here) into an airlock.
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Another solution is that the rotating structure need not be the outer atmosphere-retaining wall. The outer station wall does not rotate. Any approaching ship can attach anywhere. Humans board a rotating superstructure within to experience rotational gravity . Cargo is stored and easily moved about the outer gravity-less shell.
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A small, non-rotating docking gangway seems the best bet. If it is about 3 meters in diameter, this is not a tough engineering problem. A large space station does not need to rotate very fast, so the 3-4 meter "turntable" that the gangway extends from might make one revolution every few minutes. Put in some safety joints and an internal seal at each end to allow emergency mid-gangway rotation or to compensate for movement between craft and station, and you should be good.
It would probably be safest to only connect while transferring passengers and cargo, and otherwise park a few kilometers off. Alternatively, since docking might be a tricky maneuver, I would suggest that the station employ docking shuttles with highly specialized pilots and/or computerized flight controls.
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I want to imagine myself docking to a gigantic space station, its about 20,000 km around the edge, shaped like a sphere, and it "rotates" at about one-one-hundredth of an RPM (Revolution per minute). There is a single "docking station" like situation 2, on one of the poles, called "McMurdo bay, Antarctica". Do people at McMurdo feel dizzy? No. They can't even tell they are "rotating". If I were landing a spaceship there would I feel dizzy? No. Even though at the edge of this giant space ship, people are "travelling" about 1670 km/hour. This space ship is the Earth and to everyone on it's surface, it appears still.
In other words, the idea of "rotation" is like the idea of "movement" - in space, at speeds much slower than the speed of light, it is all basically relative, and we only feel acceleration, not any kind of "absolute speed". Go back to Einstein's thought experiment - if you were inside an rocket ship accelerating so that your feet touched the floor at a nice comfortable earth-simulated-gravity of 1g, could you tell whether it was from gravity or from the rocket engine being turned on? assuming you ignore things like seeing the walls, etc? In other words, if you are at a stop light, and you see another car roll backwards out your window, without being able to see the background for some reason, then does your brain sometimes wonder if they really are rolling backwards or are you rolling forwards? If you are on a train going 245 MPH and you drop a ball out the window, did you throw a ball at 245 mph? No, you dropped it at 0mph, its only relative to the ground that its going 245 mph.
What I'm challenging is the idea that people will be dizzy from rotating at a constant rotational speed any more than astronauts can "feel" they are going a linear constant speed of 25,000mph. If a cosmonaut, astronaut, or taikonaut has no windows to see the distant stars, i do not believe they would even be able to tell that they were rotating at all, given a low enough rotation speed. We only really feel "acceleration", or, a quick change in speed, we dont feel the absolute speed. That is true of linear speed, and I believe it would also be true of rotational speed. Given low enough RPMs.
Now, there is a problem if you were rotating too fast... but how fast? A quick google search shows that the RPM for a space station thats rotating to simulate earth gravity will be somewhere around 1 to 3 RPMs, depending on the radius of the station. Now how fast is 1 RPM, for a human mind?
Stand in the middle of your floor. Now get a stop watch and set it for one minute. Now, turn around so that you will make a complete circle in one minute. That is one RPM. Did you get dizzy? Could your brain even tell you were rotating? Close your eyes and do it. Could you tell you were rotating at all?
Its the same principle almost that Virtual Reality uses. If you close your eyes and walk in a straight line, most of the time you wont be able to do it, because your brain cant even tell what a straight line motion is. It doesnt care that much. Thats how VR can simulate walking on a path even though you are in a tiny room - it tricks you into walking in circles without your brain even knowing, because it shows you walking a relatively straight path using distorted optics. Our brains are not that sensitive to motion as we like to think.
In other words, In my opinion, option 2 is not really a problem. Other than the problem of getting two ships to spin at a very close rate of spin. If we watch a movie like Interstellar this seems quite dramatic - but only because Chris Nolan's team was showing us the background stars, planet, etc, pumped the music up, had dramatic character moments at the same time.
In reality, imagine docking against some huge rotating ship. At some distance the view screen will only show the ship. No background. Now assuming RPM is low enough, you wont even feel the rotation, just like you cant feel the rotation in your room turning around at 1 RPM. It will essentially be just like a normal docking procedure against a 'stationary' space station, except that you have to "correct" your "rotation"... which is what we do already every time Soyuz docks with the ISS. It has to make itself steady in regards to the other ship, and it has roll thrusters to accomplish that, should there be some inadvertent roll for some reason.
As you get close, and the station looms large in your view, the rotation itself becomes an illusion - you and the station are actually standing still, it is the rest of the universe that is spinning. But since you cant see that universe, you don't even notice.
This is like the illusion we have on Earth every day. I do not feel myself rotating on an axis at 1600 km/h. I see the moon and stars spinning around me if I look up and wait long enough. I do not feel myself rotating around though. I feel still. The ground feels still. The roads and buildings and mountains feel still and immovable to me. I do not feel myself rotating around the Sun either. Nor do I feel the rotation of our spiral arm aroundst the center of our Galaxy, nor do I feel the movement of our galaxy cluster in relation to others. It is relative.
And so in my humble opinion, the realistic option is number 2.
The other options will introduce unbalanced mass to the station and cause wobble, which is a much much bigger problem. As for stationary piece of the station, that involves some kind of super complicated air-tight slip ring system to mate the stationary portion to the main portion, again more problems.
And fuel required to rotate is very small. Remember essentially there's no friction in space. What if the ship has run out of fuel or thrusters are inoperable? Then either the people can get out and spacewalk or the station can send a rescue pod, like a little tugboat, that can attach to the ship and force it to rotate
Once it is rotating, there will be almost zero additional propulsion needed, it will keep spinning by itself. Just like the planets spin - even though they dont have rockets strapped to them.
Now ... I realize there is a big question here. How can people feel 1g on the space station if it's rotating, but they feel nothing at the center? What's the point of all the rotation if nobody can feel anything from it?
That goes to the crucial factor about artificial gravity, which perhaps we can alternately call artificial simulated gravitational acceleration through centripetal motion. The artificial gravity here is dependent, entirely, on the distance one is from the center of the object rotating. Just like on a merry go round, or on a ride at a fair, or even like an ice skater - when her hands are tucked close to her body, there is not much feeling on them, but when she lets them branch out as she widens her arms to a wide pose, she can feel her hands getting "heavier". In other words, at the center of the rotation, the artificial gravity is essentially zero. Only at the edge of the ship is there any feeling of artificial gravity - and that is only because your body is accelerated by being in contact with the ship, as you make your way out to the ring. You will most definitely feel the weight coming on you as you travel through the Jeffries Tubes or whatever from the central docking bay to the outer ring where everyone lives. But that does not mean there will be artifical gravity at the center of the station.
Of course until someone actually builds it.... I wouldnt say im 100% sure!!! But thanks for reading if you made it through all this.
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Bob is an astronaut. He is in love with Alice. For his next EVA in a LEO mission, Bob knows that he will be flying above Alice's farm, located in an area without light pollution, during a moonless night.
He thinks that he can be able to send her a romantic gesture, and ask her to look up in the sky around the time he will be passing by.
He carries with him 3 cobblestones, about the size of a tennis ball. He wraps them in copper wires (leftover from some do-it-yourself electricity work in his garage) and ask his captain to inform him via the intercom when they will be flying above the coordinates of the farm.
His plan is to simply hand launch the stones toward Earth and then hopefully Alice will see 3 greenish shooting stars in her sky.
Can this plan achieve the hoped result?
*Edit: As also pointed out in some of the answers, a real astronaut on a real spaceship would not jeopardize him/herself and the mission by carrying extra weight and throwing out some "garbage" for personal reason. However fictional worlds have different rules (else we would not ask if Star Wars fighter can PEW PEW when firing). In this fictional world the astronaut managed to carry something and to throw it, and thanks to some of the answers I can already correct the "target" to something smaller than cobblestones and maybe lighter, like a golf ball*
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# If he makes a giant potato-gun / slingshot / mini-rocket. Or(!)...
Our good old friend [Sir Isaac](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton) is a right honorable jerk **troublesome fellow** in these circumstances. According to [his first law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_laws_of_motion), in order to de-orbit something, you need to **decrease your speed in orbit** (\*). [You need a change (normally denominated *delta*, $\Delta$) of velocity ($v$)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v) of at least 150 m/s to de-orbit from Low Earth Orbit.
Space suits are bulky cumbersome things. You simply cannot perform anything with the speed and agility you normally do. And even without that hindrance [a really good baseball pitcher can get no better than 50 m/s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aroldis_Chapman) out of a good pitch.
So in order to achieve a delta-v of 150 m/s, Astronaut Bob will need to "cheat"
At first I thought that a slingshot might do it, but the draw length available, combined with the force needed to achieve 150 m/s for a tennis balls-sized object is somewhat prohibitive. He will not be able to pull that back by hand. A winch with a quick-release might do the trick.
Another way to do it might be to bring a big [potato cannon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato_cannon).
Or he might be able to bring a little hobby rocket to attach to the stones.
# However...
All of these things are **dangerous to the space craft**. And they add weight to the launch. Weight is a precious commodity on space launches.
And since Astronaut Bob — albeit a very romantic guy — is also a scientist/engineer, and a sensible such (because hotshots do not get to become astronauts), he will not try to sneak this aboard. He will think up another way of displaying his affection to his beloved Alice.
# ...or: he can use something smaller. (Late edit)
If Astronaut Bob settles for **smaller projectiles** — say marble-sized copper balls, instead of the tennis ball-sized you first specified — then he might be on to something. [A handheld slingshot can achieve a "muzzle" velocity of up to 500 ft per second](http://www.theslingshotforum.com/threads/what-is-the-maximum-velocity-possible.27391/). That is right on the mark: 150 m/s. And since [objects as small as a grain of sand will make a "shooting star" that is visible to the naked eye](http://astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/1999/01/how-big-are-the-meteors-that-we-see-as-shooting-stars-what-factors-affect-their-color-length-and-intensity), a ball between 1 to 3 cm in diameter will make a very good visible meteorite.
Drawing example from the fact that [astronauts have smuggled aboard "contraband" before](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallen_Astronaut), something as small as a few copper balls and a slingshot does fit within the wiggle room they have for weight; the tolerances will allow it.
Also, if Astronaut Bob is really good friends with his fellow crew-mates... they can help provide the conditions for him to do this — highly unauthorized — very romantic gesture and get away with it.
From this, all Astronaut Bob needs is a ton of good luck, because margins are narrow to say the least. But you are the author... you decide if he succeeds. With a slingshot and smaller projectiles, **yes, then it is physically possible for Astronaut Bob to make a shooting star for his beloved Alice**.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Km8xi.jpg)
*The 'Fallen Astronaut', placed on the Moon by the Apollo 15 crew, was **not** sanctioned by NASA*
(\*) Being in orbit is like falling towards the planet; you are in constant free-fall. But since you have such a high **sideways** speed, what happens is that you keep missing the Earth. So in order to come down from space, you do not throw yourself in the direction of the Earth, because that will fail. What you do to come back to the surface is that you **slow down** (i.e. you "throw" yourself **backwards**. Once you have slowed down enough, your free-fall will then bring you into the atmosphere. From there, the atmosphere will slow you down more, and your return to Earth is guaranteed (almost).
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Baseball pitchers can throw a ball at around [100mph](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fastball).
That's really quite impressive, however they train to do this and they have good footing. They're also not throwing the ball very far.
Bob is in orbit, he's throwing the ball with a starting speed of about [15,000mph](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_speed) perpendicular to the direction he wants it to go, and being generous, 100mph in the intended direction of travel.
*He's only a few hundred miles up, doesn't that mean the rock will eventually hit the atmosphere to make his shooting star?*
The Earth is only 7915 miles across, given an hour to be 100miles closer, and taking his 15,000mph orbital speed into consideration, he's going to miss the planet completely and now his rock is travelling at 100mph away from the Earth. His shooting star is now in a different, [slightly more eccentric orbit](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/12011/how-could-a-90-m-s-delta-v-be-enough-to-commit-the-space-shuttle-to-landing/12014#12014) than the one Bob himself is in.
That orbit may eventually decay and create the shooting star somewhere as Bob intended, or it may interact destructively with Bob's own orbit, much to the dismay of his captain.
In short, throwing his rock directly towards Earth, he could put his rocks into another orbit, but he's not able to throw them hard enough to overcome orbital speed.
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Let's assume that Bob is in an orbit similar to those that the Space Shuttle was normally operating in.
In such an orbit, a [200 ft/s retrograde burn](https://space.stackexchange.com/q/12011/415) was in some circumstances sufficient to deorbit the Shuttle. Depending on the specific orbit, the required delta-v could be as large as 550 ft/s. In civilized units, this corresponds to 61-168 m/s. The rest of the Shuttle's velocity was shedded via atmospheric drag.
MichaelK (who is not me, I promise!) has already [mentioned](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/98121/29) that [a good baseball pitcher](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aroldis_Chapman) can pitch 50 m/s.
Sure, as already discussed, it's hard to be a great baseball pitcher when you're wearing a spacesuit. But maybe we can handwave this away by saying that at some indeterminate point in the future, astronaut protective gear has advanced sufficiently to allow something much like that.
We can probably assume that Bob is able to use the spacecraft to prevent himself from being thrown in the other direction. (Bonus: If his tether breaks, and he's carrying these stones, he can just throw one in the direction away from the spacecraft to head back to the spacecraft. See, *it's a safety system, and he's testing to see how well it works!* It's official mission business!)
**The difference between 50 m/s and 61 m/s is sufficiently small that this borders on plausibility. It would be hard, but perhaps not impossible.**
Now, the *direction* he'd have to throw the stone in is counterintuitive. Throwing it downwards (technically, toward nadir) won't work. I'm fairly certain that he'd want to throw it directly *retrograde*, back the way he came from, possibly at a very slight angle, but Bob would need to discuss the specifics with his flight dynamics officer to be certain.
Also, unless Bob is already in the appreciable atmosphere, the right time to make the throw isn't when he's over Alice's farm, but rather, *roughly* on the other side of the planet. But this can be calculated relatively accurately, so is not really a problem. Again, talk to the FDO.
So, if Bob's superiors are in on the idea, and he is able to throw the stone in just the right direction at just the right time, with a speed relative to himself (and the spacecraft, hopefully) just slightly higher than that of a good baseball pitch (which places requirement on Bob's protective gear which are not currently met), then **he *might* be able to pull this off.**
Unfortunately, the odds that Bob's superiors would be in on the idea are pretty slim, given that this would incur a fair mass penalty on the spacecraft. **So he probably won't get a chance to try it.** Consequently, as already discussed, Bob, being a practical man, will probably think of some other way to display his affection to Alice.
But it's a nice thought, and it's the thought that counts, isn't it?
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[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DLk5y.png)
In order for Bob's cobblestones to be visible above Alice's house, he's going to need to brush up on orbital decay, drag and gravity. Or crib off the work of ALE’s “Sky Canvas” project, which I am sort of doing right now.
ALE would like to release colored meteorites into the atmosphere for a show. As you can see by the handy info-graphic, some planning has to happen to use gravity, friction, drag into account for proper deployment.
Bob is in orbit moving around 15,000 mph. In order for his cobblestones to hit the sky above Alice's house, he's going to have to figure a way to de-orbit them, or slow them down so they drop exactly(ish) where he wants them. If he releases them and lets them fend for themselves, it could take several years before their orbit decays enough to fall to earth.
For a more precise entry, he's going to need a device like a rocket to slow down the cobblestones for a more precise de-orbit. This means during his EVA, he may have to start the de-orbiting process hours or days in advance of being over Alice's house. The exact timing depends on how fast Bob wants to de-orbit them.
If I could make a suggestion, it would be to use strontium and magnesium instead of plain old cobblestones. The strontium will burn bright red and illuminate the sky. The magnesium will create a whitish blue that will be extremely visible.
* <https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/06/artificial-meteor-showers-japan-satellite-space-science/>
* <http://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-37928806/shooting-stars-from-space-for-2020-olympics>
Good luck.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qxksc.jpg)
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Orbit isn't far away. Orbit is closer than a nearby city. Orbit is [*fast away*](https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/).
Things in orbit are going at a ridiculous speed so that they [*miss* the Earth](http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Flying) in the time it would take them to fall to the ground, and instead end up on the other side.
The small amount of impulse a throwing arm could give would result in a slightly different orbit, missing the Earth differently, unless the orbit was already extremely low.
If the orbit was extremely low, then an impulse could result in the stones being slowed down slightly more by the atmosphere. This would reduce its orbit even more, and eventually it would fall to the planet. Of course, the same was true of the original "orbit", it would just happen faster here.
Accuracy would be next to impossible, as the tumble and air resistance properties of the stone would be difficult to predict, and the rentry point would be sensitive to relatively small changes in the speed and direction the rocks where thrown at. The stone could easily take more than one orbit to fall, with the shape of second (and later) orbits a function of how much speed it bled off in the earlier close approaches.
It would definitely not involve throwing the stones "at" the location in question.
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No, because he is moving far too fast for the rock to either slow down enough to freefall or travel far enough to reach the thicker atmosphere where it will burn up before it has traveled too far to long to be seen by his love. He could throw it toward earth LONG before he is above her, so the rock has enough time to reach the atmosphere above her.But even then i think it would miss the earth(though i don't know)
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There is just so much that is wrong about this.
First, he is an astronaut. He would have taken extensive courses in orbital dynamics. He would understand the math and the physics. There would be no speculation. He would KNOW.
Second, the orbs would already have a forward velocity. Dropping them does not destroy it. Should he drop them over his sweetheart's house they would continue their forward velocity, and certainly not enter atmosphere above her house. Perhaps they might re-enter in a few years or so. [Lost in Space: 8 Weird Pieces of Space Junk](https://www.wired.com/2009/02/spacestuff/) He would not need to sway her into going outside when he released them. He could wait until he got back home and was with her. They could watch it together. Somewhere. But probably not over her house.
Third, meteors 'burn up' because of the tremendous speed (roughly 20 km./sec.) at which they they hit the earth. The slower speed of these orbs (approx. 6 km./sec.) would not produce nearly the fireworks. The copper wire would be naught but fluff floating in the wind. It may glow, but certainly no naked eyesight observable effects. And it would never stay wrapped around the orb. The cobblestones would probably get hot enough to cause the surrounding air to glow, and one might get enough light from them to be seen by a good telescope that was aimed directly at them. Cobblestone balls, however, because of their high melting point and round shape, are more likely to actually survive and hit ground then burn up. [SPACECRAFT REENTRY](http://www.aerospace.org/cords/all-about-debris-and-reentry/spacecraft-reentry/) There is a greater chance of his love being hit by the orbs than of her seeing them.
Fourth, it is strictly against regulations, and would not be tolerated. Doing so would get the astronaut evicted from the space program. Debris release from spacecraft is strictly regulated. Given that it WOULD be tracked, there is no possible way it could be covered up.
See the following guidelines [Debris Assessment Software User’s Guide Version 2.1](https://www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/library/das2_1_1/das2.1_usersguide.pdf) if you are at all interested in a NASA software tool for calculating the orbits and time frame for debris in LEO, as well as regulations regarding space debris.
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[Photo IDs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_identification) (for instance, a driver's licence or passport) are essential in many aspects of life (driving, buying alcoholic beverages, crossing international borders, voting in many places, etc.). As the name indicates, however, they rely on being able to guarantee that the person holding the ID does, in fact, look reasonably like the photo on the ID, which would pose obvious problems when dealing with someone who can (voluntarily or not) change their appearance.
One partial solution could be to require that the shapeshifter assume a specific standard form for tasks like voting or going through security, and to use that standard form for the ID picture, but that wouldn't work for things like driving (what if a traffic cop pulls them over for a broken taillight and asks for their licence and registration when they happen to be in a form different from their standard form?), or with shapeshifters who have incomplete or no control over their shapeshifting.
How to solve the seeming incompatibility of shapeshifters and photo IDs?
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Here's the thing; any form of identification, whether it be a letter of passage from the King, a passport, a photo ID, a biometric signature, a PIN - they all require a singular ubiquitous element in order to work.
**Trust**.
Before Photo IDs, we still had drivers licenses, but they were paper and contained a name, an address, and a physical description of the driver (male, Caucasian, 170cm, black hair, brown eyes, etc.) and these were taken as proof of identification. We switched to photo IDs because they were supposed to be harder to cheat, and they are. But, they're not impossible to cheat which is another problem.
Biometrics are similar - biometrics are really useful the second time you ever meet someone, and their sole strength is ensuring that a person isn't registered in a system multiple times. Yes, they're also a part of authentication, but even the best biometrics have Detection Error Tradeoff (DET) curves associated with them - occasionally, they get it wrong and let someone in they shouldn't or lock someone out they shouldn't.
The point being, that authentication of identity relies on one or more of three elements,
What you have (Photo ID key or swipe card)
What you know (password)
What you are (biometrics)
in some combination that can be trusted to a point where the risk is acceptable.
This is in fact the key point - all authentication protocols are in effect risk mitigation systems, not risk avoidance systems. You will NEVER eliminate the risk of either false positives or false negatives in your authentication process unless you set up a system where the authentication process represents a *practical* prohibition on access to whatever system you have.
In other words, your cop pulling over someone for a broken taillight is really just doing a cursory check that the person in front of him isn't a wanted killer (which is highly unlikely) because no real damage has been done and he just wants to issue the infringement notice to the right person.
So - your shapeshifters may not have a photo ID at all - it kinds of defeats the purpose. What they may have is some form of DNA test or some other simple to use identifier that is much harder for a shapeshifter to circumvent.
In point of fact, if shapeshifters are a part of your society, normal biometrics like photo IDs, facial recognition, fingerprints, etc. are now all redundant for everyone. Why? Because you don't want your shapeshifter impersonating a normal person when the police pulls him over for a broken taillight and it turns out he's just killed the original owner of the car.
Ultimately I don't know what kind of identity authentication you would employ in a society with shapeshifters (and it's probably a really good question to ask here in its own right) but the simplest answer to your question about how to resolve the incompatibility between photo IDs and shapeshifters is not to use photo IDs.
The very existence of your shapeshifters has brought the trust value of photo IDs down to zero.
Assuming that your shapeshifters have a static DNA profile, what you'd probably find is that pretty quickly you'd see the advent of portable DNA sniffers being used for identification purposes by police, airports, etc. Most 'what you have' models of authentication would be abandoned pretty quickly and replaced with some other mechanism that can be trusted to the same level as photo IDs were pre-shapeshifters.
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Whilst photographic identification may not work, as Tim B II pointed out, i offer a different method of identification, microchips.
Much in the same way we put microchips in cats and dogs so, if they got lost, we can identify their owner and return them, you could have microchips in shape shifters. These chips would identify who the shifter really is, their address, criminal record, driving qualifications, insurance etc.
To use your scenario, if a shifer was pulled over by the police and asked for id, either they would present no id and be arrested or they would tell the officer they have microchip id. At which point, the officer would scan the chip and their records would be able to accurately identify who the chipped person is.
To use a different scenario, airports require you to have a passport. However, some passports have microchips in them which identifies the owner and allows for faster processing. Much in the same way, a shape shiffer could be scanned as though they were a chipped passport. You may even have metal detectors which can identify chips and brings up the records of the shifter as they are being scanned.
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# Smile and say x-Ray
Just because they can change their physical form does not mean that a picture in a non-visible light would not show some identifying features.
For ease we can call this their "Aura" and for sake of argument it is like a fingerprint for each entity.
Alternative:
# Sir please stop smiling and change into a ball.
When a shapeshifter changes they release a [thing] (neutrino, beta particle, photon, ...) or uncontrollably their "skin" cycle through a unique colour pattern. As long as the correct camera is pointed at them while they're changing, they can be identified. The key identifying markers can be put on a card and compared with what is taken from the camera.
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An alternative idea I thought of, what if shape shifters do have a standard form BUT it is not shown on their ID.
What I mean is, much in the same way you send off pictures for a passport photo or driver’s license, shape shifters would send off pictures of their standard form. However, unlike passport photos, their photograph would not be printed on their ID. Instead, the photo would simply be kept in their records, along with the rest of the information you’d expect on a passport
On their ID it has all the information you’d expect (passport number, date of birth, expiry date etc) but no photograph and the word **Shapeshifter** in big bold letters at the top. When a shapeshifter needs to be identified, the officer would ask them “please assume your standard form”. If the form matched the picture in the records, that is proof of identification as only the owner would know what their standard form is. If another shapeshifter tried to use their ID, they would fail the “standard form” question as they do not know what it is, only the ID’s owner does and, as the picture is not printed on the ID, they have no way of guessing what it is either.
Note that I use the term ‘standard form’. This instead could be replaced with a ‘security form’, a form that they would not use in everyday life, its only purpose is for passing security questions. Also, this method would not work for involuntary shifters, they would likely require a different ID method, such as microchipping as I mentioned previously.
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Many licenses have endorsements and restrictions that are printed on a license for a driver. Endorsements are exclusively for commercial drivers licenses and permit the driver to drive vehicles with additional restrictions. For example, P is used to endorse a driver to drive a comercial vehicle that carries 16 or more passengers (Busses), H permits the driver to drive Hazardous Materials, T permits the driver to drive Tanker trucks, and X permits the Driver to Drive Hazardous Materials in Tanker Trucks (i.e. Gasoline). These are mandated by the Federal Government and are universal.
Restrictions mean that the liscense is only good if the driver is driving under certain conditions, which, if violated, will be treated as reckless endangerment. If you do not have glasses, find a buddy that has glasses and ask to see his/her liscense... There should be a letter B somewhere on the liscesne that means that the driver needs corrective lenses (glasses or contacts). If they are pulled over and found not to be wearing any, it's not good.
Perhaps, Shapeshifters are allowed to be given a license with a preferred face, but there is a special letter (Not S... that's School Bus Endorsement... And SS is probably gonna tick off people) that says the bearer of the license is a Shape Shifter. The officer could as for proof at which point the shapeshifter only needs to demonstrate a visible but minor change, not revert to the person in the photograph.
After all, ask anyone who has dyed their hair: You don't have to get a new license because your a brunette who wanted to try blonde.
The one admitted problem is shapeshifter identity theft where a bad shapeshifter can take a good shapeshifter's ID and claim to be the good one. This might be a problem if shapeshifters are not rare, but if not... hope your readers don't spot the problem... or steer into the skid and make it a problem.
[Answer]
I realise this answer reiterates some points in other answers, but the context is required.
The end goal of having any form of ID is to be able to be AUTHORISED to perform some action, whether it be driving a car with a driving licence or updating your StackExchange profile with your login details. Those are two very different actions, but follow the same principles of IDENTIFICATION, AUTHENTICATION and AUTHORISATION (albeit to very different degrees).
Identification for StackExchange is practically non-existent, you state who you are, you go through some steps to prove you're a human and job done. For something like a Driving Licence, the identification step is a lot more stringent, you have to provide other forms of ID like birth and marriage certificates (which are identity documents in their own right), etc..
So the AUTHENTICATION step is purely about proving you are the same individual who was IDENTIFIED in the first place.
There are 3 factors of AUTHENTICATION:
- what you know
- what you have
- what you are
A username and password is something you know, a photo ID card is both something you have (the actual card) and something you are (the photo).
Buying alcohol with a driving licence is as all in one process, you are IDENTIFIED by your driving licence, you are AUTHENTICATED because you have it and you look like the photo on it and you are AUTHORISED because the date of birth on the card says you are over the required minimum age limit.
In the scenario where the a photo becomes untrustworthy, you have two choices. Move to another form of something you are (finger prints, voice pattern, DNA, etc.) depending what is still trustworthy, or move to something you know (password, pin number, signature, etc).
It all depends on how paranoid a society with shapeshifters is and how much they are willing to spend on infrastructure for both the IDENTIFICATION process (getting a DNA profile has an overhead, as does storing it on a chip on a card) and the AUTHENTICATION process (being able to take and process a DNA sample and match it to the known profile within a few seconds). That AUTHENTICATION process may need to be replicated at every convenience store in your country (and possibly surrounding countries too).
[Answer]
Ids are paired with a passwords or pins. You ID says you are xxxxx, what is your password/pin, and the answer to 10 random questions about your past, to prove it?
Realistically a photo id will be of little use to shapeshifters. We have to accept that what works in our human society works because it was designed for the human condition. However a civilization composed of other kinds of organism probably wont follow the same cultural developments that we did.
So some other form of ID will be necessary if this is something the authorities are interested in pursuing.
At least up until the day of instant dna kits, then dna will be the identifier.
[Answer]
Assuming modern data connectivity - a shapeshifter could choose (or be assigned) some distinctive code phrase. When checking a shapeshifter's ID, a peace officer can run the ID through a scanner, then ask for the appropriate code from anyone carrying a shapeshifter ID.
"ISJ37, Officer."
Obviously, you would arrest anyone who couldn't give the correct code.
The downside would be that shapeshifters could easily impersonate each other, assuming the one being impersonated was willing to share his/her/its code. This code arrangement would also open them up to be more vulnerable to identity theft, at least by another shapeshifter... but those stinking 'Shifties' deserve whatever they get!
The real trick is being sure that someone *isn't* a shapeshifter. Heck, YOU could be one.
[Answer]
(Hello, everyone! New to this SE, let me know if I do anything stupid!)
I tried to structure this answer somewhat but didn't quite succeed. ;)
## Obvious suggestions
**Photo-ID**
There isn't necessarily a problem with passport like documents. They include a description of what you look like, which is worthless in the context of shapeshifters but they also include a signature which probably cannot be replicated by a shapeshifter and they are hard to forge so having one also carries some weight. And in the end, **the system doesn't have to be perfect**! Unless, maybe you're creating some sort of surveillance state. ;)
**Implants**
Assuming that there are certain parts of their physicality that shapeshifters cannot change, you can just implant a chip there. Most likely part would be the brain, I suppose. If you give it low enough range it would also be difficult to read it from anywhere but extremely close-up. (Current RFID/NFC tech has been read from several meters away in lab settings, can be easily stopped with some sort of RFC shield could be sold in the form of hats or wristbands or whatever would cover the place that holds the chip.) Depending on where you implant the chip it will also make it extremely difficult to remove the chip without killing the carrier. Which will foil some attacks.
## Different approach, authentication factors
**Something-you-know**
PINs, passwords, facts about your life... the three typical categories of authentication factors have already been introduced, for example in the [answer by Tim B II](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/143475/63061). To use this, given a form of reasonably secure electronic ID (as widely used all over the world) you can ask for somebody's ID, put it in a terminal and ask them questions that only they should be able to answer. Using a PIN will work against most attacks but once it is known it is known. Giving some form of suitable surveillance technology you can also ask background questions that only the right person would know. Or something in between, like credit card companies asking you what the color of your last car was, etc. This is pretty easy to determine but somebody other than you might not have the answer available on the spot.
**Something-you-are**
There are some biometric factors that a shapeshifter might not be able to change. For example there are gait recognition systems (determine who you are by looking at how you walk, see some Mission Impossible). Other people have already suggested DNA tests and other shapeshifter specific fictional things.
**Something-you-have**
Photo IDs already perform this job as long as they are hard to fake. So maybe use some electronic passport and not US drivers licenses. ;) In addition to being hard to fake it should also be possible to revoke them when found missing and they should be required sufficiently often that loss will be noticed. They should also be linked to important things, like all your money and private data or something to make sure that people are unlikely to share them. (Like they do with payback cards.)
## Stuff
**Workarounds**
Don't base your actions on authentication when it is not necessary. If you catch a car with a broken tail light, simply fine the owner, not the driver.
**Detection**
You cannot single out the shapeshifters unless you at least have a method for detecting them. If you've ever watched DS9, a blood sample from a shapeshifter will turn into jelly, this gives a reliable way of detecting that somebody is or is not a shapeshifter. Then you can have special procedures for shapeshifters. If there is no way to distinguish them you need a system that works on everyone.
[Answer]
Photo ID might work, but only if your shapeshifter has **unchangeable base form** ("who they are") and it can be detected by authorities. They might have a special technology or magic that forces shapeshifters to revert to their base form, or the device that might be able to show/scan their base form.
Alternatively, you need to establish something unique that differentiates one shapeshifter to the other shapeshifter, even if they have the same unlimited capabilities to shapeshift. Such thing might be extraordinary:
* soulprint
* aura
* true name
Of course, physical features are out of question; face, fingerprint, retina, iris, etc. However, depending on how your shapeshift ability works, you can put restriction on the shapeshift, something that can't be changed when you shapeshift, on which you can base your identification method. For example:
* DNA
* smell
* an organ
These things might replace the photo in an ID, or complement it. Of course, the authority can detect these unchangeable thing and verify your ID using them.
[Answer]
Smart ID
Using the latest technology in facial scans the smart ID's picture changes with the users age, style, and body modifications. I assume an ID like this would be useful for shapeshifter that wants a ID that's always up to date with their new choice of face.
The ID could function by having the surface be a tiny screen who's information is updated periodically and matched on the ID itself. Maybe you could use already made technology for credit/debit cards to physically acess the features of the card as well as using a tiny harddrive to store the information. To change the face it would be a manual change via a kiosk. So as long as your shapeshifters keep a "style" for long enough to go to a kiosk and update their ID they should be fine.
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[Question]
[
Take the Jovian moon Ganymede as a real-world example. It has an orbital period of ~7 days around Jupiter, which is effectively its day and its year simultaneously.
My characters will need the words 'day' and 'night' to refer to the 7 day dark-light cycle. What words might they use to refer to the 24 hour wake-sleep cycle? All I could think of is 'cycle', which sounds a bit too cold and clinical for my fantasy setting.
"We had only two more BLANKS before the new day began and sunlight revealed our position."
EDIT: I think I might go with 'phases', as in phases of the day. Instead of 'days of the week' I'll have 'phases of the day', which will each be named after the light conditions. Dawnphase, Deepnight, etc.
[Answer]
Something to do wth [circadian rhythm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm). I'd use *circads*.
Alternatively, something to do with biological oscillations.
Alternatively, something to do with blood pressure (or other medical metric) that has a twenty four hour cycle.
But I'd personally recommend coining the term 'circad.'
[Answer]
NASA does already face this problem with its Mars rovers (since both visibility and power from solar panels require daylight):
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timekeeping_on_Mars>
Full sunrise-to-sunrise cycle is called Martian solar day, or "sol" for short. Since it is only 40 minutes longer than Earth day, they have sol divided into 24 Martian hours, and have people who live on Mars time.
In your Ganymede example with its much longer solar day, they can use "day" for 24 of earth hours, and call Ganymede's solar again sol, or a year, and divide it into seasons.
Edit: in US, people got used to naming timezones: e.g. "10pm Eastern". I bet NASA people say "10pm Martian", or "in 2 sols"
[Answer]
**Considering that your questions implies military setting, I would suggest "circle".**
Starting with "circadian rhythm" as basis (as suggested by DPT), no matter what official "circadian"-based word would be, I would expect common parlance to use shortened "circ"/"circs", which due to similarity directly leads to "circle" as slang version.
It sounds similar to cycle, circles are cyclic implying cycle, and word itself parallels "klick", existing US military slang for kilometre.
You could have potential way to distinguish civilian characters from military ones, by use of either circ or circle, with latter potentially seeping into civilian language in some areas or for some groups. Furthermore, statements in vein of "Remember to pack the blindfolds, Ganymedian day isn't very circular" become perfectly natural.
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Possibly one would refer to the most common thing/action that happens during the 24h cycles. For instance,
1. sleepies, from sleeping
2. wakies, from waking up
3. waits, from the fact that you need to wait for seven such cycles before a full day has passed.
4. zeptees, from epta, or seven in Greek, and sieben, which is seven in German
5. Dutes, based on chores, where the scheduling follows the 24h pattern, rather than the daily pattern. ( Suggested by [can-ned-food](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/104210/terminology-for-24-hour-wake-sleep-cycle-on-world-with-longer-dark-light-cycle#comment314548_104213) in the comments )
[Answer]
The first part of your question (how to call one day-night cycle on a different planet) is pretty much settled like @Bald\_Bear mentioned in his answer: Sols.
The second part of your question (how to call a sleep-wake cycle when it doesn't fit the above) is more interesting.
* I do like @DPT answer of 'circads' derived from 'circadian rythm' which I think would be perfect for general biology-related situations.
* An alternative for work or military related situations would be 'shifts'. As a bonus point this could give you potentially interesting ambiguity. Individuals would consider a sol to have 7 shifts (of 24 hours) or 7 shifts and 7 off-shifts. Where as the military would consider a sol to have 21 shifts (of 8 hours).
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Even though we have a perfectly good word for years ("year"), sometimes you will see the old-fashioned/poetical use of a single season or other annual event to stand in for it. For example,
>
> I've seen seventy-eight summers.
>
>
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instead of "I'm seventy-eight years old," or
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> Five Christmases had passed since my father's death.
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Similarly, we sometimes use "dawns" for "days".
You could adopt some version of this, using an every-twenty-four-hour event to signify the whole wake/sleep cycle.
* **"Sleeps"** is an obvious option, since that is a distinguishing characteristic of the cycle you're describing. One problem with this is that "sleep" is not usually a countable noun, so sentences like "There are only two more sleeps before daybreak" sounds a little bit awkward or non-standard, which perhaps does not fit a fantasy setting so well as it would a more sci-fi setting.
* **"Breakfasts"** or **"suppers"** (or whatever meal is most important in your world) would be another option, that sounds a bit more natural: Sentences like "There are only two more suppers before daybreak" or "It'll be dawn by next breakfast" are easily understandable without narrative explanation. Existing terms like "breakfast-time" and "lunch-time" could also be used to signify the particular time within a wake cycle, since terms like "morning" and "afternoon" may have different implications in your world.
* **"Matins"** or an analogue would be another traditional option. If your world has a religion with regular observances of some sort, it would make sense to use the most prominent of those as a reference point. If there are several throughout the cycle, these could also be used for times within the cycle (as with meals). So instead of "from sun-up to sundown" your characters could say "from matins to even-song" (or "from hail-Alara to Bed-Sacrifice" or whatever fits your world).
* **"Tooth-flossings"** or any other chore or activity, ceremonial or mundane, that pretty much everyone in your world does once per sleep cycle, would also be a possibility. This would work especially well if you want to emphasize the importance of some aspect of your society (for example, if they're a desert agricultural society, you could use "waterings").
[Answer]
## Rests
The contextual outline suggests *"revealed our position"*, which reads somewhat formal and possibly military in nature. Bearing in mind that *sleeps* is already British English slang (possibly elsewhere) for *days*, in a very similar sense, it might sound a bit offhand to use such a slang term. **Rests** sounds a little more formal, it's easy to understand what is meant, and could easily be imagined to be a military term. It could even be re-used in longer form as **rest periods**, perhaps in an excerpt of some military directive, or bureaucratic nonsense.
[Answer]
You say that ‘cycle’ seems too clinical, so that means that you'd like something slangish. At that, you don't give us enough information to devise something which would be consistent with the culture of your world.
However, I could walk through an example.
So, these people have cycles of sleep periods which differ enough from the cycles of daylight and darkness that they need their own metrics. Then begin by referring to them as just that — indeed, what we call them now: ‘sleep cycles’.
Of course, that's three syllables. In parlance, they prefer a short, brief single syllable that rolls out of the vocal apparatus. Some people began calling them ‘sleeps’, vis–à–vis
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> It's been three *sleeps* since then. Can't you let it go?
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>
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Indeed, some people [already use it in that manner,](http://www.wordnik.com/words/sleeps) [more](http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sleeps) or [less.](https://wiktionary.org/wiki/sleeps#Noun) However, it didn't really catch on in this fictional world: perhaps context wasn't enough to distinguish it from the homonym.
Then, someone noticed that another word for ‘sleep’ is ‘slumber’. Now, along it went, juggled about on the lingual pods of language; people couldn't exactly begin saying things like
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> Ten *slums* is more than enough time for you to reach a decision!
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but they could, perhaps, say
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> Only nineteen **bers** ago, you told me that you couldn't stand the sight of me. Now, what — you want to follow me around like a anxious toddler?
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Of course, the acceptance of that word depends on which vowel you use, but it seems as good a beginning as any to me.
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Terran Day or Earth Day, both shorten to snappy a abbreviation TD or ED.
I'd go with Terran Day & TD, both that's just me.
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I think the most realistic scenario is that "day" continues to refer to the average person's cycle of routine, and that people would disambiguate it from a literal day by adding a qualifier to be more specific about literal solar days.
A few related considerations:
* If you've ever done all-nighters, you might (at least I have) consider the whole span of time to be one "day". If you've done all-nighters consecutively, using literal solar days to measure time begins to become clunky and much harder to keep track of
* In areas in the far polar regions of earth where days and nights are desynchronized from the rest of the Earth, people still maintain a roughly 24-hour schedule, which is surely the more common word for "day", or something like it. That could be a perfect inspiration, but I'm struggling to find linguistic research on it.
* Most of the time someone talks about "their day", the reference to the solar cycle is an accidental part of the expression; "day" refers to routine more than it does to actual solar cycles. Going back to all-nighters, if at the end of an all-nighter, someone said that they had "a bad day", most people would never even consider that they're only talking about the second half of their two-day wakefulness.
* If there's anything programming has taught me, it's that people prefer to overload words than to make new ones.
* Following my supposition that "day" refers more to routine than solar cycle, the average reader would probably find this more intuitive than an invented word to describe this separately from the solar cycle.
Personally, if you used an answer like a "cycle" and a "day", I'd assume that "day" is about routine, and "cycle" is about natural light, rather than the other way around.
So, rounding it off:
Routine cycle: "Day"
Solar cycle: "Solar Day" or maybe "Literal Day" or maybe "Light cycle"
[Answer]
There are two major scenarios:
**Your society still maintains distinct calendars/clocks for Earth time vs. local time**, and translates between them. For example, the Sabbath is every seven Earth days, Christmas is December 25th Earth time, *et cetera*.
In this scenario, you need distinct words for the local time periods. If (nearly) everybody has similar sleep cycles, can-ned\_food's suggestion of "wakes"/"sleeps" instead of "days"/"nights" makes sense. If large fractions of the population have different ideas about when to be awake vs. asleep, then it makes sense to have a one-syllable local adjective attached to the one-syllable word for the closest Earth time period. On Ganymede, you might have seven "gandays" in a "ganweek". These words would be simplified over time, perhaps to seven "gandies" in a "nee".
**Earth time has become a forgotten relic.** This implies significant religious changes, and a loss of trade/contact with Earth.
The most likely outcome (in this scenario) is the continued use of the localized terms (from when Earth time was still distinct), such as seven "gandies" in a "nee". But if people rediscover older literature or religions, they might re-adopt Earth terms and give them local definitions. For example, seven days in a week.
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If I understand correctly, one "cycle" is the rotation of the moon and there are 7 cycles between sunrises. In that case there are also 7 Planet rises.
Since your main planet is going to have it's own name and maybe mythology then you can use that to guide the wording around what people would call "The big thing in the sky is going to rise and set twice"
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I think it would depend on what time is the important one for the locals. I assume the local time is the important (mostly used) one.
So the throughout the colonies day/night, week, year are all used for the respective local time.
When there is a need to refer to the earth time, one adds the prefix Standard-Earth- to the word. So Standard-Earth-Day (SED for short) refers to the 24h cycle.
In spoken language the abbreviations or the short term earth-day are common.
If it fits better, you can switch everything around and use Day for Earth time and Local- as prefix for the local time or even $Colonyname- if you need to compare a Ganymede-Day with a Mars-Day.
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[Question]
[
Think of this alien life form as something resembling earth bats, placed in a planet with Earth-like conditions.
1. Micro-bats have small and poorly developed eyes. Similarly, this alien species is completely blind, with the only exception that they can detect ultraviolet in low levels.
2. They make use of magneto-reception, like birds on Earth, but hundreds of times more efficiently. They can differentiate their world's magnetic field (north-south) and latitudes when covering long-distance journeys.
3. **Echolocation**: perhaps the most interesting part. They are able to emit ultrasonic sounds and receive returning echoes to detect, localize and classify their surroundings. They emit a continuous call, just like bat calls, ranging in intensity from 50/60 to 140 decibels.
Humans on the other hand, rely on vision to translate and process data from our environment. We need to *see* things in order to accomplish even the simplest task. Still, here on Earth we find species that don't need eye-sight to survive.
But, when talking about space, sight is necessary to understand the cosmos. All our missions wouldn't have been accomplished if we were not able to see it. Considering all the sensory systems I listed for this hypothetical alien species: how could they achieve space travel? How could they even perceive the notion of the universe itself if they were not even able to look at it?
[Answer]
>
> sight is necessary to understand the cosmos
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>
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If with sight you mean "capability of elaborating electromagnetic waves in the range of the visible spectrum", the statement is simply wrong. We have just got the report that the first image of a black hole event horizon was taken thanks to observation in the radio-frequencies.
So, no, sight is not strictly necessary to understand the cosmos. It is true that the broader spectrum one can analyze the more information can harvest, but lacking a fraction of the spectrum is no showstopper.
Also on a human scale, several space missions have succeeded in exploring space without having a camera for exploration. Just think of the Sputnik: it didn't have a camera, so technically it was blind.
And even we don't need to view something to understand it. Whoever takes calculus at a university level can describe your with extreme precision the properties of a multidimensional surface without visualizing it, just by studying the function representing it. And, if you object that calculus is not exactly a standard knowledge, even visually impaired people get a good understanding of the world without seeing it.
[Answer]
"We need to see things in order to accomplish even the simplest task." is quickly debunked by even the briefest consideration of lives of blind scientists here on earth.
Human's lack of natural ability to see x-rays has not diminished our capacity to detect, measure, utilize, and interact with x-rays.
If a society develops to the point of being able to produce electronics and radio technology, then they will have little trouble "discovering" the stars. If they cannot 'see' something naturally, then they will be able to build tools and systems to translate emissions into a data-stream that they *can* interact with. Exactly the same as humans have done.
Can't see something in nature? Observe its effects as it interacts with something else that you *can detect*, and use that property to study the phenomenon.
Can't see x-rays? Observe how they cause some materials for fluoresce when struck with x-rays, and use that to explore, study, and refine how you can interact with them.
Can't see anything? Observe how light interacts with specific electronics, and develop a photo-diode or similar to construct tones or vibrations that you can observe, and build that into greater and more refined sensing technology.
You may wish to consider the fact that earth has *blind astronomers*. There is far more to space related research than being able to see it with your own eyes.
To reinforce how a human's visual senses are just a small part of how we observe the world, consider primitive interactions with fire. What are the main points to observe about fire?
* It is bright
* It makes a loud crackling sound
* It emits heat that can be felt at a distance, and a LOT of heat that can be felt if touching it directly.
* It emits smells based on what is burning and how it is burning
* It changes the look and texture of material it consumes
Two of those points involve sight, three if you count smoke, and *four* of the five directly involve other senses.
Sight may be *useful* in learning about fire, but is not *required* to learn and understand it from a scientific standpoint.
Vision isn't even all that involved in learning to *make* fire. If you've ever tried using friction and sticks to start a fire, what is the first thing you observe? Do you *see* that you're beginning to "start a fire"? Of course not, as the first thing you'll observe is that *rubbing things can make them warm*.
As an experiment: Close your eyes and rub your hands together really hard and fast.
Open your eyes and let your hands cool off, and repeat the same experiment, but this time watch it.
Did being able to *see* it make it any easier to observe the heat?
Probably not - Because human vision doesn't do much with regards to heat...
So go back to starting a fire with sticks. What is the next thing you observe as you come closer to starting a fire?
* See sparks? *No*
* *Smell* a change in the wood? *Yes.*
Unless your sense of smell is especially bad, even by human standards, you will *smell* a change before you even see wisps of smoke. And by that point you will be able to *feel* a major change in the heat (And heat is related to fire...) far more than you will be able to *see* something that looks like fire...
If you don't know any thing about starting a fire from sticks, then you might observe that it sometimes becomes easier to start the fire if you feel just the right amount of wind coming from the right direction, and you can quickly learn more about how air is related to fire.
But that was all just how you can observe fire without relying heavily on vision. What about something else important to really advancing science, like electricity?
Primitive interactions include things like:
- Static sparks: See the light, *feel* the shock.
- Electromagnetism: *Moves* things, which may be felt or heard
- Current through a wire creates *Heat* long *before* it creates visible light...
-TL:DR -
Vision very much *helps* with the advancement of science. (And would make for a far more rapid advancement through early metal-ages with far fewer nasty burns...) But it is very far from a *requirement* for an individual or even a species to achieve great scientific advancements.
[Ironically, signing off: - A Visually Impaired Scientist...]
[Answer]
I think your aliens would be **better** adapted to space exploration than humans are.
Echo location is a spatial sense. It gives you directions and distances and via Doppler shift changes in distances. A species with a sense like that would be able to understand something like the solar system much better than a species that relies on a planar sense tricked up to boost hand eye coordination so that you do not fall out of a tree.
It also maps directly into radar which works with exact same principles and has exact same limitations and advantages. Except it works in space. And radar is a human version so it needs a conversion to something us poor humans can understand. Your aliens would do much better since they would understand all the data about spatial data and movement directly.
You'd need an "echo display" that gives the proper audio response based on computer data and the sounds it receives but apart from being larger and lower resolution that visual analogues it is not that complex.
Generally changing vision to echo location loses things useless for space exploration such as ability to see detail and color and gives useful things such as better spatial sense and sense of motion.
And they also have a superior magnetic field sense. They could sense the planetary magnetic field, large ferrous objects moving in it, the direction the solar wind is coming from. They'd probably know where the sun is even at night.
In space they'd probably feel the solar magnetic field. Certainly the ship could have systems to allow them to do so. And to feel the movement of the ship and even the movements of the planets. Or other ships. And then there is the [glorious stuff elemtilas talks about](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/143876).
[Answer]
# Of Course!
That is, assuming these people have the intelligence, resources, sciences, temperament, desire, technological advancements, etc., etc.
If you can see this in the sky:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/35P4p.jpg)
And something like this orbits your planet:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BXY1d.jpg)
Then you're more than equipped to get out and take a good look at this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/V3hHd.jpg)
All of those things should be "visible" to a species who can see magnetic fields the way we see light.
[Answer]
### Yes, measuring instruments are more important than senses... and you can have glasses for light polarization
I think the crucial aspect of your alien species is whether or not they are able to build complex measuring instruments and transmit knowledge.
A very important difference between Aristotle and Galileo is the emphasis the latter put on measurement (rather than their intelligence or available senses). At the time, European manufacture was advanced enough to build the instruments that he and others would require to build up their calculations, and later develop the theories that formed the core of mechanics.
The history of space travel would be very different for your species, depending on the way they are able to perceive gravitation, velocity, mass, etc. For example, the early optical telescope would be useless to them but they would have the capacity to notice [the effect of the orbit of the moon in the Earth's magnetic field](https://astronomynow.com/2016/04/01/moon-thought-to-play-major-role-in-maintaining-earths-magnetic-field/).
From this humble beginnings, they could develop a different type of orbital mechanics perhaps at a slower pace, perhaps faster than humans did. Unfortunately [we know very little about magnetoreception](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5695626/) to describe a mechanism in detail, but we do know that in some materials "[magnetic fields can change the way the charged particles (mainly electrons) respond to the light electromagnetic field](https://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=409&t=magnetic-fields-and-light)". On one side, some phenomena that remained a mistery to humans for millions of years would be a part of everyday life for your aliens...
On the other side, with enough tools and technology, your aliens could build themselves some device to perceive light talking advantage of the polarization of light in a similar way in which we have built a ton of things to measure magnetic fields.
PD I don't think sound is relevant for space travel because it doesn't travel in a vacuum.
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I think my answer is: Yes.
Given only echo location it is not possible to discern anything in space or to orient oneself in space. However, to develop space travel, I suppose these aliens would require a high level of technological sophistication anyway. Otherwise some bat would just fly in the direction of "up" and suffocate. Word might get around that this is a bad idea.
If they first develop machinery to enhance their abilities sufficiently they might also realize that space is not just infinite emptiness.
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The most difficult part would be knowing to look into the sky, when *seemingly* there's nothing there.
If they knew, they'd undoubtedly have the capacity. Any light that they need to detect, they could convert into ultrasound, magnetic fields, haptic feedback or [digital scent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_scent_technology). Humans already do this - every sensor measures something we can't perceive with our senses (e.g. atoms, deposits of metal, black holes) and translates it into something we can.
In our world it may be difficult to develop a scent-display, however we are primarily visually-oriented and - across our species' history - invested considerable resources into inventing writing, paper, printing presses, photography and graphic displays. A blind species would invest as much or more resources into other senses, possibly discovering engineering techniques we don't have sufficient incentives to discover.
The larger obstacle is **demand**. A significant reason why humans value space travel over other scientific discovery is wonder at the stars that we could see, unaided, for all of human history. Mythology of the stars and Moon abounds across continents and millennia. The largest strides in space exploration occurred at the height of Cold War superpowers displaying their influence - it's hard to imagine the Soviets and NATO competing to prove obscure mathematical theorems.
Also, space could only be discovered after the invention of accurate light-sensors (which would be prioritized as much as Smell-O-Vision); so only at our era of cheap technology *or later*. So no centuries of myths about the stars, spurring these creatures to explore. Only a curious observation whose meaning can't be easily explained to a non-technical bat - similar to obscure mathematics.
So discovery of space could begin with an inventor in the modern day failing to market his useless 'photo-braille device', and accidentally discovering something mind-bendingly impossible.
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Others have covered how they sense the universe. Two other factors exist which you will need to resolve to get the necessary technology:
**Collaboration**
Any significant technology requires collaboration, and storage of knowledge. For us, this is heavily reliant on written materials, diagrams, etc. They will need an equivalent for this. I don’t think speech will suffice to handle building the required infrastructure. Braille (or some similar concept) is a possibility - not sure how well it works for diagrams? - but would be much slower to work with, so this should be taken into account.
**Precision & Resolution**
Our vision allows us to perceive the universe in very high precision, and this precision is required for us to build the precision tools (that build the tools that build...) that build the necessary scientific and engineering technology.
I believe echolocation is much lower resolution, and there may be physical limits affecting its accuracy. Smell has a much much lower resolution. Touch has limited resolution, and is not appropriate for measuring many things (like the position of a spinning saw blade, or a oxy-torch...!)
This would make the development of the necessary technology much more difficult.
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A possible riff off of an echolocation like solution would be to release hundreds of small disposable probes that explode on impact with anything. Then light sensors the aliens have built could read the incoming data, and map out what is around them as a data point in 3D space. They would possibly be able to visualize any object based on their ability to memorize the coordinates reported by their machine, or have the machine create a model in UV or sound that they could "see" or understand. It's kind of like how a cats whiskers provide acute and specific sensory feed back from a specific point which allows the cat to make adjustments to their location with high precision almost instinctively.
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> But, when talking about space, **sight is necessary** to understand the cosmos.
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Really? Or is it just necessary that they be spatially aware?
Open your mind. It will take more work on your part, but you can explain it.
We cannot see X-Rays, but we discovered them... and then figured out how to make machines/devices that represented them in a form that we could understand (see them on photographic plates). And then discovered how they could be useful.
Note that X-Ray radiation killed a lot of the early scientist studying it (via cancer) but that didn't stop them. We learned X-Rays, and then we learned new stuff, and now we have MRIs, use sound waves to measure blood flow, etc.
The sun is easy to "see" without "vision".
They would feel the warmth, even if they couldn't see it. (Or feel effects from it if you want it really far away)
It might take longer to "see" the stars and moon(s) than the sun... but eventually a sentient species of sufficient intelligence would figure it out. First they figure out it is there, then they (eventually) figure out how to get a better view (however you decide that is possible).
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Almost the entire current understanding of the cosmos is **not** based on visible light, but on the entire electromagnetic spectrum, of which visible light is a tiny fraction. Even our incredibly primitive space ships today are not navigated by sight.
So no, quite obviously space flight does not require sight when even beings who can see don't use that sense to conduct space flight.
The more interesting question here is whether beings without sight would have ever been interested in the cosmos at all. For as long as we have written records, people were aware of "the sky" and that there is something beyond their reach, because they could see the stars. A species relying on echo-location, for example, would have no such awareness that space exists at all.
However, just like us humans, they would sooner or later invent technology that goes beyond their own senses. We created x-rays and radar, they would probably invent some kind of visible-light sensor.
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They would develop the necessary technologies in a very different order than we did, but I think they would get there.
For example, they might develop electricity and magnetism much like we did, and then radio, and then radio astronomy. That might be their first clue that stars and planets exist. But I think they'd do it.
The only issue I see is that much of our early science was inspired by astronomical observations. They wouldn't have that inspiration. Would they have something else that leads them forward?
(Contrary to what others have suggested, they would probably not be usefully able to understand radar returns by translating them to sound. Light travels almost a million times as fast as sound, so your targets would have to be a million times as far away for that to work. To get binaural perception that sounds anything like what you hear from ears 15cm apart, you'd need a pair of receivers 130km apart. They wouldn't build it until they already had at least crude radar.)
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It's well within the realm of possibilities. Vision is only necessary for us to because it is what we know. If your alien race's dominant senses are as effective for them, as sight is for us, then they could, quite possibly "sense" the nature of the cosmos in their own way.
As humans, our technology has allowed us to overcome our physical limitations over and over again. If your aliens are intelligent enough to create sophisticated technology. And it evolves similar to ours, then (I would think) lack of sight should be an easy hurdle to jump.
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Just wanted to add one minor thing that I didn't see mentioned yet.
One of the current major issues with long-term space travel for humans on the mission to Mars- for example- is the deterioration of our eyes during prolonged durations in micro gravity. In the relatively short amounts of time astronauts spend on the ISS, many of them come back with near-nearsightedness that lasts months or years after their trip. It is logical to predict that if the astronauts were in space even longer, it the negative effects would worsen and could become permanent to the point of blindness.
All that being said, if bat creatures don't rely on juicy gravity eyes to see, but rather echolocation etc, then they won't suffer this induced blindness during prolonged travel which could be a huge advantage over astronauts relying on visuals.
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Suppose you want to build a large scale habitable structure in space or on a planet or moon without an atmosphere or any organics, and this would be a long term or permanent settlement, not a temporary location. Where would you get the oxygen for its inhabitants to breathe from? And, if you got it from a different location how would you ship it?
In both cases the sheer volume of necessary oxygen (and other elements used in human-breathable air) would make it very difficult or impossible to build such a habitat, no?
It seems to me that ensuring a constant supply of oxygen for such a habitat is so difficult as to make it impossible to build.
Would the only way to pull this off, be to build habitats in locations that were already connected to some large source of oxygen?
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> In both cases the shear volume of necessary oxygen (and other
> elements used in human breathable air) would make it very
> difficult or impossible to build such a habitat, no?
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No, actually; I don't think so.
The accepted atmospheric composition of Earth is 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 0.9% argon, and 0.05% everything else, including carbon dioxide (about 0.04% carbon dioxide and 0.01% everything else, roughly). This is from research by NOAA, Wallace and Hobbs, Vaughan, etc. Lots of research.
To correct one part of your question, while the atmosphere is something like 78-ish% nitrogen and 1% "other elements, the only part of the atmosphere we need and actually use in breathing is the oxygen.
We "only" use 25-35% of the oxygen in any particular breath we take. That's 25-35% of the 21% of the oxygen in the air. So, of the roughly 12,000+ litres of air we breathe every day, we actually consume between 600 and 900 litres of oxygen.
Having said that, the [NIH](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11537696) has stated quite bluntly that "Plant-based life support systems represent the only potential for self sufficiency and food production in an extra-terrestrial habitat."
Coincidentally, it also represents the only potential for self-sufficiency and food production on a **terrestrial** habitat, as well! [;)
Note that it says for an "extra-terrestrial habitat". On Earth it requires 8 or 9 trees to produce enough oxygen to support one person. For a reasonably-sized crew that's a lot of vegetation to be propelling through space in a spacecraft for the purpose of oxygen production.
But there are other ways of of providing oxygen.
We need to have quite a bit of water on the vessel anyway for many purposes, but the main reasons are as a radiation shield as well as a heat sink. Oxygen can be easily electrolysized from that water when topping up is required. You would count on this and make sure that you have enough water on board to account for that need.
The biggest problem with breathing oxygen is the exhalation of carbon dioxide. Humans begin to fare poorly when concentrations begin to exceed 5%. Removing the carbon dioxide is easy, but you have to **keep on** removing the CO2 throughout the entire flight/mission, then you potentially have to do something with that removed carbon dioxide, and you still need to replace the oxygen which the humans are removing through breathing.
Rather than jettisoning chemical cans every few 100,000km,there are some technological, non-organic methods of separating oxygen from the carbon in carbon dioxide. Intense UV seems to be a proven method.
So; impossible? Far from it.
On a space station or space habitat you use plants, which you also employ in the production of food and the purification of waste water which may include the use of algae and/or phytoplankton. On spacecraft you have compressed or liquefied O2 as backup but primarily convert CO2 back into oxygen, topping up from water stores. That's not to say that you couldn't or wouldn't have some kind of hydroponic shrubbery, but the primary purpose would be as a kitchen garden, not the production of oxygen.
Hope this helps.
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According to this lovely image from NASA (article [here](https://www.nasa.gov/content/life-support-systems)), the source of onboard oxygen in current spacecraft is mainly water electrolysis. The hydrogen so produced is processed with carbon dioxide to reclaim some of the water and produce either solid carbon waste, or acetylene for propulsion.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HYh3r.png)
This isn't a 100% closed cycle, so you'll have to add more water over time, although you'll have to do that anyway (waste processing isn't 100% closed either).
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**Current ways to create oxygen in space**
There are a few possibilities that can be considered. Currently electrolysis is one way that oxygen is produced in space. This is done by splitting H2O into hydrogen and oxygen. A quick search on the ISS (International Space Station) or electrolysis will bring up more details about this process. Spirulina and other super algae are also being experimented with as a viable option for both creating oxygen and using it as a super food in space. Some Spirulina has already been sent to the ISS. There are also experiments going on that are attempting to produce oxygen via intense vacuum ultraviolet light and CO2. Some such experiments have been slightly successful by producing small amounts of O2 along with the carbon monoxide and carbon molecules.
**Transporting and/or maintaining materials for oxygen in biospheres**
Experiments are still being done to determine whether using photosynthesis via algae and other plants would actually work. We know they work in concept, however radiation and changes in gravity may effect this process in space. The results of some preliminary experiments done on the ISS were supposed to be released in April, but I haven't found anything reliable about these results yet when searching online other than they were returned via the Dragon in April for analysis. The most realistic option at this time supposing that a biosphere was placed at some location in space that isn't near a source of oxygen would be putting it near an asteroid belt or other potential source of water. This would allow the asteroid(s), moon(s), planet(s), etc. to be mined for water, and in turn this water could be used for electrolysis. This would also mean a source of both water (of course), and fuel in the form of hydrogen.
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**From rock.**
This is something surprisingly few people know: The main component of rocks
is
* [quartz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz) which is silicium dioxide SiO2 and therefore contains oxygen.
* [feldspar which also contains oxygen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feldspar). Feldspar exists mostly in form: <alkali metal><aluminium>2/3<silicium>2/3<oxygen>8.
And yes, [moon rock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_rock) and therefore also rock from other planets and moons contains oxygen, so no problem there.
So if you have energy available you can not only extract oxygen, but also important materials like alkali metals, aluminium or silicium.
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Does water exist on your planet? If it does then electrolysis of water could provide the oxygen needed.
But even if the planet is completely devoid of water oxygen should be the least of your worries as it would be abundant in the surface rocks of any normal planet as the inorganic oxides of silicon, aluminium, magnesium, calcium and iron (among others – that’s what most rocks are). Extraction would not be easy but would be possible using a lot of energy by electrolytic processes as described here:
<https://phys.org/news/2009-08-scientists-oxygen-moon.html>
It would also be possible to react waste organic material from the habitat with molten rocks containing oxides to produce carbon dioxide and steam for recycling into the habitat. The carbon dioxide could be fed to plants to produce further oxygen.
The key points to consider are what elements are present on your planet? If the elements are absent or in very short supply (like hydrogen is on the Moon) then the element will need to be imported or the base located where the few deposits do exist. If the element is present but chemically locked up in a different form as oxygen is in rock, then chemistry and energy can be used to extract it.
If the element oxygen is totally absent from your planet then you have to consider what is the planets crust actually made of? And you would have to import all of the oxygen you need and ensure that it was recycled very efficiently.
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Can you bring organics with you? Because if so, a greenhouse is the answer. The plants you grow take the CO2 you breathe out and water, and provide oxygen and food. It'll be hard to get a perfect equilibrium, so you will probably want to grow plants based on your food needs and balance your atmosphere with other equipment to pick up the slack. A furnace if you're producing too much oxygen, an algae tank if you're making too much CO2.
I'm making it sound much easier than it really is, no one has ever made a totally self-sufficient, air tight habitat. The ISS gets food, and water, and sends trash back to Earth via Soyuz. Nuclear submarines get oxygen from seawater via electrolysis. They pick up food every time they're in port.
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One of the first places I'd go looking is [Comets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet). The main reason for this is that one of the known principal constituents of their nucleus is ice. This is one of those 'kill two birds with one stone' situations because the ice gives you water (which you need), and that water can be broken down into oxygen (which you need for breathing) and hydrogen (which can be used as a fuel). Yes, you need O2 to oxidise the hydrogen to burn it, but you can ship excess, unburned H2 back to Earth if you have to where they have O2 in abundance.
So, go comet hunting. This gives you access to water, breathable air, energy and an export market for your 'waste products'. Just saying.
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You don't need to *get* or even *create* oxygen out of thin air (sic).
Your space habitat will be a closed system (or it better should be one...). This means that you will re-use *every* last molecule of matter that you have at your disposal. There are no known processes except fission (only relevant to radioactive material, not everyday atoms like oxygen) or fusion (applicable to certain everyday atoms, but you would have completely separate energy/matter cycles for that) to change the actual atoms you have in your enclosed space.
This leaves you with finding technically feasible processes to rip any molecules apart into their constituents (e.g., waste from your humans). This, in turn, is basically a solved problem, which simply requires energy. Lots of it, in some cases, but still only energy.
So you only need to place your space habitat in a location which gives you unlimited amounts of energy. This can be simply a sun; or if you're so inclined some fashionable black hole or whatever where your inhabitants can harvest matter with some future processes.
You obviously need to get enough starting material (harvest enough from some planet while building your habitat), and minuscule amounts that inevitably get lost due to unavoidable inefficiencies in your outwards facing doors/walls. But those you can replenish by getting any kind of raw material (from asteroids, planets, etc.) and putting them into your fancy recycling apparatus.
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Similar, but a bit more broad, to [Would a zombie apocalypse be possible if a zombie existed?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/2640/would-a-zombie-apocalypse-be-possible-if-a-zombie-existed)
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A secret lab (owned by a private company) near Chicago creates a virus strain called 'ZB01' (to be sold as a biological weapon). There is a small town nearby and, unannounced to the residence there, the lab has injected ZB01 into their water supply (to test its effects), and turning the entire town into zombies.
*These are your stereotypical zombies. Get infected and you mutate into a zombie. They hunger for human flesh and are attracted mostly by high pitched or humanlike sounds.*
1. What are the physical requirements of the zombies in order for them to not be immediately killed off?
2. What would the human-to-zombie timetable need to look be (Approximately)?
3. Approximately how many initial zombies (town's population) would it take to infect the country with those attributes?
4. Given the current tech level of Earth, is it feasible for zombies to take over even with their physicality?
Extra info:
[Different types of zombies in film](http://screenrant.com/top-5-zombie-film-types/)
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**Let's say ZB01 was supposed to be a super-soldier serum, but it has gone horribly wrong.** The component meant to give the super soldier an indomitable will and unerring ability to follow commands backfired when they gave it to soldiers on an empty stomach. Hunger, one of the most basic and primal drives from the reptilian brain became the single command the soldiers would follow. When it was given to the town through the water supply, they became strong and had an unquenchable thirst... *for blood* (cackle, cackle, lightning and thunder). The super-soldier serum has given them excellent strength, but burns energy so quickly that they remain always hungry. The hunger screams in their minds, driving them mad.
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While it's not clear what they are facing which may or may not immediately kill them off depending on physical characteristics, they should be **at least as capable as humans**. Humans with no thought of self-preservation, response to pain, and an unerring will to feed.
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This is actually incredibly important if this affliction is to spread around the world. People need to be able to get on planes and fly around the world. **The TSA does not admit zombies on to planes.** The transformation should be dormant for at least a week and that's when the hunger starts.
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A small number will do if the population quickly spreads out across the country while infected but unchanged. This would be **easily achieved in a place like Las Vegas** or New Orleans during Mardi Gras. The infected and usually wasted people would fly home after the weekend and begin infection epicenters all over the world.
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**Zombies are a fire on the human race.** They burn through fast and hot, destroying the humans that catch, but they burn too quickly. They won't take over. They might do a whole lot of damage and the world will never be the same. Pockets of humanity will remain. Bunkers, remote places, astronauts on the ISS, humans will remain and repopulate.
Children will learn to never complain about being hungry.
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The only way it's possible is if the trigger for the zombie is airborn and converts a substantial percentage of the population on infection.
Otherwise an organised military force will obliterate any number of zombies. It's just not even slightly a threat. Zombies cannot cope with structural defences, armoured vehicles, firearms, or even very basic tactics.
Essentially the infection needs to strike hard, and convert a massive percentage of the populace - a high enough percentage that the military is decimated. We're talking 99.9% zombification rates from infection by a highly contagious airborn pathogen that manages to spread worldwide before it is detected.
This changes of course if you add super-powered or intelligent zombies, but then they are not really zombies any more.
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**1.** Physically, to survive against the modern forces they would no doubt face eventually and to survive in general, they would need to be hardy. Humans are actually not terribly durable, and rotting ones even less so. You have to think that over time they're going to face the seasons, if their bodies can't hold up to heat/cold/weather, then their spread is going to be not insignificantly limited by that.
They would also need to be fast enough and strong enough to catch people. While that may not be too difficult initially when no one knows they exist, once people know to watch for them good luck catching them. Locked doors are probably durable enough to stop any zombie without above-average strength, and cars and other vehicles are going to be able to outrun them, probably even relatively healthy adults too unless they have above average speed.
In addition, in my opinion, they need to retain some level of intelligence. Humans got to where they are because of their ability to use tools, be creative, and plan ahead. If these are just your typical mindless shamblers, bait them into an alley somewhere and box them in. Dispose of as you see fit (fire, explosives, bullet, drop a brick on them, w/e), rinse and repeat.
In addition, lone zombies are rarely scary and probably not an issue unless they're some kind of super mutant. So you'd probably want them to have some sort of pack mentality. If they have lower levels of intelligence this makes sense anyway, we know many animals work in packs/prides/families to increase their chance of survival, so it stands to reason that any creature with baser instincts is likely to come to a similar conclusion.
So in my opinion there would need to be something that enhances their speed/strength and they need to either retain or mimic some form of intelligence. They should also probably roam in groups for practical reasons.
**2.** Assuming, as you said in the comments, that the incident isn't reported then I don't think the time it takes to go from bitten to infected is terribly important so long as it happens before word gets out. After that, presumably your zombies will disperse in all directions in search of food. Initially they'd likely happen across the slow, the weak, and the isolated making easy targets. Some may die as they encounter larger cities, but enough of them would probably make it into other areas that their numbers would grow.
**3.** This largely depends on the attributes of the zombies, as mentioned in one. The hardier/faster/stronger/more relentless the zombies are, and the harder to kill, the fewer you need of course. To give any kind of actual number is beyond any reasoning I can come up with.
**4.** I'm going to have to go with no unless your zombies are super human and capable of using tools. Even if they manage to deal with the various armies, they're only on one continent. If, let's say since you started in Chicago, all of America was infected. Unless your infection time is long enough for a flight/boat trip across the oceans, you're not going to expand beyond the americas with your zombies. That being the case, the other countries on the other continents can either choose to simply never go there again, or they could bomb it to obliteration, or just pick a point to start from and systematically destroy everything. With such a focused effort, unless your zombies are driving tanks and using weapons, eventually they're going to be overcome by any kind of organized armed force.
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I would recommend a Typhoid Mary (carrier) sort of situation, if it was me. This is likely best done as a multiple dispersal vector virus, or a single dispersal vector but not as a direct bite situation. Especially as you want the original infection to be introduced via the water supply, and water can carry viruses rather easily:
**Viruses are a major cause of human waterborne and water-related diseases.**
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_viruses_in_water>
A percentage of the population carries the zombie infection without turning. They 'escape', or are 'rescued', either by dumb luck or they don't 'smell' human to the turned zombies, making them not interesting as food. Alternately, they are clear of the origin zone before anyone realizes there's a zombie infection, so they have no idea they're infected with something and spreading it. Either way, they reach thus far uninfected portions of the population and disperse the infection like any other virus: surface contact, interpersonal contact, bodily fluids, sex, tears, sneezing, whatever. The uninfected don't realize the carrier is a carrier until it's too late.
If you're rooting for the zombies, there's no clear indication from blood or genetic material or whatever whether someone is a carrier or purely uninfected, and only discernible evidence of infection is that occurring during/after the turn. Also, shooting the zombies, and even setting them on fire, increases the risk of blood-borne infection spraying everywhere, or in the case of fire, not wholly burned particles containing the virus becoming airborne. This could potentially cause a bigger problem than it would solve. Breathing zombie smoke or blood spray, or even skin absorption, makes this war even trickier.
Bear in mind that zombies aren't necessarily dead, though this is a popular choice. Alternately, a colony of zombie virus might animate a person or possibly an animal by combining with the individual cells, if it reproduces rapidly enough and gets a good hold. There's also various parasites and forms of venom which can cause mind control effects in their targets, and the zombie virus could act similarly:
**Zombies may still be a thing of fiction, but some parasites more or less turn their hosts into the walking dead. These masters of mind control manipulate their hosts from within, causing them to act in self-destructive ways that ultimately benefit the parasite.**
<http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141031-zombies-parasites-animals-science-halloween/>
This isn't to say that these aren't stereotypical zombies, only that the methodology of zombification isn't necessarily death, but easily some form of biological manipulation of one kind or another.
In other words:
**What are the physical requirements of the zombies in order for them to not be immediately killed off?**
These would be the biological requirements, such as ability to be detected before turning, ability to transmit without being infected (carriers) rather than the purely physical (strength, speed, intelligence, etc.)
**What would the human-to-zombie timetable need to look be (Approximately)?**
This is a complicated issue, but I'd say probably anywhere from 6-48 hours, with carriers. Possibly determined by different people's biological and/or genetic makeup. Differences in infection time would make it more complex to pinpoint the carriers or have a distinct idea how long one has.
**Approximately how many initial zombies (town's population) would it take to infect the country with those attributes?**
I'd call it around 10% of the infected being carriers, too few and fewer would spread to other locations, too many and the carriers' existence would be noticed much more quickly.
**Given the current tech level of Earth, is it feasible for zombies to take over even with their physicality?**
With carriers, it could be, if the carriers did not show indications and neither did the infected until the turn itself began, however long that took. Bite marks are clear indications, so to increase the odds of the zombies outnumbering (I hesitate to say taking over, since they really just want food, right?) the uninfected the infection vector would have to be more viral in nature than violent, though of course we would also expect the turned to start eating people just because it's what they do.
This is my first answer submitted on Stack Exchange, I hope I did it correctly and that it may provide you with some useful ideas.
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'Classic' zombies don't stand a chance in this scenario.
A zombie can not go up against modern humans and win in a one-on-one fight. Machine guns beat stupid creatures, even a hundred stupid creatures are beaten by a machine gun. Thus, if you have less then 100 to 1 in your number of zombies to military well, the zombies are going to loose.
Because such a small percentage of zombies will reach a human to attack and bite him there will be only a small number of zombies produced from each bite, 1 out of every 100 zombies makes a new zombie, your second generation zombies are 1% as many as your first, and your third generation of zombies are .01% as strong as your first, this is pretty rapid dimension returns.
Making zombies able to sustain a few bullet strikes, or fast, is not enough. Intellect and modern weapons just give humans too great an advantage. Sure if the zombies manage to reach a civilian area they may be able to spread faster...but even civilians have guns, one hunger with a rifle will still take out a few zombies with him. Your zombies may be able to grow by about 50% going up against your average civilian population, when you factor in deaths to civilian guns, and civilians barricading themselves or escaping. After all if I simply hope in my car and start driving I can escape classic zombies quite easily...
This is ignoring the ability to use firebombs and air attacks on any massed zombies without any risk at all. the ability to evacuate an area to remove any 'food' and let the zombies die out on their own etc etc. Realistically a zombie can't be much more durable then humans, and they would still potentially starve or degrade rapidly over time if at all realistic.
Thus the most plausible scenario for a zombie Apocalypse is to translate most people to zombies in one go. A virus spreads and kills most of the world population, producing a massive number of zombies. Even if we can kill 100 zombies for every one human we still don't stand a chance if there are 1,000 zombies per one human...
Since this is unlike your scenario there are some things that you can do to try to make it a little closer...
1) make the virus spread from something other then zombie bites. Maybe the virus spreads the same way any virus would spread, through the air or physical contact with infected non-zombies, and most new zombies come about from accidental infection from a non-zombie infected, not from zombie bites. Alternatively, have the zombies explode spores of virus that spread rapidly when they die, so even killing a zombie won't prevent you from potentially being infected. Though explosive infective zombies isn't enough to contract an organized military effort to stop them unless they still have a huge number advantage.
2) infect creatures other then humans! This gives two useful advantages. First, it makes far more zombies, since human zombies will have a much easier time preying on wildlife, converting a huge percentage of that wildlife. Now in addition to human zombies you have a huge number of zombie dogs increasing the threat to humans and spreading zombiesm. More importantly, if you infect *small* creatures you have a new avenue for spreading zombies. Perhaps zombie rats are one of the largest avenues to zombiesm spreading. A single zombie could infect a huge number of rats, one dead body feasted on by rats would infect dozens, and the zom-rats could effect other rats quickly. These rats could then quickly swarm around biting humans. Because they are small and don't run in packs there is a less obvious avenue for military with big guns to attack. The approach for defending against them is different and more logistical the militaristic. If you allow bugs like mosquito and/or fleas to be infected...well humanity is pretty screwed at that point. If you couple this with a *long* delay from when someone is infected to when they become a zombie you can allow a huge portion of the population to be converted before we know there is a problem. Maybe say the more of the infection you get the faster you convert, so a bite from misquote will take months to convert you, a bite from a human zombie only days...
3) make goverments slow to respond to the attack. Perhaps people think that zombies can be saved, and are thus unwilling to unleash lead-death upon them at first. Maybe politics slow the response time, or even people refuse to realize it happened.
Another thing to consider is that zombies can't cross large body of water. If zombies are unleashed in a single city then only one land mass (the Americas or the 'old world' depending on where it starts) is in danger. Unless you go with the approach of having the virus lay dormant for a long time, long enough for people to travel to other worlds and spread it before were aware of the danger, then humanity as a whole isn't in danger.
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I heard a quote on CBC from a researcher who said there is no way zombies as popularly portrayed in media could survive more than a week or so, but I can't remember when I heard it, so I can't give a direct quote. Zombies are always represented as being dead and decaying, yet somehow continuing to live. The researcher said, basically, that there is so much decomposition happening in nature that any dead biological matter would be eaten by bacteria, insects, small animals, etc. within a few weeks. The idea that a partially decomposed but somehow living upper body severed at the waist could continue to live in a forest for months after dying and attack someone who came upon it is patently ridiculous. Millipedes, my friends, millipedes will be the end of any zombie apocalypse. I often think about this while watching The Walking Dead. Nothing can be both alive and dead at the same time. Either zombies are alive, with the processes of circulation, breathing, digestion that keep living organisms alive, or they are not, at which point they immediately become food for other organisms. Scientifically, we can't have it both ways, as psychologically satisfying as the concept of the undead is. That's my buzzkill answer.
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An interesting take I've seen on the zombie apocalypse was in the *[Last Blood](http://lastblood.keenspot.com/)* webcomic (which, unfortunately, stopped updating mid-story in 2010). In *Last Blood*, a small band of human survivors is protected by a group of vampires for their mutual survival. The vampires need the humans' blood for food, and the humans need the physically superior vampires to protect then from zombie attacks. The zombie contagion turns out to be...
>
> ...a modified/mutated version of vampirism.
>
>
>
For a month or so, zombies were more along the shambling, slow, stupid variety. But once a zombie had been a zombie long enough, they suddenly gained super-speed, super-strength, and some level of intelligence or group intelligence...I don't recall the details.
So, take a situation where zombies become more powerful/dangerous/infectious the longer they've been zombies. In a situation like this, a small group of zombies (eg a small town) that goes unnoticed long enough would become the super-powered core that drives the larger, weaker zombie horde's growth.
Just when it seems like the humans are getting the upper hand and will survive, the zombie horde becomes super-powered and the tables turn.
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Just a partial answer, but if you want the initial outbreak to spread, the location of the "small town" is at least as important as the population. Since the lab is near Chicago, would [Rosemont](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemont,_Illinois) be a valid choice? It's population is only a little over 4000, but it's a huge commercial center. There's the Allstate Arena, the convention center, the outlet mall, and a lot of big hotels, offices, and other businesses. Oh, and it's right next to [the busiest airport in the world](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Hare_International_Airport). Of course, this might be cheating on the meaning of "small town," but since most of the people in Rosemont are there for business or entertainment reasons and live elsewhere, this will help the infection spread across the Chicago area, and the country.
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Let's say I have a **mountain range** similar to the [Andes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andes) but with **no easy passes**, hence forcing everyone to circle around it (for hundreds or even thousands of miles) in order to get to the other side.
I want to **cut through it** where it's easier: high enough that the area to cut through is no longer than about 40 miles / ~64km (taking [Moria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moria_(Middle-earth)) as an example) but not high enough that even getting to the entrance becomes difficult. It will be comparable to the upcoming [Turin-Lyon high-speed railway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turin%E2%80%93Lyon_high-speed_railway).
At first, it needn't be anything more than a **wide tunnel that allows four carriages to pass through** (let's say 12 meters wide and 4-5 meters tall) but we will want to expand it so that workers' housing can be built in the underground passage itself (and, over decades or even centuries, become a city somewhat comparable to Moria). The tunnel can be wider if need be, e.g. for transporting excavated rock outside.
Also, it might have a slight ascending slope, so that bringing rock outside gets easier (we could have full carts go downhill, and empty cars be pushed uphill)
Of course, the most livable areas will be those close to the two entrances, but I suppose people will be able to inhabit the middle section of the tunnel too as long as getting food and supplies there isn't a problem.
A few notes:
* technology is comparable to that of **14th century Europe**
* the nation/kingdom/faction doing the excavation doesn't control the territory on the other side of the mountains, so it can **only dig from one side** (and not from both simultaneously). Assume that attacks from the other side are not a problem, though.
* the nation/kingdom/faction doing the excavation knows (and uses) various kinds of **food that can be grown underground**. So assume that growing food is not a problem.
* assume that safety from attacks (wild beasts or other factions) is guaranteed
* they need some way to improve air flow
* workers are dwarves who can see even in **total darkness** up to 60 feet away (in black and white), so lighting is not a problem
If availability of **manpower** is not a problem (let's say we can field as much as 100,000 dwarf workers, but it can be much fewer if that high a number creates more problems than it solves),
* **how long would it take them to dig through 60km of rock and dirt?**
* **what would be the greatest difficulties in doing so?**
[This question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/9947/could-a-dwarven-civilization-exist) is very interesting, but is more about "how could dwarves survive in such a city" while I am interested in the *making of*.
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# A few centuries
By the middle ages, miners were quite good. They employed technology that was advanced for the time to solve major problems like flooding, ventilation, and removing spoil. If you're willing to wave your hands about some practical concerns, you could conceivably have your tunnel and underground living areas built within a few centuries. When you're thinking about staffing levels, remember that the [Channel Tunnel](https://www.eurostar.com/us-en/travel-info/the-chunnel) involved 13,000 workers using 1980s tech, and that's not counting all the people who were tangentially involved (making food, manufacturing tunneling equipment, etc.). So 100,000 people is not an excessive number.
**Challenge 1: Tunnel life**
The realities of living in a tunnel would be harsh. You mention that the miners can see in the dark, which is important. They'll need fresh water brought in, waste removed, etc. You say that the living areas will be near the entrances to the tunnel, but it might be more useful to put the living areas near the middle. After all, your workers are going to be tired after swinging a pickax all day and will be grumpy if you make them walk or ride a mule cart for 25 miles to get back to the entrance housing. At that point, they might as well live outside.
Fortunately, you won't need to house 100,000 people in the tunnel. A large portion of your workers can stay outside. This project will require an entire city's worth of support activities. For example, you'll need animal breeders for fresh animals, blacksmiths to build and repair tools, lumberjacks to fell trees for support timbers, tailors to make clothing, laborers to dump the rock coming out of the mine, etc.
**Challenge 2: Air**
You'll need a supply of fresh air deep within the tunnel. There is precedent to mines installing air supplies in the middle ages. [Here's a great guide](https://www.engr.psu.edu/mtah/articles/roots_colonial_iron_technology.htm) to mining technology in the era you're considering. I suggest reading the whole thing, but here's a relevant excerpt:
>
> Delving deeper beneath the surface of the earth led to a second
> complication for the miners: less oxygen for those working in the
> elongated tunnels. Rather than limit the depth that the mines could
> extend, ventilating machines were developed as a solution. The
> simplest form of ventilation, sufficing only for the shallower mines,
> was merely the flapping of cloths to circulate air. Later, revolving
> fans and single- or double-acting bellows maintained air flow, while
> allowing miners to dig to new depths.
>
>
>
So you can hand wave a superpowered bellows to keep air moving.
**Challenge 3: Transportation**
As the tunnel gets longer, it'll become harder and harder to get stuff in and out. Even with two lanes moving in each direction, horse-drawn railcars aren't fast. Let's assume you're running a really coordinated operation where each car is filled rapidly and there's always another one waiting right after it to take the next bit of spoil. You'll still need a *lot* of people running the carts. And remember that the carts will have to go far enough out of the tunnel to dump the rock, so by the end of the project, your carts could conceivably be traveling a 100-mile round trip. The good news is that you'll have lots of empty carts going into the tunnel to carry supplies.
**Challenge 4: Precision**
It's going to be really really hard to hit a specific target from one end after all that digging. Especially given that miners were used to digging paths that weren't necessarily straight. Here's a great description of a mine from [Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/16wzne/what_did_a_medieval_mine_look_like/):
>
> How did a medieval mine look? Some were open pits, but most were mine
> shafts, dug down and reinforced with wooden supports. The miners tried
> to follow the streaks of ore in the mountain, and the mines could
> meander quite a bit. The larger mines had not only pumps keeping water
> out, but also bellows to pump air down to the miners. To break the
> mountain, the miners would light fires down in the mining shafts to
> heat the mountain, and then rapidly cool it by throwing water on it.
> It cracked, and was then much easier to pickaxe and shovel into small
> handcarts used to transport the ore to the shafts...
>
>
>
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Base it on a **qanat**.
Qanats are deep tunnels bored into mountains to convey water down to dry lowlands. They are built using ancient Persian tech which impressed the Romans when they showed up. 14th century European medievals would not have been able to do this. These tunnels serve their intended purpose to this day.
[The Qanats of Iran, Scientific American 1968](https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/24926204.pdf?casa_token=4WntBrUg_IIAAAAA:in8rCIQFGISu2psjGaZBC0X21s8JxzIf4VYTtduV1IcnPKHAEwINuvkY56erD0r2PeuZn9PYMNs6TlxdB2DnjhbNx3FSJgl1QMpzhVpIH7mJFf01lg)
>
> The qanat system consists of under ground channels that convey water
> from aquifers in highlands to the surface at lower levels by gravity.
> The qanat works of Iran were built on a scale that rivaled the great
> aqueducts of the Roman Em pire. vVhereas the Roman aqueducts now are
> only a historical curiosity, the Iranian system is still in use after
> 3,000 years and has continually been expand ed. There are some 22,000
> qanat units in Iran, comprising more than 170,000 miles of underground
> channels. The sys tem supplies 75 percent of all the water used in
> that country, providing water not only for irrigation but also for
> house hold consumption
>
>
>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pS5lr.jpg)
The linked article provides details about how the qanats were dug. The coolest thing to me was sighting underground to keep the tunnel straight - they started at the exit and were trying to hit a well far inland. By far I mean a serious long way; the longest known qanat is 71 km.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_water_sources_of_Persian_antiquity>
In your world the qanat is ancient. Possibly the construction techniques have been lost. The flowing water is key because that is what draws air down thru the vent shafts. There are methods used today to cool houses using ancient qanats - if you have a chimney it can create a suction and draw cool air up from the qanat flowing beneath the house.
Making side tunnels off the great qanat is a reasonable thing. Over time these tunnels grow. The main thing for this city is not to mess with the water - it has to flow or the city will suffocate.
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>
> In ad 41 the Romans used some 30,000 men for 10 years to push a 3.5-mile (6-kilometre) tunnel to drain Lacus Fucinus. ([Source](https://www.britannica.com/technology/tunnel))
>
>
>
Unfortunately, 14th century Europe wasn't, from an engineering perspective, more advanced than 1st century Rome. So I consider that estimate to be reasonably valid.
* 30,000 people @ 60 km = 100 years.
Could you simply scale this? (300,000 people would take 10 years)? You need to be careful with that. There's only so much space inside a tunnel. The Romans were pretty good (not godlike, but pretty good) at maximizing their efficiency, so my gut tells me the best you could do by adding more people is to pull 100 years down to 80.
Also note that both medieval Europe and Rome have one thing in common: no explosives. The work would be brutal and you can bet your bottom dollar that a lot of those 30,000 men died during construction.
**Problems**
That same source makes the following observation about ancient tunnels:
>
> Ventilation methods were primitive, often limited to waving a canvas at the mouth of the shaft, and most tunnels claimed the lives of hundreds or even thousands of the slaves used as workers.
>
>
>
Even by the 14th century, atmosphere, gasses, and human physiology were only crudely understood and what we, today, understand as completely obvious (duh!) was to them, far too often, incomprehensible witchcraft.
* Without massive ventilation, possibly requiring active fans, a 60km tunnel would kill most people before they ever got through it. You could possibly help this by making the tunnel consistently sloped, but that means there's a boat-load of bad effluvia at one end. Barometric changes at both ends will complicate this — and downhill or not, if those pressures line up correctly, the air inside your tunnel won't move an inch (everybody's dead).
* Average hiking speed is [2 miles (3.2 km) an hour](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/fashion/07Fitness.html). Your tunnel's basically 19 hours non-stop, which means people will stop. Possibly extending the passage to 3 or more days. During that time you have fires (camping, heat, and torches), defecating people, defecating animals, bats, [dust and gas](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15298660108984647?journalCode=uaah20), all building up over time. See the previous point.
* Sewage removal could be a challenge, unless you get lucky and find a couple of cave systems along the way and some water sources to wash it all down the caves.
* Speaking of water... pray you don't find much.
* The tech existed to shore up the tunnels, but historically it wasn't used much to do so, so you'll have problems with collapses.
* Caves (tunnels...) are notoriously slippery and cold.
* Heaven help you if someone half-way through the trip goes mad from claustrophobia or Nyctophobia.
* And remember if you do make it slightly sloped, whomever controls the up-slope entrance has a decisive military advantage if they have access to a river.
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[Cappadocia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cappadocia) is a mountainous region full of underground cities. The larges one is [Derinkuyu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derinkuyu_underground_city), which was built some 700 or 800 hundred years BC and could house probably 20,000 people. Those guys were 22 centuries behind your world's people in technology and they managed it.
You could draw some inspiration from these underground cities. Do notice that this city was initially built by digging through soft volcanic rock; I am not sure ranges such as the Andes would be as easy to dig, but in a fictional world it may be a possibility.
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## Start with a natural cave system
[Many natural cave systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_caves) are hundreds of km long. Mammoth has over 600 km of explored cave systems and at its widest is at least 20-30km however no one really knows for sure since there are tons of unexplored tunnels meaning it could be much much bigger.
While this may not give you 64km as the crow flies, there are plenty of natural caves in mountainous regions than take a walk of more than 64km from point A to point B. Finding one that goes under a mountain that is too hard to go over is quite possible.
>
> At first, it needn't be anything more than a wide tunnel that allows
> four carriages to pass through (let's say 12 meters wide and 4-5
> meters tall)
>
>
>
This is a very unreasonable expectation in the 13th century whether this is man-made or not. Most roads built above ground in that time period were only 4-8 meters wide because wagons were not as common back then as cars are today; so, there were few places where you would expect to need multiple lanes going in one direction.
Most medieval carts and wagons were built to the same width as old Roman carts and wagons so that they could use the same roads. This width was about 1.5 meters. Since underground roads are much more expensive, you won't waste a lot of money on extra room; so, a more likely width for two way cart traffic is going to be something like 4m wide and 4m tall, but to really get started you don't need even that much. A donkey train can go over much rougher terrain and through passages as small as about 2.5m by 2.5m giving you enough room for 2 way traffic. So, your initial usage of the passage will probably be donkeys since you will barely need to modify the caves at all for that. As time goes on you can carve things bigger and smoother until it accommodates a 4x4 space all the way through, then scale that up to 12x4 only if the need arises (which it probably won't until the mid 1900s)
Because of the long trip, way stations may be installed to give travelers places to rest. Over time the quality of roads will improve and new joining tunnels will be dug to make the trip shorter, safer, and easier, and one or more way stations may grow into a proper town in its own right collecting money from travelers as they pass through to guide them safely through the massive underground labyrinth, getting paid by the local lords to expand the tunnels, and not to mention whatever natural resources the mountains already contain.
As waystations grow into towns, ventilation will of course have to be solved for, but the locations of these waystations will likely be chosen as places that have easy access to sunlight, water, and air anyway. So, if Moria is near the surface but sandwiched between two mountain ridges, it could get easy access to above ground resources despite being a long trip from either side.
Hankrecords brings up a good question in the comments about how Moria's location would be planned, and the answer lies in the origin of the cave system itself. Many caves are created from aquifers eroding as they drain out. Basically you start off with an elevated lake or lakes sandwiched between the mountain ridges, as water drains off through underground aquifers it will erode the ground away following the path of the softest minerals creating underwater caves. Eventually these caves will begin to break through to the surface at lower elevations allowing the lake and caves to drain out.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/I2v8G.png)
This will create a natural sinkhole entrance where the lake used to be high above what will become the main town which will provide enough sunlight, water, and air for a significant underground population. The town may also have farms above ground in the valley that is otherwise inaccessible to the outside world.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LqZfV.png)
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The big question:
Data from [quanats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qanat#Excavation) suggests 2-5 metres per day. This does not account for the hard rock, but it also assumes relatively small teams and getting the spoils out through narrow shafts. Bigger tunnels have a bigger cross section, but they also allow larger teams to work at the same time. So call it 35-90 years for the full distance.
The little comments:
* Coming from one side only is no problem. There is no real chance to have two opposite tunnels meet in the middle. They might miss each other by miles and both tunnel the entire way.
* Similarly, they could not really predict how the terrain on the other side looks because they can't really align the maps on both sides of the range.
* Growing food underground sounds pointless. Transporting it 40+ miles is easier than growing underground.
* Ventilation will be a big issue. Do they dig vertical airshafts every couple of hundred yards or do they use forced horizontal ventilation?
+ Bellows or pumps operated by men, animals, waterwheels?
+ Suction through either a fire or [moving water](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_ejector#Water_aspirator)?
* Light will have to be flame, which further complicates the air supply. If the pumps fail for a few hours, people might die.
* Transport of first spoils and food and then cargo with horse-drawn carts on wooden rails?
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Given the huge investment in terms of time, material and lives, the chances of an underground city developing because someone wanted a 60km tunnel built hrough a mountain range in a world with knowledge and tech similar to 14th century Europe are rather slim.
It would be more likely to develop such a city if you started off with a mine or a group of cave dwellers with belligrent neighbours who keep digging deeper tunnels/caves to stay safe than a tunnel project - i.e. like Moria, have some or other mineral that was discovered in a cave on the side of the mountain or in a streambed of a stream with its source underground in the mountain that is rare and precious enough that when the easily accessible mineral on or near the surface is mined out it would make sense to tunnel deeper. As the mines get deeper, workers start sleeping in the mine on their off shift and only returning to the surface once a week or whenever their "rest day" may be or if they are slaves to begin with, their "masters" may leave them in the mine for life. Either way, as the mines got deeper, making first overnight camps and eventually settlements underground may make sense. They could even cut through into natural cave systems which they decide will make a decent living space.
Cutting through the mountain then becomes a "byproduct " rather than an original goal. Maybe some slaves started a religion where the tunnel was needed (some day all our people will reach the promised land when the tunnel reaches that far, where we will be free) or after several generations of following mineral-bearing veins a mining tunnel eventually broke through to the other side. Once this happened, the possibilities of establishing a shorter trade route became possible, so the tunnels were enlarged, reinforced and cleaned up and only then did the underground village really develop (as a way station for travelers through the tunnels).
Edit: Another option is if you make the underground living sort of non-optional e.g. if your region has horrendous winters with snow meters thick, you might end up with a system where people have summer and winter homes farming, hunting, gathering etc. out on the plains & forest & fishing rivers&ocean then retreat to winter caves when the weather turns. For a civilisation that evolved that way, tunneling deeper to hollow out new homes would not be that far fetched. Also, with those types of conditions, they may well decide a tunnel through the mountain is a good idea, as they would be unable to travel any other way for half the year and would have time on their hands. This would be a generations project, though. They would work on it all winter, but summers would be needed for gathering food.
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(convert to comment if not good enough)
You might have a look at De Re Metallica, which has detailed drawings and discussion of 1500s mining technology. OK, couple centuries later than you posit, but maybe 1500s would be better assumption than 1300s. There were bellows, waterwheels, etc. So, you can see some ability to go after what you are talking about.
I still sort of doubt the economic justification for it (even now, really, but definitely with 1300s or 1500s tech). But maybe with some ruler just forcing it to happen, could be done.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_re_metallica>
<http://farlang.com/books/agricola-hoover-de-re-metallica>
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Illustrations_from_De_re_metallica_(1556)_png>
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I was immediately thinking about a two railway lane for the trolleys, with a pulley deep in the mountains and a long rope connection between the trolleys.
If you're digging upward, you can fill the trolley with stones. It will run down totally alone, pulling the rope behind, which goes over the pulley, and drags an empty car in. Or new workers or food. Anything which is lighter than the outgoing trolley.
Now ropes in the 14th century can't be extremely long. So you will have to build stations, where the full cart is attached to the next part of the railway. Like that a single cart full of stones on it's way out can pull in several carts, each one only to the next station.
Those stations need to be manned to handle the trolleys, to do the maintenance on the railway and pulleys and ropes. A city begins.
Furthermore, the dwarfs living in the mountains are forced to fill the trolleys with stones, always, or the railway stops working. This might be one good reason to continue building even when some groups of dwarfs say that the project will not be finished in their lifetime so you can as well let it be... no. You need to send stones downward to keep the railway working, always, or there is no supply.
That is, until they hit an underground water current. Then they can fill carts with water when sometimes they didn't make enough stones. This can be a great reason for fight between the dwarfs by the way, and a plotline driver. Also the other way round, when water accidentally fills an up going trolley and disrupts the system. Or when some part of the city needs water but gets stones sent... all kinds of nice plot drivers here.
In 13th century in Schwaz they also started to use water mills to keep the tunnels dry. The water would go over a big water wheel on it's way out of the tunnels, the wheel would provide force over transmission belts to some mechanics. Sometimes they used it to move trolleys upward, sometimes they hung buckets on it to get even more water or stones out of the tunnels below. In Schwaz they also used kids to get silver out of the mountain. They would be paid at the entrance with a loaf of bread when they came out with silver.
So. Sorry, no exquisite perfect answer here. But hopefully some ideas and some impressions. Make sure to notify me when your book is done, I'm a fan of fantasy dwarfs.
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[
There were here some discussion concerning using [IQ](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/83199/what-would-be-the-possible-issues-with-an-iq-based-voting-system) or paid [taxes](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/34119/effects-of-tax-your-vote-political-system) as proxy of citizens merit, for purposes of making some a bit more meritocratic system. While some objections I'd consider excessive (no, come on, nerds would not to use it to take revenge on all people who were bullying them at school ;) ), I absolutely see one serious issue - those ideas were deeply unpopular, which was more than enough to make them doomed.
On the other hand there is problem of uninformed voter. Or the issue that person who through his faulty decisions suffered personal bankruptcy, presumably is not the best person to take part in decisions concerning prudence in public finance. Or people who try to vote themselves some money.
OK, so requirements:
* there is some mild (or moderate) skewing towards smarter, more responsible, informed voters;
* the interests of the other people is actually reasonably protected;
* the system sounds clearly fair and is not causing much outrage (just sounds, for example: "each patriot could easily pass this civic knowledge and proud history of our great nation test", may be quite good at weeding out people who generally don't know and don't care, while making them look unpatriotic enough to make their objections look badly);
* mass voting remains, as such ritual is useful for maintaining legitimacy of political system in most cases and just in case of total outrage allows for bloodless replacement of disliked political elites.
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There have been several proposed systems for supposedly fair, unequal voting rights. The problem is that what some sees as manifestly fair, others will see as grossly unfair. Hence, they will fail the requirement of "the system sounds clearly fair".
One example is Ayn Rand, who argued that (1) people who don't pay taxes should not have the right to vote, since the contribute nothing to the community, and (2) people who own no property should not have the right to vote, because they don’t have a sufficient stake in stable property rights that promote productive enterprise.
While this may seem fair from a Randian viewpoint, it would imply no voting rights for housewives, who contribute to society by keeping house and raising children, while the husband owns the house and earns money that he pays taxes on. Retirees who live off their savings and rent their homes would not have voting rights either, no matter how much they contributed before retirement - and no matter how much unpaid, voluntary work they do in their retirement.
In most US states, prisoners have no voting rights, and in many states, people with criminal convictions have no voting rights. While this may seem fair to some — criminals are, after all, bad guys — the fairness of this, very much depends on whether the law and prison system is entirely fair. In the US, black people are much more likely to go to prison than white people, and people committing financial crimes like tax fraud or illegal banking activities rarely go to prison, even though their crimes may be very destructive to society. Few democratic countries in the world disenfranchise criminals in this way.
I have heard Danish right-wing politicians suggest that the unemployed shouldn't have voting rights because they don't contribute and instead receive unemployment benefits from the state. This would mean that the unemployed can't vote to unseat governments that implement policies that create or preserve unemployment.
Perhaps the most detailed proposed system for 'fair' unequal voting rights comes from Nevil Shute's novel 1953 novel *In The Wet*, set in the then-future 1980s. In the novel, people can get as much as 7 votes:
* The first vote is given to every citizen on reaching the age of 21.
* The second vote is for university graduates and commissioned military officers.
* The third vote is earned after living and working abroad for at least two years.
* The fourth vote is for raising two children to the age of fourteen without divorcing.
* The fifth vote is for earning at least £5000 in the year before the election.
* The sixth vote is for officials in any of the recognized Christian churches.
* The seventh vote is given only at the discretion of the monarch (a medal, of sorts).
I am sure we all can find faults with some of these rules. What about people educated in the crafts, or people who are self-taught? What if you raise your kids to become criminals, or abuse them? Why should paid work count more than extensive unpaid voluntary work? What about non-Christian religious officials?
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**There is no way to filter the voters that isn't open to abuse, suffrage has to be universal to work.**
Any definition that can be used to exclude people for any reason can be used to disenfranchise a target group. For example, criminals. Select your target group, make something about them illegal and use that to prevent members of the group from voting.
There's also the story of the "guess the weight of the cow" game at country fairs, where any given demographic, including "experts" are wrong, but the average of all is pretty close to correct.
**So what you need to do is ensure that the voters are correctly informed.**
But how to do that without allowing a populist to take control of the situation?
Now is where it gets a little bit less practical.
1. No mass rallies. People can be hyped up and end up feeding off the emotions of others, not the actual content coming across. It's too open to abuse and populism.
2. No TV debates. In fact no visual media at all. Audio and transcript only. People are far better at telling if someone is lying when all they get is audio or written content. The visual aspect disrupts our ability to naturally detect lies.
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**Enlighten your voters.**
If you don't want your voters to behave like sheep, enlighten them.
Well-educated voters will see through populist messages and will make a more informed choice than voters that are simply entertained by politicians at the campaign trail.
*What if informed voters still fall for the populist?*
This is the inherent risk of running a democracy in which everyone gets to cast their vote with no strings attached.
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**"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on who to eat for dinner."**
This quote has been misattributed to Benjamin Franklin, but it's a good quote nonetheless as it illustrates the primary issue with a democratic system - *mob rule*. It's important to take a look at the incentives in any kind of program. And in a democracy, the incentive is to join the mob, which is why a democracy will usually split into a two-party system, because 1) people disagree and 2) people want power. The two party system allows people to disagree, and allows them to have the best shot at supporting a party which has a chance to implement their desired outcome.
Furthermore, now lets take a look at implementing safeguards - it's a horrible idea which occasionally works. Remember, we need to look at incentives, and if we allow the ruling class to control who gets to vote, they're bound to come up with sufficient reasons to only allows their base to vote, and thus remain in power, which is the incentive structure they have. Of course, that's not to say that it never works - take, for instance the rule that American presidents can't sit more than two terms (or 10 years, if they've taken over partway through another president's term). This means that a populist can't consistently win, putting more of a focus on the parties, rather than the candidates - in theory. In practice, populists still have an advantage, just parties can't abuse their populist candidates, so this was partially successful after all in curbing populists. But in general, safeguards have a habit of corrupting and turning into tools - such as gerrymandering, for instance.
What I'm trying to say is that there's no way to make the system skew towards competence, because the incentive structure to do that doesn't exists - like all democracies it skews towards mob rule, and laws and regulations attempting to preventing mob rule will be abused for the most part by those in power.
Rather, the focus should be the constituents. Focus on creating a smarter and better informed voter, and have a reliable and impartial third party responsible for detailing the basics of the issues, and the circumstances. Or at least that's what I'd like to say, except the system to do that is open to corruption as well (see, the democracies of the world we live in today), and the solution to that is to ban the government from any form of interaction with any media or education system, but that has its own problems. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is a rather complex topic with no easy solution, but at the very least I'll tell you two things - one, systems tend to corruption, so it's best to settle with making the system skew *away* from the corruption that already exists. Second, one of my favorite Winston Churchill quotes: (and this one actually was said by him.)
"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time"
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Require one year of paid compulsory public service in order to vote, or run for office. This answer relies on the theory that only things truly earned via efforts are really appreciated. Only through appreciation of one's responsibility can better decisions and practices ever hope to be accomplished.
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**Allow citizens to proxy their votes.**
When filling in your ballot, you vote for your leader of choice, but you may also proxy your vote to any other citizen of the country. By doing so, you would be saying:
*"If it were up to me, my vote would be for [leader/party],* **but if possible, I would rather my vote be given to [this other person],** *and therefore cast to whichever leader/party they have chosen."*
This would allow people to give their vote to someone who they trust to vote better than they themselves could. This isn't something fundamentally new, as people already can and do seek advice from others and possibly allow this information to influence their vote. But building it into the system would give people an option that is easier to use.
For certain, this system would change the political ecology considerably in more ways than I could possibly understand or foresee, but here are three simple points to consider:
* This system is fair because it would be the free choice of every
citizen to give one's vote in proxy or not. Everyone could
ignore it and simply vote normally, and we have, worst-case, a
democracy no different from most actual ones today.
* This system is safe because nobody (outside of vote counters) knows
who has given their proxy to whom. There could therefore be no
extortion, threats, or ways to force someone to give over their
proxy; any more than one could threaten someone to vote a certain way
in the first place.
* This system is more computationally expensive than a regular vote,
because there could be multiple layers of proxying, and possibly
cycles of proxying that need to be broken. (Any votes caught in a
cycle of proxies would simply go to the leader/party named by the
original voter; same as with any votes proxied to a person who doesn't exist/is deceased/didn't vote, etc.) Perhaps it would also need a more complex oversight
to avoid fraud.
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# Requirements to run, not to vote
First, I would like to point out that what you are suggesting (or at least something similar) *supposedly* exists for United States Presidential elections. Rather than being based on the raw, popular vote, that vote produces an Electoral College of theoretically more intelligent and informed individuals who then choose the President. Obviously, this has various flaws, including the collegiate balance vs the actual vote, the qualifications of the electors and their political bias.
So rather than trying to change the voters, let's change the candidates. The US Constitution already places age limits on many elected officials, under the dubious belief that age somehow equates to wisdom. Maybe that could be kept, or maybe it should be discarded. But at the very least, we would add more requirements to run. Such as:
**Education**: The candidate must have completed a minimum level of schooling, and must pass an examination to prove that he or she learned and retained the knowledge.
**Psychological**: The candidate must undergo a series of psychological tests, to attempt to ensure that they are not violent, delusional, reactionary, etc.
**Competence**: The candidate must take an exam, showing that they know and understand the rights and responsibilities of their intended office.
There could be others (fiscal? criminal history?).
All I know is, when I apply for a job, they check for more than my ability to win a popularity contest. Politicians should be the same.
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Since I first saw Slashdot in the (90's?) I've been kind of obsessed with the idea of an expert system for voting. Slashdot isn't perfect, but the most important/interesting/useful comments generally float to the top. Perhaps think of a combination of Slashdot, StackExchange and in particular the Skeptics SE site along with an "argument-graph" building system.
People could vote on and discuss various arguments until one side or the other is clearly superior--and if you don't have one side CLEARLY superior to another, maybe you just don't do anything until it is.
It's not like by nature we can't find a conclusive answer to most issues--Skeptics does a pretty good job of coming up with a single correct answer to a given question with an abundance evidence to back it. People who are trying to push lies, disinformation and various agendas through the manipulation of facts don't fare well on Skeptics.
Since our arguments and Votes on those arguments are contributing to a knowledge base, laws could also be re-evaluated as things changed (If an assumption turned out to not be true an argument might change and the law may need to be re-evaluated)
As for electing officials -- a candidate could post his views on various topics and his promises (Let's call them goals instead). These would be evaluated over time. As long as people still wanted the things he was doing, he might stay in office. If the results of his policies were problematic or his actions don't reflect the goals presented when he was elected, the arguments (and votes on those arguments) may turn against the politician and he is voted out at the next election.
By the way, as for why I haven't made this expert system yet, I don't have the expertise to model an argument. I think someone might... you'd have to ensure it was broken into points and every point was clear, simple to understand, weighted by how much it relates to the argument and supported by evidence. I'd LOVE to see a fully modeled argument broken down into it's components like this--has anyone seen such a thing?
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You are asking about a "Meritocracy".
Some way to make this work is to have a persons' vote count more strongly (twice, triple, quadruple) depending on his/hers achievements in life.
Finished college? +1 vote, got a PHD? +2 votes.
Votes can also be earned by taking an exam for that specific election or referendum (asking questions about "which standpoint does party A hold?" "which option takes the most taxpayer money?"; making sure to not count opinion), this allows informed people that did not have advanced education to still have the impact they deserve
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The system you are looking for is classical **Democracy**, not current pseudo-"democracy", we have at hand. The ideas of classical Aristotelian democracy are exactly what your are looking for!
What the difference?
Voting is allowed only for "demos" - i.e. for people owning their own business. But not "stakeholders" (only complete ownship counts - personal or family)
UPD:
Why it is fair?
People who work for themselfs have deeper responsability, because they answer to life itself (if they fail - they lost their status), not only to law or to some "big daddies". They proved that they can take care of themselfs and their employers. They proved that they can make dessisions and this dessisions proved to lead to some success.
To ballance this system those voting rights should come with some civil obligations, like regular mandatory military and/or civil services (sort of police, firefighting , medical, govermant paperwork) or smth like that.
The result would be sort of Heinlein fashism.
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If you want a government based on intelligence, why bother with votes at all? Why vote for a law when you can select one based on peer-review research, mathematical models, simulations and historical data? It could work if the government system is completely transparent and if every member of society has the right to submit his own research, data, proposals or review and critique other's submitted data.
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It seems like the simplest solution would simply be to raise the voting age to, say, 35. It doesn't discriminate between individuals, is easy to administer, and is merely a modification of an existing qualification (a minimum age) rather than adding something new. And virtually everyone who isn't in their early twenties can probably agree that age brings at least a little bit of wisdom.
That said, in most countries there's a political party that benefits from the unwisdom of young voters, and would never willingly give up the chance to manipulate the young for their votes. That's why you can never take away suffrage, only expand it.
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In my system, there are no elected officials. It is *pure democracy*. Furthermore, elections are used both to legislate *and* administer justice (the entire population is the jury). While everyone is legally allowed to vote on any issue whatsoever, their vote is weighted by a "test" constructed by the litigants.
In the case of a crime, the plaintiff and the defense will each lay out their version of events, presenting all evidence publicly. All debate on the evidence is also a matter of public record. Jurors can also *upvote the arguments* to cause the most popular arguments to be most prominent. Every argument is digitally signed by its author, to prevent spamming/trolling. Citizens who abuse the system anyway are separately sued for abuse of the legal system, with heavy consequences.
In order to ensure that jurors are aware of all of the relevant facts, a question database is constructed by each side, containing questions strictly about the asserted facts of the case (no opinions). The case remains open for a set duration, like 3 months. When a juror is ready to cast a vote on the outcome, they take the test, in which an equal number of questions from both the plaintiff and the defense are presented (say, 50 of each). Their vote is then weighted by the *minimum* score of both tests (to prevent blatantly biased voting for one side). Jurors self-select, but there must also be a quorum of votes for the matter to be considered settled. If there are insufficient jurors, then a public bounty is offered until sufficient jurors have voted.
The idea is that jurors will self-select issues in which they have a personal interest and passion, and hopefully, above-average expertise. It's "fair" in the sense that literally anyone is allowed to vote. But you temper a tendency towards mob rule by forcing jurors to acquaint themselves with the facts of the case on a very detailed level. Hopefully, seeing all of the facts as presented by each side would tend to make jurors more reasonable. Finally, all votes are a matter of public record. So if some jurors are strongly biased in the cases they vote on, that also becomes part of their public reputation.
This system makes jury tampering very expensive. The best you could hope for is to bribe a large number of people to vote your side, but still learn enough about the case to pass the test perfectly. The fact that jurors are putting their name on their vote should discourage manifestly corrupt votes. If jurors are willing to cast corrupt votes in full view, then your problem isn't your legal system, it's your citizens.
For legislative cases, the "plaintiff" is a legislator that wants to introduce a new law, while the "defendant" is any counter-party that opposes the passing of the law. Everything else works the same way as court cases.
Note that there are no judges controlling courtroom procedure. That is by design. Power corrupts, so this system decentralizes power to the greatest extent possible. Also, while professional lawyers would exist, their job would primarily be to craft the best test questions for the case, rather than rely on courtroom procedure and paperwork to overwhelm the opposition or win on a technicality. All evidence is admissible, but if any evidence is found to be fraudulent, then the party introducing said evidence are themselves exposed to a fraud lawsuit, with extra penalty for perverting the course of justice. All witness testimony is admissible, but again, if a witness is later found to be lying, they expose themselves to additional punishment.
Although there are no formal judges, something like professional jurists/legal scholars would emerge, as some people would choose to participate in court/legislative cases almost exclusively. They would write the highest-quality opinions, and most people would "sign on" to their opinions most frequently. They would not be *elected*, except by *upvote*. On the other hand, you could not fire or impeach such an individual, either. Their influence would depend entirely on their public reputation. It would be incumbent upon society to downvote their arguments if they turned out to be citizens of low character.
My system includes other features which help this succeed, like radical transparency, a complete social safety net, and a special compensation system for participants, but describing those in detail is going too far afield.
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**The problem isn't the voter but whom they get to vote for**
When you have a choice between two clowns, you always end up with a clown. It doesn't matter how many votes certain people have when the problem is in who they get to pick from.
Just look at the last American election. The vote was really between a narcissist and a sociopath. The result was never going to be good whomever you picked.
If voting was more split up. Everyone is split into local groups of 100. From the 100 one person is selected. Those selected form groups of 100 and vote for one person. Keep repeating until you have enough people left to run government. I'd imagine 100 is local, 10,000 is zone and 1,000,000 is federal from the federal candidates a president is selected.
This way political donations don't come in, party politics don't come in, money does not come in and non performing people get demoted or completely removed quickly next election.
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Let us instead pretend that we can see the future and humanity has survived so they must have found a way.
**EDIT: The only way to stop the ignorant from messing with a system that is fair is to make the system so good to everyone that the ignorant do not bother to try. This is the long term goal of any civilised society, sadly no society currently rates as civilised.**
In the future I see the following features in place to prevent the most egregious abuses of modern politics. In no particular order because all will need to be in place before humanity will survive and they accommodate and in fact rely on the strengths and weaknesses of human nature.
Open Source politics, there is total openness in all matters political, as in no secret slush funds and daily whistle blowing for those who care to read. (look into the roots of the GNU/linux movement and what powers the internet)
Global consensus on governance because we have reached a point where the pretence that resources and environmental harms can be ring fenced is over, all laws and policy must have "globally sustainable" as the first test and then other tests to follow.
All voting is personal, physica and secret, this prevents vote fraud, rigging, buying, coercion, hacking, supports apathy. A must at **all** levels of government. Secret voting eliminates the lobbying curse. (check out the [Cardboard box reform](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gEz__sMVaY) for sound reasons)
Multi tiered governance as not everyone wants to have dogs barking and firework bans and people must be able to find communities of like minded people to enjoy life. Needing to DNA type all dogs so their poop can be attributed to their owners is taking it too far and that law should stay in some paranoid corner of the world where the people all want it.
Personal rights are supreme as long as you respect them (you must offer the same rights to all others). Presumed innocent, no slavery, right to replace your DNA (one clone or two sexually reproduced kids) but no right to breed others out of their share of the Earth, total freedom of movement. (look up **Robert Green Ingersoll**)
Citizens initiatives at any time are enough to raise a vote of NO CONFIDENCE in ANY elected official if they raise as many supporters as the elected official received votes to gain office. This will keep the elected officials honest to their election promises. (see writings on **Demogarchy by Dennis Beckett**)
Any tier can pass a law restricting only those they supervise as long as a higher tier has not passed a law preventing such a restriction of such rights. (There must be buy in to any restrictive law, this means the laws are just, necessary and valuable or they would not have been asked for, an easy way to get this started is that all law proposals must have come from a [citizen driven initiative](https://www.kansalaisaloite.fi/fi/ohjeet/briefly-in-english), lobbyists and politicians must educate the citizens)
**and the last one that lets humanity survive:**
Anyone can form a region of governance of any size they can unanimously motivate under or encompassing any others that have voluntarily accepted to this. The precondition for a region of governance is that they have a SUSTAINABLE (ie. 1000 year plan) budget to pay an agreed number of **citizen dividend**s at the poverty line to every citizen they plan to govern. This is the only way that humanity can put a cap on population. If it is locally managed based on the available resource. Those who opt-in are the ones who have to see to it that their leaders have enough to sustain their poorest. (see Guy Standing and Rutger Bergman for reasons and ideas on Universal Basic Income)
**(a few later additions)**
There can never be a single leader at any tier for any purpose as this eliminated the voting, so 3 or more odd number of leaders. *"Sadly the easiest way to subvert any important system, with leaders, is through the leaders." Kalle Pihlajasaari, 2015*
All elected posts are volunteer posts. You get paid the citizen dividend like everyone else if you want to be a boss of others. If you have the skill to increase the GDP enough to increase the citizen divided then everyone gains and not just you.
Voting is totally optional and many people are expected to only vote when things are not working. The goal of the system is to be sufficiently OPTIMAL as in reaching a adequate working solution (like TeX that has a version number that asymptotically approaches perfection but never reaches it because the extra effort no longer brings detectable gains). Such a enduring system no longer needs the constituents to vote unless there has been a slow change in demographics of an area and the local majority want to ban dogs barking after 8pm.
**(end off additions)**
The **last one** makes politics into a mutually agreed on win-win situation instead of the serfdom that it is today where some incumbent says you have to pay taxes and maybe your vote counts for something.
(I may have forgotten some things but the idea is that it must be simple and survive for thousands of years otherwise the cost of continuously maintaining the type of system gets too high for no true value. We should have reached peak politics by now and be moving rather towards the plateau phase where things are predictable and beneficial to everyone.)
**EDIT:**
I suppose I should explain why the sustainable manifesto answers the OPs question. The basic premise is that eventually human nature will prevail as has been shown to work in all spheres of life. People will work to feed their families and gather to protect their communities (bucket brigades, barn raising, militia, hay days). What present day politics has done is take the will and common knowledge of the people out of the loop and replace it with propaganda manipulated bullying.
Human nature is such that people will do the right thing if they know what is the right thing is and it does not conflict with immediate survival. People just need a way to let those who want to rule that they get to rule if they get the job done and can keep ruling for as long as they get the job done but are out on their ear as soon as they no longer get the job done.
The thought that meritocracy will be a good system is flawed as it makes the primary presumption that someone else knows what is the best for someone else. Certainly a high standard should be expected in leaders but leaders should lead because they are capable and not because they are charismatic. The way to get rid of the junk and draw in the capable ones is if the junk gets voted out promptly and charismatic ones see the value in their effort.
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Generally people frown on tests because the test givers have the ability to manipulate the vote.
Instead, you could let each candidate state what their platform is, and the test is simply that you know the candidates platform. The test could be administered in a written, other visual, or an oral format, and can be taken as many times as needed until passed. Doing this lets the candidate ensure the individual understands their stance or story without letting anyone elevate one over the other. It also ensures the voter shouldn’t be barred from voting as they can continue to take the test and can get it in any format needed, but it would guarantee the voter at least knows the issues at hand and what the candidates say about them before voting.
Not strictly skewed to intellectualism, but a check for at least having voters be informed. It would definitely require a lot of checks, be open to all, agreed upon by both sides, etc. Theoretically it would at least solve the informed voter issue.
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I would echo the sentiment that barriers to vote are always at severe risk of manipulation to exclude or minimise the voting impact of certain demographics eg. Jim Crow laws, gerrymandering and voter id.
Meritocracy/technocratic systems with voter/politician weighted decision making are still susceptible to issues regarding skewed or corrupt oversight. This is the inherent flaw of hierarchical social contracts ie. governments where transparent and direct accountability is not enforced. Rating systems are still inherently a weighting optimisation problem and will not guarantee improved decision making every time.
If you really have to pursue a voter trust/intelligence rating system I would suggest 4 conditions:
1. Public transparency of how competency ratings were acquired.
2. A system where score decays over time ie. where your rating isn't just another accumulated asset.
3. A method for the general masses to appeal/veto certain proposals ie. a mechanism for social utility of minorities to triumph otherwise net positive utility proposals (utility distribution weighting and not just net aggregate calculations).
4. Perhaps a system for tracking citizen benefits and a requirement to counter-balance negative utility outcomes. eg. Compensation/tax cuts when negatively impacted.
The recurrent theme as you can see is the need for an impartial and effective bureaucracy to properly manage all this. So the need for transparency and the ability to audit needs to be preserved. Think blockchain trust rating if you really need to handwavium the technology.
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What you describe is actually a fact of live in many democracies - all democracies only elect a few positions, while most positions are regular career positions for the bureaucracy. This bureaucracy just works it's thing, mostly irrespective of the current government. Additonally, many if not most policy decisions are done in expert groups and which very little input from elected officials.
There are few policy positions which really rile up voters and cause shifts in voting preferences. This only happens if a policy change is politically charged.
For example, consider something like a safety standard for buildings vs. a porposed change of a tax. The latter will be discussed by voters and may cause shifts, the former rather not.
As such, if you want an effective state, ensure that you have an efficient bureaucracy AND make sure that your political climate is calm. In this environment skilled people will make most of the dicisions without a riled up public interfering. Regular elections make sure that new blood is injected in regular intervals, but honestly the biggest problem today is that parties are themselves bureaucracies and tend to maximize voting success without regard to the qualifications of the elected to actually govern (Donald Dump, Johnson?) .
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Most answers focus on changing voters and pretty much all came to the correct conclusion: Changing who is allowed to vote will lead to worse results, because, ultimately, the person in charge decides on who can vote.
Let's look at it from another perspective. You want the voters to elect good candidates, but you can't make voters more informed, because most voters don't actually care. That means you need to *change whom they can vote for*.
While a system that limits the selection of politicians can and probably will eventually devolve into an oligarchy, for a time there will be a meritocracy where the politicians will be competent.
A way to limit it would be to make "politician" a university course which can be taken by anyone at any time in life for free and teaches the basics of economics, science, sociology, history and all that to anyone who wishes to get into politics. The course can only be failed by non-attendance. It might possibly have tests that are made public whenever that politician tries to get elected to anything so voters that do care can see that he got an F in History 101.
This *will* devolve into an oligarchy once an elected ruler figures out that he can influence what will be taught to future politicians and changes the curriculum. Especially since learning about corruption in the history courses will give him the skills to corrupt the system. The faculty needs to have a strong tradition of non-partisanship and needs strong protection from interference into the curriculum to slow down the devolution. However, this, in turn, will lead to the professors essentially deciding on the eligibility of candidates, including any bias they might have.
You can have a parliament similar to those of some European countries (e.g. [Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_representation)) to limit the power of a single individual to corrupt the system, though if enough of the wrong politicians get elected, even that is no safeguard.
It's not a good system, it will eventually fail, but, in my opinion, any democratic (I'm considering non-democratic systems as already failed for the purpose of this answer) system will devolve at some point in time.
Allowing anyone to vote equally and anyone to be elected, like in many current systems, delays the fall better than any other system that has been tried and anything that deviates from that by adding bias or limits will only accelerate the fall.
Strong traditions and a well educated public is the best safeguard against corruption.
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Your first point has some incorrect implicit assumptions. IQ has been shown to have no predictive power about success or competence only their lack thereof, meaning values much below 100 are informative (you know you can't depend on those people) while high values carry no information (unless all you're interested in one's ability to solve unrealistic problems). So, you may use IQ as an example for when they *had* tried it in the past with disastrous results; it would be a step in the right direction to misspell the myth of IQ. Real life needs *robust decision making under uncertainty, ambiguity, and incomplete information;* IQ measures none of that.
Moreover, meritocracy assumes knowledge and wisdom make a good leader. It sounds quite logical but **a)** merit is often hard to distinguish from luck, **b)** knowledge of local issues by even an extremely smart and wise individual who's far from that place is, and will always be, seriously limited v.s. the collective wisdom and accumulated knowledge of local issues by the locals (I suggest you to read Hayek's economic Nobel speech), and **c)** it completely ignores character, motivation, and possible conflicts of interest. Instead, agreeing with Nassim Taleb that **people are dumb whenever they have no skin in the game,** the solution is to arrange things in ways that decision makers are directly responsible for their decisions. This will quickly remove those who are unfit for the job, not necessarily by voting but by bankruptcy due to paying for damages caused.
Being uninformed is just another way of saying the issues they vote on are not things they are directly affected by. **You don't get "better" voters by applying a filter but by keeping things local.** People have clear knowledge and firm opinions about local issues that matter to their life, so keeping those in the hands of the locals will make informed voters. What counts as local may differ based on the scale of the issue. Small neighborhoods should vote on the local school, the speed limit on their back streets, and how much to spend on the local park; things can be public (skin in the game on the social level) and informal as there's no need to over-regulate things at this level. Cities should vote about building an airport, maybe with some say by other cities in the county; things at these levels need formal processes and regulations.
You may want to consider the concept of the **renormalization group**. Decisions from smaller subdivisions would bubble up to larger ones one step at a time, carrying only the final result while disregarding the number of votes. This would give minorities a voice against the majority, so this would work towards getting your 2nd point covered.
This one goes against your 4th point but I'll still mention it as a matter of curiosity. You may take the idea of the renormalization group further and remove representatives altogether and conjure up a direct democracy. If your world is high tech, devise a system where people could vote on things they care about and delegate the rest to people they trust, probably with the option to override such delegation on a case-by-case basis. Interesting side topics to explore are digital security, privacy, immutable digital record keeping.
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The biggest problem in politics today is tribalism. Right now we even have the supposedly impartial and/or free independant media basically backing one side or the other like they're political activists. So an absolute set of minimum standards must be applied to the media to ensure that they attempt to report what's happening rather than what they're like to happen. Censure for inaccuracy and unprofessionalism should be mandatory and enforced, and although I'd like to say the ownership and funding of the press must be addressed so rich individuals cannot use their position to influence their press output the taxpayer-funded BBC has fallen into the same partisan trap. In practical terms this probably means that we need much more media, from many upstart sources that can report a wider range of views and analysis, and also a truly independant media that exists solely to report news with zero attached opinion.
The next would be to ban political parties altogether, while individuals will still band together, this would mean there's no formal banner under which the tribes can gather, and those alliances would shift according to policy making the tribal politics of today obsolete.
Lastly, my preferred option is to have a second chamber which is comprised of a jury service of citizens. If you voted, you get the chance to be selected for a year's term in the 2nd chamber, where you will be paid and housed and tasked with reviewing the legislature proposed by the primary, elected, chamber. This 2nd chamber would have a cadre of civil service to assist with the technical details, but the reviewing would be entirely performed by citizens. So they cannot make legislation but, liek existing 2nd chambers, would be able to vet and reject unworkable laws. That the chamber is randomly selected, from ordinary people, means there's little nepotism and the representatives serve for a short time means there's little opportunity for corruption.
One of the reasons for the poor democratic system today is a sense of entitlement from the elected officials, many of whom can guarantee their re-election in safe seats. A 2nd chamber of ordinary citizens holding them to account should make them remember who they work for, so they might do a much better job.
another option is to ensure that no seat is safe, a party might have to stand 2 candidates for re-election and the voters could choose which of them they preferred, meaning a scandalous rep in a safe seat would be passed over in favour of his colleague.
[Answer]
An IQ test is required to all voters, score above 100 (the average) and you get 2 votes, score less and you get 1 vote, the idea is that smarter people make smarter choices and are more competent then dumb people... people might argue about the validity of this tests ("they don't represent how smart a person is"\"they only test for a specific type of smartness") but no one would be able to argue that smart people tend to make smarter choices (not 100% true of course but enough to make the system skewed as requested) so as long as you have an accurate enough test for a person intelligence it should be enough.
[Answer]
I propose a system similar to the Chinese Communist Party: To vote you must be a member of the party. There are a lot of rules to be a party member and keep the membership and the power comes with greater responsabilities and risks. In the case of the CCP, for example, Xi is purging those deemed corrupt under his definition of corruption, that ranges from bribery to following alien religions. To climb the Party hierarchy you must show competence, like Xi himself did during his career. Even if you have, unlike China, rule-of-law, the life of a party member would be tough because the party would have his own courts and prosecution systems, like that thing in China where they abduct party members to special prisions.
You don't need to use the communist party: any organization would do, your system could be built around the Freemasonry, for example, and the results would be the same.
The key is: Only party members vote and climb the political hierarchy, climbing is based on doing useful things to State and Party, this power comes with responsabilities and special courts to punish the wrongdoers, apart from the common courts.
The problem: the creation of an entrenched elite answering only to itself. It will be a capable elite? Yes. But when State and Party interests colide it will always choose the Party.
] |
[Question]
[
**Rain-powered transport**
The plain of Soggi experiences a constant rainfall. Can a rain powered vehicle be built according to the following conditions?
1. The plain of Soggi experiences a constant rainfall of 10 cm per day
2. Flooding doesn't occur because the plain is floored with a porous volcanic rock that naturally drains into the Big Wet Lake.
3. The inhabitants have smoothed the rock in places to make roads and other flat areas
4. Wood is plentiful but non-vegetable materials (including metals) are expensive and have to be imported.
5. In this pre-industrial society, stationary rain-powered water-wheels are in common use to power mills and other basic machinery predominantly built from wood.
6. The vehicle is to be made from a wood very similar to oak. Minor metal components can be used but minimally to avoid expense.
7. The vehicle must fit into a 3 metre cube to satisfy local laws. There are no draft animals in this world.
8. This must be a go-anywhere vehicle that does not require any special infrastructure beyond the existing flat-and-level roads - no digging canals or building railway tracks or regularly spaced "charging stations"
Someone has the bright idea to power a moving cart by harnessing rain-power. This will consist of a water-wheel that drives the wheels by a system of leather belts.
The inventor decides that the minimum useful speed is walking-pace (say 1.5 m/s) and that the vehicle must be able to carry at least him (he weighs 60 kg) but preferably a much heavier load.
The vehicle will travel over levelled volcanic rock and has a similar configuration and technology to this one from the 1800s.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/J43qu.png)
**Question**
Reality check: Are there any obvious flaws in this plan that makes it highly unlikely to work
**NOTE**
Some people are suggesting alternative inventions which I find fascinating to read. However they aren't true answers because I'm asking solely about the vehicle and conditions specified above.
**In-story justification**: This guy wants to set up a door-to-door collection and delivery service. He needs to use existing roads and driveways. He can't start digging canals or building large engineering projects. See condition (8) above which wasn't added by me but with which I agree.
[Answer]
Yes, there are flaws. You don't get enough power.
Why?
Rain terminal velocity is about 10 m/s.
10 cm/day of rainfall means you will get on average 1.1 μm/s, or 0.0011 $l/s\cdot m^2 $.
The average power delivered by that rain is given by its weight times its velocity, thus, remembering that 1 liter of water weight about 10 N, we have that the average power is 0.1 $W/m^2$.
To move horizontally just 60 kg overcoming the rolling resistance of the wheels and the bearings, you would need to provide about 1.5 W (assuming wooden wheels with radius 1 meter), corresponding to about 15 square meter in the ideal case of 100% yield, more than the 9 you have available.
In the extreme case where you want to move 60 kg at 1.5 m/s of constant speed up you would need 900 W, meaning that you would need, a collecting surface of at least 9000 $m^2$, which is way larger than the 9 $m^2$ that you have.
And, mind, this is the estimate just for moving 60 kg. If we add to the calculation the mass of the vehicle and its payload the required surface further increases.
[Answer]
As has already been described, you can't get enough power from using the rain directly on an individual vehicle.
Hence the only way to proceed must be to use the rain indirectly.
We're going to build rain gathering header tanks all around the village each one will drive a waterwheel linked to a continuous belt along a stretch of road. A vehicle wanting to pass along that stretch of road will hook itself to the belt and ring the bell for the tank to be opened.
This approach removes the size limitation from the vehicle power supply.
You're still going to have limited power making climbing hills difficult. It's going to be well worth hooking vehicles into the system on the decent as well as ascent. That way you get the [funicular](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funicular) effect of the descending vehicle helping to pull the ascending vehicle up the hill, while also controlling the decent speed and reducing the risk of runaway vehicles.
[Answer]
Just skip Wheeled stuff. [**EDIT**: apparently that is against OPs requirements, but I like my answer so it'll stay]
Replace your roads with perfectly level canals and "power" them by only having one end supplied with water at any time.
You need two between each city (back and forth) and each city needs a very large area to power its canal (unless you use small canoes only), but its viable, and once the canals are set up pretty cheap.
[Answer]
Put the cart in a river and let the flow of the river carry the cart. If the river is shallow enough the cart wheels will touch the riverbed.
The river is fed by the rain, and concentrates water from a comparatively large area into a small stream to give you the watts per square meter you need.
This is unidirectional, but being able to go anywhere was not in the question requirements.
[Answer]
**This answer has been invalidated by requirements added to or clarified in the question after posting, but is being left for future web-searchers to whom it may be useful.**
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Use a system based on a [Funicular](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funicular) to store water in raised reservoirs and convert it to mechanical energy. You can use this to drive carts along rails, like a cross between a cable-car and a tram/railway.
Since you rely on the reservoirs refilling between carts, this is more likely to be a scheduled system for transporting goods at scheduled times, rather than a public ad-hoc transportation.
[Answer]
## It won't work, no way
[This is a repost of a previous, wrong and therefore deleted answer. Orders of magnitude are hard. The deleted answer had accumulated a number of upvotes, showing that orders of magnitude are difficult for others too.]
To fix ideas, let's assume that the vehicle is supposed to work by catching water on its roof and directing it to fall on a waterwheel. Let's compute available power.
1. 10 cm of rain per day means 1.16 µm per second.
2. Suppose the catchment area is 3 m by 2 m = 6 m².
3. This means that 6 × 1.16E-6 = 6.94 grams of water will be caught per second.
4. Say that this water falls 2 meters: since energy is weight times distance, it results in 9.6E-3 × 9.81 × 2 = 136.25 milliwatts.
If 136 mW are quite obviously not enough to power the vehicle; powering the vehicle from rain directly won't work.
Note: L.Dutch had the idea of using the kinetic energy of water droplets to power the waterwheel; see their answer for the computation. It may give more power than trying to catch water and make it fall on a waterwheel, it still is a pitiful amount of power per square meter.
* But wait! We can *charge* the reservoir!
Let's borrow an idea from Mr. Musk's electric cars. We don't have to power the vehicle *all the time:* we can *charge* a reservoir over a period of time and use the accumulated energy at a higher power.
* Let's assume that we accumulate water for 10 hours; the total accumulated energy will be 136.25 mW \* 36000 = 4905 J.
* This is enough to give us 1 horsepower for about 6.6 seconds. Still too little.
* Let's make the charging area larger. We can catch water over a larger area, and then pour it into the vehicle's reservoir. Let's say that we want the vehicle to have 4 horsepower for 1 hour; this comes to about 11 MW of energy.
* To get that amount of energy from water falling 2 meters we need some 546 tons of water. This is a ridiculous amount; there is no way to make it work: the required catchment area would be enormous, the reservoir on the vehicle would be a hundred meters tall, and the vehicle won't be able to move under its own power.
[Answer]
Can you collect the rainwater in a cylinder and light a fire under it turning it into steam? If the rainfall is constant, you could potentially have a steam powered vehicle which doesn't need to be refilled from water towers as it could simply be left in the rain to refill it's water tender. Of course you would have to make some of the components from metal and others could potentially be non-combustible material such as stone. By 1800, the likes of James Watt and Richard Trevithick had created rudimentary steam engines which were just beginning to be commercially useful.
Another option, if you have a world where there are many mills powered by waterwheels, you could use these are stationary winding engines so you'd attach a rope to your cart and have the action of the turning wheel pull the cart to the mill. Once it arrives there, disconnect it and attach it to the next mill. Assuming you are delivering to locations which have proximate mills, this could be an option.
The only other thing that springs to mind would be a rain powered impeller so rain falling on the vehicle is channelled to a drain point, this drain point contains an impeller driving some sort of motor to charge a battery. If it's raining all the time, this would be constantly charging. The cart left in the rain for a while would increase it's battery charge. Problem is, for this to work you'd need metal for the windings in the motor and the charger and it isn't exactly pre-industrial.
[Answer]
Two ways to make it work:
1. A wide catchment area at either end of the road collects rainwater and forces it through a [Pelton wheel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelton_wheel). The wheel drives a chain of belts from one end of the highway to the other. So, you now have two belts on either side of a road, rotating in opposite directions. Your vehicles will latch on to the belt in the direction it wishes to travel and be carried along. The size if the catchment and the flow rate determines the maximum load that can be moved, and the diameter of the turbine wheel determines the speed.
2. Same Pelton Wheel as before, but this time, it is used to charge a battery, which can then be used to drive a motor, moving the car.
[Answer]
This is actually a very similar reason as to why the sparks from a welder don't hurt. Individually they carry very little energy, just like a rain drop.
So you can't use the power of a falling raindrop to power anything beyond erosion.
As for a reservoir, now your fuel weighs more than the power it generates. So no matter what, the plan doesn't work. Water simply doesn't carry enough energy to do much of anything. Your cart would be better off with pedals and having the water collect in a small jug to quench the thirst of whoever is doing the peddling.
[Answer]
I'm going to assume other posters got the value of **900W** correct.
As a comparison:
* An untrained adult can put out about 100W of power when riding a bike.
* A competent commuter could be doing 150-200W
* A race sprinter can do well over 700W but only for short periods.
* Team Sky riders can do 400W for the duration of their race.
At an estimate, your cart would need 4-6 people pedalling through a shared geared axle to drive a roadwheel. Getting up to speed would be the most effort, but once its rolling then speed maintenacne of 5 km/h or 3 mph will have a lower power input requirement.
Something vaguely like this but with less beer.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/D0ZCa.jpg)
Downsides
* significant climbs are going to be very slow, because of the load on the cart.
* Your cart won't be particularly aerodynamic, so more than 5 km/h will be exponentially harder due to wind resistance.
* Metal requirements - ideally you'd have metal bearings and races to decrease friction, and a metal chain and cogs and axles for strength. However hardwood wooden chain/gears and bearings certainly have existed.
* 6 people on a 3 metre long cart will use a lot of load space carrying the people around. I'd guess less than half of the deck will be available for load.
---
Another variation on this is to use the people as draught animals, and have them tow the cart on traces and shoulder harnesses. Perhaps a punishment for convicted criminals?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1enQw.jpg)
[Answer]
Other posters already showed that it seems to be impossible with the given requirements.
However, when able to alter those requirements, those would be my proposals :
* Altering the streets to decrease friction - have your vehicles "glide" on a water film(similar to a phenomenon known as aquaplaning).
For that purpose, you would probably have to slightly adapt the streets, however.
* Besides, if it was possible, I would suggest your character to add a hot air balloon to it's vehicle; it's quite simply to build & attach, and you can travel by wind - as your salesman doesn't really care where he goes next, that should be fine - and if the wind is moving you the wrong way, just make your balloon stick to the ground and wait until wind direction changes ;)
[Answer]
Would storing the energy temporarily be acceptable? Since there is plentiful wood, you could harvest the rain and use a steam engine to convert the energy of the rain in to tanks of compressed air. Which can be used to power a vehicle, similar to the one you pictured.
[Answer]
**Edit to answer your question:** There seems to be no obvious flaw in your idea, if you consider that your story takes place on a planet different from earth. This does not mean you can disregard the laws of physics, it means you can change constants that are specific to our planet in your math.
To be more specific:
After finding the equations you find most suitable, alter the constants that you want, so that enough energy can be sufficiently be harnessed.
Your story is obviously not situated on our planet, which means that you are free to modify:
1. gravity
2. liquid that the rain consists off
3. density of materials for construction
4. mass of the creatures, and the materials they are interested in carrying.
Dont let our planet restrict you, unless you are set on the story playing out there.
If you do want the planet to be as earth-like as possible, play around with changing the constants minimally. Some should give you more likely vehicles, with less modification then others.
[Answer]
Okay, so water from above wont give you enough energy to get your vessel moving? Than combine it with something, that might offer a more lasting impression, like... Sodium (Na).
While that might collide with your "no much metal" rule and maybe with your expected level of technology, you still could put (handwave) your inventor or your society into a situation where the availability of an element that reacts in the same (or even more exothermic) manner with water would be possible.
But I have to admit that I cannot offer any calculations about how much thrust that could apply, nor what it would do to your vessel... at least, there would be enough water around to put out the fires....
] |
[Question]
[
What methods could a medieval society (technology level around 1475-1500 AD) use to measure the temperature of a liquid?
* The world is similar to medieval Britain/Europe, but with more trade
so technologies are essentially shared across the different nation
states
* Magic does not exist
* The measurement does not have to be 100% accurate by today's standards, a crude method would do as long as it was reliable
* Money is not an issue in terms of discovery - the church and a fair amount of merchants are invested in this line of research, but the final method should be fairly affordable (i.e. doesn't require expensive chemicals/materials to make)
* The device will be used for measuring the temperature of water around 10-50°C
EDIT: I'm not looking for a mercury thermometer, I've edited the bullet points to be a bit clearer :)
[Answer]
The simplest method of measuring temperature would be to use a [bimetallic strip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimetallic_strip): You put together a layer of copper and a layer of steel, and you get a spring that will change form significantly with temperature. The two layers have different thermal expansion coefficients, so when you heat the strip, one layer will expand a little more than the other, leading to a very visible deformation. Attach a pointer and put it next to some scale, and you have a quite decent thermometer.
The only technological requirement for this thermometer is the ability to produce relatively thin strips of metal. This may be difficult for a medieval black-smith, but I guess it's doable with enough effort.
---
To the question of precision and calibration:
* First you manufacture the strip, then you calibrate it. Some ice and boiling water should suffice to fix the 0°C and 100°C marks, then you proceed with marking a scale in between for easier reading.
* As you don't need to know where the resulting scale will be located before you calibrate, you don't need any precision when it comes to the form of the strip.
* As you don't need to know how wide the resulting scale will be before you calibrate, you don't need any precision when it comes to the thickness of the two layers. Thicker layers just mean less deformation, and thus less precision of reading, so you want to produce thin layers. But you don't need to produce a specific thickness.
Bottom line: You just do your best manufacturing the strip, then you see how well it works. Strips that turn out not to move much will be sold off as cheap, imprecise thermometers, strips that move more will demand a higher price...
[Answer]
## Boiling water, ice cold water and a binary search
You *did* say crude would do...
### Theory
Humans can't do absolute temperature measurement, but they can do *relative* - I can't tell you how hot my mug of tea is, but I know it's hotter than my hand and cooler than the kettle. This means that if we have a range of objects whose temperatures we know, we can tell if the thing we want to measure is hotter or cooler than them, and so get a range of possible temperatures - with some reservations.
### Method
This is where the boiling and ice cold water come in. Let's assume the ice cold water is about zero degrees on an arbitrary scale of temperature. (we can't use solid ice because of [latent heat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latent_heat), as AlexP pointed out), but we can use water that's *just* above freezing. Let's then assume the boiling water is 100 degrees on the same arbitrary scale. If we mix equal quantities of boiling water and ice cold water, we *should* get a liquid that is 50 degrees on our arbitrary scale.
Now check the temperature of your water against this liquid. Is it warmer or cooler? If it's cooler then your water is somewhere between 0 and 50 degrees.
Repeat this process again with a 3:1 mixture of ice cold:boiling water, and keep adjusting the fractions until you've narrowed it down enough.
### Issues
This only works between 0° and 100°C at best. In fact, because humans burn easily, it only works well below about 45°C. Helpfully this is about the range specified.
Another issue is thermal conductivity - if two objects have different conductivities they will feel different even if they're the same temperature. Fortunately once again, we're comparing water to water so their thermal conductivities are the same.
It also suffers from the fact that the ice cold water will be slightly warmer than 0°C, that the mixture will cool fairly rapidly from its nominal value, so your measurements will be less than exact, and that ice isn't always easy to come by.
Other than that, this method should be fairly accessible and uses practically bronze age technology.
[Answer]
You just need to anticipate by 1-2 centuries the studies that would lead to the appearance of the first [thermometer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermometer)
**EDIT: THIS IS AN EXTRACT FROM THE WIKILINK REGARDING EARLY THERMOMETERS:**
>
> Various authors have credited the invention of the thermometer to Hero of Alexandria. The thermometer was not a single invention, however, but a development. Hero of Alexandria (10–70 AD) knew of the principle that certain substances, notably air, expand and contract and described a demonstration in which a closed tube partially filled with air had its end in a container of water.[5] The expansion and contraction of the air caused the position of the water/air interface to move along the tube.
>
>
> Such a mechanism was later used to show the hotness and coldness of the air with a tube in which the water level is controlled by the expansion and contraction of the gas. These devices were developed by several European scientists in the 16th and 17th centuries, notably Galileo Galilei.[6] As a result, devices were shown to produce this effect reliably, and the term thermoscope was adopted because it reflected the changes in sensible heat (the concept of temperature was yet to arise).[6] The difference between a thermoscope and a thermometer is that the latter has a scale.[7] Though Galileo is often said to be the inventor of the thermometer, what he produced were thermoscopes.
>
>
> The first clear diagram of a thermoscope was published in 1617 by Giuseppe Biancani (1566 – 1624): the first showing a scale and thus constituting a thermometer was by Robert Fludd in 1638. This was a vertical tube, closed by a bulb of air at the top, with the lower end opening into a vessel of water. The water level in the tube is controlled by the expansion and contraction of the air, so it is what we would now call an air thermometer.[8]
>
>
> The first person to put a scale on a thermoscope is variously said[by whom?] to be Francesco Sagredo (1571–1620) or Santorio Santorio in about 1611 to 1613.
>
>
> The word thermometer (in its French form) first appeared in 1624 in La Récréation Mathématique by J. Leurechon, who describes one with a scale of 8 degrees.[9] The word comes from the Greek words θερμός, thermos, meaning "hot" and μέτρον, metron, meaning "measure".
>
>
> The above instruments suffered from the disadvantage that they were also barometers, i.e. sensitive to air pressure. In 1629, Joseph Solomon Delmedigo, a student of Galileo, published what is apparently the first description and illustration of a sealed liquid-in-glass thermometer. It is described as having a bulb at the bottom of a sealed tube partially filled with brandy. The tube has a numbered scale. Delmedigo does not claim to have invented this instrument, nor does he name anyone else as its inventor.[10] In about 1654 Ferdinando II de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (1610–1670), actually produced such an instrument, the first modern-style thermometer, dependent on the expansion of a liquid, and independent of air pressure.[9] Many other scientists experimented with various liquids and designs of thermometer.
>
>
> However, each inventor and each thermometer was unique—there was no standard scale. In 1665 Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695) suggested using the melting and boiling points of water as standards, and in 1694 Carlo Renaldini (1615–1698) proposed using them as fixed points on a universal scale. In 1701, Isaac Newton (1642–1726/27) proposed a scale of 12 degrees between the melting point of ice and body temperature.
>
>
>
[Answer]
Maybe they could build a primitive alcohol thermometer, with ethanol, a metallic little bottle and a reed to work as "straw". By scrapping some reeds or cleaning them with a caustic substance you can make them quite translucid.
I have no idea how you could callibrate it, though. And it doesn't work for boiling water.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/akDHv.png)
[Answer]
If we're only trying to measure the temperature of water then we can make an inverse [Galileo thermometer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_thermometer). A Galileo thermometer works because the density of water changes based on the temperature of the water. Instead of putting spheres with precisely calibrated density inside of a tube of water we just need to put a precisely measured and standardized amount of water on one side of a scale. Then we balance the scale to get the mass of the water. Since we have the mass and the volume density is easy to calculate. The density measure can be used directly like we did for mmHg, or you can translate that to some arbitrary scale.
[Answer]
I suggest an inflatable bladder full of air.
As air increases or decreases in temperature it expands and contracts, meaning you can measure the size of the balloon to get a sense for the current temperature. Make marks on a stick to find relative temperatures of say.. a hot sunny day or a chilly winter.
The bigger your balloon the more accurate this will be.
The tricky parts are
* Making a consistent balloon
* Maintaining the mass of air inside it against any losses to
osmosis.
Inflated pig bladders were used historically as footballs amongst other similar roles, however if you can manufacture reasonably consistent rubber then manufacturing a balloon wouldn't be awfully difficult.
The important factor is that all the balloons *must* be as similar in size and thickness as possible when deflated, which may make them impractical for medieval engineering.
Maintaining the consistent air mass inside it is somewhat trickier, due to leakage (inevitable) it'll slowly deflate with time, not as much as if it were full of helium, but still enough to affect it over time.
The solution is to make a lot of them and when inflating them make sure to match the size of the other balloons. They should then remain a reasonably consistent measuring tool. If a balloon is noticeably the wrong size compared to the others, then re-inflating it to match is easy enough.
It also is unable to account properly for changes in air-pressure and changes to the barometer will affect the apparent temperature.
[Answer]
Imagine you take a proper boiling bowl of water and place it outside in a freezing environment. You carefully check how long it takes before it freezes.
During that process, insert a few different materials and see where on the time scale they solidified (because our starting point is boiling). It would require some research on which material melts when on the scale, but you can fine tune this method as long as it freezes outside.
The time might differ (e.g. 1 ór 2 minutes), but the percentage wont change. If material Y freezes at the 30% passed time, it's 70°C.
Your thermomether would consist of a few tubes, with the know materials. If material A melts, its 25°C. If material B melts it's 35°C and material Z could be 90°C.
This method would become more accurate as more tests are performed, with different amounts of water etc.
[Answer]
Everyone are so hung up on fancy technological inventions.
Since the range is 10-50 °C - just stick a finger into the liquid. If you've tested a few different temperatures you will know if it's 10, 20, 30, 40 or 50 degrees.
* No magic necessary.
* Crude but reliable. Will not break. Body is always very close to 37 °C.
[Answer]
You could do something with the varying density of water at different temperatures. A set of wood and/or metal spheres say with densities that span the range of densities of water at the target temperatures. To measure, you would see which one just floated, or just sank, or just stayed at the same location. The density of water changes by about 4% between 0 and 100C, I think.
[Answer]
I'm not sure if this would meet your needs or not. Here's my method for what it's worth. It assumes that you can obtain ice at a reasonable cost. This ought to be feasible if you are nearish to a glacier or if you pack chunks of ice in sawdust and bury them in winter.
You have a material that is used as a thermal standard. Say an ingot of copper of a standard size. You place it in the water whose temperature you want to measure until thermal equilibrium is achieved. Take the ingot out and place it on a cube of ice of a standard size. Collect the melt water in a graduated cup over a standard length of time and see how much water runs off. This should give you a rough measure of the temperature of the water. You can measure time with a water clock.
This assumes you can do your measurement in a "room temperature" environment. Also, it assumes you aren't worried about how the water temperature is affected by sticking a copper ingot into it. This would work for some applications but not for others.
If ice is not available, you could measure the time it takes for the ingot to return to room temperature. You can feel the difference between someone with a normal temperature and someone with a fever which is probably more accurate than you need. Just have someone compare the "water temperature" piece of copper (or some other known metal) with a room temperature "control" piece.
] |
[Question]
[
There are many interesting places, many interesting worlds. This world is not one of them. It has an argon atmosphere, and the planet itself is made of a very unreactive, insoluble, extremely difficult to erode, not at all shiny or luminous, monotone grey powder. It is about as dense as sand.
You need not think of how this world came to be, but if you can think of a very good reason why such a planet would come to be, then by all means say it. If necessary, the substance may be synthetic, but avoid anything along the lines of complex or organic molecules.
To eat it would be pointless, but it should not poison you if you did. The alchemists who teleport there babble about the dust having unlimited potential, but then nobody actually takes them seriously. Perhaps it does have such properties.
What is the best candidate for such a material?
[Answer]
Welcome to **Planet Basalt**!
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**You want grey? You got grey.** Basalt [is mainly composed of](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basalt#Geochemistry) silicon dioxide(white colored), magnesium oxide(white), calcium oxide(white), aluminum oxide(white), and iron(II) oxide(black). [The darker grey areas that you see on the Moon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_mare) are basalt dust. If there was wind on the Moon, it would definitely be boringly covering the entire surface rather than being in concentrated mildly-interesting 'seas'.
**You want simple? You got simple.** [Basalt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basalt) is formed when silicate-heavy lava cools rapidly when exposed to the surface. Because of the rapid cooling, large crystals don't often form in it, giving a very monotonous, fine-grained texture.
**You want dust? You got dust.** Basalt [weathers quickly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basalt#Weathering) compared to many other rocks, so the winds on this planet will quickly turn the surface into dust. It's good that the planet has a non-oxygen atmosphere, as a lack of free oxygen will prevent the iron commonly found within basalt from [oxidizing and turning red](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Basalt_structures.jpg).
**You want alchemists to think it's useful? Alchemists could think it's useful.** Basalt dust can be used to make a [mineral wool](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_wool) called [basalt fiber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basalt_fiber). This fiber can be used as thermal insulation, and thermal insulation isn't that interesting to the common person. However, the fact that a *vocanic rock can be alchemized into fire resistant cloth* is enough to get any alchemist interested.
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**Addition**, because I forgot it needed to be more boring than sand:
**You want more boring than sand? 90% of basalt is more or equally as boring than sand. The other 10% might catch on fire.** Most [sand on Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand) is composed of silicon dioxide, [which is quite reactive and somewhat water soluble](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_dioxide#Chemical_reactions). Let's see how [the major components of basalt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basalt#Geochemistry) compare to silicon dioxide:
* Silicon dioxide, 45-55%. About half of basalt is just regular sand, so about half is at least as boring/interesting as sand.
* Magnesium oxide, 5-12%. Magnesium oxide [is prized](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesium_oxide#Applications) for being physically and chemically stable at high temperatures, it lowers acidity, and is not very water soluble. So, a bit more boring than sand.
* Calcium oxide, <10%. Unfortunately, [calcium oxide reacts with water](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_oxide#Usage) and produces heat, so it definitely is more interesting than sand. However, it neutralizes acids and dehydrates whatever it touches, so in a way it makes *other* things boring. Furthermore, if just enough water was evenly added to the planet then all of the water and calcium oxide would combine and become [calcium hydroxide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_hydroxide). This chemical is used in the food industry due to "the mildness of its basic properties", which is an exceptionally boring description.
* Aluminum oxide, >=14%. Aluminum oxide is primarily just [used to make aluminum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_oxide#Applications). Other than that, the fact that is pretty inert means that is used as a catalyst in the production of other chemicals, i.e. it makes other things interesting without becoming interesting itself.
* Iron oxide, 5-14%: Iron oxide is [used as a pigment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron(II)_oxide#Uses) because of its consistent coloration and water insolubility, so it's quite nonreactive. However, this means that it can be used to make interesting tattoos.
**In summary, the components of basalt are mostly boring, with one notable exception.** About 50% is just regular sand, about 35-40%(magnesium oxide, aluminum oxide, iron oxide) are used in applications where being inert is a good thing, and 10%(calcium oxide) heats up when exposed to water. **That last 10% of calcium oxide could be what the alchemists are interested in, whereas normal people just see the boring 90%.**
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It's deactivated [Grey goo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo), [Smartdust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartdust), [Programmable matter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_matter), [Computronium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computronium), or something like that.
Basically trillions of nano machines that at some point in the past ate the planet and converted it all into more machines, and then when there was nothing left they turned off. Now it's just this inert dust like stuff. After all this time it's probably harmless...
**Edit: So something a little simpler.**
If you are looking for something like a single element/compound, you could look into most of the transition elements. They are all metal, and non-reactive.
Best possibility I can think of might be powered [Aluminium oxide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_oxide). It's hard, dull grey, and would be extremely interesting to alchemists.
Something like a tungsten dust. It has a dark grey color.
Another possible option is impure carbon. It's very hard, and with the right impurities would be opaque, though possibly not dull.
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[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5b6vZ.jpg)
* Unreactive - check. Crucibles can be made of graphite. [Graphite is the most stable form of carbon under standard conditions.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphite)
* Insoluble - check. Except it is soluble in chlorofluoric acid or molten nickel.
+ Difficult to erode. Not sure about this. It is already a powder as requested. It does not really have anywhere to go, erosionwise.
+ Monotone - check. Take a look.
+ Dense as sand. SiO2 = 2.65 g/cm3 Graphite = 2.26 g / cm3 . Close enough?
+ Poisonous. Nope. Eat up.
+ How it came to be: Lightning in a methane atmosphere produces graphite and soot. This stuff snows down. It piles up. It piles deep.
<https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/1203/lightning-mixes-a-dark-and-stormy-brew-at-saturn/>
+ Unlimited potential: yes. Graphite as graphite is indeed good for a lot of different things. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphite>. But graphite is an avatar of the goddess Carbon, and carbon is the stuff of life.
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>
> You need not think of how this world came to be, but if you can think of a very good reason why such a planet would come to be, then by all means say it. If necessary, the substance may be synthetic, but avoid anything along the lines of complex or organic molecules.
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The planet is a worthless ball of rock whose only remarkable quality is a resistance to corrosion and being drilled through. It might be basalt, or granite, possibly mixed with even harder substances (e.g. moissanite - but not large crystals as they might be valuable). It might be covered in soot. The atmosphere is worthless and unbreathable. That's exactly the point.
It has been *engineered* that way to act as an enormous shield for the civilization (possibly virtualized in computronium) that dwells several hundred kilometers beneath. They weren't interested in interstellar voyages, feared that someone warlike or otherwise unagreeable might come by, so they retreated and made their whole system as unappealing as possible.
(I would not be surprised if some smaller asteroids and satellites in the system were actually extreme-endurance self-repairing kinetic energy weapons, designed to stop the occasional wandering planetoid).
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> The alchemists who teleport there babble about the dust having unlimited potential
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That's more difficult - boring *and* with unlimited potential? Either solve it literally: the dust is *carbon*. Soot, or graphite. Unlimited potential, except it isn't worth the expense to mine from the gravity well. Or it might be made up of the dead nanomachines that deathformed the planet to make it worthless real estate, but in that case the dust might contain some valuable trace elements, which won't do.
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This is interesting an interesting question.
Like Giter answered, you could have the surface made of weathered basalt.
Here is my idea for forming the planet:
In a developing solar system, a rocky planet closer than the snow line gets hit by another protoplanet of almost equal size. They hit at an angle so that a large amount of the planet gets pulverized and thrown into orbit as a large ring system, and the main planet gets almost completely melted. The material in orbit however stays as a very separated ring, and no large moons form.
Because the collision was so large, it knocks the planet out of the system and burns away all volatiles that existed on the planet before. Now a rogue planet, far from any star and left to drift for billions of years, it cools down, re-solidifying the rock in orbit and on the surface into basalt. The particles and moonlets in the ring slowly de-orbit, and pulverize the surface into gravel and dust. The rogue planet, left alone for so long, also gradually releases helium gas from decaying uranium in it's core, which is a noble gas unreactive like argon, into the atmosphere, which doesn't get blown away like it does around a star.
The planet is a cold dark body, flying alone under the stars, with a grey dusty and gravelly featureless surface, and an inert transparent helium atmosphere.
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Your search is doomed. The best you can hope for is to make it a moderately uninteresting planet.
Making it ***too*** uninteresting would attract attention. It would be at the extreme of a bunch of distributions.
So you need to figure out what makes planets interesting to civilizations.
* You want it to have little water. Most of the processes that concentrate ores into useful concentrations have water in some stage of either the creation, precipitation or transport. You don't want zero water. THAT would attract attention.
* You want to have an unremarkable atmosphere but one that is not breathable. For commercial exploitation a breathable atmosphere makes everything a bunch easier.
* Give it a somewhat larger mass and a somewhat larger diameter. This makes the escape velocity higher, the atmosphere thicker, and doing anything on the surface more tiring. The surface light would be dim, the sky murky looking
* Give it somewhat more axial tilt. This makes the seasons more extreme and more unpleasant.
* For similar reasons give it a longer year.
* Put some unpleasant material in the atmosphere. Carbon dust, silica dust. This tends to get everywhere, and make life difficult. If one of the materials is a moderately bad conductor then it has potential to mess up electronics.
* Your planet formed in a region where there weren't many supernovae, so while the crust has a fair amount of light elements it's impoverished in heavy elements.
* It has little magnetic field due to lack of iron. Solar wind blasts at the atmosphere. Good thing you started with greater mass. The solar wind has finally blasted enough away that you aren't stuck in eternal searing black calm like Venus.
* It's a long way from anywhere, off the beaten track
* The stellar system has no asteroid belt to speak of.
As an example of what some civilizations find interesting, consider Poul Anderson's "Satan's World" This was a rogue world between stars. It was going to encounter a fly past near a blue giant star when discovered.
So what use is a frozen planet soon to be well baked?
* It had water.
* No life.
* Normal geology.
* Colder than a banker's heart, mostly. (A few months near a bright star will revive the atmosphere, get the top of the oceans warm, but do little else.
In his novel they used it for mass transmutation, using the oceans at heat sinks. As the planet retreated back into the stellar night the level of transmution increased to keep the planet at a reasonable temperature.
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Depending on their technological level (I assume they teleported with magic or similar alchemic stuff and not an elaborate highly technological machine), you might also take stuff into consideration that today would be very interesting and valuable like titan but useless in past times because there was no way to easy way of fabrication.
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**Background:** A near future world very similar to our own, with two large power blocs (like USA vs USSR back then) in cold war situation, with many proxy wars and small conflicts. The third power is a somewhat small country, with advanced science level generations ahead of the rest of the world.
**Players:**
1. Power block Alpha is an alliance of nations lead by a powerful nation
similar to modern China: a single powerful party in control and frequently
manipulates information inside its own country.
2. Power block Beta is a group of powerful corporate controlling countries from the shadows; at a glance it looks like typical democratic countries, however in truth they perform frequent black ops operations, bribery, hiring mercenary, etc. with money.
3. Third power, Gamma nation, is a technocrat lead by a science committee. Their top priority is scientific progress, and have a top secret facility only known to small group of people that helps researchers to research things much, much faster. They have a small, albeit powerful army, though mainly for guarding their borders and will lose in an all-out-war with either power block. For extremely dire situations, they also have the best special force in the world mainly for espionage, sabotage and assassination.
**Situation:** Since Gamma is so advanced in science but since it lacks the amount of resources needed to guard its independence, they sell their knowledge to both power blocks or other countries in exchange for top scientists, money,
resources, or even land. To keep its independence, Gamma sells different technologies (mostly military) to both power blocks (although this is the latest by the world's standard, those technologies are way behind Gamma's latest). The world knows about this, but either power block is afraid of directly attacking Gamma as they can completely cut off trade ties and fully help the opposing power block, AND afraid of WMD that Gamma hides as its last resort option.
So the main question is, will this kind of diplomatic relations work out well for Gamma? Or will it immediately collapse?
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A scientifically advanced micro-nation could rise to something like superpower status, but it would not do so by selling weapons to the other superpowers. Instead, it would rise by giving something vitally necessary to the peoples of all nations, freely or at an extremely low price which current providers cannot match.
For example, a micro-nation with a unique understanding of cold fusion and room-temperature superconductors could give electricity to the world for one one-hundredth of its current cost while still making a profit. After a few years of such generosity, all other electricity providers will have collapsed, leaving the little nation with a monopoly on a critically needed resource.
At that point, no other country on the planet, superpower or otherwise, can ignore the micro-nation's authority. Any who try, can be defeated by the flipping of a switch. Neither of the bigger super powers can allow the other to conquer or even destroy the micro-nation. What the micro-nation provides is too vital for either side to live without, so each super power must defend the micro-nation against any enemies.
Each side may start to rebuild their collapsed power production industries in order to regain their autonomy, but during that rebuilding effort, the micro nation will be branching out into other sources of authority. It's genetic scientists will start offering low cost food and advanced medicines. Free wi-fi internet access and entertainment television for the planet. Free cargo transport via enormous fusion powered barges and dirigibles. A sufficiently advanced technological country could make itself indispensable in a variety of
ways.
And in the process, it makes itself too precious to destroy... too precious to let any enemy conquer... and ultimately, to precious to disobey.
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**Surely**
England, and later, the UK, has mostly done so all throughout its history. Being a small country in an island, it has changed shirts and switched sides constantly to keep a balance of power in Europe - preventing any European nation to become too powerful.
England managed to get more or less its way by having a large navy. Even if the european powers they faced were much stronger than them, they could not easily attack Britain because of the Royal Navy. In your setting, the existence of WMD is a deterrent enough to guarantee that, even if powers A and B agreed to ally against C, they would do so only in economical warfare, but not full invasion. And economical warfare against a much more advanced economy is not going to work unless they are completely dependent on several resources they lack of. It will always be easier for power C to sell its advanced tech products to anyone than preventing the trade for powers A and B. Even with an embargo, it will only skyrocket the black market prices.
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Let's discuss a few things first.
In your setup, your country Gamma is scientifically advanced. Okay. No problem there. But the level of superiority you are describing does not sound very plausible.
For a brief moment in time, it is conceivable that a breakthrough in one specific field or one other could bring them way ahead of their competitors, but science mainly works by:
a) standing on the shoulders of giants, i.e. building upon the ideas and the research of other scientists, and
b) peer review. That means you join the forces of many people who are themselves experts in the same field, and
c) money. Like in: huge, enormous, fantastically large amounts of money. And some extra, if possible.
Now, being a small country intrinsically means you have fewer people. Having ten times more people gives you (roughly speaking) a ten times higher chance of having a genius born in your country. It also gives you ten times more peer review. and ten times more giants on whose shoulders you can hop around.
Granted, your country Gamma can hire lots of them. But even if they quintuple their numbers of researchers, either of the other country still has twice as many.
That leaves money. Contrary to common belief in western contries, at least since the 90s or so, money has to come from "real work". That is, from fruit grown on fields, things manufactured in workshops, etc.
Some small countries currently excel in something best described as piracy, i.e. finding ways of funneling the revenue of other people's work into their coffers, but while that makes a lot of people in those small countries very rich, this wealth still is not that mch compared to the combined average wealth of a ten times larger country.
And creating more money, so you can spend it on the scientists and their apparatus, becomes a necessity.
True, you can produce fancy stuff with your advanced knowledge, but eventually your customers run out of money to buy stuff with. So this is by no means an endless source of income.
But back to being so very much advanced:
Physics tells us that systems tend to acquire entropy ( = shed energy and order). For your scenario, that means containing so much knowledge in a small space is an energy-rich and orderly state, and you will need to add energy to prevent your knowledge from spreading, since spreading would be the natural thing for knowledge to do.
Scientists often like to talk with other scientists about their findings. If they didn't, they would not be scientists, by definition (see: peer review). Also, those large and strong neighbours will have a highly intrinsical motivation to increase the entropy on your pool of knowledge (a.k.a. espionage). So you will need to spend absurd amounts of energy on maintaining that state of superior advancement.
**Summary**
You can have the state of affairs as you describe them, but not for long.
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Your premise is quite hard. However, there are ways we can slow technological development if we're willing to make your blocs considerably different. Otherwise why would the outcomes be any different? Hopefully some historical context and examples will help to make something closer to the spirit of your idea; though I feel the stated implementation isn't going to be enough!
You say Alpha bloc is like China. I propose we think of Maoist China, or perhaps the Chinese empire before European empires started meddling. Perhaps consider isolationist Japan too. In these cases Alpha bloc doesn't care about the rest of the world. It's a big, traditional, agrarian society, and even if Gamma bloc are trading with them, it's proportionally small enough of a contact to never bother the regime or change mass consciousness. Unless of course Gamma bloc decided an opium war or two is a good idea. The regime may control heavy industries a few steps behind Gamma bloc's own (Maoist Chinese technology during the Korean war), but may also have little regard for or ability to innovate them. Their size and weight of numbers is enough to make the prospect of war undesirable. Land war in Asia and all that.
Beta bloc you describe as democratic. Perhaps they too are agrarian, but in this case more like America's Antebellum deep south, or the city states of ancient Greece. These societies value democracy (under their own terms) but their economies are tied up with agrarian industries, maybe even slavery. That is their tradition, and they're quite happy about it.
Alpha and Beta are both deeply socially conservative, further accentuated by their dependence on agriculture. There's simply too much vested interest in things staying the way they are. What's more, Gamma doesn't have the numbers to be able to conquer either; especially if they're selling both sides basic weapons systems.
Gamma bloc is more like Venice, or Industrial revolution Britain. It is a vast trading empire with a tiny homeland, which values knowledge, and importantly uses this to leverage control. They sell weapons abroad but perhaps these weapons are less capable than their own versions. And of course they never permit their scientists and engineers to leave (like Venetian glass makers); they are intellectual isolationists, permitting trade and travel with restrictions on certain places and people. Because Gamma are not capable of conquering Alpha and Beta, perhaps neither side considers them an existential threat (even with WMD), and so isn't in a rush to catch up technologically. Not that their societies could help it if they tried.
That balance might work, as ultimately Alpha and Beta have their own business to attend to, while Gamma sails about making lots of money and enjoying the fruits of its own research. So long as Gamma doesn't actually try and impose itself upon Alpha and Beta, there's no reason that either society would be forced to change. And thus the technological differences would accentuate over time. Phases of modernisation come to old large powers through shock moments, like the opium wars for China, or the Crimean war for Russia.
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You do so by not giving them power in a form that can be acquired by force.
If you give them advanced technology, the other power blocks don't even need their army, they can simply abduct a couple scientists and their families in a covert operation.
If you give them money, an army can invade, take that money, and leave again.
So you give them something that cannot easily be taken by force:
* The most obvious choice is Religion. Imagine the Vatican in a world of many strong believers. When block A captures the Vatican, the Pope may escape to block B, or die, and the believers in block A will be very unhappy with their leaders.
* Another choice is a unique position in trade, as the middle man for trade between block A and block B. Annexation by either block will cease trade between the blocks.
* Yet another choice is the country being an influential member of an unstable alliance of smaller nations. Nobody can say for sure if the alliance would come to the rescue of the country if it were attacked by either power block, but it serves as a deterrent.
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Cultural inertia, historical background, and the willingness of the biggest superpowers to maintain the status quo.
There are several real world countries, which, although not "third greatest superpowers", have significantly more political influence than what their size would indicate. Exaggerating them a little, they could be good templates for such a superpower.
* The Vatican, for example, although it is less active in world politics as it once was, it has considerable influence despite being less than a square mile in size. You don't want to piss off millions of Catholic voters in your country.
* Israel. Even disregarding conspiracy theories that claim it has absolute control over every aspect of our lives, Israel does in fact have much more political influence (and lobbying power in the media) than what its sheer size alone would indicate. Among other factors, due to its unique history and a large diaspora of rich and influential people in many developed countries, and the fact that you usually don't want to be called an antisemite.
* Other relatively small countries, like Switzerland or Monaco, can be important due to many world-spanning banks and other important organizations having their headquarters there, or as a meeting ground of rich, influential people. Such a country could be used in your story as a neutral meeting ground, allowing to organize shady deals between the two major superpowers, getting significant local power in return.
Having a lot of soft power (cultural inertia, religious significance, historical legitimacy), being the seat of many global financial organizations, being in a good geographical spot, and having good defenses (less military strength than the two major powers, but enough to make any invasion a Pyrrhic victory, especially if you possess nuclear weapons) can make a country have significantly more political power than what any other country of similar geographical size and population could achieve.
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Gamma invented the internet, controls the world's internet infrastructure, manufactures most microchips in use . Gamman software is used all over the world and Gamma has tremendous cyber warfare capabilities that they clandestinely demonstrate to alpha and beta. Should be enough to hold alpha and beta in check.
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The small country can play a big role in keeping the equilibrium among the powers, and therefore will keep existing.
Let's say we can quantify the strength of each block and the number gives an exact forecast of the outcome of an attack (the higher one wins), and let the values being
* Alpha 100 Strength Units
* Beta 90 Strength Units
* Gamma 20 Strength Units
Since no block can be stronger than the other two allied together, and since alliance is the only way to defeat an aggressor, we have that there is no convenience in attacking or in closing an alliance to attack.
This will ensure the existence of the Gamma block despite its evident inferiority.
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In addition to other great answers, you might further limit Alpha's and Beta's scientific capabilities by adding some fundamental flaws to their cultures and societies. Those flaws would be hard to get rid of and would cripple their ability to progress in the same time.
There might be:
Caste system. "no, you can't do science since your father is a janitor". This would effectively limit the country's mind pool to such extent that tiny Gamma might have higher amount and quality of scientists then huge Alpha. This would also allow Gamma to import talents from Alpha as those people are not perceived as valuable by the Alpha's government since they are from lower castes. Also it is important that Alpha would not be willing to implement the same equality policy as Gamma because an attempt to do so would meet fierce opposition from a large part of Alpha's society.
No education for women. "Kinder, Kuchen, Kirchen" way of thinking effectively halves available mind pool. Again, since women are not perceived as valuable human beings by Beta's government, they are not going to prevent "export" of some of them to Gamma. In the same time, an attempt to implement Gamma's policy in this area will be treated as absolutely immoral and unacceptable by Beta's society.
Slavery. "Why would I need a machine when I can deploy a hundred of slaves instead?". Again, slavery reduces mind pool and also prevents technological advancements. It is hard to abolish (since while providing huge benefits in long term, it also ruins slavery-based economy and creates major social problems in short term) while Gamma might further strengthen itself by purchasing some of unfit to hard work and rebellious (but smart) slaves to set them free and provide them with an education.
Religious taboos. "No combustion engines: it is said that coal is great, but oil is the Earth's blood and must not be spelt ever. And no cybernetics: it is said that when people create a machine thinking like a human, it will trigger the end of the world. No this. No that.". Cutting off research in several vital areas would effectively cripple the whole scientific development for the country. They might make some initial advancements in some fields, but inability to do cross-discipline research would slow them down eventually.
Having these or other similar limitations, Alpha and Beta could still be extremely powerful because of their numerous and highly indoctrinated population, while free and open nature of Gamma would give her a scientific boost. It is also important that being both stronger in raw power and indoctrinated, both Alpha and Beta would see Gamma's culture as inferior to them and would despise implementing any of those Gamma's beneficial policies. Even if they recognize that Gamma's policies are more effective and decided to implement some of them at some point, they will find that this would affect the very core of their way of life, so every such implementation attempt would be highly opposed by the majority of their own population and it will take them several generations to at least catch up.
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This would only work temporarily. To make it lasting it has to expand, perhaps annexing peacefully or otherwise it's immediate neighbours. You can't control other leadership any other way but taking over as leaders. You can't say, 'if you don't do X, 10 million of your people will starve to death before you can get to us.' Leaders don't care, if you challenge their authority they'll throw resources at eliminating you. If you have something necessary to their economy there will be constant attempts to either copy it, steal it, or just outright take it.
Stalin said 'One death is a terrible tragedy, ten million is just a statistic.'
But power structures are always fluid anyway, so if it could survive as a superpower for 50 years that's pretty good going.
The biggest danger is always from within, ambitious people not getting what they want will use whatever means necessary to get it. And the more power a place has, the more outside powers will be happy to assist, covertly or even overtly.
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So gamma nation - let's call them Japan - is technologically advanced related to Alpha - let's call them USA - and Beta - let's call them Russia.
Gamma is playing safe using the "you bad bad country, you did us wrong" card toward the Alpha and the "you wanna conquer us? we all die and you get nothing" towards the Beta.
As both Alpha and Beta are more interested in trying each other in different theatres they don't mess with Gamma because it's not worth losing the technology they get from there.
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The question is fairly simple. Could a civilization progress so far as to have spaceships while still using swords, spears, and bows as their most advanced weaponry? (what those weapons are made of could, of course, have improved with better material science)
The question is one of interdependent technology and culture, I suppose. Is it even possible to find a way into space without hitting the obvious alternative applications of rocket technology? Could you even get to rockets without first developing something like gunpowder?
Are there ways of achieving orbit that do not have obvious weapon applications? Something like scramjet engines might allow you to get to orbit with sufficiently low gravity, for instance.
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I would say, **no**, but let me elaborate on why and see if there's a possible way around the issues:
Assuming you still have environmental dangers, accidents and people wanting/having to kill each other:
* Projectile weapons of other sorts have technology that you can use for other purposes.
+ For example, the idea of a crossbow is pretty much a bow with the string pre-drawn. The application isn't that simple, but as long as you have strings and understand the idea of switches and materials, if you need weapons, why not make one?
+ Muskets use the same principle but with explosives instead of a string - again, you will discover explosives by accident and need to understand them. Finding out that they're very effective when placed in confined spaces and tubes is a short step.
* If you figure out how to control explosions and place them in tubes (cannons, mortars, rockets) and you need weapons, you're going to use them that way because, if you don't, your enemies will.
* Weapons and weapon-like tools aren't just for killing people; they're for hunting as well. More importantly, they're used to protect yourself from animals. If this isn't easier, exploration is harder, so is guarding flocks of animals and crops.
+ Also, there's a lot of tools that can be used as weapons: ice-picks, axes, climbing hooks, boot-spikes, dynamite, nets, fences, rope etc. If you *can* think of weapons, you've already thought of using these as weapons.
So, the way I see it, as long as weapons for either attack or defense can occur to you, every technology is a potential weapon. There will be strong environmental pressure to develop better ones and most of them are relatively simple applications of engineering principles.
However, you *might* be able to have a civilization with starships but *no* advanced weaponry [iff](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_and_only_if):
* There is an incredibly powerful cultural drive towards pacifism after rudimentary weapons are developed.
+ This assumes that *for some reason*, *everyone in the world*, the bad, the good and the ugly, decide to be pacifistic. Either there is no warfare or inter-special dangers, or it is conducted through other, more effective (for that species) means.
* Said species encounters *no* other species that doesn't share its own perspective. If they met a regular species, they'd be forced to develop weaponry or be enslaved or wiped out. So such a species would either have:
1. met no one else and is ultra pacifistic
2. met only ultra pacifist species and civilizations
3. has come up with means of attack and defense that are far superior
4. met a non-ultra-pacifistic species and has been wiped out or enslaved already
I don't see any way around these limitations.
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> NPSF3000 argues that a civilization could achieve spaceflight before
> high-tech weaponry if they faced another constant and very powerful
> threat, such as intense volcanic activity that motivates them to
> achieve space flight and other technologies, while reducing the
> motivation for warfare since cooperation would be more important
> against the larger common threat. He further argues that it would be
> unlikely for them to resort to weaponry even if faced with a military
> threat after achieving spaceflight and would be more likely to pursue
> other strategies such as trade, negotiation, stealth and alliances.
>
>
> I agree with this perspective though I consider my prior assumptions
> more likely.
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> *There is a transcript of our chat conversation [here](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/17727/conversation/discussion-on-pacifists-achieving-space-flight) for those interested in the thinking process by which we arrived at the above
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I would argue no.
Technologies are just means of directing energy. The difference between a tool and weapon is where the energy is directed. If you use a hammer to direct energy into a nail, it's a tool. If you use it to direct energy into a person, it's a weapon.
Any high energy technology is automatically a high energy weapon.
Getting into orbit requires a lot of energy and thus any technology that could put you into orbit could also direct energy against people and serve as a weapon.
Consider the Olympus Mons scenario advanced by @Nerrolken. Merely climbing up a mountain or other means to space would in effect store positional energy. If you use that energy to step off into space fine, but you could also use that energy to propel things against the ground below, producing a weapon. It would be like carrying an anvil up on a roof and dropping it on someone.
A space elevator, for example would seem just a structure, but you can run something up the elevator and fling it off the top like a stone from a sling. It could hit objects in space or even the surface at tens of thousands of miles per hour.
Moreover, once you are in orbit, regardless of how you got there. You have vast amounts of stored potential energy. So, anything in orbit with mass is potential weapon.
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The simple answer is no, for rocket flight you need explosives since a rocket is essentially a very long controlled explosion. You could have a peaceful race that did not weaponize them, but that same peaceful race would have no use for swords.
You would need something that prevents the use of rockets in that way such as strong social conditioning, for example maybe only priests are allowed to use rockets and the priests are neutral. You'd still expect corruption to eventually lead them to being used for warfare though and the immediate tactical advantage would mean everyone needed to follow suit or submit.
I can think of three options that might work:
**Atmospheric Flight**
One possibility that would work was explored in [The Land and Overland](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_and_Overland) series by Bob Shaw. In that case there were two planets orbiting so close to each other that they shared an atmosphere. It was actually possible to fly from one to the other using hot air balloons through the shared atmosphere. While technically interplanetary flight I don't know if you would qualify it as space flight though.
**External Forces**
A third party with knowledge of suitable science is acting as a police force and preventing their use as weapons. This intervention could either be subtle and working behind the scenes or be overt and forceful.
**Gravity Drives**
They somehow crack control of gravity without ever developing explosives. They make some fundamental scientific breakthrough that we've missed and from that are able to develop both atmospheric and space flight without needing rockets at all.
[Answer]
**Yes.**
Example 1 - Olympus Mons, a massive mountain/volcano on Mars, is tall enough that it rises above the atmosphere of the planet. It is not at all difficult to imagine that a planet (or moon or something) could have an irregular enough surface that some peak might rise high enough that escape velocity could be significantly easier to achieve through mechanical means, such as a trebuchet-style launcher. The natives would need to master pressurized suits so they could breathe at the launch site, but perhaps the process begins with a "pilgrimage" from lower altitudes, like during an ascent of Everest, where they are able to make and don airtight suits.
Example 2 - Alternatively, you could imagine a planet with an atmosphere that doesn't contain enough oxygen for combustion to occur naturally. The species could become incredibly advanced, but they would consider fire and explosives to be only possible in a lab. Their rockets would have O2 injectors to allow them to ignite, but personal firearms would be impractical, even if theoretically possible.
A physicist could probably poke holes in both of those notions, from a purely scientific standpoint, but as a foundation for science-fiction stories they're both perfectly plausible.
[Answer]
One way I can think of addressing the inherent issues elaborated in [TechZen’s answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/1001/308) and [Saidoro’s answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/978/308) is an **underwater civilisation**.
Our species lives on a planet mostly covered with water. There are tiny pieces of land that can support a rocket-launching site but they are deserts to our species (cf. the Kung in Pratchett’s *Strata).* Thus, there is nothing of value to destroy without going underwater.
Now, you can still cause explosions underwater, but since this is much harder, it is plausible that your species detects the way to make easy explosions on land first.
To go one step further, you can make the ocean not consist of water, but of some non-Newtonian fluid, whose resistance to movement strongly depends on the speed of that movement. This would slow down any fast motions within a short range and strongly prefer melee weapons (something vaguely similar is done in Frank Herbert’s *Dune,* where shields with a similar property lead to a renaissance of melee).
Alternatively or addionally, to avoid people dropping something from space, there could be large underwater cave structures, in which our species lives and which protects it from threats from above.
[Answer]
No, but not quite for the reasons already cited. Getting to orbit requires you to move very, very fast and anything that is moving very, very fast is, fundamentally, usable as a weapon. It is technically conceivable (though vastly unlikely) that a civilization has no hand-held weapons more advanced than sword or bow while also having space flight, but their most advanced weapon would unavoidably be orbital bombardment or some other variety of high velocity projectile or rocket.
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> The question is one of interdependent technology and culture, I suppose. Is it even possible to find a way into space without hitting the obvious alternative applications of rocket technology? Could you even get to rockets without first developing something like gunpowder?
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So, as all the other answers are singlemindedly arguing that this is not possible so I just felt motivated to argue the opposite. As far as I can tell it should be possible actually, though the path there would be a bit different.
# Requirements for rocket technology
So, what do you need to get a rocket into space?
* First and foremost you need a lot of energy in a contained form for the propulsion.
* Second you need the computing power to stabalize the entire thing
* And lastly the manufacturing skill to build something that can withstand these forces
# Contained energy
In our world we use fuel/explosives to power rockets. On one hand in an alternative world where there is no desire for war whatsoever it could very well be that explosives are still used a lot especially for mining and similar tasks. The question however seems to be implying that the race is quite similar to humans regarding their thoughts on war, so what other economically desirable form of energy could be present? What about an electricity based rocket? How could you generate that much energy? Nuclear energy. (And yes, we indeed do not have the technology yet to power rockets by electricity/nuclear energy) Now, thinking back to our discovery of nuclear energy it's simple to say it's not possible to discover nuclear energy without discovering the atomic bomb as well, however if you imagine a society where the development of an atomic reactor is driven by the wish for more energy the thought of "hey, let's build a mini reactor and let it go out of control dropping it in an enemy nation" is quite far fetched. To make this crazy need for energy more realistic one could say that we have a world that has discovered electricity, however doesn't have nearly any fuels to burn (so alternative energy sources were discovered earlier on than in our world).
# Computing power
Well, the obvious answer to this one can be found in computers/electricity. The only alternative being humans specialized for computational tasks such as in Dune (if I remember correctly). Both I believe can be developed quite reasonably without war, so that's another yes.
# Manufacturing skill
This might be the hardest requirement to fulfill as looking back at our own history developments in this area have been massively fueled by war. Still though, in any world that values innovation over time this skill could be developed... it just would take **long**.
In the end the central question comes whether you can find a sufficient drive for innovation apart from war. If you include things like magic (in the sense of technology) and religion (in the sense of an absolute basis for norms and morals) it might be quite possible to think up a world where space travel is reached without war, though it has to be noted that a sufficiently evil individual could still let the rocket crash land in an area of his choice, so the moral qualms about killing people do need to be seriously higher.
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Yes, absolutely. It becomes trivial once you start thinking outside the planet.
Consider a cluster of space habitats that *waves hand* had a technological collapse among the human inhabitants - the first move from planets to habitats might have been done with rockets and coilguns and nukes, etc., which aren't a big distance from various advanced weapons, but that was a long time ago and none of that is done anymore.
Maintenance of habitats is fairly easy and could plausibly be done with primitive inhabitants (either low tech tradition is good enough, or high tech automated systems that the humans don't even realize exist), so the lack of rockets, etc., don't need to imply inevitable hab failure either.
Once you're in this setting, space travel becomes easy: just walk out the airlock and kick off the wall. For longer distances, you head out to the surface of the habitat and let go, allowing its rotation to launch you at whatever that tangential velocity is.
This won't be enough delta-v to get you far.... but you might already be somewhere quite interesting. A cluster of habitats that can be traveled between with precise timing of your launch, perhaps. Maybe it is in a moon or ring system with little gravity gradient, meaning you can move around slowly, and it takes a long time to get somewhere, but you don't need high tech rockets.
BTW rockets ARE possible. Pressurized or heated air or water shot out a nozzle produces thrust. That'd foil typical habitat recycling, so you'd need to replenish it, but that's certainly possible to do. Not great rocket performance, but again, might be good enough for a friendly setting.
Can that make a weapon? Sure, but a pretty poor one. You won't bring a Super Soaker to war, and a steam rocket is probably unreasonable anyway.
Oh yeah, and while the fragility of orbital habitats is mostly mythical (they don't instantly fail if there's even a large hole punched in them, though that would need to be repaired), the requirement of maintaining your shared home might just create a disincentive of weaponizing certain technologies anyway.
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Bottom line though is I think a lot of people neglect the possibility of changing the physical setting when wanting to engineer a situation. You can always do that, even if wanting to stick within the realms of hard sci-fi - don't feel limited to just natural bodies in the solar system!
[Answer]
Yes.
I'm imagining a society on a planet, that has extremely harsh conditions.
The society would constantly struggle to reproduce and protect against this environmental hazards.
In my opinion, conflict comes from limited resources, which is mostly caused by overpopulation.
Therefore I could imagine a world, where resources are abundant, but environmental hazards limit population, leaving no reason or room for conflict.
Simple weapons may still be required for hunting.
Rocket technology would need to be created for some other reason.
Let's assume explosive materials are very abundant, like there are gasoline lakes (which would also explain the environmental hazards). And there are natural examples of propulsion engines, like octopuses and geysers. Instead of steam-engines powered by coal, they developed gas turbines very early and rocket engine based transportation.
Another factor could be, that there is a very friendlier Planet very close, like in a twin planet constellation. Once astronomy is advanced enough, scientists could show that conditions there are much better, creating a strong urge to get there. And their long peaceful tradition may prevent the from waging war once they arrive there (Although probably not ^^). Or thing there aren't that peachy after all, therefore they keep improving their space travel capacities. Space may also be a better place to live than their home planet, especially if they don't suffer from long exposure to zero gravity, like humans do. So they may actually choose to live in space, excelling in automated planetary harvesting.
If the start raging war once they established their live in space is another question though, but that is out of scope here :)
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Is it possible? Yes, Many of our weapons were other discoveries that we weaponized, if you have a very inquisitive race but isn't particularly violent they would likely get to space faster by not wasting time on offense/defense technology. We are very competitive and fairly violent. When nuclear fission was conceived, energy might have been the goal but it was immediately put to work as a devastating weapon.
As far as [gunpowder](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_gunpowder), it was invented by the Chinese and they had fireworks long before they started really using it in any way for war.
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Anything is possible. That said, I doubt that any plausible *human* society would ever get to the point of building spaceships without also having built some more advanced weapons, since humans are a pretty belligerent species.
However, if we had a species that was *competitive* without being *combative* amongst themselves, any weapons they may *use* could be only that required to discourage opportunistic predators that might like to eat them. Their competitiveness could lead them to develop new forms of technology, to go further, higher, faster, yet despite all this competitiveness, it would have to be *friendly*. Such a species could well be much more herd-oriented, perhaps with an individual's status within the herd based on personal achievments and/or corporate achievements and the individual's contribution to them.
It can be argued that by the time you have a spaceship, you must have some very powerful weapons, but a weapon is defined as such by the purpose for which it is intended by its makers, and if they never *intended* their technology to maim or kill - despite its potential to *actually* do so, then it is not a weapon. It is one thing for a species to say "This effect is dangerous, how can we weaponize it?" (the human approach), another for a species to say "This effect is dangerous, we must be careful that when we use it, no-one gets hurt". Even the fact that an effect can be harmful and may even have caused fatalities is not the same as saying that it is a *weapon*.
Take the laser as an example. When sufficiently powerful, they can blind or burn humans. Dangerous? Certainly. How many humans have been directly killed by exposure to a laser beam since they were invented? I am not aware of *any*. Are they weapons? *No.* However, lasers can potentially *enable* better weapons, even though they are not weapons themselves. However, someone must make the choice to do that, and our hypothetical alien species may simply just not think of any weapon more advanced than that needed to survive their own environment.
Just because this species does not *maintain* weapons more advanced than it needs, does not mean that they could not repurpose items of their technology *into* weapons should the need arise - such as an encounter with a belligerent alien species.
To use an example from literature, in one of Larry Niven's known space books, humans have become pacifistic explorers, and their ships do not carry weapons. A human photon-drive ship encounters a kzin ship (kzin are warlike carnivores) that can outmaneuver the humans, and the kzin decide to kill the humans after a kzin telepath determines that the humans are not carrying weapons (According to the kzin, anyone who goes about unarmed deserves to die). The kzin weapon is somewhat like a microwave gun and begins heating the human spaceship, intending to roast the humans in their ship. The humans, realizing that they have no weapons to defend themselves with, realize that they must improvise *something*, and turn their photon drive - which is essentially a giant laser - onto the kzin ship, destroying it.
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In a rigidly controlled society, like the Empire in Fables, the only weaponry that would be necessary would be what was needed to maintain control. This would especially be the case if there was some way of controlling the elites, such as a deeply entrenched system of honor and duels, maintenance of control through ritual marriages, or simple mind control. In this kind of system, advanced weaponry in general would be something that would be controlled because it might destabilize things, so if it existed, it would be directly under the control of the Emperor/God-King/Grand Panjandrum. It would probably take them a long time to reach orbit, but they might manage it eventually if they had some sort of strong motivation.
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How about this plot:
"Civilized mankind" leaves the planet after a more suitable planet was found, which does not undergo a climate change; and they take all their movable goods and inventions with them, just leaving back the carcasses of the houses and their space elevators.
Some isolated indigenes of the amazon will be forced by said climate change to move north, towards the equator, and will find one or more of these elevators there.
And voilà, they will be able to travel to space without rockets, if they can power, repair and maintain that thing, without the requirement of rocket technology. And then, there is no imminent necessity for advanced weaponry, since a globe that once fitted 7 bn people armed to their teeth, can easily hold a few thousand indigenes.
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I would argue that it is [highly] unlikely. Take a look at how we as a civilization have developed spaceflight:
The first [rockets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket#In_antiquity) were created in China hundreds of years ago. They were little more than rods with [gunpowder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder), but they were pretty powerful - although nothing like what we have today. What did humanity proceed to do with gunpowder? Use it for weapons. Once people realized how effective it was at launching projectiles, they realized how effective it was at launching projectiles at *other people*. Since then, gunpowder hasn't been used for spaceflight - at least, not outside novels by [Jules Verne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_verne)!
Flash forward quite a few centuries. The first "modern" rocket was designed by [Robert Goddard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_H._Goddard) in the 1920s. While his designs never had a huge influence on the course of rocketry, it certainly was a starting point for the future. A future where the development of rockets was - you guessed it - used for war.
[Werner von Braun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_H._Goddard) has gone down in history as a controversial figure, politically and scientifically. He was the primary developer of the [V2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket) rocket, which was used by Nazi Germany in the [Blitz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blitz). Later in the war, however, he and his collaborators defected, and the United States took them (with Russia taking many technicians). This was the start of the space race.
[ICBM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icbm) development was one of the defining factors of the space race and the Cold War. It was behind the idea of [MAD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction) (Mutually Assured Destruction) and was a huge deterrent to nuclear war. Large rockets could also be used to get people (and things) to outer space, though. Bigger missiles meant bigger (peaceful) rockets, and better ways to get to space.
So my guess is that the easiest first way for a civilization to get off their home planet would be via rockets, and that they would soon figure out that rockets have some other (more devious) purposes.
I know this answer rests on the principle that rockets are the first way a civilization could get to outer space. I made this assumption because rockets are certainly the simplest way to get there. While there's certainly more the building and launching a rocket than lighting a fuse and hoping for the best, it is still simpler than developing alternative methods - although there are [some creative ones](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/5463/why-dont-we-use-catapults-to-get-to-space) out there.
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Not really.
1. Having spears and bows must progress into better weapons. You always want to shoot your enemy or prey from larger distance.
2. Having the Earth as an example, the human population over years has developed so many different languages and a few races so the distrust is natural. From the early ages on when the food is scarce, agriculture in development and people so dependent on the weather, sickness and other natural dangers there must be a competition for the same resources and wars as a result.
3. Morality is not carved into our brains and violence is all around.
4. Even if there's only one nation in the world, you still have to use and develop weapons for security forces because there's always some internal struggle in the state - pro democracy, religious, regional bosses away from capital that want their share of power, new ideas and progressive/conservatives struggle...
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This primarily depends on how human your civilization is.
You might be able to customize an alien race or planet to the point where they don't really develop advanced weaponry. You could have a hive mind that doesn't fight among itself, a race with such poor eyesight that they can't use ranged weaponry, a race that uses ecolocation like a bat so any weaponry that makes noise is totally unworkable, or even just make them alergic to gunpowder. You planet could have low gravity, some exotic anti gravity material. Baring any really specific tweaks like this, I don't see a way that a human civilization would avoid inventing such weaponry.
Spaceships require so much power to hurl them into orbit that any civilization that ever goes into war is pretty much guarenteed to use that energy in some aggresive way. Not only that, but space flight also requires advanced metalurgy to stand up to the strain of liftoff. Those same advances in metal would be used in armor and even armored vehicles, meaing bows and spears traveling at such low power would do nothing. Some advances in offensive weaponry would be required to offset the defensive advantage of advanced metals.
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I can only think of the following ways:
* Their space flight is dependant on very specific magic.
* Their space flight is dependant on some sentient alien race (think Farscape).
* They for some strange reason are incapable of imagining violence to certain scale (some sapient entity programmed them to forget any ideas related to it?).
* Their space flight depends on some material/mechanism that is very easy to extract in their world but does not exist on ours (think H.G. Wells's "First Men in the Moon" - covarite is a gravity-opaque metal but natural)
* They are on a planet that does not have much gravity so cataputs or something can more easily reach escape velocity.
Even if they are a non-violent species, if they have any use for a weapon they can easily turn any means of propulsion which can reach space into an advanced weapon. This means if they bother having bows and arrows and can make a rocket, they would easily be able to make a basic cannon. Whether they would is a little different discussion and would depend on the psycology of the species.
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Your question doesn't specify, but all the answers so far seem to assume Earth-normal gravity. Perhaps it's possible to envision intelligent life evolving and something we would recognize as civilization arising on a planet with very little gravity and very little atmosphere, perhaps even intermittent or seasonal atmosphere. Such creatures might evolve the ability to escape their planet without rockets and travel in space for increasing lengths of time, perhaps to move to more favorable regions of their planet, until eventually they are able to travel into deep space.
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Sure, this is possible. Why not?
Consider a civilization composed of a species which could suffer only negligible damage by impact. Perhaps each individual is multiple separate organisms where the loss of one of them means nothing. Perhaps they're completely resilient to being struck. Perhaps, even, they're composed of energy "linked" to some indestructible focal point with a range of movement that barely encompasses their planet, and thus cannot be damaged by the physical world, but need to interact with it in order to travel through space.
In this case, they could easily develop projectiles without ever conceiving of them as weapons. They could use those projectiles to get into space.
Of course, once they met a society that *could* be damaged by impact, well, they would have all the technology they needed to make weapons. Whether they could conceptualize that is another question.
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Yes. Everyone has been looking at rockets and concluding that since a rocket can be used as a kinetic energy weapon that advanced weapons must exist.
Instead, lets consider a world where you can have spaceflight (albeit at great complexity) without rockets.
The world has an extremely dense atmosphere--approaching liquid type density. (Say, Uranus ate Mars.) Flight exists but you simply can't throw anything any great distance no matter how great the motive force. (Think of what happens to bullets underwater--they stop in a few feet.) The first possible long range weapon is the laser.
Now, about spaceflight in such a world? No rocket can operate (while in theory Orion could it's unlikely they will develop explosives in a world where they're pretty much useless.) but that doesn't preclude climbing your way to space. An elevator can't be built because you have to start from space to do so but towers start at the ground. Yes, there's nothing strong enough--all that means is that something else must support the tower.
Build a ring around the equator as high up as practical. It must be perfectly round (yes, this means parts may be underground if there are mountains in the way.) The ring is encased in an airtight tube and free to spin--the whole thing is basically a huge maglev train except with no cargo besides mass. Spin the ring to well above orbital velocity--you get an outward force, this counteracts the weight of the towers holding it up. Now be extend the towers (they're strong enough as it is) and build another ring. And again and again and again. Eventually you'll be above the atmosphere and can use rockets or you can launch from a track on the outer ring.
While nothing about such a world fundamentally precludes weapons it avoids the inevitable development of weapons as a side effect of technology.
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Absolutely not.
To achieve spaceflight you will need tools. Any tool can be used as for good as for bad :hammer and surgical knife as obvious examples.
At the end pure weapon is just such a specialized tool. Any civilization will maintain set of weapons adequate to current set of tools/capabilities.
To achieve safe atmospheric flights (past 9/11) we must have fighter jets together with airliners.
In the same way when civilization will have spaceships it will have spaceship destroyers. Just in case if something will go wrong with some [civil] spaceship on a hit course. Not even because of someone's bad will but just due to catastrophe, etc. ...
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I'd argue that **strictly theoretically speaking**, yes it's possible.
The problem is not in the capabilities of the materials used in advanced weaponry (such as gunpowder or, gods help us, nuclear weapons)
Recall that weapons are (ironically) primarily for safety. Anything can become a weapon: when someone raids your home, you might pick an ancient, decorative Chinese ceramics and throw them at the enemy, thereby making it a makeshift weapon, *even if it's not made as one in the first place*. The same can be said for kitchen knife and empty beer bottle
.The Chinese invented gunpowder which subsequently created fireworks, largely for entertainment purposes. Its application as short range missiles were driven by the need to one-up the enemies in the name of safety.
Thus, if a civilization lives in a world where violence is low enough (and primitive enough, for example only petty melees) that everyone does not fret over safety, it is entirely possible that people will invent technology without trying to figure out how best to use it to hurt something else.
Such a civilization would be extremely peaceful, bordering utopia
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*Sure, weapons and spaceflight are two different uses for technology, there is no direct necessity that a people apply technology in a particular use.*
As a simplistic example, how many weapons has NASA made? How many moon landings has the US Military made? Both have great technical abilities, both have huge budgets, both have strong political will behind them. Both are human. Yet they have very different results.
Weaponry is not advanced because we have better technology, weaponry is advanced because we desire better weaponry.
As such I can easily conceive of two scenario's of advanced technology but primitive or non-existent weaponry:
1) **Lack of desire for weaponry.** Either biological or ideological a people might desire to not advance weaponry - e.g. Vulcans in Star Trek have decided as a race to control their violent aspects and live pacifist lives. Other examples include odd codes on Honor (even Klingons, who are very warlike in Star Trek, relish hand to hand combat. Even today, many weapons are banned from warfare - e.g. cluster bombs, biological, chemical, nuclear and even the dumdum bullet).
2) Taking it further, **what if technology itself prevents weaponization?** Sure explosives can be easily configured to be weapon or tool but not every technology is dumb. Asimov's three laws of robotics, if taken to extreme, could demonstrate a world with incredible technology - literally all matter is intelligent and able to change shape, form and function at human will (think nanobots) - but is intelligent and fundamentally pacifist - "A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.".
In this scenario, plenty of technology could exist that would, if applied correctly, have devastating weaponry capabilities. However without the ability to use it as such the point is irrelevant.
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I'm going to take a completely different approach on this one, arguing for **Yes**.
First off, it's probably going to take a *long time*, and it will require your civilization to start out pacifist.
Imagine a world populated only by plants, and one species of plant has sentience as described here:
[How could a sentient plant evolve and what conditions would be required for this evolution?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/10761/13391)
That answer mentions weapons, but I see no reason why that would necessarily be the case. If this plant civilization had no predators and their internal competition was strictly peaceful because of their strong psychological connection with one another, then they could likely maintain no need for weapons *per se* for a long time (they might have tools to destroy other plants, but we don't really see those as weapons). Their science would develop to solve other problems besides military ones, for example disease and longevity, greater access to resources for the species as a whole, and so on.
It would likely, as I said, take quite some time, but eventually this civilization will look to the cosmos for resources. They might have already noticed by this point that [rockets are useful for intercontinental transportation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket-powered_aircraft). Eventually their space program will develop.
Now, why would they develop swords, spears, and bows? Here's the fun part:
After they start exploring other worlds, they notice that some have animals, a rather unusual creature. They frequently capture small specimens for study in their own environment. Eventually, one of these specimens is actually able to take advantage of the plants for its diet. This creature reproduces quickly and becomes a pest--kind of like how rats are a pest that stowaway on ships on Earth. Having never needed weapons before, and given that the creature is a small, dumb rat, the plant civilization may well be able to develop bombs or pesticide, or engineer a contagion, but that's overkill for a small pest problem. Instead, it is easy to turn cutting edges into swords, or mount them on poles to make spears and arrows.
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I've seen conceptual designs for mag-lev mechanisms for launching trains into orbit at high speed. Using "peaceful" energy sources, e.g. wind or geothermal or hydroelectric, you could charge batteries to power such a mechanism. It's similar to the concept of a rail gun, but on a very large scale without the mobility requirements characteristic of most weapon systems.
This is just one way to leave the atmosphere without the use of technology that's historically been weaponized.
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Yes, however it is unlikely.
In general space-flight does not require any weaponry to invent first, but the tools used to propel a space-ship into orbit are so obviously usable for advanced or intermediate weapons, that it takes a very special civilization to not come up with those ideas beforehand.
Weapons are invented for hunting, defense or attacks.
* Hunting is only required, if food is sparse and the civilization needs meat as nourishment. A species of vegetarians would have no use for hunting weapons.
* Defense is only required, if there is a threat to defend against. If an environment has nothing to be afraid off, weapons for defense would be pointless to invent.
* Attacking is usually done as a result of greed, either because survival is difficult or a species is aggressive enough.
So theoretically a species of vegetarians living in some form of paradise without external threats or any lack of food, that still has a certain population control factor to not run out of resources, would have no need for weapons and therefore might never come up with the idea to built them.
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Okay, the question is how would a civilization get into space without the use of gunpowder and the development of rocketry. Seems simple enough.
Several answers concerned themselves with other weapons like the bow and arrow, trebuchet, and the question of violence equals weapons potential. Let's go different way.
Here's an idea. Suppose that you have two tribes that hate each-other living on separate islands. As the year pass they've developed all the melee combat weapons to fight each-other over the open seas. Nobody develops gunpowder but they do create some good sailing ships. Eventually someone gets the bright idea of a trebuchet to use to safeguard their shores from attack by the other tribe's ships. Years pass and the trebuchet gets bigger and everyone has one now. Eventually they get so big they can attack each-other's islands without going to sea in ships.Just a case of MAKE BIGGER.
Then another guy gets a bright idea. Using the heat from their active volcano and slaves they manufacture a steam-powered blowgun big enough to shoot a telephone-sized arrow all the way to the other island. Eventually this thingamajig gets bigger, and in the process develop hot and cold running water and plumbing. the other island doesn't have a volcano so their steam-powered machinery is inferior and they loose.
If a group of people spend a few hundred years developing volcano technology this way it is conceivable that they could develop a gun that could shoot a person into space. Volcanoes have been recorded to launching large objects into the upper atmosphere during an eruption. I call this idea the Jules Vern Volcano Gun.
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While it's hard to imagine a species achieving space flight without encountering the *possibility* of advanced weaponry (if nothing else, you can crash the spaceships into things) it isn't hard to imagine a species with less *interest* in killing than humans have, and therefore have never really thought much about developing advanced weapons.
As a collective, humans are a fairly violent species. This is a survival tactic: we have learned long ago that one of the best defenses against a potential enemy, whether interspecific or intraspecific, is to kill them first, *before* they show signs of aggression. As a result, our relationships with strangers have always been strained with distrust, extending one hand in friendship while keeping the other on the holster of a loaded gun.
There are other animals that do this (ants, for instance) but there are also a great many that do *not*. An intelligent species that evolved from creatures that dealt with threats by fleeing, or digging, or retreating behind barriers, would likely live according to a different paradigm and not be driven by the same factors that has guided human technology.
Imagine, for example, a species of intelligent "deer people" who have historically avoided threats by fleeing. Such a species might develop space flight not out of curiosity for the unknown (or to control "high ground" in order to attack enemies first, which was a prime motivator for human space flight), but out of fear that their planet may at one point be threatened. While humans would respond to such a threat by developing stronger weapons to fight off the threat, leaving flight as a last resort, deer people would prefer to make faster vehicles first and leave weapon technology for last. They might even develop space flight faster than humans, because they are instinctively motivated to avoid being 'trapped', which they would feel once they realized they were stuck on a single planet.
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**Why do you need weapons?**
The last time humans needed better weapons to fight anything other than other humans was back over 4000 years ago.
If you cultures had rules or traditions that stopped physical fighting or limited it to ancient weapons no one would bother putting the effort to make weapons from rockets.
**There also might have been an invention that rendered projectile weapons useless.**
In Dune shields block all attacks moving faster then a small speed, blocking ranged attacks and forcing everyone to use swords. Then the old tech might have been abandoned
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To expand on the answer by **Vulcronos**:
Yes, it is possible. One example might be a theoretical hive mind: if the entire sentient species were "one", and they didn't need to develop weaponry for survival reasons (including hunting) against "animals", then it is entirely possible they could develop space travel without advanced weapons. (Regarding hunting, perhaps they domesticate animals - much as some ants do - or are purely vegetarian.)
Note, however, that they'd have the science - so if they encountered a more violent species (*ahem* humans *ahem*), they could probably adapt relatively quickly. The science hasn't changed - just the use to which it's put.
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I've never understood the purpose of it. It makes the heroes unable/unwilling to explain the situation to their loved ones. Thus they ultimately create rifts with their loved ones. Like, I understand why it's done (drama), but I never understood the actual implications of a secret identity. It does more harm than good. So I'm asking, why would a superhero, in the modern day, want a secret identity?
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Firstly, if you know the hero's real identity, you as a person would act differently around them. Who would want to hire and boss around Superman when he is literally invincible? It would make it incredibly hard for the superhero to live a normal life and they would be chased around by paparazzi and fans forever.
Secondly, if a villain knew the hero's identity, they would be able to better plan around situations the hero would have to face and also influence the hero's life. Heroes don't exactly go around arresting people who have not committed a crime yet, so knowing who the hero is allows a villain to either plan around their daily life, or launch a preemptive attack, neither of which would be preferable to a hero.
Thirdly, if the villain knew who your loved ones are, they would have an advantage over you should they kidnap them. Keeping your identity a secret protects them from likely harm and also doesn't burden them with the social pressure of dating a hero, being friends with one, raising one, etc. and the endless stream of questions, jealousy and gossip they would probably face from fans around the world. Even if they are kidnapped, it would be random chance with the hero's identity a secret, rather than intentionally and this gives the hero more power to pressure the villain to comply with her/him.
A secret identity allows the hero to live a normal life - they might not want to be a hero all the time, they might want their own time, or to relax. They want to protect those they love and those close to them, and they want to have an edge against the bad guys. Not everyone is okay with effectively exposing their entire lives to the world and its criticism.
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**Because your loved ones are a liability you don't want to expose**
Let's just use Superman as a classic example. How do you attack Superman? You can't. He's super strong, can fly, and shoots heat lasers out of his eyes. Generally speaking, you don't want to attack him, or do anything that's going to annoy him.
BUT!
Lois Lane; whole different story. If the world knows that Superman is Clark Kent and that he's in love with Lois... Scratch that. Even if they don't know he's Clark - what if all they know is that he has a thing for Lois?
That's his Achilles' Heel. That's the thing that will get him do do anything to save her and he's ultimately under your control as long as you hold her in a prison surrounded by Kryptonite or whatever. The point being that you really don't want people knowing who you care about.
While not on the same scale, this already happens in the real world. Spies (for example) don't share their lives with their loved ones, even if they really want to know. First of all they can't, second of all they won't be able to handle the really tough stuff. Many emergency workers feel the same way. What if you (as a superhero) only just managed to protect the Earth from some Asteroid / Zombie Apocalypse / Insert your trope and it was a closely run thing? You really don't want to dump that on your significant other, and they (as much as they'll tell you otherwise) don't really want or need to know how close the world came to destruction. Again.
So; they keep the secret from the world for the same reason that policemen don't put their home addresses up on facebook, or public superstars don't get listed in the phone book. They keep it from their significant others because seriously, their relationships will last *longer* that way.
Besides; this is the era of marriage breakups. Do you really want Lois spilling her guts in a tell-all interview with Entertainment Tonight about Superman as a negotiation tactic for keeping custody of the kids? No. You don't. Modern intelligence workers face similar problems already and face a choice; either quit the industry or risk losing their kids. It's a stark reality and not an easy decision to make for many.
Take that to the next level and you have a superhero who *can't* quit the industry easily, and you know it's going to be a solitary existence. Your family cannot know (if not for the reasons above) simply because the more people who know, the greater the risk of exposure. The greater the risk of exposure, the more likely someone eventually takes someone you love in an effort to control you.
If you're a super hero and not a super villain, you'll do anything you can to avoid that contingency, even risk losing the people you love to protect them.
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It's to do with the mechanics of narratives in English, the rules of what makes lead characters suitable to be the focus of the story.
At its core, narratives in English have their roots in a period when people couldn't read, yet plays illustrating the bible were enormously popular. These spectacles slowly evolved into theatre plays about non religious topics but they kept the core of allegory (and also why the puritans were so dead against popular theatre). So it's from these ["Mystery plays"](http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/stage/early%20stages/mysteries.html) as they were called, we get the expectations that a story must be about Good vs Evil, that the lead character must show certain traits - self sacrifice, humility etc., that good acts get rewarded while bad acts get punished. And people expect any story to be structured around these core rules from film to novels to wrestling matches to superhero hero comics.
Thus it's humility that has the hero hide his true identity because only Villians will do the opposite.
Heroes never act out of pride, or wrath, any beatings they give to villains are not their conscious choice but part of their role as the instrument by which the villain is punished by God for being evil.
Heroes may be rich, but not because they actively seek wealth as that would be gluttony or avarice.
And so on.
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Super heroes have super villains.
Either you have no friends or family or you put them at risk every time someone wants payback.
A lot of heroes do tell their family but two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead.
The less people that know, the less likely someone will let it slip out and then the family has to go into the super hero version of witness protection.
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So one reason that has been another consistent reason for Secret Identities that I haven't seen is that many Superheroes... even single and no family heroes have is that they are engaged in what is predominantly a criminal act. Most Superheroes are vigilantes and while many may uphold the law just as well as any deputized officer of the law, some do not. Batman, for example, skirts the line of hero and vigilante depending on the writer. Watchmen and Increadibles both explicitly state that superheroic activities were tantamount to vigilantism. The Marvel Universe is rather insane with the Punisher, X-Men, and the Hulk having different shades of Vigilante style legal issues before Civil War. And the less we say about Spider-Man... who sells his selfies to the Daily Bugle which considers him either a threat or a menace or both, the better. Dude needs a Super-PR agent.
It should be noted that in the United States (and other common law jurisdictions and possibly some Civil Law jurisdictions) do have Citizen's Arrest, which allows an ordinary citizen (even one wearing a mask) to arrest a person committing a crime in their presence without a warrant. However, the liability for these actions is much stricter if they get it wrong than a deputy of the law. The crimes permitted depend on the State in the U.S.
The idea of a superhero breaking vigilante laws has been frequently discussed in various fiction as yet another reason to wear a mask.
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I have often thought that many, though not all superheroes, don't need to live in their birth identities and shouldn't.
A superhero without families and friends could live in a fortresss of solitude at the north pole or in outer space and only come down to Earth on superhero missions.
And if the superhero gains a family they could move in to his fortress and make it a fortress of family life, unknown to super villains.
Or maybe there could be a superhero town or city where superheroes live, so a superhero could go out into the outside world to save people knowing that other superheroes are guarding the town to protect all the non super loved ones of superheroes.
So I think that many superheroes could live in their superhero identities 24 hours a day, and occasionally take on the identities they were born with to mingle with ordinary mortals and visit friends and relatives who don't know they are superheroes.
Superheroes might create dummy businesses that officially employ the birth identities of those superheroes, so they can claim that they have jobs.
No doubt many superheroes have situations where such a plan wouldn't make sense, but I think it would work for many superheroes.
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Quoting from [TV Tropes](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MedievalStasis):
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> Medieval Stasis is a situation in which, as far as the technological, cultural, and sociopolitical level are concerned, thousands of years pass as if they were minutes.
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The world I'm currently building has a history of about 4000 years, the last 1000 of which see the world stuck in XVI century tech. In a setting where magic is limited by the user, and not so common that it becomes an universal problem solver, and deities do not interfere with their mortal subjects, how can technology stagnate for so long? Or to turn the question around, what would push towards technological progress?
The setting sees neighboring countries with opposing views on several things, which brings them to war with each other many many times over the course of the millennium.
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Keeping population low.
When population increases, people explore, there are researches to feed the new people, the social structure changes to accomodate that usually the low classes reproduce in greater numbers than the powerful ones... Progress in few words.
Hit your society with periodic plagues they can't fight, droughts, floods... this way they can't create universities, they can't write books and the occasional geniouses die without showing the world their amazing inventions.
The Black Death contributed a lot to the advancement of society in the 15th century, but if it had hit again in that century, it would have produced stagnation.
Also famine in one part of your world produces waves of raiders that invade their neighbouring countries, killing thousands, destroying important buildings and burning libraries, like the Barbarian Invasions of the 4-5th centuries that ended the Western Roman Empire and the Mongol Invasion halting the progress of the Muslim Empire.
Combined with a powerful central government and a big territory, you have a situation similar to China, which had very advanced technology in the 14th century but it had lost the inventions' race three centuries later.
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A few ideas:
1. **Technology forgotten or deemed unnecessary:** cities in India had sewer systems millennia ago, but the technology was forgotten. Ancient Romans had steam power but it was used for entertainment and never put to more productive use. the Chinese invented the printing press in the Middle Ages, but their writing system limited its practicability. You can come up with lots of reasons why a technology might be discovered multiple times but never lasts or spreads very far.
2. **Labor is cheap:** Alberto's answer is accurate in that small populations have less ability to achieve scientific progress, but the opposite can also be true. One proposed theory why the Industrial Revolution happened in Europe rather than China is that there was no real incentive for the Chinese government to invest in labor saving resources because labor was so plentiful! Combining with reason #1, China actually did develop many technologies like gunpowder and the magnetic compass, but they were underutilized. Why develop better weaponry when you can mass conscript? Why finance large trading fleets when you can produce everything you want at home?
3. **Lack of resources:** one reason why the Industrial Revolution began in Britain rather than anywhere else in Europe was because of the plentiful coal deposits in the country's north. The first coal powered engines were incredibly inefficient, but it didn't matter, because they were only used within and very close to the coal mines. It was only after experimenting and tinkering with these engines for decades that they could extend rail networks across the country. Germany and the United States became industrial powerhouses after Britain because they also had the resources to do so. Though you could argue that a country like France had better education and infrastructure, limited access to the proper resources meant they were always lagging behind the British and Germans when it came to industry.
Ultimately, there are a lot of potential reasons why technological innovation happens or doesn't happen, and historians don't agree on which factors are most important, so try mixing and matching!
Also, one quick note: *Medieval Stasis* is itself kind of a misnomer. Though there was a major societal collapse after the fall of the Roman Empire, there was innovation during the Middle Ages, but it was in less flashy things like better stirrups and plows. ;-)
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A cultural bias against cities. Cities bring people together and encourage intellectual gestalt. That is, they concentrate the creative power of the population. They are also generally filled with people who are doing things other than farming. There's no room in a city to farm, so people have to do something else in order to make enough money/resources to buy/barter for food. That leads directly to technological innovation.
So long as your population is diffuse and focused mainly on growing food they won't progress technologically.
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**Necessity is the mother of invention, so if you fill in the necessity then it is easy for it to stagnate.**
High grade items can come from a third party(ex; dungeon, gods or secret organization), then just have it so that those items can satisfy the high ranks of society and then they will just try to use their time and money to get items from them instead of researching and inventing stuff themselves. Especially if they don't believe they could create such items(because they're magic items created by something we don't understand).
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Make the literacy rate VERY low. (Maybe their languages don't lend themselves well to being written down. Maybe literacy is carefully controlled by some trans-national guild or religion. Maybe there is a cultural taboo against writing things down. Maybe written documents are easily "scried" by magic.) The point is, all art & technology would then have to be transmitted directly from masters to apprentices. Your civilizations would be effectively pre-historic, except for a few literate lore-masters.
In addition, you should make your people suspicious of change. For example, varying from the standard practice might be sternly frowned upon by guilds, whose interests might be trans-national. ("Look, I invented stainless steel!" "You fool, you'll put us armorers out of business! You must never make this again.")
The main point is, illiteracy plus institutionalized resistance to change requires everyone to constantly re-invent the wheel.
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# Religion
The common religion doesn't believe in technological research or scientific advancement. Maybe they say it's "*the devil's work or blasphmey*", maybe their religion provides "*all the answers they need*", or maybe just because they say so.
There are some real-world examples easily found, such as case of Galileo and the flat earth, among others.
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I had another idea about **war driving military applicable inventions** (like airplanes, submarines, nuclear power/bombs, space exploration - I think some fairly advanced mathematics was developed to help cannons hit their targets) but your question specifically states that neighbouring countries are *at war with each other many many times*. So they'd have to ignore the desire to find better military technology, which sounds unlikely, as if they're just happy with the number of casualties their armies suffer and they don't want to end the war(s) sooner by winning... but religion could account for that too.
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The sharpest change in living standards and technology in human history came about because of the invention of automation - inventing machines to do the work for you markedly increases efficiency. With increased efficiency, more time and resources are available for further innovation, so you need to **find a reason why the invention, or the implementation of automation is very unlikely or difficult to achieve.**
### Limit knowledge sharing
New ideas pretty much always come from previous work done by others. In order for technology development to essentially stagnate, you need to ensure that it is difficult to come across existing knowledge, and difficult to share new knowledge when it is discovered. This would require a restriction to the access of education. If education is rare, it will to some extent self-perpetuate - in order to learn you need a teacher, or educational material (books). If few people have knowledge, fewer people can be teachers. For books to be rare, it must be difficult to manufacture them **so don't allow the society to invent the printing press**.
### Keep population density and population growth low
It isn't the overall population that matters, but the population density, when it comes to knowledge sharing, so find a reason why population density remains low. It could be due to a lack of food resources (see below), or due to diseases restricting population densities that get too large.
Another way to keep population density relatively low is to have population centres far apart. This could happen if resources are scarce, or if the terrain is such that very few places are able to easily increase in size.
### Keep farming inefficient
One way to keep population growth limited is to have food production be very inefficient. As long as food production is slow and labour intensive, a large proportion of the population will be required to farm, with very little spare time or money. There could be many reasons why farming is difficult:
It could be natural - a lack of fresh water, or poor soil (possibly due to some ancient catastrophe, possibly because crop rotation hasn't been invented), or excessively rugged terrain, or a high prevalence of disease in food crops, or a high level of pests that eat the crops (e.g. locusts).
It could be societal - e.g. in a feudal system where all the land is owned by wealthy (non-farming) landowners and the farming is done by serfs, there is very little incentive for the serf to come up with ways to improve farming efficiency. They won't benefit, only the landowners will.
It could be due to war - e.g. if an army invades the land, takes all the food and burns all the fields every few years, you're unlikely to be able to produce the surplus of food usually required for population growth.
### Scarcity of resources, especially fuel and metals, especially iron
In a world where the only available fuel for combustion is wood from trees, the course of any industrial revolution would be hugely slowed, due to it being much less efficient a fuel compared to fossil fuels. Some of the recent jumps in technology have only been possible due to the ready access to fossil fuels like coal and oil. Additionally, if relying on trees for fuel, you need the space and time to be able to grow the trees.
Similarly, if metals like iron are difficult to get hold of, it's difficult to manufacture the tools required to invent new technologies. Such tools would become very expensive and restricted to only the most wealthy sections of society. Also, if wars were constantly being fought, the powerful may want to use most of the metal in the formation of weapons and armour, rather than tools for the manufacture of goods.
### Restrict the movement of people, by making travelling difficult and take a long time
Sharing of new ideas is much more rapid if it possible to easily encounter people from different societies and geographical areas. Making travel difficult and/or take a long time is one way to restrict the movement of people.
Travel could be difficult for political reasons (e.g. warring neighbours), safety reasons (e.g. unpoliced travel routes), or a lack of resources (e.g. not very many roads/not very many transport operators).
Travel could take a long time because of several reasons. Places could be very far apart, transport could be very slow, there may be very few roads, or very poor roads.
### Don't have religions
One interesting point that may be worth exploring is having a world without any religion. One of the largest sections of society that had the wealth, time and inclination in medieval (and pre-medieval) societies to travel and spread knowledge were religious institutions. Monasteries were large centres for learning in medieval Europe, especially as centres for reading and writing. It would be interesting to explore the idea of how a lack of religion would have affected the spread of knowledge. It is of course possibly counterweighted by the fact that organised religion can be a large factor in limiting the spread of "heretical" ideas and spreading mistrust among (differently faithed) neighbours.
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The existence of magic might [make it difficult to explore science](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/62286/why-would-a-society-choose-to-reject-technology-and-use-only-magic/62300#62300). This has been explored here before and I'm already linking the post that quotes other posts so I won’t meta quote *that*!
Likewise, we’ve also discussed [how magic can mess up technology](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/17404/science-religion-magic-can-they-be-maintained-in-equal-and-parallel-oppositio/17422#17422). You can’t build simple machines if the material properties can change suddenly or new sources of energy are introduced etc.
We’ve discussed [Must magic be tied to medieval tech?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/8/must-magic-be-tied-to-medieval-tech/17178#17178)
before. This can be your answer: **magic’s existence prevents technological advance and scientific inquiry.**
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**ELDER GODS**
In short, every time someone start reading too much they attract the attention of creatures so superior to humankind that they are gods in all but name. Obtaining knowledge becomes impossible and anyone trying to do it is exiled before he attracts the wrath of the things that sleep below.
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Keep your medieval-esque world using an archaic number system that doesn't involve zero. In other words, stick with Roman numerals and never adopt Arabic. Mathematics are so much more difficult that you aren't building great economies or calculating ballistics. (Maybe there is one guy that figures it out but no one can make sense of his journal.)
Maybe there are some advances but they just don't seem to go anywhere. Optics were remarkably advanced in Medieval Europe. However, instead of inventing telescopes and reading glasses in your world the technology was used for a scrying magic that didn't work. (Rather how the Astrolabe was used for astrology more than for astronomy.)
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**Low life expectation**
New inventions and technological progress require knowledge of past inventions and technologies to some degree. For example you would not invent a gunpowder weapon without first acquiring the technology of gunpowder and munition based projectile weapons in general.
If your civilization due to some reason, like diseases or biological limits, has a very low life expectation (I am thinking about less than in Europe Medieval times). Someone that wants to make progress in a specific technological field probably needs some basic general education and then starts as apprentice in this field. You need that knowledge about your field to be able to see flaws in design and processes and additionally the idea how to improve it for progress to occur. Simply lacking lifespan decreases the chance that such progress is made. If you a have knowledge about mathematics look at it as a poison distributed random variable.
The probability in reality would probably even increased with work time.
This prolongs the time your culture is stuck in Medieval until all necessary inventions and discoveries are made.
Furthermore human reproduction also has to occur in your limited lifespan and as there is some reason that limits lifespan or decreases life expectation you might also need more tries until you "produce" an adult that is also able to reproduce due to this reason.
As magic in contrast to technology is not or not as easily transferred to a new generation except maybe for artifacts. And as also their lifespan is limited their time to master magic is too.
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If magic works for some but not for all then practitioners become elitist, protecting their art and would not want it to be superseded by technology just as the religious zealots wouldn't want their God(s) to be replaced by science. Add to this a cabal of wealthy and powerful in a class-based society in which commoners may aspire to become merchant class at best; accepted but not included by the noble class. The merchant class would not want just anybody to be able to join their ranks so they stifle innovation such as a case in which the one(s) who provide swords and shields and siege engines to the army would NOT want to see rifles and cannons come onto the scene unless they can gain and maintain control of such things. Political influence, treachery, etc come into play at this point.
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A secret society that thwarts all advancement in tech to keep the opposing factions balanced. Not too far off from reality when you think of it.
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As long as man doesn't have to work all his waking hours to avoid starvation, he'll invent. And the first thing he'll invent is a superior rock for killing his neighbor. By the 1500s, enough people had enough leisure time for invention. Consider Game of Thrones, where society has been in a late medieval state for a few thousand years. Preposterous.
* Leonardo Da Vinci: 1452-1519
* Michaelangelo: 1475-1574
* Galileo: 1564-1642
* Compound Interest (the engine that drove prosperity) was
invented by the 1330s
* Modern banking (Medici bank, established by Giovanni Medici) in 1397.
So we can see by the luminaries above, that mens' minds were flying by the 1500s.
Edit - this answer does not justify technological stasis. Quite the opposite. It isn't happening without hand-waving, at which point any ad hoc reason will do.
Edit 2 - In case it isn't clear, the thing that pushes technology is the inventiveness of mens' minds and their desire to seek knowledge. To make matters worse for a 'stasis' argument, technological progress exploded exponentially, and it all started with the minds of the 16th century men. Within 350 years, that culture would unleash nuclear power, travel to the moon, and invent computers.
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I have in my world a "crystalline desert". The idea is that a major cataclysmic event turned the surrounding area into glass, color irrelevant. Then following the event, major earthquakes and the passage of time broke it up into much smaller pieces, at least on the surface. There could be major chunks of "glass" below the surface I suppose.
The end result is a desert made predominantly of little tiny glass shards (I suppose they would turn into beads over time).
*edit:* I will add that when I say glass I mean a solid shiny surface, so glass like in appearance, it doesn't have to be chemically identical to glass
*edit2:* Occurred to me I should mention that the area in question is quite large. Say the size of Texas but circular. 268,581 sq/miles. It can be 'more' glassy in the middle and only partially towards the edges.
*edit3:* I want to clarify that I do not require an event. The event will be magical in nature, but that doesn't mean that a hellish firestorm couldn't cause problem globally.
* What kind of temperatures would have to be achieved to do this to a temperate area?
* Would the event have to take place in an area that was a desert in the first place? Is sand required?
* What would be the global impact of such temperatures in a localized area?
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As a materials engineer the concept of a crystalline desert full of glass is baffling, as the two terms, crystal and glass, mean essentially opposite things. I'd like to start by making sure we are using the same terminology. I apologize in advance if I come across as lecturing! It is not my intent to bring bad feelings.
**Some Terminology:**
A *crystal* is most commonly defined as a periodic lattice with a repeating unit cell. A *crystalline material* would thus have its atoms arranged periodically on a regular grid in space and thus exhibit *long-range order*. If you were to move around the crystalline material, you would see the same atoms whenever you move one unit of distance along one of the axes of the lattice. Crystals are highly organized, and in thermodynamic equilibrium are the preferred state of all inorganic matter when in the solid phase.
An *amorphous material* is a condensed material that does not exhibit *long-range order*, and both liquids and solids can be amorphous. When a solid material is amorphous, it is commonly called a *glassy material*, *glassy solid*, or simply a *glass*.
**Well, why does this matter?**
Cooling rates! Allow me to explain:
I did mention that in thermodynamic equilibrium crystals are preferred for inorganic matter in the solid phase. However in practice kinetics can make achieving thermodynamic equilibrium occur over geologic timescales or longer. In the case of pure silica (SiO2) at room temperature, the kinetics of a glass to crystal transformation is very slow, and the timescale is on the order of hundreds of millions of years. It is difficult to measure the rate directly at room temperature because in a lab setting nothing measurable happens within a human lifetime.
The reason silica forms glass is that at an atomic scale, each Si4+ ion shares one electron with each of four O2- ions, forming a tetrahedral ionized molecule. Each O2- ion bonds with two Si4+, linking two silica tetrahedra at a common vertex. Because the oxygen ion bonds are relatively flexible, the tetrahedra have only a vaguely preferred orientation with respect to one another; very little energy is required to knock them out of alignment during cooling. Thus, as a body of silica cools from the liquid phase, it can take a long time for regular, periodic crystals to form and settle in, and instead the vibrating atoms may slow down in whatever arrangement the tetrahedra happen to be in, which may or may not be a periodic lattice.
Therefore, if the cooling rate is slower than the crystal forming rate, a crystalline solid forms. On the other hand, if the cooling rate is faster than the crystal forming rate, an amorphous solid forms: glass.
**Now to address your questions:**
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> What kind of temperatures would have to be achieved to do this to a
> temperate area?
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Assuming the entirety of your glass precursor material is **pure silica** (SiO2), the melting point is **approximately 1700 C**. Other components in solution with silica such as alumina, magnesia, and iron oxides will generally serve to reduce the melting point, however, alumina and iron oxides will make it much easier to crystallize the material as it cools. Beware, as you would want to maintain a temperature above 1700 C long enough to heat everything beneath the surface above the melting point as well, or you will only get a superficial layer of liquid.
In practice, artificial glass forming techniques take advantage of what are called network modifiers, which are metals with valences of 1 or 2, that disrupt the tetrahedral structure even further than it is in pure silica. This (1) reduces the melting point, requiring less energy to form the glass, (2) baffles the ability of the glass to crystallize, meaning even lower cooling rates are required to form glass instead of crystal, (3) reduce the glass viscosity at every temperature, making it easier to shape. So if you have a lot of Group Ia and IIa elements in your precursor material, e.g. lithium, sodium, calcium, magnesium, etc., then more glass will probably form from the same event.
One thing to worry about is that heating 250K sq. mi. to any significant depth involves a tremendous amount of heat, and the heat in that much volume will take a very long time to dissipate into the rest of the planet, its atmosphere, or out into space. We are talking somewhere in the range of thousands to millions of years depending on depth. As a point of reference, a 50,000 pound steel casting can take a day to completely solidify, and possibly a week or more to cool to shipping temperatures. We are talking about possibly trillions of tons of material heated to the same temperatures. In that time, it is possible for lots of defects to show up in the glass for a variety of reasons, most notably ejecta returning to the surface.
There is also the problem of crack formation from volume changes on cooling. Cooling materials decrease in volume as they lose heat, but the glass crater surface also wants to stay put due to friction from its own weight on whatever material it is sitting on. There is thus a competition between the force of cooling-induced shrinkage, and friction. Something has to give to balance forces, and so the material will fracture, and many cracks will form in a single-piece glass crater. Unfortunately, if allowed to cool under its own devices, in other words an excruciatingly slow cooling rate, most of these cracks are going to be small and spaced on the order of inches apart, effectively breaking up your glass surface into little chunks. However, if you can magically cool it instantly throughout its entire volume, it will form cracks only spaced very widely apart. It will also form a glass to a greater depth into the ground. With magic, you could potentially have what is effectively a crater filled by an ocean of glass.
**My recommendation is to have a near-pure silica-sand desert, and a very large, very high-temperature magical effect (above 1700 C). Silica is incredibly common on Earth, so it is plausible if your planet is Earth-like. Very large meteor strikes would satisfy the magical heating effect nicely, as would a firestorm, or a radiant "explosion" of some sort. If you want large contiguous pieces of glass instead of a crunchy thin bed of glass fragments, try following the high-temperature magical effect with a rapid cooling magical effect. Faster cooling will give bigger, deeper chunks of glass.**
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> Would the event have to take place in an area that was a desert in the
> first place? Is sand required?
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**Sand is not required, but silica is virtually required for what one might call "practical" methods. With magic, other materials are possible.**
So you could possibly get away with silica-based rocks, from which silica-sand would be made. Other oxide materials may form glasses, but are much less common on earth than silica. If your world is Earth-like, you may want to just stick with silica.
In principle, any inorganic solid can form a glass if you cool it fast enough. Unfortunately for us, the materials must be either cooled extremely rapidly (106 Kelvin per second or faster for pure metals), or baffled from forming crystals as with silica. It is possible to get metals to form glasses, but the entire volume of pure metal must be cooled more rapidly than is possible by any method known, with the exception of samples that have ~10 nanometer thicknesses or less.
Specialized, artificial, and often very expensive alloys have been developed which require cooling rates ranging from 105 K/s down to 1 K/s. Current iPhones have a small part (the sim-card ejector) which uses an iron-based alloy called liquidmetal that I would guess requires approximately 10 K/s to form a glass. It is also both incredibly strong and incredibly tough compared with crystalline iron alloys. However, as noted on their [(site)](http://info.liquidmetal.com/blog/bid/271267/What-are-the-Size-Limitations-for-Liquidmetal-Alloy-Parts), production sizes are limited by the cooling rates achievable.
With appropriate magic, and a lot of processed iron metal, you could have a basin full of amorphous iron! What I wouldn't give to be able to make that happen on Earth, admittedly at smaller scales and in a controlled, repeatable and inexpensive fashion.
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> What would be the global impact of such temperatures in a localized area?
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As noted above, all that heat has to go somewhere. **A meteor creating a crater the size of Texas would cause global devastation and mass extinctions. The planet's climate would be altered for tens of thousands of years or longer.** It is implausible survivors would ever see the glass basin before it is broken up and buried by geological action. It is arguably implausible for there to be human survivors with any notion of civilization without some serious magical intervention anyway.
On the other hand, **if it is some sort of radiant heating effect, it would be more locally destructive, but would still create massive weather effects including likely global storms, evaporation of nearby bodies of water causing more overcast conditions and rain elsewhere in the region or world, earthquakes from the sudden change of the shape of the ground as well as the huge expansion of matter from heating.** Global storms could create problems on the ocean as well, including larger than normal waves. There would be noticeable effects worldwide even with a radiant heating effect, though to a much less severe degree than with a meteor.
Alternatively, you could, as I've mentioned, **use a rapid cooling magical effect to remove a lot of the heat instantly**, though I suppose this may not fit into your world. If you choose this option, however, that would be sufficient to explain away a lot of the problems associated with a sudden influx of heat and energy into a large chunk of your world. There would plausibly be mild to no long term climate or weather effects in such a scenario. It's possible people thousands of miles away would hardly notice. However, it should be obvious that no matter how this happens, everyone and everything in your Texas will be vaporized or melted into an unrecognizable and meaningless state.
***IN SUMMARY***
**The way I would do it is using molecular-scale magic effects. I recommend a widespread molecular heating effect sufficient to heat a large grassy region down through much of its bedrock. This would then be followed up immediately by the exact same effect but with cooling instead of heating, and much faster (read: instantaneous). This is effectively the only way to make this result in large contiguous chunks of glass while staying consistent with Earth-like physics and material science.**
On a side note, this is starting to sound like a scene in a novel set in the Dragonlance campaign setting circa 2nd edition that I read 15 years or so ago. Unfortunately I don't remember the title of the novel, or any of the character names, so I can't really help you identify it, unfortunately. In the scene, a character was walking through a(n in)famous region where a powerful magic-user had used very large-radius, powerful, elemental magic to create a firestorm and an icestorm (possibly among other effects), to stop an opposing army, with the icestorm last. The freezing effect ended up being permanent, and the magic-user and what was left of the army were frozen in place forever. So, a bit similar to what you're talking about, but with ice instead of silica glass.
Edit: I forgot XKCD What-if? has [this](http://whatif.xkcd.com/15/) article, the latter half of which describes the ancient Chicxulub impact [(Wikipedia)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater). The area of the crater is considerably *smaller* than Texas, at about 5%. Munroe describes ejecta reaching space in a similar explosion.
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Well we already have [volcanic glass](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_glass) and a specific type [Obsidian](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsidian) which occur naturally from volcanoes, this glass
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> is the amorphous (uncrystallized) product of rapidly cooling magma
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So there is one source. The Trinity test left
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> The desert sand, largely made of silica, melted and became a mildly
> radioactive light green glass,
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It was a relatively small blast, 100-ton and only had a 30 ft. wide hole 5 ft. deep.
So unless someone, or something 'glassed' an area, say with a huge laser or some kind of nuclear explosion, the most likely scenario would be to have a very large volcano or a chain of them to 'create' the glass.
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> What would be the global impact of such temperatures in a localized area?
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Considering the impact of a [Super-volcano](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervolcano) on the world's ecology, weather and local area (Yellowstone is ~1500 sq. mi.), and it is still significantly smaller than the state of Texas (268,820 sq mi), it would likely be or cause an extinction event. The heat dissipation could take generations to cool.
ETA: one more thing
If you have magic, some kind of clash of powerful being like devils and gods perhaps, could have left this wasteland behind, the glass might even have been caused by their destruction.
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> The event will be magical in nature, but that doesn't mean that a hellish firestorm couldn't cause problem globally.
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In that case it would be a LOT of energy that would need to be dissipated, the heat output alone could disrupt trade wind patterns. Also that is a very large area, and that will be an awful lot of smoke, soot and ash from everything burning that can. It could cause some major weather and season issues until everything falls back out.
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Sand and Glass are both made of silica, sufficient heat can convert sandy desert terrain into glass.
From [wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinitite):
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> Trinitite, also known as atomsite or Alamogordo glass, is the glassy residue left on the desert floor after the plutonium-based Trinity nuclear bomb test on July 16, 1945, near Alamogordo, New Mexico. The glass is primarily composed of arkosic sand composed of quartz grains and feldspar (both microcline and smaller amount of plagioclase with small amount of calcite, hornblende and augite in a matrix of sandy clay) that was melted by the atomic blast. It is usually a light green, although color can vary. It is mildly radioactive, but is safe to handle
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This article also says:
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> In 2005 it was theorized by Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist Robert Hermes and independent investigator William Strickfaden that much of the mineral was formed by sand which was drawn up inside the fireball itself and then rained down in a liquid form.:
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So essentially you need to pull the sand up into or expose it to a very hot fireball and then let it rain or flow over the area you want covered in the glass.
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Bowlturner beat me to what was going to be the crux of my answer, so I'll go in a different direction.
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> Would the event have to take place in an area that was a desert in the first place? Is sand required?
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Well, it would be a plus. from [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass):
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> The most familiar, and historically the oldest, types of glass are based on the chemical compound silica (silicon dioxide), the primary constituent of sand.
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[Silica ($\text{SiO}\_2$) - based glasses](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass#Silicate_glass) are typically one-half to three-quarters silica. The highest listed is oxide glass (90%), and the lowest listed is aluminosilicate glass (57%). So, yes, you would want to have a lot of silica - and thus sand - in the area.
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> What kind of temperatures would have to be achieved to do this to a temperate area?
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Locally, you'd want a forecast of sunny, with a high in the upper 1650's (degrees Celsius). [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitrified_sand) indicates that your scenario involves vitrified sand, which can form at that temperature and become glass-like. The page notes that types of vitrified sand can form from interactions with lightning, nuclear detonations, or meteor strikes (note that it does not cite sources, but these events seem plausbile). I'd aim for a couple thousand degrees Celsius. The page also notes that volcanic glass does *not* fall into this category.
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> It can be 'more' glassy in the middle and only partially towards the edges.
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I think you'll need the high-temperature meteor strike for that scenario.
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> What would be the global impact of such temperatures in a localized area?
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Well, a meteor strike would be devastating. I'd predict a large crater, as well as other effects, such as an impact winter. A lightning strike wouldn't be on the scale you asked for, so that's out. A nuclear explosion - eh, not really large-scale. So I think your only plausible option is the meteor, which will have severe global effects.
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If you want large chunks of glass, it's not possible.
To create glass, you need to heat a material up above its melting point, and then cool it rapidly enough that it solidifies without being able to form a crystalline microstructure. This pretty much requires a rapid, shallow heating such as you'd get from a lightning strike or an atom bomb detonation, and precludes getting any great thickness of glass.
Material is pretty much irrelevant: effectively any material that melts (instead of sublimating or combusting) can be made into a glass if you cool it fast enough. Some materials (such as silica) are more forgiving of cooling rate than others (such as iron).
If you want a thin layer of glass (no more than an inch or two thick), you can do it through simple magical heating, though you might have trouble cooling the center of your area fast enough. If you want something thicker, you'll need to go with direct magical transmutation.
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This is more an answer towards obsidian rather than sand, although there are several volcanic 'glass' rocks out there...tachylite (I think thats right)...even Pumace is considered a volcanic glass.
To form volcanic glass, you need a lava flow to cool extremely quickly. The lava content can range from high silica content (obsidian) to something with a much lower silica content (tachylite) along with several types in between...so content of the lava doesn't seem to matter as much as the extremely quick cooling. What better way to cool lava than water? Sea volcanoes are quite frequently responsible for volcanic glass.
Try to give a scenario for it:
Somewhere in early planetary history, a volcanic hotspot exists under a significant amount of water. A single eruption occurs and the magma released turns into glass as the water quickly cools it. Over an extended period of time these eruptions leave layer upon layer of volcanic glass deposits. Enter plate tectonics...these layers of volcanic glass exists between two plates and gets pushed up to the surface as the two plates collide (not unlike the Himalya's when the Indian subcontinent merged with Asia). Volcanic glass is hard, but exceedingly brittle...all you would need now is an impact or geological event that shatters the majority of the volcanic glass. I like the idea of a meteor impact at this time, which would break up the glass and leave behind a crater like lake for the glass to collect in afterwards.
Or perhaps more to your want here...the volcanic glass layers have a layer of dirt collect on top of it, leaving it a lush green location (igneous rocks are rich in minerals that plant life thrives on, if you've ever seen Hawaii, the color of these greens are absolutely amazing) and you have a civilization that builds on that location. How you turn this lush green location with a civilization thriving on it into a glass sea is now your call to make, just make whatever happens contain a large enough concussive impact to shatter the volcanic glass below. I get the strange feeling you're thinking magic here
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Glass fractures easily. If you want a large smooth glassy area, you would need to make sure the glass layer is thick enough to actually form a molten layer that wouldn't turn to shards in an instant. You would need a steady long heat to make sure you permeate the ground enough to get a decently thick pool of liquid. It'd probably also be helpful to cool it slowly so that it has more time to work off stress as it shrinks.
If you try to do a sudden event, remember that sand is reasonably good at insulating from heat (see desert animals burrowing to escape the heat of the sun). You're going to need quite the firecracker to get a sudden burst of heat very deep.
For some real life comparisons, look at the volcanic glass on Kauai, Hawaii. There are areas where the magma cooled with just the right conditions to form a glassy sheen on the surface. (However, they are not flat, because they crystallized into glass while the lava was moving so they had to follow the outside edge of the lava as it cooled).
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Futuristic science is equivalent to magic. So assuming you can have quantum nano-robots that can convert energy into matter and vice versa these answers should be adequate:
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> What kind of temperatures would have to be achieved to do this to a temperate area?
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Pretty high, 1 kg of matter turned into pure energy is equivalent to almost 21.5 megatons of TNT. In comparison the largest nuclear weapon ever tested (according to wikipedia) the *Tsar Bomba* exploded at a force of about 50 megatons. However this technology (hopefully) would use all the extra energy to form silica atoms and bond them into glass. Hopefully no extra heat would be leftover.
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> Would the event have to take place in an area that was a desert in the first place? Is sand required?
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No. You could even turn air into glass (compressed first) if you wanted to. This would quickly erode the glass into smaller pieces if done at a high enough altitude.
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> What would be the global impact of such temperatures in a localized area?
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**If the laws of thermodynamics prevented turning all of the excess energy into glass:** Possible side effects could include vaporization of the world. It could quite possibly vaporize much more than the world if the robots malfunctioned and vaporized all of Earth into pure energy.
Note: Forgive me for poor grammar and for any overlooked laws of nature that distinctly forbid this.
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Read this after reading starrise's excellent summation.
Just as a note: Immanuel Velikovsky in his books Worlds in Collision, Earth in Upheaval, and Ages in Chaos postulated cataclysmic evolution. His idea was that our planetary neighbours were at one time wanderers in the solar system and came very close to earth, creating great catastrophy. The next paragraphs are from the wiki listing of him:
Planet Earth has suffered natural catastrophes on a global scale, both before and during humankind's recorded history.
There is evidence for these catastrophes in the geological record (here Velikovsky was advocating Catastrophist ideas as opposed to the prevailing Uniformitarian notions) and archeological record. The extinction of many species had occurred catastrophically, not by gradual Darwinian means.
The catastrophes that occurred within the memory of humankind are recorded in the myths, legends and written history of all ancient cultures and civilisations. Velikovsky pointed to alleged concordances in the accounts of many cultures, and proposed that they referred to the same real events. For instance, the memory of a flood is recorded in the Hebrew Bible, in the Greek legend of Deucalion, and in the Manu legend of India.
The causes of these natural catastrophes were close encounters between the Earth and other bodies within the solar system — not least what are now the planets Saturn, Jupiter, Venus, and Mars, these bodies having moved upon different orbits within human memory.
So, just suppose our hypothetical planet had a close encounter with another, it would seem that a sea of molten glass could be created. It at least would result in great volcanic upheaval, and lots of volcanic glass.
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[Question]
[
I have a character who is mute and they would need a voice synthesizer to assist them in their day-to-day communications (shopping, working, romancing, etc.). How could that work in a Victorian-Steampunk universe?
I'm after an assisting device that can be easily carried, with a similar functionality as the one Stephen Hawking used. Perhaps even with some prerecorded messages if possible.
Alchemy would be accepted as part of the process but preferably without electricity and batteries. The universe would be based on the late Victorian era, with low-ish steampunk elements. Like cars, but no airships.
I was thinking something similar to the phonograph but with pipes, valves and horns, but couldn't come up with anything plausible.
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It might be plausible. One of the early speech synthesizers, the [DECtalk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECtalk), worked by playing back phonemes (fragments of word sounds) in a sequence controlled by the user. Most people will have heard it at least once since it's most famous user was the physicist Stephen Hawking. Googling for "DECtalk phoneme list" will show what sounds it could play and there are videos on YouTube that demonstrate how it worked.
One could imagine an Edison style [phonograph cylinder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonograph_cylinder), driven by clockwork and with a playback head that mechanically switched tracks to play back phonemes in sequence. Such a mechanism would be horrifically complicated in real life, but being in a steampunk universe papers over that a bit.
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**Very easily, in fact! -- with the GRAMMOGRAPH MARK III**
Allow me introduce Steam Gadgets Ltd's latest concept in *mechanical grammography*:
Your character will be supplied with a functionally improved & entirely bespoke typewriter, looking something like this sleek standard model:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WXZBJ.png)
which will be connected via cables to a bank of clockwork reproducers, of which this is an early example:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cBsjr.png)
The keyboard won't be the standard QWERTY or DVORAK types, and indeed, it won't even have a paper roller, carriage return mechanism, tabs or even the standard assortment of letters! Instead, it will consist of keys depicting various individual [phonemes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneme) that might be expected to occur independently, as well as common [syllables](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllable). E.g., the phoneme [t] won't occur independently because in English we don't (normally) just say "t"; but the phoneme [o] will, because it's an actual English word -- either "o", the vocative particle, or "oh", an interjection of surprise. On the other hand, syllables like [di], [ɛks] and [ɛnt] will be present on the keyboard in order to form words.
Functionally, the system will work like a [tracker organ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracker_action): your character will press a key which will pull on a mechanism that causes the correct grammophonic recording to sound. Rather than the crank to play system we find on the old dolls, this mechanism will make use of the pull-string with flywheel clockwork mechanism to allow for less delay and more rapid playback. Playing upon they keys with a sense of musical rhythm ought to provide for some level of fluid speech and a minimum of transposed syllables. No hunt-n-peck to make this device work!
In order to improve functionality, we have extended the upper & lower case shift positions (two levels on a standard machine, four on ours) to allow the user to access whole ranges of recordings of set phrases, common greetings & small talk, plus phrases expected to be used in her every day environment, such as commonly given orders or responses.
Our improved grammophones are quite small, with metal platters no more than two inches across. Each platter can hold up to 30 seconds of speech. Obviously, phonemes and syllables don't take quite so long to pronounce! Each platter can have as many as 16 separate tracks: which track the stylus engages being a function of the key pressed, as it is controlled by a spring mechanism.
The whole mechanism requires no electric devilry and no messy alchemical processes. The device weighs around 250 pounds and can be easily pushed along in our handsome oak or cherry trolley with cast iron frame and heavy duty casters. Just open the lid and lock the grammograph into the working position and your character will be ready to deliver lectures, address staff or communicate with any person as easily as they can talk, all with excellent tonal & speech quality!
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dP1Uy.png)
*Note: the Edison talking doll depicted actually uses a ring record made from wax or tin; but many fine antique dolls did in fact have "compact discs" inside, that could even be changed! The same technology can be found will into the 20th century with GI Joe and other talking dolls whose speeches are recorded on phonographic tapes rather than discs.*
[Answer]
Go full out steam punk on it:
Build a steam driven or compressed air driven [voder.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voder) This is a [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbXvLlbBmJM) of the Bell Labs electronic voder in operation.
In place of the electronic oscillators, you use air pressure driven buzzers (for the buzz) or open orifices (for the hiss.)
In place of the filters, you have tuned resonance chambers.
Each key of your keyboard activates a specific buzzer or hiss orifice with its own resonance chamber.
You use multiple hissers/buzzers because trying to route the sounds to different resonance chambers would be complicated - imagine trying to use one "whistle" for all the pipes in a pipe organ, and switch the pipes to make it resonant. No fun at all.
Thinking about it, it is probably easiest to look at the voder as a specialized [pipe organ.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipe_organ) The keys of pipe organs were traditionally mechanical - you could look at how they work to see how to control your voder.
Maybe you could base it on a [calliope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calliope_(music)) style design. Those used steam power. It might be inconvenient to have to pull a wagon around to have a conversation though - or to have to stoke the fire when your "voice" gets weak.
A pipe organ style design will be rather large, no matter what you do. The size of the resonance chamber is dictated by the frequency (and hence the wavelength) of the sounds you need to reproduce. You might be able to "coil" the pipes like in some musical instruments, but I think that would make the resonance frequency range for each "pipe" too narrow.
Maybe you have a big, fancy voder built permanently into one wall of the living room and hold conversations "Captain Nemo" style by "playing" complex words on a big keyboard for fine nuances.
For "out and about" conversation (shopping and such) you have a smaller, suitcase sized voder that you pump with your feet. It has fewer pipes and keys, so it can't express things as clearly.
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The voder is one of the few things I can think of that could have realistically been done during the age of steam if anyone had seen a need to do it.
Much of what you see in steam punk are things that couldn't have really been done with just steam power technology. The voder could have been done, and could still be done today if anyone wanted to try.
[Helmholtz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_von_Helmholtz#Acoustics_and_aesthetics) described work on producing vowel sounds with resonators back in 1863. Bell even says that if he had better understood what Helmholtz had written, then he (Bell) wouldn't have gone in the direction that led to the telephone - Bell apparently couldn't read German, and Helmholtz (as a German) wrote his stuff in German. Thus we ended up with electrical telephones for everyone instead of mechanical speaking machines for the handicapped.
You could have someone in the history of your world pick up Helmholtz's work on vowel sounds and generalize it to all speech sounds to develop the voder.
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Steam calliopes were **loud.**
Imagine the circus comes to town, and tows a steam powered "voder calliope" through the streets announcing the circus and telling you where to find the big top and announcing all stars and attractions - with some poor schlub with thick earmuffs sitting on the back, playing the machine to make the announcements.
Then, with the invention of player pianos, someone encodes voder keys for the calliope and makes fully automatic (and loud) announcements without having to deafen the operator.
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Being a woman in the 19th century, as in most of history, sucked a lot. When they finally snapped, people said they were displaying the effects of hysteria, which was believed to be in part due to sexual deprivation. Some dude called Mortimer Granville invented the vibrator to resolve that[This is largely disputed nowadays]. Yes, this is very \*\*\*\*ed up.
Anyway, people found out that if you touch your throat with an activated vibrator, your voice comes out robotic, in a funny kinda way. Guess someone had to try it at some point. Then they found out that it allows (some) mute people to speak. This eventually led to the invention of the [artificial larynx](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolarynx):
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> Initially, the pneumatic mechanical larynx was developed in the 1920s by Western Electric. It did not run on electricity, and was flawed in that it produced a strong voice. Electrolarynxes were introduced in the 1940s, at a time when esophageal speech was being promoted as the best course in speech recovery; however, since that technique is difficult to master, the electrolarynx became quite popular.
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Pneumatic dil... er, vibrators are very steampunky and might fit into your world nicely.
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Is **[Wolfgang von Kempelen's Speaking machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_von_Kempelen%27s_speaking_machine)** steampunk enough? It doesn't even need steam to work.
And [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_YUB_S6Gpo) you can see and hear the thing in action.
It can be made wearable and portable in a bagpipe style design.
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How about a compact speech synthesizing player piano? <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6e2c0v4sBM>, but it's also googleable.
I'm pretty sure early player pianos were wind-up models, so that fits with the steampunk theme. I have no clue if it can be made compact though.
It could be made with punch cards for simple words and phrases, to be fed into the machine. Or maybe premade punch cards that are fed through on button presses, like a jukebox but with one word per card. Not sure if punch cards would fit in the steampunk genre, but I think it would work. Make them out of copper plates if need be.
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**Burping**
With practice it is possible to be reasonably fluent and certainly very understandable.
[Burp Talking! From the Burping Queen!](https://youtu.be/nBXYee6p2Ro)
The following video is of a man who has a technique for pumping a lot of air into his stomach and articulating quite long quotations.
[Burping & Talking 8 long Life Quotes](https://youtu.be/XO7JBlC5a70?t=29)
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If you are looking for Steampunk, look no further than the guy, along with his colleague Bruce Sterling, launched the (sub)genre with his novel *The Difference Engine*, William Gibson. However, the voice synth is not in his Steampunk novel, but his debut novel (which created the Cyberpunk genre). In Villa Straylight, there sits the family terminal, a talking head, which is:
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> The most unusual thing Jimmy had managed to score on his swing through
> the archipelago was a head, an intricately worked bust, cloisonné over
> platinum, studded with seedpearls and lapis. Smith, sighing, had put
> down his pocket microscope and advised Jimmy to melt the thing down.
> It was contemporary, not an antique, and had no value to the
> collector. Jimmy laughed. The thing was a computer terminal, he said.
> It could talk. And not in a synth-voice, but with a beautiful
> arrangement of gears and miniature organ pipes. It was a baroque thing
> for anyone to have constructed, a perverse thing, because synth-voice
> chips cost next to nothing. It was a curiosity. Smith jacked the head
> into his computer and listened as the melodious, inhuman voice piped
> the figures of last year's tax return.
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For a user with full function in at least one hand and thumb and one finger of the other, a common voder and some learning time will do the job. These devices became publicly known in the 1950s, but they took advantage of the fact that the speaking voice is, at its core, nothing but a combination of buzzing, hissing, and clicking sounds (linguists make distinctions of multiple clicks and at least a couple hisses, but speech is intelligible if these are glossed together).
The original voder was battery powered, but it could just as easily have run on clockwork. The controls were for volume and pitch (over a fairly narrow range) for the buzz, volume for the hiss, and simple actuaction for the click. By learning to operate this very simple machine in the manner of learning a musical instrument, the user could produce very clear speech with literally two thumbs and two fingers. The devices I've seen were held on straps like an accordion -- not due to weight and bulk (they were no bigger than a Swiss concertina, which needs no straps) but so the hands were free to operate the controls rather than hold the device.
I saw this on *What's My Line* or *You Bet Your Life*, episodes recorded in the late 1950s, I don't recall which -- but the device itself (in clockwork form) could have been built as early as the 17th century (mechanism no more complex than automata and complex striking clocks of that period).
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In the future, the world is in a parlous1 state. Earth people of the future (let us call them Futurians as in the answer by DWKraus) are desperate but they still have a number of time portals in working order. They decide to raid the past. They will travel back in time and steal resources that have lasting value, including oil, metals, and machinery.
The portals are open at one end in the future and simultaneously open at the other end in the target time in the past. The portals have zero length apart from the frame that contains the mechanism and acts as the entrance/exit. The time travellers2 can move back and forth easily between the two time periods and even run roads or pipelines through the portals for mass transport.
What they fail to realise is that they are robbing their own past and thereby impoverishing their ancestors. Thus they themselves created the barren world that led to their own downfall.
Let us focus on oil. The ancestors lose their oil because it is stolen by the Futurians. The Futurians are short of oil because it was stolen from the ancestors who therefore were unable to pass it on to their descendants.
This leads to a paradox — or does it? If we handwave the existence of time travel, is the scenario possible from a resources point of view? How can I make this work? How can I balance the books?
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**Information for would-be editors**
1 [parlous](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/parlous) is a real word
2 [traveller - British spelling](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/traveller)
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**The future is impoverished because the past has been raided.**
Let us say I was well stocked with cheese crackers Wednesday night but Thursday morning I am not at all. I wake up and the crackers are gone, all 4 boxes and one of them was Family Sized.
I am hungry for cheese crackers. Thursday and Friday and all through the weekend I am hungry and I cannot go out for more because I promised I would watch the cat. All I have are those healthy vegetable crackers and they are pretty old because no-one wants them.
Monday I am fed up, or actually unfed up with cheese crackers. I use my time machine and go back to early Thursday morning. There are the crackers! I consider leaving my past self one box but decide that suffering builds character and there are those vegetable crackers if he is hungry. All 4 boxes return to Monday with me.
I get halfway through the Family Sized box and fall asleep. I wake up Tuesday and 3 of the boxes are gone. Inside the Family Sized box I find the box of vegetable crackers. Bastard!
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You are not creating a paradox, but in fact the opposite, a closed timelike curve. Physicists and philosophers don't like them, because there is no longer any clear sequence of cause and effect, but physicists and philosophers are long dead anyway so who cares.
A paradox would mean that by their actions in the past, the time travellers remove their initial reason to travel into the past, but here they actually create it, so all's ok.
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**Embiggen the Bermuda triangle and a buddie movie.**
There's been lots of oil spills over the years since the first days of tankers, all the way from a tonne and a half or so up to hundreds of thousands of tonnes. Take a shufty at the [Wikipedia page about it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_spills), it makes for shocking reading, and gets tedious because it's so looong - which is shocking in itself.
Most are tankers, some pipeline leaks or bursts, one deliberate in the Persian Gulf during the 90' when at war.
Nabbing the tankers before they get grounded/run-into or just plane broken-up by bad weather not only would provide large quantities of crude oil, but diesel oil, refined petroleum and a goodly amount of steel and tanker engines and other bits and bobs to be found on- board. The side effect would be to protect the coastline and marine life, not to mention saving on the cost and manpower of clean-ups. No doubt the sudden disappearance might cause a few raised eyebrows and spawn a few conspiracy theories, but who cares.
The buddie movie part comes from when you kidnap Edison and Tesla, drag them to the future and show them what'll happen if they don't help sort out the past's energy usage and oncoming environmental-catastrope, send them back armed with all the knowledge you can give them for rechargeable energy storage and solar/wind/hydro power.
If that doesn't work well enough then when you've dropped them off and you return home to your time, you'll soon see if nothing much has changed. Time for another trip. World presidents/prime ministers and leaders the day after inauguration (not just their mates, the Al Gore incident taught you that lesson), then maybe a few billionaires for good measure. Rinse and repeat until the time you return home and like what you see.
**Glossary of terms:**
*Shufty (or shufti)* East-end of London slang meaning "glance at or peek at", popularised in the 1980-2003 British TV series [Only Fools and Horses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Only_Fools_and_Horses). Thought to be of Egyptian Arabic origin.
*Nabbing, to nab.* To take possession of, sometimes 1970's police slang "to arrest".
*Rinse and repeat* - self evident, like the shampoo commercial.
[Answer]
## Renewables and Parallel universes:
I think that as long as your Futurians aren't DIRECTLY stealing stuff other people already mined or cut or manufactured, you should be okay.
**Your Futurians always had the goods**: I think you have no problem. If you assume the Futurians are exploiting the resources they are collecting, then their past selves/societies never had these to begin with - they were gone long before. There may have been evidence of what happened - old mines abandoned centuries before people learned to desire the resources that are gone - but the Futurians were the first to get to them, in a very backwards way (pun intended). But your Futurians HAVE the resources now (the future). Maybe they could have had a better past if they hadn't done that. Oh, well. If they collect the resources bafore the resources were even claimed by anyone, there wouldn't even be a legal question.
**Your Futurians can take resources that were never used**: But not all resources are gone if the future robs the past. There were (assumedly) huge coal reserves in Siberia 100's of millions of years ago, the burning of which in geologic events caused the Permian extinction. A lot of that carbon can be scavenged, and it just reduces the total planetary carbon levels by a minuscule amount. You could mine or pump millions of tons of coal, and millions of gallons of oil, and still not likely significantly affect the future. If biodiversity is a resource, they can sample organisms from throughout history. Or maybe they want a pleasant place to live - entire large cities that exist for hundreds or thousands of years could vanish into geological time without being noticed. If you want, they can even dump their carbon waste into the past and balance the mass scales, so their garbage turns to oil in 100 million years, and in the future, they get cheap crude from 100 million years ago. As well, much of the surface of the Earth has subducted into the mantle, where it isn't doing people a whole lot of good. Those areas could have been mined completely out and there would be no harm, no foul.
**Your Futurians aren't going to their past**: All that is also assuming that by traveling to the past, they don't end up creating a parallel universe. Travel back to 10 million years ago, and it's an alternate universe that will now evolve differently than out own - because they can't change their own past. So go ahead, enslave our australopithecine ancestors as soon as they develop thumbs! Mine those ores and pump that oil! You can make the future, or you can re-make it! You aren't stealing from your own ancestors; some other time travelers did that millions of years ago. Dirty bastards. Or your whole society could migrate back in time and simply replace the timeline with one of their own making.
* **PS**: This next part depends on how your time stravel system works. If *equity* is what you are worried about, a resource exchange can be worked out. Find rich industrialists who are willing to trade things they have in abundance (like crude oil they may not even know what to do with yet) for things that are impossible for them to make (like advanced medicines from heart medication to Viagra). You might have a semi-permanent arrangement; they have less motive to develop tech if they can get the products for the mere price of wood, coal, oil and ores.
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You carefully raid only lost resources.
The wreck of [the Exeter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Exeter_(68)) disssapeared from the ocean floor, experts blame scavengers. but we know better.
The [Centralia Mine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire) has been on fire since 1962, but the locals only see the smoke as evidence, the coal is really being stolen and the smoke returned to centralia after it is used.
[MH370](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370) disappears without trace: time pirates!
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Accepting your given concept of time travel and it's consequences at face value, one thing the time travelers could do to offset their own future poverty is inform the past generation of what they are doing. Given that knowledge, the past generation could then accelerate their production of oil and other resources to compensate.
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Alright so let’s say that we have a massive dragon about 2 miles long. This big guy needs a lot of fuel to power himself and since there is only so much food he can eat at one time, he decides to run on nuclear power. Now dragons (in this universe) utilize metals in large quantities for various purposes such as in their scales, bones, claws, etc. So this gigantic dragon goes and munches on some radioactive metals and stores them in a special organ that is immune to the effects of the radiation. The dragon then uses the energy for heat, to generate electric currents, and generally keep itself alive.
So here is the actual question. Would the above exposition (eating radioactive material), be a sufficient explanation for a radiation based breath attack? Bonus points if anyone can devise a way for said breath attack to use alpha, beta, and gamma radiation. More bonus points for anyone who could describe the effects of such an attack.
P.S. - I know that I can make this creature do whatever I want, as I’m the one writing it and “it’s a dragon.” However, I would like to have some sort of plausible explanation for its incredible abilities other than the standard “it’s a dragon and can do what it wants.”
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If the breath attack is purely radioactive it wouldn't be a very good offensive weapon because exposure to even large doses of radiation still take a while to kill, on the order of hours or days. To get such a large amount of radiation to immediately kill you would have to generate a powerful enough reaction to require tons of shielding to keep from frying your dragon.
Alternatively, maybe the radiation breath is not instantly lethal, but strong enough to give a lethal dose to anyone not completely encased in lead armor. Radiation poisoning is a pretty horrifying way to die, I'll let you look up the full list of symptoms and effects but to name a few:
* Nausea & vomiting
* Skin damage from radiation burns that can lead to infection
* White blood cell death which can make infection worse
* Anemia from red blood cell death
* Changes in blood chemistry
* Internal bleeding
And of course an increased chance of cancer, leukemia, etc. If this is a world before the health effects of radiation exposure has been documented, let's say people who return from trying to slay this dragon report they saw a flash of blue light (Cherenkov radiation) and begin to die over the next few hours or days from an "unknown disease". It would definitely inspire fear in those who want to slay the dragon.
A purely radiation breath could be done by having an organ which stores radioactive material and is surrounded by shielding (your dragons can use metal in their bodies, so it could be lead or tungsten). All you need to do to release this radiation is open a hole in the shielding, working like some laboratory and medical radiation sources. To win the bonus points for using alpha, beta, and gamma, all you need to do is change the level of shielding:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/v6bck.jpg)
There could be some flaps in front of the organ the dragon can use to block different types of radiation, although gamma would be used almost exclusively for its penetrating ability.
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The other answers are good in general. Let me propose a somewhat specific way of bringing this about.
The dragon indeed has a running nuclear rector in its belly. (Look at [NASA's Kilopower project](https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/kilopower/images) to see how (relatively) small and simple a reactor can be (your dragon needs way bigger))) It uses the temperature difference between its core and the wings (rejecting heat and having many vessels for coolant-blood) to produce power. This produces mechanical or electrical power (lets say in pistons or in [termoelectric](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_generator) converters) [Radiothropic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus) symbionts complement this, allowing direct production of organics for the "meaty parts" of the creature.
The reactor has thick shielding/neutron reflectors in the most directions, except downward. This acts as a secondary weapon (irradiates things upon flyby), but has an another useful effect. When the dragon finds an uranium ore deposit, it digs in or finds a cave, and sleeps on a floor of nuclear ore. The leaking fast neutrons effectively turn the dungeon floor into the breeding zone of a [fast breeder reactor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Fast_breeder_reactor). Naturally abundant U-238 (fertile but unfissile) is converted into fissile Pu-239. After that the dragon can eat already highly fissionable
material, reducing the processing is has to perform internally. (Still needs chemical processing, but little or no isotope separation) The main radioactive weapon is the byproduct of this. Highly beta and alpha active daughter elements remain back, and get separated when the dragon secretes the reactor fuel from the ingested material. These get mixed (perhaps in form of salts) into water, and emitted as a plume of either boiling water or steam. On the effects likely for an unfortunate knight who inhales, ingests or gets contaminated by this, see the fate of [Litvinenko](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinenko#Illness_and_poisoning)
And the dragon has one last nasty trick. It can poop highly radioactive spent fuel elements when they became depleted (or poisoned by reactor poisons). These are used to reinforce the dragons liar with a many-miles wide dirty perimeter, making even approaching it nigh suicidal.
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The simplest answer is the dragon works like a nuclear reactor, causing fission of the nuclear materials its eaten, which releases tremendous heat and abundant radiation. Normally, a nuclear reactor does this in a containment vessel (meaning the nuclear process, and its bypoducts, never leave the vessel), but the dragon's innards act like a containment vessel.
When they need to attack, the dragon simply stops regulating the process (i.e. drawing the heat off to use for energy) which builds up tremendous heat. We're talking about enough heat to [make lava](https://www.wired.com/2013/04/the-most-dangerous-manmade-lava-flow/), such as the corium that is produced in a nuclear reactor meltdown. Mix that heat with other materials the dragon has eaten, and you have a highly toxic radioactive substance that is not easily dealt with (just standing next to corium for a few minutes will kill you). In theory, you could also build up hydrogen (caused as a byproduct of the nuclear reaction breaking down water) and have the dragon exhale it. Still pretty radioactive.
Just be sure your dragon has a ready source of coolant (like water or something else).
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## General Dragon Thoughts
Eating radioactive material is sufficient explanation for a radioactive breath attack, for the simple reason that vomiting radioactive debris at someone is legitimately lethal.
One difficulty to consider is that highly radioactive material is rare in nature (such material decays away quickly on geological timescales), so the dragon will perhaps struggle to get enough material or be strongly tied to a particular deposit that does contain sufficient concentrations of fissile material.
A second difficulty is how, biologically, to get value from radioactive materials. Heat is one thing, but what you really need is a way to do chemistry and manipulate the complex molecules that compose a living organism. You'd be looking for a semi-photosynthetic system that can capture the energy of gamma, beta and alpha radiation in wave modes and broken bonds of organic molecules.
## Breath Attack Specifics
Radiation is not good at immediately killing things in the way that, say, being on fire is. Extreme radiation doses that shred up your molecular machinery still take about an hour for the body to get to a sufficiently bad state that it dies. Less extreme, garden-variety radiation sickness kills over a few weeks.
Regardless, the dragon could happily vomit radioactive debris from its internal stockpile at people, and if it were sufficiently dirty material they would die over the next week or so.
Or, if the dragon has an internal organ that is running a nuclear reaction, you could arrange that organ such that it can be opened/moved to a direct line of sight to the outside world (eg. organ is on the gullet, like a throat pouch, and dragon can open their mouth, flex the pouch, then BOOM, anyone in front of the dragon is staring at an exposed nuclear reactor and taking a hideous dose of gamma & beta radiation)
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Lets start by making this a fission based dragon vs a fusion based dragon so the dragon will have a use for eating all that radioactive material.
Since the dragon will not be able to use uranium ore directly there will need to be a few steps in its digestion process. The first step will be to grind up the ore by chewing and dissolve the uranium ore "yellowcake" in nitric acid in the dragon's stomach to form uranyl nitrate. Then the uranyl nitrate will be passed to the dragon's second stomach where it will be combined with ammonia to create ammonium diuranate. The dragons third stomach will reduce the ammonium diuranate with hydrogen to get uranium dioxide while its 4th stomach will convert that with hydrofluoric acid to uranium tetrafluoride before its 5th stomach oxidizes the results to get uranium hexafluoride "hex".
Once the food is digested it will have to be enriched and molded into a useable form. The hex will be passed via a special organ in the dragon's body consisting of a huge chain of diffusion chambers used to separate the uranium-238 from the uranium-235. The Uranium hexafluoride gas will be cascaded through the diffusion chambers before being passed to the dragon's 6th stomach that chemically removes the fluoride from the hex and transforms it into Uranium dioxide. The Uranium dioxide is then melted and compressed into pellets that are stored in the dragon's reaction chamber.
The dragon's reaction chamber holds the enriched Uranium dioxide pellets close enough to achieve criticality when moderated by the high-pressure water running through it. The high-pressure water is used as both a moderator to keep the reaction critical and as the coolant used to move the energy in the form of heat throughout the dragon's body to its cooling organ, its skin.
Each scale on the dragon has a copper inner side and a steel outer side. The temperature differential between the outside atmosphere and the high temperature, high-pressure coolant water works as a thermocouple to simultaneously cool down the dragon and generate electricity. This electricity is what is used to power the exotic dragon musculature that allows these majestic creatures to hold their immense two-kilometer bodies aloft without being crushed under their own weight.
The dragons breath weapon is powered by pellets generated in its reaction chamber and moved up the dragons esophagus to its breath chamber. When it wants to rain down death on its foes the dragon moves the pellets in its breath chamber together at the same time it opens its mouth and feeds chunks of waste u-238 into its breath chamber. The extreme heat from the breath chamber reaction turns the uranium into a stream of high velocity extremely radioactive uranium plasma.
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One issue that I see is that if it's a flying dragon maybe being 2 miles long strains the imagination somewhat. Also, there are not many materials sturdy enough for such a large object to be made. For instance bones are pretty close to the limit with something like an elephant. If it's 2 miles long, what are its legs made of? How does it not sink into the ground?
With regards to storing the radiation, the problem is shielding. Alpha and beta are trivial to shield against. Even a paper sheet will do. Gamma is a lot harder. To stop those, you need a lot of matter, and it has to be something dense, like lead. Now you have the issue of this thing moving around with the weight of the reactor and the shield. In fact, the closest thing to what you describe is a modern aircraft carrier, which is pretty much only possible on water. Maybe it should be a water dragon.
Second, the part about the breath weapon. First of all, the dragon need not breathe, but can simply store quantities of radioactive fuel somewhere like above its eyes, and have dangerous "heat vision". You can make the aperture out of lead bearing proteins or whatever (actually, it really has to be a solid lead, any protein with lead co-factor would have way too much gamma-transparent non-lead, so you would need A LOT of the shielding, like dozens of meters thick probably). Second, in reality a lot of the danger of nuclear bombs is not the explosion. That's gone in an instant. What happens though is a lot of radioactive dust is generated. You breathe/drink/eat this dust and then it shines radiation on the inside of your lungs, which is how you get cancer. The breath sounds like it has radioactive dust in it. So how would it avoid breathing this dust itself? Spitting a solution of radioactive dust would be more believable. Also, as others point out, it wouldn't be an instant effect. So perhaps it makes more sense for the dragon to breathe superhot steam from the reactor cooler, or plasma (for instance, directly from the reactor if it's a fusion dragon).
Fusion dragon would also be nicer because the fuel is just hydrogen, easier to find than Uranium ore. Also, ore actually has a tiny amount of active isotope. Tiny amounts of it must be filtered from huge quantities of ore. This is done with a centrifuge, because a slight difference in mass is really the only way to distinguish the two isotopes, they are otherwise chemically identical. So your dragon must eat A LOT of these rocks (how???) to get enough fuel, even if he located a nice exposed uranium vein. And it won't be easy for his cells to chemically enrich it, he'd need a centrifuge organ (???) or something equivalent. It's also pretty incredible that you could biochemically enrich uranium, because it's so hard for living cells to distinguish isotopes that [whole experimental methods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_isotope_labeling_by_amino_acids_in_cell_culture) are based around it. I'm not aware of a single conclusive case where a biological system could meaningfully distinguish isotopes.
I think however you always have the option of simply not dealing with any of this. Just declare that the dragon's biology is radically different and much less vulnerable to radiation. Maybe it doesn't have DNA but entirely different biochemistry. Maybe it has exceptional mutation tolerance. Maybe its immune system is really good at fighting cancer. Who knows, I mean, it's a 2 mile animal, it's clearly nothing like any living creature we know.
And lastly, the dragon's breath doesn't have to actually be deadly. A creature like this sounds like bad news, I wouldn't want to mess with it. So I bet a lot of information about its weapons is 2nd, 3rd and 4th hand. It's rumor and legend. Perhaps the dragon's breath doesn't instantly kill, but after he attacks the crops die and children are born malformed for decades, such that the town is eradicated. Over many retellings, this time aspect gets blurred, and people start thinking that the dragon just breathed once and everyone instantly turned into mutants. Not like many people would track him down to try and see for themselves.
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Actually a radioactive breath would be an extremely useful tool for a behemoth 2 miles long slowly plowing trough the surface. You would effectively need siege weapons to do anything to it and those take hours to days to build. A synced timescale with radiation death.
Another thing what could HUGELY increase the effect and danger is if he could breathe out clouds of radioactive dust. That is real nasty. Just irradiating someone is unpleasant. Ingesting that radiation in lungs is deadly quite fast. Also would serve as a simple probe for radiation, because if it breaths the stuff on some plants and they don't die, it is possible that there is heightened radiation source in the ground.... Lunch time!
Also at such scale you would have to think about a totally different organisation level. As was stated, cooling, circulation and movement will be difficult in the traditional sense. So huge wings will be probably used just for cooling (or scales, protrusions, shields), but generally you could take some inspiration in ship design or building design.
Or if you want to want to be a little ridiculous, you could make it generate super-heated plasma and use it as a propellant. Kinda like a rocket. And That could be used immediately like a kind of breath weapon....... Or maybe air-based catapult.
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**Particle beam shooting radiochemistry doing superentity.**
1. Giant dragon is a colonial organism of specialized beings - a tight swarm or flock rather than a single 2 mile entity. It can spread or shrink according to need. Certain parts might remain earthbound or largely subterranean except in times of need. This sidesteps giant creature impracticalities but allows the thing to become a de facto giant creature when that morph is necessary.
2. The radiant energy from the isotopes it eats are used for [energy capture photochemistry](https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/107363/energy-capture-photochemistry-with-ionizing-radiation) in a manner analogous to how plants capture visible light radiation with photochemistry.
3. The breath weapon is not radiant energy. **It is a particle beam of radon**. Radon is the byproduct of the dragons isotope food and radon particles would make an excellent particle beam as laid out here: [What subatomic particle is best for a particle accelerator gun?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/101554/what-subatomic-particle-is-best-for-a-particle-accelerator-gun/101590#101590) The particles are accelerated by specialized organisms which generate electrical current and a consequent magnetic channel that accelerates the radon ion. A beam of radon ions in an atmosphere would become a channel of plasma and flame as it progressed, with the energetic radon particles dumping their energy into gas particles they encounter, ionizing some molecules to hot plasma and heating the mass to incandescence. Solid matter hit at short range by the particles would also be ionized and heated in a cascading chain reaction. At farther distances, heating by the hot gas and plasma would be more relevant.
Probably the subentities within the dragon which are responsible for storing radon would be killed in the course of a breath weapon activation - a being like this will have lots of available energy but depletion of the radon subentities / radon supply will limit the number of times it can use that weapon.
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I'm building the world of my story for my comics and I've come to a bit of a standstill with a particular idea.
Assuming there were no other planets in our universe, just a single planet Earth.
1. The Sun is as the same size as the Moon (maybe slightly bigger).
2. The Sun has the same proximity the Moon currently has.
3. This planet in question still has a moon that does the usual orbiting
Would the SUN be able to:
* Provide the same heat, light and energy necessary for living organisms (humans, plants, animals, etc) to survive and carry out the usual life processes?
**EDIT: I'm asking if the Heat and Light energy emitter with the size and proximity of the Moon could allow the planet to support life (If this planet in question was the only one in that universe.)**
[Answer]
**Short:** No
## Long
**Why? (heat)**
The sun uses its gigantic mass to fuse hydrogen. If the sun was light enough to orbit the Earth it would not generate enough pressure to start the nuclear fusion.
**Can't it burn normally?**
No because:
1. You don't have oxygen in/on the sun
2. Burning would only work for a couple of months maybe years.
**Why (light/energy)**
When the sun doesn't burn/fuse it doesn't create any light and thereby won't light up the world. The moon doesn't receive any light from the sun and so it will also always be dark. Because of the lack of reactions in the small sun it will also not radiate any energy to earth.
## Additional Info
Any thing with the same mass as the Sun of our universe wont work because:
1. If the "sun" would be in the proximity stated by the question it would rip the earth apart $F = G\cdot \frac{m1 \cdot m2}{r^2}$ m1= mass1 and m2 = mass2 G = gravitational constant, r = radius/distance of the two objects F = force.
If we plug our values in (mass of sun mass of earth distance of the moon from earth) we get: $5.367 \cdot 10^{27} N$ which is "only" abit more than 100 000 times stronger than in our universe. The problem is because the sun would be more massive the moon would be lost within days. (it would be attracted more by the sun than by the earth)
Yes a white dwarf does fusion but it would be way bigger than a moon, would also rip earth apart and the fusion is not enough to provide energy for any organisms bigger than a centimeter. (if at all)
**"Ripping Earth apart"**
Upon research I have discovered that the Force of the "sun" may not be enough to rip the earth apart but would be stronger than the gravitational force of the earth which would cause everything not connected with the crust of the earth to fall into the "sun".
Also the hot core of the Earth would melt through the cold crust after a while and so in the end earth would still fall apart. (because of the same reason everything not directly connected with earth would fall of of it)
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So, obviously the *natural* answer is NO.
But what everyone really wants is an answer that is YES!
Because you have a world where you are *not* going to let facts get in the way of a good story, right? So now we have to look at ways of making this happen. The situation you describe is the **Geocentric Conundrum**. How to make things work with an Earth-sized planet at the centre of the universe. At least [one famous work of fantasy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discworld) does this; and that work in itself is simply a spiritual descendant of the Flat Earth cosmology, in that a tiny Sun orbits a much larger Earth.
* Naturally tiny Sun: this option is out, as even Jupiter, while warm, is not large enough to begin stellar fusion, unless you posit some form of unobtainium that does what hydrogen does, but at much lower pressures
* Artificial Sun: this is going to be your answer, in form or fashion. Essentially, you are going to have some kind of orbital station or platform that generates light and heat for the planet it orbits
I'd suggest an artificial rig comprising an armillary-like platform of gantries supporting a network of substations that generate an *atomic force field*. The forcefield allows for hydrogen to be pumped in through inlets at the poles, but enforces a spheroid shape throughout. When the "bag" is full of hydrogen such that the automatic safety on the inlet valves is engaged (the pressure being great enough that the vast pumps can no longer support the back pressure), the forcefield generators squeeze with equal pressure all around, thus driving up the already high pressure within. Stellar fusion is initiated and hey presto! Instant orbiting star.
The brightness of the light obliterates the gantry rig from view by people on the planet, so all they see is pure & wholesome sunlight!
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In my answers to this question
[Day/night cycle science help?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/135649/day-night-cycle-science-help/135706#135706)[1](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/135649/day-night-cycle-science-help/135706#135706),
and this question
[Could this planet exist?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/135797/could-this-planet-exist)[2](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/135797/could-this-planet-exist)
I discuss factors which could change the relative length of day and night on a planet.
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> There is a simple geometric reason why normal stars illuminate half of a planet's surface at any one time.
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> The planet Earth has a diameter of 12,742 kilometers, the Sun has a diameter of 1,391,400 kilometers, 109.19 times as great. So if the Sun and the Earth were touching, the Sun would illuminate a lot more than half of the Earth's surface at any one time. The farther away the Sun was from Earth, the smaller the proportion of Earth's surface it would illuminate at any moment, But even at infinite distance the Sun would still illuminate at least half of the Earth's surface at any one moment.
>
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It is possible for a small white dwarf star or an extremely small red dwarf star to be slightly smaller in diameter than the planet Earth.
But in order to shine they would have to have sufficient density and mass to have many times the mass of the Earth in order to have natural nuclear fusion reactions in their interiors. So even if one could get a red dwarf or a white dwarf small enough to have only the diameter of the Moon, it would still be many times, thousands of times, as massive as the Earth, which in turn is about 81 times as massive as the Moon.
If it was possible to have a shining star that had only the diameter of the moon - and it isn't possible to have a naturally shining star with so small a diameter - it would still have probably at least a hundred thousand times the mass of the Moon and probably be at least a thousand times as massive as the Earth.
So even if a Moon-sized natural star was possible - and it isn't - it would be many times as massive as the Earth, and so the Planet would orbit around the tiny star, not the tiny star around the Planet.
Could any tiny natural star be at the same distance from planet as the Moon is from Earth and yet give that planet the same amount of light and heat as the Sun gives to Earth?
The Sun has an average distance of 149,597,870.7 kilometers from Earth, while the Moon has an average distance of 384,399 kilometers, so the Sun is about 389 times as distant as the Moon. If a star as bright as the Sun was at the distance of the Moon, it would give a planet about 15,000 times as much heat and light as Earth gets from the Sun, and the planet would be many times as hot as Venus or Mercury.
Proxima Centauri is a M5.5V red dwarf star, and is pretty dim for a star. A planet, Proxima Centauri b, has been detected orbiting Proxima Centauri in the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri, at a distance of only about 7,500,000 kilometers and with a day only 11.186 Earth days long.
And even that close orbit is 19.5 times the distance of the Moon from Earth. If a planet was only 384,399 kilometers from Proxima Centauri it would get about 380 times as much radiation as Proxima Centauri b gets and would be hotter than Mercury or Venus.
As far as I know the potentially habitable exoplanet that orbits its star the closest is a planet of TRAPPIST-1, a M8V class star much dimmer than Proxima Centauri. Planet TRAPPIST-1c orbits in the habitable zone only about 2,370,000 kilometers out. But that is still about 6.16 times as far as the Earth-Moon distance, which means that a planet only 384,399 kilometers from TRAPPIST-1 would get about 36 times as much radiation as Earth gets from the Sun.
It is possible that an even more dim natural star could be only about 384,399 kilometers from a planet and give it the same amount of radiation as Earth gets from the Sun.
But that dim natural star would still be about as wide as the Earth and would thus look about four times as large as the Sun and the Moon look from Earth. To make even the smallest possible natural star have the same apparent diameter as the Sun and the Moon, it would have to be moved out to about four times the distance of the Moon, or out to about 1,537,596 kilometers.
And it would be more likely that a natural star could be dim enough to illuminate a planet with only the same amount of radiation as Earth gets from the Sun if that star was at a distance of about 1,537,596 kilometers as it would be if the star was at a distance of 384,399 kilometers.
But that star wouldn't have the diameter or mass of the Moon, it would have about the diameter of the Earth and thousands of times the mass of the Earth. And it wouldn't be at the distance of the Moon.
So IMHO it is almost certain that even if such a dim natural star is possible, it wouldn't satisfy any of your requirements exactly. Though perhaps expert astrophysicists might know of a dim enough star, the diameter and mass requirements seem totally impossible for any kind of a natural star.
Therefore, either you change your requirements or else you need a giant artificial satellite of your planet that has power generation and countless giant lamps.
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[Day/night cycle science help?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/135649/day-night-cycle-science-help/135706#135706)[1](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/135649/day-night-cycle-science-help/135706#135706)
[Answer]
Other answers have explained that our sun's simple design would not work if scaled down to the size of the moon.
Our sun's design is: pile enough hydrogen and helium together that the pressure at the center is so hot that you fuse hydrogen to make helium. The waste heat from this nuclear reaction eventually gets to the surface, where the surface' plasma releases black-body radiation at 5,500°C.
But **it is conceivable to design a moon-sized replacement for the sun, in lunar orbit**. You would need to come up with a way to contain 5,500°C hydrogen-helium plasma on the surface of the lamp that faced the Earth. You would want to aim most of the output of the lamp towards the Earth, because this reduces the power output needed by a factor of 2,200,000,000. Our sun has about 64,000,000 times the volume of our moon, so there would be enough room to store enough fuel for the lamp to match our sun's lifespan.
You would need to build quite a few large fusion reactors on the "dark side" of the lamp to power the plasma devices that produce the light. Specifically, you would need the equivalent of 175 million 1 GW (GigaWatt) fusion reactors, or about 20 reactors per square kilometer of lamp. You would need to build storage systems for a large amount of hydrogen. (You might choose to use hydrogen compounds instead of molecular hydrogen. Green cheese would work.) You would need to build a substantial heat radiator to disperse waste heat. And of course, you would need a substantial structure to hold the whole thing together as it rotates once per month to keep the lamp facing the Earth.
[Answer]
No.
At the moons size it would not be a nuclear furnace, it would just be a ball of gas. The mass of the sun is needed. So if Jupiter (also a ball of gas), had the mass of the Sun it would also be a Sun, but since it doesn't, it's just a ball of gas.
[Answer]
**Fission moon.**
Prior answers establish that you need stellar-scale masses to sustain fusion. But not fission. I put forth the idea of a fission powered radiant moon here. It could serve as a star with the size and distance of a moon.
[Can a fission satellite duplicate the radiance frequencies of a star?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/105268/can-a-fission-satellite-duplicate-the-radiance-frequencies-of-a-star)
and there is a bunch more discussion of the concept here
<http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?t=111216>
This would be a moon sized object containing a lot of fissile material - uranium, plutonium, thorium etc. The XKCD forum establishes that at star size, this would explode with an enormous energy output, so it cannot be anywhere near that big. The object needs to be the size of the moon (or smaller?) and larded with a lot of stuff that does not participate in fission - iron, perhaps. Compressed in the core to criticality, the fissile elements do their thing. Fission heats the metal moon to blackbody glowing and there is your star equivalent.
The problem is that the fission accelerates. Maybe it is perfectly balanced with the iron so it doesn't but probably the heaviest stuff migrates to the core and so the mix would stratify. The best conjecture I thought was the "sputter" moon. The fission accelerates, getting the reaction core (and the entire moon) hotter and hotter and eventually gets so hot that it explodes. The moon increases in size and as it does, the fissile elements are spread from each other. The fission peters out. The moon falls back into itself, mixing back up as it cools. But as the fissile elements get close to each other, the fission starts back up.
This would produce a lunar cycle of smaller and brighter then larger and cooler.
[Answer]
**Yes. *Except.***
(Note: This answer presumes that the distance to the sun remains constant between our world and your work.)
Glossing over how this would happen, the strength of the sun's gravitational field is related to its mass, not its volume. Sticking with Newtonian physics, the strength of gravity is:
F = GMm/r^2
where
G:= Gravitational constant
M:= greater mass
m:= lesser mass
r:= radius, or distance between m and M
You'll note that nowhere in there is volume. With fixed r, the Earth would still orbit the sun every 365 days. Things would continue as normal.
However, there's still the exception part.
Strictly speaking, after a star is compressed below a certain radius, it collapses into a black hole, as near-range light can no longer escape it. I did a quick calculation and determined the hypothetical Swartzchild radius of the sun to be roughly 3000 km. That's about 400 km too low. So, at this point, the sun would not emit any light whatsoever. Near-range gravitational attraction, which is normally canceled out by attraction from "higher" matter, would be so strong that light could not escape it.
This doesn't actually mean that Earth's orbit would be compromised, but the luminous output of the sun would be flat-out missing. Sounds bad, right?
Even if it didn't collapse completely, it would likely form a neutron star, which would completely scramble the light emissions. But, that's a bit off topic.
Of course, aside from that conundrum, it would be reasonable to consider how it is that that much mass could actually collapse to the size of the moon. Fusion convection does a pretty predictable job at keeping stars of a set mass at a set size. This wouldn't ever actually happen in our universe, as we know it.
I leave that to you, though.
One thing you might want to look up is black dwarf stars. None of them exist yet (the universe just hasn't been around for long enough, even distantly), but they're roughly the size of Earth and are what happens when a star burns out, but lacks the mass to form a neutron star or black hole.
Good luck!
[Answer]
Yes it is absolutely possible; despite that other answerers insisting that the sun wouldn't work scaled down, it does; as long as you scale up what they fuse. - What you're asking about is called a "white dwarf". Read more here:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_dwarf>
It has mass comparable to that of our sun; meaning that we'd either be spinning around it in a fraction of the time, or we'd be similar distance.
It has volume comparable to that of Earth (which isn't THAT far off the size of our moon)
It is a star near the end of its life, and is no longer fusing hydrogen or helium, but carbon and oxygen (not burning them, fusing them). The star is very hot internally during this time, but the luminosity is low because of it's small size.
This might allow the planet near it to not end up looking like Mercury or Venus.
The big issue of can it have a moon - well, that you can't have - because you already have something at similar distance. In all likelyhood, that moon will have hit the sun.
[Answer]
If you change the way stars work, then yes.
The sun and the moon are almost the same size as viewed from Earth. If the surface of the moon was as hot as the surface of the sun and we had no other sun, Earth would receive close enough to the same amount of radiative energy as we do currently.
If you move the moon-sun twice as far away, it would have to have a surface area fours times its previous area to occupy the same amount of sky. The inverse square law means the planet would receive the same amount of energy (four times as much energy at one quarter the strength).
$$ a = (C d)^2 $$
$$ E = {a \over d^2} $$
$$ E = C^2 $$
$a$ is the area of the moon-sun, $C$ is a constant multiplier (not $c$, the speed of light), $d$ is the distance between the moon-sun and the planet, and $E$ is the amount of energy received by the planet. As you can see, the area and distance exactly cancel each other out, leaving just the amount of sky taken up and the temperature.
So, if you want to come up with some way that a very small sun (maybe with the same mass as our sun, maybe less or more) can have a surface temperature the same as our own sun for billions of years, then yes, you can do it. You just have to sell the concept to your audience so they can suspend their disbelief.
[Answer]
It really all depends on which laws of physics you want to obey and which ones you want to ignore. If you are willing to accept special laws of physics working in the interior of the sun to produce the heat, but you want basic optics and thermodynamics to work correctly, then I think the answer is yes. The radiant heat you get from something basically depends on its temperature and the spherical angle it takes up from wherever you are. This is why forest fires can burn people even when they are standing pretty far away from them.
Since the Moon takes up the same area of sky as the Sun, if the Moon were radiating with the exact same energy spectrum as the Sun, it would heat the Earth in pretty much the same way. Someone else mentioned that, because the Moon is closer, it wouldn't be visible from as much of the Earth at once, but that is a small effect.
If you really want some plausible explanation of how there could be a Moon-sized body radiating like the Sun, that's a lot harder. But sometimes you are willing to postulate one crazy thing and you want to get the rest correct, and I think a Sun-hot Moon would heat the Earth just fine.
[Answer]
The first thing I thought of was a White Dwarf; they could actually be cool enough not to cook the Earth, while holding onto their heat for long enough for live to evolve.
Sadly, ut they max out at 1.44 solar masses (and get smaller the heavier they are). A typical white dwarf is the radius of the Earth, 4 times too big.
Neutron Stars are much smaller than White Dwarves, but they are too small for your needs. They also weigh multiple solar masses. They radiate energy, but usually in really a really harsh spectrum.
You'd think that "less white dwarf" would work, but white dwarves with less mass don't get smaller, they get larger as the gravitational attraction pulling them together gets weaker.
There isn't anything really stable between a white dwarf and a neutron star; white dwarfs, when you add matter, just nova (not supernova), and if you pass the limit at construction time they supernova into a neutron star. And even if there was, a solar+ mass object that close to the Earth would tear it apart; the Roche limit of something solar mass is 700,000 km, twice the distance to Earth's moon.
Now, the moon has a volume of 22 billion km^3. If made out of a heavy element (like uranium), that gives it a mass of 10^23 kg. Such an object wouldn't tear the Earth apart.
You'd have to extremely carefully pick the blend of isotopes, but you might be able to build a fission nuclear reactor that would run for a few billion years.
The reactor would glow with thermal heat; odds are most of the radiation would be in its core. It gets really tricky trying to ensure that it has enough heat to glow white-hot and maintain it for the duration we are talking about, while relying on fission, and never blowing itself apart as concentrations of various isotopes and elements vary.
Such a structure could never occur naturally, and it would be a megaproject for even a T2-3 civilization.
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[Question]
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The sand worms in Dune are gigantic creatures. Confirmed sizes reach up to 450 meters long. And in the wiki it says "Some people believe that worms from 700 to even 1000 meters existed in the southern pole regions, but this could not be confirmed"
In all cases the sand worms are huge. They are territorial and defend their territory against other worms, which makes sense. They also attack spice harvesters which also makes sense because those things are big and loud. Same with ornithopters or large things in general. It is conceivable that large things could be considered potential adversary or predators. Alright.
However humans or human sized creatures or noise also attract the worms? Which I'm not sure makes much sense. It's like a lion or rhino rushing to defend their territory from...a mouse or pigeon. What?
I understand they are a bit mysterious and I'm not saying it's done badly in the book or anything similar.
I'm talking about humans without shields, since they are driven mad by shields. Also they don't actually eat humans or metal contraptions. About their diet:
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I'm just asking: **Is this behavior biologically probable/possible if they existed and followed laws of biology without any mysteries, would they still want to attack humans, human sized, and possibly smaller sized creatures? If it is possible then why?**
[Answer]
**They don't want to attack, they want to investigate.**
It's just that their preferred method of investigating is a bit destructive.
You see this all the time in reports of shark attacks. Usually the shark isn't actually *attacking*, as such, with the intent to eat or kill or even drive away the human. They're just curious. But a shark's eyesight isn't very good, and its senses in general are geared more towards telling it *where* things are than *what* they are. So to investigate things, sharks like to go up to them and feel them, get a sense of their shape and taste. Since they have no hands, the best way to do that is with their mouths.
Baby humans are the same way; they often stick things in their mouths because they're curious about them, and their other senses aren't as refined, so this is the best way to find out what something is.
Sandworms, well, they don't have hands or any manipulators at all (that I'm aware of). Their senses, other than their tremor-sense, are probably not that acute. I've always sort of assumed that they're blind; it's not like sight would be very useful underground, smell likewise.
So they aren't really driven by aggression, but rather curiosity at what these small moving things *are*. But in order to find out, they need to go up there and touch them - and to a human, the difference between a 500-meter, umpteen-hundred-ton sandworm getting close to you out of aggression or out of curiosity is pretty academic. You're likely to end up dead either way.
[Answer]
We don't know much about the sandworm's diet (from <https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Sandworm>):
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What we do know, however, is that they *primarily* feed on "inorganic components". There's also a hint there that they sift the sand-plankton. So what we have here is an organic creature which subsists largely on inorganic matter and a sparse diet of organic plankton. It is safe to assume that *some* organic matter is also necessary for their survival, which supports their also eating plankton and is also a good reason for them to jump at any chance of getting a meal, no matter how tiny. After all, if their primary source of organic matter is plankton, a human would be a feast!
It therefore makes a lot of sense for an enormous creature living in a desert, an area where organic matter will be very scarce, to jump at any chance of supplementing its diet with a more substantial meal. Since they would only get such chances relatively rarely in the barren desert environment, they have evolved to be very sensitive to any kind of movement, no matter how small, since that would mean organic matter to eat.
I would imagine the likeliest scenario would be that while they can metabolize sand and other inorganic matter to make the majority of the essential chemicals they need, there will be others that they can only obtain by eating living creatures. This is the case with many life forms, including humans: we can metabolize our food into most of the things we need for life, but we also have things like the [essential amino acids](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_amino_acid) that cannot be synthesized by our bodies and which we need to obtain from our diet.
We only need trace amounts of these chemicals in our diet, so it could very well be the same for the worms: they only need a tiny amount of whatever it is that organic matter provides them with, so even the tiniest morsel, such as a human, is worth the effort given that opportunities to consume organic matter and supplement their diet are few and far apart.
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Unfortunately, although the above may be plausible in theory, the same Wiki page I quoted about the worm's diet, also claims that:
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This would mean that eating a human or any other Earth life form would kill the worm. This means that they also can't eat the spice harvesters since they contain humans and, therefore, water both from the human bodies themselves and the supplies they would presumably be carrying. Some sort of handwaivery will be required...
[Answer]
**The worms think little things might be big things far away.**
It can happen. If I hear a noise it can be hard to tell if it is something very loud and distant, or something quieter and nearby. I can walk towards the noise. If it is still not very loud and I find it, then it is quiet and near. If I keep going and it gets louder and louder, it is something loud farther away. No way to know except to head in the direction of the sound.
That said, there can be tells. Lower frequencies travel farther. If I hear a song with no high frequencies it is probably coming from a concert in the park, not my neighbor. But maybe the sandworms can't tell.
[Answer]
[Evolutionary arms race](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_arms_race). Big things on the surface learn to make smaller noises. Worms learn to detect smaller noises. This presumes there is an evolutionary advantage for the worms to detect and eat things like humans, which is defended in another answer.
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The Emperor of the World wants there always to be a full moon. His Scientific Advisor (the SA) comes up with a plan.
He plans to cost out the venture, hand it over to the Keeper of the Treasury who then has the unpleasant job of explaining to the Emperor how much it will cost.
The SA's plan is to to cover the entire surface of the moon with a network of LEDs, solar panels and rechargeable batteries.
The sunny side of the Moon will charge the batteries and the dark part of the moon will be lit up with the LEDs. Detectors will make sure that only the dark parts of the Moon facing the Earth are lit.
Ignore the exorbitant cost, not to say the virtually impossible task of transporting the materials - those difficulties will be presented to the Emperor by the unfortunate Keeper of the Treasury.
**Question**
In theory, given unlimited resources and using 2018 technology could the SA ensure that there was always the equivalent of a full Moon in terms of brightness. Are there any insurmountable *technical* problems?
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Side Note - *Not part of the question* but the emperor wants a picture of his face to flash on and off when a New Moon coincides with his birthday. Eventually he would like the Moon to act as a colour TV screen for propaganda.
[Answer]
Sure it is possible (in theory).
Moon's albedo is [12%](http://www.asterism.org/tutorials/tut26-1.htm)
Photovoltaic panel efficiency is around [19% (commercially available)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell_efficiency#Comparison) and can go up to 40% with more exotic technologies.
Assuming Moon gets the same amount of solar radiation as [Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight), surface receives 1367 watts per square meter, 42% of which is visible light, which gives us 574 watts per square meter to play with. LEDs should beam back 69 watts. Assuming that we are using commercially available LEDs with [50% efficiency](https://electronics.stackexchange.com/a/325793), 1 square meter should house 138 watts of LED power. This is a lot, but our bulbs will cover only a fraction of surface. The rest can be used for solar panels. Solar panels, on the other hand, will give us 229 watts per square meter.
During lunar day, panels will be baking in sunlight, converting it to electricity, which would be stored in batteries (do we have enough lithium on Earth? Hmm...) during the night, the bulbs will turn on, creating illuminated Moon face.
Also note that while solar panels can cover 100% of Moon surface, LEDs need to be installed only on the visible side, which should double the energy balance in our favor.
P.S. Calculations above assume that lunar LEDs work just like the Moon's surface, i.e. their emission is omnidirectional. Our efficiency can be improved A LOT is we are allowed to beam light only in Earth's direction.
[Answer]
I wouldn't touch the *actual moon*, it's 384,400km away, it seems much cheaper & within reach to make your own "equivalent" using an array of satellites (maybe [only 320km - 600km away](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/39138/how-far-away-can-something-be-from-the-earth-and-still-be-in-orbit/39142)) with very bright lights, maybe in a [geosynchronous orbit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosynchronous_orbit) (approximately 35,786 km away) to keep them at least visible every night, using each one like a single pixel in a very large "display screen".
Either individual satellites just close enough together to look right, or tethered together with cables or filaments, or an extremely large single array or framework of bright lights.
So you end up with a virtual LED display in space. Perfect for displaying messages, or depending on the density of lights, even any picture or video.
With unlimited resources & energy, powering them should be within reach today with either solar power & batteries, or nuclear, or maybe even a Tesla-esque wireless power transmission from earth. Taking the "unlimited resources" more literally, then the pixel-satellites could even be brighter than the actual moon, so a "sky television" could even be seen during the day.
Some satellites are already visible from the earth now (and I'm pretty sure they don't even have any purpose-built lights aimed at the earth). Here's an image of some from [How to See and Photograph Geosynchronous Satellites](https://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/how-to-see-and-photograph-geosynchronous-satellites/):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/f9gOl.jpg)
Just imagine a few million of them, tied together in a giant "screen" array, with unlimited energy for bright colours, and you've got your emperor's face, and propaganda, and a moving zooming or even exploding image of the moon, or Mars, or Jupiter, or anything really.
Here's a hopefully poor example using 160 computer keyboards (each with maybe 100 led lights), but it should give an idea of what's possible with even just 160,000 lights (from [here](http://www.norlatifah.com/logitech-makes-giant-display-using-160-rgb-keyboards/), video [here](https://laughingsquid.com/logitech-combined-160-gaming-keyboards-to-make-one-giant-pixelated-display-at-pax-east-2016/) or directly on [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf4GSWRuY-c)):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1VeMf.jpg)
[Answer]
## Numbers, numbers
* The actual Moon surface is quite dark; the [albedo of the Moon is 0.136](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon). This means that the Moon reflects only 13.5% of the sunlight it receives. Moreover, the reflection is diffuse, that is, the reflected light goes all over the place, not only towards Earth.
In order to move light from the far side of the Moon to the near side in the form of electric power, we need to (1) capture the energy of the light and convert it to electric energy, (2) transfer the electric energy to the near side, and finally (3) convert the electric energy into light. The overall efficiency of the process must at least match the 13.6% achieved by the Moon rocks through reflection.
Can this be done?
* The efficiency of a decent photovoltaic panel is about 20%, meaning that the panel converts 20% of the incoming light energy into electric energy.
* The efficiency of a white LED lamp is currently around 15%, but 20% efficient lamps exist; the theoretical [maximum luminous efficacy of a white LED](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_efficacy) is about 40%. Let's say that the emperor's scientists have achieved the capacity to make white LEDs with 30% luminous efficacy.
* Let's put the efficiency of electric power transmission at 90%.
* Overall this gives 20% (light-to-electricity conversion) × 90% (transmission) × 30% (electricity-to-light conversion) = 5.4% overall efficiency. This means that, at best, the artificially illuminated new moon will have about 40% of the luminosity of the full moon; in photographic terms, that's a difference of about 3.5 stops of exposure; in astronomical terms, this is a difference of one magnitude.
How visible is the difference in luminosity? Here is an image showing a normally exposed full Moon and a copy with the luminosity reduced to 40%.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/no4qo.png)
*The photograph of the Moon on the left is exposed so that the highlights are close to the maximum value, without exceeding it. The Moon on the right is the same image, digitally manipulated to make the Moon have 40% of the luminosity. Own work.*
* But what about the *phases* of the Moon? Won't there be a marked difference in luminosity between the naturally lit and the artificiall lit parts? Yes, there will be a one-magnitude, or 3.5 stops, difference; visible, but hey, it *very* much better than the current situation.
* But what about the non-uniform illumination of the photovoltaic panels? True, the Moon is spherical, and the conversion efficiency of the photovoltaic panels on the far side will vary between the theoretical maximum when the Sun is up in the sky to zero when it is on the horizon; this will bring the available power down a factor of two, and make the artificially illuminated part even darker. Actual calculation remain as an exercise for the reader; however, overall we can confidently say that we can build a decent artificial lunar illumination system for our glorious and much beloved emperor.
[Answer]
## Much cheaper option:
Every evening, send a large LED panel into the upper troposphere, e.g., with balloons and haul it down every morning. Since the panel is a lot closer to the ground, it can affordably be a lot smaller in cross section than the moon.
## Plus side:
You can then rig the LED panel like a normal TV or monitor.
## Minus side:
* It will always remain in the same place.
* There will normally be two "moons" in the sky.
[Answer]
**EDIT: It can be done, see my second edit below.**
Fundamentally can't be done. This issue was parodied at [XKCD](https://what-if.xkcd.com/13/). The gist of the problem is this: you can't duplicate the firepower of the sun, especially if you're using a solar-based power system that isn't 100% efficient. Even if it was. It would need to acquire 100% of the solar energy that would hit the moon during a full moon, transfer that power perfectly (100% efficiency... the engineer within is starting to weep) to LEDs, which can emit the collected power as photons with 100% perfect conversion (oh, the pain!).
Can't be done without serious power. Serious. Check out the link. Serious.
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**Edit:**
*Also, remember that where there's solar panel, there isn't LEDs. You can hide the batteries underground and put the panels on the backside of the moon (it's tidally locked), but that means you must capture and store enough power to illuminate all those buka-watt LEDs for each night. Serious.*
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**Edit:**
OK, Shadoweze has piqued my curiosity. Lunar albedo for a full moon is 0.12. Albedo is the ratio of energy received to energy reflected. The sun bathes the moon in 1kw/m. So the reflection, what we need to achieve, is 0.12kw/m.
The full-moon lunar surface is 1013 m2. That means we need to generate 1.2E12 watts or 1.2 terrawatts. The [most efficient solar panel in 2018](https://earth911.com/home-garden/solar-panel-efficiency-2018/) has a 22.2% efficiency. That means for every kw of solar energy we'll actually have only .222 kw to work with. That's twice-ish what we need, so far so good.
Average lunar light is about [0.015 foot-candles](http://www.illinoislighting.org/resources/ICROL-Moonlight.pdf) or about 0.0019 lumens per m2 for 0.016 lumens-per-watt of lunar emittance. 2018's [most efficient LED](https://phys.org/news/2018-07-quantum-dot-white-efficiency.html) is 105 lumens-per-watt. Good news! We don't need to cover every inch of the earth-side of the lunar surface!
Better news is that for each pass of the moon in front of the sun, there isn't a commensurate "full-moon" pass for the earth. The moon varies from a new moon (100% LED use) to a full moon (0% LED use). I'm absolutely wrong with the assertion I'm about to make, but to keep this from becoming a full dissertation, let's assume we only need to store 50% of the power needed to hold a full moon all the time and there's enough space between the LEDs that we can use detectors to shut off the LEDs we don't need during each phase of the moon. (And I'm ignoring the fact that we only need to turn the LEDs on when the emporer is in the night cycle. Who cares what the peons see, right?)
OK, I'm convinced. Shadowzee's right. It can be done. It might need enough battery mass to shift the moon's orbit... but it can be done.
*Why is the XKCD no longer relevant? It's emitted light from the earth reflecting off the moon. That takes a ton more power, and I'd ignored it.*
[Answer]
>
> Are there any insurmountable technical problems?
>
>
>
Not really, unless you are under some time constraint. Moon reflectivity is around 0.12, and considering directed reflectivity that goes down to around 0.02. In other words, less than 2% of the incident solar light gets reflected towards the Earth.
So it's possible to cover the Moon with laser LED arrays and solar panels; even with very low efficiency and transmission losses, the Sun will supply energy enough to power a virtual moonlight beam.
Of course most of the material will need to be mined *in situ*. This means replacing copper with aluminum and magnesium wherever possible. On the other hand, vacuum refinement of silica would be easier than on Earth. Solar panel fabrication would be an ongoing project, because the solar wind might age panels faster than normal.
The Moon has a visual radius as seen from Earth of around 16 arc-minutes, so it covers 800 arc-minutes squared. The best resolution the human eye is capable of is around .7 arc-minutes; make that 0.5 and you have a radius of 32 pixels, requiring around 3220 beam emitters. The "image" thus obtained will be indistinguishable from the Moon by the naked eye. **You do not need to cover the whole Moon with LED panels** (or solar panels).
The total visible light from the Moon towards the Earth has been [plausibly calculated by the Internetz](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/15o5im/does_a_full_moon_provide_any_noticible_reflected/) at 1/436000 of the Sun, the latter being 550 W/m^2 in the visible range.
So we can assume the total output required of each beam emitter to be around 50 MW. Solar panels can supply around 200 W/m^2, requiring a minimum of 25-50 hectares of solar panels for each tower, or 160,000 hectares in all. We may actually need up to about three times that to cover the new moon stage (when the whole 3220 emitters are powered by a ring of solar farms just beyond the terminator, with equivalent power transmission line lengths of 2800 km in length and losses thereof approaching 20% for aluminum-magnesium lines).
[Answer]
As already stated - lighting up the surface of the Moon with LED's to mimic a full one can't be done with just solar panels and LED's.
"Possible" other options?
* Nuclear power to provide the electricity - @Gary Walker pointed out the amount of Thorium on the moon to use for fuel. Benefit of not being limited by incoming sunlight
* Earth based generators beaming power to the moon via microwaves?
* Network of giant mirror satellites to reflect sunlight onto the moon when it's behind earth
* During non-full moons, fly a massive plane/drone equipped with a giant LED screen between the Emperor's location and the moon, to mimic the appearance of a full moon. Added bonus of being able to display messages
[Answer]
## Aiming makes a huge difference with LEDs
This adds to several answers which do the heavy calculations to duplicate the moon's albedo with LEDs. But the LEDs don't need to work nearly that hard.
**The only light that matters is the light that's aimed at the Earth.**
Since LEDs only emit about a 140-160 degree wedge of light, they lend themselves to aiming with lenses, which are extremely efficient. You narrow its radiant angle to just cover the earth. This dramatically reduces the energy required, by a factor of very roughly 99%, and that makes this a whole lot more practicable.
Since the moon is in synchronous rotation, you will only need to aim the LED once, you don't need heliostats to track the Earth.
[Answer]
***Recently a Chinese company had proposed plans to put fake moon into orbit.***
This is a direct Quote from [BBC](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-45910479)
>
> According to the People's Daily state newspaper, officials at a
> private aerospace institute in Chengdu want to launch this
> "illumination satellite" in orbit by 2020, and say it will be bright
> enough to replace street lights.
>
>
>
**Why i pointed to this concept/idea?**
Because in this scenario you do not need solar panels and leds which i think will cut costs and "EMPEROR" highness would be pretty much happy. *No major capital burning here!*
**When and How ?**
The satellite would be put to orbit by 2022 or so and would be known as the "*Illumination Satellite*", which would have reflective panels to reflect sunlight similar to putting a gigantic mirror in space.
It would be in a geostationary orbit roughly 37,000km from Earth.
**This is not the First of its kind mission** (Quote from same BBC article)
>
> In 1993, Russian scientists released a 20m-wide reflector from a
> supply ship heading to the Mir Space Station, which was orbiting at
> between 200km and 420km.
>
>
> Znamya 2 briefly beamed a spot of light about 5km in diameter to
> Earth. The light marched across Europe at 8km/hr, before the satellite
> burned up on re-entry.
>
>
>
**Side-effects / Disadvantages :**
* May affect natural sleep cycle in Humans.
* Nocturnal creatures would be
affected drastically.
[Answer]
This is impossible for a multitude of reasons.
First of all, the moon doesn't really receive enough sunlight to power LEDs covering half of its surface. The amount of energy a single square inch of modern solar panel produces in an hour is only about 0.1 watts, whereas the amount of energy required to power a single modern LED for an hour is 6 watts. That means that an 8"x8" solar panel would be required to constantly power an LED that takes up a fraction of a square inch of space. Area-wise, the bright side of the moon just isn't big enough to power its opposite half.
Second, there is the issue of transporting the power you get to the LEDs. Every cable that we have loses power for every foot that it travels, which is a natural limit on how far power can be transported. Even with fiber optic -- the most efficient path we could use with 2018 technology -- the power loss experienced over the hundreds of miles of the moon's diameter would be too great for anything to reach the other end.
[Answer]
I can't put this in the original question because it might invalidate some answers. Therefore I'll put it as an 'answer' to my own question.
**White Solar Panels**
>
> It’s being touted as a ‘revolution in renewable energy architecture’ –
> the world’s first white solar panel with no visible cells or
> connections.
>
>
> <https://www.energymatters.com.au/renewable-news/white-solar-panels-em4579/>
>
>
>
Using these we could cover the side of the moon facing us and immediately get a much brighter moon. This would also make the unlit side somewhat visible. The LEDs could be inserted through holes on the panels and any stray illumination from them would also be reflected.
This is incomplete but it would supplement answers by those who have assumed solar panels must be black.
[Answer]
Note: this answer was thought of before noticing the stipulation of "needs 2018 technology". I'm still including it because it would be exactly the kind of thing an worldwide emperor who wants a permanent full moon would approve of.
# Move the moon to the L2 Sun-Earth Lagrange point
the L2 Sun-Earth Lagrange point is one of the 5 points in an orbital pattern where you can place objects in a relatively stable location relative to the 2 larger objects in the pattern. It is located about 1 million miles away from Earth in the opposite direction from the Sun. Moving the moon there means it should always be full moon.
Moving a gigantic natural satellite like this is impossible with our current tech. It would also have an absolutely massive impact on Earth's ecosystem: tides would change, no more lunar cycle for nocturnal animals, it would break the Earth-Moon Lagrange points and it would forever remove the possibility of solar eclipses.
[Answer]
**Ring Roads Around The Moon**
There have been several Answers regarding photovoltaics and LEDs, which have missed a crucial point : no single device both creates and ingests light. If you have static devices on the lunar surface, you would need to alternate them on the Lunar ground, generating a fraction of the possible light. Directionality might improve that fraction.
Another possibility is to have moving devices. Imagine a large number of rings around Luna, built of railroads. Each ring is covered in rail cars that either receive light (photovoltaics) or creates light (LEDs). Electricity is transmitted through the rail, suitably insulated or through super-conductivity. Luna's synodic period is about 27.3 days, and Luna's circumference is 6786km, so the fastest rail at the equator needs to travel at 248km per day, or about 11km an hour.
Never stopping moving, with different LED cars set to different colors / brightnesses to emulate the ground underneath them.
[Answer]
Part One of Two.
Possibly giant mirrors of very light and reflective fabric could be set up in space to reflect sunlight on the unlit hemisphere of the Moon. That would also be a very large, expensive, and extravagent project, but I haven't calculated the relative difficulty and cost.
To avoid using more mega mirrors that the necessary minimum, one sufficiently large set of mirrors in one position would be preferable. The mirrors would always have to be farther from the Sun than the moon is to reflect sunlight onto the unlit part of the Moon.
The Moon's orbit has a perigee of 362,600 kilometers and an apogee of 405,400 kilometers. So a set of mega mirrors would have to orbit at least about 410,000 kilometers farther from the Sun that Earth does to reflect light back on the moon.
When the Moon was between the Earth and the Sun, the unlit half of the Moon would mostly be the near side facing Earth, so light reflected from the mirrors beyend the Earth would hit the near side and light it up.
But when the Moon was beyond the Earth as seen from the Sun, the unlit side of the Moon would mostly be the far side facing away from Earth. So reflecting light onto it would not make the Moon look fuller as seen from Earth. Thus at least one set of secondary mirrors somewhere in space would be needed to refect the sunlight from the primary mirrors onto the near side of the Moon at those times.
If the gigantic primary mirrors were at the Earth's L2 posiiton relative to the Sun, they would orbit about 151,100,000 kilometers from the Sun, about 2,000,000 kilometers beyond the Earth's orbit, and they would take one Earth year to orbit the Sun, thus staying in position relative to the Earth. That would make the total size of the mirrors needed to keep the Moon illuminated millions of times smaller than if the mirrors were not in the Sun-Earth L2 point.
Of course L2 points are rather unstable, and the gigantic primary mirrors would have to use gigantic amounts of thrust from time to time to keep in the L2 point.
Possibly there might be mirrors in the L2 point of the Moon, orbiting at about 448,900 kilometers from the Earth. Orbiting beyond the Moon, they would reflect light onto it's far side, never seen from Earth, so they would have to be aimed past the Moon toward secondary mirrors aimed at the near side of the Moon. And of course they would be closer to the Sun than the Moon was about half the time and wouldn't be able to reflect unlight on either side of the Moon at those times.
And the use of lunar statites, reflecting sunlight to stay above a nearby planet or moon, might be considered a a method to reduce the distance between the mirrors and the target Moon and thus reduce the size of the gigantic mirrors needed.
<http://arcana.wikidot.com/statite>
<https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12917594-000-science-polar-satellite-could-revolutionisecommunications/>
So possibly someone could design the optimum system to light the Moon with space mirrors, and calculate how the cost would compare to using solar panals and lighting on the Moon.
Part Two.
This is not an answer to the Emperor's desire.
But it is possible to design a solar system where a planet naturally always has at least one full moon visible at night. Note that it wouldn't always be the same moon(s) that were full.
But there would always be at least one full moon in the night sky, without artifical lighting, and without using enormous, fantastic, unbelievable amounts of energy to keep that moon in the right position in space.
The solar system probably would have to have been constructed by a very advanced civiliation in the past, but members of the present civilization living on the planet ages later need not know or care about that and probably won't have to pay anything to the civilization that built it millions or billions of years earlier.
See my answer to this question:
[How can a moon be always full (no other phases)?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/219020/how-can-a-moon-be-always-full-no-other-phases/219067#219067)
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I am having trouble finding a detailed breakdown of the chain of authority on a naval ship. I have been able to find fully detailed charts for Merchant and Cruise ships, but not so much for a naval combat ship. I'm sure it varies somewhat from nation to nation, but The most I can really find is that you have the CO (Captain), XO, then a handful of department heads with everyone else below them, and that's pretty much it. A warrant officer or high ranking enlisted (title and rank seems to vary) functions as the Captain's representative among the enlisted, but I'm still not quite sure how they fit in either.
**What exactly is the hierarchy of authority on a naval combat ship besides just who's in command?**
If an officer is over a department, do the enlisted in that department report to them or to the ranking enlisted (officer of the boat?)?
Also,
**Are there restrictions/requirements for certain departments?**
I know that Pilots have to be officers, but what are the requirements for engineers, medical officers, or gunners(or whatever the equivalent seems to be)?
Addendum:
I am referring to modern warships, Destroyers and Aircraft Carriers. I am actually writing a scifi novel some 400 years from now, but I am trying to imagine the appropriate evolution of military structure for the space navy.
[Answer]
My Qualifications: I was a Surface Warfare Officer in the US Navy, with two sea tours.
# Assumptions
That anyone reading this is familiar with [officer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_officer_rank_insignia) and [enlisted](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Navy_enlisted_rates) ranks.
Ultimately, there is way too much information to share here, so this is an abridged version.
# The Wardroom
The officers of the ship are collectively referred to as the wardroom, which doubles as the name of the space in which they collectively eat their meals. On a larger ship (i.e. an Aircraft Carrier) there may be more than one wardroom, or the CO might eat in his own space if he is a Captain.
For a warship (Frigate, Destroyer, Cruiser, Aircraft Carrier), the Commanding Officer (CO) is responsible for the ship and could be a Captain or Commander. The Executive Officer (XO) is the captain's primary assistant and is generally a Commander. A frigate may have a LCDR as XO, and an aircraft carrier will certainly have another Captain.
### Departments and their heads
Departments depend on the ship. An amphibious ship has the Deck department (responsible for all well-deck and landing craft operations), while on a Frigate this is only a division. A cruiser has both a Weapons and Combat Systems department, while an amphibious ship only has one of them. A large nuclear powered ship like an aircraft carrier may have both an reactor officer and an engineering officer.
Here is a (not exhaustive!) list of potential departments:
* Operations: Almost certainly on every boat. Responsible for operating the Combat Information Center (including electronic warfare), communications with outside command, and the ship's schedule.
* Combat Systems Department: Responsible for sensor systems and integrated computers for weapons system.
* Weapons Department: Often merged into Combat Systems on smaller ships; on a larger ship Weapons handles ordinance as opposed to sensors.
* Deck Department: Handles mooring lines, underway replenishment, and small boat operations. On small non-amphibious ships, this is merged into Operations.
* Navigation Department: Only on an aircraft carrier, otherwise merged into Operations department.
* Communications Department: Only on aircraft carriers (and maybe cruisers?). Responsible for communications equipment and cryptography.
* Reactor Department: For a nuclear powered ship, this is responsible for the reactor.
* Engineering Department: Responsible for the various engineering systems. On a submarine, this is merged into Reactor. On a carrier, they are separate; with Reactor in charge of anything that uses high pressure steam from the nuclear plant, and Engineering responsible for anything else. I'm not sure how it was on the old nuclear cruisers, they were all decommissioned before I joined.
* Supply Department: Responsible for beans and bullets. Also miscellaneous things like haircuts, dip and Monster. Dip and Monster are extremely important in the modern Navy.
* Admin Department: Only on a carrier since there are ~5k people on board.
* Legal Department: Again, only on a carrier.
* Medical Department: On a carrier or large amphibious ship. Doctors are officers these days; generally high ranking (LCDR and up).
Department heads vary in rank based on the size of the ship. On a carrier, many of the important department heads are Captains (Supply, Reactor, Engineering, etc). On a Frigate they are usually senior Lieutenants who will make LCDR while they are assigned as Department Head.
The air detachment, on any ship, is a nominally separate organization. For a smaller ship, a LCDR or CDR in charge of the air detachment will basically act as another department head. On a carrier, the ship's CO and the Air Wing CO are equals, both with commands of over a thousand and both subordinate to the Strike Group Admiral, who will also be on the carrier. However, the ship's CO has ultimate authority over discipline for any air unit embarked on his ship.
### Watchstanders
There are several important watchstanding billets on a ship underway.
* Tactical Action Officer (TAO): Stationed in the Combat Information Center (CIC). Granted authority for weapons release. Usually only significant for 24/7 combat operations. In a combat situation, the CO will be in the CIC to take responsibility for weapons release. When there is a 24/7 risk of combat, the TAO is stationed. This is generally a department head, although a carrier has a lot of surplus Commanders and LCDRs to fill this role.
* Officer of the Deck (OOD). Responsible for the bridge, navigation and carrying out the ship's normal plan of the day. During a combat operation, the XO goes to the bridge to supervise the OOD. On smaller ships, this is generally a LTjg; on larger a LT. In the case of the aircraft carrier, pilots need to qualify this watch to become a carrier CO eventually, so you will see lots of LCDR pilots doing this as well.
* Engineering Officer of the Watch (EOOW). Responsible for the engineering plant while underway. Subordinate to the OOD, although in my experience the EOOW is often the higher ranking officer.
* CIC Watch Officer (CICWO). Responsible for the Combat Information Center, particularly for keeping up communications with other ships. If the Admiral calls in the middle of the night, this is who he talks to (and this is who wakes up the CO). This is generally the watch that you qualify for before OOD, so this is usually a junior officer.
### What does a warrant officer do?
Warrants are being phased out in the modern US Navy, but generally they are responsible for things that require more technical knowledge. Since these are formerly enlisted personnel, generally with greater than 20 years experience, they are one of the primary ways that institutional knowledge is passed along in the wardroom.
One or more warrant officers may be attached to a Reactor department to help ensure that long term maintenence best-practices are followed. Ships often have maintenance items done every 3 years or longer; its nice to have a warrant on board who has done it more than once.
Generally, warrants don't do much watchstanding (although EOOW may be an exception) and they are rarely department heads. That being said, a W-5 or W-5 might be a Communications Officer on a cruiser.
# The Chief's Mess
In general, every division on the ship has a Chief. Every department has a Senior Chief, and the ship has a Master Chief (on a submarine, this is called Chief of the Boat). On a small ship, there may be 4 Departments and 12 divisions, and a senior chief may double as divisional and departmental chief. On a carrier there are hundreds of chiefs, not counting the air wing.
Generally, chiefs are responsible for discipline within their division, and first line supervision of their divisional enslisted. They are expected to be 'on call' for their division 24/7 and as such are not usually standing watch. Chiefs may perform watchstanding functions as CICWO or EOOW on certain ships; a lot of that depends on the CO's temperament and trust in the Chief's Mess. Generally, this would be Senior Chiefs with reduced divisional responsibilities doing this.
# Junior Enlisted
The bulk of the crew are the junior enlisted and petty officers (E-1 - E-6). These guys do the bulk of the work. Important positions for petty officers within divisions include the divisional Leading Petty Officer (LPO) and workcenter supervisors. Workcenters are responsible for maintenance of certain shipboard components; the number of workcenters per division can vary widely based on how much equipment they own.
Junior enlisted stand the bulk of the watches. They man the radars and comms equipment in the CIC; take logs on operating combat systems and engineering equipment, update the navigation plot in both the CIC and on the bridge, stand lookout, and steer the ship (under the direction of the OOD).
[Answer]
Note that the details of national navies differ. This is a sketch based on the Royal Navy because you might was well imitate the best, everyone else did.
>
> *I am actually writing a scifi novel some 400 years from now, but I am trying to imagine the appropriate evolution of military structure for the space navy.*
>
>
>
Navies tend to lag well behind the society they're protecting. They maintained a strict, brutal social order for centuries, only becoming liberal by the necessities of technology and the need to crew their ships with willing, skilled people.
Navies in the Age of Sail, about 1500 to 1860, remained pretty much the same because the technology and tactics remained pretty much the same. Large sailing ships of war required large crews to manage their increasing number of sails and broadside muzzle-loading guns. So long as you had a core of competent seaman to show the new folks the ropes (literally), the crew could be trained on the ship.
Naval society reflected social society. Officers were generally men from the upper class. Everyone else was from the lower classes. They did not mingle. The slightest disrespect by the crew was met with lashing and other corporal punishment. Some particularly skilled crew were sufficiently valued to be considered [petty officers](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Petty_officer): the bosun, master gunner, and carpenter for example. While never socially equal to the commissioned officers, they were at least given some autonomy, respect for their opinion (when asked for) and better quarters. There remained a clear distinction between [wardroom officers](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Wardroom) would eat together, and everyone else. Even a boy [midshipman](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Midshipman) would be treated with more respect than an adult able seaman.
And then technology happened. The launch of [HMS Warrior](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/HMS_Warrior_(1860)) made steam propulsion, iron armor, and rifled, breech-loading guns mandatory. Suddenly skilled engineers were needed to maintain the machinery. The more powerful guns and longer ranges needed skilled gunners. These skilled workers were from the growing middle-class and needed to be attracted from well paying jobs and convinced to remain in the navy. As a result, the class barriers and officer/crew barriers began to break down. This only accelerated with the launch of [HMS Dreadnought](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/HMS_Dreadnought_(1906)) in 1906. Oil fired steam turbines, radio equipment, electrical generators, and long range gunnery became the norm. More technically savy crew was necessary, and increasingly the traditional officer training was not covering the new technology. The petty officers gained more respect and authority, begrudgingly.
The introduction of naval aviation compounded the issue. Naval pilots were officers, and suddenly there were a lot of them. They were young, they advanced in rank quickly, and they went through a different training program.
The expansion of navies during both World Wars promoted a flood of freshly trained and reserve officers, as well as civilian crew. This further rankled the social order of officers who went through the traditional peacetime academy. Previously looked upon with disdain, reservists were now placed in positions of command by necessity.
All this, the mechanics, gunners, pilots, reserve officers... these people did not grow up with the traditions of the navy and the sea, and increasingly jostled for better treatment.
Technology and expansion make navies more liberal, but only begrudgingly. A space navy would have undergone a transition as the officers and traditions of the water navy give way to the needs of being *IN SPAAACE*. It's hard to predict what would stay and what would go, but here's some thoughts.
# Officers still mess together
If any tradition will remain, it will be the tradition of the [wardroom](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Wardroom). Officers will eat meals together separate from the crew, even if it's only a notional special table in the galley. This will likely include petty and warrant officers.
The captain may also retain the privilege of having their own mess, again even if this is a better-than-average galley meal brought to their quarters. The captain will likely still maintain the tradition of inviting their officers and crew to eat with them to get to know them in a less-formal setting.
# Is your spaceship a submarine or a battleship?
Small ships tend to be more liberal than large ones. A large, roomy ship with 1000+ men on board has plenty of space and opportunity to form stratified societies. The crew and officers are more specialized and disassociated from the life and death of the ship. It's easy to forget that your job six decks down is attached to the job of being a fighting ship. It's easy for officers to be more concerned about spit and polish than maintaining fighting efficiency.
In contrast, it's hard for officers to maintain a haughty detachment when you're 50 men stacked on top of each other in a submarine. Everyone knows that one mistake and everyone drowns 200 meters below the ocean. Every job is critical, even maintaining the toilet.
# Rank fault lines
If you choose to keep rank as social stratification, the fault lines are commissioned officers, petty officers, and the rest of the crew. Commissioned officers will have gone through some sort of special academy to bring them all together early on, and the needs of command will tend to separate them from the people they're commanding. Petty officers have gone through a different training regimen, or come up through the crew by merit, and have their own social strata. The rest of the crew who are just doing what their told will be in their own strata.
Or you can go the Star Trek [Federation](http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/United_Federation_of_Planets) egalitarian route. While rank commands respect, it does not indicate social nor moral superiority. Rank is more a practical and organizational thing. Particularly on [Deep Space Nine](http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine), officers and crew freely intermingle socially and to get the job done... though even still the officers tend to hang out with the officers.
# Recommended Reading
* [Master and Commander](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Master_and_Commander) by Patrick O'Brian. Despite being fiction, it's some of the best depictions of life in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic wars. I refer to it as "Jane Austin on a boat".
* [At War At Sea](https://books.google.com/books?id=jvIHAAAACAAJ&dq=at+war+at+sea&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi5pYbd0cLdAhW2wMQHHZ1WACUQ6AEILzAB) by Ronald Spector. This covers the social upheavals of the US Navy in the 20th Century.
* [One of Our Submarines](https://books.google.com/books?id=yuqXAwAAQBAJ) by Edward Young Commander, DSO, DSC, RNVR. This is an extremely well written autobiography of one of the first Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve officers to captain a submarine in WWII. It shows the day-to-day issues of a fresh officer in tight quarters.
[Answer]
* *"I know that Pilots have to be officers":*
Aircraft pilots are officers by courtesy and tradition, not by any kind of necessity; historically, many nations had (some still have) aircraft [pilots with NCO rank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergeant_pilot).
## Generalities
On a ship, as in any military organization, *functional* subordination is much more important than rank order; for example, the seaman who is steering the ship will take direct orders from the officer who is conning the ship, no matter how many ranks separate them.
Most usually, weapons operated by specialist ratings. (BTW, this is most important on a modern ship: a person's [rating](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Navy_ratings) is often much more important than their rank.) There are exceptions, for example related to nuclear weapons.
## Specifics
Let's look at the typical organization of a U.S. aircraft carrier, as given in "[Module 4 -- Typical ship organization](https://fas.org/irp/doddir/navy/rfs/part04.htm)" of the [*Ready-for-Sea*](https://fas.org/irp/doddir/navy/rfs/index.html) Modular Course & Handbook published by the United States Naval Reserve Intelligence Program, 1999.
The first thing to note is that there is a *dual* hierarchy, with a "seafaring" side and and "airfaring" side. The carrier's captain *does* not have authority over the aviators, and the air wing commander does not have authority over seamen.
* The "seafaring" side is headed by the Captain:
>
> *When fully manned, an aircraft carrier is home to as many as 5,000 personnel—the size of a small city. Thinking of a carrier as a city is a useful way to understand its organization. At the top and comparable to a city’s mayor is the ship’s Commanding Officer (CO), who is ultimately responsible for the entire ship and the accomplishment of its assigned mission. Next in line and acting as city manager is the Executive Officer (XO). From the XO on down, the ship’s individual functions are handled by the ship’s company via different departments. These departments are in turn divided into divisions, each specialized in an area of the ship’s operation and mission.*
>
>
> *The carrier battlegroup’s primary mission is power projection to targets ashore and at sea. The central element of the carrier’s offensive punch is its embarked air wing (CVW). The typical carrier air wing normally consists of nine squadrons, each with individual missions, which join the carrier while it is deployed.*
>
>
>
The typical departments are Administration, Air, Aircraft Intermediate Maintenance, Chaplain, Communications, Deck, Dental, Engineering, Maintenance Management, Medical, Navigation, Operations, Safety, Supply, Training, and Weapons. *"Each department is further subdivided into divisions with personnel manning these divisions assigned to 'Watches,' 'Sections,' or both."*
*"The Air Department gives direct support to the embarked air wing, [handling] launching and landing aircraft, fueling, moving, and controlling fixed and variable wing aircraft."*
* The "airfaring" side is headed by the Air Wing Commander (CAG).
>
> *The CAG is directly responsible for the operational readiness and tactical performance of the air wing. He is responsible for the coordination and supervision of all activities of the embarked squadrons and detachments, and for the material readiness, communications, and intelligence functions of the air wing. The CAG does not fall directly under the carrier’s commanding officer. Rather, he is a co-commanding officer. Both the carrier CO and CAG report to the composite warfare commander under the CWC concept discussed earlier.*
>
>
> *The embarked aircraft squadrons retain their corporate identity and basic organization, but each squadron also supplies specific personnel, such as ship mess cooks, stewards, and laundry, to various departments listed above.*
>
>
>
The embarked air wing has a set of officers outside the component squadrons; those are: the Air Wing Commander (CAG), the Deputy Air Wing Commander, the Operations Officer, the USW Operations Officer, the Air Intelligence Officer, the Maintenance Officer, the Weapons Officer, the Landing Signal Officers (2), the Flight Surgeon, and the Carrier Air Wing Intelligence Team.
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[Question]
[
What is the lowest, most basic technology level needed for a human population to be able to develop a reliable flying machine capable of transporting people over medium-short distances (at least a few kilometers)?
# Context
I have a setting where the world has no solid surface and is instead made of floating islands. I want to know if humans, given the need to move between islands, would be capable of developing flying machines early enough for the purpose of the setting.
There are no flying creatures capable of transporting humans across islands.
Whatever materials are needed exist in the starting island in their natural raw forms.
Humans are extremely motivated to leave the starting island and are actively working on a way to achieve this.
As for magic, there is an elemental system with seven elements: water, air, fire, wood (and flesh), stone, metal and a special seventh element. Humans can create the first six with the help of the seventh at the expense of their stamina.
For example, a human has a piece of the seventh element that is tuned to fire, they can create fire by channelling their energy through it. Using too much energy and the person passes out there and then. This element can also store energy for large periods of time, meaning it can be charged in preparation for heavy usage.
The specifics are quite a bit more complicated, but suffice to say that it can be used for powering an engine provided that the technology allows building an engine in the first place.
[Answer]
In an interesting inversion, Leonardo da Vinci described various powered flying machines and even a parachute in the late 1400's, about 300 years prior to the invention of the hot air balloon.
While Leonardo did not have the power source to actually fly any of his machines (and given his inspiration was bird flight, virtually all of them were ornithopters), close examination of his notebooks by modern researchers reveal he had a fairly detailed understanding of bird flight and his flying machines had subtle features to allow the pilot to manipulate the flying surfaces for control.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/V8TpN.jpg)
*One of Leonardo's designs*
If Leonardo had assembled the "Great Bird", he would have rapidly discovered that no human being would have the muscular strength to flap the wings (particularly when you realize the most detailed sketches had notations which accurately calculated the size of the "Great Bird's" wingspan to carry an adult human male, and it is much larger than some of the early sketches would seem to indicate). Had it occurred to Leonardo to simply lock the wings in the outstretched position, a fairly aerobatic "hang glider" would have been the result. This would actually be more advanced than the gliders created by pioneers like [Otto Lilienthal](https://infogalactic.com/info/Otto_Lilienthal)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/U8Buw.jpg)
*Otto Lilienthal hang glider*
So assuming there are birds for inspiration and a Leonardo level genius living on the floating island, it is quite possible for a late Renaissance level technology to create hang gliders to begin gliding flight between points.
[Answer]
I can't add comments yet, but you could conceivably build a hot air balloon with fairly basic technology (textiles, woodworking for the vessel, rope). Flying paper lanterns existed in China as early as the second or third century CE.
You could then couple this with air or fire (heat) magic and create directional travel by essentially building a rudimentary sailboat and suspending it from one or several hot air balloons. Blow the wind into the sails and boom, flying machine.
Sailing ships have been around for much of human history - there is no reason I can see why a similar civilization on floating sky-islands would not pursue this line of technology in place of wind-powered seafaring vessels.
[Answer]
The [Ring of Fire series](http://www.baen.com/categories/books-by-series-list/ring-of-fire-series-by-eric-flint.html) postulates dropping a West Virginia town from 2000AD into Thuringia in late 1631, and then tracks the influence of the "uptime" ideas and knowledge on the world of the Thirty Years' War. One of the technologies that was implemented fairly early was the hot-air balloon, so I'd say that if you've gotten to at least late medieval/early renaissance technology, hot air balloons are possible - without magic.
[Answer]
Kites were first created around 500 BC. Kites big enough to lift people weren't recorded until much later, but I see no reason why a kite big enough to carry a person couldn't have been created earlier. Combined with your air magic to power/control it, and you've got it.
---
Per your comment: In real life, we don't live on sky islands. We evolved on the ground. The highest points we could reach were trees, mountains or buildings (fun fact: The pyramid of Giza at 481 feet was the tallest manmade structure for 3800 years). Humans invented kites and parachutes long before we invented anything that made them a necessity (like a balloon or a plane) so they were pretty much just novelty items. I mean, I live in a 3rd floor apartment, but even I wouldn't consider buying a parachute!
On the other hand, look at the [evolution of birds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_avian_flight). Birds didn't start off by being able to soar through the air. They started by gliding from either a great height or a great leap. Humans sought to mimic the characteristics of birds in developing flight ([Icarus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icarus), [Bladud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bladud), [Sampati](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampati), et al). It seems quite reasonable that if humans started at a great height already (an island in the sky), we too would begin our quest by controlling our fall rather than looking for ways to reach into the heavens in the first place. We see things fall all the time in our world. Presumably, trees in your world would also lose leaves or have [helicopter seed pods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samara_(fruit)) that your humans would look at for inspiration.
What I'm wondering (and its totally unrelated to your question), is would we still create gods that lived "in the heavens" if we evolved in such a world?
---
Edit #2
So I'm thinking about this more. What is a kite but a leaf on a strand of spider silk? I think if the need arose, kites could have been developed even earlier than 500BCE. I can totally see my tribal chief tying me to a primitive kite (that might fail) and reeling out rope until I reach another island. Once I've gathered enough bananas for him (the bananas on the remote island are obviously better!), I reattach the kite, and he reels me back in to the main island.
Once our village priest starts seeing patterns in the winds, he can create a highway (no pun intended) of kites that can be used to get me from one island to another so I can gather bananas from even more remote islands by island hoping.
[Answer]
## Technology is a product of available resources:
**If** the floating islands have a ready source of lift, constructing an aircraft is easy. Wait... They are floating islands after all...
There shouldn't be an "**if**" attached.
What actually keeps the inhabitants of a floating island from using (parts of) the island as aircraft?
If they can break off a piece of the rim of the island, does it float away?
Can you sit on such a piece, if it's large enough?
Can you hold a piece of seventh element, charged up to the brim and use wind as an impulse drive (point to the back and let the wind blow you forward)?
Required technological level seems to be restricted to maybe iron age mining techniques to break off a piece of an island large enough to carry the number of people you want to transport.
[Answer]
This is more a question of industrial development than technological development. You can make a perfectly good hot-air balloon using [paper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paper) (second century AD) or [silk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_silk) (fourth millennium BC). Navigation isn't really a problem, either: for such a short hop, you can just wait until the wind is blowing the right way.
The problem is one of scale: even the smallest hot-air balloons require hundreds of square meters of envelope material. Until your culture has sufficient excess production capacity to handle that, you won't be able to fly.
[Answer]
Mine the lift-stuff.
I asked the OP for clarification. Here is the response:
<https://www.reddit.com/r/corsarius/comments/5oygit/on_the_mechanisms_behind_the_floating_islands/>
the core of each island is Active Aether infused rock (with debris and the like encrusted on it). This Active Aether is decaying.
In primitive times, you can go to the edge of the island (maybe under the edge) and knock off rock attached to ropes or nets and weights. Sometimes the rock you knock off will have more Active Aether than dead weight, otherwise the opposite.
High quality "lift rock" (with a higher than average Active Aether density) can then be used as the core of your ships.
As the Gaia field is described as a flow, and gravity still seems to exist, and there is air resistance, you can tack. A thin sheet of high quality lift rock (even pulverized and bagged, or turned into cement to get the ideal shape) may be pushed harder by the Gaia field when facing "flat" against the flow, and less when turned to show a shallower profile.
Throw in sails to resist air, propellers to turn physical effort into push, gravity pulling down, and careful control of such flaps, and you should be able to build an air-ship.
But you want to know how primitive we can get.
In more primitive times, lift-rocks will be found (some will "roll off" the bottom of the world), and with rope, nets and effort could be used to build bridges between floating islands.
Before that, take a small lift rock and some fans. Tie yourself to the lift rock so you are neutral boyency. Add large foot and arm fans and bring lots of food. Fly yourself to another island.
In short, there is a mechanism that keeps the island afloat. Humans would exploit that mechanism to keep themselves afloat, and add propulsion mechanisms to move around.
With the islands floating around, these tactics would be used when islands get close. You'd invade another island or colonize it when you are close by, and hop from island to island over generations. The culture who masters these techniques spreads the furthest.
[Answer]
Invention is the result of inelegance and a need. Most early inventions are just mimics of nature, or extensions of current tech to a new purpose.
My point is that we didn't develop "stable" flight because we didn't need it. There is absolutely no reason for a human to fly in our world. We invented the reasons, like faster travel, or military superiority. We created the need, then the solution for it.
In your world, if there is a driving force to get from one island to another, then flight becomes less about "oh look that's cool" and more about "I must fly or die".
What I am getting at here is that if there is a real need. Humans will find a way. I imagen in your world flying from island to island would be a lot like taking boats from one country to another. Sure boats seem easier to us, but we had a real need to use boats.
Lets break down the problem into it's parts.
First is navigation. We don't have to worry about that. If you want to fly between two islands you wait on the wind to be blowing that way. If the need is great enough it won't even matter if early flight has a high death rate (boats did for us).
Second is lift or floaty-ness. Because were trying to do this as eary as we can, we need a passive floaty-ness. Craft that depend on generated energy (like jet engines) are out. But that leaves gliders, balloons, sails (parachutes), kites and a few others.
So looking at our own history (and google)
* Some gliders had success around 1 A.D.
* Some kites worked around 5000 B.C.
* Some kites have been recorded "lifting men" around 500 A.D.
* Around 700 A.D. man carrying kites were used quite a bit in China.
* Examples of rotary aircraft (helocopters of a sort) exist from around 400 BC
* Then there are hot air balloons around 300 B.C.
So even in our history we understood, in some way, the basics of flight very early on. If we had a real need to fly, back in 300 B.C. It seems we could have.
I would imagen flight in your world would have started very early as a kite. The first kites lifting 1-2 people, then growing in size to hold tens of people. There is less complex material in a kite. Kites can be made from paper, or from leaves, for example.
Kites have some serious problems though. So I don't think it would take too long to go from kite to balloon. Balloons would seems a natural progression. They can be made from paper, but cloth works better. I would see balloons coming around as an answer to stability of the kite. A little hot air and a lot of paper and you could move 10-20 people. Still risky, but if your choices were move to another island or die from lack of food, you would learn to fly.
I would also expect to see (given magic) the idea of rotary aircraft take off pretty fast. The largest problem with early flying machine designs was the lack of a way to make them work. This and the limited number of tries (once you failed at your manned kite attempt that was pretty much it for you) slowed down progress, but we did have the basics.
[Answer]
Its all about material science, observation and weather.
You'd need *tightly* woven, light material - early parachutes were made of silk, and that's a low tech material. You don't actually need to take off - you're already above the ground.
You need lightweight, strong frameworks - aircraft have been made of wood, but bamboo-like material would work.
Now the hard part is *design*. Someone would have to have observed that birds soared in thermals (rather than looking at flapping), someone needs to have designed aerofoils.
Now here's the hard part - *navigation* You need to navigate, in 3d, taking into account wind currents, thermals and the like. You drop, grab a thermal, soar, and move towards the destination.
Without modern technology, its tricky. Its not like finding an airfield in a fixed place at fixed altitude.
[Answer]
Given the ability to use magic... Depending on how powerful air magic is, you may just need enough technology to craft a sturdy hang glider and use air magic just to get yourself off the ground and maintain altitude.
Someone else mentioned the approach of creating a hot air balloon, using fire magic as a substitute for the gas powered heat source.
I would just look up what people use to fly/glide today and deconstruct them to what they are made up of and how they work and figure out which elements can be substituted by magic and less advanced materials.
[Answer]
The magic angle sounds as if hot air balloons should be availabe. Especially if there is no risk of the bag catching fire. No directional control, but flight should work.
Historically those were 18th century tech, but they could come much earlier.
[Answer]
Well, the Incans were believed to have used balloons in order to draw the immense [Nazca lines](http:////en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_Lines#Images) in deserts of Peru; about 500 BCE, so stone age tech level?
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[Question]
[
A multi-state feudalistic medieval society manages to accomplish certain advancements (directly agricultural and supportive), specifically discovering/refining/implementing:
* Crop rotation
* "Modern" plough
* Transportation infrastructures, such as improved roads and canals
* Land conversion, land drains and reclamation
* Increase in farm size
* Selective breeding
* Drilling and sowing
* Enclosure
* Modern irrigation techniques
* Agricultural specialization
Over the next few hundred years, would feudalism realistically survive? As a sub point, assuming >95% of the population was involved in agriculture (directly, or supportive such as trade) before, roughly where might the percentage settle to?
[Answer]
Unfortunately, this question is difficult to answer, as many of the techniques you speak of go back long before feudalism. Several of these were known in the medieval period in Europe--some of them were known in Roman times, or even earlier.
## Crop rotation
Crop rotation was practiced in the Middle East as early as 6000 BCE.
## Land conversion, land drains and reclamation
The Romans used stone-lined land drains both to direct springs to a desired destination, and to drain lands for agriculture.
## Selective breeding
Selective breeding goes back to pre-history.
## Drilling and sowing
The Sumerians used a single-tube seed drill. The Chinese used a multi-tube seed drill.
## Enclosure
In the agricultural sense, enclosure goes back at least to the 13th c. in England.
All of the mentions I mention from your list were in use in medieval times.
Now, would feudalism have survived the other things on your list? I don't foresee problems with a modern plough, improved transportation infrastructure, improved irrigation, or with larger farm sizes. The biggest factors that would lead to the end of feudalism would be agricultural specialization.
The feudal system was economically based on farming, but it also had a social basis: a commitment to provide certain things for the other party. The workers (the serfs) provided labor, the lord provided protection and care for the workers. What led to the end of feudalism in Europe was a break-down of the social order and the loss of that sense of mutual obligation.
We see a similar economic relationship (without the sense of mutual obligation) in sharecropping in the American south-east. After slavery was ended in the United States, agricultural labor became a surplus on the market: property owners persuaded many former slaves to engage in sharecropping arrangements that were little better than their previous slavery. The freedmen who worked these farms were not legally tied to the land (as the serfs were in Europe), but most were economically unable to break free of the sharecropping agreement. Often the sharecroppers were paid barely enough to survive, and they became dependent upon the landowners for survival (meager survival though it frequently was).
[Answer]
If your world is about agricultural economy, you could easily explain feudalism in your story by keeping the population at [Malthusian trap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_trap) thus preventing surplus accumulation. Actually de facto feudalism was still alive in most of the world till the very recent age, check [The Peasant Betrayed](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0932790747) how various land reforms fared, both socialist & capitalist. The places where land reforms succeeded are usually known as success stories, the places where land reforms failed and landlords kept their powers or socialist government put everybody in collective farms, are known as failures. Since countries without any significant export resource have to skim the agriculture.
The state also had very large effect on creating the capitalism, for example by enclosing the [commons](http://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/articles/short-history-enclosure-britain)
>
> "Suppose for argument's sake, 20 five-acre farms, cultivated by spade
> husbandry, together were more productive than a single 100-acre farm
> using machinery. This did not mean that the landowners would get more
> rent from them — far from it. As each 5 acre farm might support a
> farmer and his family, the surplus available for tenants to pay in
> rent would be small. The single tenant farmer, hiring labourers when
> he needed them, might have a lower yield, from his hundred acres, but
> he would have a larger net profit — and it was from net profit that
> rent was derived. That was why landlords preferred consolidation."
>
>
>
And if you want today's data check Guinea & Lao both over 70% agricultural [population](http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS?year_high_desc=true)
[Answer]
It depends on which of the common definitions of "Feudalism" you're talking about. Pure Feudalism? Or specifically the European implementation of Feudalism during the Middle Ages?
Pure Feudalism is simply a contract-law approach to government. You've got a bunch of population centers of various sizes, and they make agreements with each other to achieve their collective goals.
For example, a slightly stronger manor or village goes to is neighbors and negotiates that if those neighbors agree to each provide 40 men on demand for up to three months, the stronger party will use them for the common defence to repel invaders and brigands. This would be how the local lord gets started. Note that the deal goes both ways though: if the lord doesn't fulfil his obligation to defend the territory, he'll find that his neighbors stop sending him troops when he calls for aid, and probably pick someone else to be the regional commander. He may or may not, at that point, be able to convince them to let him back into the defence pact, it depends on how badly he screwed up.
These contracts aren't limited to defence, they can include trade, road usage and maintenance, and anything else necessary to organize a society.
Slavery and Serfdom are not an inherent part of a feudal system of government, rather they were an artifice of the low level of economic development at the time. As the technology level increased, free-holdings and townships became more common until the Industrial Revolution made them the dominant social force (largely due to the traditional lords being unwilling to adapt to the new society.)
So yes, you could have a feudalistic society with modern technology, and to the cursory view, it wouldn't be much different than the modern state. The most visible difference would be that when a city or a county or a state or whatever level you choose to look at does something it is forbidden to do (or fails to deliver on its promises), instead of some people complaining, and the courts telling the government that they can't do that, but leaving the same people in charge and imposing no real penalty, the contract would be voided (possibly with penalties for the violating side) and the "government" would then have to beg the lower organizational levels for its power back, with a high probability that someone else would be chosen.
You could even have elected representatives and all the trappings of modern "democracy". It's simply a matter of structuring the contracts between the different levels of organization in a way that keeps everyone happy.
[Answer]
Feudalism ended due to Lords realizing that they can make more money from renting than by having serfs and peasants that they rule. In other words, the realized that they do better and lose less by "freeing" people. This is why the industrial age brought more freedom as well. The wealthy realized that if they promised only some given sum they could pay overall pay less.
Advanced farming techniques would have only sped up the process by moving farmers into the non-farming labor classes that could be switched to renting more easily, but ultimately the farming techniques have nothing to do with feudalism per se. If the Lords didn't see renting as more valuable then regardless of how advanced farming would get the Lord would not move people on to renting.
[Answer]
Everything you've listed above has been used by civilizations dating back to before the birth of Christ. And yet, feudalism still existed for hundreds of years.
What you're describing are advanced agricultural techniques, not social reform, which is exactly what you'd need in order to end the effective slavery of the farmers.
In a feudal society, the nobility own the land, and everything which is grown on it. The peasants work the land every day of their miserable lives, and are *magnanimously rewarded* by their lords and masters with just enough food to stay alive, and maybe a plot of land on which they might grow some personal food stuffs.
Growing more food, using more modern techniques would change nothing other than make the ruling nobles richer, and fatter. And, OK, maybe fewer people would starve to death (although that's not a guarantee, as food storage was still shoddy, and prone to being lost to pests or diseases)
What you'd need in order to alleviate or abolish feudalism is armed rebellion, or that the nobility grow a conscience and willingly give up their power and privilege. You judge which is more likely.
[Answer]
If I'm understanding you correctly, you're drawing an implied link between feudalism and agriculture, in which the peasantry or serfs need to be inefficient agricultural workers for the institution to survive.
However, this depends entirely on the tradition and context one is discussing. In western Europe serfdom didn't survive the black death. This owes to two factors, firstly that in this region there were upper, lower, and middle classes. The middle class; freemen or yeomanry in an English context, had legal rights and could own land.
This was very important, as it allowed families to accumulate wealth and status down the generations, eventually joining the upper class... perhaps even seeing their grandchildren able to woo royalty. This meant that the mass death caused by the plague rose the cost of labour and allowed the middle and lower classes bargaining power, especially as in England there had been basic constitutional rights granted, restricting the monarchy - monarchs and nobles couldn't just enslave or murder freemen going about their business. They had negotiating power owing to their legal rights as free men.
The situation in eastern Europe, especially Russia, was very different. While the English king agreed to [Magna Carta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta) in 1215; thereby limiting his power and increasing the rights of nobles and free men, the lesser known [Sobornoye Ulozheniye](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sobornoye_Ulozheniye) drafted in 1649, led to greater restrictions on social mobility in Russia.
The latter code merged the lower classes into serfs, making them property. Not only this, but only the nobility could own land, and the serfs were heavily restricted, needing internal passports to travel between towns as they did not have any right to travel.
One was not a serf because they worked the land. There were many "house serfs" who served their lord's estate as household servants. There were many other roles serfs played, from traveling entertainers to soldiers, and all the time they remained property. Their noble masters could do what they liked to them, as the Tsar could do as they liked with anyone.
Increasing agricultural efficiency does not change that, because feudalism is a legal principle and structure. Nobles could put their serfs to work as they pleased, including factory work. See the likes of "[The Condition of the Serf Workers in Russia's Metallurgical Industry 1800-1861](https://www.jstor.org/stable/1876755?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents)". Factory serfs did not have life any better than their farmland peers, in fact the argument goes that they had it much worse, proving that technology does not in itself provide social emancipation. Keep in mind that by then, still about half the country regarded the Tsar as a living God, and the aforementioned legal code survived until 1849.
Serfdom as an institution was only abolished in Russia in 1861, but for many the reality remained the same for decades to come. So you need a lot more than just increases in agricultural productivity to have a meaningful effect upon society... much less the abolition of feudalism.
[Answer]
Feudalism would almost certainly survive.
Why? Because the nobles had the most valuable, important thing of the lot: the castle. Now sure, the power of the inner-city merchants and traders would increase drastically and there'd be noticeable market-style reforms, but as long as the nobility have the right to build strong fortresses, their power remains.
The power of the nobility came in large part because of military strength, not economic might. Sure, many of the high-nobility was also rich as sin during the height of feudalism, but they held on to castle castles that would take years of hard effort to be able to breach.
By comparison, the development of the cannon was the single most destructive weapon against the power of the nobility; it rendered previously years-long siege prospects down to a much more manageable time. Worse, the necessary development of gunpowder made heavily-armoured knights increasingly vulnerable to militia with firearms.
By the time feudalism ended, the nobility were mostly riding on old laws that empowered them to the detriment of the commoner. Their old castles looked more and more like mansions while real defences against invasion were unglamorous squat things.
Now as for demographics, historically the British Agricultural Revolution drastically shifted the balance of population. Where before it'd take several farmers to feed one man in a city, several city dwellers could easily be fed by one farmer. Tremendous booms happened in agriculture, allowing people to switch to higher-payout farmings, like sheep (which also depressed the price of unprocessed wool). Enclosures added tremendous economies of scale to formerly subsistence farms.
The surplus farmers largely ended up in urban cities where slums developed. Terrible, in the short term, but the lure of new, cheaper labour en masse along with much cheaper wool helped break the old guilds and lead to new methods, the earliest forms of mass-production, which itself lead straight into the Industrial Revolution.
There would be turmoil though, especially in the early years. Newly impoverished farmers would be angry. The new bourgeoisie would be angry there's a flat ceiling on how far they can rise. Squalid slums would be breeding grounds for diseases, insurrection, and generally awful things.
[Answer]
It is not as much the technological advances that ended feudalism.
It was more the growth of the bourgeoisie. In the start it was merely craftsmen and merchants who did enjoy some influence on the affairs of the local city or borough.
When that class grew in numbers (vastly outnumbering the nobility) and wealth, their requirement for real influence and power outside of the city's affairs could only be met with a huge reduction in the influence of the nobility.
The nobility had earlier been able to keep their influence due to the fact that they delivered the soldiers for the armies, the armies was now a national issue.
Without that powerbase, the bourgeoisie could wrestle the foundation of the wealth away from the nobility, by taking away their right to cheap/free labour and when democracy arrived simply outvote the nobility.
So to keep feudalism in play reduce the power and number of craftsmen and merchants and keep the control of the armies in the hands of the nobility. Perhaps by having all cities controlled by a local feudal lord, not allowing new settlements outside feudal control.
[Answer]
the more technology used for farming advances, the less vassals are required to work the land.
at some point feudal lords would decide to work the land just themselves(extended family included) and former vassals would have nothing to do anymore.
of course that would lead to those people switching to other fields of work like industry. someone has to built those machines that are used to do their former work at least.
[Answer]
**Feudalism and innovation do not go together.**
Serfs would do all the work and the surplus would go to the landowner, usually a noble or a monastery. The serfs would not innovate, survival would be the goal of the day, month, year. The landowner would not innovate, as agriculture would be entirely beneath notice.
If the yield would fall short, the serfs would be squeezed a little more. They would starve, but there are always more serfs.
There was some activity aimed at crop improvement by monks, for example peas, but this wasn't wide-spread.
Something like a bridge would be used to extract tolls from the users. Quite limiting the positive effect on the economy.
Productivity was low and basically defined by what a person with tools could do. The speed of innovation would be a snail's pace by modern reckoning. What there was of innovative energy would go to the arts, music, warfare and religion.
The main period for feudalism was not called the Middle Ages for nothing. While modern understanding is a bit more balanced, it still was that period in between with less happening than before or since.
It was actually such triggers as the Black Death, which caused the feudal system to break down that allowed yeoman to flourish and unleash many of the innovations you list.
References:
<http://www.vlib.us/medieval/lectures/peasants.html>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages_(historiography)>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolution>
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[Question]
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**Passage of the Childhood Ownership Act of 20X8**
[Bob](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/25242/how-can-a-single-person-with-unlimited-lifetimes-and-persistent-memory-affect-th) has finally made it to a position of power as a rich white male in the First World after hundreds of lives as a powerless child. He has used his power and wealth to be a powerful and tenacious advocate for the proper treatment of children. After decades of advocacy involving the unification of many child welfare NGOs, Bob has gotten the Child Self-Ownership Act of 20X8 passed in the United States and (what's left) of the European Union.
The principle provisions of the act are:
* Require that, before any infant is allowed to leave the hospital, the parents must complete a child safety and developmental psychology course. The parents may leave the hospital at any time after the mother has sufficiently recuperated. This course may be completed before delivery so that the baby can leave the hospital with the parents in the usual way. Thus, parents who are prepared and want a child may get ready beforehand.
* Taking the education course shall place no undue burden on the parents. If the yearly audit shows that it *does* place an undue burden on parents, then corrections to the program shall be made the following year.
* A childhood development section shall be added to the State's high school education and will be a graduation requirement. There may be no waiver for this class as there is for sexual education.
* Parents who don't complete the course beforehand will have two months to take it afterwards. The baby is still theirs just not living with them. If they don't complete the course in the required time frame, then custody of the child reverts to the State and the child is placed in protective custody. For a period of three months after the baby becomes a ward of the State, the parent(s) may appeal by taking the course and showing why they didn't take it earlier. A judge will decide whether the baby should remain a ward or be restored to their parents.
* Special facilities shall be built to house those infants who are not claimed.
* Funding for the course and facilities shall be provided for in the budget. (This is not an unfunded initiative.)
* The course is offered free. For those who cannot afford to take the time off to complete the course, the State will pay them a stipend per day to take the course. This should equalize the field somewhat between the well-off and the poor. No one should be denied their children because they are too poor to take time off.
* The course shall be available at every hospital in the State.
* The course shall cover known best practices and common malpractices in raising children.
* The State may not hold any infant past 8 months of age. The longer babies wait in State custody, the worse it is for them and the greater the burden for the state.
* The adoption process shall be considerably streamlined to facilitate these babies getting into real homes/families. Emphasis shall be placed on speedy background checks of prospective families.
* The content in the childhood development course shall be sourced only from reputable journals of peer-reviewed articles/studies. The source journals must be three years old at the time of the passage of this statute. Curriculum shall be developed only by licensed and practicing psychiatrists, psychologists and medical doctors.
* There are no restrictions on who may have children or when they have children or how many. (Trying to regulate who can have sex with who is a futile endeavor. Don't even try.)
* The entire adoption and education process shall be audited every year.
* The results of the adoption and education process audit shall be publicly published within three months of the end of the year.
* Failure to produce the audit results shall be cause for termination of employment for the senior officer(s) in charge of the audit.
* The law must be renewed every 5 years or it will go out of effect.
* The law makes no statement for or against abortion.
Known Problems:
* What happens to people who are just passing through the state and have their baby here? Are they required to take the course too in order to leave the hospital?
*Would this law be sufficient to improve the lives of children?* What complications could arise? How might the law be circumvented, cheated or corrupted to make children's lives worse? The law assumes that most parents would do better if they knew better. This law aims to give them a very strong incentive to learn.
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Not sufficient, but helpful.
First, there is a lot of mandatory education out there that seems to have mixed results. People have to pass a driving test, yet there are lots of reckless drivers. Sufficiently-reckless drivers may have to take another "no really, we mean it" class before getting their licenses back, but that doesn't guarantee that they'll be safe drivers forevermore.
Anecdotally (that's code for "I have no data"; sorry), it appears that the more people view something as a "right", the more likely they are to resist or outright undermine any obstacles put in their way. You have to pass the bar to practice law? Sure, that makes sense. You have to complete a test to take your kid home? Outrage! Bob will be contending with that problem for a long, long time.
However, parenting education will help some. There are people who *want* to be good parents but never learned how, and you probably can't pop over to your community college to take a class on it. And I've never heard of such classes in high schools. So there is a segment of the population who will be helped by the mere *availability* of such a class.
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> What complications could arise? How might the law be circumvented, cheated or corrupted to make children's lives worse?
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You know the parents whose hostility to their kids sometimes takes the form of "I slaved away / gave up a plum job / worked three jobs and ate rice and beans / etc to raise you and this is how you treat me?!"? For some of them this class will be like that, so expect some kids to hear about it.
How could people cheat? That depends; your law doesn't actually specify that they have to *pass an exam*, just *show up*, so some could tune out. If you have an exam, assume that any methods used by students to cheat on school exams could also be applied here.
Resistance to the class isn't limited to those who will be terrible parents. Some parents will do fine even though they cheated their way through the class. Some will then use that as ammo to argue against the need for the law.
I know you're trying to dismiss the financial aspect, but that money has to come from *somewhere*. Expect some resentment from those whose taxes are raised or budgets cut in order to provide this. Some will be swayed by the public-good argument (as with school taxes); others will not. Those with political power might act against the law; if they can't get the law revoked directly they'll cut the program's funding. Look to modern US social-welfare programs for examples of such political maneuvering.
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> The law assumes that most parents would do better if they knew better. This law aims to give them a very strong incentive to learn.
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Most parents probably *do* want to do a good job. Some don't care and we've discussed that. Bob also needs to consider the ones who'd rather punt on parenting than go through this. Not all children are planned; those who are planned but turn out to have problems can become unwanted at or soon after birth. This program makes it very easy for parents to abandon such children -- which isn't necessarily a *problem*, but it is a *consequence*. If the state can place those children quickly, rather than letting the kids linger in state care for years before being released for adoption, the class could provide a socially-acceptable way of dumping a newborn: "well we *wanted* to have a child, but that nasty state stepped in and...". That might be an easier claim to make than "didn't want to keep it".
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So, what else might Bob consider?
* Distributing this education throughout the whole public-education program. Some ideas can be planted as early as elementary school; they can be built on in middle school and high school and then in college. Think of it as an *ongoing subject*, like math, rather than a *one-time thing*, like driver's ed or sex ed.
* Developing a mentorship program. Not every set of parents can in turn rely on *their* parents; whom do they call for help, for everything from "how do we solve this acute problem" to "are we doing it right"?
* Facilitate group/co-housing/"it takes a village" configurations of adults and children. I once visited a community where all the children stay in the "children's house" with plenty of (mixed) adult supervision, but they spend time with their families *too*. This gets more of the community involved, with adds both breadth and earlier detection of problems. Bob shouldn't impose this sort of thing (you think they resented a mere *class*?), but where adults are inclined to form such communities, the state should (a) not hinder them and (b) consider incentives.
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One way to get round the law as written: Home birth.
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In 2012, out-of-hospital births comprised 3%–6% of births in
Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington
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- <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db144.htm>
The above question is based on the assumption that some specific subset of humans are incompetent to make decisions regarding children. Your solution is to move these decision to some specific subset of humans.
This might very well backfire, too - what is being taught at this class? Religious values? That might sound great, until you find out that the religion being taught is (insert religion you don't like here). Adherence to government values?
Remember that anyone who objects to these teachings is going to be denied access to their children. Not just now, but in 100 years, when different people have been in power.
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No, it will not improve the lives of children.
After I was able to convince myself that this was not some cynical work of satire, I could appreciate the irony of the title, "self-ownership act," as this work already presumes both parent and child are property of the state. I suppose when you see the state as an extension of yourself, the next goal is to steal for yourself everything you can, including others' children.
It is sad that so many have such a poor view of their fellow humans, that they can be entertained by imagining new ways to imprison themselves by a fantasy bureaucracy. After thousands of years of oppression, you really can't wait to climb back into your shackles, can you?
The State cannot save you, and it cannot save the children. Only a free society can do that. This act is not progress, it is regress.
Cultivate the courage to seek liberty.
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Short of the great potential for a bureaucratic nightmare, this seems like a good plan to me.
The tough part of this plan would be getting it passed. When you start talking about interfering in families like this many people will fight it.
But given that you get the law in place your plan appears pretty solid though obviously there are concerns (as with any plan)
Concerns:
* Cost. This will be crazy expensive, worthwhile but expensive.
* Enforcement. There were 3,932,181 births in the US in 2013...that's a lot of personnel needed to enforce the rules.
* Annual audits are incredibly labor intensive and in some cases do not give you the time/data to properly evaluate something's efficacy. I would space it out more. Maybe every three years.
Bonus points for:
* Streamlining adoption is a huge deal to make this work, good addition.
* Childhood development section shall be added to the State's high school education
Things I would consider adding:
* Couple this program with prevention methods as well, contraceptives, condoms etc
* Education programs for parents to support the children. Its one thing to know what you need to do to take care of a child, being able to actually do it is something else entirely. I am talking about employment education mostly here. If you know what nutrients your kid needs but can't afford them...well...problem.
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Consider that a recent Nature review of psychology results couldn't reproduce *half* of the results. So are "best practices" really scientific?
Are the results that the researchers have decreed worthy universally held? This is not a trivial point, as you are implicitly imposing a value system. I.e. in classical Catholicism the value of modesty are very highly regarded. One could argue that modern western society actively discourages modesty.
To me it seems, you're flirting with building a "Brave New World" like dystopia.
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"Would this law be sufficient to improve the lives of children?" No. As intimated by Jet Khan earlier, It seems the majority of those discussing your question have all assumed that the responsibility of insuring a healthy childhood lies with the state. If you start with a very different assumption, namely that "government is at best a necessary evil, and at worst an intolerable one"~(Paine), than you come to a very different conclusion.
This fictional Childhood ownership act and the others like it begin with good intentions in response to evident problems. However, they are at best surface repairs which leave the root of the problem unsolved-- in this instance, family dysfunction. It is hoped that by educating parents, they will be better parents, e.g. that education is the solution or the vehicle for the solution. This misses the true basis for a sound family: self-denial and unconditional love. Virtues like these are ideals which the best of us rarely experience, and they cannot be gained through education or enforced by an act of congress.
Beyond It's inability to address the root problem, This act suffers from three major pitfalls: The act enforces a process and standard intended to fix the dysfunctional families, which means good families must suffer the same treatment. In addition, taxes must be raised to pay for the facilities, systems, and bureaucratic overhead of such an endeavor. Finally, and worst of all, it is inevitable that the whichever group which holds political sway will pervert this act to further their own ideology.
The alternative, to leave individuals to raise families as they see fit, is fraught with danger-- they may choose to live selfishly and wreck the lives of their children, as many do. Humans are morally bankrupt, as a general rule of thumb, and we have thousands of years of history to prove this axiom. However broken individuals are when left to themselves, it is silly to think that a great number of similarly pathetic humans could fix their dysfunctional condition by agreeing to adhere to a law, proposed, seconded, and passed by mere men. The simple fact of the matter is that real, lasting solutions cannot come from the top-down( government regulation and etc. ). They must come from the bottom-up, from within.
Ultimately, the only hope for the betterment of mankind comes from obedience not to the laws of kings and congresses, but from obedience to eternal, spiritual laws. There simply is no reason to "love thy neighbor as thyself", the foundation of a great society, unless there is a God who defines and enforces such a golden rule, and unless you believe in that God. All other attempts at morality are doomed to failure, because they lack the basis for any such morality.
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I think this - "The course shall not make any assertions about the right way to raise a child, only the consequences of doing it wrong." - is the flaw.
Most countries put new drivers through a training course and test before allowing them to drive on their own. How successful would these courses be if they only trained people on the consequences of doing it wrong?
For example, if the instructor merely tells you that the consequence of a mistimed overtaking maneuver is a head-on collision, how many people would learn the correct way by trail and error? How many would just avoid overtaking?
I don't see how this could work (or parents be tested on their understanding) without giving them some positive guidance on what the correct way is.
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Since this is unlikely to worsen the lives of children I think it is safe to say that yes, this action will improve them. However, I suspect you’re unlikely to see a significant benefit, let alone one that warrants the cost and constitutional disputes.
Ultimately, what you’re doing is forcing parents to take and pass a sort of written driving test. They are required to take it and (hopefully) pass it in order to be given charge of a child. Unfortunately, this test is even less stringent than a driving test because there are no rules (other than existing mistreatment laws) taught that can be enforced. All a parent needs to do is memorize material and regurgitate without any incentive to retain it.
To once again look at driving as an example, consider those on the road in the United States. Even with clear laws dictating the rules and copious numbers of officers out enforcing them, there are still many dangerous and incompetent people on the road. Even among well-meaning drivers, mistakes (with life-altering consequences) can still be made.
Raising a child is also considered a very personal experience by many. Teaching information from the best academic sources is a good start, but there is also enormous distrust surrounding academics in some political and socio-economic circles. Some people will never like being told what is best for their children. This adds a barrier to the effectiveness of any material taught, especially since the children of these parents might benefit significantly from this education.
Good parenting requires a desire to learn from your childhood and your parents’ mistakes as well as a profound understanding that your child now comes before yourself. These are things that take a committed effort and cannot easily be taught. As a result, poor parenting is always going to be impactful on society.
There is a ray of hope, though. There will certainly be parents who will learn from this kind of education whether they intend to or not. If a parent chooses to ignore the lessons, their child is no worse off than had they not taken the course. But somewhere out there, at least a few children will experience better lives.
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> Would this law be sufficient to improve the lives of children?
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The biggest debate would center around this question. On one hand, delivering critical information to parents on best practices in terms of nutrition for mother and child, or healthy psychological and emotional development can be very beneficial *if* the parents are open to receiving it. In fact, alot of organizations around the world work hard to deliver this message to new parents with some success.
However, why would a mandatory course be necessary? Why not just a free DVD handed out at the hospitals as part of a [Maternity Package](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternity_package) which includes some of the material items required to support healthy child development? Are we assuming new parents would be inherently resistant to receiving information that we must threaten to take custody of the child if they don't sit through an in-person lecture? What problem is a society really trying to solve with a law like this?
Without trying it and evaluating the data, there isn't really a way to say objectively if it would be enough to "improve the lives of children", but alot would have to go into defining what exactly we mean by that in order for such an evaluation to take place. In what ways do children's lives currently need improving? What are the reasons for the deficiencies that we are attempting to improve? How much do we measure the improvement? How much improvement would we expect to see from the implementation of this law? Without being very specific here, it is impossible to give a good answer to this question.
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Well, you are systematically taking children away from their mothers, at least in some cases, so there would likely be some severe political backlash to that alone.
In terms of implementation, as mentioned, cost and practicality come into play. What happens when the flow of infants to adoptive families slows down? Suppose something changes in the equation and suddenly you have a backlog of babies? Where do they go after two months?
Also, institutionalizing infants for any reason is a really terrible idea, especially in the first two months. The benefits of breast-milk from the infant's own mother are widely understood, as is the daily nurturing that only a parent can provide. Alot of long-term damage will be done to each child forced to live in the hospital, where the child would certainly receive less attention in a ward full of infants waiting for their parents' paperwork to clear, than they would in their homes.
Cultural biases would also probably come into play at some point with regard to the classes being taught. Who gets to write the educational material? Who gets to deliver it? It's not a simple as handing out a list of do's and dont's to parents. It all has to be contextualized to the audience if it is going to be retained and implemented.
These are just a few thought-provoking ones. A comprehensive list of potential complications would be very long.
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> How might the law be circumvented, cheated or corrupted to make children's lives worse?
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Let's not assume it has to be circumvented to make children's lives worse. There are alot of practices that may be very beneficial to specific children in specific parental/cultural contexts, but aren't understood or backed by academic research. Many of these could be lost if you 'program' parents to behave in a certain way that doesn't defer to the wisdom and learning of the generations before them.
That said, I've never seen a law that could not be somehow abused or circumvented. Legal systems are always prone to this. It all depends on the lettering of the law and the social/financial resources available to those who would want to get around it.
It could also be easily corrupted by whoever is charge of both implementation and execution. The state is seizing quite a bit of power simply to implement this law, so certainly there could be all sorts of nefarious outcomes if ill-minded people gain control of these legal levers.
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> The law assumes that most parents would do better if they knew better. This law aims to give them a very strong incentive to learn.
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According to the [U.N. Convention of the Rights of the Child](http://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx):
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> 1. States Parties shall ensure that a child shall not be separated from his or her parents against their will, except when competent
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> the best interests of the child. Such determination may be necessary
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> child by the parents, or one where the parents are living separately
> and a decision must be made as to the child's place of residence.
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A law that, by default, removes a child from the custody of their parents without any individual case evaluation goes far beyond incentivizing a desired behavior. It crosses many well-established ethical lines. It starts with the assumption that all parents are "bad parents" if they haven't taken the course, and makes them 'earn' the right to care for their child. This is not at all consistent with the way we understand human rights.
Human beings have been raising children for a long, long time. Most parents are completely capable of doing a fine job of this. Unless this is a society that has undergone some sort of catastrophic pandemic parenting-failure scenario that could be altered with the implementation of a single parenting course, requiring all parents to go through this course would likely be a huge waste of resources, as opposed to designing effective interventions targeted at individually identified and defined social problems. Finding ways to support struggling parents would be a lot more cost-effective than implementing some sort of mass infant-trafficking network.
However, this doesn't mean that a nation would not give it a shot. It probably wouldn't fly in a democratic nation, but it is conceivable that a totalitarian state might try something like it, especially if it had some motivation to take direct ownership of its children, say to indoctrinate them or to build an army, or to host [perfectly executed adorable hoe-downs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C3saOrZLl0).
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**Long answer - my favourite part in the last paragraph**
To develop a parenting course that will actually help people, then teach it to every member of the population, will require a huge number of teachers, as well as overheads for training the teachers, selecting the teachers, ensuring quality control on the classes, validating the curriculum, updating the curriculum as people get foreknowledge of the tricks used so they stop being as effective, etc. You will need some form of monitoring, to ensure the teachers are actually teaching the material, instead of doing the work for their stuents for money. Some kind of computerised multiple-choicce questions on a hack-proofed (and continuously improved) terminal would probably be appropriate (multiple choice questions are surprisingly versatile - don't dismiss them 'til you try them). All these teachers will have to be enthusiastic workers, and that will remove a lot of enthusiastic workers from the rest of the economy.
Also, depending on the length of the course, you can't just compensate people for lost hours. Their employers will need to find replacements in their absence. You may be able to mitigate this cost by making the training part-time over a period of months. But it may still affect an employer's hiring decision for newly-married applicants, depending on the length of training.
Also, creating a state-sponsored adoption program will almost certainly lead to an excess of orphans over adopters. The law won't change the number of people who want to adopt, but it likely will greatly increase the number of children offered for adoption, since it would become easier to get rid of unwanted babies (credit Monica Cellio)
On the other hand, the state can't just "not hold any child beyond 8 years of age". They can't turn kids out onto the street. The state will likely have to incentivise adopting, somehow, and that will lead to lower quality adopotive parents who are only there for the incentives.
There may also be a stigma attached to growing up as an orphan, no matter the length of time spentt in state care. Children might be bullied and/or sufffer serious self-doubt over their parents not caring enough about them to study for a free test. These children would also know they had heightened odds of coming from parents who went down the "I didn't want to give him up, but" route, or even the "I had no choice, so I didn't take the test" route. This would make them feel worse about their origins.
As an alternative law which would be easier to implement, without the associated costs to the children of widespread orphanhood, what if the state **imposed a tax on people who don't take the test**? The tax could increase over time the longer the parents don't take it.
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I agree that in general, parental education, psychological improvement, and children's rights can be good things and if improved, could make life better for children, and for everyone (or most) overall.
One major problem I see is the potential for the child to be apart from its parents for (up to) the first two months of its life, if the parents don't do their coursework. That period is one of the most important developmentally for a child - the parents, particularly the mother, should be with the child for that period. If it's about the child's rights, then the child wants/needs its parents, and the mother should be required to be with the child. That need should be part of the course. If the mother hears that her child needs to bond physically and emotionally with her during that time, or may die or have a future life unable to connect with other humans, and yet she still wants to leave her baby behind in the hospital, then you're probably better off revoking that mother's parental status and assigning a new mother immediately.
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No! Instead, have a waiting list of well-educated healthy women who want to adopt infants. The women near the top of the list go on standby. Assign the children of unfit mothers to them immediately, so the child can bond with the new mother.
Jet Khan's answer also brought up some valid issues with the mindset of the law.
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A long time ago I asked a question about dragon saddlery([Dragon Riding Question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/214095/90300)) and later on how to pilot flying animals([How to pilot flying animals?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/218432/90300)), but recently I saw a lot of art on the internet with characters riding flying animals and they do it by sitting on animals and I remembered that in Game of Thrones Daenerys rides Drogon in a different way, she lies on it instead of sitting. Noticing this, I had a question: **What would be the best way to mount flying animals, sitting or lying down? Which of these two ways would be more efficient and why?**
Take into account situations where the animal is with a saddle as well as situations where it is without. Like, if his rider doesn't have what it takes to buy or make a saddle or has unsaddled the animal, but lost it, doesn't have time to get it, was destroyed, is stored in a distant place, etc... Depending on the fantasy work, the creatures can have multiple wings or legs, but for this post we're going to set a limit on members: The creatures flying creatures only have a maximum of 6 limbs (like pegasi and griffins), there are no creatures with 8 or more and there are some with 4 limbs (like giant birds and pterosaurs).
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The rider's position is going to depend on the specific animal's anatomy as much as anything else. A few examples:
* If the animal has a head that rises up above the torso (horse-like, as opposed to a lizard-like head in line with the torso), a rider lying down likely won't be able to see much other than the back of the mount's head. A sitting position would be more likely.
* When the animal is highly intelligent and can handle navigation on its own, the rider can afford to lie flat. A less-intelligent animal that merely responds to rider commands (like a horse) would require the rider to have as much mobility, visibility, and freedom as possible and thus would more likely use a seated saddle.
* An animal with slick scales or skin will likely use a seated saddle, as there's nothing to hold onto if you lie down.
* Some flying creatures (e.g., Eastern-style dragons) bend and undulate through the air as they travel. A prone rider would bend and twist along with the mount. Since the rider's body is likely not designed to move that way, lying would be unlikely.
* If the animal tends to roll a lot during flight, a prone position is less disorienting for a humanoid rider. Their head would be closer to the animal's centerline, so it wouldn't experience as much angular acceleration.
* If the animal performs very steep ascents or dives, it would almost be required for the rider to have a chair-like seat that they could securely strap themselves into.
* Lying might be necessary on certain animals. The wings of a griffin, for example, connect to the torso across an area that covers over half the animal's length. It would be almost impossible to sit on one like a horse because the rider's legs would hang down onto the wings and interfere with their operation.
* Similarly, sitting might be necessary on certain animals. One big reason that we don't lie down on horses is because we're too long. The bottom half of our body would hang off the back of the horse. I would assume you'd have similar problems with a pegasus.
* If the animal has a spine that's close to the surface of their back (like a human has), lying would be rather uncomfortable for both mount and rider. Sitting in a saddle minimizes the contact area plus gives you the opportunity to add cushioning for both parties. It doesn't matter how practical or effective something is; if it's not comfortable for both rider and mount, it's not going to be done.
The particular situation at hand will also contribute to the decision. A few examples:
* In your example of an improvised mount with no saddle available, the rider would almost certainly lie down. Sitting bareback on a flying mount would be very difficult and tiring for the rider if the mount was traveling at any appreciable speed. A saddle would have a chair-like back to support the rider against the push of air resistance. Without a saddle, the rider would have nothing to support them and it would be too easy to fall off. They would be much more likely to lie down where they could grip the animal tightly with both hands and legs, and minimize the forces that might try to knock them off.
* If the rider needs to be able to attack a foe while mounted, then a seated or standing position would be almost necessary. A prone rider would not have the freedom of movement necessary to operate most weapons.
* If the rider is under attack while mounted, they would be more likely to lie flat. This would reduce their profile and make them much harder to see and hit. The same logic would apply if the rider was trying to be stealthy.
In general, I think your riders will most likely be seated in a saddle. Saddles are really just inter-species adaptors that have one side customized to the mount's biology and the other side customized to the rider's biology. They're designed to provide the optimal fit for both parties. I don't see you getting that same level of compatibility when lying flat on the animal's back.
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Airflow-wise, a laying position is much less disruptive than a sitting one and will create less drag, allowing the rider to exercise less force to stay mounted and the mount to get less tired from the flight.
Also, being less exposed to the air-stream would make easier for the rider to not get chilled and save on padding (weight is always a concern when flying).
Additionally, it reduces the risk that the rider bumps their head when the mount passes too close to an obstacle with its back.
Shortcoming of laying is that the field of view will be somewhat more limited than when sitting: watching behind will be more difficult and also the front view will be hampered by the mount's neck/back. Unless some periscope is used.
There is also an additional effect: a sitting rider would shift the center of mass more up than a laying one. I am no expert in flight dynamic to assess how that impacts the flight performance.
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The sitting position probably derives from the fact we don't have any antecedent of riding flying animals. Thus artists envisioned the riders like those they are aware of, namely riders of horses, camels, yaks, elk, or even bipedal animals like ostriches.
**A lying position will have less of an impact on air resistance, but a sitting position will allow for more control over the animal.** Riders may want to vary their position according to their needs, but ultimately the best position depends on the synergy between the rider and their mount: what kind of animal are we dealing with, how much the mount trusts their rider, how much control the rider wants or needs to exert, how important speed is, what the angle of attack is, what the position of the rider is (on the neck, on the shoulders, on the back), how much of their field of view they want to compromise, &c.
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I am going to suggest laying down just so the rider can hold on.
Even professional bull riders can barely handle any torque. So imagine a flying creature diving straight down and reaching terminal velocity, then pulling up hard. The rider would be effortlessly tossed off.
By using a harness laying down while holding your feet and arms you could hang on much better. You might even safety strap yourself to your mount so you can't fall off.
To put it another way.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/S23Ms.png)
Let's not do this on the back of a griffon.
A griffon doesn't have a nice little spot to snug yourself into to hide inside its body like a plane has. So you're riding on its back. Sitting up right means you have no support for your back, minimal support for side to side.
By laying down on the back of the creature, you can use a foot harness to support your forward movement, which also includes dives and climbs. And using your arms, you can support yourself from any side to side movement.
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Is there any reason you couldn't do both?
At a lower and/or steadier speeds I would imagine that you'd want to sit up for easier precision control.
In a dive or other fast acceleration, I'd think you would want to lean in.
This would just be an "exaggerated" version of what horseback riders already do.
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I mostly agree with the other two answers (at the time of writing this), that wind resistance would make lying down better for control, and (not) shifting the centre of balance, and the cooling factor requiring more padding and thus more weight. At the cost of field of vision, true, but better than a tired mount that can't continue midair.
But one factor I usually don't see, is the effects on the mount in the long term. Horses tend to be ridden with rider sitting upright, and over time this weighs on their backs, creating slump. How would this affect your winged mounts? If the rider sits upright, how would their hollow bones and already (relatively) fragile build be affected by a regular weight atop their spine and rib cage?
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**The animal will carry the rider.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/76gto.png)
<https://www.pinterest.es/pin/739786676282127312/>
This is much more physiologic for the "mount"; these fliers will not be used to having wings and backs encumbered by riders lying, sitting, squatting, surfing or otherwise being a nuisance up there. But the flying animals will be very well suited for picking things up and carrying them away. The "rider" will then have all 4 limbs free for doing whatever he or she wants to do with them, and will be able to see in all directions.
Some may object that riders will not want to be carried by the buttocks. I humbly suggest the riders try it a few times to see how it goes. Try it with open minds.
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Sitting or lying? Why not both, with the NEW Kneeling-Lying-Saddle!
The rider kneels on the back end of the saddle and uses straps to secure their lower legs firmly to the saddle. The resulting posture is somewhat similar to a normal saddle (for horses), just that the lower legs are more horizontal and the torso slightly more forward leaning. This posture gives the best field of view and the rider has their hands free to use tools or give signals.
The middle part of the saddle is for lying down. A cushioned part for the torso and a ledge at the side for the rider to prop themselves up on their hands or elbows. This posture reduces air resistance and fatigue for both mount and rider, while still giving some flexibility to look around.
The front end of the saddle has a side-wards facing hole through it. The rider can put their arms into the hole and hold onto grips inside (or their own hands). This posture maximizes the rider's ability to hold themselves in the saddle during extreme maneuvers.
This design can be adapted to various occupations and circumstances. Is cold wind a major issue? Add a wind shield to the front end. Need more safeguards against falling off? Add extra straps at the middle part to hold the riders torso and give them rope to tie their hands together in the front end hole.
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[Question]
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So, in my setting, there are dwarves that make good steel. Shocker, I know. To refine the ore, they rely on the bloomery process like everyone else, using anthracite (when they can get it), charcoal (the normal fuel) or bituminous coal (when they can't get a hold of anthracite or charcoal). From there, most of the more skilled blacksmiths use the crucible process to refine their iron blooms further, although only a minority are able to control the carbon content well enough to make proper steel consistently. For most dwarf-smiths, particularly the younger ones, the process is shrouded in superstition that prevents them from being able to make the highest quality steels (e.g. one must use the knuckle-bone of certain creatures for flux, using the blood of strong beasts, etc)
But the most skilled smiths are also wizards, able to manipulate the heat around them. Typically, they pull heat out of magma flows and geysers underneath the mountain tunnels they inhabit, and direct and concentrate it into the crucibles to get a more consistent, faster, and cheaper melt. These wizards are also capable of refining certain metals out of ores that would otherwise be impossible to produce with their (late medieval) technology, e.g. aluminum or tungsten.
This brings me to my question. Is there a reason that he might make his crucibles out of tungsten, instead of using more traditional clay or clay-graphite crucibles?
For the sake of argument, let's set a few parameters. This master dwarf-smith, although he can use magic to refine, melt, and shape any metal, can only do it a little bit at a time, and doing so drains his magical energy stores for weeks on end. Thus, though he can't use it to refine steel directly, he can produce crucibles with the skill. Further, although they're aware of graphite and have been known to produce graphite crucibles, there aren't any good deposits of it anywhere near their lands, while there are some good seams of tungsten ore. Lastly, dwarves have a lot of experience working tungsten using magic, and due to its extremely high magical conductance (jargon, I know), it's widely used among dwarves for magic wands and staves.
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Two downsides to working with tungsten metal crucibles. The first is that tungsten has higher affinity for oxygen than iron, so oxygen in the liquid iron will react with the tungsten. Unfortunately, tungsten oxide is not coherent with tungsten, so the oxide will spall off as it forms, and get into the steel. Because the tungsten oxide isnt controlled in terms of particle size and shape, it is unlikely to benefit the steel properties and will probably embrittle the steel. The crucible will also eventuly fail from corrosion. Note that sapphire, made from aluminum oxide, has higher affinity for oxygen than tungsten, and so sapphire forming is a reasonable application for tungsten crucibles.
The other major downside is that tungsten metal is challenging to shape. Because it has high affinity for oxygen, higher than the carbon in carbon dioxide, and melts at a very high temperature, casting it is practically out of the question. Unless of course the dwarves have a high vacuum or enclosed inert gas melting system *and* something to hold the liquid tungsten. It is possible to powderize the tungsten, put it in a meltable binder and form the crucible like with clay, in a process called powder processing. Once the tungsten clay is formed, it can be readily shaped, the binder melted off, and the remaining green form, all tungsten, sintered. Sintering can be done at a lower temperature than melting, but without a high pressure, inert gas furnace, I would be concerned about oxide formation and inability to close up porosity where the binder was. Collectively that could lead to a brittle or porous tungsten crucible.
For holding molten iron those of us in the real world would stick to trusty stable oxide materials like alumina, magnesia, and silica. In other words, clay! Of course this is your world, so the choice is yours!
Edit: As an addition, if they can refine most metals, why not produce tungsten carbides, and mix the carbides into cobalt metal to produce advanced machining tools? Controlling carbide particle size is a challenge of course. That would perhaps be a better use of tungsten.
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I have a minor hobby interest in this topic, so I can tell you that both clay and tungsten crucibles exist and are in practical use. I am by no means an expert in this topic.
There are likely many benefits, as pointed out by the other answers, but the primary reasons that I know of are:
1. Tungsten will be able to tolerate much higher heat.
2. Tungsten will be much sturdier.
While clay can tolerate very high heats, I have read that you can ruin clay if you get it too hot, and the temperatures that are "too hot" for clay are much lower than tungsten melting point. I have never subjected clay to high enough temperatures for long enough to do this, but I have never cast steel before either.
Even if the clay can tolerate the temperatures that your smiths produce, the clay will not last as long as the tungsten. If they want to keep replacing their clay tools periodically, then they are free to do so. Some people go this route in reality, continually replacing cheap tools. The ones who want a tool that they can rely on for a very long time will likely use tungsten.
People who do this or similar work on a large scale sometimes measure their tools, even their crucibles and molds, in mean number of uses before tool failure. In this sense, the mean use before failure will be lower for the clay, higher for the tungsten. A clay mold is expected to last for X uses, graphite for Y uses, etc..
Now I am going to try to get in character and think what I would do in your situation...
If I am doing my normal day to day work and involves melting iron, personally I would want the tungsten crucible, and if casting it I would prefer tungsten molds for items I cast very often but would use clay molds for items I will not cast many of.
If I am doing experimental work which includes working with different materials or at different temperatures or alloys, I might prefer to use clay crucibles and molds because they are more likely to get ruined (ie: I want cheap stuff if it will get ruined), and I might be trashing the special-use crucibles or molds after.
This assumes I am well off and can just do whatever I want. If I'm a younger and/or poorer smith, then the cost of tungsten materials would likely put me off and I would just do clay for everything. Clay is cheap. Cheap to mine (anyone can extract it from dirt with cheap tools, though it can be very tedious), cheap to form into what you need, and cheap to fire. Tungsten would be the opposite: expensive to mine and expensive to form into the tool.
And there are other cases where I would make one decision or another.
Disclaimer: As I said, I'm not an expert. I have done some hobby work (nothing serious, just playing around with it) with plastics, metals with lower melting points than iron, and glass. I have never used a tungsten crucible, and I would consider them too expensive for my personal use in reality.
So the real, nuanced answer is likely that you will find practitioners in your world using all the different available options. Their choice will be based on their attitude toward throw-away tools vs. lifetime-use tools, and on their budget, the specific project and use case, etc.. Different ones will have different preferences, and some will have multiple crucibles or molds owned at the same time made out of different materials. You will see all the variations, just like I own several different kinds of saws and drills, and my neighbor owns still different ones.
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I just did a DuckDuckGo search for tungsten crucibles and found a few sites offering them. One claims:
>
> Tungsten crucible and other parts can be used for sapphire crystal
> growth and rare-earth melting due to their high temperature
> resistance, low pollution and other excellent characteristics.
>
>
>
Another supplier says tungsten crucibles are:
>
> Ideal for use in electron beam equipment.
>
>
>
Another supplier offers molybdenum and tungsten crucibles:
>
> for leading sapphire growth furnace OEMs and crystal growers around
> the world. Corrosion resistance, creep resistance, and high
> temperature performance make these materials ideal for use in high
> temperature crystal growth processes.
>
>
>
A fourth gives the advantages:
>
> Advantages of tungsten crucible: low thermal expansion; high
> density;erosion resistance;high strength and low resistivity
>
>
>
And lists possible uses:
>
> Since the temperature in working environment of tungsten crucible is
> above 2000℃, it commonly used for sapphire single crystal growth
> furnace
>
>
> Applied for quartz glass melting furnace
>
>
> Used for rare earth smelting furnace
>
>
> Used for sintering metal mold of high melting point
>
>
> Tungsten crucibles are also widely used in other industries like
> ceramics and metallurgical industries, machinery processing and light
> industries.
>
>
>
In conclusion, I know very little about the chemistry, but real-world evidence proves that there are uses for these. Looks like your smiths might use them for working with metals like tungsten and molybdenum that have high melting points, or for sintering (a technique involving forming metal powders into shape without melting them), or for growing crystals.
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I would be in favour of having, and using, tungsten crucibles under these circumstances for at least the following two reasons:
* extremely high temperatures can be used without damaging the crucible, this means that in the event that too much magically concentrated heat is applied you aren't ruining your equipment nearly as often, it also means that you can perform melting operations that would otherwise be impossible *without* having to expend a lot of magical power.
* uniformity of results, rammed-fused crucibles whether made of clay or more advanced materials are very rarely uniform in the way they turn out because they're made of materials that aren't uniform, a cast crucible is far more uniform and so yields far more uniform results allowing masters with such objects to produce more consistent quality work.
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Just as a thought, if they use magic, they might find value in rhenium or tantalum crucibles. They have slightly lower melting points than tungsten, but some other properties are different and might be worth it. Tantalum is corrosion-resistant and rhenium is strong.
Alloys of various sorts might be useful. If magic makes it easier to find sufficient amounts of rare earths, then they could be more practical to use than they are for us.
If your smiths are doing craft-scale work, different smiths may have access to different rare metals. A smith who does a lot of work with copper would have access to copper impurities, while one who collects meteorites would have iridium etc. (Some special-purpose crucibles are made from iridium alloys.)
If it's craft scale work, not unlikely each master has his own special skills he hasn't particularly shared, and having special crucibles with special properties could be a mark of pride. They might have occasional arguments about which is better for some particular arcane purpose, with the agreement that they all have something adequate.
Rather than accept that each smith's knowledge dies with him, the most skilled might possibly share results. Perhaps only with each other, so that to get access a young smith must first share something useful the others don't already have.
A magical smith who wants to exclude oxygen could mostly do that. For example, for any air inputs first burn an excess of something which does not burn to a gas. (My first thought was magnesium, but you'd need to keep magnesium oxide powder away from your molten metal.) Then remaining oxygen would mostly come from the metal being refined. In that case, he could use a diamond crucible. Or even graphene. Or tungsten coated with diamond or graphene.
If you have a giant mob of smiths doing cottage-scale work, then the mass of the work must be done cheap. Most smiths will spend all their time using the cheapest techniques, and there is no need for them to learn anything else. If they can get economy of scale on the cheap stuff, then fewer actual smiths are needed for things like refining metal. Cheap smiths can take ingots of copper, steel, etc (or partly finished products) and shape them. Expensive smiths can do specialty work.
I imagine foundries that melt many tons of copper or iron at once. Much easier to collect rare-earth impurities from tons, than from many batches of a few pounds at a time. So the master smiths in charge of major foundries would have special advantages.
But maybe it turns out that the specialty stuff is mostly good for bragging rights, and what's important is finding cheaper ways to do the bulk work.
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Thinking about this, you have magical smiths whose magic is a limiting resource. They can do wonderful things with magic, but only so much. So much gets done without the magic.
They would naturally tend to save the magic for only the most cost-effective uses.
I tend to assume that knowing is cheaper than digging. So smiths who can predict the best places to dig for ore, are more valuable than smiths who do bulk magical digging. On the other hand, smiths who make limited amounts of magical dynamite could be worth a lot. Easier than constantly replacing their steel chisels.
It's generally more cost-effective to use magic to make tools that will be used many times, than to put it into individual products.
The single most cost-effective use for smith-type magic: Growing large, flawless sapphires and rubies. Advanced smiths need to know a lot about crystallization so this is a natural for them. Rubies and sapphires are varieties of corundum which is valuable for other purposes. A cheap magical method to make corundum falls into tool creation.
However, gemstones are only valuable when they are rare. The smith who has the right to do that will not make too many of them. He may have a few hundred stored away, so he could sell them if necessary without having to make them on the spot.... And that's one use for a tungsten etc crucible.
If he has a forge in a volcano, it's very useful for him to predict when the volcano will explode. Early enough to escape. Even better if he has the skill to make a tiny change which lets the volcano adjust itself without exploding, and gently pour lava in a harmless direction. He might pay miners to dig a tunnel that will do most of the work, while he does only the last little bit when it is needed. Still potentially dangerous work for them. And a smith who is not quite as competent as everybody thought, shows it by dying along with the people who most trusted him.
If he is advanced enough then for many purposes he doesn't *need* a crucible. He can simply no-hands place his work (packed in inert material) into the magma, wait until it is the right temperature, and remove it. For big crystals he heats until the material has liquified, cools it some and waits for the crystals to form (possibly speeding the formation with magic) and then removes them.
Less-advanced smiths who do not have volcanoes handy have the problem of controlling carbon in their steel. Their heat comes from burning carbon. Bits of carbon ash can get into their products, along with CO and CO2 and unburned carbon compounds. They must buy mined coal, or created charcoal etc.
One way to control carbon is to create the heat some other way. For example, thermite. Or magnesium. Of course you have to get the energy to make the thermite or magnesium first, but maybe that step doesn't have to be controlled so much for carbon. I think you can't just get magnesium with electrolysis because water will split first, but maybe you could find something that magnesium oxide would dissolve in, and do electrolysis in that. Ammonia? After you do your work and it cools off, you send workers in with brooms to collect magnesium oxide to reconstitute in the ammonia baths. Yum. [smith's employees at work](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edAxujKev1I)
A dwarf smith might want to hire a lot of big dumb humans for the grunt work. He only does the parts that need his special skills. And if he doesn't have the special skills to manage a big herd of human workers, he might hire a manager who does.
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[Question]
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I have a clan in early middle ages when both man and women of a military aristocracy train for war.
All the daughters of the warriors train archery from the early age. It is expected they should be able to protect their fortified homes together with the boys when the men are on campaign.
In the emergency situation when numbers are against it and the battle can't be avoided daughters join in the battlefield in full weapons and armor. Something like women of ancient [Scythians](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141029-amazons-scythians-hunger-games-herodotus-ice-princess-tattoo-cannabis/).
From my research men used warbows of 100# to 180 pounds. The olympic archers use mostly 45-50# but they value accuracy instead of lethality. The heaviest draw weights used by woman I found on the world archery website was 60#.
The height of average woman in the clan is around 5'10"(178cm) with athletic build.
Are the draw weights of 90# to 100# realistic for women archers who train for war?
I'm thinking about traditional recurve bows like the one used by Scythians, Huns, Avars, Magyar [etc](http://www.grozerarchery.com/index_b.htm) Culture is based on Scythians.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/d2rVB.jpg) taken from [Grozer archery](http://www.grozerarchery.com/index_b.htm)
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## Yes, it is completely believable.
First modern comparisons are not helpful. Historic war-bows were a lot more powerful (draw weight wise) than modern bows, war and hunting have very different needs, and modern compound bows are built to reduce power needed at the worst(hardest) part of the draw. 200lb bows are known to have existed. English longbows commonly ranged from 80-150lbs. It is rare to find a modern bow with anywhere near that pull weight. Modern bows are almost exclusively hunting bows and such power is just not all that useful for hunting, historic hunting bows were also significantly lighter for the same reason. Few modern archers can draw a 150lb longbow yet we know they were common, the ones that can draw them train with them regularly, training with a longbow matters a lot for ability to use it.
Women on average have less muscle development in the upper body, but this is an average without training. There is no reason *trained* archers would have a comparable difference. [Training matter much more than sex](https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/fulltext/2020/05000/sex_differences_in_resistance_training__a.30.aspx) for muscle development so the difference will be much less than a simple untrained average would predict. Even if you don't believe that you are looking at bows half or more lighter than those known to have been used (so it would still be possible). Average differences are not representative of differences with training. At worst you can say the average trained female might be slightly weaker than the average trained male archer, and the bows proposed are the lightest of common bow weights so that would make it very possible.
**90-100lbs is at the low end of common war-bows so it is absolutely plausible for well trained women to be able to use them.**
Additional [source](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/19552903_Sex_difference_in_muscular_strength_in_equally-trained_men_and_women) thanks to Leo
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Premise: I personally love longbows, an elegant weapon from a more civilized era.
I suggest this book to anyone interested. It's recent and with new tests:
[Mike Loades - The longbow](http://www.mikeloades.com/the-longbow/)
So do not take the following as dissing the longbow or bows in general but
**It is not that it is impossible. It's just not the wisest thing to do.**
You do not mention the kind of bow your culture use, and many of the replies have assumed the longbow. For good reason, but let's go orderly.
First of all don't assume two different bows with the same draw weight are going to produce the same energy on the arrow or the same damage to the target. There are a lot of other variables at play.
The longbow for instance is efficient due to its long draw (around 30" depending on the archer) and long limbs. Observe how at full draw the angle formed by the string and the tip of the limb is smaller than with much a shorter bow. The bigger that angle the higher the stacking. Stacking is 'fictional' draw weight. Imagine pulling a piece of wood with a 180° degree angle. How much energy will be transferred to the arrow? None.
Still the archer feels that stacking and strains his muscles for it.
That is why bows that HAD to be shorter (for instance because used on horseback) were heavily recurved. To lower stacking and allow storing higher energy in the system while drawing.
Other designs (e.g. recurve, reflex / deflex) are even more efficient than the longbow but they need longer construction times and were more expensive to produce. Longbows could be mass produced, with several bows obtained from a single stave.
When it comes to defending a fortified position crossbows are going to be more effective than bows. Higher energy in the shot, easier to move around in tight places and to exploit cover and most of all easier to train with and to shoot for an extensive period of time, for instance in a siege which is most likely to happen when a force is attacking a fortified position. In the middle ages sieges were far more common than open field battles.
Of course your clan may have not discovered crossbows for some reason if you don't like them, it's your world.
But since you add the tag medieval I take you want some historical comparison. In England aristocracy would not train with the heavy longbow (they may use lighter bows for hunting) and would dedicate themselves to their proper role in battle. Archers were commoners. And were duly encouraged to train.
>
> And so 1363 marked the first of a series of ordinances and parliamentary statutes meant to compel Englishmen to spend their Sundays and holidays “not in pointless amusements such as football, bowls, tennis and dice, but in shooting at the butts.”
> [Archery in Tudor England](https://janetwertman.com/2015/09/29/archery-in-tudor-england/)
>
>
>
Do you really want your daughters of the aristocracy to mix with the rabble?
Extensive training with heavy bows leads to a number of cartilage problems. Not something the aristocracy would impose on their daughters I wager.
Also consider their opponents, what kind of armors do they wear? As plate armor became more common the effectiveness of the longbow declined. Also chain mail with textile additional protection proved effective.
>
> In 2011, Mike Loades conducted an experiment in which short bodkin arrows were shot at a range of 10 yd (9.1 m) by bows of 140 lbf (620 N) - powerful bows at less than normal battlefield range. The target was covered in a riveted mail over a fabric armour of deerskin over 24 linen layers. While most arrows went through the mail layer, none fully penetrated the textile armour.[35]
>
>
>
Brigandine armour instead proved vulnerable to bodkin arrows.
P.S. Your clan must be made up of huge people! 1.78 as average for women? What do they eat?
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A good rule of thumb is that in purely strength based exercises women are ~25% weaker with comparable training in the same weight class. Compare [Men's Powerlifting Records](https://www.powerliftingwatch.com/records/raw/world) with the [women](https://www.powerliftingwatch.com/records/raw/women-world). The difference decreases the more endurance heavy the exercise is (for the marathon the world record difference is only 9%, I think for long distance triathlon it’s even less).
If men can use war bows with 180 pounds draw weight then 135 pounds for women is completely realistic.
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According to wikipedia tallest women are in the Dinaric Alps with height of 171cm, the woman of this clan are 178cm tall. Being of athletic build I will compare them with basketball players. Quick glance at WNBA guards it seems that many of similar height weigh around 175 pounds. [Joe Gibbs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBxdTkddHaE) said that he could shoot 160# whole day without a problem, and few shoots of 200# bow. I can't find his height and weight but from the video he doesn't look that much heavier than 175 pounds.
Assuming that woman has upper body strength of 40% of the man, it seems that 160\*0.6=96 pounds your numbers seems plausible.
**Addendum**:
I use a height as proxy for weight class, since taller people are generally heavier and have more muscle mass. Comparing people of similar body type.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2Zndj.png)
Draw weight relies a lot on the muscle of back, thus people who are very fit but never trained archery, and never trained those muscles will have problem with low draw weights. Famed archers in antiquity trained since childhood and have sceletal deformations that makes that easy to recognize them.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Tmvjx.jpg) image taken from this [thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/Archery/comments/4op5n0/skeletonreconstruction_of_an_english_archer/)
The draw weight is one part of the explanation that other is draw length. Longer draw length means better transfer of power, since arrow stays longer in contact with the delivery system. That's why bows with average draw length of 30" are far more efficient than crossbows who have half of draw length. That's why crossbows compensate with larger draw weights, and in modern times with reverse draw crossbows.
How this affect woman archers in this clan. 80-100# is something like a maximum that very few woman could pull, but being very tall, training since childhood, having best food & source of proteins, and right genetic stock being descendants of warriors make the situation plausible.
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I would hazard the guess that 90 to 100 pounds is a bit much, assuming the people you're talking about are ordinary humans and the bows you're talking about are ordinary bows. A quick survey of a number of archery forums suggests that even physically fit (but otherwise untrained) women fall short of your goal.
Since this is a warrior culture, I'd expect that they would know, intuitively if not scientifically, that grown women & men have different physical strengths and would arm their home guard accordingly. They'd train boys and girls from a young age and they would almost certainly follow [Hugh Latimer's wisdom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_longbow):
*[My yeoman father] taught me how to draw, how to lay my body in my bow ... not to draw with strength of arms as divers other nations do ... I had my bows bought me according to my age and strength, as I increased in them, so my bows were made bigger and bigger. For men shall never shoot well unless they be brought up to it.*
It's entirely possible a woman could *bend* a bow she might not otherwise be able to *draw*.
Also, I'm sure the girls will be tested against ever stronger bows, just as the boys will be, until they reach a point where they can neither bend nor draw the bow. They should be wise enough to ultilise each woman with a bow she's able to draw or bend.
You could also consider thinking about bows other than the usual war bows or English long bows. I see no reason a woman couldn't effectively bend a heavy *foot bow* for example. Regardless of gender or strength training, the legs are much more powerful than the arms. Bending such a bow would be much easier, as you're not relying solely on leg strength, but also on arm strength and even more importantly, on *gravity assist*.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/D3NOK.jpg)
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Several people have pointed out that using a bow requires years of training, starting in childhood. Would you go to that effort with girls if they're only going to be used as a kind of last ditch militia/Volksturm?
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I believe that if they are trained from childhood, even girls can use 100 pound bows consistently with enough conditioning, especially on an 178cm frame, which is as tall as the average modern man.
The females in your clans could probably go toe to toe and even overpower most men in that period.
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[Question]
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Humans (and mammals) have 2 lungs, one right and the another left. The right lung has 3 lobes and the left have 2 lobes because in the "third" there is the heart, so the right lung is bigger than the left.
I want to make a race with two hearts so I have to remove one lobe of the right lung to locate the heart and also I have to move a little the left heart.
If I remove a lobe this race would have a less pulmonary capacity and won't be able to run much. **How can I overcome this problem?**
## My ideas are:
* **Increase the size of the lungs:** The problem is that I don't know if we have "free space" in our body to do that.
* **Hollow bones:** Some time ago I read that birds have hollow bones and they store air inside to breath later, then I found that is false but it is still an interesting idea. The problem with that is I would make bones less strong and I don't want that.
* **Increase efficiency:** I couldn't find any page with this information but 2 years ago I read that we inspire air with 21% O2 and exhale with ~15% O2, so we breathe the ~6% of O2 in air. Maybe it's possible to increase this efficiency and exhale air with 10% O2 or less to compensate for the lost lobe. The problem again is that I don't know if that it's possible or how to do that.
* **EDIT ADDED**:
+ [**Myoglobin**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myoglobin): searching more about the ZioBite's [answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/85695/35041) I found the **myoglobin**, a substance similar to hemoglobin but instead of transport oxygen it's used to store oxygen in the muscles. This could explain how they can do physical effort but not how they live normally (because this store slowly the excess of oxygen not increase the oxygen input).
I had some ideas but I don't know if they are possible or how to do them.
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[The way birds do it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_anatomy#Respiratory_system).
The air passes one-way through the lung and can extract nearly all the oxygen in one pass.
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> A diagrammatic representation of the cross-current respiratory gas exchanger in the lungs of birds. Air is forced from the air sacs unidirectionally (from right to left in the diagram) through the parabronchi. The pulmonary capillaries surround the parabronchi in the manner shown (blood flowing from below the parabronchus to above it in the diagram). Blood or air with a high oxygen content is shown in red; oxygen-poor air or blood is shown in various shades of purple-blue.
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[Answer]
**Exit route**
Imagine a car parking lot with one single lane entrance. You can either admit a car or allow a car to exit. If you have high volume you can admit a bunch of cars at once, then allow a bunch of cars to exit.
Now you open another lane. Cars can exit all the time, and enter all the time. You can have a steady stream of each. It is more efficient because you never need to stop and reverse traffic.
Do the same with the lung. Open an exit route. This will be a hole somewhere in the bottom of the lung (which might be better configured more like an intestine with this scheme - a air-filled tube rich with alveoli). I envision this right around the xiphoid. Oxygen rich air enters continuously at the entrance and exits continuously at the exit. The mechanics of breathing will be different and might be more like our digestive tract, another system with an entry and exit. The digestive tract operates using peristaltic waves and I can imagine a respiratory tract with an entrance and exit doing the same - perhaps with many small valved chambers along the way which open and close in sequence.
I here assert you will double efficiency by not having to regularly reverse flow.
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One of the quickest ways to increase the efficiency of the cardio-vascular system is to take EPO/use blood doping. So, it seems the lungs and heart are already big enough to utilise more oxygen carrying capacity than our blood already has. You ought to be looking at increasing the efficiency of the **blood**. The more oxygen your blood can carry, the more of it will be extracted from the air in the lungs. And the more oxygen in the blood, the more oxygen your heart will pump to your muscles without needing to change the amount of blood being pumped.
See here, from the 90s onward:
[Tour de France](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_at_the_Tour_de_France)
In short, make the **blood** better - not the **organs**.
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A few points:
* Having hollow bones doesn't make bird bones more fragile, it makes them lighter (and you need some other place to to put the "factory" of erythrocyte, but that is another matter). A pipe is much stronger than a bar of same weight and material.
* If You need a more efficient respiratory system copy cetacean system. They can store oxygen in muscle tissue and exchange very efficiently with a single breathing act (see, [for example](http://www.whalesforever.com/toothed-whales.html)).
* In general the rib-cage size is not a real constraint, lung status is: a "normal" human being has a "vital capacity" (volume difference between full and empty lungs) averaging around 5 liters, but normal respiration uses about 3 liters (or less) and athletes can move more than 7 liters in a single respiratory act. Severely handicapped lungs (such as those of long time heavy smokers) can have "vital capacity" lower than *one* liter and people still survive with only "marginal drawbacks" (i.e.: use a lift instead of stairs ;) )
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It seems like you don't want to change human physiology much so the easiest things to do would be to increase the efficiency of the bodies.
As you said we only absorb 6% of the oxygen we breathe in, so let's find the bottlenecks.
Potential bottlenecks are:
* **Airways** - The amount of air we can breathe in.
* **Blood** - The amount of air our blood can absorb.
* **Lungs** - The amount of air our lungs can put into our blood.
* **Body** - The amount of air our bodies need to function.
**Improve Airways**
While the first is the least likely, it's obvious that we breathe faster or deeper when we're in a state where we need more air. A solution would be faster or bigger airways (we also tend to use our mouth for breathing instead of our tiny nostrils). Another issue we face is that we can not breathe in and out at the same time reducing the potential efficiency by 50%. Others here have identified this and claimed that it would work if you had an entry and exit hole, but keep in mind that air needs to flow in and out continuously as well. That would only work with a 2 chambered valve system similar to a heart.
**Improve Blood**
All of this is meaningless if our blood can not absorb enough oxygen. Since extreme divers hyperventilate before a dive to fill their blood with more oxygen, it seems like this is not the case - on the other hand, athletes try this angle when doping. Some of the things they do that increase the amount of oxygen that can be carried by our blood are to increase the number of red blood cells. I assume some other elements might be more efficient in carrying oxygen. This can also change the color of blood, Crustaceans, for example, have copper based blue blood rather than iron based red blood.
**Improve Lungs**
As I said, divers hyperventilate to increase the oxygen in their blood. This implies that the bottleneck is the lung. While you suggest that the size of the lung has to increase, this is actually not the case. What's more important is to increase the surface area of the lung. Their lungs could be built like window blinds, like a CPU cooler/heat sink with fins, or similar to fishes gills, which are made for breathing in low oxygen environments. The last two options would work best with flowing air, similar to first suggestions. Since your humans are double hearted and their blood would flow faster, chances are this will become an even higher bottleneck than it already is.
**Improve Bodies**
Our bodies can become more efficient and require less air to perform the same way. If you've ever tried to get in shape, you might have noticed that at first, you'll be out of breath after a short run. However, once you've trained for a while, you can run for a while until you finally run out of breath. Your double hearted humans could have a better physique anyway and thus not be out of breath as fast.
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**Consider the biochemistry of this race**
Above answers are all very good! However, although this doesn't specifically apply to the lungs, you could also consider the molecules that are involved in oxygen transport. This works if you were looking for an option that involves biochemistry, rather than further changing the anatomy of your new race. To do this, you may wish to consider the protein **hemoglobin**, which binds oxygen and then transports it to cells. As you have mentioned, *myoglobin* is another important protein, and is a key player in diving mammals, though I believe the molecules that allosterically bind to *hemoglobin* are a better option.
In particular, a real life applicable example is **2,3-bisphosphoglycerate** (2,3-BPG). This is the molecule that leads to populations that live in higher altitudes being more efficient at transporting oxygen. In short, this molecule decreases the oxygen affinity of hemoglobin, meaning it is released more easily when it reaches the cells. Since oxygen itself is an allosteric regulator of hemoglobin, as more oxygen is released from the one hemoglobin protein, more will want to be released as well! Populations at sea level have around 5mM concentrations in their blood, whereas populations in higher altitudes can have around 8mM concentrations.
You may also wish to do some research on the other molecules that are involved in hemoglobin regulation, such as **hydrogen protons** and **carbon dioxide** (the acidity of our blood near our muscles is higher than at the lungs, and this results in oxygen unbinding from hemoglobin so it can be used by our cells).
**In conclusion:** this is probably something that you might wish to 'add-on' to one of the other options provided, as there is a limit to how much you can play around with the levels of these molecules in our blood. If you were to increase the concentration of BPG tenfold, then oxygen would never even bind at the lung-blood barrier!
**Just a few questions** Is this really just a different *race* of humans? If you are trying to ground your creation in reality, have definitely considered the plausibility of having a different race of humans with two hearts. Can they mate with one-hearted humans? What would the result be? Could this in fact be another species, closely related to humans?
**EDIT** Here is a graph that shows the binding of oxygen to hemoglobin vs the partial pressure of oxygen for blood with and without BPG. Though this may be hard to understand without having being taught it, there are many resources explaining the role of BPG in the blood.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MB2hm.png)
**Also note** that it would not be too far-fetched to perhaps say that the hemoglobin in your new race has changed in such a manner that it is more efficient at transporting oxygen. *In hindsight*, I definitely think that that is probably the best option to go with if you don't want to have to change the anatomy of your new race any more than the extra heart!
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To add a little to the 'yoga breathing' line of thinking, with a view to the underlying physical mechanics:
If, say, 2 litres of air goes into your lungs, then necessarily 2 litres of the volume of the rest of your body, needs to be displaced, somehow, somewhere. There is a certain degree of flexibility in how to do this, and some ways are better than others, and some ways easier to learn than others. The former tend to turn up in practices which deliberately teach breathing, the latter turn up as people's typical breathing habits.
Now if our 2 litres of body-volume immediately surrounding the lungs has to move out to allow the lungs to expand, then 2 litres of body volume surrounding that has to go somewhere. And so it continues from the lungs themselves to the extremities of the body, or at least until this 'one bit of the body making way for another' ceases.
Now of course the physical work done to get the air in the lungs is, technically, done by the pressure of the air outside your body pushing the air in, due to a decrease in pressure in the lungs, caused by the volume of the lungs expanding. To breathe in, the body must thus work to increase the volume of the lungs. Part of doing this physical action efficiently, from an engineering perspective, is distributing the workload around the body. Another part is minimising mechanical losses due to one part of the body unnecessarily working against the efforts of another. The other is doing this so that you get an optimal amount of air in and out for the amount of oxygen your body needs.
When you hear yoga (and perhaps tai chi) teachers giving the seemingly crazy instruction to 'breath into your feet' or something like that, what is being got at is, in some sense, this 'mechanically efficient' breathing described above. But to actually *do* this, it is necessary to understand *how to do* it in terms of body sensations, and instructions the brain can deliberately give to the muscles, hence the very subjective viewpoint. If you actually do this, (to my experience,) it can *feel* as if you are breathing into your entire body, and to actually deliberately do this, you breathe *as if you feel* you are breathing into your entire body. (With years of practice, the deliberate stuff gradually becomes instinctive and automatic, of course, which is why the word 'deliberate' is important here.)
Much of yoga and tai chi is described in terms of how things *seem* when you are doing them correctly, rather than in terms that an engineer or biomechanics specialist would think of when understanding and explaining things (since they are generally talking about a body *other* than their own, whereas the yoga and tai chi practices are largely about teaching you about what you do with your body and your mind).
But to conclude, if you think about the mechanics involved with breathing, given a pre-existing piece of breathing apparatus (so you can't swap e.g. human lungs for bird lungs), thinking like the above can arise quite readily, and from there the connections to things like yoga and tai chi start to become apparent.
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One specific idea - separate breathing from eating.
As humans we have to stop breathing for a moment to drink or swallow. Evolutionarily-speaking, its probably to make the best use of a complex system of the mouth for speaking as well as chewing rather than duplicating things.
If the beings had separate eating orifaces from their breathing ones, then efficiency rises and multitasking becomes more possible.
Downside, the human nose depends on air movement to smell things, and having no air movement there would impact on the sense of taste.
On the positive side, there's zero danger of choking on food, or inhaling vomit into the lungs because of the partitioning of systems.
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To increase the efficiency of the lungs try breathing using your diaphragm. Commonly called Yoga breathing, you intake by pushing your stomach muscles out to fill your lungs. This generally increases lung capacity by 20–25% intake.
Hold longer to pass more oxygen through your blood, exhale slowly.
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My galaxy exploring ship is powered by a fusion reactor (back up with some solar panels but they spend a long time between stars). We know that stars are powered by fusion too, so they have all the ingredients we need and I've seen sci-fi use this...but the question is:
**Could we actually get our fusion ingredients out of a star?**
Is it too hot to approach close enough to pull any matter away? Do we need to only go to small stars where the gravity isn't so strong...or is the pull the same if you're going for a particular density of matter?
My main inspiration was the [fuel scoop](http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Fuel_Scoop) though the numbers there aren't important.
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Depending on the density of fuel you are looking for, exactly what fuel you need, and how protected you are from heat and radiation, I would say your best bets for refueling a fusion-powered spacecraft are interstellar gas, gas giant planets, ocean/ice planets, and red giant stars.
# Fuels
The easiest [reaction for nuclear fusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion#Criteria_and_candidates_for_terrestrial_reactions) (requiring the least temperature and pressure to fuse) is [deuterium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuterium) plus [tritium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium). Both of these are isotopes of hydrogen, with one and two neutrons, respectively. Normal hydrogen, also known as "protium", has no neutrons, only a proton and an electron. Tritium is radioactive with a half-life of 12 years, so there are no long-lived stocks of it to collect. We will skip this possibility for now.
The next best reaction is deuterium + deuterium. Deuterium is stable, and was produced in the big bang along with protium and helium, and so it is a (very small) fraction of the interstellar gas, which is also what forms stars and gas giant planets; the primordial fraction is about 27 parts per million of the total hydrogen. This is similar to the fraction found in gas clouds, newborn stars, and gas giant planets, and you are unlikely to find it in higher concentrations on a truly large scale anywhere in the universe, although it can be expected to be somewhat enriched on terrestrial planets, because it is slightly more resistant to being blown away by stellar wind than normal hydrogen. For instance, on earth it is 156 ppm of hydrogen.
Moving down the list, the next fuel you might be interested in is [³He](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3), the rarer isotope of helium. Its cosmological abundance is about 300 ppm of helium. Helium makes up about 23% of the mass of atoms in the universe, with hydrogen making up most of the other 77%. By particle number, however, it is only about 7%. Thus, ³He nuclei are about as common cosmologically as deuterium, and it can likewise be found in gas clouds, newborn stars, and gas giant planets.
The next useful fuel would be [lithium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium). There are two relevant isotopes, ⁶Li and ⁷Li. ⁶Li, the rare isotope (about 8% on Earth) can be fused in potentially useful reactions with deuterium or ³He. Alternatively, both ⁶Li and ⁷Li can be reacted with neutrons (produced in other reactions) to form tritium and helium. This reaction has been used in hydrogen bombs; neutrons produced from the fission igniter and the initial fusion reaction react with a lithium plug to form more tritium, which will then create even more fusion with the deuterium. ⁷Li is primordial, although with a much lower concentration than ³He or deuterium. Thus, it can be found in dust clouds and newborn stars. It is also in gas giants, but since it is a solid at the cold temperatures that characterize the outer atmospheres of gas giants, it sinks into the middle. I'm not exactly sure what process produces ⁶Li, but I will assume it can be found wherever ⁷Li is found, just in smaller quantities.
Finally, if you have some very fancy tech that can compress gasses more effectively than the core of a star, then maybe you just want protium. This is the fuel used by the sun and other main sequence stars. However, even in the core of the sun, the reaction goes quite slowly, with the average power density lower than that of the human body. Protium is the most abundant atom in the universe, and you can find it in gas clouds, planets, and stars.
# Deep space
The easiest place for a starship to get fuel, is probably to collect it slowly as you travel through interstellar space, especially within molecular clouds and nebulae. For one thing, you are already travelling there. The only disadvantage here is that the density is quite low. The densest part of molecular clouds may be up to one million molecules per cubic centimeter, and young planetary nebulae are similar. One million may sound like a lot, but keep in mind that a gas at standard pressure and temperature has on the order of 10^19 molecules per cubic centimeter. Remember we had about 25 ppm of deuterium and ³He, so that means at one million molecules per cubic centimeter, we can expect to find a couple dozen molecules of each. If you can scoop them up efficiently from a wide area around your ship as you travel long distances through the cloud, e.g. using a [bussard ram scoop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet), this could get you a lot of material.
# Gas giants
Alternatively, as mentioned in evil professeur's answer, gas giant planets are a much more concentrated source, and are much safer to be around than stars. Regarding the question about gravity, the gravity at the surface of a smallish gas giant, such as [Saturn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn), is about the same as that of the Earth. Keep in mind, there is no actual "surface" on a gas giant, but the depth where the atmospheric pressure is 1 bar, about the same as that of the Earth, is considered the "surface". On Saturn, the temperature at this altitude is 134K, or -139°C. At this temperature, the gas will be about twice as dense (number of molecules per cm³) as Earth's atmosphere. Saturn is composed of about 96.3% hydrogen, with the balance mostly helium, so protium is easy, and deuterium and ³He are available as long as you can separate them from the bulk gas. As I said before, lithium will sink to the center of the planet, so it will not be accessible.
Heavier gas giants, like [Jupiter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter), have greater gravity near the 1 bar level; for Jupiter, 2.5g.
Aside from the lack of lithium, gas giants do not shine, and so locating them from far away can be difficult. Still, with our observational capabilities, we have started to find them by the hundreds around nearby stars, and they seem to be quite common.
# Ocean/icy planets and moons
Ocean planets, like Earth, can be a reasonable source of lithium and deuterium, and of course protium. All can be processed from seawater. However, they are generally quite poor in helium, especially ³He. Lithium and deuterium, as well as all nuclei heavier than helium, are relatively enriched on Earth, and presumably other terrestrial planets, compared to the cosmos as a whole. That's what makes them terrestrial planets!
Icy worlds are similar, with hydrogen (and therefore some deuterium) as a component of the water, ammonia, and methane which make up the surface ice, as well as any subsurface oceans.
Surface gravity of ocean and icy planets varies with size, but they have the advantage that you can land on them while you do your fueling, instead of needing to expend energy to "fly". All of the relevant bodies in the solar system have surface gravity equal or less than that of Earth.
Detecting ocean and icy bodies from interstellar distances is even harder than detecting gas giants. Ocean planets may (or may not) be quite rare, but if our solar system is any indication, icy moons are common around gas and ice giants.
# Stars
Small, cool stars, including [red](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_dwarf) and [brown dwarfs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_dwarf), are the most common stars and at least red dwarfs shine brightly enough that they should be easy for a spacefaring civilization to find. Unfortunately they are depleted of deuterium and lithium. Because these are the easiest fuels for fusion, they get burned up first as the star is forming. This is actually the distinguishing feature between stars and planets: the smallest, coolest stars are brown dwarfs, which got hot enough to burn their deuterium, but not to start burning protium. Intermediate brown dwarfs have also gotten large enough to burn lithium. Both red and brown dwarfs are fully convective, meaning that the entire star is well mixed, and all the original deuterium and lithium pass through the core and are burned up relatively quickly.
Stars the size of the sun and larger are not fully convective, and so the outer layers contain deuterium which has never cycled through the core and burned up. However, as other answers have mentioned, the environment near the outer limits of a star is extremely hostile. Although it can be assumed that any starship has fairly extensive radiation shielding to protect it from ionizing radiation, there must be limits to that shielding. The outer atmosphere of stars, although diffuse enough that I don't think there would be too much conductive heating of a spacecraft, are hot enough to emit x-rays, which would be quickly deadly to any unprotected humans. Additionally, the strong, rapidly changing magnetic fields associated with solar flares can in extreme cases be enough to disrupt electronics even on Earth, even inside the protective magnetosphere.
Regarding gravity: The "surface" gravity of a star (or anything else) is proportional to its mass and inversely proportional to the square of its radius. For main sequence stars, which are burning hydrogen in the core, this actually means more surface gravity on smaller stars. For instance the surface gravity of [the sun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun) is about 28g, while the surface gravity of [Proxima Centauri](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri), a red dwarf with only 12% the mass of the sun, is about 170g, and [Sirius A](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirius), the brightest main sequence star in our local neighborhood, is twice the mass of the sun but has a surface gravity of "only" 22g. The surface gravity on [red giants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_giant) is much lower, because they have the same mass that they had when they were main sequence stars, but a much larger radius. For instance [Arcturus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcturus), with a mass only about 8% larger than the sun and a radius 25 times that of the sun, has a surface gravity of 0.05g. With this low gravity, in combination with the strong stellar wind, you might be able to use some very temperature-resistant solar sail to stay in place above the star while gathering fuel. Red giants are also cooler than a main sequence star of the same mass (4300K for Arcturus vs. 5700K for the sun), and so somewhat safer to approach. The red giant phase is a comparatively short period in the lifetime of the star, and so red giants are rarer than main sequence stars; however, their total luminosity is very high, so they are easy to locate. On the downside, near the beginning of the red giant phase, the outer part of the star becomes more fully convective, and so the concentration of easily fusable nuclei like deuterium and lithium will be somewhat decreased.
The outer limit of red giants is even more diffuse than for main sequence stars; depending on how dense you need your fuel to be, you can approach closer or farther. Indeed, at the end of their lives, red giants of moderate mass blow off their envelope completely, becoming planetary nebulae (see above).
# Edit: Escape velocity
In my answers above, I talked about the "surface" gravity of different stars and planets. This is the gravity that the starship would have to hold itself up against while it is in the process of refueling from a star or planet that doesn't have a surface to land on. However, this is only part of the problem of gravity; before the ship can match velocity with the "surface" of a star or planet, it would have to lose the speed it gains by going into the gravity well, and after it was done fueling, it would have to escape the gravity well again. This in effect means it needs to pay the escape velocity twice. So, here are the escape velocities of the objects I mentioned. For stars, this is the escape velocity to interstellar space, starting from the "surface" of the star, and assuming that the ship is matching the rotation of the star. For planets and moons, I give both the escape velocity to interplanetary space starting from the surface, and also the escape velocity to interstellar space given the orbital speed of the planet. I don't know if your ship has a futuristic propulsion system where these kinds of velocity changes are trivial, but since you asked about gravity, here it is:
* The sun: 615 km/s to interstellar
* Proxima Centauri (red dwarf): 577 km/s to interstellar
* Sirius A (main sequence star bigger than sun): 655 km/s to interstellar
* Arcturus (red giant): 125 km/s to interstellar
* Saturn: 25.7 km/s to interplanetary, 29.5 km/s to interstellar
* Jupiter: 47 km/s to interplanetary, 52.6 km/s to interstellar
* Callisto (an icy moon of Jupiter): 5.9 km/s to interplanetary, 11.3 km/s interstellar
* Titan (an icy moon of Saturn): 4.7 km/s to interplanetary, 8.5 km/s interstellar
* Earth: 10.7 km/s interplanetary, 23 km/s interstellar
Molecular clouds and nebulae are already in interstellar space, so I won't calculate any escape velocity for them.
As you can see, stars have deep gravity wells, but red giants are again the best bet, because you don't need to come so close to the center of mass.
For gas giants, it would be most efficient to choose a light one far from its star (e.g. more Saturn than Jupiter), unless the ship is stopping in the inner stellar system anyway.
For icy moons, choose one far from its planet, and a planet far from the star. Icy minor planets and Kuiper belt objects would have even smaller escape velocity to interstellar space, but they are less likely to have a molten subsurface ocean, because they are not heated by tidal forces. So you would have to dig your fuel instead of pumping it. They would also be substantially harder to detect, even from within the system.
# Edit: Ionization
If your ship uses magnetic fields to pull in fuel, then you need your fuel to be ionized. This rules out gas giants, molecular clouds, and icy/ocean planets/moons. The photosphere (aka "surface") of cooler stars is also largely unionized. However, the stellar wind is ionized, and will be densest a short distance from the star. Planetary nebulae also tend to be ionized, at least when young.
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Yes, gravity works on mass not volume
The only materials you would be able to reach would be those emitted from the star. Both gravity and heat would prevent you from scooping up anything from the star itself. A picture of the sun should dissuade you from trying. The forces are just too titanic to be messing with.
The only thing known to be able to escape the suns gravity is the solar wind, you may be able to do something with that.
But if it's just the ingredients you need then you'd be better off taking it from any other source. The Sun generates its energy by nuclear fusion of hydrogen nuclei into helium. Hydrogen is the most common element out there. You don't need to go to the sun to get it.
[](https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=11095)
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That obviously depends on the tech level you have available in your story. An extremely advanced civilization would probably find more efficient ways of producing energy long before figuring out how to do something like that safely. On the other hand for a deep space exploration it just might be a prerequisite.
Check out *Stargate Universe*. *Destiny*, the ship that is the focus of the show, did exactly that to carry its mission out over millions of years.
EDIT:
If you were to go a similar way *Destiny* did, there are several problems to consider. Heat shielding is the obvious one. To survive in our Sun's photosphere for instance your ship would need to withstand temperatures of up to around 6000K. Another one is the method of acquiring the material itself - are you going to use ram scoops while traveling at speed or is the ship going to be stationary? If it's traveling, it's going to have to withstand the resistance of the matter (again, in case of our sun the density is $2\*10^{−4} \frac{kg}{m^3}$, so depending on your velocity, this might just become a brick wall). If it's stationary, you will have to have a way of defeating the star's gravity.
In short, it's theoretically possible, but a civilization that could do it might already have a better alternative.
EDIT2:
Come to think of it, if you're only after hydrogen or helium, why not simplify the problem and look for jovian planets instead of stars themselves? They would generally have a very similar composition, but the temperature and gravity would be far more manageable. Because of the lower temperature, there will be more complex molecules present, however. Planets will also be somewhat rarer (debatable, evidence suggests there might be more planets than stars) and more difficult to find.
Also, it's not nearly as flashy.
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Stars are very hot. You don't want to get too close to one. Certainly not close enough to pull matter away from one.
That is, most stars. [Red giant stars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_giant) *might* be manageable, but you would need some pretty aggressive cooling.
Also, "pulling matter" is not something you do in a scientifically accurate
story. There are no tractor beams. Instead you travel through the outskirts of the star and simply collect the matter as you pass by.
You want to go fast to avoid getting too hot. But the faster you go, the harder you hit the matter you are trying to collect.
Both problems get better as you pass further away from the star, but there is less matter to collect. You might need to do many passes.
I am sorry that I have any clear numbers to give you, but this should at least give you somewhere to start researching.
This is not what you ask, but I think your best bet is to go find some nice cold ice asteroid to mine. You will more than enough hydrogen to fuel any reasonable sized ship. You will also find other useful stuff, like oxygen.
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You could "pull" your fuel using a massive enough fishing hook, the same way [white dwarfs in binary stars *eat* their larger sisters](http://cseligman.com/text/stars/binary.htm). [A small neutron star](https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/minimal-mass-of-a-neutron-star.297453/) could do. To be able to take your hook back you need a pretty massive ship (probably around the mass of the sun itself, so please don't come near this solar system). And a long unobtanium wire that doesn't melt (superconduces phonons, quickly radiating per surface unit) or breaks (almost infinite tensile strength). This scheme would allow you to keep some distance from the sun, but if you can manage neutron stars you may not care about the fission reactor or the sun's gravity.
Alternatively, just open a wormhole and drop one end to the sun's surface so that some of your fuel is carried to the other end (your very well insulated and reinforced fuel depot). Probably you need to bury the intake end under the surface of the sun in order to have some at the outtake end, your wormhole acting as a communicating vessel. In both cases, you should be careful of tidal waves, since gravity would as well cross your wormhole and try to rip your ship apart. Also, wormhole technology is a really powerful one, particularly recognized by its plot destroying capabilities. Consider you would need to find excuses for it not to work at domestic scales, apart of explaining why you have to get close to the sun to use it.
Maybe more approachable is being able to predict and intercept coronal mass ejections, at a distance of the sun that is safe for your ship but efficient for your mass collectors to work.
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Assuming you don't want to get your nice spaceship (that you're riding in) too close to the sun, you could always **throw something at the sun** and let it skim the corona or even the surface, or skim a coronal mass ejection, collecting matter/heat/energy as it passes through, then you catch it on the other side.
If your ship's engines are strong enough to take you from star to star before you grow old and die, they should be strong enough to push a few rocks at a sun before you grow old and die too.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9a0BK.jpg) The sun's corona during a solar eclipse, it's big & relatively easy to throw things at. [Image courtesy [Wikipedia By I, Luc Viatour, CC BY-SA 3.0](https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1107408)]
A basic empty box or tube could be enough to collect plasma or solar matter or whatever you're interested in.
* "*But I'm on a long range, long term mission, I'm not made of tubes to throw at the sun! They'll get all melty and ruined!*"
Ok, how about you push an asteroid at the sun? It could pick up & carry enough solar matter with it for you to catch it on the other side & collect whatever you'd like. A hollowed out stone or metal asteroid might collect a lot of "sun stuff" on it's trip too, not just whatever gets knocked loose and comes along for the ride as with a solid asteroid. Or even push a comet.
* "*A comet? Come on, it'll melt worse than my tube!*"
Actually, comets have survived passing through the sun's Corona, like [Comet Lovejoy here re-emerging from the sun's corona in 2011 or ISON in 2014](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27954-what-would-happen-if-a-massive-comet-crashed-into-the-sun/),but since you get to pick your own more solid rock or metal ball (or whatever) to throw, your odds of survival should be better.
* "*I just want to be close to a big explosion to collect released energy and stuff (more than a normal sun, that's too slow!)*"
The above article also says a team led by John Brown, Astronomer Royal for Scotland, speculates:
>
> If a comet is big enough and passes close enough, the steep fall into the sun’s gravity would accelerate it to more than 600 kilometres per second. At that speed, drag from the sun’s lower atmosphere would flatten the comet into a pancake right before it exploded in an airburst, releasing ultraviolet radiation and X-rays that we could see with modern instruments.
>
>
> The crash would unleash as much energy as a magnetic flare or coronal mass ejection, but over a much smaller area. “It’s like a bomb being released in the sun’s atmosphere,” Brown says. The momentum propelled by the comet could even make the sun ring like a bell with subsequent sun-quakes echoing through the solar atmosphere.
>
>
>
If you could pinpoint where one of those will explode by throwing a comet there, it could provide lots of energy & matter to collect.
* "*I give up, I'm just going to go find a nice cool gas giant*"
Ok, fine, good idea *I guess*. But you can still throw stuff at gas giants, and it's a lot safer to get closer and catch the "splashback"
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The pull will be dependant on the star's mass, not density. As for gathering fuel, you'd need to work out heat protection first, and radiological protection second - any star is, after all, a thermonuclear reactor, technically speaking. Thus you get a large amount of ionizing radiation output, especially up close (as radiation exposure scales up/down with distance. Our sun (and any other star too, for that matter...) could very well kill us with radiation if we got too close without shielding)
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How about getting the hydrogen from [molecular clouds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_cloud)? There should be some, and they are pretty large (up to hundreds of light years diameter). They aren't extremely dense (up to 10000 particles per cubic centimeters) but there might be lumps that could be collected. Their detection is a bit problematic, though.
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An option I haven't seen presented is to release a tethered mass into the star's gravity well and harvest the resultant momentum.
For example, drop your accumulated trash, tied by a very long, thin, and very strong line (a braid of carbon tubes, for instance). Allow it to reach blistering speeds, then at some point transfer the energy to something. It could be a flywheel, or a chemical storage medium. For instance, it could spin a dynamo which results in electrolysis of a solution which releases energy as it winds down.
A more sophisticated society may have means to reverse (so to speak) nuclear reactions this way. Alternatively, you might have some captive microsingularities (baby black holes) which are strongly affected by a resulting electromagnetic field (electromagnetism being deemed a "stronger" force than gravity), reseating the singularities into position within a mechanism which releases their potential energy over time (maybe allowing one to fall toward another, turning a crank or generating heat).
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As others have stated, the physics of such an attempt don't stack up too well. However, since you're in sci-fi, you can mess with what's possible a certain amount.
How about doing something similar to the Death Star Mk2 in The Force Awakens? In that film, the Death Star is seen to be 'sucking' material out of a star. You could conceivably do something similar...
For example, your super-ship could place into solar orbit a micro black-hole. That has such enormous gravity that it causes an amount of solar matter to be 'sucked' out of the star and into space, where it rushes towards the black hole, and a proportion of it will be 'sucked in' to the black hole. However, some around the edges will be moving so fast that it escapes the black hole's gravity and into the loading bay of your space ship (sort of like a gravity lens does with light).
When your tank is full, you somehow either dismantle the black hole (which is now whatever you put there + an awful lot of the star), or maybe better still is you 'push' it into the star itself. Therefore, the star gets its material back and presumably can consume or otherwise integrate the black hole you created. I guess you could initially put the black hole into a deliberately decaying orbit so that it will automatically fall into the star when you're full and out of the way.
Of course, *how* any of this gets done is up to you. Maybe your ship works by making its fuel super-dense, and so the micro black hole is just a blob of super-dense (spent?) fuel? You get a few 'green' points for that one because your spent fuel returns to the stars, or maybe you can redefine spacetime a bit and sort of 'punch' a dip into it to make the gravity (although it's theorised that 'dips' are created by gravity, not the other way around, so you may get into trouble there). You could go a bit 'Stargate' and open a wormhole to an actual black hole, and therefore have a point-source of gravity with which to create the 'lens'.
Ooh... this is fun :-)
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Assume you have a culture that eats some or all of their dead at the funeral as a ritual, instead of burying the dead as we do. Assume somewhere between medieval and renaissance level of technology/science.
What is the risk of disease being spread through such a custom? Would the risk of disease lead to any interesting ritual or symbolic customs? For instance, would those that die of old age or disease be seen as unclean and thus unfit to be eaten, resulting in contempt of those that die in such ways, etc.?
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This kind of culture is not unheard of. The most well known (at least to me) is the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea. As part of their funerary rights they eat the brains of the deceased.
This tradition led to [Kuru](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease)), an endemic degenerative brain disease.
If this tradition were more wide spread there are ways it could (health wise) work and ways it would end very very poorly.
Disease is certainly a concern, humans are, in many ways...disgusting creatures and death makes us no prettier. Additionally as @TomLeek mentioned diseases in the human to be eaten are obviously communicable to other humans, which isn't nearly as large a concern when eating other animals, exceptions like bird and swine flu as well as ebola not withstanding.
@dsollen, in response to your question in the comments there are some portions that would be relatively safer than others. Muscle tissue and certain organs (the same organs that we eat from other animals, heart and liver for example) would be less inclined to promote disease than the nervous system, the GI tract and the respiratory system.
The kicker here is that human disease spreads in only so many ways, primarily you are talking about those portions mentioned above, blood borne diseases, diseases that are caught like the flu via the respiratory system, and lastly diseases that enter via the GI tract.
Avoiding the respiratory system and GI tract is easy enough but blood borne diseases would be virtually impossible to avoid if you didn't know it was present due to the fact that blood of course permeates every part of the body. And blood borne diseases are generally [really not good](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood-borne_disease). The list includes HIV, Hepatitis, Hemorrhagic Fever and while slightly different West Nile Virus and Malaria (these are, as the article mentions) vector based diseases generally caused by insects.
Some general notes to make this tradition safe(r)
* Clean...really really well. Meaning both with soap and like a deer...avoid opening up the internal organs...
* Cook. You've seen the warnings on meat before...cook Bob before you eat him.
* Quick, don't wait a day...don't even wait 12 hours. The sooner it is done the better, decay is rapid.
* Don't eat people that were sick or died of disease.
**Cultural impacts**
Cultural traditions that could come from this are potentially there. Your idea of the old being unclean isn't difficult to imagine...when the body stops functioning fully things get gross.
The opposite could be true as well, maybe the young could confer a health bonus or revive those that are older from certain ailments and allowing the dead to live on in those that partake.
Eating hearts could give you courage, eyes wisdom, genitals erm...prowess, and so forth.
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According to the wikipedia article on [Kuru](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease)) there was a study on the populations that identified a prion-resistant version of the protein.
Imagine a population that grew genetically on this trait: individuals without it will suffer from a prion disease and die off, meanwhile the trait will become more common in the population. Fast forward several generations in a culture like this and we could see a generally healthy population with very little prion disease.
However those that do suffer from Kuru with shaking and bursts of laughter may be viewed as shamans or other spiritual members of that society. Perhaps having a percieved connection to the land of the dead.
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Speaking as a chef who is certified in food safety, sanitation, and hygiene, I can tell you that there are a number of variables which would have bearing on the question of whether eating the dead would cause health problems. The safest way to conduct such rituals would be as follows:
* Perform the eating ritual as soon as possible after death. The Jews have [strict laws](http://judeangardens.com/faq.html) requiring that the dead be buried within 24 hours whenever possible. This would be a good idea for our fictional culture. It would be best to make exceptions for bodies which have been dead for longer than a day or so.
* On a related note, butcher the corpse as quickly as possible, to prevent cross contamination. The nasty critters in the digestive tract begin to relocate shortly after death, spreading through the rest of the body. As soon as the person dies, his or her digestive tract should be removed and discarded.
* It would be best to limit consumption to the muscle tissue, but at the very least, the most dangerous parts of the body should be disposed of. These include:
+ The brain
+ The digestive tract
+ The liver, lungs, and bladder (in some cases)
* Cook the corpse thoroughly, to an internal temperature of at least 160 degrees Fahrenheit. This should kill most parasites and pathogens.
* Consume the corpse as soon as possible after cooking, or cure the meat by smoking or salting.
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Very risky - especially if you eat the brains.
This was the main cause of the 'mad cow disease' epidemic. Firstly cattle were being fed with the remains of deceased cattle. Secondly this spread to humans.
The main risk is from nervous tissue - brain and spinal cord. These are now prohibited from the food chain in most first-world countries.
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Judging from actual rituals (of hunters, warriors, shamans etc.), which – except for symbolic communion – I only have anecdotal knowledge of, there are several parts of the body that would be more likely to be eaten than others. They all come with risks. It’s rather unlikely that human steak would be served at the wake. What to expect instead, also depending on who mourns, who died and how and when:
* **Brain** for the wisdom → Kuru/prions, otherwise quite safe if prepared properly
* **Heart** for the courage → relatively safe if cooked and prepared properly
* **Genitals** for the strength, especially male (penis and testicles) → probably not as safe as the heart, but okay if cooked
* **Blood** for the vitality → rather risky, especially in larger amounts and raw/liquid but not totally fresh
* Cremated **ashes** for the preservation (‘lives on in us’) → quite safe in rare, small amounts in that it wouldn’t transmit most diseases, but maybe cause some (e.g. mercury poisoning)
PS: I am not a doctor.
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If a human standing on bedrock could indefinitely increase their mass without increasing in volume, how much mass could they add to themselves before they start causing damage to the ground? How massive can they get before they sink into the ground?
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Ooh, this is an interesting question.
Assuming granite bedrock, you have a compressive strength $\sigma$ of [130 MPa](https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/compression-tension-strength-d_1352.html). That's the pressure needed to start pushing through the rock. We also need to assume a certain area of the human's feet or shoes - one way to do this is to use some sort of average total foot area, such as by summing the surface areas of the sole regions on [page 1241 here](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325610182_Cutaneous_afferent_innervation_of_the_human_foot_sole_What_can_we_learn_from_single_unit_recordings) to get 178 $cm^2$ per foot, but if our human is wearing shoes, it might go up to 190 $cm^2$, for a total area of 380 $cm^2$. Converting to square meters, we get 0.038 $m^2$.
edit: I'm also going to specify that the shoes have to be strong enough to hold up our incredibly dense human. Otherwise, proceed with the following calculations but for a barefoot human (0.0354 $m^3$) instead.
Assuming your human is standing on Earth, and not jumping around or leaning on something, or getting blown by the wind, the pressure they exert is equal to $$ mass\_\text{human} \times \text{gravitational acceleration}\_\text{Earth} \div \text{Area}\_\text{shoes} $$ (that is to say, the gravitational force divided by the area that force is exerted over). It's when the gravitational force, spread over their shoe area, exceeds the compressive strength of the rock that they start sinking: $$\sigma = m\_\text{human} \times g\_\text{Earth} \div A\_\text{shoes}$$
Solving for the mass and substituting the values, we get: $$m\_\text{human} = \frac{A\_\text{shoes} \times \sigma}{g\_\text{Earth}}$$
$$m\_\text{human} = \frac{0.038 m^2 \times 130 MPa}{9.807 m/s^2} \times \frac{10^6 kg\,m^{-1}s^{-2}}{MPa}$$
(conversion of MPa is just $10^6$ [Pa](https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_(enhet)))
Dividing it out, you get:
$$m\_{human} = 503,000 kg$$
A normal human has a density of about 1,010 kg/$m^3$, according to [this somewhat sketchy website](https://www.aqua-calc.com/page/density-table/substance/human-blank-body), so if you assume a normalish weight of 80 kg you get a "human volume" in cubic meters of 80/1,010, or about 0.08 $m^3$.
To get the density of this superdense human, you divide their mass by their volume to get $$503,000 kg/(0.08 m^3) = 6,400,000 kg/m^3$$
Just to be on the safe side (in case it's an especially strong granite), you'd probably want to bump that up to $$6.5 Gg/m^3$$ That's much denser than most things we know on Earth, about 40 times denser than the core of the sun and denser than all of the known elements. [It doesn't nearly measure up to a neutron star or an atomic nucleus (without electron cloud), though!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_star#Density_and_pressure)
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Many factors in history have contributed to society's taking a long time to accept the heliocentric (= the Earth orbits the Sun) model: the first that come to mind immediately are **religion** and, more generally, people's instinctive **resistance to drastic changes in ideology**.
While **the sphericity of the Earth was widely recognized in Greco-Roman astronomy** from **at least the 3rd century BC**, the **Earth's daily rotation** and **yearly orbit around the Sun** was **never universally accepted until the Copernican Revolution**.
Moreover, the **Copernican model was devised in 1543**, but was accepted by no more than a few astronomers until the **17th century**, when - among other things - **the use of telescopes provided a lot of proof which favored the heliocentric model** over the Ptolemaic model.
So considering religion, generic resistance to change, and technology, **what would need to have been different in our history in order to lead to an earlier** (let's say 1200s, but the earlier the better) **wide acceptance of the modern heliocentric model?**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4NCr4.jpg)
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First of all, we have to recognize that before Newton's laws of motion and law of universal gravitation, and before the advent of telescopic astronomy, the only two criteria which an astronomical model had to satisfy were *elegance* (how simple it was) and *accuracy* (how well it could predict the positions of the planets). There was nothing else to judge.
To understand why the ancients didn't fall for *a* heliocentric model, we must understand what Ptolemy’s, [Copernicus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus)’s and Kepler’s model were.
* [Ptolemy's model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_of_reference) works like this:
+ Earth is a sphere, fixed and imobile.
+ Everything else *rotates* around the center of the Earth in a uniform circular motion, completing a rotation in 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds (a [sidereal day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidereal_time)); this is called the *first* or *diurnal motion*.
+ For the fixed stars, that’s all there is.
+ Each of the [seven classical planets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_planet) (the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) executes two supplementary circular motions:
- A circular motion along a path called the [deferent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferent_and_epicycle), the center of which is not the center of the Earth, but a point called the *eccentric*; this *second motion* is uniform with respect to a point called the *equant*, which is placed on the line from the center of the Earth to the eccentric, at a distance from the eccentric equal to the distance between the eccentric and the center of the earth — that is, the eccentric is exactly midway between the equant and the center of the Earth. This motion describes the movement of the center of the *third motion*. The duration of one complete revolution of the second motion is what we call orbital period.
- A uniform and circular *third motion* on a path called the *epicycle* around the point executing the second motion.
* [Copernicus’s model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus) is almost the same, just considering the Sun fixed. Earth rotates around its axis (replacing Ptolemy’s first motion) and moves on an epicycle which moves on a deferent which revolves around an eccentric with uniform angular speed with respect to an equant (thus mimicking Ptolemy’s second and third motions) etc. There is nothing to choose between Ptolemy’s and Copernicus’s models, they are almost equivalent from a [kinematic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinematics) point of view; they describe very similar motions, differing only in the [frame of reference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_of_reference).
* [Kepler’s model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler%27s_laws_of_planetary_motion) is radically different:
+ The sun is a fixed and immobile sphere with respect to the fixed stars.
+ Earth, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn move along [elliptic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipse) paths, with the Sun in one of the foci; their motion is such that the line from the Sun to the planet sweeps equal areas in equal times (areal uniformity).
+ The cube semi-major axis of each ellipse is proportional to the square of the orbital period.
+ The Moon executes a similar motion around the Earth.
+ The Earth rotates around its axis, completing one rotation in a sidereal day (23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds).
Kepler’s model is kinematically different from Ptolemy’s or Copernic’s models, which are equivalent. That is, when computing the future position of the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, or Saturn at a future date, Ptolemy’s and Copernicus’s models give very similar results, while Kepler’s gives a different result.
[Johannes Kepler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler) was stimulated to develop a new model because he had access to the fantastically accurate observations made by [Tycho Brache](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho_Brahe) at his fantastically expensive [Uraniborg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uraniborg) observatory. These observations *did not match* the predictions of the Ptolemaic model. They matched the predictions of the Keplerian model. Game over.
As history is prone to irony, within Kepler’s lifetime the arguments in favor of his model accumulated: [Galileo Galilei](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei) discovered the Galilean satellites of Jupiter, the phases of Venus (which were simply impossible to explain in a Ptolemaic framework, but were explainable in the kinematically equivalent Copernican model), and the rotation of the Sun around its axis. Nevertheless, the only decisive advantages the Keplerian model had were its simplicity (only eight motions instead of 15) and its better accuracy.
Then came Newton, and the Keplerian model was shown to be a direct consequence of three simple laws of motion and one simple law of universal gravitation.
So, how could a heliocentric model be favored in earlier times?
* First of all, the rotation of the Earth could have been proven using an experiment similar to [Foucault’s pendulum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault_pendulum). There is nothing in [Léon Foucault](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Foucault)’s 1851 experiment which could not have been done in 1581 ,or 1081, or 581 or even 81 CE. They just didn’t think of it — and they did not study pendulums very carefully before Galileo. They could have, but they didn’t.
* Then there was nothing revolutionary in Tycho Brache’s Uraniborg. It was the most advanced naked-eye observatory ever built simply because it was the biggest and by far the most expensive: to build it, king [Frederick III](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_III_of_Denmark) of Denmark allocated 1% of the state’s budget per year for five years. No astronomer before or after Tycho Brache *ever* had such budget.
* Kepler was very good at numerical calculations and very dedicated. When Tycho asked him to recalculate the orbit of Mars in accordance with the new precise observations, Kepler first set to compute it using Ptolemy's model. After many months of calculation he achieved an accuracy of 2 to 8 arc-minutes, but he wasn't satisfied; he then began trying to replace circular motions with various ovoid shapes; at the 40th attempt he tried an ellipse and his law of uniform areal motion: and it worked to better than 1 arc-minute. In the antiquity, only Archimedes was as good and dedicated at numerical calculations, and Archimedes was not interested in astronomy.
[Answer]
The heliocentric model already had support long before the time period you are after (1200s). In fact, some of the Greeks tried to prove the heliocentric model thousands of years ago. There was also religious support for the heliocentric model even before that.
## Technology: Greeks
There were some bright Greek astronomers who were on the right track and viewed the cosmos similarly to how we do now. They realized that if Earth is orbiting around the sun, then there should be a calculable [parallax](http://www.dictionary.com/browse/parallax "define parallax") for the stars. That is, if you make astronomical observations at one point in the year, then you make the same observations precisely 6 months later - when we would be on the opposite side of the sun - we should have moved enough to see some of the stars in the sky change location *relative to each other*.
The calculations are simple trigonometry. The Greeks tried it, and calculating the trigonometry would have provided difficult to dispute proof of the heliocentric model.
Interesting side-note: According to the Wikipedia page on trigonometry, "**The field emerged in the Hellenistic world during the 3rd century BC from applications of geometry to astronomical studies**". The study of triangles started long before that; this is referring to trig much more as we know it today. So it was the astronomical observations and debates much like the one that we are discussing in this Q&A that actually established current trigonometry.
The problem, which the Greeks were unaware of, was that even **the closest stars are so unreasonably far away that the parallax is so small** that you need a descent telescope just to measure it. The Greeks were *so close* to proving the heliocentric model, but their astronomical observations just did not provide enough precision to discern the parallax. And so the geocentric model had a victory instead of the heliocentric model.
So the answer to your question here is to provide the Greeks with better astronomy equipment. That shouldn't be too difficult. Just shift the timeline of the telescope forward by giving them an improved control over optics.
[Citation for the stellar parallax, including the Greek use of it](https://www.e-education.psu.edu/astro801/content/l4_p3.html "Stellar Parallax").
According to the above source, from Penn State, the stellar parallax observation was not successfully done until the 1800s. So you might need to shift the development of telescopes forward *a lot*. Though usually developments take many generations, it is not unheard of to make drastic leaps and bounds in 1 generation if you get a dedicated individual who devotes their life to it, such as was done for clocks when moving from weighted systems to springs. You could have a history where a Greek person obsessed with optics spends his life pushing the telescope hard shortly before the heliocentric debate happens.
## Religion: The Diplomacy
(Edit: See new note at bottom of this section)
*Religion itself* was not a barrier to the heliocentric model. At least, the predominant Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Islam, Christianity) were not; I cannot say with confidence about other religions.
If you are thinking about the catholic church's blocking of the heliocentric model, considering it heresy, that was not a religious issue. That was purely a diplomatic issue. The catholic church was a governing structure which relied on its word being unquestioningly accepted. If the catholic leadership allowed their word to be questioned, they lost their power. The catholic church's actions should be viewed as the actions of a government, not a result of religion.
In fact, ancient texts used by the Jews, Christians, and I think the Muslims too actually support the heliocentric model. Despite the catholic church's own proclamations otherwise (which was essentially heresy by the church government), their **bible actually states that the *Earth* is what moves through space**. Earth is said by the bible to be a sphere that travels through space, and yet many of the governing leaders who abused the faith of their followers tried for centuries to tell us that the Earth was flat or that it was the stationary center of the universe, *despite that bible*.
So *religion* itself actually supports the heliocentric model, but *the people* did not accept that.
So the answer to your question as far as religion is concerned is to change the people somehow so that they are not arrogant jerks (not the words I want to use, but I'm keeping it G-rated). Let religious people *actually practice their religion and develop it* instead of having dictators pervert religion to their whims. Wouldn't that be grand? In theory, this is actually a smaller and easier change than the one above about changing the history of optics, but in practice changing people to be better is very difficult.
*Please note*: I am trying to find sources for my claims in this section. It is easy to find the claims in the bible that Earth is round and suspended in space, but I am having difficulty finding the one I recall about it actually moving through space. Also, some people are pointing out in comment the supposed biblical evidence for flat earth and geocentric models: to that, I suggest people take notice of the fact that the sections that sound geocentric are often in symbolic, metaphoric sections (ex: Psalms *is literally* a collection of *songs* and *poems*), and I find such biblical geocentric claims to be weak personally - but yes, there are hints of geocentric ideas as well. I would also point out that the biblical heliocentric support is generally in the more literal sections. Overall, feel free to take the biblical claims with a grain of salt until such time as I update this section; however, the claim still stands that the catholic blockade of the heliocentric model was, as many catholic actions through history, a diplomatic power play rather than a religious requirement. This is evident in that many supporters of the heliocentric model were themselves very religious Christians as well.
## Resistance to Change
Your other issue was the generic resistance to change that many people have.
There is not a lot you can do about this. However, given one or both of the above changes, I don't think you would actually need to do anything else special here.
If the religious texts were actually taken at face value, instead of having governmental perverts keeping people from reading their own religious texts, then the religious groups would have been on board with the heliocentric model.
If the Greeks had made better observations, they would have been on board with the heliocentric model.
The Greeks and the Abrahamic religions were, arguably, the two most influential things in history to much of science and art that would follow, even to this day. If the people in both those camps supported the heliocentric model, *I don't think there even would have been a change necessary, as it would have been the default*.
[Answer]
Resistance to change is only a factor if people start out with a geocentric model. If you posit a heliocentric model coming first, then resistance to change would favor that. In any case, while it is certainly true that there are people who reject new ideas because, "the old way was good enough for my grandfather and it's good enough for me", there are also plenty of people who embrace new ideas out of a love of novelty. Teenagers routinely question their parents' beliefs and chase after new ideas. (The Bible mentions that Paul of Tarus took advantage of how the Greek intellectuals loved to discuss new ideas as a way for him to introduce Christianity. "For all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing." -- Acts 17:91) So it's not at all clear that resistance to new ideas would be a major barrier.
It's not clear how religion supports the geocentric view. Nothing in the Bible supports a geocentric view, and the Greek and Roman pagans didn't have a clear body of authoritative writings. I haven't studied what the Koran says on the subject.
Yes, yes, the Catholic Church opposed Galileo, but that wasn't for any religious reason. The Catholic Church at the time also ran the colleges, and the college professors were committed to the geocentric view because of their faith in Aristotle. The pope found Galileo unconvincing but was willing to let him spread his ideas ... right up until Galileo wrote a book with a character named "Simplico", which means "simpleton", i.e. idiot, who was clearly modeled after the pope. Insulting powerful people in print is not a recipe for success in any society. Also, while we remember Galileo as being right, most of his arguments were flawed. For example, he said that tides were caused by the motion of the Earth: as the Earth moved in its orbit, the oceans tended to lag behind because of inertia, causing tides. Opponents blew holes in that argument.
Heliocentric ideas have been around for a long time. I don't know who first proposed a heliocentric theory, or if anyone today can say for sure. Archimedes assumed a heliocentric model in his paper that is now called "The Sand Reckoner", circa 250 BC, which discusses the size of the universe and large numbers. (He assumes that the universe might be as much as 2 light years across.) Others have mentioned Aristarchus of Samos, same era.
I think the real problem is this: What experiment can you perform to distinguish a geocentric universe from a heliocentric universe? Of course everyone today knows that the Earth goes around the Sun and that those ancient people who thought otherwise were incredibly stupid to think such nonsense. But ask them how they KNOW that the Earth goes around the Sun and not vice versa, and few could give an answer beyond "I read it in a book" or "they said so in that science show on TV".
The geocentric model actually worked pretty well for predicting things people could observe: the rising and setting of the Sun, seasons, eclipses, even the observed motions of the planets. What I think really did it in was as telescopes improved and people were able to make better observations of the motions of the planets, the geocentric model had to get more and more complicated to explain them. They had to introduce "epicycles" and all sorts of contorted sub-theories to fit the experimental observation. Ultimately people realized that with a heliocentric model and elliptical orbits, everything worked out quite nicely. Then Occam's Razor, pick the simplest theory that fits the facts, and the heliocentric theory won.
As @Aaron notes, people eventually figured out that there in fact IS a measurable parallax in observation of the stars. But it is minuscule: the difference at opposite ends of the Earth's orbit is 1/3600 of a degree for a star 3.26 light years away -- a "parallax second". No one was able to measure that finely until 1838.
So all of that said ... I think the way to get a heliocentric theory sooner is for astronomers (or astrologers) to make sufficiently detailed observations of the planets earlier and realize the awkwardness and unlikeliness of epicycles.
[Answer]
The heliocentric model **existed** as early as the second century BC.
Unfortunately it was based on *circles*, and as such, **it did not work** too well because, well, ellipses (and it's not so likely that Hypatia really did intuit that as in the film *Agora*).
So, until Copernicus, the geocentric model was all the rage because it worked better (until even more advanced observations) and was anyway good enough to explain mostly everything. Religious arguments were found to support it - one of the most famous being Joshua's request for God to stop the Sun over Gibeon (Book of Joshua 10,12-13):
>
> And the Sun stood still, and the Moon stayed, until the people had
> avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book
> of Jasher? So the Sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted
> not to go down about a whole day.
>
>
>
(The obvious counter-argument being that, as in the passage where the Bible states that the Earth is flat and square as a table, the descriptions are from the point of view of the people of the time).
In fact, even after the observations started supporting Copernicus, the weight of tradition and religious arguments *still* made opinion tilt in favour of geocentrism.
**And that's your answer.**
Have Aristotle become convinced that Aristarchus' heliocentric model is more sensible. Have the early religion not be so hung-up on *not* resembling Mithraism and discard any associations between the Sun and God Almighty; actually have it do the contrary. Have the Sun associated with *God's grace* and have it maybe stem from a revised interpretation of the Jewish *Qabbalah* - with some handwaving you could have them posit even the [Big Bang theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohr#The_Ohr_Ein_Sof_-_The_Infinite_Light); then, of course, *let there be Light*.
Ellipses could be said to *have to be* ellipses because circles are perfect and only God may be perfect - the original theistic argument, as most irrational arguments, can run both ways.
Once the elliptical orbits are a God-given Truth, the fact that geocentric predictions initially fit just as well will simply be *discarded* and (correctly!) attributed to errors in measurements and rudimental instruments; also, supporting geocentrism will now be seen as a teleological *faux pas* - what, you want planets to revolve around the *Earth*? Whom do you serve - God, or Mammon?
From an astronomer's standpoint, this scenario is also better. For centuries, astronomers had to have noticed that the better they observed, *the worse were the results*. To make things fit, the "geocentric" model had to deny itself and introduce eccentrics, then [epicycles and deferents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferent_and_epicycle), and by 1500 it was clear that a further level of *deference* was needed to make calculations fit the observations.
But starting with a belief in the heliocentric system, they would get large errors in the beginning, but the better the observation, the better the results. *This* would have been a way stronger incentive to both observe and publish.
[Answer]
Have [Ptolemy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy) (AD 100 - c.170) be convinced by the heliocentric model of [Aristarchus of Samos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_of_Samos) (310 - 230BC), and use it in his writings. That puts him in conflict with [Aristotle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle) (384 - 322BC), who was firmly geocentric, but it makes geocentrism vs. heliocentrism a live issue.
From that point, the weight of opinion can come down in favour of heliocentrism at any time you choose.
[Answer]
Discovery of the **Earth's axial procession** is attributed to Hipparchus in the 2nd Century BC, by comparing astronomy records written in the 3rd Century BC. But Hipparchus wasn't confirmed until Ptolemy in the 2nd Century AD. It took a half-millenia of relatively consistent data and a common written language to confirm it.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_precession#History>
Hipparchus even confirmed the old observations in secondary sources, but the data he could match up was limited to a certain star on a certain date. He knew the stars around the ecliptic were moving, but didn't assume it was the whole sky (ie: the Earth moving, not parts of the sky). He didn't have the full picture, and didn't even have the exact years, so he made a rough estimate and dropped it, but if he'd had more data from the past he might have been able to calculate the axial procession more accurately.
In an alternate history, the recorded data might have been preserved better over the centuries, and as he solved that rotation it might have occurred to him that *everything* processing means the Earth is wobbling. For a Worldbuild-y twist, our axial procession could be a little more obvious, or perhaps our orbit a little more elliptical, and it wouldn't have taken five centuries of written records to see long-term issues that the accepted epicycles didn't solve.
[Answer]
Perhaps it would have helped if the **Moon had a moon**. Such setup is theoretically possible, even though perhaps not stable in long term - the orbit of sub-satellite would sooner or later be destabilized by tides.
However, having explanatory model of planetary system available for education and study on nightly basis might have changed the world view of past civilizations.
Note that this changes the "current model" of Solar System as defined by OP - it would not be the real Solar System any more.
[Answer]
Just as a child first learns about their own house and later about their own community as they grow older and explore farther, so an ancient society learned more and more about the world and its size as it explored farther and farther.
It may be noted that the Sun and the Moon have the same apparent size as seen from Earth. And as someone travels farther and farther from home, and sees the apparent size of the sun and the moon stay about the same no matter where he goes, he can estimate how far away they could have to be to look the same size every where he went, and thus how big they would have to be to look that big at such a distance.
Anaxagoras (c. 510-c. 428 BC) proposed that the Sun was even bigger than the Peloponnesus. Thus the Sun should have been at least 180 miles wide and thus at least 20,626.498 miles away to have its apparent angular diameter.
Aristarchus of Samos (c.310-230 BC) claimed that the Earth and the planets revolved around the sun, that the earth rotated, and that the stars were distant suns. Aristarchus calculated that the Sun should be 18 to 20 times as far away as the Moon and thus 18 to 20 times as wide. He also calculated that the distance of the Moon was 20 times the radius of the Earth. So the diameter of he Moon would be 0.0872 the diameter of the Earth, and thus the diameter of the sun would be 1.570 to 1.744 times the diameter of Earth. Calculating that the Sun should be significantly larger than the Earth might have persuaded Aristarchus that the Sun was the center of the solar system.
Eratosthenes of Cyrene (c. 276-195/194 BC) calculated the circumference of the Earth to an accuracy of 10 or 15 percent. Eratosthenes is also said to have calculated the Sun's diameter at 27 times that of the Earth, a vast understatement. Eratosthenes is said to have calculated the distance to the sun as either 4,080,000 stadia (about 399,799.2 miles) or 804,000,000 stadia (about 78,783,960 miles), the latter being approximately the correct figure.
Clautius Ptolemy (c. AD 100-AD 170) calculated the distance to the Moon to be about 60 times Earth's radius, thus making the distance to the Sun using Aristarchus's calculation - 18 to 20 times the distance to the Moon - about 1,080 to 1,200 times Earth's radius and making the Sun's diameter about 4.5 to 5 times the Earth's diameter.
So in the late Hellenistic era and Roman era people educated in philosophy knew that some astronomers had evidence that the Sun and the moon were vast balls of rock similar to the Earth. Lucian of Samosata (c.AD 125-after 180) wrote *A True History* that included a trip to the moon and war between the natives of the Sun, the Moon, and various planets and stars, which were thus depicted as places. That's right the first Space opera was written in the 2nd century AD!
Ancient Greek and Romans made many types of glass, including glass clear enough for eyeglasses, telescopes, and microscopes. Lenses may have been used for some purposes in ancient times. So inventing telescopes would not have been totally impossible in Hellenistic and Roman times.
Since philosophers had more or less proven that the Sun was much bigger than the Earth, and since Aristarchus, Seleucus of Seleucia (b. 190 BC), Martinus capella (5th century AD), mentioned by Copernicus, and others supported the heliocentric system, telescopic observations that supported the heliocentric system might eventually convince philosophers that the Earth revolved around the sun.
The Galilean moons of Jupiter showed that celestial bodies could revolve around bodies other than the Earth. The phases of the planets, showed the geometrical relation between a planet, the Sun, and the Earth at the moment of observation. Repeated observations were a strong argument for the heliocentric model of the solar system.
Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) developed a "geo-heliocentric" system in which the Sun and the Moon revolved around the Earth and all the other planets revolved around the Sun. Once the phases of Venus were discovered, only the heliocentric and Tycho's "geo-heliocentric" system could explain them, the plain and millennia old geocentric system could not. Thus observing the phases of Venus would be enough to eventually disprove the geocentric system.
[Answer]
There are a lot of factors that played into the geocentric and heliocentric beliefs, but these are just a few of the biggest influences that would change a lot of things related to them.
Ptolemy is the main reason why the geocentric system dominated stargazing for more than 1,000 years. Ptolemy was actually unsure whether he was right about the geocentric system and that currently there was no way to figure out for sure whether it was true. But he still was very influential was many people treated his word as law. If you want an earlier heliocentric system, then the easiest way would be if Ptolemy had been convinced of the earlier heliocentric theories. But even if that had changed, then the geocentric theory still might have survived.
The Church was another big reason why the geocentric system was so popular. They at the time had a philosophy that as people were the most important parts of the universe, they should also be the center. The center meant the center of attention, the universe, and the solar system. At the time, it just made sense that it would work like this. The Church just took Ptolemy's writings as a scientific backup for their ideas. If the church had been more open to astronomy and not threatened to kill anyone who disagreed with them, then there would be more open thinkers and people would have come to the conclusion of a heliocentric solar system much quicker.
Aristotle had a lot of influence, and he personally believed in a geocentric solar system. He has definitely influenced the important believers in the geocentric theory, and Ptolemy might not have come up with some of his theories without hearing about some of Aristotle's works. So changing Aristotle's views would definitely change some things. But do not remove him altogether, as that would also change countless modern-day concepts such as classifications of animals, other correct theories in astronomy, and many other things.
If Aristarchus of Samos had been more vocal about his beliefs, then the public might have been convinced of the heliocentric theory and there would have been more of an open debate in this field, as the other answer suggested.
[Answer]
It would seem to take a number of events to make a helocentric model better than the alternative as expressed in
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernican_heliocentrism#Copernican_Revolution>
from that entry:
>
> During the 17th century, several further discoveries eventually led to
> the wider acceptance of heliocentrism:
>
>
> Using the newly invented telescope, Galileo discovered the four large moons of Jupiter (evidence that the solar system contained
> bodies that did not orbit Earth), the phases of Venus (the first
> observational evidence not properly explained by the Ptolemaic theory)
> and the rotation of the Sun about a fixed axis[43] as indicated by the
> apparent annual variation in the motion of sunspots;
>
>
>
So one thing would be an asteroid large enough to be seen without a telescope orbiting the moon. Even if this object was eventually ejected from orbit it would be evidence that some solar system bodies did not orbit earth.
] |
[Question]
[
How can I create holidays/traditions for my fictional world? I want these holidays to be believable and original, not just something inspired by a holiday we have here.
An obvious course of action seems to be to investigate the origins of our own holidays. A lot come from religion (Christmas, Easter, etc.), but what about those that don't (like Halloween)?
How can I take the history and setting of my world, and create natural, believable, and above all, original, holidays/traditions?
[Answer]
First of all, I don't think there's any shame in taking our existing holidays as inspiration. Many holidays from different cultures on Earth have similar roots, typically in the meanings of the seasons and other natural phenomena. As religions developed over time, these holidays were imbued with new meanings.
For example, a celebration of the winter equinox seems to be very common in Earth cultures. Early cultures may have wished to appease their gods or other forces of nature in the hopes that winter would end soon, but over time, the celebration itself became the highlight of the event. (Come on, the longest night of the year is exciting!) As ages passed, holidays such as Saturnalia, Hanukkah, and Christmas came about by pairing a certain religious event with the existing winter celebration. In fact, Christmas' date was assigned to align with Saturnalia and related celebrations, specifically the birth of Mithras.
With that said, here are the steps I'd recommend to crafting fictional holidays:
1. **Pick some events of importance to early agrarian societies.** Basic examples: the new life of spring (plants in bloom, baby animals, etc.), the autumn harvest, the winter solstice.
2. **Flesh out some pagan traditions that would have come about in
response to these events.** Physical offerings, bonfires or mass candle-lighting, music and dance are some options to start, but don't be afraid to make them more specific. Pick certain symbols and details that cultures might latch onto over the years.
3. **Establish at least a few major religions of your world, based geographically.** Write out some myths and stories for them. Think about which ones would be most central to that religion.
4. **According to your world's history and geography, assign these religious meanings to your celebrations.** Consider which cultures were dominant in certain regions at certain points in history; this will affect how some religions will adapt to the existing religions of others, for example to avoid persecution.
5. **Give the holidays a few hundred years for the pagan traditions and religious traditions to merge and evolve.** Not all aspects of Christmas are Christian, for example, but not everyone knows this.
EDIT: The comments below are in agreement, so I'm updating this answer with the popular recommendation that historical/political events be given commemorative holidays as well. These holidays will probably be given distinct dates because of their historical relevance, rather than organically blending with religious holidays. They may develop some customs of their own that are loosely based on the event (Independence Day in the U.S. is a pretty big deal, for example), or they may remain exclusively legal holidays. You mentioned that you aren't particularly interested in legal holidays, but consider making a few history-based celebrations if they are particularly pertinent to your world or a certain country in your world.
[Answer]
Work with your history. You *do* have a history, right? If not, go and write one now, then come back to this answer.
While it is true that many holidays are religious - in fact the word derives from "Holy Day" - holidays are also inspired by other events such as military victories or defeats (such as ANZAC Day or Remembrance day), or by important milestones in public history, such as gaining the right to an 8-hour working day as opposed to a former 12-hour working day, or by sporting events (such as Melbourne Cup Day or AFL Grand Final Day) that people ignore work to attend anyway.
Most of your holidays will be annual events on a given date, but some that date back to events that occurred before the modern calendar was developed (for whatever value of 'modern' your world's calendar has) may be associated with particular seasons and/or astronomical events such as the phases of the moon(s), and may or may not occur every year, and thus may not occur on a single date.
For example, a certain important religious event may have happened as the first snow fell in the Holy City one year, and the holiday that is associated with this event may occur each year with the first snowfall of the year - either on the Holy City (in which case, people celebrate when they hear that snow has fallen there), or in their own location (what happens when there is no snow in that location - ever?). Our Christmas is traditionally a winter festival, so there is a certain amount of dissonance when celebrated in the hemisphere opposite to that in which it was conceived - Consider the incongruity of singing carols about snow in furnace-like summer heat.
In these sorts of cases, it is important to know not only when a holiday was conceived, but where, and to where has it spread since its conception. I've heard stories about a Japanese department store wanting to celebrate Easter one year, and because of the inexperience of the (primarily Shinto) staff in charge of setting up the Easter display with Christian traditions, the store set up a display of a crucified Easter bunny, which remained in place until it was pointed out to them that this was in fact inappropriate. However, your world may not have had someone to correct a holiday's misconceptions, and a holiday in this particular place and those settled from it may have what other people consider quite outrageous features as a consequence.
[Answer]
Holidays initially started as ways of marking the passage of the seasons (Easter and Christmas are both very near the spring equinox and winter solstice respectively, so the symbology of birth and rebirth has been adapted from other, far older celebrations). So the oldest holidays in your or any world will probably be related to the agricultural season, to reflect planting, harvest, midsummer and midwinter.
Now over the ages, various religions will have latched on to these, and as civilizations or societies rise and fall, the "old ways" may be adapted to the new (Saturnalia becoming Christmas is the easiest example). Tying holidays to other naturally occurring events is also fairly easy to do, so long as the events have some sort of regular pattern. The "Alt History" of Graham Hancock revolves around the precession of the Zodiac; many thousands of years ago, the Sun appeared in the constellation Leo during the spring equinox (it appears in the summer now), so spring holidays may well have revolved around lion mythology. (As more time passed, the precession shifted the constellations so that Taurus and later Pisces appeared with the sun.)
Monty's explanation is also quite good, and easily accounts for more "modern" and secular holidays, as well as some of the problems inherent in calculating just when a holiday should occur.
[Answer]
Answer the questions below and I think you will arrive at one, suiting your world best, by yourself,
What kind of calendar do they follow ?
What does the population do on a daily basis ?
How do they spend their days and how is their schedule organized ?
Who all hold authority over them and who do they hold with respect ?
Did something happen in the past in the world, when their world was built ?
What is the biggest question they have on their minds ?
What is the biggest deficiency in their society ? (Food, water, housing)
Hope this helped
[Answer]
Many real holidays have gained certain themes and traditions that accompany them. You can start with that and find an explanation for it.
## Examples
* Christmas is now much about **sharing joy** exemplified by exchanging presents.
* Many cultures have dress-up holidays (e.g. Halloween, Carnival) that allow people to pretend to be someone else and **escape daily routine** for a day.
* **Remembrance** or commemoration of several sorts is celebrated everywhere, mostly of defining or unifying events, but also for those who died, perhaps for a specific reason (e.g. war).
* Most individuals (and couples) are celebrated at a certain annual date where **only they are special** locally, e.g. day of birth, christening, death, coronation, wedding. For famous and important people, e.g. rulers and founders, their special day can become a national or religious holiday.
* **Thanks-giving** is also widespread, although the one thanked may be nature, gods, thy neighbor or someone else and the things or actions that gratitude is expressed for may differ as will the traditions on how to do so.
* Certain feasts are more likely to induce binge eating (e.g. Easter and Sugar Feast after fasting periods) and **family gathering**, others afford **public shows** (fireworks, parades).
* Many cultures have a holiday at which otherwise **improper behavior** like excessive drinking (e.g. St. Patrick) or other drug use or lying and pranking (April Fool’s) is tolerated or even expected.
* Some holidays mark the end or beginning of a certain **period economically important** for society. That used to be agricultural (meteorological or astronomical events, maybe with indicators in fauna and flora), but now can be just commercial like Black Friday / Cyber Monday.
* Most festivities have spawned specific **decorations** that include music (Christmas carols etc.) or noise (e.g. New Year fireworks), lights (ditto and candles or lanterns), colors (e.g. red, green, white and gold around Christmas), clothing (e.g. party hats, costumes, red underwear, veils) etc.
* Traditional **meals** may originate in seasonal offerings or sacrifices, e.g. meals (e.g. turkey on Thanksgiving, pumpkin at Halloween, lamb or eggs on Easter, Christmas cookies, cake, pastries, chocolate).
] |
[Question]
[
So, my world is a sphere (roughly) within [hyperbolic space](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbolic_space). Since the surface areas of spheres in hyperbolic space grows exponentially with radius, it has the same surface area of the Earth (indeed, we can assume that the surface *is* the exact same as the Earth (continents, countries, and all) for the purposes of this question), but only has a radius of 4 km (2.5 mi).
This means that you could, for example, start in the US, dig a 8 km tunnel, and end up in China. Indeed, you can reach any point from any point with a 8 km tunnel (ignoring the heights of mountains and stuff).
In the past, the hyperbolic nature of the universe has not affected the world, since humanity was stuck to the surface of the sphere (spheres in euclidean and hyperbolic geometry are the same), but towards the beginning of the twenty first century, the inhabitants started to be able to build tunnels through the world.
This of course has awesome economic potential, but many militaries are worried. **How do you stop enemies from digging under you country?** How do you stop enemies from digging into your base, or into your country, to either deploy troops, plant bombs, or even just dig a giant pit under you, your buildings, and your land?
Remember, they don't need to be next to you. Enemies anywhere in the world with the digging capability can easily get to you from below. Indeed, even if they are next to you, going through the center of the world is probably quicker. Not only that, but by going below, they can hit you anywhere, not just the border.
Note:
* It may be hard to visualize how a sphere with the surface area of earth but only a 4 km radius *would even be possible*. To do this, it might help to visualize it within the [Poincaré ball model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poincar%C3%A9_ball_model), centered on the world. Note how circles grow exponentially with respect to radius in this model, instead of quadratically. For example, look at the [heptagon tiling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heptagonal_tiling). A large circle of heptagons has a much smaller diameter than you would expect (note that all the heptagons are the same size).
* Once countries realized the economic, and more importantly *military* implications of the situation, they invested very heavily in digging and tunneling technology (similar to how on Earth, we invested heavily in nuclear technology). As such, tunneling technology is particular will be much more advanced than in our world. In particular, I imagine they might have developed "worm tanks", i.e. vehicles/drones that move through the ground without needing a tunnel.
[Answer]
Israel has developed several ways to find tunnels made by Hamas. There most [advanced one](https://www.timesofisrael.com/tunnel-detection-system-to-be-deployed-on-gaza-border/) relies on a series of sensors and computer systems that detect slight vibrations in the ground and triangulate them. But simpler models have worked relatively well for decades.
[In WW1](http://spartacus-educational.com/FWWtunnelling.htm) where mines were common, soldiers developed a whole host of means to detect mines before they were blown. These involved detecting the vibrations in the earth to digging their own tunnels and listening to the tunnel walls with stethoscopes. When a tunnel was detected they were broken into and blown up.
Considering how this world works, it would be reasonable for countries to develop a large warren of tunnels all over their country and set up listening posts, manned at first than automated as the technology developed, to ensure no one was trying to tunnel into their country.
[Answer]
>
> How do you stop enemies from digging under you country?
>
>
>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/IFbpb.png)
You dig under your country first, small tunnels with seismic sensors (which isn't going to be so easy, since you're receiving a planetary surface's worth of seismic waves from above). Then deploy mines, and an underground force to intercept enemy excavations.
With current technology it is relatively easy to drill a hole one kilometer deep. So drill lots of such holes, several at the same time to prevent seismically locating them. Then deploy sensors in every hole.
[Answer]
## Build up
You would want to build up anyway since there is so much more *room* up there. But building up also allows you putting things like heavily reinforced concrete in the enemy's path.
Of course, even the heaviest concrete can be breached, but it will take time and be very noticeable.
One might think that building a concrete floor under your entire country is not feasible, but in a hyperbolic universe it turns out you can.
That is, if you aren't too hung up on the idea of defending the original surface area. Instead you put down a thick and strong concrete slab on a few square kilometers. Then you build a few hundred meters up from that and suddenly you have room for everything and everyone you want.
Let the enemy have the rest of your old country, you don't need it anymore.
[Answer]
A 8km deep tunnel would collapse as the weight and pressure of the surrounding rock makes the rock behave more like a soft pliable plastic than a solid. Heat is the other big issue at about 4km down it is too hot for humans. In hyperbolic space the pressure may actually increase faster than on earth, more mass above a given area, so it will get softer and hotter faster than on earth.
the other issue os of course it takes a long long time to dig that deep, the deepest\* a human has ever gone on earth is about 3km. On top of that it is really really obvious so its not a surprise attack. Note this is digging into rock not cheating by finding a deep water trench.
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Water would be another way, like @Dan Clarke suggested Israel isn't alone in suffering from Hamas tunneling, Egypt is another country with the exact same problem (and the exact same cause to said problem) and their solution to it was to dig a moat and fill it with water around the Egypt\Gaza border and connect said tunnel to the ocean, any tunneling attempt will simply be flooded once reaching that tunnel.
[Answer]
From a story point of view, this could lead to an interesting mutation of submarine warfare. Each country builds a fleet of subterranean transports. They have digging apparatus in front and they pack the dug material behind them, so they can freely patrol under their own countries without literally undermining their own land and buildings.
They have seismic sensors to detect enemy craft or sappers. Drama could be created in a believable way by limiting the technology such that the sensors can only detect another craft if the sensing craft is not moving (since the action of tunneling creates too much "noise". That would mean that once an enemy has been detected, the captains of such craft would have to predict the motion of the enemy and decide when to start moving to intercept knowing they will go blind once they move, and they will be detectable. Then they could stop periodically to listen and "hide". Some kind of slow, tunneling torpedo would be interesting. It could be detected seismically like the craft, and it could attempt to home in on a tunneling signature, and may or may not lose lock when a target stops moving.
Alternatively, there could be seismic outposts that detect activity and use 3D triangulation to map out exactly what is moving where, and then they could use limited radio communications to guide their craft. Ferromagnetic ore deposits and veins could prevent radio communications, or merely "wet" earth with dissolved salts. All kinds of interesting technological challenges and solutions would arise in subterranean warfare.
[Answer]
In the 1980's the US released radar generated images of underground water channels of the Nile River - this [1996 article](https://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view.php?id=52410) shows some of them.
The real reason for releasing the radar images in the 1980's, was to show the Soviets that the US could spot their underground missile silos, no matter how well hidden they might be, by looking for the rather large gaps in the ground. A missile silo requires a fair amount of open space underground, and there's no way to mask that without looking like you're really trying to hide something.
So an advanced society could use space borne synthetic aperture radar to spot such tunnels early in their construction, and take appropriate countermeasures. That's in addition to seismic sensors... tunneling, especially through rock, is a very noisy affair.
If that planet had a molten core, as the Earth does, tunneling straight through the middle would be impossible.
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Note: I understand the approaches mentioned in this answer may be entirely infeasible for some literary scenarios. I'm not saying this is necessary the most universally useful answer for all scenarios. However, I propose this as a valid approach that may be useful in some scenarios, and therefore be worth considering (even if not for an exact scenario that you're currently actively thinking of, perhaps useful for some other scenarios that may be usefully worthwhile to include somewhere in your world).
If you have a bunch of friendly tunnels that pre-exist, then creating a new tunnel may seem like a pointlessly expensive venture. (If someone wanted to become an enemy, they may take an entirely different approach that is less expensive.)
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> **How do you stop enemies from digging under you country?**
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Take Switzerland's approach. The "Swiss army" may be most famous for something that is not a weapon of mass destruction that typically causes tremendous amounts of death, but for [a useful tool](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Army_knife). ([Wikipedia's article for “Neutral Country”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_country) notes that Switzerland and Sweden avoided the conflicts of World War 1 and World War 2.)
This approach may best be explained by this Presidential quote:
"The best way to destroy your enemy is to make him your friend."
-- Abraham Lincoln
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Very interesting geometric puzzle.
If I were an army inventing armaments to deal with that, I would take a lesson from Ender Wiggin: the enemy's gate is down. I would make a lot of weapons that are designed to be utterly vicious when fired downward. It'd definitely involve exploiting the properties of the world (whatever they truly are), but I'd try to make it so that the enemy is welcome to take advantage of this really fastpath, but to do so puts them in an incredibly weak position because they're going to be in line with my most dangerous weapons.
In theory, this is really just an adaptation of standard warfare policy. You always have more rapid responses prepared for the most rapid paths an enemy can take to your position. If they take the long route, I always have time to react.
For an amusing irony, this means "guns down" is actually the aggressive position, while having guns leveled at the enemy might actually be "average" level hostilities.
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You stand on a rock.
Just as the radius of the planet is absurdly small when compared to Earth, so are its inhabitants' brains when compared to ours. For the same ratio that you have between that planet and Earth's radii, a cranium with the same surface area as a human's would have a very small brain. Anyone's enemies probably have the intellect of a worm. They may dig as much as they want but they will not figure a way to dig through rock.
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The world I'm currently writing is an alternative Earth with Space Age tech that advanced much faster than our Earth because of Ancestral Guidance:
1. In the middle of every graveyard, there is a patch of special material (called Pactite). Once a person is buried in this graveyard, his memories and brainpower become eligible for Guidance.
2. Upon the birth of someone with a Guidance-eligible Ancestor, one of their ancestors randomly gets assigned as their Guide. From this point on, they are bonded until death (exceptions apply, see below) in an Ancestral Bond.
3. A person with a Guide can mentally talk with their Guide and ask them to do things within the power of the Guide, but they do not have direct control over the Guide. the Guide has heightened senses with reduced limits and can think independently of the Guided one, but cannot directly interact with the world or other ancestors.
4. At the age of 12, a ritual involving the ingestion of Pactite empowers the bond between the Guide and their Guided One into an Ancestral Pact. This pact has the following consequences:
* The Pacted obtains direct control over the ancestor's senses and mental acuity.
* The Ancestor remains as a voice inside the head to give advice.
* The Ancestor can directly communicate with other ancestors nearby.
5. Further ingestion of Pactite gives a temporary second Guide for 24 hours, but with a recovery period of 3 days involving reduced effectiveness of pactite ingestion and severe withdrawal symptoms. Ingesting Pactite while having the temporary second guide has a 50/50 chance of either making the second guide permanent or destroying all existing bonds permanently.
This Ancestral Guidance is essentially the gimmick of the world, but my problem is that I'm hoping to create a world where everything is explained through technology, and having your ancestors around kinda implies an afterlife, which I don't want. The Pactite started around 1300 BCE through alien intervention, so I don't mind having ultra high-tech solutions that would be impossible for that tech level, as long as they actually address the fact that memories and personalities from the deceased can be passed on.
I've read [How could ghosts be explained without an afterlife?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/9114/how-could-ghosts-be-explained-without-an-afterlife), and it kinda works, but it doesn't go far enough. This is more than just random traces of people remaining behind. This is about an entire imprint of the deceased applying itself to their offspring.
I have considered a solution like Assassin's Creed handles this, where your genetic code contains the memory of ancestors, but I don't like the major plothole where even memories after conception are passed on, and where you can even have memories from siblings passed on.
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Alien nanotech solves this simple enough. Strictly speaking "nano" is a misnomer here, maybe "microbots" might be better?
In anycase, the pactite is composed of these "very small" alien robots, which have following abilities:
1. to communicate with each other and form ad hoc communications and computation networks with each other,
2. to listen, record, and parse what happens around them,
3. to build new robots from surrounding matter
4. to remain active within human body for decades after being ingested
5. to rejoin with the main pactite after being buried close to it
6. to generate simulations of people based on recorded data
7. to vocalize simulated data audible to the person they are within
So you are not really talking with your ancestor, you are talking with a computer program simulating him running on the bots within your body.
The limitations can be explained as arbitrary rules or simply because the simulation programs are only designed for one simulated target so ingesting bots with a second personality running will cause random errors until the network fully syncs to the previously established simulation.
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An experiment to enhance individual intelligent succeeded in more than doubling the neural density of subject brains, but yielded no increase in intelligence. Further tests discovered that the new neurons remained seperate from the original brain matter, forming a seperate hyper-parrallel matrix which was capable of hosting a human level intelligence. The two matrices could interact through their interaction with the body which they share. They could literally push words into the cochlier nerves of their ears, creating sounds which only they can hear.
Pactite is the gene-therapy which initially creates and subsequently maintains the presence of the higher density brain tissue where the second consciousness lives. The consciousness comes to occupy that tissue via much more complicated neural transfer machine which is housed in the Hall of Ancestors and used during the inital bonding. The ancestor/guide-candidate consciousnesses are also stored at the Hall of Ancestors in the form of quantum photographs which detail the state of their brains at different points in their lives. Once per year, every guide-candidate has their brain quantum photographed so that if they die during the coming year, their collective knowledge will not be lost.
Pactite might also help in the quantum photographing process in a manner congruent with the dyes we currently ingest for some medical imaging techniques.
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What if the pactite is actually just a hallucinogen? One that provides a consistent mental effect among human users? It activates a part of the brain that allows for a mild telepathy or group conciousness, and the brain translates this as a voice providing advice. Alternatively it allows for a higher thought pattern that the human mind interprets as a voice providing advice. Nothing spiritual about it, just a mind-altering drug.
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You can do this with a very high resolution MRI scanner and some hand waving about AI imitating human thoughts. The MRI scanner can read the brain down to the atomic level, so a recently deceased person placed into your alien material so it's brain can be scanned. Since the person is dead, they are immobile and can be scanned at a very high resoluiton. The alien tech is able to extrapolate the neural network and protein strings into the memories and thought patterns of that individual. It then acts like a repository of thoughts.
For communication with a descendant, the alien tech could implant a small amount of itself into the brain, enough to allow for stimulation of the acoustic nerve to simulate hearing a voice and enough along the dura around the brain to be able to read at least the conscious "thoughts" of the host to allow for 2 way communication. The implanted material then communicates back to the repository via neutrinos, quantum entanglement, radio waves, whatever method you wish to achieve the limitations/range you need. Ingesting more would temporarily allow for a second set of implants but would compete with the first set for resources/energy (presumably the implants are leeching nutrients from the host or using blood vessel turbines for energy) so they deactivate after 24 hours in order to not over stress the host.
The limitations of this process would be that the dead person would have to be entombed fairly recently after death (with in a few days unless it is very cold or the brain could be preserved in some way) and significant brain trauma could limit the quality of the memories that could be extracted. Depending on how similar the "ghost" needs to be to the original person (i.e., does it just have the memories, or does it retain the speech patterns, sense of humor, ambitions, etc of that person) you would need specific regions of the brain intact.
Of course you will also have to determine if these ghosts can still evolve to new stimuli received from their descendant. Can they change their viewpoint? What do they do while the descendant sleeps? Are they in a virtual world or do they only "exist" when the descendant accesses them? Can they be emotionally affected by what happens to their descendant? Can an enemy bury their own dead in a graveyard and "hack" the memories stored there?
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Go for a Neuromancer solution, then.
In the first book of the series, there is a computer that will perform the following steps if it catches anyone trying to hack it:
* Copy the whole memory of the hacker into a chip;
* Kill the hacker.
The computer now has a "ghost" of that person, which lives only in the Neuromancer world's version of our internet. At some point a friend of such a victim steals the chip that contains his buddy and can have the ghost "live" inside his computer.
Even more mind boggling, one day he finds a ghost of himself in the net. He was copied at some point, without his meat body being killed.
So you could work it out like this: at some point in life, people have their memories copied into some sort of computer. Maybe people need to manually activate this, maybe everybody has a nano-computer in the head with a deadman's switch and a link to the net. And the brain-to-machine interface somehow depends on Pactite.
And in this way you can perform cyber séances!
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Find a tool that wraps the mind of a person. Reads and transforms all the information in a genetic code compatible with your brain.
If the brain of a person isn't capable to read any code then enhance it with another machine
Then upload this code onto other people...
I'm not sure if this would work with every dead person, probably it will be only effective if the brain is not completely destroyed in pieces.
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**Flash based ancestor**
Imagine that it's possible to encode someone's memories and personality and store them in a flash chip. Perhaps like the flash card of a camera. Initially this is invented as a way to prevent death. Everyone has a backup device installed when their craniums stop growing. It has tendrils reaching into the brain and is making a constant copy. Upon a person's death the flash card is removed and stored for safekeeping.
After the first generation of this, perhaps someone makes a machine with two slots. One for the constant copy and a second for the companion. New generation rolls around, one of the stored flashcards is given to a youngster, youngster installs flashcard and has access to a lifetime of memory and experience. A second companion with limited duration could be enabled by hot swapping the companion chips. (remove the old chip, but don't flush it from working memory, load a new chip, share computing resources) This would naturally tax the computing equipment and would not be safe for extended periods. Machinery starts to overheat and can cause permanent failure of the equipment (I'm sure you'll want to throw some brain damage in there too just to keep things interesting). Ancestor to ancestor communication happens over a mesh wireless network.
Two things are required here. Technology to store a memories and personality, the ability to then run that copy on a machine that can communicate with the natural-born personality. (All this could actually be feasible in a hundred years given the way technology is expanding)
**You are a hologram**
If you don't like the aesthetic of physical storage and tiny computers you could possibly use the notion that personality can be expressed as a holographic image atop the computing machinery we call the brain.
The natural personality is strongly expressed, but a copy made of a dead ancestor could be overlaid overtop. It would be an light image like a photocopy, transparent and less forceful than the host, but overlaid atop same machinery as the host.
A holographic reader could be used postmortem to capture the last state of a person who has died. Faint glimmers of the past companions might persist, but the copy of a copy would be faint. (otherwise you'd be getting persistent racial memory which is not what you asked for)
Multiple imprints could possibly exist simultaneously but could lead to all sorts of problems (bleed-through, missing parts, strange and random mixtures of the personalities --up to you ;-)
**Genetic memory**
How does a hunting dog know how to point? How does a newborn foal stand up and walk? There must be some component of behavior which is informed by genetics. Imagine a brilliant geneticist unlocks this secret and expands it. Imagine further that he or she invents a way to read all memories into a form which can then be passed on to another. I'd want this to be a destructive process or it gets out of hand quickly (you drink a potion on your deathbed, it blasts through your brain turning it to goo, encoding memories and personality traits as it goes. Your essence ends up stored in a vial.) The mechanism for delivery would be challenging. Perhaps a specially tailored virus painstakingly designed to splice the new memories in without destroying the old. Not sure how you'd cram a second one in there temporarily.
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# Philotes
Orson Scott Card in the *Speaker for the Dead* and *Xenocide* explained sentient life as a strings called [Philote](http://enderverse.wikia.com/wiki/Philote). These were bound to physical bodies allowing life to express itself in the universe. I'm pretty sure I'm butchering something here but that is the gist of it.
If your Pactite acted as an anchor to these multidimensional sentient end points they could transfer them to their corresponding ancestor. Card did something like this with a computer program connecting to the main character. Their is still plenty of flexibility to make the idea your own but it's a great foundation. It makes life itself a mystery still but allows for a true sentient consciousness to collaborate with after death.
The limitations could be due to the toxicity of the element adding possible plotline that someone develops a better version of the element. Or it could be overload of the human nervous system by having too many sentient being in their all at once.
# Familiars
Eastern mysticism and Christian tradition have a concept called "Familiar Spirits" where a demon or extra dimensional being will follow someone around and essentially impersonate them when summoned by a medium. Think of Philip Pullman's *The Golden Compass*
Since your world is high with technology a person may have a familiar or a companion (a nano bot as suggested by another answer or a big brother program with cameras everywhere) follow them that learns them and acts as them in proxy. Or the Pactite itself may absorb the persons memories allowing the memories to take a sort of conscious form.
More fun make the familiars an alien species that has been watching humanity for millions of years and the pacicite is their food or attracts them or something like that.
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What you're asking for is impossible.
You can't have a magical material that interacts with the consciousness of dead people without magic.
In the very moment electrical activity in the brain ceases (it's actually a period, not a moment, but that's besides the point) the "consciousness" of the dead person ceases to exist completely. (Unless it was somehow copied, as suggested by another answer, but even that would not be able to explain the weird rules you have for interaction with "pactite" unless these rules were artificially made by someone, though their reason for making these elaborate and seemingly nonsensical rules are anyone's guess)
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**Machine learning**.
There was an [actual project](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/2009/01/night_of_the_living_dad.html) on something in this direction (albeit much more primitive) proposed by the United States Department of Defence. The idea was to create a virtual persona, based on recordings of a soldier, to interact with the soldier's family "when phone and internet conversations are not possible" (e.g. when said soldier died in combat).
Given the recent advances in machine learning, it is not too far a stretch to imagine a future with machines that are attached to you for all your life (or just some later part of it), observe your behaviour and process it to learn "how you tick". At your life's end, these machines should have learned enough to imitate you in most situations. They are detached from your body, reprogrammed from recording to simulation and attached to the "Pactite".
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The only thing I can come up without 'magic' is the genetic code of your 12 year old's dna as you suggested at the very end. Ie ancestral events after conception wouldn't be possible.
You could have you pactite material store/absorb genetic material of you ancestors at time of death. That way you get all the 'memories'. Since your pactite is in the graveyard where the ancestor's are buried, this shouldn't be a problem.
You could have a combination of the two. When both genetic memories of the pacted and ancestor overlap the memories will be more clear, while when the memories of only the ancestor are still there but less clear or take more focus to reach/interact with/remember. Give you 'guide' a kindof early dementia/alzheimers...
Edit: It would also mean your ancestor would remember the entirety of their death and slightly after as the ancestor's dying cells shut down. If your ancestor had an especially traumatic death he could be haunted by this knowledge!
Further edit: activating the genetic memory of your pacted and ancestor would be a once off ceremony as you suggested. There would be no need for any technological maintenance or yearly checkup of your pacted to ensure the bond stays strong. I don't think you could have the memories of your siblings, unless they predeceased you and you got them as your guide.
DISCLAIMER: I'm not saying genetic memory IS a real thing. The science-based answer to that is that the entire scenario the OP described is unrealistic, unreal and a flat out 'no its not possible'. I'm saying IF it were, and you had sufficient technology to reach it, this COULD be a solution. Please don't downvote me for trying to fix a hole in a trope that has some basis in science but takes liberties with the range of memories available.
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I have only a rough understanding of this, but isn't there some kind of "Atomic" view of time, in which each moment is more like a physical thing than an abstract concept? All the moments are supposed to exist simultaneously. A few google searches couldn't find any more details and I can't remember where I heard about this. It might be my own misinterpretation of something I learned in a philosophy class.
Anyway, if time worked like that you could probably place some kind of communication device at one point and connect to it from another. There would have to be some explanation for limiting it to only one person that cannot interact with others.
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I like the solution used in the book "Gewist" by Marco Kunst (sorry I couldn't find its English name; read it in German)
In the story, there is an archive containing mankinds history including all important persons. Everyone entering the building gets his brain scanned and archived. A simulation based on this brain data allows visitors to interact with people dead since long ago.
You could use this in your world to allow communication with ancestors in a science fiction setting: Everyone has to back up his brain so that it can guide future generations (or: everyone's brain is scanned at his burial before the brain cells die or something like that). The simulation could run on a chip in the brain.
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There are a number of good answers that deal with how imprints might be made while the people are living, that can then be recycled into guides when the person is dead. Several generations down the road this covers a lot of immediately known ancestors. You mentioned in one of the comments you wanted this to work on ancestors who had died before the alien intervention occurred - since that's trickier, I'll focus on that.
So there are a lot of theories on how ghostly imprints (or [residual haunting](http://paranormal.about.com/od/ghostsandhauntings/a/Ghosts-What-Are-They.htm)) might be a kind of natural recording - some minerals, [geographic formations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Tape), and locations under certain circumstances might 'record' whatever is happening, and then under the right stimulus, probably requiring some access to energy, the area can 'play back' whatever was recorded. Often, the circumstances that lead to such recordings are tied to strong emotion. Gems and crystals are also sometimes said to be able to store this kind of emotional or psychic imprint. Don't worry, it's already in the question that you wanted something more interactive than these kinds of traces, but I thought this could be paired with your other requirements to make a solution.
So, if your people before the alien intervention had a couple of beliefs and practices, this can help make the whole thing work. They need a strong tradition of venerating ancestors, including praying to these ancestors for guidance, a sense of duty to their descendants, and the idea that lasting, living memory is somehow useful to spirits. They also need some idea or superstition of the stone tape type of residual imprints, which they happen to successfully use - I'm thinking some ritual jewelry, which happens to be made of the right crystals and the right mix of minerals, which is ritually given and worn every day of their lives, and which becomes the focus of their family's memory rituals after their death. So these crystals have some kind of emotional imprint or overlapping recording of the person's most intense emotional moments, as well as a bit of how others in their family remember them.
So, during alien intervention, a computer (or several) get dropped on your people. It might be bulky, or self replicating, or dropped in all differing locations, or have a really long range, or be actually connected to the Pactite, I don't actually know. Programs get generated for each Guided One - and maybe they were supposed to guide them (as some kind of social experiment from the aliens) or maybe they were only supposed to observe. As it happens, it uses some vaguely-similar crystal technology to store information - and predictably, that means it somehow actually picks up and interacts with the recorded imprints from the burial crystals. A program which has some of the memories, will self-identify as the person, and seek other memories that fit and discard those that don't, so it ends up one set per program even if they weren't actually programmed that way. Alternatively, once one program 'wakes up' it may deliberately try to pair the memory recordings with other programs either because it thinks that's how the programs are supposed to work, or because the person it's acting like realizes what's happened, and waking others will help their families. The two sets of stored information collide, and programs "wake up" with memories, *emotional* memories, of the people in the recordings.
This is starting from imperfect, static imprints and recordings, mind, but once the program self-identifies with the person, they can seek out other information about the person (from records, and living memories of Guided Ones), and *develop* their personalities based on the impressions they remember. And since they already have beliefs that ancestors are supposed to help guide and teach their descendants, they make the situation fit even if it wasn't what the programs and computer were originally supposed to be doing - which is why I mentioned that the programs might not have been meant to guide, but only observe or even other things (since this is a really tricky thing to intend). Once the programs have emotional memories, they will self-identify with the person and act as the person would, not necessarily as the program should. They might also resist deletion once their guided one is dead, and prefer to work with only their own bloodlines if they can. The society that has them might advance more quickly by having ancestors given time and memory storage to think about and plan new things, to not lose bits of information to death or forgetfulness, to simply have more minds working on any given project, or even by having some access to things stored in the alien computer - with strict limitations on what's actually in the computer, what they can understand, and what they can use.
So, my first thought was the Pactite itself was the source of the computer and programs directly - nanomachines or the like. However, since you mention in a comment that you might not want everyone to be dosed with nanotech, maybe there's another solution. Maybe people in your world have a low-level telepathic ability - obviously a science-compliant one. Low level enough to be subconscious and have people be mostly unaware of it (maybe it comes out in hunches or intuition). Perhaps that is why the people could successfully make the stone tapes for recording in the first place. In this case, the Pactite might boost the native ability long enough form a link or alter their minds to make a permanent conduit through which their Guide can find them. Their native ability might be enough for maintaining the link once it's set up. On the other hand, if ingesting more Pactite just boosts the telepathy, that wouldn't necessarily create a second link - but it might be that no one does ingest it without that intention, so the second guide is actively trying to create the link at that time. Or maybe it's not actually telepathy, but somehow the combination of the Pactite and the rituals let a (wireless) link be built to a main computer, where the programs live.
As a bonus, the period of time in which all this is getting set up (the memories meeting the programs) would seem to be the ancestor spirits adapting to the boost the Pactite gives (and the changing rituals), and figuring out dosage and empowering on both sides, for the guide and guided. The framework for ancestral guidance is already present, and if they already have coming-of-age rituals incorporating the Pactite and guides can be easily done once they have some ideas for what works. And, double bonus, this doesn't have to be something the aliens *intended*, per se (as it is a strange and difficult thing to do on purpose). The aliens might come back and discover their observation computer has been taken over by programs, which somehow have emotional attachments to their subject *and* identity disorders, and be very confused.
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One solution is **genetic memory**. (Memories of the guide will be limited to until the ancestor conceived the subsequent ancestor).
In this solution, Pactite doesn't summon the ghost of the ancestor, but activates their genetic memory.
In our world's humans, it doesn't work this way. Our genetic memory is extremely course and unrefined. Generally, our genetic memory is stuff like "don't drink something that smells like acid, it will kill you" and various warning things of death or near-death situations.
In your alternate world, if biology has a lot more robust mechanic for managing genetic memory, it could contain much more detail (and result in cells having noticeably larger nuclei) although to avoid bloat, there would probably also be a mechanism to only keep around genetic memories for so many generations. However, to activate it, normally requires some kind of intimate contact with the one memories are pulled from, and of course they have to be an ancestor.
For obvious cultural reasons, eventually intimate contact with people much younger than you was frowned on, but the Pactite leeches bodily oils and fluids from a deceased corpses nearby and holds it like a sponge, but is dissolved on ingestion allowing for close chemical contact between the imbiber and their ancestor. Technically, the pactite contains fluids from everyone in the graveyard, but the person only has genetic memories activated from their ancestors (because that's the only one they contain). It also explains how extra ingestion cause problems and withdrawls, as they're getting too many mixed signals.
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I've asked before about my [polytheists with competing moon gods](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/71/28). I now have a better understanding of how tides -- a very visible manifestation of lunar influence -- work with multiple moons (thanks), but now I need to disrupt it.
My story calls for a human spaceship observing this planet (presumably from orbit) to *unintentionally and unknowingly* interfere with the lunar power dynamic on the planet. It's ok if they would realize it if they stopped to think about it; i.e. they're allowed to be careless. But they're not malicious. Is there some mechanism by which this could happen or do I need to rethink my premises?
Constraints:
* Timeframe is unspecified but I'd like there to be a credible path from "earth today" to whatever technologies are called for. I'm not looking for magic.
* It helps my story if the effect is gradual, but something that produces an effect immediately noticable on the planet is workable.
* The planet (of unspecified size) has at least three moons. More are acceptable. (Three are important to the plot.)
* An effect that causes the ship to be interpreted (on the planet) as a new moon is ok, so long as it has gravitational effects on the planet as if it were a (small?) moon.
* The natives of the planet are pre-industrial.
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If the effects of the tides are significant, and the spaceship inhabitants are observing the planet, it's likely that they would know that they are influencing the tides of the planet. However, if they're on some sort of commercial mission, rather than a "don't interfere/we come in peace" mission, it's highly likely that they may just not care. If that's the case, then there are numerous things that a spaceship could do that might affect the tides of the planet. Here are some examples:
**The spaceship could be really big**
A spaceship big enough to affect the tides would act like another moon, though tidal effects would be more variable/random if the spaceship was moving around. In this case, the spaceship would probably be visible from the planet, though cloaking fields etc. could negate this. Effects on the tides wouldn't come all at once, but rather would be a steady shift towards a new tidal equilibrium. Tides are a resonance phenomena, so it will take a few days/weeks for the tides to shift into the new pattern.
**The spaceship could produce artificial gravity**
Things like Alcubierre drives rely on warping space, which would likely affect the tides. Since this would be a less constant effect, it would probably cause something more like a tidal wave than a consistent change in tides. There *would* be a consistent effect if the spacecraft was using artificial gravity to stay at a certain non-natural orbit. For example, if a spacecraft wanted to be in a geosynchronous orbit, but at a low altitude, the craft could do this by reducing the effect of gravity from the planet on the ship. If this reduction in gravity affected the ocean under the planet, it would cause tidal effects.
**The spacecraft might need to either dump things into the ocean or suck up water**
A huge craft spending a few days/weeks replenishing internal water supplies by sucking up water would definitely cause tidal effects if it was using something like a gravitational tractor beam to do so. Likewise, a spaceship dumping all of its garbage would cause huge tidal waves. If they were cleaning out some internal holds by sucking up and dumping water repeatedly, this could cause alternating super low tides and tidal waves, along with massively disrupting currents on the planet.
All of these things would be very noticeable for the people in the spaceship, but they might not care. They may also not be paying any attention to the significance of changing the tides on the planet for the people below. Consider the effects of oil prospecting in the rain forest on the natives living there. The prospectors aren't really unaware of what their presence does, but they don'r necessarily think or care about the consequences. I could definitely see a space faring nation having similar attitudes towards a pre-industrial culture.
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All the answers so far dealt with the ship creating gravity itself. But there's another possibility: The ship might have some sort of gravity shields (to allow to pass close nearby heavy objects like neutron stars or black holes during travel without the ship being damaged), and they might have forgotten to switch them off after arrival. Now every time they pass between one of the moons and the planet, they disturb that moon's gravity (by shielding parts of the planet from it), and thus interfere with the tides.
So, how plausible are gravity shields? Well, at least not less plausible than artificial gravitation or Alcubierre drives. There's the claim by [Podklednov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Podkletnov) to have observed such an effect. There's no independent verification and great doubts about it, so this is far from accepted science, but at least it's more than we have for artificial gravity, where I'm not aware of even a claim of observation. If Podkletnov is right, a gravity shield would be made of rotating superconductors.
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I'm no physicist and don't know much about gravity, but I do know quite something about tides. My hint would be to look into resonance. Some areas on earth have extremely high tidal amplitudes (for example Mont Saint Michel in France, but there are more) because the length of the basin is 1/4 of the tidal wavelength at sea. This results in a standing wave pattern, with extremely high amplitudes. Also, while most coasts experience high/low water levels twice a day, some have it once a day. Of the many tidal frequencies that are present, the once-a-day frequencies are resonant along that specific coast, resulting in one high tide and one low tide per day.
Now back to your question, a spaceship still needs to be pretty large to induce a tidal signal, but if city X lies at the head of bay Y and bay Y happens to be resonant to the (small) tidal signal of the spaceship, the resulting tidal amplitudes may still be significant. Of course this is a local effect, but may have big consequences for city X. And since it's such a local effect, it is also very difficult for the spaceship-crew to anticipate beforehand.
[1st time commenter, please be patient with my input and non-native English]
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Since moons affect tidal patterns on planets using gravity; I would say that's what we would have to focus on as a spaceships only means to affect tides on a distant planetary body.
Obviously, a single spaceship shouldn't have the same gravity as a moon. But let's take it a step further.
As we all know by now, the idea of "warp drive" has been a seriously considered form of FTL travel. Since your story will have a human spaceship visiting a distant planet, it would only make sense that there is some form of FTL travel (like warp drive?) available in your universe/timeline.
So let's take it a step further. Since warp drive relies on manipulating large amounts of gravitational force to manipulate space-time; maybe the spaceship could be have an early version of warp drive that didn't have all the "kinks" worked out yet.
Maybe the spaceship has to charge "gravity" up before it's ready for a warp jump to the next star system or galaxy!?
EDIT\*\*\*
The "obviously" part may have been a bit misleading.
So let me lay out my reasoning for that statement based on the following assumptions:
For a spaceship to be large enough to affect the tidal patterns of a distant planet (the distance, of course, would be dictated by the gravitational pull of the and the distance the object was from the planet) it would require that the spaceship to be the same mass as a moon! That would seem to be pretty huge.
Even if, the civilization was advanced enough to build a structure/spaceship that large.
There are many reasons to *not* build ships so large for the sake of efficiency. First of all, newtons laws of force and motion would still apply to an object in space. Therefor, the greater the mass of the object they are moving (propelling the spaceship would require more energy to move a large spaceship than a small one; not to mention how much more it would take when approaching the speed of light).
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Let's suppose that the ship enters the system at a speed near the speed of light and they have a problem braking. The apparent (relativistic) mass of the ship could be quite high, and if they pass near enough one of the moons they can change the orbit the amount you need to disrupt it. They can manage to solve the problem later and come back to observe the planet, maybe not realizing they have caused such a mess (although this is quite naïve...).
If the effects are, for example, on the farthest moon and the main effect is to change the eccentricity, I can imagine that the effects could be somehow graduals, when the changed moon orbit interact with the others...
As noted in comments, it's true that the time of interaction will be short, but you can suggest that the orbit of that moon was not so stable anyway (n-body systems are really complex --- as far as I know Earth's orbit isn't really stable, it's changing a bit) and that the "nudge" can move it to another kind of quasi stable condition... like this:
Please note: I'm a layman on orbital mechanics --- my field is electronics. But there are oscillators that can behave like that, so maybe it's not impossible in orbital configurations.
This is not at all an original idea --- I can remember somewhere similar in a SF book I read, but I can't remember which one. Maybe something in The Algebraist (Iian M. Banks?)
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I can think of two uses for gravity generation aboard a spacecraft. The first is environmental, keeping crew and components from floating around while the ship is outside of a planet's gravity well. The second is locomotion, some form of space/time warping device.
The environmental system would probably be too weak and localized to fit your needs, unless the ship was truly massive (in which case its own mass might serve your purposes).
The propulsion system would probably be much too strong when engaged. Altering planetary orbits is not your goal... you just want to move a little water. So that leaves the propulsion system at rest. Perhaps, as well behaved explorers, your humans turned off their warp drive well outside of the solar system and have drifted in using more conventional propulsion. But even with these precautions, the warp drive itself, even when turned off, emits a powerful field, approximating the strength and scope of a small moon.
The environmental system would therefore serve two purposes... keeping the crew's feet on the ground and helping them resist the gravity of their engine.
As for any of this being feasible, given what we know about gravity, I am not qualified to say. As far as I know, we can feel gravity, measure it, depend on it and even occasionally defy it... but we have yet to figure out how to create it sans planetary masses.
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The other answers have, unfortunately, all been too kind. You cannot affect the tides in any sort of spaceship of non-ridiculous size, you cannot move a spaceship of ridiculous size, and the technical demands for hypothetical singularity-based drives are (in addition to not being widely accepted as consistent with modern physics) so far past what we have now that there's no credible path there from "earth today".
However, very much science fiction is written without a credible path from "earth today", or in blatant contradiction with physics. So don't let that stop you! It just makes the science fiction a bit less hard.
Anyway, the thing to realize about tides is that the forces involved are immense. The tides dissipate 3-4 TW of energy on the Earth, or about 1/4 of the total power usage of all humans on the planet. *Accidentally* imparting anywhere near that much energy to a planetary system seems hard to do unawares (only really possible with antimatter-based energy sources; you would need to waste an extra gram of antimatter per three minutes to equal the tidal dissipation on Earth). Doing so via something other than gravity (which is extraordinarily hard to manipulate) without causing huge visible effects also seems unlikely.
The bottom line is that orbiting in a spaceship is a pretty low-impact activity, while changing tides is a big one. It would be more plausible if one of the premises were changed (e.g. one of the moons is actually the spaceship, and they are maneuvering it to begin a million-year journey to a different solar system; or the spaceship isn't there just to quietly observe but to perform massive resource extraction, which they think they can manage by huge-scale seafloor mining with drones, which is largely true except for the (gradual) change on the tides).
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I'm going to answer the part about "unknowingly".
If your civilization regularly uses spaceships near planets, it is wholly implausible that they do not know that spaceships affect tides. Thus, you need something extra happening that circumvents this conventional wisdom.
Some possibilities are
* It is well-known that you're not supposed to operate this type of spaceship near planets precisely because of how they disturb the planet. Everybody follows the rule, and so common knowledge waters down to "don't do it, that's the rule". Your observers have decided to break this rule, because they have an urgent need to observe the planet and aren't satisfied with any method that adheres to the rule. Your observers are so caught up in trying to *rationalize* breaking the rule that they haven't yet given any honest thought as to why the rule exists.
* The ship is malfunctioning. It's not *supposed* to be emitting a gravitational field, but the Einstein couplings are leaking. These are important for correctly containing and directing the immense gravitational fields that are built into the interstellar engine, but the leakage doesn't impair their ability to maintain planetary orbit, and for whatever reason the crew simply haven't had a reason to run a diagnostic on their gravity engines, and so haven't yet noticed the leak.
* The spaceship is alien, and humans don't yet have *practical experience* with the technology. This may be the first ship of this type that humans have ever piloted near a planet. In retrospect, it's obvious that the ship could emit enough of a gravitational disturbance to affect tides, but nothing has prompted the observers to even consider the question. Maybe nobody has ever considered the question yet, or any of the many reasons why it wouldn't be common knowledge yet. ("Of course it would affect the tides, that's obvious! Why would I need to tell that to anybody?")
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**Someone left the artificial gravity on.**
The [Alcubierre drive](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive) works by manipulating space-time so that you ride a 'wave' of gravity forward at any speed. You might use this same technology to create a more static artificial gravity over a given area.
When in deep space, your ship can produce **artificial gravity by emulating a large mass** some distance below the ship, and letting otherwise-natural gravity take over from there. The mass of our own moon is about 7\*10^22 kg. To get 1 g from that naturally, you'd need to place the mass [162 miles](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=sqrt%28G%20*%2010%5E22%20kg%20%2F%201g%29&a=UnitClash_*g.*StandardAccelerationOfGravity--&a=UnitClash_*G.*GravitationalConstant.dflt--&a=UnitClash_*kg.*Kilograms.dflt--) below the ship. This is really the furthest you'd need to put it: The mass and distance would be much lower if the ship were closer to the planet than our own moon is, or if the tides don't need to be as strong. You could either make this place of artificial mass be something like a point mass (a tiny black hole) which might be visible and have little particles streaking around it, or something subtler, like an even density field over a sphere or other shape. If you want the center of mass to be contained within the ship instead of below it, you can have it malfunction so that the gravity is stronger outside the ship instead of inside, like it should be.
**Normally this gravity is switched to a local-only mode** (it uses significantly more energy, but creates a gravity effect limited to the ship) **when you approach a planet** or another ship to avoid dangerous interference, but **due to a malfunction or mistake, it was left on** this time.
The sudden introduction of this gravity source **will slowly begin affecting the tides**, and when they realize it's happening they can get it fixed. It will also pull the other moons and planet, but you can engineer it so that this is a negligible or significant thing, based on whether the ship is nearer to the planet or the moons.
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All the current answers are god, but they require the ship to act like a mass that is comparable in size to the planet. That seems problematic. Maybe the ship could instead investigate the lightest of the many moons (somewhat asteroid sized) from a low orbit around it, which slightly alters that moons (presumably somewhat instable) orbit, which causes it to influence a slightly bigger moon in a domino effect, etc. etc. (maybe there is even some slingshotting involved). Finally, after (many) years the "main" moon changes its orbit - maybe it even happens that the "second in command" moon god gets promoted.
I'm not too sure about the premise of an easily influenced mini-moon, however. If the system has so far been stable enough to survive asteroid impacts, the mini-moon orbits are likely in rather stable orbits and in some resonance with the bigger moons.
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Is it important that the humans didn't intend to disrupt the lunar orbits, or merely that they didn't intend to affect the indigenous culture?
While it would be difficult for a spacefaring race to not be aware of their impact on lunar orbits (they're going to chart them just to make sure they don't run into anything, at the very least), it might be that they've believed in science long enough that they've forgotten that their ancestors used to worship celestial bodies. If they haven't run into a lot of other races, and if they don't see a sea of artificial satellites in orbit, they might genuinely be surprised that the "unsophisticated" natives are even capable of noticing a change in lunar orbits. Yeah, sure, they might affect the tides, but ecologically, what's important is that the tides happen, not that they happen on schedule, amirite?
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What about the ship having some kind of spacetime warping alcubierre drive? This would affect spacetime, thus behave gravity like. To not disturb star systems, standard procedure is to disengage the drive far enough from other gravity wells. But this time some slight miscalculation caused it to be disengaged a bit nearer to the planet.
This in itself is normally not a big deal, and everyone aves it of, as the distance is just a security measure, but this time due to, well, lets call it "gravitational coupling" or so, it took the warping field quite a while longer to wear of, and it affected the outer moon, but just a bit, mostly unnoticed.
Even this would normally be not a big deal, but N body systems are notoriously unstable, and this gave that moon a little kick into the wrong direction. Due to complex interaction between the three (or even more moons if you want), they start disturbing each other, changing orbits, and if you like could even collide or shoot of one of theirs... this would be gradually noticeable, probably on the timescale of months or even years.
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Quite simply, you can't.
The key part here is "unknowingly". If you have a structure large enough (simply massive) or advanced enough (gravity shields or internal gravity or something) to actually interfere with the tides, then it is *undoubtedly* being piloted by a very advanced species that has a full understanding of tides and is aware of the effects on a planet.
Our incredibly primitive culture had a keen knowledge of the tides for [thousands of years](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide#History), despite having the ability to reach space for a couple dozen. By the time a species has the ability to build a structure advanced enough to effect tides, they will have mastered the simulation capabilities far beyond what is necessary to account for tidal forces.
Whether or not they care is an entirely different matter.
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Somebody left the tractor beam on or a control system accidentally malfunctioned activating the tractor beam. While this comes close to magical space technology effectively every other answer to this question invokes one form of magic space technology (Charles Stross TM) or other. This concept is modest by comparison, apart from the ludicrous energy requirements which have been discussed in at least one answer, with hurricane-force handwaving in the other answers. Mine is a gentle breeze in contrast.
No-one seems to have considered the possibility of a quantum gravity space-drive inadvertently leaking excess gravitons into nearby space. That could make it look like there was a new moon. if they have interstellar travel, there is every reason to expect science will solved the problem of quantum gravity and developed technology based on it. What better technology than a space-drive.
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Too long for a comment.
**TL;DR** Whatever you do, that effect has to be pretty strong.
**Explanation:** If you have three moons, the tides (depending on the moons' trajectories) might be very chaotic, nowhere near the pre-industrial capabilities of tidal forecasts. We have several possibilities:
1. Somehow, the tides were *very* important and that one domain was much more developed than any other.
2. The forecasts are rather coarse.
3. The forecasts are done only for places which have physical properties that make the flow easy to predict.
4. They don't use forecasts, only observe the tides after the fact.
With each of these there are some problems:
1. Flow dynamics (including resonating systems) is one really hard domain that we still work on. I think it's highly improbable for them to be able to do accurate tidal forecasts. But hey, it's your story. If you want to follow this path, perhaps you could have placed (a few hundreds years before the actual story is set?) some out-of-their-time character (crashed spaceship?) with only one survivor who had taught them how to calculate the right numbers for their planet.
2. The effect of the spaceship has to be visible over the chaos and their coarse tidal forecasts. Any such effect would influence other things (perhaps more noticable).
3. The effect has to get through the thing that makes the tides predictable. Similarly, any such effect would influence other things.
4. Knowing what should have happen is easier, but still rather hard. As the tides were chaotic to begin with, when something unpredictable happens it would be most likely taken as "oh bother, what we though isn't quite right, there some new factor we missed...". It takes a whole new level of reasoning to arrive at "our results were quite good, but diverged, however, our current results are still consistent if we would assume this new huge blob of mass somewhere here near our planet...".
I hope this helps $\ddot\smile$
] |
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[
So, I’ve seen other settings before where magic-users – mages, sorcerers, wizards and similar – are basically gods. There have been fantasy stories where a mage can singlehandedly wipe out an army, and no mundane man could challenge them. In those settings, the mages typically have forcefield shields, endless magical bolt attacks, flight, telepathic communication or whatever.
I would like to strip all of that away, and ask what is the best way of implementing of a more limited form of magic during wartime? How would mages realistically be used in battle and warfare?
In my world, magic is a concept that exists but there are pretty hard limits on how much of it a person can use. Firstly, I'll highlight the levels of power that I'm considering.
Basic assumptions:
* Mages are all imperfect humans. Like any regular soldier on a
battlefield, a magic-user is prone to miscommunication,
friendly-fire, or even panic. Come battle, a mage requires training
and command to keep them in formation,
* Besides a defined number of spells, mages do not have any superhuman
capabilities. Their reaction speed, their awareness, and their
durability are the same as a regular person,
* The quantity of mages is limited in number. It requires a large amount
of study to use magic, typically decades. Due to the time and
dedication involved, most experienced mages tend to be quite elderly,
Restrictions of magic:
* A mage can typically cast a **maximum of three spells per day**. After
casting three spells, they require a full day to recuperate their
strength,
* After every spell, it takes around **one hour of recharge time**,
* It requires intense concentration to cast a single spell,
* There are serious, life-threatening consequences involved with
casting too many spells too quickly,
* **Magic works in short, powerful bursts**. A typical spell lasts no more
than a few seconds,
* It is impossible to maintain magic for any extended period –
attempting to create and then maintain a magical barrier would drain
the mages very, very quickly.
* A mage **requires direct line of sight** to the target to aim the spell,
* The power of a spell is inversely proportional to its range. If a
mage tries to target something a long distance away, and the energy
will dissipate over that distance. The **range of a spell is
approximately half that of a longbow**,
* There is a trade-off between power and precision when casting magic.
For example, a mage could launch a large fireball into enemy lines,
but that would be difficult to control and he wouldn’t be able to aim
very well. Alternatively, a mage could launch a concentrated beam of
heat to evaporate a single enemy’s skull, but that would require a
lot of focus and he wouldn’t be able to put much power behind it,
* To cast a spell, a **mage must be holding a large, two-handed staff**,
* However, there are no restrictions on their clothing or armour. A
mage doesn’t need to wear robes, he could wear full-metal plate.
Likewise, before and after casting, the mage could swap weapons to
hold a sword and shield if necessary,
* Magic originates from the caster’s staff and requires a direct medium
to reach its target. A mage cannot telekinetically crush a man’s
heart with magic, for example. The mage could only crush a man’s heart
if he placed his staff directly against the man’s chest,
* Depending on the circumstances, a spell can be blocked or deflected,
* A spell cannot work passively. There is no such thing as a magical
shield,
* Enchanting or imbuing other objects with magic is not possible,
* No spell exists that allows far-seeing, scrying, or instantaneous
communication. The most that a mage could do is fire up a signalling
flare,
* No spell exists that allows direct mind control,
* No spell is powerful enough to significantly control the weather.
Capabilities of magic:
* Most mages use and specialise in elemental control, but other
specialities exist.
* There are quite a variety of different spells that can be cast,
usually limited only by the caster’s own skill, power and focus,
* For example, a mage could cause the surrounding air to spontaneously
combust into a fireball. He could also gather static in his hands and
generate a lightning bolt. He could also telekinetically create a fissure
in the ground beneath him. Alternatively, he could pull moisture from
the air, or manipulate air pressure to form a shockwave. However,
they are limited by peak power,
* For a rough approximation of their maximum power, a **mage might launch
a fireball with a five-metre impact diameter**,
* When faced with a solid castle wall, a mage would be able to create
cracks in the stone and tear it apart, provided that he was close
enough proximity. This **could be used to break through walls, gates
and fortifications**, no battering ram required,
* No single type of spell is ‘fixed’ – there’s a large amount of
freedom for creativity during casting,
* Manipulating light and creating hollow illusions is possible, but
again these illusions are restricted in range and duration,
* It also possible to mages to ‘curse’ or ‘hex’ individuals. They can
artificially induce the symptoms of various ailments or diseases
against their enemy. This requires a lot of focus,
* Most mages have one or two speciality spells, depending on the
individual. A mage can often perform their preferred spell with great
efficiency, but they would struggle to cast any other different
spell.
The above are general guidelines – there are some individuals that would be stronger, others are weaker, but that’s about what a commander could expect from an average mage.
Basically, mages are like cannons that can fire very infrequent, very powerful, short-range attacks. However, unlike cannons, they are fleshy men in the middle of the fighting.
I imagine that a magic bombardment would be very good at breaking through walls or scattering a cavalry charge. However, a skilled archer can still outshoot a mage by quite a large margin, and so mages would still be very vulnerable to a hail of arrows. Archers can fire a lot further and a lot more regularly. In the thick of fighting, the enemy would probably train their marksmen to target any figure holding a staff.
Also unfortunately for mages, they do need to be on the front line to be really effective. They don’t have the range of siege weapons. You could guard them with a shield wall, but the mage still needs line of sight and a clear target to fire a magical blast.
So, the question: **how does the existence of mages of this level affect military warfare and strategy in this world?**
Let us assume that you are a general; you have an army of conventional forces (such as archers and crossbowmen, infantry and spearmen, knights and mounted units, etc.), and you also have a limited number of mages to support them. Let’s assume a few dozen mages among a thousand men. What is the best strategy of using these mages in battle, bearing in mind their effectiveness and weaknesses? What formations do you use, how do you get most use out of them?
I’m especially interested in consideration of different types of combat. How would mages influence a pitched battle? Or what about when besieging a castle? Do you use them differently during skirmishes or raids, or is there a better place for them off the front lines altogether?
Also, what do you do when the enemy has a larger number of mages in his army? How do you defend against them?
I have my own thoughts on the subject, but I’m curious to see what other people suggest.
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In this world you've created, mages are essentially more flexible forms of ordinance. In that way, as colmed suggested in their answer, you can look to how modern or renaissance war deals/dealt with that technology.
Here are some other things to consider:
* The point of a battle is not to kill every enemy soldier. **The point of a battle is to convince the enemy soldiers that if they don't run away *right now*, they will die**. So, as with any military asset, you want to be clever in how you employ mages, and they may be best used to strategically frighten and surprise enemy troops. For instance, if you pin down an enemy unit with infantry, and then hit them from the flank with magic that goes boom, that unit will be more likely to break. Sure, arrows may kill more of the enemy than a spell, but do arrows go 'boom?' No, no they do not.
* Deception is a big part of war. There are lots of ways to use mages to deceive your enemy, especially in crucial seconds of a battle. But moreover, you could **deceive your enemy *about* your mages**. Remember, the mere presence of mages on the battlefield is frightening. But how can you tell a mage is a mage before they start casting spells? By their staff? By their robe and wizard hat? *Anybody* can wear those and pick up a fancy looking staff...
* Given the ranges involved and the fragility of the human mages, they may not be what you want to commit at the beginning of the battle. It's easy to imagine battles being **somewhat of a rock-paper-scissors situation**: archers kill mages, melee troops kill archers, mages kill melee troops. Now *obviously* this is an oversimplification and depends on the specific battles, but I think you can build battles around trying to waste your opponent's archers' ammunition (or killing all the archers outright), and then subsequently bringing your mage corps to bear on the infantry. Or you could sucker your opponent into thinking they've killed all your archers, committing their mages, and then revealing your secret stash of longbowmen to rain death upon the mages. The possibilities are endless!
* Cavalry mages?????
* As you say, mages might be very effective as siege engines. Being able to walk up to a city and knock down a wall without having to build a catapult or drag it along with you drastically changes the math. Siege tunnels become much more dangerous too, since it can bring your mages close to the wall without risk.
* You might also have (mercenary?) units that are mixed mage/warriors. So, for instance, they each know one spell, fire it into the enemy, draw their swords, and then charge. Swedish musket pikemen did this to great effect in our world, firing their guns, dropping them, and immediately charging into their adversaries. Check out King Charles VII of Sweden and the Great Northern War.
* Mages themselves will try to make themselves seem scarier than perhaps they are. Sure, your mages are pretty limited, but superstitious soldiers don't necessarily know that. For thousands of years, hucksters have been convincing people they're magic... imagine if those hucksters could actually *do* some magic. You could have a school of mages the pretend that they can perform multiple spells in an hour by having one mage stand up and make big, impressive motions, while his colleagues do spell after spell, one at at time. If you used that school in your mage corps, other countries might be loathe to attack you because they think that school is significantly more powerful than their own. Or culturally, it may be a closely guarded secret that mages need time to recharge... *I*, for one, wouldn't want some punk with a knife to know that I used up my one-spell-for-this-hour blasting his buddy to smithereens.
Now that you've set the limits, you get to decide how your characters work around those limits, and how your cultures have built themselves to deal with them. You said it yourself: mages are just people, so they're going to get creative... and stubborn, and thickheaded, and brilliant, and sneaky, and arrogant, et cetera. This is the fun part!
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By far the best way to use your mages is manipulating the environment. Have mages erect barriers of dirt, dig trenches, cause landslides, dig holes to make choke points, flood the enemies camp at night, damage the battlefield to halt a charge and pave transport routes to make supply lines more efficient. Risking the lives of such great support troops by having them actively participate is something a foolish general might do, and he will lose to a support mage using general 95% of the time.
And of course, most mages probably know earth and water magic. Do you know why? Because their main job is probably cultivating fields. Tilling swaths of land easily, ending a drought by launching water out of the river into the sky above fields. Digging waterways through hills that a normal farmer couldn't. Paving roads much flatter and harder on trading routes than any normal person can. Breaking up large sections of rock in a mine like an early version of dynamite. Basically mages would be a separate class above peasants but below nobility, where they do work, but only as much as a mage can do a day. A delicate balance of maximizing a mage's abilities but not pissing off a man who can shoot lightning at you. Of course they can't rebel because of their archery weakness, but a noble will prosper if he keeps his mages happy and working, so he tends to treat them better than the average serf.
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# Look at historical precedents for such a weapon
### [Carronade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carronade)
This 18th century Naval weapon was a large bore, short barrel, short range, and low muzzle velocity weapon. These were loaded with shotgun type grapeshot or canister shot, or else with specialized barshot or chainshot. These later types were intended to damage rigging, while the grapeshot was designed to damage personnel.
Following this example, suggests that mages would be utilized for a few powerful and distributed shots to disrupt enemy personnel or equipment. Instead of a single fireball, the mage would be used for anti-personnel blasts, firing projectiles (or chain lighting) at multiple targets for maximum personnel damage. Alternately, the mage could be used to damage equipment like rigging at sea, or to try to light a boat on fire. The same could be applied to seige equipment.
### [Minion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minion_(cannon))
Very similar to the Carronade, this was smaller and designed for use on land. A notable existing one is '[Boston](http://www.johnhampdensregiment.org.uk/pages/artillery.html)' held by an English Civil War re-enactment society. Boston could carry a three pound ball, but would be used with ~1/2" grapeshot in combat, with an effective range of 250 yds. Looking at the linked pictures, note the large wheels for mobility. Wizards could be moved into position to deliver such devastating grapeshot blows into massed enemy formations.
### Massed arquebusiers
The [arquebus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arquebus) had a long range, but low accuracy, and was mostly effective in volley fire. This was the principle behind the Spanish [Tercio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tercio). As early as [Cerignola](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cerignola), the power of massed arquebus protected by pikes was used to repel both cavalry and infantry charges.
Ultimately, a charge doesn't take vary long (men running in mail get tired fast), and an arquebus took up to a minute to reload. A mage could probably replicate the effect of 10 or 100 arquebusiers per shot. Even if they are limited to 3 shots a day, a few mages protected by pikes could be used effectively with Tercio tactics; though they would be at great disadvantage if the battle lasted for more than a few hours.
# Conclusions
The mage would be optimized for wide spread anti-personnel or anti-equipment blows. While mages are squishy, cannons are also easy to put out of service, what with their vulnerable wooden wheels and ~5 squishy operators.
If there are small numbers of mages, they should be deployed like minions or carronades at sea. If there are large numbers of mages, they should be deployed in combined arms tactics with pikemen, simulating the tercio of the early modern period.
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Many of the answers here focus on individual battles and tactics, but not so much on strategy, so I'll chip in a few points there.
Firstly, let's consider the cost-effectiveness of your mages:
Your mages require many years or decades of training before they are ready for use. Their rate-of-fire is very slow and modest in potency. And finally, they are squishy (and often elderly) humans, subject to all the usual human foibles and weaknesses.
It's worth noting that in medieval times, any kind of scholarly pursuit was very expensive due to the rarity of books (no printing press, so everything was hand-written). Furthermore, if these mages are unable to use magic effectively until they've had a decade or two of training, that's a decade or two that they are *consuming national resources with no return on investment*. And if, after completing his training, an aspiring mage goes out to the battlefield and gets killed, or catches any number of deadly medieval diseases whilst on the road, that entire investment of time and resources would be *wasted*. Also consider that the average life expectancy of medieval Europeans [was only about 31 years](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/241864.stm)! Two decades of study would mean that your average mage would only have 3-5 years of useful life, 10-15 years if you're generous.
Simply put, your mages are *enormously* expensive to produce, aren't useful for very long, and are *very* fragile.
They are the stereotypical Glass Cannons, so expensive and so fragile, in fact, that I'm not sure any sensible commander would dare place them on the front lines unless they were in dire straits. Wars are just as often won by economics as they are by military strength.
Secondly, let's consider the three greatest challenges in pre-industrial warfare:
* [Communications](https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/a-brief-history-of-how-people-communicated-in-the-middle-ages/)
* Situational Awareness
* Supply Lines
Before radio, communication on the battlefield and with the military's senior leadership was slow, imprecise, and unreliable. In battle, army units were controlled via music (horns or drums), smoke signals, or flags. A good way to disable an enemy force was to take out their flag-bearer/horn-blower, and then isolate and demolish the individual units in the ensuing confusion.
Reporting the movements of enemy forces to, or receiving orders from, the senior leadership sitting in a nearby town or the nation's capital required sending mounted couriers or trained birds with tiny scrolls, which could take days or weeks and were vulnerable to getting lost or intercepted. You can have the mightiest army in the world and still lose a war because your opponent could outmaneuver you. Case in point: the Roman empire.
This might be the single most-useful role for mages. You've ruled out instantaneous communications in your magic system, but not teleportation or *near*-instantaneous communication. Consider, instead of sending a courier across the river through the haunted forest around the enemy camp up the mountain and into the valley, you could just "beam him up" to wherever the bigwigs are sitting? Or if you could set up a series of communications posts, each with a couple of mages, who could manipulate light, smoke, cloud, whatever, to relay messages from tower to tower? Suddenly you would be able to coordinate your entire army, everywhere in your empire, in minutes or hours rather than weeks, and without any risk to your valuable mages.
Partially as a result of lack of communication, it was also very difficult for local battle commanders to know where the enemy's forces were, where the local terrain was beneficial or harmful, and where valuable targets were located. To gain this knowledge, they would have to deploy scouts (mounted or on foot), who would travel ahead of the army and (hopefully) report back. But scouts could be easily captured or killed, especially if not riding a horse.
Here, again, teleportation would be a useful skill for a scout. Even the ability to conjure a brief distraction or camouflage one's self would greatly increase the chance of survival and escape for a scout. But, this would put the mages in a fair amount of danger, so it might not be cost-effective.
As Frederick the Great famously said: an army marches on its stomach. Providing food and equipment to an army -especially one operating in hostile territory- is probably the single greatest challenge to every armed conflict in history. Not only do you have to move a *lot* of stuff, but you have to move it over long distances to a target that is itself always moving. No matter how big and powerful your weapons, your troops will all quickly die or desert if you can't keep them fed and clothed -and the same is true of your adversary. Supply lines were a fabulously attractive target, not only because you could deny supplies to your foe, but you could also make use of them for yourself if you captured them!
Attacking enemy supply lines might be a viable offensive use for mages. Mages are like [hand-cannons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_cannon) in your world: modestly powerful but slow to reload, basically lighter, more mobile artillery. Mounted on horseback, a team of mages could suddenly descend on an enemy supply caravan, blow up all the wagons before the defenders knew what was happening, and retreat at a gallop. Hit-and-run tactics would be the most effective and the least risky, and it wouldn't take many lost wagons to incapacitate an army. Of course, your enemy would try the same tricks on you, whilst also adding mages to the caravan escort to repel your attacks, and you would do the same, and so on...
Finally, let's talk about direct front-line combat. As I said above, your mages are very much like hand-cannoneers in the early days of gunpowder. Look at the tactics used by the [Hussites](https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/military-history/hussite-hand-cannons-a-revolution-in-gunpowder-warfare/) and the Chinese; typically, the gunners took an artillery or armor-piercing role in the army, replacing ballistas and trebuchets, and often working in tandem with conventional troops.
One such application that comes to my mind would be embedding a couple mages in a [Roman Phalanx](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx) formation. A phalanx is a slow-moving but nigh-impenetrable wall of shields and spears. Cavalry, infantry, archers, none of them could really do much to hurt a phalanx unless they could get behind it. A mage inside such a formation would be very safe and would effectively function like a cannon: periodically emerging from behind the shield wall to wipe out approaching infantry or cavalry, tear down fortifications, or repel enemy siege engine fire before retreating back inside. A couple mages in the rear could very effectively counter any attempt to flank the formation, eliminating the greatest weakness of the formation. Basically, you'd have the medieval version of a tank.
Another thing to consider is *how* your mages use their power. Throwing fireballs into a crowd of soldiers makes for a cool kaboom, but you could just as easily incapacitate those same troops by blinding them with focused light, or deafening them by setting of a shockwave in the middle of their formation -and doing so would likely be more energy-efficient than a fireball. In fact, a light-based attack is inherently *unblockable* because, unless your troops all have sunglasses, defensively filtering or blocking their eyes would have just as detrimental effect as the attack itself.
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There are three roles that I see for mages under these circumstances:
**Artillery:** The trick is to get them close enough to the enemy without getting shot. Have they need to hide their staves as they approach in their units. Maybe the units can use shield wall tactics to protect the mages. Then ripple fire into the mid and back of the units they are facing. This will make it much easier to punch through the enemy unit. Then the mages are done unless the battle takes far longer than they usually do.
**Terrain Control:** Before battle (or during if you want to take the risk), make ditches, choke points and, maybe, pits to slow down enemy approach. That will give enough time to blast the enemy with artillery magic. This can be used offensively too to smooth the ground for a charge.
**Utility:** Make roads, clean water, till a field, build a fort, heal the injured and anything else you can think of. Anything that helps the kingdom increases its fighting strength.
**Combo Artillery and Terrain Control:** Blow the earth in front of a charging unit so the dirt and rock flies into the enemy. This causes wounds from the rock, blinds them during their charge, may bury a few, cause the back ranks to bump into the front ranks, and creates a ditch for the blinded/wounded/pushed enemy to fall into.
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Before I get to the meat of my answer, let's keep a few things in mind.
**Castles as we know them wouldn't exist**
Well, that's a bit hyperbolic, there probably would be some fortifications somewhere, but if there is a widespread group of people who can simply walk up to your hideously expensive, painstakingly built stone fort and wish big holes in it, you wouldn't build them.
I imagine most armies/towns would simply use a ditch/berm with maybe a log palisade, because anything else would bankrupt you.
**Most people didn't die on the fighting line**
Most people who died in medieval warfare did so from disease and/or starvation.
Most people who died in medieval battles did so after one side broke. Battles would generally consist of maneuvering until one side felt they had an advantage, then they would commit. If they were right, the other side usually broke and ran - if they were wrong they usually lost some guys and retreated, or were counterattacked and broke themselves.
Then the cavalry did it's job, which contrary to popular movies was not to charge headlong into solid blocks of enemy troops. They harried the fleeing enemy because horses can outrun people over short distances. That's how you end up with those seemingly ridiculous 200 vs 6500 casualty accounts.
Okay, so answer time -
**Strategically**
These guys make siege warfare an irrelevance. Look up historical examples like
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Constantinople#Siege>
for the sheer scale of what medieval besiegers had to bring to take down a wall. In your world those walls probably wouldn't exist, but still.
So there would by the nature of things be more field engagements.
**Tactically**
First, there is no way these guys would operate in a vacuum. Just like Knights had a whole team of fellas helping them, so would these guys. I imagine at least five bodyguards or shieldbearers. Any hit that would go to the mage, be it mundane or magical, these guys take. They are paid exceptionally well for the risk, it's a veteran's job. A mage also would probably have a couple of understudies/pages/messengers to handle their personal effects and keep them in communication with higher ups and their peers. The severely limited number of spells means coordination is more important than your standard medieval army in our world.
The mages would be your most valuable military asset, because they are adaptable force multipliers. They can use different spells in different circumstances, whereas a cannon is just a cannon.
Shock cavalry would be less useful in your world, if there are guys who can make fire happen out of nowhere. Horses don't do fire, even well trained warhorses aren't as stupid as people.
You need to hide your number of mages. If the enemy knows how many mages you have they are either going to run away until they can pick them off, or just steamroll you depending on who has more. If spells can more or less be countered by a similar power-level mage, the side that ends up with six or seven extra fireballs is probably going to win.
Mages should ideally be used like tanks - concentrate as much fire and fury into an area as possible to break formations. Armor up your mages, have your best infantry assembled, wait until the enemy seems to have expended most of their spells and charge the weakest section of the enemy line. Right before you hit, unleash four fifths of your remaining spells in the most destructive manner possible. Shock and awe.
I imagine most battles between roughly even forces would end up being a series of feints or maneuvers attempting to draw out enemy mages and waste their spells before one side just goes in.
The end point of all of this of course is that this guy
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BLkWz.jpg)
Would kill everyone even harder than in our world. They would outrange the mages and everyone would be depending on the mages for battle winning miracles that just wouldn't happen against a highly mobile logistics independent force. Without forts, warfare would be more mobile, and no one wins mobile warfare like steppe nomad horse archers.
And then someday someone would invent a rifled musket and mages would be relegated to entertaining the troops or digging ditches.
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It's kind of limited only by your imagination (or the imagination of the characters, whichever is lower) - but basically the old adage applies here, that magic is no different from "sufficiently advanced technology".
In other words, there are real inventions (i.e. weapons) that mimic how your mages work - a 5m fireball? Not much different from a grenade. Breaking a wall without a battering ram is a bit like a cannon. I think you'll find a lot of the ideas you could think of have modern-day equivalents using technology.
I would look to how these inventions have affected warfare and adapt to fit your scenario, though it would seem your mages would have the equivalent powers only highly limited, so you'd have to consider what it would be like if, for example, cannon balls were in extremely short supply.
And remember, if you have mages that can do things that normal medieval armies could not, then the enemy would change their tactics to suit. e.g. if you have a mage that can break a wall, the enemy may adapt by building a fortress with multiple walls, or thicker walls (if thickness makes it more difficult for the spell to work), etc.
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Warfare come in all shape and size, so your mages can affect the tactic and strategy in many way. Your magic is not strong enough to cause any drastic change in warfare, but it can make some aspect of war become more effective. Here i'll try to break it down to different levels of warfare:
**L1. Personal combat:** Your mages are strong, but not strong enough. Pre-firearms battle tend to be quick and exhausting, so your mages only have one shot per battle most of the time. A small squad of normal soldier could be more efficient in my opinion.
**L2.Battle** Since the damage is not that impressive, your mages's role in battle wont be damage-dealer, but rather a support role. One notable use for your mages is to disrupt enemy formation. A few ditchs appear out of nowhere could greatly reduce the momentum of a calvary charge, and a fireball in the shield wall could leave a big gap for infantry to exploit.
**L3.Campaign** Your mages will be great tool for siege (which play a major part in medieval warfare), since they are more precise and creative than your trebuchet. He could, for examples, cover all the "kill-hole?" in the battlement, or hex some random enemy with cholera that could quickly infect the entire castle...
**L4.Pre-war Preparation** And here your mages truly shine. Send them to enemy's main city or region, and then start a plague or something..
In short, warfare will still be familar to us, but also quite different form history. War will be more deadly (and thus less frequent), castle will lose some of its importance (and open battle more common), and the battlefield will be more chaostics and have less formation.
[Answer]
I can only think about 3 kinds of uses for a mage:
* Manpower.
* Support/utility role.
* Triumph card.
## Triumph Card
As you said, each 1.000 thousand soldier there are around a dozen (12) of mages.
I think they could be used as a perfect triumph card. 12 mages are able to cast **12 spells per hour for 3 hours**.
* Knowing that the average fireball only has 5 meters impact diameter it may be a good option. I don't know the number of soldiers per squared-meter of battlefield but if it were 1 every 2 meters, your mages would be able to kill $\frac{5^2\times12\times3}{2}=450\text{ per day}$, if the battle only lasted for an hour it would be $150\text{ soldiers}$.
Mages are humans, which mean they are small, light and self-propelled, not like a catapult or trebuchet. Even they can hide as normal soldiers or civilians. Imagine a situation where a few mages secretly get close to the city wall, and together they break the main door or make a hole in it to let soldiers invade it easier.
* Imagine that your enemy (or you) are retreating from the battlefield. With several mages, they could cast an earth wall from the surrounding ground in order to close the enemy retreat line or buying you time to escape while the enemies get stuck by it. You could also divide the enemy armies with walls.
* Imagine a battle with a hill and a plain zone:
+ If **your army** is on the hill you could:
- Throw huge casted stone balls (or adobe/mudbrick balls) through the step of the hill. With the help of gravity, these balls can kill a lot of enemies.
- Flood the valley/plain with a strong stream of water (cast from the deepness of earth). Enemies with heavy armour will sink while the other will have a difficult time.
- Cast a very bright light towards your enemy in order to blind it and difficult the fight.
+ If **your enemy** is on the hill (or there is a plain enemy zone, a hill and then a plain ally zone) you could:
- Move the earth of the hill causing an avalanche of earth violently killing and crushing enemies on or under the avalanche. (**Warning:** be careful casting the avalanche, it must go forward you and not towards you... otherwise, it can a bad idea dangerous).
If you don't like to use them as artillery, siege or in a so violent way, you could also think about other alternatives like:
* Poison a water well, farm field or the supply foods of your enemy with magic. (Mages could get infiltrated as spies in the enemy lines).
* Simulate the illusion of a bigger army to scare the enemy.
* Close enemy supply path.
* Summon mist or fog to difficult enemy visibility (maybe it can also be toxic).
# Support/Utility Role
Maybe mages can't/aren't able/don't want to kill people so violently. It doesn't matter, they can still be useful.
* Healing magic. You didn't say mages can't use healing magic. They could heal/cure (or just stabilize) around 3 VIPs per day with spells.
* ¿Teleport VIPs? (You said there isn't communication spells, so not sure if this could be done).
* Make new roads and transport lines. They can increase the efficiency of your supply line.
* Build tends from your army quickly with magic.
* Fix armours, catapults, walls with repairing magic.
* Fast communication using lights and signals in the sky.
* Dry streams and rives to move soldiers, or even flood fields to cut the path for enemies.
# Manpower
With magic a lot of stuff can be done easily:
* Work in farm fields: with magic you can harvest plants, increase their speed, fertilize grounds, or even build irrigation zones with water streams.
* Work as a doctor using healing magic or helping indirectly (cauterize wounds, pasteurized surgeon tools, fix bones misplaced, etc).
* Work building: telekinetic magic can help to cut a tree, making planks from logs and put them in the correct place to build a house, a palisade or even a stone wall.
[Answer]
**Teamwork!**
Assuming you have a dozen mages in your army, the trick would be to get all of them to work in unison to use their limited spells as effectively as possible.
Your telepath mages won't be able to keep a constant line of comunication, but they could be used to send urgent messages, think how useful it would be to warn a city from an approaching army or even to help relay position and status from different parts of the army as they march.
Shield/defensive Mages would be needed to keep your general and other important figures from being cursed by the enemy, they would also be needed to move your offensive mages in position.
Offensive Mages will probably be the glory boys of your army, they will be the rockstars that gets all the glory, burning away enemies troops, cracking walls, cursing enemies, and zapping supplies. But! They will need the constant support of telepaths, fliers, and support mages to keep them alive.
So, the idea is for mages to form small groups of individuals, each specialized in some different spell and trained to support each other or even combine their spells to strike hard and fast, retreating for security before the enemy could counter-attack.
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A lot of things, but you basically make your mages an assassin with the ability to shot poison arrow only 3 times a day while it take him one hour to prepare said poison between shots. So fireball generals on battlefields. Sneak into castles using illusion and silently kill people by shattering their hearts.
And as with assassins, they are great at killing and sneaking but you don't make a platoon out of them to send them to battle.
The battering ram usage is pointless as you need to have an experienced older mage. Making a ram requires some trees, few hours and inexperienced crew.
Using fireballs on enemy soldiers is a waste of magic. Archers do that far better and can shot much more arrows per battle. And such fireball would work as good at trebuchet launching, well, fireballs. While again, trebuchet have much higher shot per hour ratio.
Maybe some guerrilla use. A mage disguised as regular merchant walk on the bridge just minutes before some important figure. The bridge collapse and nobleman die. A mine is unable to mine resources as trolleys brake. and of course, the couriers bearing important news die in their sleep.
[Answer]
Enchanted catapults.
Mages hang back and enchant the catapults (or the ammo/rock). The effect makes the weapon explosive. Catapults have a long range, magic ones go even further. At 3 shots per mage, you have a decent amount of shots to do maximum damage early on in a battle.
This turns them into the first artillery.
Later on, enchanted cannons. Same effect, more power, more range. Every rich ship might have a mage to sink an opposing ship in a single enchanted canon shot.
You can think of many other support roles too. They could be medics for important officers and leaders. They could handle battlefield long range communications (sky flares, etc).
Warfare isn't just killing. Logistics and tactics are equally important. A mage could create food and water for an army. Or they could burn a map of enemy positions into the ground for all to see. There is limitless possibilities for non combat roles.
] |
[Question]
[
The idea of the trope is that at some point, Earth is doomed, humans flee into the stars, knowledge of Earth is lost in the process, eventually becoming legend or myth, either due to loss of information, revisionism due to state propaganda, or even something gone horribly wrong in the early days.
So, the question is: in reality, is this trope a viable scenario (even if temporary) or is it unrealistic from the start?
[Answer]
I think it is very plausible, even if Earth still exists and is still inhabited, at least if the "no faster than light travel/communication" still stands.
The closest known terrestrial exoplanet is Proxima Centauri b, which is 4.22 light years away. This means, every communication has a round trip time of about 8.5 years! Now imagine, that Proxima Centauri b is not inhabitable and maybe the next few planets aren't either, so maybe our colonists settle on one if the TRAPPIST planets. They are about 40 light years away. So every communication takes a whole lifetime until an answer arrives. Then there is the question, if it is even possible to communicate over such long distances at all.
So, no matter which extrasolar planet will be the home of our settlers, communication and transportation between Earth and our settlers' new home will be extremely difficult if at all possible.
Now, I guess, it will not take long until the regular population will not know more than myths about Earth anymore. Most people are extremely ignorant towards places they have never been to. Just compare it with the average knowledge about any far-away place. For example, a lot of Europeans don't even know that there is an African Union, that, similar to the European Union tries to unify the African countries into a larger construct. Likewise many Americans don't know that Europe consists of many countries. And that's just superficial detail, nothing more.
Same goes for times past. So many people think, the dark ages lasted until the 1800s or believe that people in the dark ages thought the Earth was flat.
For historians to loose that kind of information without a major event (e.g. data loss) it will probably take quite long, if it would happen at all. But in most stories involving the myth of "Earth that was" the protagonists are not historians but some random people. So it is very plausible, that they would not know anything more about "Earth that was" than regular people now know about the life under the rule of the Babenbergers (they ruled some areas in Central Europe where I am from from 976 until 1246, and I have no clue as to how life was like for a regular person at that time).
One other point that might be also relevant is what kind of information the historians took with them from Earth. Depending on where you are from, history is taught with a very different focus. If you live in the USA, you learn a lot about the American civil war. If you live in Europe, the American civil war is hardly more than a footnote, while the French revolution is really important. If you live in Japan you will hear a lot about the Sengoku period. And in none of these countries you will learn a lot about the history of Zimbabwe. Especially if these settlers hailed from a totalitarian or very patriotic country their knowledge about "Earth that was" might be very distorted and incomplete.
[Answer]
**Plausible scenario:**
... After a millennia of traveling by the single colony ship to escape Earths doom a catastrophic error occurred in the ships computer system causing the digital loss of star charts and Earth's known location.
Kind of hard to figure out where Earth is if you don't remember your flight path and accrued solar data.
[Answer]
I feel like you have to start with a discussion of the exodus and when you start to think about it on the surface seems like a crazy, horribly unrealistic option.
But what other options are there? The death of the species seems like the only one to me.
With that in mind we can make it plausible. With extinction the alternative is there any end we wouldn't go to so avoid it?
**Some points:**
* Some version of future tech helps.
* Making the story take place in the future helps
* It is difficult to imagine us doing it today
+ We don't know where we would go
+ Our technology can't really handle the scenario
Losing track of earth in such a scenario isn't that difficult. Particularly if the technology available is just barely sufficient for the task...which seems like the situation we humans would put ourselves in...
The **time** it takes to travel to distant stars (in a physically consistent with reality way) means anything can happen with information. We convince ourselves of things that aren't true on a nearly daily basis due to feelings...losing the reality of Earth when you can't even see it doesn't seem all that hard.
* Options for losing Earth (just examples)
+ Storage media damaged/destroyed
+ Belief warping, "Earth" becomes the equivalent to Heaven in a religious sense
+ Executive decision, we don't want people trying to "turn the car around" so to speak, so we tell them it is a myth.
+ It's no longer relevant so we forget about it (I used to be able to converse in German...)
**All in all I would say it is a completely viable scenario**, and frankly the most likely, maybe not today but certainly in the future. From a story telling perspective I would say it obviously works.
[Answer]
EVE Online's prologue uses this trope, and has some clever ways to make it a bit more plausible. It's all laid out in [their old intro video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T84nrp08MWo). Here's the summary...
Humanity has "outgrown Earth" and go out in a "desperate quest to colonize other worlds". Humanity builds FTL stargates to jump between worlds. Eventually even the stargates could not take them further (this could mean humanity covers the whole Milky Way galaxy). With nowhere to expand to, humanity begins fighting itself. Your basic "Earth Is Doomed" story, but it's the whole galaxy.
Then Earth discovers the ["EVE Gate"](https://fiction.eveonline.com/new-eden/lore/EVE-Gate), a wormhole to another part of the universe called "New Eden". ***It's so far away they're not sure where it is in relation to Earth.*** Millions of colonists rush through and eventually settle thousands of new worlds.
Then one day, without warning, ***the gate collapses*** leaving thousands of colonies suddenly cut off from Earth and their supply line to Earth.
Lacking the ability to build, maintain, and repair space ships and jump gates without support from the Milky Way, ***each colony lost contact with the others for thousands of years***. Most colonies are not yet self-sustaining nor are their planets even fully terraformed. Cut off from each other, these colonies die. The surviving isolated and incomplete colonies descend into anarchy and barbarism. This begins "*a dark age that erases civilization as it is known to be, as the accumulated knowledge of millenia slowly eroded*".
Finally two planets independently reinvent space and FTL travel, and humanity begins building stellar empires again. But the dark age has left "*the memories of our past transformed into legend and myth*".
---
EVE Online solves the problems with the "*Earth That Was*" in a few clever ways.
First, ***New Eden is so far away from Earth that even "the ancients" didn't know where it was in relation to Earth***. One explanation is it is within the same Universe, but outside the [universe observable from Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe). This neatly solves the problem of how they lost knowledge of where Earth is: they didn't know it in the first place.
Second, the only way to get to New Eden is via the EVE Gate wormhole. ***This leaves no breadcrumbs to follow back to Earth***. There's no metaphorical "road" nor string of colonies nor evidence of space campsites to follow back to Earth as we can with, for example, [Polynesian expansion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesia#Origins_and_expansion). Even if they wanted to, the residents of New Eden can't trace the steps of the ancients. The ancients can't do it either.
Third, ***FTL in New Eden is limited***. They model distances in game between planets and star systems accurately. The FTL drive in ships is sufficient to quickly move from planet to planet within a star system, they are far, far too slow to cover interstellar distances. For example, the distance from Earth to Saturn is about 1 billion km, give or take. The distance to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system, is 25,000 billon km; 20,000 times further.
Most ships need established jump gates to travel between star systems. These represent an enormous investment in time and resources to establish and maintain, something struggling colonies could not afford. While there are ships with their own interstellar jump drives, they are enormous, expensive, fuel hungry, and limited in range. ***This makes casual interplanetary exploration difficult and expensive.*** Getting to the neighboring star system requires either an established jump gate, or an enormous investment in a jump capable capital ship, or a lot of patience. This reduces the ability for humanity to explore making it more plausible they can't find Earth again. Firefly does something similar with "The Verse" being just one very large and heavily modified star system.
And just to cover any holes, ***the "dark age" of New Eden is so much worse and complete and sudden than anything humanity has ever seen***. In examples from Earth history, there's always some way communications or trade can happen, even if it's across a perilous ocean or desert. In New Eden, the loss of space flight leaves all the colonies cut off from each other by the cold vacuum of space. On top of that, most colonies die off, only a handful survive. Those survivors cannot communicate with other survivors for millennia.
This hard information and trade gap between colonies, plus the swiftness and suddenness of the EVE Gate's collapse, makes the New Eden dark age lengthy and complete. It is far more plausible that all history and technology would be wiped out with a millennia of isolation in marginal environments.
***This long, complete dark age also allows EVE Online to reset the timeline of humanity***. EVE Online is set millennia in the future. On this scale, humanity and its technology would be incomprehensible to a 21st century observer. It would be difficult to explain why we have the [Space Spanish Inquisition](https://community.eveonline.com/backstory/races/amarr/) fighting the [Space French](https://community.eveonline.com/backstory/races/gallente/).
Instead, the New Eden dark age allows them to be divergent cultures emerging from their own isolated post-apocalyptic planets. Their sometimes primitive and regressive cultures, for example [there is slavery in New Eden](https://community.eveonline.com/backstory/races/minmatar/), can be explained because each one is the result of humanity being knocked back to basic survival in isolation. Each in their own Darwinian struggle on their own little [Galápagos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galapagos).
---
The closest analogy to New Eden from Earth's history might be [Easter Island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Island). Settled around 700 AD, geographically distant from any other inhabited island, it became completely isolated around 1500 AD. By the time Europeans arrived in 1722 it had consumed most of its resources and lost 80% of its population.
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The question makes more sense if we think of it in mytho-poetic terms than hard loss of navigation data.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SXPiM.jpg)
*Where was that place again....*
Consider your own memories. Unless something truly traumatic happened in your school or childhood, you probably have a fairly idealic recall of that period of your life. Now go even farther back, to your family history. The stories passed down the generations have been selectively edited. Great grandfather is the hero of the story, or the "flood of '21" takes on mythological proportions. Careful research into historical records might not even reveal your Great Grandfather's name, and the rainfall in '21 might have been somewhat higher than average....
Going even farther, look at national mythology. America is "The Shining City on the Hill", Britannia "Rules the Waves", Moscow is"The Third Rome", China is "The Middle Kingdom" between Heaven and Earth and so on. As a personal recollection, I was serving in Bosnia and being told the story of the "Battle of Kosovo Polje" by local Serbs in such vivid detail that you'd imagine it was fought in the 1990's during the civil wars. It took place in *1389*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/EXFYn.jpg)
*I thought this took place just a few years ago....*
So while everyone may actually be able to point to Sol from their position in space, referenced between thirteen different millisecond pulsars, the actual remembrance of events and places on Earth will be so coloured and distorted that if you or I were to step out of a wormhole and have the tales of Earth recounted to us, we would come away convinced that these people came from an alien planet.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JpFva.jpg)
*Directions to Earth*
So the "Earth That Was" may be a clear memory and starting point of the colony's history, but may have little to do with the actual Earth itself.
[Answer]
# Plausible, but somewhat unlikely
The timeline looks something like this:
1. An interstellar colony loses contact with Earth
2. The colony loses any/all specific knowledge of where Earth is (mythology allows for things like "second start to the right, then straight on 'till morning")
3. Without contact or navigation details, Earth eventually becomes the stuff of legend
4. Eventually people start to doubt Earth ever existed
Now let's look at how that might happen.
**Loss of contact**
This is far and away the easiest one. Some catacylsm happens on Earth that wipes out most/all human life and/or all advanced technology that might be used to talk to our colony.
Assuming that FTL communication is possible (subspace, etc) then attempts would still be made by the colony, but with no response eventually the program could be shut down as resources dwindled. Assuming no FTL communication, then at some point all radio chatter from Earth would stop. Our constant stream of broadcasts would be cut off. In that scenario, the colony can pretty readily guess that Earth isn't around anymore.
**Loss of knowledge**
The colony needs to be in a very specific state of development for this scenario to be truly feasible: it needs to be independent enough that survival without a supply line from Earth is possible, but dependent enough that most critical systems are irreplaceable.
Similarly, having a large, diverse, and specialized population of civilians would be helpful in this case. One unified leader, whether scientific, religious, or military, could command enough authority to maintain order. Whereas many different groups with no clear central authority could easily descend into chaos, resulting in the loss of computer systems and computer data. As these systems fail without replacements, the people who know how to maintain and fix them become overwhelmed. Without years of schooling to teach these highly specialized skills, because everyone needs to help out on the farm, each subsequent trainee knows less and less about these advanced systems. And as the specialized knowledge dies out, the systems fail completely.
Perpetuate this state for at least one and a half generations and all you've got to go on is your aging great-grandfather's half-remembered paper sketch of a star chart.
**Passing into legend**
Humans have been pretty obsessed with their origin since we started thinking about things. We now know of course that biologically we [evolved in North Western Africa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomically_modern_human) and the earliest signs of non-nomadic human civilizations were in the [Fertile Crescent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertile_Crescent) of the Middle East. There is no reason to believe that a technologically regressed interstellar colony would be any less obsessed with passing on stories of Earth.
As the generations press on, these stories go through a cosmic game of Telephone until suddenly airplanes are flying cities, urban metropolises are cities with towers that pierced the sky, and we could fly through the air just as well as we could fly through the water.
**Denial of Earth's existence**
This one is a bit tricky. The best way to accomplish this would be to have some religious or social movement take primary control of the colony that denies the existence of Earth as a matter of principle/philosophy/faith. Any scientist or historian will very easily be able to prove that humanity didn't come from Here, so maybe we did come from the mythical Earth.
The best bet of having a society deny it entirely is to make the denial based on some unprovable element, something that can't be proven or disproven via scientific analysis.
[Answer]
Depending on what assumptions you make about the progress of technology, it may not only be plausible but relatively likely. Its easiest to look at the steps in order.
**1. Earth is doomed**
Over a long enough timespan, this may be almost certain. There is a better chance than most people want to think about that we will make this world uninhabitable or at least undesirable in the relatively near future through pollution, climate change, or nuclear war. There are a number of extinction-level natural events which are possible. Of course, sufficient technology with sufficient forewarning should allow us to prevent or mitigate most of those, but it is plausible that one will occur that cannot be prevented. And of course, over a long enough time span the sun will eventually change to make the solar system uninhabitable.
**2. humans flee into the stars,**
How likely this is in reality is hard to say because it depends on whether it is even possible to develop the technology to travel faster than light or create something akin to suspended animation or create a generation ship capable of lasting for the entire trip to another habitable planet. But while it is hard to say how likely those things are, they are certainly plausible and absolutely ubiquitous in science fiction.
If we develop any of those technologies, then it is almost certain we will attempt to establish colonies on other planets long before earth becomes doomed, especially if we see that doom coming.
**3. knowledge of Earth is lost in the process, eventually becoming legend or myth**
If we accept parts 1 & 2, then over a long enough time span this is all but certain. If you look back at ancient or even medieval history much of what we think we know is dubious or disputed and almost certainly exaggerated.
You might think that our hypothetical settlers that abandoned earth will avoid having that issue with earth because we have better record keeping now than they did in the ancient or medieval worlds, but time has a tendency of twisting such things. Records will be lost. Storage media will be corrupted. Other storage media may be fine but people may forget how to read it.
Worse, people will deliberately destroy or alter records for all kinds of reasons. People will outright twist the truth and lie about what is going on when they make the records. Even if accurate records are mixed in with the lies, it can be hard to know which ones to trust and which not to. Superior record keeping may mean that it will take longer for the truth to be reduced to myth and legend, but it will almost certainly happen.
And those are just the simple historical processes that occur with the passage of time. In our hypothetical, our settlers abandoned a dying planet. They may be doing so with limits to what can be carried and without putting a high priority on bringing the historical records with them.
And all of that is without positing something plausible but less likely such as the rise of a fanatical religion that wants to take coordinated action to discredit knowledge of earth.
In short, the entire sequence if definitely plausible so long as we take the assumption that space colonization is plausible at all.
[Answer]
I think it's extremely plausible because of how difficult space travel is. (And probably always will be). And of course, how hard it will be to have a conversation with 'home'.
A colony ship will take multiple years, potentially multiple generations to reach it's destination. Over that time, even when staffed with the very best scientists, you'll have an inevitable reduction in knowledge/education level. Things will break aboard your colony ship, and they simply won't be possible to repair - even with excellent electronics skills and a good soldering iron, manufacturing replacement microprocessors will be extremely hard.
And once you reach the colony, then ... maintaining the kind of advanced technology that we're all used to is going to be impossible initially. With 'just' a few thousand colonists on a brand new settlement, I think a reversion to a basic agricultural lifestyle would be largely inevitable.
Once that happens, it only takes one accident over the course of multiple decades to wipe out the records. Say, the 'book store' gets flooded, or there's a solar storm and the backups get wiped, or ... well, all sorts of things.
It's really not that unusual when doing backups to find a proportion of your restores just fail if you've not been checking them regularly, and as the specialist knowledge faded over generations then that problem would get worse.
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[Question]
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In the mobile game ["The Path To Luma"](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.NRG.PathToLuma&hl=ko/), the main hero travels to very tiny planets.
Let's not think about where is the sun and how we leap through such small planets. What I want to ask is, if there is a spherical planet with a radius of 50 meters, will there be enough gravity for humans to live there?
Specifically, that planet...no...asteroid consists of the same materials as Earth. Also, the atmosphere is enough and air, ground (er... soils and rocks?) density is the same as Earth.
[Answer]
Our known quantities are:
* Radius of the body: 50 metres
* Density of the body: same as Earth's, 5515 kilograms per cubic metre
This is enough to calculate the [acceleration due to gravity](http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/Gravity.html) on the surface of the body. We multiply the **density** $\rho$ and the **volume** $V$ to get the mass, multiply it by Newton's universal **gravitational constant** $G$, and divide by the square of the **radius** $r$ of the body:
$$ g' = \frac{\rho \cdot V \cdot G}{r^2} $$
To spare the reader lengthy calculations and descriptions of constants, I did my calculations in [Wolfram Alpha](https://www.wolframalpha.com/) - it is a handy tool, as it recognises natural language and automatically plugs in constants.
My [calculations show](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=density+of+earth+kg%2Fm%5E3+*+(50+metres)%5E3+*+(4%2F3)+*+pi+*+gravitational+constant+%2F+(50+metres)%5E2) that the acceleration due to gravity will be $ 7.7 \cdot 10^{-5} \;m/s^2$. For reference, right now we are experiencing an acceleration about $ 9.8 \;m/s^2$, so the magnitude differs by more than hundred thousand.
Thus, your rock will not able to hold air, and even *itself*, together, let alone let you walk on it.
**To solve this**, you could increase the density of this object by a factor of (up to) ten thousand - how you do this is up to you, but if my *other* calculations are correct, this is the limit after which the radius of the planet becomes closer to its [Schwarzschild radius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild_radius), which you definitely don't want in your life.
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First matter first: to have a body in a spherical shape, you need to exceed a certain radius, dictated by the material. Most likely with 50 meters you will have a potato shaped object.
Moreover, to have a decent gravity you need more mass. Just as a reference, [Ceres](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceres_(dwarf_planet)) has a radius of 473 km, a mass of 0.00015 Earth masses and a surface gravity of 0.029 G.
This means that the same effort you would exert here on Earth to jump 1 meter high would make you jump 34 meter high (if you don't reach the escape velocity of 0.51 km/s you will then return on the ground).
Then, with such a flimsy gravity, forget about keeping any atmosphere or liquid water.
[Answer]
Of course if the planet was made of a very strange matter or had a singularity at the center then it might be possible, but I think the tidal forces would create issues. Your head would probably experience significantly less gravity than your feet for example.
[Answer]
Let's assume that by "*enough gravity for humans to live there*" you mean "*enough gravity for humans to stick to the surface (due to gravity)*". This implies you're asking a Volumetric Mass Density problem since gravity is a function of how Mass Density influences surrounding space.
Specifically, you're asking a question about how massive this small planet would have to be given its radius (**so how dense it must be**).
>
> Lets call *small planet* '**Small**'; and *earthly planet* "**Earth**".
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For there to be "*enough gravity for humans to stick to the surface*" lets assume the mass of planet "Small" has exactly the same mass as the planet "Earth", regardless of volume, since human's **stick to the surface of Earth due to gravity** pretty well.
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> **Volumetric Mass Density** is defined as its mass per unit volume:
> $$ \rho = \frac{m}{V} $$
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So let's represent Earth's Volumetric Mass as:
$$ m\_e = \rho\_e \cdot V\_e $$
Likewise let's represent Small's Volumetric Mass as:
$$ m\_s = \rho\_s \cdot V\_s $$
Since (we're saying) humans stick equally well to both planets why not make Small's mass (regardless of radius) the same as Earth's Mass since we stick pretty well to Earth. That means:
$$ m\_s = m\_e $$
or:
$$ \rho\_s \cdot V\_s = \rho\_e \cdot V\_e $$
But we want to solve for Small's Volumetric Mass Density $\rho\_s$ so we can see what it's made of (Earth is mostly molten nickle and iron).
To rearrange this equation and solve for Small's mass-density $\rho\_s$ lets divide both sides by $V\_s$ leaving:
$$ \rho\_s = \frac{\rho\_e \cdot V\_e}{V\_s} $$
But recall that the top term in this fraction $\rho\_e \cdot V\_e$ is really just $m\_e$? So lets simplify by replacing the top term $\rho\_e \cdot V\_e $with $m\_e$ making our equation:
$$ \rho\_s = \frac{m\_e}{V\_s} $$
This says the mass-density of planet Small must be equal to the the Mass of the Earth divided by the Volume of planet Small. So lets figure it out!
* If the Earth's Mass $m\_e$ is: **$5.9721986×10^{21}$** metric tons; and
* The radius $r\_s$ of planet Small is **50m**;
* And the Volume $V\_s$ of planet Small is calculated from its radius using:
$$V\_s=\frac{4}{3} \cdot \pi \cdot {r\_s}^3$$
(which works out to be **523599 $m^3$**)
Through substitution $\rho\_s$ must be:
$$ \rho\_s = \frac{5.9721986×10^{21}t}{523599m^3} $$
$$ \rho\_s = 1.14061×10^{16}t/m^3$$
>
> **Answer**: Asking Wolfram Alpha [what has this density](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=what%20has%20density%201.14061%C3%9710%5E16t%2Fm%5E3) we indeed get the answer that this planet would be more dense than a neutron star ( $8x10^{13}$ - $2x10^{15}$ ) putting it into the range of exotics such as [gravastars](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/87472/are-gravastars-observationally-distinguishable-from-black-holes), objects that exist inside the Schwarzschild radius of an Earth-mass object.
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[Answer]
If you need to explain it for some reason, there could be a little ball of superdense matter in the middle, like a little black hole. I'm assuming since you're asking that you want to get technical, so there are problems a with that or any way of amping up the gravity on a small object. One is that earth gravity draws a certain amount of space dust, between [5 and 300 metric tons](http://www.universetoday.com/94392/getting-a-handle-on-how-much-cosmic-dust-hits-earth/) of it. We don't notice it on Earth because even at the maximum, that is about 5e-20 of the earth mass. If your 50-meter planet has earth gravity it's not going to stay 50 meters for long.
Another thing is the atmosphere. Even if you have some dense matter gravity source at the center the air can only be as dense as air under a given pressure and temperature. So if it is similar in pressure, temperature, composition, and humidity to that of earth it will be dense up to about [16 km and will extend out to about 500 km](http://www.space.com/17683-earth-atmosphere.html). So your planet is really a gas planet with a tiny ball of matter in the middle. What would this do to weather? I don't know. Weather is usually affected by solar heat rising from the surface, air flow blocked by land mass, and water evaporating from the seas, just to name a few. With mostly a big ball of air over 10 times the size of the land inside I don't think it would behave the same way at all. What would happen to the land mass when all that air absorbed or released water? For that matter would you still have clouds and rain with such a small surface to cause temperature disturbances to cause rain and evaporation? If there were the kind of weather patterns that would develop are unpredictable.
I think it wouldn't be long before you had a lot of debris orbiting, but around a much smaller center than earth. There's no reason that it would draw in any less debris that earth does but it could orbit as low as 300 miles from your core. If it did enter your atmosphere it would easily add significant acceleration to any matter that wasn't part of the superdense core, since there isn't much mass on those parts. I think with all this space dust, meteors, and atmospheric anomalies you would have a very unstable surface.
[Answer]
Wil McCarthy's *The Collapsium* and sequels have miniature planets, called "pianettes", held together by the gravity of artificial neutronium at their cores... and even then, he makes the smallest habitable one (inhabited by a single human) about 600m in diameter. That is already small enough for several inconvenient effects — a building with 90° angles can't be very large (or else gravity and the floor would point in noticeably different directions near the edges), the air pressure is already noticeably lower a few meters above the surface, and anything any distance away takes on a disorienting tilt. At 100 meters diameter all of these problems would be magnified.
Using conventional materials, it's impossible; even osmium isn't dense enough.
[Answer]
If you have a 100-meter sphere, the only practical thing to do is to make it hollow, spin it up to generate centrifugal pseudo-gravity, and live on the inside surface. Even at that, it's a bit small for the pseudo-gravity to be entirely comfortable.
[Answer]
for gravity, YES, it is possible.
Imagine a 50 meter building to be a planet. Can you walk on top of a 50meter building? The answer is yes!
Gravity generated by that building is negligible, but the one from earth is still there. also the one from the Sun.
so just by looking at spec of one planet is not enough to answer the question. there could be one side of that planet that you could stand on!
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[Question]
[
* How could a creature explode itself?
* *Why* would it?
We see example ideas of these all the time (Scourges, creepers, etc.) but nobody ever said how or why a creature would intentionally explode. I am not referring to intentional combustion, but explosion *specifically.* This would be an evolutionary process. Would the creature survive?
[Answer]
## Spreading your seed
For sessile life forms (plants, clams, etc), explosions could be an excellent method of seed/egg dispersion. Heck the organism could create a "mortar tube" and vastly improve the dispersion range of its young. Probably any woody or shell based tube would need to be a pretty low pressure affair, but it'd be an interesting way to spread one's seed.
## Self Defense (As mentioned in other answers)
Over time this method of seed dispersion might evolve as a form of self-defense too. If attacked or nibbled on, it'd attempt to point its mortar tube toward the aggressor and fire it even if the eggs/seed weren't ready. Better to survive for another spawn then to lose the spawn and yourself.
## Reload!
Also, depending upon the specifics of the configuration, the explosion need not kill the "exploding" organism. If the organism was protected from the worst of the explosion (ala the mortar tube described above), the organism might develop the means of rearming and reseeding the tube.
## Arms Race
If the mechanism did evolve from seed dispersal to self-defense (which is a logic progression IMO), it would lead to an evolutionary arms race in which the nibbler would learn to only eat certain portions of the sessile creature which wouldn't trigger the self-defense mechanism. Alternatively, they would wait until after seed dispersal to eat the organism once it disarms itself.
It would also evolves to "reload" the tube with new explosives pretty quickly after use and slowly lay the seeds/eggs in the tube for dispersal later.
## What explosives?
Organisms in our own "Real Life" biosphere use explosions. One such creature is the Bombardier Beetle. [It uses a hydrogen peroxide + some other organic compounds to form a steam explosion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_beetle#Defense_mechanism).
This sort of reaction would work great for the mortar tube configuration mentioned above and a similar trigger system would work too. Basically store the liquid hydrogen peroxide in a gland with a one-way valve. When excited the organism squirts some hydrogen peroxide into the mortar tube - which already has the fuel and catalyst in it. The explosion shuts the valve to the peroxide gland and forces the projectiles down the tube.
The Bombardier Beetle stores enough for approximately 20 shots. The explosion alone (with no projectile) often kills the attacking critter. Our exploding critter might do even better if it could launch projectiles. Just remember though, our critter would probably not be able to reload the projectiles so quickly. So the first shot would include projectiles while subsequent shots would just be the Exploding noxious gas.
[Answer]
This might be a valid evolutionary trait for several reasons. Some plants and animals already use combustion or other energetic chemical reactions for defence or to distribute their seeds.
Taking this to extremes, in a life form whose continued survival is not of evolutionary importance, for example a infertile soldier-caste member of a colony, or a life form which dies in the act of reproduction, an explosion might have evolutionary advantages.
In the example of an infertile soldier, if it contained a biological bomb, it could detonate this if it was killed or incapacitated in close-quarters combat, and the resultant explosion might well eliminate one or more enemies, thus benefiting the colony as a whole with its spectacular demise - much the way that a worker bee stinging an enemy benefits *its* hive - regardless of the fact that the action is fatal to the worker bee.
In the case of a life form using a chemical reaction to disperse the next generation, if it dies afterwards (as do many species of plant and animal), then if by having a more violent chemical reaction the offspring are distributed more widely and have a better chance of survival and growth away from competition, then such a life form may well evolve to disperse its offspring via an explosion.
It is a short step from there to suppose that such a being may evolve to explode in order to drive sarcophagic offspring into the bodies of nearby creatures of other species at high velocities, at once killing its enemies and providing its offspring with a source of nutrients.
An *independent* creature could only evolve to explode as a matter of *survival* if by exploding it distributed fragments of itself sufficiently widely that one or more would escape a predator and survive to grow into new creature(s). This necessitates that at least some of the fragments of the creature survive the explosion. The threat posed by predation would have to be such that succumbing to the predator would result in a total failure to reproduce - probably because the entire creature is destroyed by the predator's digestive system. An explosion in such circumstances could also have an altruistic benefit that it injures or kills the predator, thus preventing it from harming other members of the exploding species.
[Answer]
A new twist on procreation! Fertilized eggs are produced asexually and stored in a specialized gas-filled organ called the blast bladder. Each egg is a tiny parasitic creature, ready to infest any host which has compatable biology. When enough of the eggs have collected along the inner lining of this bladder, the creature is primed. It then waits until it is in the company of potential victims, to ignites its belly using some internally generated combustable gas.
After the blast, the now belly-less beast crawls away to heal, and begins producing more eggs.
[Answer]
>
> * How could a creature explode itself?
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**Use [Hexamethylene triperoxide diamine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexamethylene_triperoxide_diamine) (or another organic peroxide)!**
Hexamethylene triperoxide diamine is an [organic peroxide](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_peroxide#Explosives), which can be formed when hydrogen peroxide and [hexamine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexamethylenetetramine) (obtainable via the combination of formaldehyde and ammonia). Certain catalysts must be used, but they are obtainable by organisms. Hydrogen peroxide itself is explosive, but is inorganic. You would need a source of it for the creatures to use. [Acetone peroxide](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetone_peroxide) could be used instead of hexamethylene triperoxide diamine, but it, too, needs to be made using hydrogen peroxide, and it is more unstable.
Other organic chemicals that can apparently explode/ignite/cause something fiery:
* [Sugar](http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/edible-innovations/sugar-explode1.htm)
* [Methane](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane)
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> * *Why* would it?
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I can think of a number of ways:
* Self-sacrifice to save the herd (or younger animals)
* Self-sacrifice to hunt (if they're carnivores)
* Self-sacrifice to get rid of diseased animals without spreading the disease via rotting carcasses.
[Answer]
I have a mobile plant thing I've come up with. It is not mobile enough to go far distances however. It has this fruity sack on its belly area. When ripe and when a large animal is in range, it inflates it's fruit sack with liquid and launches itself onto the animal, and the fruit sack bursts like a water balloon filled with goo. The goo makes the seeds stick to the animal and the surprise and the horrid smell of it compels the animal to go somewhere else where the seeds fall off. The plant dies, since it's job is done.
Though I suppose that isn't exactly an explosion.
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[Question]
[
I asked a similar question here on the site but it was too broad, so I'm attempting to break it down into smaller topics for people to dissect: this will likely be one of many.
I am attempting to write a project/start a thought exercise on how a society could be built on the rules and conventions of an RPG. **Specifically, I would like to know how the practice of "leveling up" could be measured and enforced in this society.**
There was some confusion last time I asked this question because I wasn't very particular on what I meant. In this scenario, "leveling" is not a magical occurrence; there's no flash of light initiating it or some magical wall you have to get over to gain XP, etc. You still get stronger or better at a task through training and experience, as you would normally; but in this society, your progress is tallied and measured, and eventually cataloged and rewarded, for your effort.
I imagine there must be a system in place that would be regulated and enforced by the governing body, or an organization within that body, that takes this information and does the necessary scrutinizing of it to make it work. Citizens are probably expected to keep up with their own progress, but there are also systems in place that test these assumptions to sort out liars and bad math, etc. I liken it kind of to like being audited, even though that's not quite right. But if all goes well you are eventually assessed and your level becomes a permanent part of your record, and later, your worth to this society.
I was initially looking to the recent trend of "gamifying" your life, which I'm sure I don't have to explain here; but given that this isn't a technological society I am proposing that might be an issue (it is based on agrarian and feudal concepts, which I'm still trying to refine). I also didn't want to rule out any other source of inspiration, like tabletops, card games, MMOs, what have you, so pull from whatever helps you with the discussion. If I need to divulge more information I will, just let me know.
[Answer]
In the Marine Corps I was an Avionics technician on a specific aircraft. After training, I was issued a service log that detailed **EVERY** task that could be performed on the aircraft, within my discipline. Other disciplines included Hydraulics, Airframe, Powerplant, etc. and they all had similar service logs for their disciplines.
Service logs are exhaustive documents and each task had a proficiency level that needed to be demonstrated and then signed off by a senior technician, who had obtained a mastery level of the discipline. Each proficiency level was a little more difficult to demonstrate and achieve. 75% or more of the service log had to be demonstrated at a mastery level before a technician was certified as a master technician and allowed to train and provide quality assurance for junior technicians.
This was a paper log. Schools have grade cards. Martial arts uses belts. Unions and other organizations use written and practical exams. But in every instance there is a Master and an apprentice, there are tasks and achievements, demonstrated through proficiency. Life is already `gamified` in this regard.
If you wanted to make this a social requirement, you'd have to take it to another level with bio-tracking and an enormous database storing all of the data for every member of society and every task that could be performed by that individual. Soft skills would be an included skill set - patience, compassion, listening, etc. Additionally, every task for every skill set for every hobby and career would be in the database. The bio-tracker would automatically contact the master database, sending out detailed data when certain tasks were completed - time, bios, proficiency, location, etc. Mentors and masters could also send data to the master database in lieu or in addition to the bio-trackers.
Constant scans of the database would alert the individual and a specific guild or interested party when specific skill sets were `completed` and an invitation to demonstrate the skill set would be issued. This would ensure that corruption is mitigated. The individual could accept or decline, but only acceptance and successful demonstration would allow the individual to level up. If the individual accepts and fails to demonstrate proficiency, this is noted and the data adjusted to reflect observed proficiency
Skills proficiency would be rewarded with job offers, promotions, societal benefits, etc. More difficult tasks and challenges could be assigned with more confidence to those presenting the level of proficiency required.
Lack of skills proficiency would prevent incompetent people from entering into jobs, careers, hobbies, politics, etc. or be assigned tasks they have no hope of completing. They would not be rewarded with societal prestige or perks.
A system like this could allow individuals to remain individual but allow interested parties to identify qualified or gifted candidates for recruitment. A system like this would uncover the gotchas that happen when a candidate looks good "on paper" then fails to deliver, regardless the arena of life.
[Answer]
**In short...we pretty much do this already just in a more piecemeal manner than a character leveling up**
Here are some examples
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## Education
**Basic** - Simple, broad knowledge: arithmetic, reading, writing, basic science, history, etc
We, in much of the world, already have this broken into RPG friendly levels and tiers...though studying for a history test isn't as exciting as killing rats in a basement.
**Advanced** - Less broad categories, more specialized knowledge: This area would be the equivalent of high school and the early college years. More specific than basic information but most people will overlap in places
**Expert** - Specific knowledge, narrow focus. This is where we specialize, late college years, and on into the workforce and post graduate years.
In terms of education, the system is already in place really, nice and easy.
## Martial Skills
Like many marital arts, you have a belt system which denotes a certain skill/mastery level.
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## Rankings
Be it the military, a church, special clubs (boy scouts, shriners, etc) ranks are already in place and in theory should denote a skill/achievement level in line with the organization's purpose or beliefs
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## Government
Yep, we already rank people here too.
I could keep providing examples (firefighters, civilian job titles, trade skills etc.) but I think you get the point...heh.
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**What's it all mean?**
Well look at it this way. **Games simplify the complexities of reality**, because lets be honest, no one wants to take their half orc barbarian to the latrine after he had to cook his dinner of roast squirrel.
If you want to apply an overall level gain idea to real life you have to take into account the complexities of real life.
So what we need is an added layer on top of what we already do today, my suggestion would be a system of proficiency points.
* For each level of mastery in any given subject (based on relevant testing) you get a certain amount of points.
* Quantity of points would be determined by...someone or some group based on criteria, I don't know what criteria, that is for your imaginary leaders to decide
* At certain point intervals, you level up, not unlike experience. If you have played Skyrim this is the exact system. As you get better at things (doesn't matter what they are or how useful it makes you) you level up.
* If you want to push people toward certain skills you simply weight the points gained in favor of skills deemed more useful.
**Additional note:** You don't mention it as part of the question itself but you could create a class (job) system not unlike DnD. You'd have to create a chart showing what rank in what skills is required to take a certain *class*. So for example someone wants to be a police officer so they have to have a certain proficiency in diplomacy, combative, weapons, critical thinking/analytics...etc.
So you could create a super complex web of skill interdependency for each profession...would be an interesting exercise.
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Since many people have already pointed out the various ways we do "level up" in modern society, I should step in with some of the negatives so the discussion can fully consider the implications of this.
1. Cronyism/Gatekeeping
There are potentially millions of people with the intelligence to become doctors, lawyers, electrical engineers etc., but there are actually only a limited number in today's society. Much of the reason for these shortages is artificial, using various methods of gatekeeping to limit the number of people who actually can practice these various professions and keep the relative wages high compared to the rest of society. Entry into so called "elite" schools is also put through an elaborate gatekeeping system; there really is little difference in lessons in a specific subject taught in an "Ivy League" college and a mundane "State" college, but the credentials count for a great deal more.
2. Recognition/credentialism
This is somewhat similar to point one, but can be extended over a much greater sphere. In Canada, a person can be trained as a vehicle mechanic in the Armed Forces, and even p[ractice the profession for many years, yet discover on release that their credentials and experience count for nothing. (Alternatively, a "Class A" licensed mechanic until recently would still be forced to take a military mechanic's course in order to work as a soldier). On line training such as the [Khan Academy](https://www.khanacademy.org) or even university level courses are not universally recognized, and of course we all hear horror stories of fully qualified doctors coming to a new country and being forced to work as taxi drivers.
3. Skill Fade
You can go to school, apprentice at Hogwarts and even write bet selling books on the subject, but unless you actually perform the skill on a regular basis, your ability to do the job will be deteriorate. Eventually you will get to a point that you will either be incompetent or actively dangerous if you attempt to carry out the skill set you are credentialed in. Even actively performing a limited skill set isn't going to be much more helpful, you could work in a [Taylorized](http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/Taylorism.html) factory and be an expert in your own task, but still be unable to fill in for a sick worker on a different station, or explain how "your" job fits in with the bigger picture.
So while we "level up" in society and life, it is not an entirely open or iterative process, nor does "levelling up" either fully open all doors or lasts for life.
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This absolutely happens in nearly every part of our daily life. Its almost impossible to go through a day without running into it.
The tricky part is realizing what "leveling up" must mean. Leveling up must be a change in state which can be captured numerically. Given that it's not magical, it must be a change in *perceived* state, showing how society views you and your skill level.
We use this all the time. If you drive to work, you have a driver's license. Most of the time, we keep track of our own driving skill informally. However, when we get pulled over, we have to produce this license to prove that we have "leveled up" enough in driving skill for the government to grant us the right to drive. This involved a written test, a driving test, and proof that you hadn't gotten in any DUIs and lost your privilege since then. This is functionally indistinguishable from "leveling up."
Virtually all of our first-pass estimations of people's abilities stem from observing their level. If you want to go get an engineering job, you don't get there by showing prowess in engineering. You get there by showing a piece of paper from a good Engineering college known as a diploma. You might even have to show your GPA. Want to enter the IT field? I don't care *how* good you are at managing Cisco routers, you won't find a job unless you have attended the proper courses and gotten your Cisco certification. Even the lowest paying entry level jobs at least want some proof that you've leveled up enough to have an address (and a shower you can clean up in).
This process is natural. Many skills take quite a lot of time and energy to observe properly. We can't waste that much energy, so we assign symbols to signify the exertion.
The drawback to the process is that you have to presume someone knows exactly what skill you have sufficiently well to test you. Arts in particular are *notoriously* difficult to pin down with a test. There's just too much subjectivity. You also have to be careful to avoid people teaching to the tests. In America, we've been pushing standardized testing for years as an effective way to measure the progress of students. The result has been a laughable failure. Students are entering college and complaining that they are *woefully* unprepared for college life because their entire school life, from elementary to high school, has been centered around how to pass the standardized tests.
My favorite compromise is the kyu/dan system used in Japan for Go and many martial arts. You also see mirrors of it in martial arts belt colors. One starts at a high numbered kyu(like 30 kyu for Go), and progress towards lower numbers. Eventually you get to 1 kyu. The next transition is from 1 kyu to 1 dan, then 2 dan, 3 dan, and so forth (typically there are 3-7 levels of dan). The belt analogue is that the colored belts are like kyu ranks, and the different degrees of black belt are the dan ranks.
Many of us assume a black belt in karate means "you know karate." However, that is a bit of a misnomer. A more accurate phrasing would be that a black belt, or a 1 dan ranking, indicates that you are "minimally competent in your art." You know just enough of the basics to claim competency. Black belt is not the end of the road; its the beginning of one.
There is a distinctive shift in the way the testing or "leveling up" process works when one shifts from kyu to dan. To achieve a new kyu rank, the primary focus is an objective measure of your ability to do some skills. In theory, a 1 kyu knows all of the objective skills from the art. Once you enter the dan ranks, the tests become more subjective. To become a black belt/1 dan in many martial arts, one has some subjective portion of their testing. In my Tae Kwon Do class, a black belt was expected to produce an essay "What does a black belt in Tae Kwon Do mean to me." There is no right answer to this; each essay is different.
This shift lends itself to a nice mix of the RPG style "leveling up" with a buffer to permit more expressive arts. At first one is expected to build up basic skills, a. la. leveling up. After that, however, it is recognized that no one size fits all. You have to find your own soul in your work, and you are credited with a 2 dan or a 3 dan rank when the community believes your expression of the art warrants a new level.
With this, you also see a natural check on liars cheats and thieves. At the low levels, if a yellow belt decides to buy an orange belt to sneak into some training, minimal harm is done. On the other hand, if a charlatan buys himself a 3rd degree black belt and tries to open up a martial arts studio, people will quickly check up on his lineage, and spot his failure.
More interestingly, fellow black belts will detect the charade instantaneously. By the time one becomes a black belt, one *certainly* has the skill and experience to determine whether a fellow practitioner has earned their rank. Thus, if you know a black belt who is teaching, you might ask them to go say 'hi' to the newcomer. They will quickly tell you whether the newcomer is legitimate or not, with or without an official trip to the records room to find his certifications.
[Answer]
You level up through school, 1st,2nd 3rd etc, if you do too poorly you might be held back a year and need to repeat.
People don't worry too much about the newbie low levels, almost everyone ranks through them.
There's separate advanced ranks once you get a little way into the skill tree. Apprentice, Journeyman, Master vs Bsc, Msc, Phd depending on what you specialize in.
Jobs will be listed requiring a certain level in a certain skill tree.
There's a huge structure around the accreditation of institutions who can assess you and decide if you've earned your new level. There's shysters who'll happily sell you a scroll stating that you've achieved the top levels but only the gullible will fall for that because those shysters aren't accredited.
Then there's even levels within organizations.
Of course the system isn't going to be perfect. If the kings son is a little dim and isn't leveling up as he should a few words will be whispered into the right ears to make sure he passes his tests and nobles sons will get the fast track up the level system.
[Answer]
There are a good number of ways this has been done, but the one that I can see actually being most akin to what you're looking for is from an anime called "Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?", or "DanMachi" for short. Strip it of the obvious fan-service and you get an intriguing basis for an RPG-based society. Take away the "Familia" gimmick and you have something that could even be plausible with some tweaking. I will, however, elaborate here since watching an anime is a bit of a time sink. *Italics* will indicate the anime's gimmicky bits while **bold** will indicate what I came up with to replace that. This will appear in a [*anime* / **replacement**] format because I think that would be easier to read.
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The basic premise is as follows: There exists a dungeon underground that has a will of its own and continually births out monsters that have magic stones at their heart. Adventurers kill monsters and claim these stones to sell aboveground to buy better equipment and adventure deeper, and so on. In order to be allowed entry to the dungeon, a person must [*receive the blessing of a god(dess) and join their Familia* / **have a license obtained through having someone vouch for you, followed by an additional screening process to make sure a person isn't just going to get killed**]. Adventurers have basic stats based on their overall performance, such as Strength, Agility, Endurance, etc. that increase through training and exercise. You could increase your Strength by lifting weights or hacking away at monsters, for example. Your stats are updated [*by the god(dess) of your Familia using magic to update a chart on your back* / **by performing a number of tests for each stat that gauge the stat's numerical value (see footnote for examples of these tests)**] and provided to you on a neat little sheet. Since the monsters in the dungeon apparently get stronger the further down you go (perhaps due to getting closer to the source of the dungeon's will), adventurers aren't allowed to access certain tiers of floors until their stats get to a set point. Stats have an alphabetical tier system [*that is based on potential growth, I think, though it isn't explicitly stated in the show* / **that is used to give other people a general idea of how far that stat has progressed**], while also providing an easy way to judge how soon someone can progress to lower floors (such as "You must have one C-Ranked stat to access floors 11-15").
Not sure what else to say. Hope this helped!
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## Footnotes
Stat Test Examples: If **Strength** is a measure of raw lifting power, having the subject dead lift increasingly heavy weights; if it is a measure of striking power, hand them a hammer and have them hit a suspended weight that has a number of markings along a wall that are used to track how high it went. If **Agility** is a measure of how well the subject can dodge attacks or projectiles, throw an increasing number of dye-soaked projectiles at them, time how long they dodge, stop the timer when they are hit; if it is a measure of flexibility or acrobatic prowess an obstacle course will do. If **Endurance** is a measure of how long the subject can maintain rigorous activity, have them run around a track until they tire; if it is a measure of how many hits the subject can take before they lose consciousness you save this test for last, surround them with people with saps or bats and have them get beaten up until they cry mercy (Ruthless, but I'm not sure how else to measure this...).
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## Links
* [Wikipedia Page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is_It_Wrong_to_Try_to_Pick_Up_Girls_in_a_Dungeon%3F)
* [MyAnimeList Page](https://myanimelist.net/anime/28121/Dungeon_ni_Deai_wo_Motomeru_no_wa_Machigatteiru_Darou_ka)
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[Question]
[
In sci-fi, we can find the concept of artificial fertilization and incubator quite commonly. I work in a company that's heavily involved in that technology, so I became curious to adapt this to my medieval Europe-inspired fantasy world as some magical force. It could be some sacred tree that a couple can spill some of their blood into the sap and the tree will offer an egg-like fruit that a baby will eventually break out of. Or maybe even the old tales of birds carrying the couple's baby from somewhere. The mechanism doesn't matter at the moment. What I'm interested in is the effect that such a means of reproduction that doesn't involve 10 months of pregnancy will have to the population and society.
Let's lay down some assumptions first:
1. The mechanism has practically unlimited capacity, but won't allow a couple
to use it too often.
2. The baby **is** the biological offspring of the couple and the couple
has no control whatsoever to the traits the baby will have, just
like conventional reproduction.
3. Inter-species offspring is also possible (like half-elves), but only if the
couple is biologically similar enough. Obviously, a homosexual couple can
also have a baby this way.
4. Perhaps the mechanism will do some tweaking to prevent genetic diseases, which could be an added bonus to using the system. This also means a baby boy from two females is also possible.
5. The baby is delivered much faster than conventional reproduction.
6. There are no concerns like "can we really say this is our baby even though
we didn't birth it?" or "does such a baby qualify as human?" at all.
7. The world visually resembles medieval Europe, but assume a utopia in terms
of human rights, equality, protection of the weak, etc.
8. Abusing the mechanism to mass-produce humans for slavery, war, etc is not
possible, nor would anyone think of attempting it even if it was.
Now, I'm looking to build a world where this mechanism has been in place for a long time since before history, rather than trying to imagine how the world would react to its sudden discovery. What would population growth and maintenance in a world where this mechanism is common look like? Of course, traditional pregnancy still exists.
I think it's obvious that the biggest difference would be when a rapid increase in population is required, such as at the early stages of a settlement's growth, or right after a big drop in population due to some calamity. But in normal periods, how would families be in the presence of such a reproductory mechanism?
Update: one thing I'd forgotten about is the production of breast milk, which requires pregnancy. Alternatives to natural milk would be in demand, creating interesting ideas for the economy and industry in the world. Although males being milk producers is an idea I'm willing to probe.
Update 2: I originally wasn't going to bring this up because it's my fault for making this question too vague and I didn't want to stop people from exploring a lot of possibilities based on the core concept (such as JBH who brought up wonderful points) regardless of whether it fits my intentions, but I noticed that too many answers are actually restricting themselves to the tree example and the interpretation that anyone can make a baby anyhow out of any people. I'm still not trying to stop anyone from exploring under that assumption so I won't update the above points but I will clarify this: I failed to list the fundamental assumption that **two** people must intend to use the mechanism with the specific **wish** of having a **baby between them** and **full understanding** of what they're doing. Which is evidently a *very* big communication mistake on my part because I was just thinking as a biotech worker. Too late to point it out I guess. I think I will post a separate question that will be closer to my intention in the future, after coming up with a proper mechanism that 1) will be hard or preferably impossible to abuse and 2) is also a difficult process although it has no biological impact to either parent.
[Answer]
**You haven't nailed down the process, which is rather important as to how it will affect the population. Let's consider this solely from the perspective of the magic tree and blood...**
This process has some messy issues.
* What stops the local Duke, age 90, from hauling out the local pretty girl, age 6 and nowhere near birthing age, from combining blood to create a child?
* What stops two men, or two women, from combining blood on the tree? Does the tree require actual biologically viable reproductive components? Or does it produce people (we'll stick with humans) who have only half the required chromosomes?
* What about pre-arranged relationships where the heads of two families bond their alliance with the scion of two seriously underaged children?
* What stops the local shrew from stealing into the king's room one night to steal a tincture of blood with which she creates a legitimate heir to the throne?
* How long must the blood be viable? Could Some knight's wife sop some blood from her dead husband's body and use it to create a legacy? (What happens if women sop up the pools of blood, heaven only knowing whose blood is all mixed together, and uses it?)
* And what could convince society that the children of the trees are equal to the children of the body? Would your society consider the children of the trees easily disposable?
You see, what you're describing only looks like a mythical convenience for problematic childbirth on the surface. It's really a nightmare — socially, emotionally, politically, religiously, you name it.
**Which makes it *ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS* for a story!**
This breathtaking idea makes all the shenanigans found in *Game of Thrones* pale in comparison! If you think about it, conventional reproduction has natural filters, like women not having the ability to conceive before menstruation starts or needing to actually find time to get together with someone, and (outside of rape) actually needing to know who it is you're with (well, rape, drunkeness, you get the point). Conventional reproduction naturally gates (compared to your trees) the process of interfering with lines of succession and legal rights of inheritance. It would be terrifying, a system that could be so easily abused for blackmail, exploitation, (there's gotta be a dozen words that go here, but it's late....). Like I say, *Game of Thrones* on steroids.
* People would develop a terror for cuts and blood loss. It would almost become religious in its nature (possibly even interwoven into religious practices). Think of a chastity belt for both genders that looks a lot like plate mail — only it's a cultural taboo rather than a physical barrier.
* Cremation would become the prevalent form of cadaver disposal.
* Myths about approaching battlefields after the battle, reinforcing a taboo that protects the blood of soldiers, would abound.
* It used to be that (fantastically) princesses were locked in towers to protect them (and the family). Now everybody's locked in towers to protect themselves from the ruthless.
* It might even set back the development of the medical scienes as people are afraid of coming in contact with another's blood — just in case you didn't wash as well as you thought you did, scratched your hand on the brambles when you tripped, and caught the tree to try and keep your balance — *Dang!*
And one more thing:
**There would be so many bastards that the word wouldn't have meaning**
Somehow the culture would need to change legal concepts from "of my blood" to "of my body." It's easy to see to wonderful people creating a child they'll care for as their own. But who's responsible for the gutter-rat "conceived" in any of the situations mentioned above? Oh, what a tangled web we weave....
And we won't even talk about the cults who seek for a "supreme being" by regularly mixing all the adherent's blood into a bowl and pouring it over the tree, believing that the child thus born is holy.
*Oh, yeah. There would be effects. An uncontrolled reproductive process like this where there's little to no hope of protecting yourself from the intrusion of childbirth... the culture would be unrecognizable compared to our medieval civilization.*
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First, *big* population boom. You just removed the nine-month limit, but more importantly, you just effectively removed one of the big killers of humanity: childbirth. You know when you see figures that the average lifespan in the Dark Ages was about 30? Well that was because of the woman and children dying mostly; the men lived for decades more. Now woman will be on equal footing in that regard. You might still have a high child mortality rate, but that's easy to fix. Just make more children. Besides the fact that people won't be dying, parents will make a lot of children this way. For most of history, children were used as free labourers by their parents and this will still be the case in your world. Parents might not be able to use the magic often but they'll use it as often as possible, especially poorer people, until they can't feed any more people.
You already said that this society is a utopia for equal rights but this is a big thing. Women would equal now for sure. Through history, the reasons they've been second-class citizens have been many and varied, but they mostly come down to pregnancy and ensuring that the father's children are in fact there. With this out of the way and no longer relevant, women as a group would be way more equal.
Interestingly, I expect proper pregnancy, as it still exists, to be kind of like a privilege. It'd be something that the rich women of society do to show off their status. Consider that manual labour is certainly easier for women who aren't pregnant, it would be a sign that the female in question didn't have to work and that they could financially accept the burden of actual pregnancy. This especially true if normal pregnancy takes longer than the magic: it shows she and her husband can easily take the financial hit of her not working, or being less productive at least.
Never forget the role of religion. Considering that beliefs accept society as well as the other way around, you might find that true pregnancy gets an aura of sacredness and divine blessing. Priestesses might become pregnant on purpose etc. Because it isn't normal, there'd be an air of 'specialness' around it. Pregnant women may even be venerated. This may flow onto the children: those born naturally may have a higher station in society.
However, all of this assumes one crucial point: you have reliable contraception. Otherwise, regardless of your magic breeding, women are going to be pregnant the old-fashioned way, and quite often. For most, you'd be right back at Medieval birth rates, and then some. People would have two children at once and increase it even more before slowing off. If there's no contraception, then women will keep dying in childbirth and the rest of my answer can be safely ignored.
[Answer]
Unfortunately, I think the consequences of the childbirth method you mention are mostly negative. I'm continuing on in JBH's vein in a sense
# Life Is Cheap
Unfortunately, it's part of human nature to value things based on its scarcity. If 'child-getting'(calling it childbirth is misleading because that term's meaning is based on the real world process of having a child) is so much more expedient then people are that much less likely to value children. Without the physical process of pregnancy, emotional bonds between parent and child are likely to be weaker or even nonexistent. The way people view children would probably be closer to how we in the real world view pets, with abandonment becoming a big issue as a result
This translates upwards to the level of the state as well. There may be safeguards with war or slavery in mind, but how far do these safeguards go? Would they do anything to prevent a Stalinist regime from coming about, or wage slavery as opposed to the ancient form of slavery? As a neither-good-nor-bad aside, another consequence I see would be to push the needle towards modern preschools and kindergartens, especially if 'child-getting' results in a sufficient amount of stray kids to require a state response. These childcare centers might have an indoctrination element to them, depending on the state in question.
# What You Can Do
I understand that your original vision was much more escapist and utopian than how it actually to turned out. In order to get to that, you'll need to finetune and alter the exact mechanics of 'child-getting'. It might help to draw some inspiration from a 90s Japanese fantasy novel series called *Twelve Kingdoms*.
In *Twelve Kingdoms*, for a couple to have children, they tie a ribbon to a special tree and pray to the gods. If the gods decide to grant their wish, a child would then grow on this tree as a cocoon with said ribbon on it. Childbearing in the sense we understand it doesn't exist at all, and even beasts and demons are born through a similar process with special trees in the wilds. As a result, these trees are considered sacred with connotations you might expect. Blood cannot be spilt while under the shelter of these trees; a law that all living creatures must respect or face divine punishment for breaking. As a result a traveler under attack by wolves can seek inviolable sanctuary under such a tree if he's lucky enough to find one and fast enough to get there first.
Removing childbirth from the equation entirely could help you build the world you want, since it'll take away the biggest biological reason for 'keeping women in their place'. It'll definitely shake things up and would probably open up the job market for women. Whether you want to go this far is up to you though.
[Answer]
My guess is that families would look pretty similar. For the most part, families throughout history tend to be sized based on what the parents *want* (poorer and rural families having more kids, urban families and wealthy, well-educated ones having fewer as a general rule) regardless of biological factors. There's some variations, of course, the odd surprise, but for the most part it tends to work out. Even as "costly" (in a broad sense) as having children the old-fashioned way is, and it is, *raising* them is by far the more significant expense, in time, money, and effort.
So I would expect families to mostly be around the same size as they were in the real world under different circumstances. Similarly, mass production of people for the purpose of bulking out your army, making a slave labor force, or rapidly settling areas would be extremely problematic - the big issue being food supply for all your people. I'm assuming that once the children are born, they develop in the traditional way, so you need to sustain them for a long time before they're suitable for things like heavy labor or soldiering.
One situation that this would help is replenishing populations after disasters (especially plagues, which kill a lot of people but leave the infrastructure, as opposed to say an earthquake or invading army). You'd still have to shepherd your population carefully to make sure your children didn't eat you out of hearth and home, but it could rebuild your population fairly easily and reliably. Ironically, this might be a bad thing; there are theories that the dearth of laborers after the Black Death (and the related rise in the value of labor) played a role in making later Europe more egalitarian.
[Answer]
# Almost none
Most people don't have sex with the sole purpose of making babies. People have sex because it's fun and babies are an occasional consequence if nothing is done to prevent them.
In the modern world, the people who would make use of this are the wealthy and career women who want to minimise the interruption of their working lives to reproduce. In a medieval world it would be dominated by the wealthy who wanted to safely create a baby without risking the mother's life.
Everyone else will continue to make babies the old fashioned way, by having sex and occasionally making a baby.
Remember that serfs are basically property, we're not talking about a population free to do as they will.
[Answer]
Whoever controls the device can control so much of the world. Especially if there was a way to make it so that the device becomes the main or only form of viable reproduction (pregnancy has huge demands on the body, if for some reason those demands weren't sustainable such as working conditions or frequency of disease it becomes even more risky for a woman than it already was in that era). Whoever controls it can dictate whatever they want be it as ransom from the couple or over societal norms.
Now comes the more interesting part since the poster is trying for a more Utopian world. You have the potential for radical changes in sex differences between male and female.
A huge driver of evolution by natural selection is sexual selection. Choosing mates based on traits that have little to nothing to do with fitness (in a survival sense). Peacock's tails (probably the most common used example even though the tail's trade off's make it also an indicator of fitness). Much of the physical difference between male and female is because of requirements for reproduction. But not all. Breasts are needed to feed a child, but how large are they really needed? Looking at patterns across the world, it's obvious that there is way more differences between groups than should be justified if the only selection pressure on breast size was how efficient it is for keeping children alive. I specifically mention this one because larger breasts are mostly about more fat, which is about the woman having eaten more and so for a long time it was the ideal to marry such a woman because clearly she has enough food (the same for paleness as an indicator that the woman didn't work the field which indicated wealth).
So there is no longer a selection pressure for woman to have the traits that are most needed for child birthing/rearing. With the indicated time frame this could eliminate much of the physical differences between the sexes overall. It could also lead to more extreme physical changes such as groups looking so different from each other it may not be obvious that they are all still human. (This group preferred tallness for so many generations above all other traits, their average height is twice that of a human, hey, they are giants! But in realty, still human just humans who grow way taller.)
[Answer]
Maybe worth to mention that if this technology will be available to everyone then men will eventually be attracted to less feminine women. The beauty standards for women are mostly based on there ability to make babies (wide hips etc). There would be no evolutionary pull anymore towards fertile bodies if babies can be made on a tree. This will also mean that men will no longer be attracted to young women.
The fact that babies can still be made naturally does hardly matter if the alternative is so much easier and safer. Those conceived natural will be seen as uncivilized as in Huxley's "Brave new World".
The effect on society is probably that people reproduce on a later age and old people will occupy most of the resources before they start to reproduce. The only thing that currently stops women from reproducing at later age is that they will no longer be able to.
As a whole this will mean that more of the resources (houses, ground, money) will be occupied by older people and humans will live with there parents till a later age. Maybe this can have a positive affect on humanity in terms of fewer violence, but it might make society as a whole more hierarchical traditional etc.
[Answer]
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> *What would population growth and maintenance in a world where this mechanism is common look like?*
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I would expect that very strong social customs would have come into effect to prevent people from abandoning their tree-children. Bujold's *[Ethan of Athos](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/067165604X)* is an SF novel centered on an all-male world that used imported ovaries, but they still had the social issue of requiring evidence of responsibility before having children. One also earned "social credits" by taking care of newborns. This world had been populated for about 200 years and not all couples/relationships were homosexual.
Along that vein, I suspect that your world would have lots of intentional communities, which would be set up where people could live together without needing a heterosexual component for reproduction. One could have all-male (such as *Ethan of Athos*), all-female, or celibate "monasteries" (or communes) where they'd have children without sexual involvement. [Shakers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers) were a celibate religious movement in the US who are now known for [a style of furniture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaker_furniture).
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> *But in normal periods, how would families be in the presence of such a reproductory mechanism?*
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Keeping in mind, your statement about medieval Europe level technology, I suspect that most children would be born via the tree, as [death](https://www.tudorsociety.com/childbirth-in-medieval-and-tudor-times-by-sarah-bryson/) in [childbirth](http://mentalfloss.com/article/50513/historical-horror-childbirth) was [very common](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_longevity/2013/09/death_in_childbirth_doctors_increased_maternal_mortality_in_the_20th_century.html) until the necessity of hand-washing and cleanliness were "discovered" by [Ignaz Semmelweis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis). Cultures that encouraged tree-birthing and discouraged body-birthing would have significant advantages due to lower death rates among women.
[Answer]
JBH did scratch the surface, but I'm afraid he didn't go deep enough...
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> medieval Europe-inspired fantasy world
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Then, since the events are occuring before the invention of feminism, I as your Supreme Leader cannot help but take note that a population entirely made of men has roughly twice the military strength of a population of 50/50 men and women (no matter how "strong and independent" the latter may be)... since your magical contraption allows dudes to reproduce then the first kingdom to outlaw women (lets call it the Rainbow Islands Kingdom) gets such a military boost that it promptly takes over the world in an unstoppable wave, and generalizes the idea. In other words, if this has been going for long enough, then there are no women left (except as pets for your magnanimous Supreme Leader, of course).
Likewise, if the events occur after the invention of feminism, then there will be no men left (except as pets/bodyguards for your Supreme Leader, of course).
But the cool thing is that you've ended sexism! Pretty cool.
Additionally, besides providing better mixing of genes, sexual reproduction (aka, screwing) also performs an important role in keeping the gene pool in working order: it weeds out the uglies, the crazies, the sick, etc, due to the fact no-one wants to screw with them. So, if anyone can reproduce to their heart's content by stealing a drop of blood from someone, then the species will go degenerate pretty quick... but perhaps someone will object that [this does not necessarily require a magical device](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2730791/Are-STUPID-Britons-people-IQ-decline.html), only a lack of natural selection...
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> The world visually resembles medieval Europe, but assume a utopia in terms of human rights, equality, protection of the weak, etc.
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Kumbaya! Unfortunately, such a utopia is only possible when resources are abundant. In a medieval setting where you have to work 15 hours a day in a field for a meagre pittance, useless mouths to feed simply die. Only people with full bellies think about trifles such as "Human rights". Hungry people think about dinner instead. Gotta have our priorities straight. Look up Venezuela.
Therefore, in order to make this viable, your plot device should do something to the babies, perhaps "elevate their soul" or whatnot, so they become people who are actually able to live in such utopia. Also you'd have to get rid of all genetic defects etc, and if you don't want too much crime, you'll probably have to also abort everyone with an IQ below 120 or something (calling Aldous Huxley? Yeah at this point it does become a bit creepy).
Plot twist: the device cheats. It delivers a baby but it isn't yours. It actually uses the genes of the best, healthiest and smartest people instead of yours. So the children are all beautiful, smart, civilized, etc. But they're not yours.
Plot twist #2: humans resulting from normal screwing are normal, which means they don't get the "soul elevation" the device imparts. In other words, they will rise to the top due to being more ruthless, cruel, and hard bastards!... So many possibilities...
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Given a famous tale, which can be found [here](https://genius.com/The-brothers-grimm-the-shepherd-boy-annotated):
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> The king said, the third question is, how many seconds of time
> are there in eternity. Then said the shepherd boy, in
> lower pomerania is the diamond mountain, which is two miles
> high, two miles wide, and two miles deep. Every hundred
> years a little bird comes and sharpens its beak on it, and
> when the whole mountain is worn away by this, then the first
> second of eternity will be over.
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Simple question: In similar conditions, how long would such a second be?
I would like reasonable estimates backed up with equations.
Parameters:
* The size of the mountain are given in the story; assume that the mountain is made from a material that the bird can wear down in rubbing its beak as it would against a cuttlebone;
* Assume a bird not at all unlike a [budgie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budgerigar#Ecology), a small seed eater about 7 inches long, keepers of which are known to supply them with cuttlebone;
* Assume that the average [cuttlebone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuttlebone) is about the same size as the bird in question, about 7 inches long by an inch thick in the middle, and may last about two months of ordinary time:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KGWtB.jpg)
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The mountain is made of diamond. Diamond on the [Mohs scale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohs_scale_of_mineral_hardness) is a 10.
For the bird beak I have no solid data, so let's assume it has the same value as tooth enamel, which is about 5.
Now let's make the (rather wild) assumption that for every 1 point of difference in the Mohs scale there is a factor 100 in abrasion. This roughly means that while material A with Mohs value X will abrade 100 layers of material B with Mohs value X-1, material B will only abrade 1 layer.
This assumption tells us that it will take $10^{10}$ layers of the beak to take away 1 layer of the mountain spot where the bird sharpens its beak.
If each sharpening takes away 5 layers of the beak, it means that it will take $2\*10^9\*100$ years to remove 1 layer of the sharpening spot. That is already 200 billion years, way more than the estimated age of the universe (15 billion years).
I am rather confident that weather will be quicker in leveling down that mountain...
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For purposes of this answer, I am going to assume that erosion of the mountain is not an issue (since I think that is closer to the spirit of this story). I will also have to assume that the bird's beak is going to be able to make any sort of mark on the mountain, or the answer will be "infinite".
For a "small bird", I'm going with a house sparrow, whose beak is 1.5cm long (thanks, Wikipedia!), looks like 0.7cm at the base, and a stubby conical shape. Without going into detailed calculations, I'm going to assume that for sharpening to be meaningful, the sparrow has to abrade about 0.5% of its beak (very generous, I think), so that is $2\times10^{-10}$ $m^3$ of beak.
Let's assume then that 1 unit of beak material abrades 1 unit of mountain material (again, very, very generous here). You are looking at a conical mountain which has approximately $2\times10^{10}$ $m^3$ of material.
That means that it will take $10^{20}$ sharpenings to wither the mountain down to nothing. At the rate of 1 sharpening per 100 years, that's $10^{22}$ years, a.k.a. ten sextillion years, a.k.a. ten billion times the age of the universe, a.k.a. a **bloody long time**.
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At the scales we are working on, usually anything except the exponent part is something we can ignore, because error elsewhere is going to be larger than a factor of $10$.
The bird pecks at the mountain. It sharpens off $0.01 \mathrm{mm}$ of beak. The beak has a density of about $1 \frac{\mathrm g}{\mathrm{cm}^3}$ and a thickness of $0.1 \mathrm{mm}$, so this involves abraiding $0.0001 \mathrm{mm}^3$ or $10^{-12} \mathrm{kg}$.
The mountain is made of diamond. It has a density of about $3.5 \frac{\mathrm g}{\mathrm{cm}^3}$. It has a volume of $3\cdot 10^{16} \mathrm{cm}^3$, so a weight of about $10^{14} \mathrm{kg}$.
The mountain is $10^{26}$ times larger than the amount of beak sharpened off, give or take.
It takes about $2 \frac{\mathrm{kJ}}{\mathrm{mol}}$ of diamond to convert it to graphite -- basically, peel off layers of atoms. To sheer off a layer of graphite takes $0.2 \frac{\mathrm J}{\mathrm m^2}$. If we model the bird's beak as graphite (The bird's beak is going to stick together better than graphite does, so we'll use this as a lower bound): every $0.22\mathrm{nm}$ requires $0.2 \frac{\mathrm J}{\mathrm m^2}$ to sheer off, or every $4\cdot 10^{-8} \ell$ requires $1 \mathrm J$, or about $44$ micrograms per Joule or $4\cdot 10^{-5} \frac{\mathrm g}{\mathrm J}$.
$1 \mathrm{mol}$ of diamond is $12$ grams (assuming pure carbon-12), so $\frac{12\mathrm g}{2000 \mathrm{kJ}}$ is $6\cdot 10^{-3} \frac{\mathrm g}{\mathrm J}$ of diamond to sheer off carbon.
So, the diamond takes about $10^2$ more energy to break carbon off than it would take to sharpen matter off the beak.
If $1\%$ of the energy used to sheer off the beak also nicks off atoms of diamond, then $10^4$ more beak is worn off than diamond is in the sharpening process.
$10^{26}\cdot 10^4$ is $10^{30}$ beak sharpenings to wear the mountain down.
One sharpening every 100 years (aka $10^2$), so $10^{32}$ years, aka 1 followed by 32 zeros.
[Impressive bird](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl9pTDK8PAk).
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As pointed out by others, the bird is definitely the underdog here. Its beak just isn't hard enough to really make much progress. However, you were specific:
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> "...only a literal diamond mountain is in the spirit of my question." -SK19
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Well let's use real diamond. While De Beers might want you to think otherwise, a Diamond is Not Forever. I'll give 'em credit. It's pretty close. But it's not actually stable. It's metastable. Diamond decays into graphite over time... a lot of time. At high temperatures, we can make this happen fast, but at room temperature, we've never actually observed diamonds decaying into graphite..
Fortunately, chemistry is amazing. We can find that the [activation energy of the transition](https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/a/34202/13226) is -540kJ/mol, which is utterly gigantic. But by recognizing that this is an activation energy problem, we can leverage the [Arrhenius equation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrhenius_equation). This is an equation which has some decently strong theory behind it, but more importantly, it has a history of being empirically effective for many sorts of reactions, ranging from gas reactions to crystallization.
One of the consequences of the Arrhenius equation is that the pace of reactions tends to double roughly ever time you raise the temperature by 10C. It's not an exact rule, but we are talking about a bird wearing away an eternal mountain here, so I think some scientific license is permitted.
From [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L7BV3IBfFA), we can see that in the 1400-1500 range, it takes just a few seconds to convert diamond to graphite. For simplicity, let's say it takes 1s at 1500C. That's roughly 150 10C steps away from room temperature. Each one of those doubles how long the reaction takes, so $2^{150}s$ is not unreasonable. That's roughly $10^{45} seconds$, or $10^{38}$ years.
That number happens to be close to the [lower bound](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(time)) on the half-life of a proton. The upper bound is quite a lot higher.
I'd say $10^{33}$ years to $10^{38}$ years to destroy the mountain, depending on whether proton decay occurs first, or if the diamond all turns to graphite first. If diamond to graphite takes longer (I've seen estimates of $10^{80}$ years for a half life), the upper bound of $10^{45}$ for proton decay will take over.
Oh, and the bird? Well, given the timeline of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years for the fundamental structure of the mountain to give way, I don't think it will have much trouble shaving off the graphite in a nominal amount of time after that occurs. Or maybe its protons will decay, in at which point the question really starts to become one of those abstract philosophical ones, doesn't it?
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Short answer:
A geological amount of time. Over 32 million years, probably longer, if tectonic activity raises the mountain.
Long answer:
I am gonna assume the mountain is just called diamond mountain and not actually made of diamond.
Your mountain is 2 miles high, which is about 3.2 km (using metric, as I am doing science).
[This website](http://hudsonvalleygeologist.blogspot.co.at/2013/01/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none.html) states, that Everest erodes at a rate of 0.1 mm/yr.
Following the calculation 3,200,000 mm / 0.1 mm/yr = 32,000,000 yr or 32 million years.
This does not account for any growth of the mountain, as I don't have any information on the tectonic activity of the area (Everest grows 5 mm every year for example), but just keep in mind that it could take much longer.
The bird does not make any difference though.
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I am sorry I am probably missing point and I do not offer any equations whatsoever, BUT if infinity is measurement of time (true....with indetermined lenght) than your question is really pointless. You have not given up convetional time measurements (second is still valid time measurement in your universe). It is like asking how long is second in month, and than coming up with question how long it is in year.
Second is still **"9,192,631,770 cycles of the radiation that gets an atom of cesium-133 to vibrate between two energy states."** and it doesn't matter in how long time scale is second percieved. If in your world atoms vibrate in different frequencies, then again, second is still determined lenght of time no matter in how long time window, which is exactly point of physics...coming up with defined variables to measure other, more complex ones (not to mention quantum physics).
hope you get my point, english is not my first language, so ive done my best.
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How might such a species evolve? How would they swim, navigate and breed? How big could they grow, and what complications might arise out of their growing very large?
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I think an alternate biochemistry might be what you're after. On Earth, we already have extremophiles that, while they retain carbon-based biochemistry, have [entirely different metabolic systems](http://mmbr.asm.org/content/63/3/570.full "Bioenergetics of the Archaea"). Though their biochemistry is carbon-based, they do contain some variants of the "normal" carbon biochemistry: such as the use of [ether lipids](http://sbkb.org/fs/archaeal-lipids "Archaeal Lipids, on Structural Biology Knowledgebase") rather than ester lipids in their membranes.
Silicon-based, rather than carbon-based, life has been a minor mainstay of speculative fiction for quite some time. It has chemistry similar to carbon, though with much greater rarity of the multiple bonds ("unsaturated" compounds) upon which so much carbon chemistry depends. Because of this, the existence of silicon-based life at STP would be pretty much impossible.
Still, silenes (containing Si-Si double bonds, analogous to carbon-based alkenes) and silynes (containing Si-Si triple bonds, analogous to carbon-based alkynes) can be prepared, and the extreme environment of a magma ocean might even be used to explain their greater prevalence than in a lower-temperature aqueous environment like Earth.
Silanes (containing only Si-Si single bonds) and siloxanes (such as "silicones" used as adhesives and sealants) already provide a rich pseudo-organic chemistry. Add the conditions necessary for easy formation of Si-Si double and triple bonds, and throw in some P-P double and triple bonds (P could serve, in a Si-based biochemistry, much the same purpose N serves in carbon biochemistry, with a little imagination) and you have a biochemistry easily diverse enough to support living systems of some complexity.
I'm not sure you'd want to go as far as the crystal-based biochemistry of *[Sentenced to Prism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentenced_to_Prism "Sentenced to Prism, by Alan Dean Foster")*, but if you're exploring alternate biochemistries, you should definitely read it.
Another take on silicon-based biochemistry (synthetic, this time) is *[Star Chase](https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/brian-james-royal/star-chase/ "Star Chase, by Brian James Royal")* (not to be confused with the Saxon Andrew series of the same name), though it's distinctly pulp-grade writing (and, I believe, was published as three separate titles at the same time by a pulphouse, though I can't recall the specifics). [Edit: the specifics! [It was plagiarized](http://greatbutforgotten.blogspot.com/2011/11/gardner-f-fox-comics.html "Gardner F. Fox") from *Escape Across the Cosmos*.]
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There are three main issues with living in Magma:
1. Heat - any organic material we know of is going to struggle to survive a temperature of between 700 and 1300 degrees centigrade. Even extremophile lifeforms that survive around volcanic vents or springs can't survive 200 degrees.
2. Pressure and density - This is still rock we are talking about it's pretty solid and heavy stuff. Life is more likely to float on the top than sink. This stuff is around 2.5 times as dense as water and we can already float in water.
3. Viscosity - Lava is much thicker than water. Swimming (already hard to to the density) is much much harder work due to the thickness of the substance you are swimming through.
The first of these is probably the main one, as life has adapted to many extremes of pressure. We don't know of any organic material capable of surviving these conditions though - let alone viable lifeforms.
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They probably couldn't. At least nothing like earth's surface life. Some conditions are just too harsh for anything like our kind of life.
The things traditional life are made of are just too flammable and rely on water.
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[Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry) might be able to help here... Silicon and silicon dioxide can stay solid well into the 1000°F range. That said, they are so abundant on Earth, if life could have evolved spontaneously in underground magma, it would have.
The biggest issue with living in magma is the lack of *temperature difference*. Plants take energy from the sun because the sun is very hot compared to the Earth; heat engines can't work if the temperature is the same everywhere.
Processing any sort of chemical energy in magma would be very difficult as most of the chemicals present are already in a low energy state.
Perhaps you need another species to create some sort of temperature difference (e.g. they put sea water into the magma to create steam for an energy project). Either they happen to create some sort of imbalance that also has all of the pre-constituents for silicon based life, or they set out to have a life-like solution for their project that then evolves.
For a non-Earth-like environment, perhaps the planet's sun is so close or hot that the surface is always molten. Then you have temperature difference and liquid chemistry. Carbon based life would not be able to interact with these creatures.
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It can't happen with life as we know it. There are [extremophiles](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperthermophile) that have evolved to handle high temperatures, but we haven't seen anything surviving temperatures above 122 °C. One of the reasons why they can't go higher is mentioned in that article:
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> it is thought unlikely that microbes could survive at temperatures above 150 °C, as the cohesion of DNA and other vital molecules begins to break down at this point.
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>
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In short, **DNA doesn't work about 150 °C.**
So what would it take to prevent a creature's internal temperature for reaching that temperature? *Very* good insulation, and that would still only allow it to live in magma temporarily. There is no such thing as perfect insulation - a vacuum is close, but even then there's [black body radiation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation) causing some heat transfer. The higher the temperature something is, the more energy it will give off as black body radiation. Your creature wouldn't be able to use a vacuum anyway - the pressure it would need to resist would easily crush a vacuum unless the shell was made of handwavium.
A sufficiently thick exoskeleton might be able to protect the creature, but that would be impractical because the thickness of the exoskeleton would render it immobile.
So there's no way to protect the creature from the heat levels, and it can't have DNA at that heat level. You need something completely unlike all life that we know of. It's not going to evolve from anything with DNA - abandoning DNA and switching to something else would be completely losing 3.5 billion years of evolution.
If it is possible, it would have to be a life form based on a molecular biology that we are currently unaware of. If you really want there to be something that lives in magma, you're going to have to handwave the explanation in one of two ways. The first is to have it be a life form that uses silicon (or some other element) as the fundamental element of its biochemistry instead of carbon. The second is to not attempt an explanation, which could be lamp-shaded by having someone say that they have no clue how in the world it is possible for such a thing to exist. In either case, no known biochemistry can fully explain how this could be possible.
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The concept of a creature on Earth surviving in magma was explored in an NBC television series called *[Surface](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0452718/)*. (Unfortunately, it was cancelled after the first season.)
There we met a member of the species, whom the main character named Nim:
Source: <http://nimpicgallery.blogspot.com/>
These creatures can get pretty big. Here's a full-grown relative:
Source: <http://tvshowssurface.blogspot.com/>
These creatures are amphibious, heat and pressure resistant, and they can produce electricity in much the same way as an [electric eel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_eel). Nim's species might be some form of offshoot from an ancestor of the eel, one that migrated downward in search of warmer waters around volcanic vents. Over the eons, the creature developed an affinity for the magmatic environment within the vent, but returned to the ocean when it needed to lower its body temperature.
Nim and his family have claws and teeth, so anything they can catch they can consume. Sharks have a multitude of senses for navigating, ranging from the [ampullae of Lorenzini](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampullae_of_Lorenzini) to the [lateral line](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_line). Since these are highly effective, it is feasible to believe that Nim's family would develop something similar.
In the *Surface* series, some members of the species were thought to be larger than whales. Their activities in the ocean caused an earthquake that led to a tsunami and brought the species to the surface.
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Realistically, creatures would not evolve to live around magma - there are much more hospitable areas for creatures to form that offer a great deal more than the magma can offer.
If they have no choice though, and you want such creatures to exist...
One thing that would make Magma appealing is an evolutionary ability to generate energy from heat - most creatures and plants can only absorb energy from sunlight, and don't directly convert energy to heat, but with such an abundant heat source, your creature might. This would suggest a skin that is highly conductive to absorbing energy - possibly scales. But they would also need a tremendous ability to *remove* that heat, so that they can absorb it again, or else there'd be very little net gain.
This creature would also have the issue of its organic matter being cooked by the extreme heat - being silicon-based might help that, but we have no silicon-based lifeforms to test that against. Alternatively, they could be large, or have large extraneous body parts to help dispel heat (A tail, or perhaps a large gas-expelling organ on top of their bodies that could evolve into a flight ability). Or you could have them breath out the heat in large bursts like...well, a dragon.
Complexity would be an issue though - any sensitive organs would be extremely vulnerable, either to the varying levels of heat in the Magma, or any sudden drops of heat, such as when the magma eventually cools. Either one of these would wreak havoc on sensitive internal organs.
Magma-based creatures are not practical, especially on a planet with alternative options. But with no other options available, life might find a way.
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The CGI (Cosmic Gateway Interface) System is a set of commands which (nearly?) anyone anywhere can intone in order to trigger some kind of alien tech (which exists somewhere far away), which opens a wormhole between two points, with the size of the gate and the locations of its end points defined by the commands given. This gateway can allow basically instantaneous interstellar, or even intergalactic travel. Whether you're an advanced AI on an automated ship, a freebooter astronaut in a small rocket, or the shaman of a primitive tribe, leading his people from the frosty land of their heritage to some tropical paradise, if you are able to speak the correct commands, a gateway will be opened between two points, and travel is enabled.
I'm not particularly concerned (yet) with how the the tech knows to not open a gate between a populous city and the heart of a star, or between the bottom of an ocean and deep space. I'm not asking about how the gates are created, or what this alien tech looks like.
What I would like is at least a hand-wavy fig leaf of an explanation for the really hard problem:
**How does the CGI System even know that someone several galaxies distant is giving commands for it to follow?**
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## Your universe is a simulated reality ... and CGI is your admin console interface
Ever been playing an immersive video game, you're really into it, and you accidently press the '~' key? In many games this will bring up a hidden console that will allow you to make changes in the game that players are not supposed to be able to make. Give yourself a stack of resources, spawn or delete things out of existence, teleport where ever you want to go, so on and so forth. Well, your universe is kinda like that. It always follows the same set of rules except for where the CGI is concerned. The CGI has rules, but they are very different rules that are not supposed to be part of the normal simulation.
The creators of your universe made it with the intention of the creator race being being able to enter the simulation and interact with it; so, in the early days of existence when reality needed to be tested, the creators made the CGI. An interface for doing impossible things inside of reality from inside of reality to make debugging it easier. Well, now that a few billion years have passed, the CGI is still there just in case one of the "aliens" needs to come in and debug something.
The CGI can always hear you because it it not a thing inside of the simulation, but rather, it is an interface to the simulation itself. The thing about simulated reality is that all rules are just that, rules. Light can only move in certain ways because that is the rules, but in actuality, the simulation can put whatever it wants wherever it wants whenever it wants, the rules are just there to give it structure.
The CGI can actually do many things, if you know the right commands. It could be used to summon entire galaxies out of nothing, it could be used to delete an entire enemy civilization from existence. It could even be used to factory reset reality back to the big bang... the good news is that the creators were smart enough to put proper authentication steps on all the more dangerous functions of the CGI so it's much harder to accidentally end the universe, but they got so tired of saying thier full username and password every time they wanted to do a simple teleportation; so, they disabled authentication requirements on the command making it relatively easy of intelligent beings to find it by accident.
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How does the CGI System even know that someone several galaxies distant is giving commands for it to follow?
The CGI is not a single collective, it has a network of remote and local processing stations. It has levels and each level is responsible for everything at that level and 1 or 2 level below it depending. So each suitable planet has a node, and each part of the galaxy has a node that provides local services and communicates with a couple master hubs in each galaxy. Then there are galactic nodes that communicate between galaxies and so forth and so on.
In order for such as complex system to stay working it would need multiple independent replicas so if station #1 breaks down station #2 sends its drones over to fix station #1.
So each planet would need to have a local hub(s), which the CGI would have drones roaming the universe seeding planets.
The hub would have a list of neighboring stations which it would stay in communications with. So if one station failed it would have backups, obviously drones would be dispatched to fix said failure.
Once your civilization starts broadcasting radio waves, those become easy to listen to and pick up so your CGI has an easy job of that. Your AI on an automated ship, a freebooter astronaut in a small rocket, and etc will have no problem broadcasting the commands on a frequency.
Your problem is going to be primitive races. You will have to have massive networks of listening microphones to listen for commands that are interrupted by the local hub. The local hub opens a micro-wormhole to one of many wormhole devices which will do the actual work.
If you go too primitive you will have to have planet wide MRI like machines which constantly scan the vocal processing center of all lifeforms brains.
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To avoid the simulated universe, you can say that the CGI is able to bend spacetime as it sees fit, which it effectively has to do to create the wormholes you want. Using this ability, the ancient aliens also made sure that *all* points in space are exactly adjacent to the CGI, from the perspective of the CGI. In other words, wherever you are, the CGI is always next to you. It's a universal listening device because it exists everywhere at all times.
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The wormholes themselves *probably* don't violate causality, and are mildly plausible. However, they cheat by changing the topology of spacetime itself such that no objects technically ever travel faster than light.
But more generally, you absolutely have to obey that limitation. Not even information may travel faster than light (unless you scribble it down and send it through the wormhole). This makes your premise suspect without either just abandoning the pretense of hard science fiction or appealing to some higher level of physics still.
That might not be the worst approach. I mean, after all, do the users even "speak" the way we do? We vibrate folds of meat in our throats which in turn cause sound waves in atmospheres. What kind of user interface is that? Does it care about pitch? If my timing's off by 110ms on speaking these syllables (because I'm lucky enough that I can speak them), does it fail? How close to perfect do the commands have to be?
Does this require that diatomic oxygen molecules have to resonate with these sound waves? What if it's a helium atmosphere? Or even that it's some funky isotope of oxygen? What lag does this interface have?
Well, unless you want to explore that stuff (and it soon becomes frustrating unless you're Greg Egan or something), then the simplest way to deal with all this stuff is to say that it does not matter. The correct *patterns* in any medium and at any speed will initiate the magic. You and I would speak the invocations, but the bug people of Zebulon VI would light up their carapaces in blue pulsing lights and either is good.
Thus, it's less of a listening device, and more of a "monitor". The universe seems to proceed in a manner reminiscent of computing. Whatever goes on at the level below that which we can perceive or even imagine seems to run a sort of software that calculates where this electron should be, or how much energy that photon has. Is it time for the neutrino to turn into a tau neutrino? Well, in such a case, the listener might well be just another aspect of the software that does that.
Does this mean the universe is a simulation? Not necessarily, or at least not the sort you're familiar with from popular fiction. That always posits a "real" reality, where ours is virtual. But the scenario I illustrate is more of one where there is no such real reality, and this "software" just executes at the bottom level of physics. Little perturbations in string theory strings, maybe.
Does this mean that some aliens or gods created the universe? Again, not necessarily. It might be possible with some extraordinarily advanced science to alter that software. In which case they did so billions of years ago before anyone else figured it out. Or, if you prefer, no one did it. And the universe just manifested that way without someone orchestrating it (though, from what I read of Wolfram, he contends that such universes are unlikely to develop with any sort of deep magic... if you're appealing to him, you might be down one book sale).
What limitations does this impose on your scheme? Very few. If it's not a simulation, then it's more of a state machine and not a full-blown-computer. In which case the invocation will have to be somewhat constrained. The gas balloon people of New Jupiter who live 100 million years and take 10,000 years to say hello... they might not be able to speak quickly enough for it to work. Nor could the pattern itself be spread across megalightyears and work, for the Gigantor race of the Xeegene Supercluster who scribble with stars the way you and I play with Lego blocks.
The real question is whether your characters cheat and figure out to harvest usable energy from the scheme or not. Sure, a gradeschooler would figure out to just open a gateway to the interior of a large star and siphon off a few stellar masses per day (kindergarteners in your story are probably Kardashev II before they graduate to 1st grade), but if the CGI thingy is creating photons ex nihilo, then you could really do some truly interesting things.
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**It doesn't actually listen. The future is written in stone, and the program has that stone.**
Since there is FTL travel, there is necessarily FTL communication, [which means time travel](http://www.physicsmatt.com/blog/2016/8/25/why-ftl-implies-time-travel). Since there is time travel, there is no causality, except if everything is predetermined.
The Listener is not actually Listening on anyone, it's just following the predetermined path of reality. It doesn't Listen to anyone speaking, but knows exactly when someone is speaking, or has spoken, or will speak. It's a deterministic program with an already defined input from t=0 (dawn of time) to t=EOF (End Of the Freaking universe), and it's just executing in a deterministic manner, which is perceived by us mortals as responding to our commands because it coincides with when we speak those commands (so long as there aren't any bugs).
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# It doesn't.
The "listening interface" is actually a distributed network of long-range sensors hidden in space. They are so sensitive that they are able to detect and decode brain activity at orbital distances, so they "know" when someone is going to speak and are able to determine when someone is explicitly addressing the CGI.
The myth says that in ancient times, the race that built the CGI was planet-bound and in every dwelling had one or more gadgets that were tailored to their owner's voice and connected to a world wide network. They used them to control air conditioning, ambient music and whatever. Then they evolved to the point that they just had to prepend a special word - приказывать, *Siri*, *Accio*, the various versions of the myth do not agree on what the word actually *was* - and finally they made it so they just needed to *know* they were addressing the Gateway Interface, to get the answer to any question, or anything reasonable done.
When they at last left their original solar system, they expanded the network to go with them, in time allowing access to their allied races. In the end, they built Answerer as a service to less-sophisticated races, and departed in a unique manner. Where they went, only Answerer knows. [Because Answerer knows everything](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33854/33854-h/33854-h.htm).
The myth has it that in every generation, there was at least one user who would ask a question about entropy reversal. While the exact form of the question has not survived, most legends agree on the answer always having been, '[INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER](https://templatetraining.princeton.edu/sites/training/files/the_last_question_-_issac_asimov.pdf)'.
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Simple, your universe is a simulation and the CGI system has administrator (or similar level) access, and is thus omnipotent and omniscient. The "alien tech" is simply the supercomputer running the simulation, and the CGI "commands" are actually designed to be moderator and system administrator tools for when some sysadmin needs to dip their toes into the simulated universe.
Maybe the aliens overseeing the simulation stepped out for a coffee break or something and the simulations inhabitants somehow figured out their command phrases while they weren't looking.
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The CGI system server briefly opens extremely narrow wormholes everywhere for listening, say once an hour/day/year... . A command for opening a wormhole must synchronise with the appearance of the listening wormhole, which adds an extra dimension to the invocation (but there could be commands for requesting listening wormholes to be more frequent or at a particular time if someone knows they are going to need one soon). As the listening wormhole exists there are no FTL issues in communicating the wormhole request to the CGI system server; it can open a larger wormhole for travel as requested. There are a host of options with this scheme such as which parts of the universe are served, how frequently the listening wormholes appear, whether you have to go to a special place for the listening wormhole, whether some areas have good "coverage" but some have none etc. It also lends itself to the classic scenario of the heroes/villains needing to escape but have to wait for the listening wormhole to open.
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The CGI thingy was created by ruling aliens, which ruled the galaxy before they were somehow killed. Before they were killed/driven out/something, every object was imbued with some sort of magical something that lets it connect to the CGI 'brain' and tells it when someone is speaking a command, then activates the corresponding wormholes.
Keep in mind, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. just make something up about why each rock has a mic in it:) have fun!
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I'd go with the classics - massive swarms of nanobots all throughout the universe - or at least the livable parts. They live in atmosphere so they can hear you. As JohnO said, it would put limits on who can cast the invocations (you need to have vocal capabilities in the right range), but maybe that's acceptable.
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The alien race who created the CGI might have already mapped out the limits of the universe, so they could turn it into a coordinate system. Then, it would be a matter of choosing which coordinates to pick.
You could alternatively give the CGI a limit to where you can place your teleporting points. If it's land undiscovered by the alien race, for example, the CGI would forbid teleportation there. Although, that would make the CGI useless if this alien race hasn't contacted Earth yet.
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The problem of sub-FTL communication to the source of your portals was already explained by a few answers, but I think I have an idea for that from the field of distributed computing:
The problem: Having a singular "listener", but the distance to "clients" is too long for them to overcome without using using the portals themselves.
My solution: Have several distributed listeners throughout the universe with a permanent portal from them to the main listener. This way the slow initial connection from a client can be shortened to the nearest listener, which then uses it's call-home-portal to transmit it further. The only tradeoff is how many sub-listeners you want to have to increase latency, but with a bit of handwaving you could "hide it between the worlds" or something and fill up your universe with them.
These sub-listeners with permanent portals could also be exploited by evil-doers who search for them and take their portal to the portal-source if your story desires, but that is easy to prevent (if desired).
(This is similar to content delivery systems, I could look at my old study notes if anyone wants to get a more precise term for it. )
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I building up upon the [prior answer by cybernard](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/183745/78659), saying roundabout:
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> There are alien tp\*/receiver satellites in every galaxy/system receiving a tp command
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> to execute
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\*tp = teleportation
How to interact with Alien Technology? They might not have a usb port.
The question just says "intone" to interact with the system.
But how does the System hear you?
**With an [device like Aloys focus](https://horizon.fandom.com/wiki/Focus)**
It might not even have to be worn like Aloy it does.
The tribe leader with just have it in his staff or his headdress
Why are there so many devices?
The aliens have fought in wars and dropped them
The devices feel that they are not attached to a person and change to room mode.
Now they execute all order in a room.
Maybe the aliens were very very quiet and the devices room mode can hear someone from across a canyon.
How are they still charged?
Remember portals? You can have a charger go through the portal and charge the device
Hope it helps
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**Polling the Universe**
I assume it works by randomly poking holes through space-time. It is constantly creating tiny, very short lived wormholes between random locations throughout the universe and one of its sound sensors. The holes aren't perceptible because they are so small, and they are not big enough to allow more than a few molecules through at a time, but they can pick up vibrations.
Although you aren't garenteed to have a wormhole nearby when speaking your CGI commands, one will almost definitely open in time to catch the echo of the command.
The CGI controller is smart enough to pick realize when it has heard a beginning of a command at the end of one of the wormholes' lifespans and intentionally open new ones nearby to catch the remainder of the command.
Its not terribly efficient, wasting a lot of energy on useless holes, but *polling the entire universe* is the only known way the CGI could perform as well as it does.
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If you swallow some of the obvious objections (isn't FTL signalling necessary for this? Why would it respond to sound vibrations within the range of human speech and humanly-possible accuracy?), here's a few more handwavey options in rough order of "we already have god tech making wormholes, how much weirder can it get?" handwaveyness.
**Disclaimer:** please assume that all of this is absolutely impossible nonsense and I have no idea what I'm talking about.
## Filamentary network
The entire universe is permeated with a vast network of permanent wormholes, many of which are connected to either the central CGI node or one of a vast number of local subnodes.
## Distributed listener nanobots
The entire universe is suffused with a staggering number of self-replacing, self-repairing, shockingly stable nanobots. These communicate directly with local subnodes or a single central node.
## Timeless physics
The universe is a static mathematical object—a configuration space, every point of which is a possible state of the universe. Time is a consequence of whatever rules (perceived as global physical laws) govern the structure of that mathematical object; it does not exist outside of it.
CGI isn't a system responding to events in time, although that's how we perceive it. Rather, it's a very weird, complex physical law imposing a static relation in the configuration space between a sequence of states where certain sounds were produced and states in which a precisely-defined wormhole exists between two locations.
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One property of life is communication. In particular sound is very useful due to it's non-directional nature. An alarm call is heard by every member of the pack and warns them immediately of the danger whether they are looking in the right direction, or asleep, or doing something else entirely. It also travels around corners, allowing you to hear the alarm call even if you have something in between you and the lookout.
For life-forms evolved in space, for example
[Could life form in outer space?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/1401/could-life-form-in-outer-space) then sound would be almost completely ineffective. It could be used when two life-forms are touching each other or touching the same solid body but not when they are separated.
What could they use to serve the same purpose as sound does for earthly lifeforms? A mechanism that they could use for communication with each other and that has similar useful properties to sound waves. Is there anything that could take the place of sound as an alarm, warning, or distress signal?
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# Yes; Bioluminescence!
You could use [bioluminescence](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioluminescence)! It has been well documented that many deep-sea creatures use bioluminescence, and a popular theory for many of them is that they use various lights to communicate as well as for lures.
For instance, many types of cuttlefish use light shows to attract mates. They're effectively saying "I'm awesome, mate with me," which seems to get the job done. Obviously, you could use such a thing for communication in space, but not in areas where individuals are heavily obscured.
**Edit: On Wave Properties of Light, and Problems With Communication**
(Inspired by Peter Masiar's Comments). There are some problems with using light to communicate in space. You need to overcome these problems:
* You need to decide on some part of the [EM spectrum](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum) to use, and it's preferred to use something that doesn't fry your creatures every time they want to communicate. (Of course, they are *in space*, where frying or freezing is a real issue.)
* Objects can obscure your signal. Unless these creatures are star-sized massive, or interact on that sort of scale, you can say [light does not bend around corners](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens). Some light can go *through* the corner, but then you run into the problem mentioned earlier. Also, that energy for communication needs to come from somewhere, so less energetic light is better.
* Your creatures need to be paying attention. This is common for any type of communication, though. I suggest more eyes in more places if you're using light to communicate.
* False Signals. Space has a lot of stuff in it, and that stuff produces light at many frequencies. They would need to be complicated enough in their communications that they can distinguish between a communication signal and a [pulsar](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar).
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Would electromagnetic waves work for you? Light is the most obvious.
To go around corners you need much longer wavelength. That adds additional complexity - receptor needs to be size of wavelength, but still can work in outer space where distances are huge, so species can grow big.
Not sure why downvoting - 'around the corner' requirement was added as response to my answer. Someone is mean.
Downvoter, would you care to explain why? Or is it just a signal i am not welcome here?
Currently all 3 answers suggest light. My was first, and AFAICT the only one downvoted.
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Some possibilities not mentioned yet:
**Gravity**
A sufficiently large organism could communicate using gravity waves. It would need a way to rapidly generate or move mass, but could then pulse those out. Major advantage is it's difficult to block these, a disadvantage is they're not directional - everyone within range can "hear" you.
**Ansible**
This is a staple of several sci-fi stories, it's basically an instantaneous point-to-point communication system that operates at any distance. You could use a parent-child pattern (so children have a link to their parents, and two children can go child -> parent -> child), allowing families to communicate within eachother. If they're effectively immortal, this could network the entire species.
**Dancing/ Sign Language**
Bees use "dances" to communicate with the hive. On a similar level your creatures could use 3d patterns of movement to communicate, since they clearly need some way to detect other objects. Or if they can change shape/orientation, they could use a form of that the same way we use sign language.
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The easist substitute to sound is light. We already have photoluminestic organisms such as fire flies and can create their own light source, and many others, that can reflect light. Any organism that lives in space could change how it generates or reflects light to sound an alarm or communicate among its kind.
However, on a planet there is usually a den or different terrain that prey can flee to escape. In the vast reaches of space, there likely isn't a similiar benifit to an early alarm, instead a warning would be a signal to congregate and prepare to defend the herd.
There are some additional options to light as well. Neutrinos are very low energy so it wouldn't be impossible to send out a signal using them. The creatures would have to posses a way of reading neutrinos far better than anything we currently have since neutrinos react so rarely with normal matter. Neutrinos travel through almost any object allowing the animals to signal each other through obstacles, as long as they can consistantly detect the particles.
A final idea would be a magnetic field or a way to manipulate gravity. Gravity propegates in all directions. If your creatures could manipulate it, everyone with a sensitave enough detector would read the change, regardless of what structures where in the way. Magnetic fields are similiar. Any change could be sensed and acted upon nearly instantaneously.
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In space you can stil use pheromones.
The very low density of air means that your "scent" would disperse pretty quickly (if its a gas).
So, basically, you might create a species that can communicate using different kinds of gases to communicate.
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Maybe they could use some other kind of radiation (such as ultraviolet) that can pass through many materials. Some organisms such as bats do use it to locate prey.
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Since we are talking about higher life in a vacuum, I'm going to assume that some organizing agency (a.k.a. God, Forerunner-Aliens or Human Genetic-Engineers) were involved in the entities' creation. IMHO, hard vacuum and harder radiation is just too harsh an environment for classic evolution. If therefore we can assume some deliberate design in your creatures' origins, then stretch believability slightly and bring quantum entanglement into the game.
Within the space being's nervous system, terminate a nerve at a magnetically sensative and assertive organ which itself is wrapped around one side of a pair of quantumly-entangled atoms. Put the other side of that pair in a similar organ within the brain of a related space being, perhaps a parent or sibling or child. Now evolve a communications protocol, using these organs to emped a two-directional signal across this quantum pair. These two creatures are now telepathically connected.
Now add such qe pairing between each of the genetically related members of a space herd, effectively forming a mesh network across the entire species.
A scream signal, pushed across all of the pairs of this mesh is therefore instantly "heard" across all the vastness of space, regardless of corners, attention or consciousness.
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They could communicate by generating a magnetic field. This would be done most likely by shocking a special plate, much like how we shock a muscle, to change its magnetic field. This would cause pulses, and they would communicate almost in a Morse code manner. Plus, they can change their "volume" simply by making the field weaker/stronger. It will not really bend around corners, more just go through them (unless it's magnetic as well), and would only really be affected by another field, just like 2 noises would interfere.
In a vacuum, this would be the closest to sound, excluding the ability to bounce off things.
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Do your aliens/creatures have technology ? If so maybe they could have a radio transmitter embedded in their heads from birth to communicate.This 'device' 's input end would be connected to the speech nerve (if these creatures are anything human-like) and output to auditory nerve . Whatever they want to say , they just think and that gets transmitted to other aliens / creatures in the vicinity . But anything which uses a transverse wave will work , as only those work in vaccums . Other answers , like light , electromagnetism are also good and are well described in other answers
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How bout telepathy/psychic? The way Zerg communicates from planet to planet? Which is also a perfect example of organic life-forms capable of space travel.
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This question is about a fictional scenario where an evil suicidal scientist has built a high-energy weapon somewhere on earth. His intention is to shoot a beam of some form of energy (or high-energy particles) to the sun, in order to disturb the nuclear fusion processes and in process kill all life on earth (well, he is evil after all).
Besides the fact that it is not known what form of energy to beam to the sun in order to disturb it sufficiently, what technological hurdles would the scientist have to overcome? What would be the plausible minimum amount of energy needed for something like this?
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You simply would not be able to do it with raw energy alone. Using a [table](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_%28energy%29) that I simply *love*, consider three lines:
* $3.9×10^{22}\text{ J }$ estimated energy contained in the world's fossil fuel reserves as of 2010
* $2.2×10^{23}\text{ J }$ total global uranium-238 resources using fast reactor technology
* $3.8×10^{26}\text{ J }$ total energy output of the Sun each second
Every single second, the sun outputs more than *a thousand* times the sum of all of the fossil fuel and nuclear fusion fuel we believe exist on the Earth! **The sun is just that powerful!**
For your scientist to destroy the sun, he would need to reign in his Testosterone, and concentrate on style rather than raw power. He will *never* beat the sun at raw power. However, if, in your fictional world, he identifies a weakness in the shape or distribution of the sun which, upon striking, could affect the sun in a non-obvious way. Perhaps he could identify a particular spot near a solar flare where there is a potential chain reaction that would allow him to use the sun's energy against it (Judo style). The options are limitless here: science is not aware of any such weakness to date, but it has not proved that such a weakness does not exist, so as a creative person, you have all the creative license you need.
Just remember that a *lot* of random things happen in the over one million Earths worth of volume that makes up the sun. Make sure your plot device is not something that a reader would think could accidentally occur over a few billion years in that volume -- otherwise they will have to wonder why it hasn't gone boom by random luck already!
**As for minimum energy**, that depends on how sharp of a weakness you exploit. If you can rely on the sun to amplify the energy you direct, just a few perfect joules would be believable (though for the readers, I'd probably give it more juice). **I would concentrate less on "how much energy" vs. the precision of how he can deliver the energy.** For example, an energy weapon that is just a laser-beam will be easily bent in unpredictable ways by the sun's sheer magnetic forces, but a wide distributed array of beams might be able to create a region of stability for the final beam to strike.
Nasty frequencies might be an option too. Consider that all of this talk of energy is macroscopic. The microscopic world of QM offers markedly different and noninutitive options. The highest energy a point-like particle could have is 1 Planck-energy, which is about $1.956 × 10^9\text{ J}$. Any more than that, and QM predicts that the particle will start to behave macroscopically. **That is not a lot of energy: its about as much chemical energy as you have in your gas tank.** If you threw a gas tank at the sun, it wouldn't even notice. However, throwing just one high-energy photon near the Planck-energy limit could have tremendously different effects (so different that I will have to defer to someone with more QM knowledge to even play with such waveforms). Consider another energy table (this one is in eV, and very approximate):
* $~2-3\text{eV}$ - light energy that we can see
* $10-100\text{eV}$ - ultraviolet, that can ionize our skin and cause a sunburn
* $100-1000\text{eV}$ - XRays, which are so good at causing cancer that we limit their use in medicine
* $10000000\text{eV}$ - Lower range of a gamma ray discharged by lightning
* $12200000000000000000000000000 \text{eV}$ or $1.22 \times 10^{26} \text{eV}$ - Planck-energy *-or-* one tank of gas
If you are playing with single photons with energy like that, the laws of physics are... a tad different. You can get a lot of odd behaviors once energy gets that high.
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Your mad scientist faces two problems.
**You would need $2\times 10^{41}~\mathrm{J}$ to [blow apart the sun](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=gravitational+binding+energy+of+the+sun).**
Anything less than this and gravity simply pulls the sun back together. As mentioned before this is an unimaginable amount of energy. (Although less than a percent of the total energy the sun will emit in its lifetime). This is equivalent to around 40% of the mass-energy of the Earth. Already it seems destroying the Earth is a better bet.
**The sun is too small to go supernova.**
The smallest type of supernova is a [type Ia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_Ia_supernova), where a white dwarf of around 1.4 solar masses has just enough mass added to it that it collapses further, igniting fusion through the whole star. Stars less massive than this are not dense enough for any thermal runaway process to occur. Essentially you would need to rapidly age the sun billions of years and then increase its mass by 40% to re-ignite fusion.
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> what technological hurdles would the scientist have to overcome?
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That it's effectively impossible?
I mean, the only way that this would plausibly work is that somehow the energy beam causes even more fusion to occur, chewing up the fuel or simply making the sun hotter to burn away the people. And the problem with that is that so much energy being shot from Earth would be enough to fry basically everyone on the planet before it ever got to the sun.
There are a few hundred easier ways to kill everyone on Earth.
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I can think of a few ways:
* Stream of small black holes, that could eat up the sun slowly from the inside by bouncing around inside it. [@Forest's interest pushed me to calculate this: to avoid evaporating before reaching the sun when fired at light speed, each would need a Schwarzchild radius larger than 2\*10^-21m (~one millionth of an electron's classical radius), giving a mass larger than 1.8 million kg. At that speed it'd reach the sun with a little mass left over after 8 minutes: but time goes up with the cube of the mass, and the radius goes up linearly with mass, so you can drop the velocity to reasonable levels without adding much size... but you're already handwaving away the creation of black holes, so adding in silly velocities seems almost trivial... This all assumes normal 3D spacetime, that relativity works on small scales, that Hawking radiation is a thing, etc.]
* A one-dimensional singularity *string*, rather than a series of black holes.
* Some mechanism to cover the sun in sunspots and hence darken it significantly.
* Some mechanism to *block out* the sun, by placing something at an orbit that would block most of the sun, most of the time, from most of the earth.
None of these work in a "hard-scifi" setting, but could be OK in a soft scifi one.
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Edit: OK, just realized another problem with the black hole thing. We need them to hit the sun's surface at below the escape velocity from the sun, or they'll just fly through and come out the other side, never to be seen again. So we can't just handwave and say "8 minutes, going at light speed".
We need to figure out the correct upper bound for the speed to fire from earth, to get them to arrive at 618km/s velocity needed to remain within the sun's gravity.
And let's say we want to *not hit the Earth* with these black holes, too. That means we need a velocity lower than needed to get from the sun to Earth. Kinda hard, if you're firing something *from* Earth. Then you have to fire the stream from a sol-stationary satellite, backwards along earth's orbital path at exactly our orbital velocity, so the holes fall under gravity towards the sun. You can handwave that you can fire it from the planet's surface facing the sun, too, since the holes should be slowed at least a LITTLE by passing through the sun.
You need to do this at Earth's point of closest approach, perihelion, about 147.5 million km away from the Sun.
Now we need to know how long it would take to fall that 147.5 Gm down the sun's gravity well.Thankfully, smarter people than I have done the math (<http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/39-our-solar-system/the-earth/other-catastrophes/57-how-long-would-it-take-the-earth-to-fall-into-the-sun-intermediate>) and come up with "65 days".
65 days is rather more than 8 minutes, so we need bigger black holes.
Now here, I'm just trusting some random guy on the internet (<https://www.quora.com/How-fast-do-black-holes-evaporate/answer/Henry-Norman-3>) for the equation, but I'm fine with that since the answers it gives seem in vaguely the right ballpark and I'm sure people will shout at me if we're wrong.
EvaporationTime = 5120 \* pi \* gravitationalConstant^2 \* mass^3/(reducedPlanckConstant \* lightSpeed ^ 4)
...where everything is in SI units.
Now, we want the mass, so we can rearrange that to get:
mass = CubeRoot((EvaporationTime \* reducedPlanckConstant \* lightSpeed ^ 4) / (5120 \* pi \* gravitationalConstant^2))
Assuming I didn't cock that up, we can plug in all the values we know:
mass = PrincipalCubeRoot((65\*24\*60\*60 seconds \* reducedPlanckConstant \* (lightSpeed ^ 4)) / (5120 \* pi \* (gravitationalConstant^2)))
We slap that into Wolfram Alpha, and get: 4.057×10^7 kg
To figure the Schwarzchild radius, via <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild_radius>, we use:
radius = 2 \* GravitationalConstant \* Mass / (lightSpeed^2)
= 2 \* 4.057 \* 10^7 kg \* GravitationalConstant / (lightSpeed^2)
= 6.025×10^-20 meters
So, 30 times larger than the radius we could get away with at light speed, but still about 1/50,000th of the size of an electron radius. Pretty small.
---
There remain unanswered questions.
The first such question, of course, is... would these black holes have ANY effect on the sun? Or would they just, given their insignificant size, just zip right through it, and oscillate through in an "orbit" with a 260 day cycle and a radius of about 1AU?
And this, I don't have an answer to. I don't know how to begin calculating how wide of an area these black holes could pull in particles from in its path at those velocities.
Because, to do actual damage to the sun, we need each black hole to be large enough when it hits the sun that it will absorb more mass from its path through the sun, than the mass evaporated in the following 130 days before it returns to the sun again.
And we also need to calculate how MUCH damage it will do on each pass. This will increase each time, as the hole becomes more massive. Intuitively, I feel it should get exponentially worse, gobbling up more and more sun each pass through, perhaps doubling the damage each time, but I don't know that's the case, or whether it would take forever for it to eat away the sun a few atoms at a time.
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It would take a lot of energy to disrupt the sun. [This question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/3040/how-much-force-needed-to-blow-open-a-planet) had a good answer for just blowing up the earth.
You add to that the fact the sun is a long way from earth and ~333,000 times as massive and already a huge ball of energy? you might need to turn most of the moon directly into energy just to generate enough power to have a negative affect on the sun. The discharge to shoot the sun will likely be more than enough to kill the earth.
To shut off the fusion reaction or make go into over drive (supernova), I would expect some kind of n-dimensional physics that we haven't even imagined yet to have a chance of killing a star.
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(Not an energy beam, but a wormhole)
Stargate SG-1 has an answer in [*Red Sky*, the fifth episode of the fifth season](http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Red_Sky):
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> A mission to K'tau causes the planet's sun to die out, after the
> wormhole traveled through it, causing it to be unstable...
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Stargate SG-1 has another answer in [*Exodus*, the twenty second episode of the fourth season](http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Exodus):
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> Major Samantha Carter and Jacob [...] plan to destroy [Apophis] fleet by
> blowing up Vorash's sun. This would be done by throwing the Stargate
> currently on Vorash into the sun while it is connected to P3W-451 –
> the planet where they found the black hole.
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In order to get the sun to go out you have to stop the fusion process and one way to do that is to eliminate the effects of gravity.
**Scenario 1:**
In scenario 1, you direct a beam of dark energy at the sun. Dark energy is responsible for the accelerated expansion of the universe. Perhaps a concentrated beam would have the affect of counteracting the sun's gravity, causing the fusion process to stop and the sun would go out.
This of course assumes you figure out what dark energy actually is, can harness it and then direct it at the sun.
**Scenario 2:**
Another idea along similar lines is to develop an anti-gravity beam.
This beam would either need to encompass the sun or have a cascading affect across the whole sun.
Without the force of gravity holding the sun together and driving the fusion process, it would explode or perhaps just fade out with the hydrogen drifting away into space.
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The obvious and easy solution is for the scientist to find a way to alter a suitable universal constant temporarily in the core of the sun. I suggest [fine structure constant](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-structure_constant#Anthropic_explanation), which I think wouldn't need to be altered much at all to radically slow down nuclear fusion in the core of the Sun. Wikipedia article talks about some numbers, but those are just certain limits, any change will alter the rate of fusion as function of pressure/temperature.
So, the scientist points his high-energy universal constant altering weapon at the sun and leaves it doing its thing. If done in a controlled fashion, the core would start to contract slowly, releasing gravitational energy instead of fusion energy, and nothing much would be noticed from the Earth for a long while. Only the massive power bill regularly sent to a distant volcano or to the dark side of the Moon or whatever would hint at something bad going on.
Then, after the density of the core would have gone up the right amount, simply let the universal constant to return to the normal value within the now hyper-compressed core of the sun, and you get an instant nuclear fusion of the entire core, resulting in a explosion with power up to [a type Ia supernova](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_Ia_supernova), which is basically the entire dead core of a sun-like star undergoing nuclear fusion in a single flash.
This would also make a perfect blackmail device... Switch it off suddenly and *KABLOOIE*. Let it keep running and ramp the universal constant back to normal really slowly, and everyone will be saved.
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I'm surprised the physics majors didn't jump in to offer a more scientific answer. However, since the Sun is approximately at 149 million km from Earth and 15 700 times the size, the Earth would have to collide 15 700 times to effect 1:1 per volume, indicating the impossibility of delivery and potential influence should be evident and is most likely the reason that someone hasn't already done it. But then, there is the nuclear possibility, which would make it very possible in both delivery and influence, a really scary possibility for some Lex Luthor out there. Now, I'm going back to sleep.
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The sun loses about 4 million tonnes of mass per second, if you apply Einstein's formula E = mc2 to its radiated power output.
Barring some exotic (made up) star-disrupting technique, you'd think that energy on this scale would be required to even have a hope of physically disturbing the sun's core and stopping it from continuing to operate as a star in its usual way. A second's worth of "what it does all the time anyway" isn't obviously going to do the sun any long-term damage.
To do it that way, the scientist's beam generator would somehow have to consume something at least of the order of 4 million tonnes of mass per second and convert that *all* to energy. This is more energy in a second than the human race has ever generated by all means, put together. And of course, any effect that can physically disturb a star is going to do a lot worse than that to the earth if he simply points it down instead of up.
So, I think you need to look at more subtle ways than brute force, to do *something* to the sun that upsets the earth. For example, a [Coronal mass ejection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronal_mass_ejection) can mess with electronics and even power grids on earth. If you imagine some pseudo-scientific technique to provoke a "super-ejection", directed at earth, then you could make the planet or at least its biosphere fairly unhappy for a far more modest expenditure of energy.
You would at that point be inventing how much energy is required to *guide* the sun into doing something destructive to the earth. The energy required could plausibly be almost as small as you like, for the same reason that a tiny mosquito can *plausibly* cause a horse to kick someone to death, by biting it in the right place at the right time!
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# Invent new physics
How I read the question:
***How can my mad scientist throw a water balloon at the ocean in order to destroy it?***
Obviously that will not happen with any present known **real** physics.
However, if you invent some new physics for the purpose of your story, then you will have little problems, since it has already been done, both for stars ([Star Trek Generations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_Generations)) and for oceans ([Cat's Cradle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%27s_Cradle))
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How about creating an alcubierre drive style warp bubble inside the sun. With enough size it could theoretically send parts of the sun flying away. Am not sure if it could be done but this is just a suggestion to expand on.
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Send the Sun down the drain: make a wormhole that links the surface of the star to a much more massive black hole, and let the burning gas escape due to gravity pull of the black hole.
So, two problems now... A) creating a wormhole on command, B) pinpoint acuracy wormhole creation. Have fun!
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As a non physicist I can only give you a partial answer.
The sun is already unstable in and of the fact that different regions move at different speeds within a charged medium. Periodically the charged medium creaetes a large ejection of plasma (solar flare). It should be possible to change the polarity of the upper level and release enough plasma to destroy or make the earth unlivable (an event similar to this in the 1850s destroying massive amounts of telegraph lines -- obviously the humans didn't cause this).
To make this more feasible / defray costs create an extremely large bussard ram scoop and some minor polarization on the sun the, and a way to take the (soon to be initial) flare energy and turn into magnetic energy. Once the flare activates the scoop feed the energy back into the sun by way of more ionization.
Alternately you could employ the waiting beam. In 5 billion years the sun will destablize due to lack of fuel and swallow the earth.
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I have seen it suggested that a sufficient energy **density** at a point in the outer layers of the sun can create a self-sustaining blast that propagates around the sun--epic solar flare. Obtaining that density will almost certainly involve shooting an object at the sun rather than a beam, though.
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I believe there is a sci-fi book out there, probably by Piers Anthony, that has two parallel universes and beings from one of the universes are draining the energy from the other, which eventually causes some kind of imbalance with disastrous results to the host universe suns... something about the net balance of particles, etc., and the host suns having to work to maintain the balance, or some such theory. I will try to find the book and post the title, but I think the author is Piers Anthony.
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All guys saying “you need 10blah-blah joules to achieve it” **lie** (although Ī am not astonished with their impunity, knowing how StackExchange works). There are two aspects of their lie. First is an assumption that inflicting a catastrophic damage to Solar System requires gravitational unbinding of Sun. Not so: red giant stars (BTW, a prospected stage of our Sun in few billions years) routinely shed circumstellar gas shells that could incinerate planets, such as Earth, with ease (albeit having only millionth parts of the star’s mass).
Second is ignorance in nuclear physics and composition of Sun’s core. It contain a sizable amount of 4He that can fuse to 12C and other its nuclear “multiples” [*really* fast](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_flash). This would inevitably result in a cataclysm, although not *immediately* due to poor thermal conductivity of (usual) stars.
Why this appears to never happen to main-sequence stars? The answer is simple: because **there is no natural cause to ignite 4He prematurely**, i.e. before an orderly transition to the red giant stage. If the mad scientist possess some energy beam weapon able to penetrate the Sun down to the core and concentrate its energy output in a small volume, then there is plausible that helium flash can be initiated.
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In a world of my story, which is loosely based on medieval times, fire disappeared. Are there any sources of lighting without fire that would be possible in a medieval setting?
It is a fantasy book and magic does exist and is widely used to create light. But I'm looking for non magical ways to do it.
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In terms of what was known before, say, the 18th century, there were very limited sources of what we'd normally consider rather dim light, but fire wasn't the absolutely only light source (not counting the sun, moon -- as it was thought to give its own light in pre-Renaissance times -- and stars).
Glowing insects were the commonest, and brightest. Fireflies can be nearly bright enough to (briefly) read by, if you can get even two or three of them near your page (their tendency to blink in synchronus is both helpful, because they're brighter, and unhelpful, because it'll be bright then completely dark). Firefly larvae are "glow worms" -- and I'm not certain whether they glow steadily or flash like fireflies.
Other sources of phosphorescence, like certain fungi (foxfire), are very faint -- easily bright enough to *see* in a dark forest, but not really bright enough to *see by*.
I can't say whether it was known in pre-scientific times or not, but the mineral sphalerite (zinc sulfide) is moderately common in some regions. It's the material that's incorporated into "glow in the dark" paints and plastics -- it will absorb light energy and then release it over time, though it can't be "kept" and only lasts minutes to an hour or so unless there's a source of either UV radiation or something else (this was used in radium clock dial paint, excited by the radiation from the actual radium).
Pure phosphorus was made by alchemists well before the 18th century, and glows from slow oxidation even when stored in water -- but I'm not sure this wouldn't be a form of the lost fire.
Another possibility is electric light. There is (slight, controversial) evidence that electricity had been created during the Bronze Age -- the Baghdad Battery was a wine jar that contained a rolled core consisting of dissimilar metals separated by fabric; it would have functioned as a simple electric cell if filled with wine or vinegar. Speculation is that it was used for electroplating, to allow dishonest jewelers to pass off cheap base metal goods as solid precious metal. However, there are various ways this low voltage electricity could be turned into light without requiring the ability to produce tungsten or platinum alloys (to take the heat).
One possibility is electroluminescence; this requires 100 Volts or so (which is a big bunch of battery jars), but could be made from minerals and metals that were available before the 18th century, if someone knew how (or stumbled on the effect -- say, a jeweler plating a ring that already has a tourmaline mounted).
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Proper medieval artificial light sources rely only on fire, or on trapped fireflies.
Though it is not exactly a medieval technology, really dedicated alchemists (and a twist in the story) might come with the invention of the [glowing sticks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glow_stick).
>
> A glow stick is a self-contained, short-term light-source. It consists of a translucent plastic tube containing isolated substances that, when combined, make light through chemiluminescence, so it does not require an external energy source. The light cannot be turned off and can only be used once. Glow sticks are often used for recreation, but may also be relied upon for light during military, police, fire, or EMS operations. They are also used by military and police to mark ‘clear’ areas.
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During daytime, they can use glass bottles with water, plugged in holes in roof as sort of light bulbs for home illumination.
<https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-build-a-SOLAR-BOTTLE-BULB/>
Also with systems of mirrors and lenses its possible to illuminate, for example, cellars and mines using light of Sun.
Unfortunately, at night, you have to use candles, and fires.
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**Glow in the dark paint.**
The [brightest glow in the dark paint](https://unitednuclear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=28_45&products_id=1079) is supposed to be visible in the dark for 30 hours, which is plenty to get your peasants through the night.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oBgcP.jpg)
A lamp like this would be clearly visible and would not require fire or electricity. Just charge it up during the day, and the [photoluminescence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoluminescence) should go all night.
According to [Encyclopedia Britannica](https://www.britannica.com/science/luminescence), glow-in-the-dark was first synthesized in 1603. It technically isn't medieval (5th-15th century), but it's still pretty close.
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You might find a way to modify [Archimedes' heat ray](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes#Heat_ray) for your purposes. Essentially, one or more mirrors would be used to reflect sunlight (or light from another source, I suppose) to illuminate a given location. Further, you could use a series of lenses to magnify or diffuse the light as needed.
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[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LdDP6.jpg)**Hammered iron.**
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXF60MOWUeY>
Cold iron can be hammered until it is glowing red hot. That is a little bit of light. Also the hammering throws off sparks which also produce some light.
Not sure anyone is going to read a book with light like this but it might be a cool thing for a story - someone whaling on an iron rod until it glows then using it to light the way.
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There are a few natural sources of light, which could be harnessed if you really need to.
Lightning produce light. If lightning storms are something common in your setting, it's not unthinkable that someone (maybe with some help from magic) has learnt to harness such power to use as light source. Not sure realistic, but hey, it's a magical world...
Sparks. Technically fire (?), but not a real flame. Imagine how much sparks come from a wheeled wetstone when sharpening a knife. Now make it smaller and portable, with a smaller blade attached. Takes a bit of effort, but could be a source of dim light.
Bioluminescent animals and plants. From common fireflies, to rare fishes found on in the deepest trenches on the ocean floor, all the way to some kinds of plankton and algae or shrooms. All sources of dim light. Since it's a living being, it's going to requires some taking care of, or constant replacement.
Moonlights is obviously an option. Maybe your world has multiple moons, making full moons a much more common event.
Magic. I know you said u don't want magic sources, but what about "natural" sources that came to be thanks to magic? Maybe some crystal or other mineral (possibly not radioactive or toxic) that sheds some light? Maybe a glowing small animal, something hamster-sized or larger. Or maybe there's simply some glowing liquid (naturally, or by alchemical means). It's magic, doesn't need to have an evolutionary purpose or even sense!
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On medieval tech? It's a very simple answer: no.
Just about every answer above involves tech well beyond the medieval period, or ways of producing light that don't actually produce enough light to be of any use. Sounds like you're reliant on magic, short of handwavium like "*Koomatka* fruit glow with a bright bluish-green light, and are widely used for lamps."
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One could heat a well-insulated mass of metal by using a solar mirror, and then use the black-body glow of the metal when the sun goes down. You could get yellow light at sunset, fading to a deep, soft red as the metal cooled.
The insulation would be layered, with porous pottery at the innermost layer and something more like horsehair on the outside. Insulation is important to reduce the losses, and help the metal heat faster and cool more slowly.
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Bioluminescent fungi aka foxfire. It's nowhere near bright enough to be a torchlight, but you may be able to have it cultured brighter. A specific one would the bitter oyster fungus. (Tastes nasty, apparently.)
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Magma emits a very beautiful light at night. Might be helpful if you don't mind living near a volcano. You may even scoop some lava from a nearby volcano and hold it in a ceramic or tugsten container, making your very own *lava lamp* (drumroll).
And while you may not have fire, if you scratch two iron rods really hard you still have sparks. One could crete contraptions which rub iron against iron and give off a little light as well.
Finally, since you are using the [magic](/questions/tagged/magic "show questions tagged 'magic'") tag, you can take a page from [Terry Pratchett's Discoworld's light dams](https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Light_Dams):
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> An architectural and engineering feat in the Great Nef desert, designed and built by Goldeneyes Silverhand Dactylos.
>
>
> While not described in the text, it would appear from context that these are otherwise conventional dams, strategically located in the Nef desert **to trap and channel the sluggish Discworld light, so that it can be exported and/or sold on to other parts of the Disc that need it more than a desert does.** The further details of the technology/technomancy involved have so far not been disclosed to us. The Light Dams and their devisor make an appearance in The Colour of Magic.
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Some ideas for light sources that do not involve lighting something on fire:
1. Bioluminescence (Fire flies in a jar, jellyfish in a jar)
2. The moon or sun with a mirror network to redirect light.
3. Chemical reactions that give off light, for example Zinc Atoms and Nitrous Oxide: When zinc atoms react with nitrous oxide, N2O, the reaction is chemiluminescent.
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<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphorus> was discovered in the 17th century, and by an alchemist trying to produce a philosophers stone so might fit with the time period.
You'd still want to burn it though so depending on your definition of 'fire' it may not count. It burns with a brilliant white light iirc, so would at least look completely different to wood/charcoal fires.
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[Radioluminescence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioluminescence)
This is not a medieval technology but i can't see a real no-go technological limitation for that era.
>
> Radioluminescent light sources usually consist of a radioactive
> substance mixed with, or in proximity to, a phosphor.
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>
The only issue is the low light intensity.
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**Well, it's certainly not historical, but it might be doable with tech that they could have used. A Mercury lamp.**
If handed the requirements I can't think of any step that is impossible, though admittedly improbable and no reason for them to invent the tech themselves.
Glass tubing -- Difficult, but at least possible - would be very expensive in comparison to modern manufacturing techniques.
Mercury -- The knew have to produce this.
Electricity - Making batteries does not require advanced chemistry techniques.
You need high voltage. You could put enough batteries in series, but it will take a lot - you need about 250 volts DC to get a mercury lamp started that operates at 120 V.
There are still hard details. E.g., as the mercury heats up and converts to plasma, the resistance of the lamp drops, increasing current and heats in a positive feedback loops that leads to self-destruction. No modern circuitry to rescue you from this problem, but by integrating a variable resistance element in the circuit (hand controlled) until operating temperature is reached you could be OK as the resistance of the batteries in the circuit would provide some negative feedback of the current.
Mercury lights produce a lot of ultraviolet, which are normally filtered out (in one form or another) in lighting applications. You can go blind if you get too much. Can't think of a simple way to block UVA (glass blocks most UVB) using middle age tech off the top of my head.
I should add that producing glass tubes without fire would be rather difficult, but I consider using magic to produce the glass if necessary still qualifies as not using fire to produce light. I am also assuming a low-pressure version of the mercury lamp similar to the original produced in 1860
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There are natural rocks that glow in the dark (after charged from other light).
<https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2018/09/17/michigan-man-discovers-strange-glowing-rocks-in-the-upper-peninsula/#2f1544d723ff>
If your world has these rocks readily available, it's possible that fire for light wasn't really a need at all.
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With a lot of vinegar (for the batter and pickles), it is theoretically possible to produce enough electricity to make a pickle (or any other material that glows hot from electric resistance, like a non-flammable thread) glow.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aab8VjzuXyM>
<https://www.scienceworld.ca/resources/activities/vinegar-batteries>
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As some of the comments have hinted, "fire" is more general than you think. If fire doesn't work any more, it's *extremely* unlikely that life can work either -- fire is based on (exothermic) oxidation, convection (which is based on gas laws and gravity), and radiant energy. Take away any of those things, and you're left with an environment that bears no resemblance to ours.
If you want to hand-wave something that makes fire impossible, you might as well keep waving and invent some other light source that suits the needs of your story.
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I want a substance, of which the victim does not notice any effects, except for a very severe withdrawal effects.
Ideally, it could be a natural water contamination. (Fungus?).
I want severe physical withdrawal symptoms, comparable to heroin. And I want people to start clean and become addicted by accident, so oxygen does not fit.
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**Corticosteroids.**
The body makes cortisol. This hormone is important for immune function, metabolic functions, blood pressure control and other things. If you take synthetic corticosteroid it will suppress the body's own corticosteroid synthesis. High doses of synthetic steroid have side effects but low doses just mimic what the body does naturally.
If you take low doses for some time, the body becomes dependent on the synthetic corticosteroid. Then if you stop taking the synthetic corticosteroid abruptly your body cannot ramp up its own cortisol synthesis in time to prevent deficiency. This is [acute adrenal insufficiency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrenal_insufficiency) and it is every bit as uncomfortable and considerably more life-threatening than heroin withdrawal.
<https://www.medicinenet.com/steroid_withdrawal/article.htm>
>
> •Synthetic cortisone medications (corticosteroids) simulate cortisol,
> a naturally occurring, anti-inflammatory hormone produced by the
> adrenal glands. Such drugs (for example, prednisone) have since
> benefited many, but are not without potential side effects.
>
>
> •The two
> major problems related to continuous steroid treatment are: 1) drug side
> effects and 2) symptoms due to changes in the balance of normal hormone secretion (withdrawal symptoms).
>
>
> •The production of corticosteroids is controlled by a "feedback
> mechanism," involving the adrenal glands, the pituitary gland, and
> brain, known as the "hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis" (HPAA).
>
>
> •Using large doses for a few days or smaller doses for more than two
> weeks, leads to a prolonged decrease in HPAA function.
>
>
> •Steroid use
> cannot be stopped abruptly; tapering the drug gives the adrenal glands
> time to return to their normal patterns of secretion.
>
>
> •Withdrawal
> symptoms and signs (weakness, fatigue, decreased appetite, weight
> loss, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain) can mimic many other
> medical problems. Some may be life-threatening.
>
>
> •Tapering may not
> completely prevent withdrawal symptoms. Steroid withdrawal may involve
> many factors, including a true physiological dependence on
> corticosteroids.
>
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>
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The fungus thing mentioned in the OP is interesting because fungi do produce steroid hormones including pharmacologically used corticosteroids.
<https://www.emlab.com/s/sampling/env-report-09-2006.html>
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> The steroid in "the pill" is produced industrially by the fungus
> Rhizopus nigricans. Steroids, such as cortisone (used in arthritis
> treatment) and prednisone, are manufactured with the help of molds.
>
>
>
Could some escaped industrial fungus produce a huge growth in some holding tank and secrete cortisone into the water supply? It seems at least plausible.
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**B12**
Years ago, I took a B12 vitamin pill for some added energy, since I was working a 3rd shift job and going to "night" school at the same time. I didn't get "hooked" on the pills, and I didn't even really notice a significant energy increase, but I did feel better in general.
However, every time I forgot to take the pill, I had a massive headache that day. Taking a "late" pill didn't immediately solve the headache, but I felt better the day after.
This isn't on the order of a heroine withdrawal, but it was still pretty bad. Fortunately, continuing to not take the pills didn't produce continual headaches, just that first day of missing the vitamin pill.
Conceivably, this could be an additive a local, state, or federal government body decides to add to the water, as a health booster like some places use fluoride.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation>
In our case, it unfortunately is at a level that causes similar headaches when the water is filtered, or the person travels away from the B12 additive water.
It's not an addiction, per se, but there's definitely a reason for continued use of the B12 water (avoid day long, massive headaches).
**Caffeine**
There are many people who are addicted to caffeine, and it is considered a poison. We start drinking it as little kids in our soda/pop, then as we get older, we drink more pop, then add coffee, energy drinks, and there are many other caffeine infused items people use on a regular basis.
Years ago I found an online store that was dedicated to caffeinated products, from food to makeup to soap to pretty much anything you can think of, but I can't find it ATM.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine>
Caffeine withdrawal can be fairly serious, but not like heroin symptoms. From what little I know about it, they are about the same in what they affect, but caffeine is much milder and lasts a much shorter time.
<https://www.caffeineinformer.com/caffeine-withdrawal-symptoms-top-ten>
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Small, regular amounts of nicotine. Nicotine can seep through your skin, be insuflated, smoked, or ingested orally. You could put it in hand lotion, for example. Or small amounts of amphetamine in coffee daily.
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I know iron is valuable, but I was wondering if iron was extremely rare, rare enough that it could not be used for construction, weapons, or anything our society uses iron, what this society would look like.
Would they be able to find a good alternate or several alternates in order to accomplish the same things as our society, or will they be stuck on the planet?
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The biggest problem would be magnets. Iron has the ability to keep magnetic fields contained in a much smaller volume. An air core transformer is much larger. Motors too would be very large. Other materials are magnetic, but not nearly so much as iron. Alloys? Maybe.
C.M. Kornbluth wrote a story, ["That Share of Glory"](https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/kornbluthcm-thatshareofglory/kornbluthcm-thatshareofglory-00-h.html) about a planet that had little or no transition metals on it. (Copper, Iron, Nickle, ....) Their answer was ceramics. Given how well our Corelle dishes wear, this has a possibility.
Another short story was rebuilding after an nuclear war. All the easy ore deposits were used up. What to rebuild with? Their answer was a form of tempered glass.
Not having steel would be a huge handicap. The replacement of wooden hulled ships would be much later. How would you railroad? Sure, bronze. But the price of bronze compared to the price of steel would mean that you would use it sparingly. Do a price comparison on a bronze hammer compared to a steel one.
Aluminum is a good replacement. Aluminum Magnesium alloys are even better. And it's cheap enough in bulk for ship building. The MHS Sheffield was an aluminum alloy frigate(?) in the Falklands war. Got hit by a single exocet missile and burned. I didn't realize that aluminum could sustain a flame, much like magnesium.
Titanium is another expensive replacement. When external frame packs were still *in* when I was a boy, you could get a steel pack frame for 20 bucks, and aluminum one that was about half the weight for about 35, and a titanium frame that took another 4 oz. off it for $300.
Getting to the Aluminum Age from the Bronze age would be hard. Cheap steel made the industrial revolution possible. Without iron, you'd be stuck with bronze/brass. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze>
This page: <http://www.roymech.co.uk/Useful_Tables/Matter/Costs.html> gives typical comparison costs. This gives you a way to look at alternatives, but with no iron the demand for everything else skyrockets. For story purposes I would take the multiplier and do a further multiplication by a factor of 5. So for example, a steam locomotive made of bronze would be a factor of 6 for bronze, and a factor of 5 because no one has steel, so 30 times the price.
Of course if copper, zinc, tin are more common due to iron's absence, this will affect these factors.
Once you get to the Aluminum age, shortages disappear. Aluminum is very common. It's just expensive to refine. At this point, you get down to things that are only a factor of 4 or so more expensive. I think your industrial age will limp along until the aluminum industry gets going.
Look at bicycle technology. Steel alloy frames are in the 30 pound mark, and you can still get a serviceable $150 buck bike. With carbon fiber you can get the weight down below 12 pounds, and a price tag comparable to a good used car. Note however that the chain and gears and spokes are still steel. There are bronze alloys that would work for this, but at a price factor of 6 to 30 times as much.
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From a historical perspective, iron kinda sucks. It's actually very comparable to bronze in terms of mechanical characteristics.
Steel on the other hand is so incredibly useful, we've only recently begun to come across things that work as well as it.
As far as replacements go, it really depends on what you need to do. Titanium alloys can go toe to toe with most steel alloys in terms of physical performance, but the but the best steels are still better than the best titanium. Additionally, it's MUCH harder to machine or smelt titanium alloys as they don't conduct heat very well and are comprised of more component elements. Whereas steel could be (and probably was) discovered by accident.
If you're looking for a replacement for use in spaceships and the like, Aluminum is your best bet. It's not as strong, so it requires more skilled engineering, but it's got great properties for its weight.
On Earth, natural aluminum is incredibly rare and we were only able to mass produce it once we got the ability to pump tens of thousands of volts through bauxite. If your society had plenty of copper, tin, and bauxite, it's possible they could skip the iron and steel stages of development and get to electricity and make the jump straight to aluminum, but there would be several differences. They wouldn't have skyscrapers. Their buildings would, in all likelihood, cap out at about 600 or so feet tall and have to be made of concrete or the like. Bridges would likely be causeways instead of suspension bridges like we have today, so inland shipping would have to happen on smaller, flatter ships.
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I suppose it's possible in theory they could largely bypass metals and discover polymer chemistry and eventually materials like carbon fiber.
At the very least they'd probably focus on composite materials for construction applications and possibly an alternative metal alloy for electrical uses. Fairly common copper is probably a minimum requirement for quickly developing electrical theory. We've actually started to explore [Plastic Magnets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_magnet), so that's a possibility down the tech road for your civilization. And [superconductors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_superconductors) don't actually require iron at all.
The problem would be that no iron age and no industrial revolution with abundant iron would probably slow down development a lot.
But there are no total barriers.
[Bamboo for scaffolding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaffolding#Bamboo_scaffolding) is still used, although it's use is now declining. I think we should not leap to the conclusion that we would not find materials that do the job we need. We used to build warships from wood and particular woods were valued highly because they were exceptionally strong.
You might find this [Wikipedia list of copper alloys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_copper_alloys) useful. There are lots of copper alloys which are more important than iron.
There's also quite an [interesting page on magnetic metals](https://www.metalsupermarkets.com/which-metals-are-magnetic/) which gives a good overview of possibilities.
For ferromagnetism the next most important metals to iron would be Nickel and Cobalt, I think. As you'll notice from the list of copper alloys, nickel and cobalt turn out to be quite useful in making interesting alloys, along with zinc.
"Happily" [gunmetal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunmetal) does not require iron at all. :-) Not only does this mean we can keep killing each other with more sophisticated means on your iron-depleted planet, it means we can build lots of other high performance industrial equipment.
Iron available in relatively small quantities is useful in making some alloys.
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The biggest value of iron is that it is cheap. It is very common, and relatively easy to work.
Something will always be the winner in strength per cost, and that will be what everyone uses when they care about getting something done rather than how it is done.
Everything generically 'metal' is steel because because it's cheap. If iron wasn't cheap something else would be the cheapest, but not being as cheap products wouldn't be as cheap, and since the runners up (tin and aluminum I think) aren't as strong you'd get less performance. There isn't really anything magic about iron, if it was too expensive people would make due, the same way we make due without adamantium or nano tubes.
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Thinking on how technology evolves, I believe this society would not find something to replace iron in things that we make from iron, but they would instead create other things with other materials to deal with the same things we use iron-based things to.
>
> Would they be able to find a good alternate or several alternates in
> order to accomplish the same things as our society (...) ?
>
>
>
They certainly would find ways to develop things according to their needs. They would accomplish the exact same things our society did?
If you mean material things, certainly not... if you mean development, science, technology, politics, economy, religion, art, etc., I believe so.
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As others have mentioned, magnetism is an important property of iron, though any of the ferrous metals (iron, nickel, cobalt) would work for that.
The other fairly unique property is that its used for steel, and [steel's fatigue limit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatigue_limit) means it can effectively be exposed to low levels of fatigue indefinitely. This is critical for things like bridges, and the reason airplanes have a lifespan of takeoff/landing cycles before the aluminum is too fatigued to be safe. Apparently titanium alloys have this same property.
[Answer]
# A yet another Russian novel
[Two novels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seekers_of_the_Sky) by nowadays sort of famous Russian sci-fi/fantasy author Lukianenko had a quite similar setting. The names and "Cold shores" and its sequel "Narrowing morning". I don't know it they were translated in other languages. It is a retelling of a biblical story in the more or less modern world, with apostles and travel and doubt if the leader is brining genuine good.
The world is purely technological with a single fantasy addition and a same-natured large-scale fantasy event roughly 2000 years ago. The basic idea is that a heavily implied analogue of Jesus blamed the iron in all the conflicts the mankind led and vanquished all known to him sources and forged iron artefacts from that world.
So, they **had** normal Iron Age and diverged from our historical timeline 2000 years ago.
The actual fantasy addendum is the ability to *hide* and produce again items to a personal wormhole dimension. The problem is that these dimensions are hierarchical and the root one holds all the iron. For typical people the size of the dimension storage they can use is low, so it's more a portable bank storage cell and less a teleport for large items. It plays an important role in the plot, but not really in the world building.
# The world
The actual novel happens in 19xx, but the technological level is more akin to the 19th if not 18th century with few additions / novelties. So, basically a steampunk setting. Iron is *very* rare, mostly from artefacts made more than 2000 years ago and hidden at the time of vanquishing of the iron. Is is mostly used for jewellery, similar to gold in our world.
For production use brass and copper are used. They did not reach to aluminium or titan in large scale production. The creative use of rockets, however, enabled take off-assisted gliders, mostly from wood.
# Byline
According to Lukianenko, if the Iron-era humanity suddenly looses all the iron sources known to it in, say, 30 AD, we would be slowed down for 100-150 years of progress and have Queen Victoria's steampunk with brass steam-powered battleships and wooden glider planes in 20th century.
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There's be no civilization as we know it because we wouldn't be here. Iron is a critical nutrient to vertebrate life, necessary for the creation of red blood cells to transport Oxygen throughout the body. Its commonness is why sufficient amounts of it dissolve in soils world wide to be absorbed into plants for us to consume.
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The iron age started not because bronze was mechanically inferior but because it was relatively expensive. There are bronzes, those made with noticeable amounts cobalt in particular, that are in fact *still* superior to steel. Iron's advantage is that it is over 20,000 times more common than tin, which is needed as an alloying material with copper (833 times rarer than iron), in the Earth's crust. So a world with as much bronze ore (90% copper, 10% tin) as we have iron might skip the iron age altogether. As for the industrial revolution basic bronzes could have been used with difficulty, everything would have taken longer and cost more. The age of electricity would depend on the availability of large amounts of the other ferrous metals, nickel and cobalt, for making permanent magnets, aluminium would then be available in quantity, aluminium has a number of alloys that can take the place of steel in structural applications and is of course very important in aerospace.
So that's alternatives at various stages, where are you really going to miss steel? Jet aircraft, and rocket motors, bronzes will get you a long way because they're very good at dissipating heat but where you need to concentrate heat, such as in steam engines, jet engines and rocketry, bronzes are not as useful. So you need rhenium, niobium, titanium, tungsten, neodymium and a host of other relatively rare, on Earth, elements that do some things iron does better at the expense of being a good "all-rounder" for example tungsten is very strong but very hard to work because of it's extremely high melting point and quite dense so weight dependent applications need not apply. The space industry already relies heavily on non-ferrous metals like aluminium and titanium for light weight construction and even more heavily on non-metallic ceramics and polymers for heat shields, solar panels, insulation, etc... so if these materials were easier to come by there's no reason people wouldn't still engineer a space race and all the good and bad that has come from it.
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Ok. So let's look at what man did have in the bronze age. They had enough technique by that time to mine and process both tin and copper and to combine them in the correct ratios to produce bronze. The would have used bronze for things like weapons for hunting or war, utensils like pots, locks and yes, plows.
What needs to be borne in mind is that the discovery of bronze was probably not a deliberate action. Someone accidentally did something stupid or thoughtless, and this resulted in (ooooh it's so much sharper than my flint kinfe) the start of the bronze age. This age does not merely cover the use of bronze in ever expanding ways, which led to the invention of metallurgy, but also saw the first writing, farming and the evolution of social structures. If iron were scarce, some other accidental discovery might have kicked off another age. Considering the shortage of iron, your next step might have been kicked of by the metallurgical discovery of a better, stronger metal ([here is a list of the most common alloys](http://www.explainthatstuff.com/alloys.html), though some of them are modern).
Alternatively, small quantities of iron might have been used sparingly (like on the edge of a plow blade, to allow it to keep its edge longer).
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If iron were rare, it would certainly hinder the development of an emerging society. Iron is fairly easy to extract from iron ore, can be done with fire and modest air blasts. Aluminum, for example, requires electricity to extract from bauxite, which is why aluminum wasn't used in industry until after electricity could be generated in sufficient volume, the late 1800's. The earliest form of steel, which is iron plus carbon, dates back to the 9th century, the [Ulfbehrt swords](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulfberht_swords) built from handmade Damascus steel. It wasn't until the Bessemer furnace and crucible steel process was developed, lowering the cost considerably, that steel use became widespread.
In a modern technical society, scarcity of iron can be overcome, because that society has the knowledge base to find substitutes. But to a pre-industrial society, the absence of a metal that is strong, plentiful, and can be smelted and worked with using crude technology would slow advancement considerably. Developing the advanced tech to extract other metals is hard to do, if you don't have a simple to extract metal to build that technology with.
[Answer]
Just remember: there's a *reason* that humans switched to iron from bronze asap: it's:
* stronger
* lighter
* stiffer
* melts at a much higher temperature
* is magnetic, which means electricity
If you want to know what a world without much iron is like, take a look at the Bronze Age, and imagine metallurgy stopped there.
Many consequences ensue, including:
* agriculture remains inefficient, because bronze plows are heavier and lose their edge quickly
* no clearing the forests for fuel, roads, villages/towns/cities because axes and saws (if they're even invented) have the same problems as plows
* never mass-producing aluminum, since the process requires cheap electricity, and copper isn't magnetic
* no sky scrapers, since iron is stronger and lighter than bronze
* we cook at a lower temperature
* we can't heat rooms as efficiently, since bronze melts at a much lower temperature
* Anything that hangs and is made of metal wouldn't exist, since bronze bends easier
* no cars
* no trains
+ engine boilers need the strength and heat resistance of iron
+ and so do the rails
* primitive steam engines
* gun technology stops at the "bronze cannon" stage.
] |
[Question]
[
My world geographically separates agrarian from urban centers. A large caravan (hundreds of different 'farmers') travels to the cities every harvest, to sell their goods. The caravan is over a month in length, with the first and last weeks being in the wilderness between cities and farmland. The farmers need to eat. I like the idea that those on the caravan that are bringing livestock to the cities would also act as butchers during the traveling part of the venture. So, in the middle of nowhere, livestock runners have a sweet deal because they have hundreds of hungry farmers to feed.
I've gotten some great ideas from the [silk road](http://www.flavorandfortune.com/dataaccess/article.php?ID=585) history, but I don't see anything about livestock being transported for trade and slaughter. It would be messy, en route, and butchering a calf and roasting it may take an unreasonably long time.
Preserved meats, or chicken, could be easier.
This question may be trivial, but I keep wondering if the image in my head of a wagon of livestock, being slaughtered and eaten by the people on the caravan, makes logistical sense.
**Would a 'silk road' type caravan butcher and prepare livestock for food, en route?**
**edit**: My world has changed slightly based on feedback here and elsewhere. One city has a river delta and others have poor agriculture, so there is ship-based transport between cities with which they can limp by. The caravan focuses somewhat more heavily on supplies that are more 'exotic' than food. This includes drugs (e.g. weed) and alcohol. The caravan is also a means for the farmers to acquire goods in the city.
I appreciate the feedback throughout.
[Answer]
# It depends
First do note that meat is usually not a primary source of food. Ever since we stopped being hunter-gatherers more than 10 000 years ago and became farmers instead, we started relying on grains and roots (such as potatoes) as our primary source of energy.
That said...
A caravan needs to feed itself. Unless the caravan can buy food on the way, then it needs to be self-sufficient. The problem with being on the move is that keeping "dead" food (harvested plants, slaughtered animals) fresh and consumable is difficult. Your idea solves that problem. As long as the livestock can feed and hydrate itself, it stays fresh. Also it can propel itself, another great advantage: less carriers needed.
There may be a downside to killing animals for food and that is that you are taking a valuable resource and stuffing your belly with it. Livestock are always worth more to be sold than to be eaten. Killing livestock to eat makes for **expensive** meals.
Then again... suppose this caravan is a cattle drive. Animals are bound to hurt themselves during such a trek. A certain portion of loss is to be expected. A cow that breaks a leg cannot be moved anyway. Sorry Bessy, you are now food for us.
Hence...
# Pros of killing livestock for food along the way
* Fresh food
* Self-propelled food
* Loss of an individual is not a loss for the caravan
# Cons against killing livestock for food along the way
* Expensive resource "wasted" as food.
* Somewhat more troublesome logistics as wagons rarely need herding, only driving.
[Answer]
**I think you have missed a lot in your research then**
First lookup [Bedouins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedouin)
(granted these guys were more in the Saharan reaches)
These nomads were prolific traders on the silk road (amongst others). In their culture Camels are a foundational pillar. The camel is good for transporting materials, it can be milked as a food source, it can also be slaughtered for its meat.
Indeed the Bedouins do slaughter their camels particularly the males, and the old. They also would likely trade their harvested meat for necessities from towns they visit.
I mention these because its such an efficient system. Your merchant has a singular animal that can survive extreme conditions, can carry goods, can produce food, and can be slaughtered for meat. Other animals would be less efficient.
**One point to consider though.** Silk road merchants would rarely transport animals solely for butchery (unless in times of a crisis). Any settlement they would trade with would require a stable food source including general meats. Chickens and goats were common in just about any destination. Also larger animals require more nutrition during transport so cattle becomes more troublesome across uncertain terrain.
**Clarification:** Transporting livestock solely for butchery is an inefficient mercantile practice. Thus this would only be done for richer settlements seeking exotic meats that for some reason couldn't raise said creatures on their terrain. Furthermore, processing an animal and preserving its meat for transport is less risky than herding an animal across uncertain terrain where it could easily wander off, be stole, or die from starvation, disease, injury, thirst, etc.
Meat preservation usually requires things like a smokehouse and or curing salts. These would be difficult to achieve on the road as a merchant. These would be infeasible to carry around just in case.
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# Caravan Diets
[Camel Trains](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel_train) describes the people, cargo, **diet**, and speed at which your caravans likely moved.
>
> The caravan people's food was mostly based around oat and millet flour, with some animal fat. A sheep would be bought from the Mongols and slaughtered every now and then, and tea was the usual daily drink; as fresh vegetables were scarce, scurvy was a danger.Besides the paid cargo and the food and gear for the men, the camels would also carry a fair amount of fodder for themselves (typically, dried peas when going west, and barley when going east). It was estimated that, when leaving its point of origin, for every 100 loads of merchandise the caravan would carry around 30 loads of fodder. When that was not enough (especially in winter) more fodder could be bought (very expensively) from dealers.
>
>
>
There's quite a bit more information at that link about what they carried, how fast, and other logistical concerns. A "stage" (distance traveled in a day) was typically 10 to 25 miles (walking pace for a man). If bad weather hit, they might camp in place for several days without moving.
### Not technically a road
The Silk Road wasn't really a [road](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road#Routes). It was a series of trade routes which connected various cities. Some parts of the "Silk Road" were sea trade routes, so not even close to roads at all. So different routes and modes of travel would have involved different diets. Though in all of them, meat would have been rare.
### Caravans
In trying to find data about feeding caravans, I too, found no reference to meat. But I did find this [Tea Horse Road](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Horse_Road), which was considered part of the Silk road. It specifically mentions mules and humans carrying cargo, but not livestock. I also found [this link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravan_(travellers)) describing caravans as quite limited in cargo capacity; 500 camels could transport about half the goods of a Byzantine era merchant ship.
See also [Caravanserai](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravanserai), which are sort of roadside inns. (The link includes links out to specific Caravanserai, with pictures.) From the link:
>
> Caravanserais provided water for human and animal consumption, washing, and ritual purification such as wudu and ghusl. Sometimes they had elaborate baths. They also kept fodder for animals and had shops for travelers where they could acquire new supplies. In addition, some shops bought goods from the traveling merchants. "Now the true account of the road in question is the following: Royal stations exist along its whole length, and excellent caravanserais; and throughout, it traverses an inhabited tract, and is free from danger."
>
>
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## Medieval meals
People generally had [two meals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_cuisine#Meals) per day, at least in Medieval society. Meat was expensive, and therefore your low-paid laborers on a caravan would likely have eaten little if any meat. [This site](http://www.lordsandladies.org/middle-ages-food-and-diet.htm) suggests some potential foods for different classes, though I don't know how reliable the source is. And again, these are for middle ages/medieval society in general and not specifically for caravans.
I think the first link at the top is your best source of data.
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Cowboys on cattle drives would eat fresh beef. Your folks moving livestock could do the same. Also, the more people there are to eat the better the economics - I bet 10 cowboys could not finish a fresh-slaughtered steer before it went bad, but 100 people certainly could.
<https://truewestmagazine.com/cowboy-grub/>
>
> “When it comes to broiling steaks, ‘Dutch’ had the knack down pat. He
> would get his campfire hot, slap the steaks into it for a minute,
> which seared them on the outside. Then he would pull the meat away and
> let it cook slowly. Of course the beef was off of a fat yearling, a
> good meat to start off with.”
>
>
> Chuckwagon staples had to travel well and not spoil. The list included
> flour, sourdough, salt, brown sugar, beans, rice, cornmeal, dried
> apples and peaches, baking powder, baking soda, coffee and syrup.
>
>
> Fresh beef was the main meat, but cowboys also hunted wild game and
> fish along the trail and during roundups. The cook used bacon grease
> to fry everything, but it also served as the main meat when supplies
> ran low.
>
>
>
from <http://newsok.com/article/2492279>
>
> Eventually, chuck wagons were elaborately stocked with everything
> needed to operate a mess hall outdoors - spices, Dutch ovens, wood for
> cooking, meat hooks, water barrels, tableware and large quantities of
> staples like molasses, lard, bacon, beans, fresh beef, beans, coffee
> and flour.
>
>
> "When people think of cowboy cooking, they think of beef and beans and
> coffee," Price pointed out. "That was true in some places, but
> certainly the traditions were leavened by Mexican cooking, Basque
> cooking in some regions of the Great Basin area, and of course,
> California added its own style of cuisine. " There were also regional
> variations in the amount of money ranches spent to feed cowhands,
> Price said.
>
>
>
[Answer]
You could easily blend several ideas here.
Which animals to eat. Easy, the ones that get injured on the journey. Don't count on them as a staple food source, more as a bonus. keep the sacks of grains and such as staple foods, but don't waste a huge lump of kilo-calories if it drops (metaphorically) in your lap.
How to butcher? Just like a hunter out in the wilderness. Do it where the animal falls though. Other dray animals will likely get nervous when one of their own is in distress or getting butchered. Drain blood, gut and quarter. Use a team of people to do this, because you want it done fast.
Eat some and preserve some. At night, set up to cook some of the meat and to make some of the meat into jerky or pemmican. To dry the meat, maybe get a couple of wagons off to the side of the trail to carry racks of the meat for drying, but maybe keep them out of the way of the dust cloud generated by the main caravan. There are lots of other ways to preserve meats, but this is what comes to my mind.
Alton Brown's Good Eats show had episodes on Jerky and on Kebabs which will give you some interesting ideas as well as make you hungry.
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They certainly could do. It would relatively easy and an advanced party could butcher, cook and distribute the meat to other members of the caravan. However I suspect they would not, or would not to any great extent.
The reason being that meat would normally be more expensive than grain. These people are farmers living in remoter agrarian areas so I would imagine they would not be very wealthy. If so then they would probably prefer to eat a minimal amount of meat as they would be eating their profits by doing so. Probably better for them to bake bread, boil rice and/or cook a range of vegetables such as beans.
] |
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[
So, this is a trope common to any number of science fiction worlds: humanity emerges from its solar system to discover that there are a bunch of alien races out there, but, importantly, at least the major players are all within decades of each other when it comes to technological advancement.
Star Trek is perhaps the most egregious example of this, but lots of other continuities have the same basic structure: humanity (or another race) may have *primitive* warp drives/proton torpedoes/sun harvesters, but not so much that any fight is a foregone conclusion, if and when it comes to a fight. This is generally handwaved, if it is addressed at all.
Given the rapid pace of advancement of technology (particularly weapons technology), any more than an effective century of disparity would seem likely to produce the kind of imbalance that would make conflicts entirely one-sided. Over the course of an intelligent species' evolution, a century seems like an awfully narrow window.
So: **What would a reasonable mechanism be by which this result could be accomplished?**
Assumptions: FTL transport is possible and cost-effective to transport actual beings over interstellar distances (soft sci-fi), life is relatively common (one in a hundred stars has a planet with a biosphere), limited deus ex machina (ideally would prefer to avoid "God did it").
[Answer]
If you're talking about levelling just the *technological* playing field, the obvious answer would be trade. A second answer would be the limits of physics.
# Trade
Assuming natural resources are ultra-plentiful on non-intelligent-life and non-inhabited planets & things (suns, comets, asteroids) there shouldn't be a reason to fight with your neighbours over them. And once you can build a few robots there should't be any sane reason for slaves.
The only reason you would even want to talk to any other aliens is to trade information or things that they've made. Maybe your culture is growing old & bored, and thrives on new stories even. It would be easiest to trade basic technical info to obtain their "stuff," you don't have to make & deliver anything, while just showing them how to build faster & bigger ships so you can get more stuff delivered to you faster. Basic enough info that it still works, but not so advanced that they could fly over and blow up your planet at the slightest whim.
If some species think that's a bad idea and don't want to give technical info to "lesser" species that could threaten them sometime in the future, that's fine, they won't. But all it takes is one species willing to trade, or even *just one ship* from one species and Pandora's box is open.
# Physical Limits
Second, maybe the best technology & weapons have physical limits that just can't be surpassed. A musket from 400 years ago and a modern assault rifle are worlds apart, but both use similar physics & are both still dangerous.
I'm not a (theoretical) physicist, but maybe nuclear reactions can only get so big (like a sun), or "ray-guns" have a maximum theoretical power, and once you can build a reactor or a bomb or ray-gun, then another thousand years of tweaking the details won't result in much more "bang for your buck." Going from a 20% efficient ray-gun to a 90% efficient one would be a big jump, but they're both still effective enough.
In that case, someone with a basic entry-level weapon could still fight against the thousand year old species, but the minor tweaking details would still give the old species the advantage, most of the time, making for a not-completely-one-sided conflict.
The first season (or two?) of Star Trek's Enterprise show often focused on technology. For example their weapons start off basically working, after some "tweaks" they're up to a level similar enough to fight with the much older Klingons. It also showed technology traded to others. [Cloaking devices](http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Cloaking_device) eventually going from Romulans (and the future?) to Klingons, and ["holodecks"](http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Holodeck) from a Xyrillian ship to a Klingon ship, and in "future" series' the Federation.
---
Wrapping the two ideas together a little, the Star Trek episode "A Piece of the Action" ends with Dr.McCoy realizing he left his communicator behind on the planet, possibly teaching a basic civilisation the key to replicating all the Federation's advanced technology...
[This page](http://www.tor.com/2010/04/29/lemgstar-treklemg-re-watch-a-piece-of-the-action/) has a nice review with some dialogue like:
>
> SPOCK: Captain. If the Iotians, who are very bright and imitative people, should take that communicator apart—
>
>
> KIRK: They will, they will. And they’ll find out how the [transtator](http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Transtator) works.
>
>
> SPOCK: The transtator is the basis for every important piece of equipment that we have.
>
>
> KIRK: Everything.
>
>
> MCCOY: You really think it’s that serious?
>
>
> KIRK: Serious? Serious, Bones? It upsets the whole percentage.
>
>
> MCCOY: How do you mean?
>
>
> KIRK: Well, in a few years, the Iotians may demand a piece of our action.
>
>
>
[Answer]
>
> "The Asgard would never invent a weapon that propels small weights of iron and carbon alloys, by igniting a powder of potassium nitrate, charcoal and sulfur. We cannot think like you do." *Thor, Stargate SG-1 S4E1*
>
>
>
This is a very complex question, which is undoubtedly why so many SciFi worlds bypass dealing with it. The central issue is that any truly alien species (as in, developed on a completely separate world and therefore beholden to a completely different environment) will be completely alien in nature. The implication of this is that as a species we are mostly incapable of actually imagining what an alien would be like biologically, let alone socially or technologically.
Star Trek gets around this with the Federation's handy Theory of Convergent Development, which is how they explained all those episodes on other planets with totally-not-Nazi Nazis and totally-not-western Westerns.
But let's look at it analytically:
Most depictions of sentient aliens in SciFi are shown as vastly superior to us, either physically, mentally, or technologically. But that is just as likely to not be the case.
For example, here on Earth the primary state of life is direct competition. Predators fighting predators for the prey, prey eating the plants, plants trying to not get eaten while still spreading seeds, etc. But what if we imagine an alien species where the primary method of competition was symbiosis/parasitism? Or even a planet where adaptability was the most needed trait due to a highly unstable environment?
We don't think about it a lot, but humans are actually pretty good at surviving at the purely biological level. We don't think we are because we compare ourselves to lions and elephants, creatures we evolved to directly compete against; over those animals we have only our superior intellects and planning skills.
But imagine that species from the planet based on symbiosis. Perhaps they pilot biomechanical spaceships and their technology is directly integrated into themselves. After all, how else would they design it, coming from a planet where everything functions at the most basic level by its ability to integrate with other organisms? To us, they would appear as a single life form instead of a ship piloted by individuals.
In this situation, our weapon technology would in all likelihood be overwhelmingly more advanced for the simple reason that we make weapons to kill things, whereas they would most likely make weapons to break things apart. Imagine a weapon that destroys an organisms ability to communicate. On a symbiotic world that would be devastating, as bad as a neurotoxin. To a human though, it would be a horrific weapon but hardly deadly. Unleash a communication killing weapon on a human army and they'll just keep attacking, albeit with little to no organization.
And this is only one example.
To summarize: there are lots of things that could even the playing field. The key thing to think about is what biology/psychology/technology the aliens have and why they have it. And if you find yourself imagining something mostly human-like, then it isn't really a true alien. Once you can imagine that, then you can imagine why their technology would be ineffective, or what we might come up with to counteract it.
For a slightly softer but more creative look at this concept, take a look here: <https://i.stack.imgur.com/xGDHe.jpg>
[Answer]
I think Stargate SG1 managed this quite well.
(May contain some spoilers about Stargate SG1, so if you haven't seen it and plan to, don't read the main text, just read the bold bits.)
Most of the 'aliens' they encountered were actually humanoids that had advanced to varying degrees of technology, most of which was behind their own, but a handful were truly superior to them in every way.
---
**Steal Weapons:**
**As soon as you can, start stealing the weapons of superior hostile races.**
One species, the Goa'uld, were a parasitic race that stole all their technology. One of the first things the Tau'ri (Earth humans) did when they knew they were outmatched was steal as many Goa'uld weapons as they possibly could as soon as they possibly could.
In a way it would be equivalent to a roman soldier coming to the future and stealing a policeman's handgun (except this handgun fires energy bolts and takes a very long time before it needs reloading), as soon as they understood the simple "point and click" interface, they'd be a genuine threat. If they could actually understand how it worked (which in this case the Tau'ri eventually did), they'd be an even bigger threat.
---
**Make Powerful Allies:**
**Ally yoursef with a more powerful race.**
Other advanced races tended to be more peaceful or preoccupied with other enemies. One race in particular (the Tollan) allied with the Tau'ri but refused to give them weapons.
(This was due to an incident in which they previously gave an advanced power source to a less advanced race in their own solar system and that race turned the power source into a weapon that managed to destroy their own planet, rendering the whole system uninhabitable.)
It was one of these advanced races (the Asgard) that truly offered Earth protection. Early on in Earth's adventures into space, the Asgard contacted them about a treaty they could sign with some of the more moderate Goa'uld that would prevent the Goa'uld from attacking them on the grounds that if the Goa'uld attacked the Asgard would come and wipe them out.
(The treaty was a sort of half-bluff, the Asgard were capable of wiping out any Goa'uld faction that didn't comply with the treaty, but their hands were mostly tied by another war they were fighting.)
---
**Learn From Others:**
**Reverse engineer your gifted and stolen technology in order to be a better contender.**
Eventually, Earth acquired some of the Goa'uld's smaller space-faring vessels and managed to learn enough from them to develop their own space-faring vessels. It took a lot of trial and error but they got there in the end. They even eventually managed to build their own completely Earth-designed space ship with full FTL travel.
They also developed their own power-sources by reverse engineering alien power sources, which was thankfully less hard.
Lastly, one of their allies eventually agreed to hand over all their technological knowledge to the Tau'ri (in the form of a handful of easy-to-use databases) because their entire race was dying and they saw the Tau'ri as the best candidate to use the knowledge for good.
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Anyone who advances technologically will be ganged up on by the other races.
Let's imagine 2 people standing in on opposite sides of a big wad of cash in the centre, and both people are willing to kill for it.
Both people have a revolver on their hip, and go to draw.
One of the people is secretly an alien, and has a ray gun hidden behind his back. It's more accurate (100% vs 50%), but with the same rate of fire.
In this scenario, he will draw the ray gun and fire. His odds of surviving are 50%, as the other person gets 1 shot at him.
His odds if he used the revolver are 25% chance of killing and surviving, 25% chance of killing and not surviving, 25% chance of not killing and not surviving , 25% chance of surviving and not killing, which loops back to round 2 at the same odds as the first. So his odds of surviving with the revolver are 1/3.
Now, lets say there are 3 people around the cash.
If the alien draws his ray gun, both of the other people will aim for the alien. After everyone has fired once, human 1 is dead, human 2 is alive, and alien has a 25% chance of being alive. If he survives, then he fires and kills person 2. , and has a 50% chance of being killed in return. His total odds of surviving are 12.5%. By contrast, the other people have an average of 37.5% (0 and 75%) chance of surviving. The people with the revolvers are 3x as likely to survive as the alien with the ray gun.
If instead he drew his revolver, then one of two things can happen, the three can fire at the person on their left, or two of the three can gang up on someone.
If everyone fires left, then all the possibilities after 1 round are equally likely (12.5%). These are:
All live.
All die.
Only alien lives.
Only person 1 lives.
Only person 2 lives.
Two people live in any combination (A+P1, A+P2, P1+P2).
So that is 5 options where the alien dies, 2 options where they have a 1v1 dual, and 1 option where they win. The 'everyone lives option is not included, for the same reason that rolling a 6 sided die and rerolling all 6s is the same as rolling a 5 sided die.
If he is in a 1v1 dual, as above he has a 1/3% chance of living.
So his total odds of winning are 1/8 + 2/8 \* 1/3. This is 5/24, or 20.8%.
The alien is nearly twice as likely to survive if he keeps his ray gun hidden.
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My first thought would be that everyone else went away. Perhaps we live in a relatively bad area of the universe and all the life forms that could do so left.
Think about what humans are doing. We want to get to Mars, because that's the next "great leap for mankind," but after that, are we really going to stay in our little corner of the galaxy, poking around on every little planet out there as our home world deteriorates? Absolutely not! We'll be on the first ship out, once we have a ship to take us. Our technological boom is powered by the destruction of our planet, to the point that we might never be able to save it, so once a viable escape option becomes a realistic and nearly certain option, the odds are good that we'll damn what's left of the planet to finish our ship and then be off to the best planet we can reach. That probably won't be the nearest one, or the occupied one. It will be far away and it will have the kinds of elements we deem desirable in a home-world.
It seems to me that most intelligent (the use of 'intelligent' to describe species that wreck their planets may be a stretch, but you know what I mean) species would probably do the same thing we humans are doing, and as you said, technology advances so quickly that once the first breakthrough in this technology is made, the rapid expedition of life from a planet is not far behind. This creates a natural separation of those-with-awesome-tech from those-without-awesome-tech, and if we assume that our planet (or whatever planet you may be writing from) is in a district of space that no one wants to live in once they know there's an alternative, it's quite reasonable to assume that the only life-forms we would have contact with in our pre-overpowering-technology stage would be other species in pre-overpowering-technology stage. It's not because that's the only age of life there is, it's just that that's the only age of life that hasn't left yet.
Along this same vein, you could work in that some life-forms built up to near-overpowering-tech levels, then crashed their societies, either through destruction of resources or overpopulation or what-have-you, and now are either primitive once more, barren wasteland planets, or maybe some kind of steam-punk blend of futuristic lost technology in a less-advanced society.
You could also make some kind of historical event that allowed for the evolution of life at a specific time. Like, maybe there was some kind of massive super-nova/black-hole/worm-hole/antimatter something-or-other that created a wave of magnetism or some such that allowed for the evolution of life from the elements. This wave would travel out, and as it passed over a certain area in space, it would spark life on every 1 in 100 star systems. Because life started at about the same time in the same neighborhoods of space, the life on those planets would be about the same age. As you went farther from your home-world, you'd find life that increasingly differed in age from your own species.
[Answer]
You don't need to have a level playing field.
There are millions of civilizations in the galaxy, all at random levels of development. The ones which happen to be at or near the highest levels will consider one another peers, and from their point of view there is a level playing field. There are scads of other civs out there, but they ... *don't count* from a astropolitical point of view. They are variously ignored, conquered, used as proxy or buffer states, or, well, eaten.
(Note that if the lesser-equipped civs survive long enough as slaves/clients/buffets for long enough, it is likely that technology will diffuse from the big neighbors and the more backward groups will gradually start being more competitive)
Note also that this could vary per region. Our spiral arm could, by chance, be a very low-tech region. The high civilizations of our arm have never met the mighty empires of galactic center; if they did, they'd be humbled. Think Aztecs -- primus inter pares in their region until something completely unexpected showed up. This is a common trope in sci fi series ... after defeating the local bad guys, there's suddenly an invasion of *even tougher* bad guys from somewhere else!
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The classic pattern in science fiction is that, from the perspective of an interstellar civilization, there are three known plateaus for civilizations: planet-bound, interstellar, and "sublimated". The technological cliff that must be overcome to move from planet-bound to interstellar is almost always faster-than-light travel; the cliff that must be climbed to achieve "sublimation" is a mystery. Planet-bound civilizations are unable to interact with interstellar civilizations -- at least not on their own terms -- and "sublimated" civilizations are incomprehensible to, and usually unwilling to interact with, interstellar civilizations.
Other answers have covered forces that would tend to equalize technologies among interstellar civilizations, but the other important detail is that these two cliffs represent a lower and upper limit on technological development. There's only so far that a planet-bound civilization can go, and there's only so far an interstellar civilization can go, prior to sublimation. The most advanced interstellar civilization cannot easily overwhelm the least advanced, and an interstellar civilization will relatively quickly reach technological parity with the more advanced through communication, trade, and espionage.
In short, interstellar civilizations would reach relative parity due to rapid communication of interstellar travel, and the relatively narrow range of technologies on that plateau.
I'd argue that these plateaus are at least implicit in Star Trek, and are often quite explicit in space opera; overcoming one or the other cliff is an explicit victory condition in many [4X games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4X). Occasionally the result of being unable to overcome one of the two cliffs is explored, as in Iain Banks's [Against a Dark Background](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_a_Dark_Background).
An interesting variation, in Vernor Vinge's [A Fire Upon the Deep](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep), was adding a geographic component to the constraints. This made it more clear why civilizations that had achieved more advanced plateaus rarely interfered with civilizations on lower plateaus: to do so meant physically travelling to areas in which travel and thought itself was slower, and they were rarely willing to do so.
[Answer]
**The Prime Directive**
In Star Trek, there are aliens that are unbeatable, but they tend not to conquer less advanced civilisations. From the point-of-view of a prewarp civilisation, the Federation would be unbeatable. The prime directive prohibits the federation from interfering with prewarp civilisations however. The Q-continuum would have no trouble defeating the Federation, but they have something similar to the prime directive, so they *mostly* don't mess around with the Federation.
I brought up the prime directive since the question mentioned Star Trek. Higher powered beings may avoid conflict for other reasons, such as simply not caring about insignificant beings, or maintaining a nature reserve.
Of course, high powered aliens might care about lesser beings, perhaps seeing them as vermin to eradicate. However, the most interesting tales may simply be set in areas of space where human-like intelligences are permitted to exist. This may involve species settling into quanta of power, where they do not interfere with other quanta
* **prewarp**: Conflict is primarily within the same planet. On Earth the USA has the greatest military technology. However, it would be unwise for the USA to declare war on the rest of the world. Note, that the USA would not be as strong without trade, so almost by definition it has to share some technology with its fellow prewarp rivals. Also, he USSR switched from an ally to a foe around the 1950s.
* **warp/interstellar**: Can do things that we can only imagine, like bending spacetime to achieve FTL. Begins trade with other civilisations, resulting in a power arrangement similar to the pre-warp case.
* **trancendant**: Weird energy beings that can do things that we can't really imagine. Their motives need not be clear to a human. Perhaps they don't really care what happens in what we call 3-dimensional space.
[Answer]
Weapons are simply a means of delivering large amounts of energy to a small space, causing havoc and destruction. Given the vastness of deep space, it would not seem improbable that a major way for species to meet would be for both species to develop FTL travel. But, developing FTL travel means that you have developed a way to direct energy. You have the means to deliver almost limitless energy to anywhere you want. In turn, that means that you have pretty much reached or come within spitting distance of the limits for weapons development.
This is sort of like where the Soviet Union and the U.S. stand now. Sure, we can refine our nuclear weapons so that they are 20% more efficient, or 15% more destructive, or have 35% greater range. But what's the point. Whether we do or not, we have MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction.
So, back to the vastness of space... At the same time you develop FTL, and you have built-in access to FTL level weapons. You have also the technology for that level of energy control, which means that you can also develop defensive technology to match those weapons. Again, you are within spitting distance of each other.
At that stage, then conflict is a lot more about tactics than it is about being stronger than the other. You can see this in high level physical battles (UFC or boxing). Strength and speed are a big factor, but among the very top competitors, skills and strategy can and often do determine the outcome.
Another example of this is coach Tom Herman leading Houston to a victory over Florida State on Dec 31, 2015. Florida State had a team made up of higher recruited players, supposedly stronger and faster. But, at that level, given the right leader, even a team like Houston can challenge (and defeat) a team like Florida State, or number three ranked Oklahome in 2016.
The point is, there are technological plateaus, as there are plateaus in any kind of development. Areas reached where a hard technological or developmental or scientific limit keeps the players within a range close enough for leadership and tactics to be a greater deciding factor.
That is, until some alien race hits some paradigm shift, a technological breakthrough that takes them to a whole other level. At that level, of course, they can locate and destroy every other race at will, or they can rise above such needs or desires. We are just lucky to be in the galaxy where those races, so far, have chosen the latter.
I think that is a pretty good explanation. And I also think it is all BS. But then again, that's the point. Isn't it?
[Answer]
Spoilers for *Singularity Sky* and *Iron Sunrise*, unfortunate but necessary.
Have a look at the Eschaton books by Charles Stross, *Singularity Sky* and *Iron Sunrise*, humanity is actually without biologically alien neighbours, but there are other human civilisations who are different enough for story purposes. The Eschaton is a weakly god-like agency, in this case an AI who, for purposes that remain opaque, spreads the greater part of humanity to the stars in a sphere about 1000 light years across and gives them cornucopia machines and some other toys available on Earth in that particular era and a couple of new ones (including FTL and a commandant *not* to use it for time travel *or else*) and enough people to make the colonies work. On the same day that the majority of people disappear SETI receiver stations start going haywire, the Eschaton has also pushed people back in time a year per light year of distance from Sol so the colonies that are 500 light years away are also 500 years older than Earth's civilisation technologically, and hideously advanced as evidence in *Singularity Sky*.
Now if those colonists had been dropped off *without* temporal displacement they'd all be on about the same footing, except for the Luddites who trash their nanotech and other modern machines. It might be a bit too "God did it" for your purposes but it could also give you some ideas.
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Option #1 - warp drive has time-altering effects.
Warp travel's FTL qualities results in time travel.
However, warp drive activation protocols negate this effect in a huge area. (Too big to try and drive out of it conventionally.)
If you use warp drive, you won't ever notice the time travel effect, since it will be blocked anywhere you've ever been.
However, any species which doesn't have warp travel (and thus doesn't have the warp drive buffer zone) will experience time much more quickly than the warp-capable species.
This leads to a convergence of technology, as **every species, which will ever achieve warp travel, achieves it at nearly the same exact time**.
Option #2 - no shields, no super materials.
Every ship in the galaxy is a glass cannon - nobody can take a significant hit, even from primitive ships.
So your superior tech may give you a 3-1 advantage and way better strategic maneuverability, but if you get surrounded or assaulted by overwhelming numbers you still die.
[Answer]
There is no competition from higher level technologies because Science is not as blind and amoral as she normally appears.
At our infantile levels and all the way up to FTL level, Science is designed to be easy to figure out. There are no cultural or moral requirements which might keep a student from figuring out how things work. If anything, a little cruelty and selfishness on the part of the student, actually helps with the early studies.
But as you advance past simple things like FTL, the designers of the universe have encoded a higher set of minimum requirements. General pacifism and a post-scarcity escape from primal greed are not only good ideas, they are integral to understanding how the higher level aspects of our universe work.
The advanced studies in our universe simply can't be fathomed by minds which still understand concepts like nationalism, ownership or superiority-through-biological-distinction.
So most of the species who manage to get up to the FTL threshold, get stuck at that level, (squabbling among themselves for dominion over meaningless star charts) for centuries. The few civilizations which transcend their primal instincts continue on a journey of peaceful advancement and non-intrusive exploration, while everyone else compete the more visible roles of the conquerors and the vanquished. Those in the more visible roles stack up across time, no matter how long ago they mastered FTL, they really can't go any further using these old techniques. So they fight among themselves with more or less equivalent arsenals...
OPTIONAL PART
...until an emissary of peace returns from a place beyond their understanding to show them a better way.
[Answer]
**Big Brother Race**
The first race to achieve FTL doesn't seek domination. Instead, they spread across the galaxy, and whenever they meet another sentient race, they share all their knowledge and technologies with them for free. Even if one race reached the stars a thousand years before the other, they both use tech provided by the First Ones, which is beyond anything they could achieve in a reasonable time.
And, well, with developed enough surveillance (and maybe some telepathy), First Ones can see any attempts of lesser races to develop ingenious technologies. Depending on technology in question, it either gets shared between everyone, or, well, disappears along with everyone that knew about it.
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[Question]
[
Many myths have creatures like sirens who can use their voices to lure men to their deaths.
But is there any way a creature could exist in the real world that had that power? I don't just mean fooling animals by using scent or color to lure them in, I mean actually causing humans to approach without defending themselves.
The easiest thing to explain would be if the creature was able to lure unsuspecting humans into an ambush, the more varied and powerful the effect the better though. Ideally one of these sirens would be able to literally stop a fight and have everyone in it mindlessly approach the siren instead. I think that's unlikely but the goal is to get as close to that as possible.
This ability does not have to be gender specific, if it targeted all humans or even all animals that would be fine. Equally if it is gender or human specific that's also fine.
[Answer]
## Crying
Crying invokes a natural protection instinct in humans and animals alike; or, alternately, invokes the predator instinct of an easy lunch. Either way, mimicking the sound of a child crying is likely to draw the attention of either helpful or hungry marks. As long as there aren't many targets, it's unlikely to be detected, unless a whole gang approaches. Making "helpless" or "hurt" type noises is likely to bring food to your door, and has the added benefit of not being suspicious.
## Being loud
Certain sounds have been shown to have a direct effect on human emotions and physical state: [Infrasound](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrasound#Human_reactions), very low frequency sounds, can cause a sense of awe or unease, and certain higher frequencies can cause nausea, irritation, vertigo, and disorientation. While these sounds aren't songs, per se, simply finding the resonant frequency of your target and blasting them with sound waves would likely incapacitate them enough to not be a problem. With a good set of lungs, it wouldn't be hard to take down a human for a few minutes with disorienting ultrasonic bursts. Of course, while loud sound can quickly disable a person, the sound will carry. If using loud noise, especially low frequency noise, make sure your sirens can escape with their target quickly, before anyone else shows up. Survivors are not likely to equate such a creature with the sirens from legend, however.
## Chemical help
The right combination of chemicals secreted by the siren could cause any number of effects, from lowered inhibitions to hallucinations. It may be that the siren's song is merely to draw the gaze if those affected by a chemical substance, such as pheromones; when the affected target hears a "siren song", they turn towards the siren, draw in by motions and sounds she makes. Survivors will only remember a beautiful song.
## Technical interference
The sirens of myth and legend drew sailors to themselves by their siren call, drawing them towards rocks that smashed their ships. Our siren may do just that, only at a higher technology level than mere music. Instead, the siren mimics the "ping" of [SONAR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonar), confusing sensors into believing there is danger (or safety) where there is none. With their sensors confused, ships wouldn't be able to spot a floating island, and would wreck; the siren could then further damage the ship, eventually sinking it. The more advanced the ship, however, the more difficult this would be; failing could draw a lot of unwanted attention.
## "Sound"
Not all sound we hear is actual sound; interfering with the brain can cause it to register sounds without those sounds actually being present. The right electromagnetic waves could produce the sensation of music, as well as stimulating the pleasure center of the brain; those affected would claim to have heard a hauntingly beautiful song, but one that they cannot reproduce. While under the influence of the "siren song", they would be in a dreamlike state, unlikely to fight or even notice their surroundings. Survivors may even be tempted to return and find the source of the beautiful music; wearing headphones or noise-cancelling devices wouldn't stop the music, either, meaning detection is very difficult.
[Answer]
**A Song**
It is entirely possible for a song to be so breathtakingly beautiful and "pure" that anyone hearing it would be so moved as to be almost hypnotized. However, that song would serve only as a momentary distraction in the face of another important event.
For example, if hearing this beautiful song becomes associated with an "evil siren" lurking just around the corner waiting to feast on your bone marrow then people will quickly learn to turn around and run the heck away.
In order for people to become utterly hooked you'd have to somehow hypnotize, or better yet, ***drug them***.
**Drugging People For Fun & Profit**
Consider that a drug which makes people simply forget about violence and embrace "love" already exists: ***ecstasy***.
Now imagine a creature capable of releasing ***ecstasy-like pheromones***. People within range would breathe these in without even knowing. While drugged they could experience wonderful (or horrifying) hallucinations, pleasant sensations, overwhelming feelings of guilt, or love, while also losing their decision making, and reasoning abilities etc. It's really your choice.
**Why Not Both?**
So now your victim is drugged and highly open to suggestion, but how do you draw them into your trap?
The pheromones can be accompanied by a "beautiful" (it could only seem so to the drugged person, while anyone else might find it to be a shudder-inducing, hungry-for-meat moan) song which serves to draw the drugged/hallucinating victim closer to the siren.
[Answer]
So you know how sometimes songs get stuck in your head for hours, even if you've only heard a small snippet?
That's because some music creates patterns that resonance with our minds, and once started that pattern just bounces around in a loop.
A Siren is a creature that has a natural affinity for music, and can make musical patterns that are so in sync with brain activity that they shut down the higher reasoning centers, affecting the motor cortex directly.
By changing the pattern a Siren can cause an individual person to follow complex commands, or can cause a group of people to follow simple commands like "follow me", or "put down what you're holding", or "chill out".
[Answer]
There's another approach you can take on the Siren song approach.
What if the siren simply produced a soundwave-song that was unbearable to humans? Something super high pitched, something to drive the humans in a certain direction - perhaps the direction of your other Siren friends, or dangerous rocks. They're not defending themselves, just avoiding something annoying/painful.
Basically, instead of luring the humans, you scare them into moving away from your voice - all you would have to do is reposition yourself such that you're between them and the open ocean, and they're between you and a rocky cliff (or some other similar hazard).
So the answer to your question, if we took the above approach, would probably be **yes**.
Since many creatures can produce sound of different wavelengths, one could potentially evolve to produce the wavelength required to drive humans/animals mad enough to run away from you (and to their deaths), or towards you (if they're already insane in the first place/they're just that curious).
And if you wanted to vary the power, just have your hell-sirens sing a lower volume and become a small annoyance instead of a piercing shriek-song.
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Any scent/pheromone that could produce a rohypnol like effect would be hugely effective in this.
One of the triggers to release [Oxytocin](http://www.livescience.com/42198-what-is-oxytocin.html) is listening to soothing music. So a 'Sirens' song could easily help relax someone and put down their guard.
A hypnotic beat to the song might be used to further lower someones resistance, and add a in hypnotic dance and you might be able to seriously hold someones attention.
Then if you can add in some outside chemical warfare to further reduce conscious resistance it might work. Though without chemicals it might be hard to be fool proof, but no trap in the natural world is fool-proof, just successful enough.
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## It would only work once.
Once word got around among humans that such a creature exists, and that its intent is fully malevolent, the full might and power of our technological civilization would be put to use against such creatures. Since the Sirens are necessarily intelligent, it would also be our first alien contact.
Hazmat clad-soldiers with stun guns would descend upon the shores with noise cancelling headphones on their ears blaring "Ride of the Valkyries" at 100 db.
The few sirens that survive this onslaught would be dragged to research laboratories and studied, filmed, vivisected; their minds stripped bare before the scientists.
Soon, we'd have siren-inspired pop culture and siren-based advertising, and counter-measures for those.
[Answer]
Sure you could, just use magic.
With magic, the song doesn't even need to sound that good. :D
Or maybe if we understood the human brain much better, we might find certain notes struck in a certain pattern affects neurons in cool hypnotic ways.
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Another possibility : a parasite that infects most humans without them even knowing and that would draw them to sirens.
I am thinking about something that would work the same way *Toxoplasma gondi* does on a mice's brain. For more details on how and why this parasite works, see here [Parasite that makes rodents lose fear of cats](http://www.nature.com/news/parasite-makes-mice-lose-fear-of-cats-permanently-1.13777)
In your world, a parasite of your creation could infect humans without visible symptoms and no effect on their health. It would only tamper with their brain so that they'd be attracted to any siren around. In order to stick with the legends of singing sirens, you can even choose to make the parasite "act" or "activate" only when its human carrier hears the sound of a siren.
If you need a few of your characters to resist the sirens' songs, this solution also allows you to scientifically explain it : for instance some people's genes might mute thus developing an enzyme that would destroy the parasite.
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[Question]
[
One of my fictional planets (which is largely terran in nature) is notable for an unique animal. Said animal is a dangerous predator that is notable for several things:
* It is physically separated into three parts: one "hunter", one "digestor" and one "reproducer". All three parts share the same DNA and arise from a single egg and yet have individual circulatory systems and lungs. Only the hunter is mobile while the other two parts are largely static.
* The hunter's body contains a mouth and a pouch for storing prey, where it is only "pre-digested" (if at all). Other than that, it has eyes, feet, claws, teech and everything else a successful predator requires.
* After hunting, the hunter returns to the nest and gives the prey to the digestor, whose body lacks eyes and an ability to move. The digestor basically consists of one giant stomach rooted to the ground with deformed appendages.
* To eat, the hunter returns regularly to the digestor and harvests a nutrient juice through a separate, smaller "mouth".
* The reproducer is a modified digestor which uses its stomach to grow eggs before dying off.
* Only the digestor has a well-developed liver and kidneys. In turn, it lacks a large brain (the hunter has it).
While a process of "evolutionary assimilation" is presumed to be the origin of chloroplasts and mitochondria, the formation of a creature like described above is certainly the result of a reverse process, in which an animal's organs are separated from its body and become semi-independent in their function while de facto staying parts of it. All three parts - the hunter, digestor and reproducer (and any arbitary additional "castes") are dependent on each other in the long term, as most vital organs are "separated" among them.
The only organs every part will have will be those required for immediate survival. Among the already mentioned circulatory systems (with individual hearts, of course) and lungs, each part would probably also have an excretion orfice.
My question is:
* What would force an animal to evolve in such a way? What would be the advantages and disadvantages?
Note: it can be assumed that the immobile parts protect themselves from enemies by means of a strong venom or hunters who stay in the nest for security purposes.
[Answer]
Sounds like a miniture bee swarm. You have highly specialized individuals who all work for the survival of the whole swarm.
According to your description, you will end up with a slightly bigger swarm than just 3 individuals:
* One egg hatches one "hunter", one "digestor" and one "reproducer"
* The first reproducer creates more eggs and dies, but the hunter and digestor are still alive
* In every generation, some hunters and digestors survive the reproducer. Their numbers will increase while the number of reproducers stays low.
And that's exactly how it works with bees, ants and termites. You only need one reproducer hatching egg after egg. You only need enough digesters to feed your swarm, no need for a 1:1 ratio. What you need are many of the hunters. They bring nutrition to the digesters and defend the stationary individuals from physical danger.
The advantage of this specialization is a reduced energy demand and reduced risk for the whole species. Solitary mammals have to hunt their own food, find a good mate, nurse their offspring while hunting enough food to produce enough milk and if the mother dies, the offspring often dies as well.
Your specialized animals share the risk of reproduction. Only one individual has to ingest enough food to produce eggs. The hunters are not burdened with embryos and if one hunter dies, the offspring will survive nevertheless. If all hunters have a bad day and don't catch anything the digesters can still feed the swarm for a limited time.
From an evolutionary point of view this species has the added advantage that every individual only needs the energy to grow its very specialized body. The hunter has no use for a womb, so the energy to grow one is saved. The digester has no need for eyes or legs, so the energy needed for them is saved.
One disadvantage is that if all reproducers of a swarm are killed, the swarm will eventually die. Insect swarms produce a new queen, but this seems not possible for your aliens.
Another disadvantage is the location of reproduction. Since 2 of 3 casts are stationary, the swarm cannot relocate to another territory when the food sources run out or when natural catastrophes endanger the survival of the stationary individuals. If you make the hunters spread the eggs in their territory, the swarm will grow to a size that is not managable anymore. Some digesters or reproducers might be forgotten and die of starvation simply because they hatched too far away from the center of the territory.
[Answer]
What you describe sounds like the [Portuguese man o' war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_man_o%27_war)
>
> The Atlantic Portuguese man o' war (Physalia physalis), also known as the man-of-war, is a marine hydrozoan of the family Physaliidae found in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans. Its long tentacles deliver a painful sting, which is venomous and powerful enough to kill fish or, rarely, humans. Despite its appearance, the Portuguese man o' war is not a true jellyfish but a siphonophore, which is not actually a single multicellular organism (true jellyfish are single organisms), but a colonial organism made up of specialized individual animals (of the same species) called zooids or polyps. These polyps are attached to one another and physiologically integrated, to the extent that they cannot survive independently, creating a symbiotic relationship, requiring each polyp to work together and function like an individual animal.
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> the Portuguese man o' war is composed of three types of medusoids (gonophores, siphosomal nectophores, and vestigial siphosomal nectophores) and four types of polypoids (free gastrozooids, gastrozooids with tentacles, gonozooids, and gonopalpons), grouped into cormidia beneath the pneumatophore, a sail-shaped structure filled with gas. The other three polyp types are known as dactylozooid (defense), gonozooid (reproduction), and gastrozooid (feeding).
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Such an organism looks like an intermediate step between an unicellular organism and a true pluricellular one.
It has advantages with respect to simple unicellular organisms in that it has some specialization, however with respect to truly specialized organisms it doesn't look so extraordinary.
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Your question makes me think of [honeypot ants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeypot_ant):
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> Honeypot ants, also called honey ants, are ants which have specialized workers (repletes, plerergates, or rotunds) that are gorged with food by workers to the point that their abdomens swell enormously. Other ants then extract nourishment from them. They function as living larders.
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The queen is a reproducer, the repletes are the digesters, and everyone else is a "hunter" (more likely harvesters in the ants' case).
These ants could evolve to match your criteria, in two main steps. The simplest one is to have more than one ant being born from the same egg. The second may require aeons: ants evolved from non-social insects. They would have to go non-social again, so that a single egg contains all of the individuals.
Both changes may result from evolutionary pressure caused by food scarcity that makes the colony lifestyle less and less effective.
Notice that you will need mobile reproducers to fertilize the non-mobile ones. That, or the hunter may go gather the seed if their reproducer is female.
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The actual analogue for this are social insects, where a meta-organism emerges from the collective behavior of the society - different development results in different 'organs' - workers, drones, queen.
EDIT: symbiosis is another direct analogue, though also not a segmented organism, but a dependent relation, of various sharing/benefit/detriment arrangement, between two distinct organisms
There is a quantum of minimal self-organization which the original question exceeds. A viable organism must be able to feed itself. Its gut must be connected to its mouth & anus. Any subdivision into segented parts must in each part also maintain the requisite sensory, cognitive & motile organs. Segmented organisms therefore require a prohibitive amount of redundancy, vulnerability, suffer from an absence of vital organic integration which would necessitate some handwavy substitute far from anything feasible/reasonable.
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**Remain Pure**
I could imagine the hunter component and the reproductive component being kept separate due to hazardous conditions while out on the hunt. Perhaps there are elements of the flora and fauna that are carcinogenic or that degrade DNA over time. There would be an advantage to having the reproductive component remain pristine while the hunter suffers corruption over time. The reproductive component may have evolved to be better suited to a particular climate or elevation that makes use of its own unique defense mechanisms but is a less ideal environment for the hunter. With this consideration though, there are plenty of examples in nature of how some genders evolve differently to promote reproduction in the species.
That being said, I can't imagine a situation where a separate digestor component would be favorable to evolution. The hunter requires too much energy not to have instant access to food and the reproducer would need a constant supply over the long terms of reproduction. The best I could imagine is a "shared stomach" where the hunter travels with it during it's prime and then "sheds" it for the reproducer when the time comes, essentially passing the torch for the next generation.
Any third element to this odd trinity would probably be more useful in some maintenance role such as groom, or nursemaid. This would be similar to existing symbiotic relationships where the smaller critter gets the benefit of food and protection for services rendered.
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While we have examples of similar things on earth, the question is what the pressures are to create such a thing at mammalian scale.
My initial thought was symbiosis between three species. The main problem there is that for breeding, you would somehow need all three to breed, even though there's only one reproducer.
But we already know that this can happen. Cells, for example, seem to be a union of two basic elements, probably each originally a separate organism, combining to become cell and nucleus. Butterflies, again, are likely a long-developed version of a parasite/symbiote and an organism that now entirely rebuilds from one form (hunter/digester) to another (reproducer) and passes on the genes of both.
So you COULD feasibly have three symbiotes, each very good at one thing (hunting stuff, converting hunted stuff to energy, and creating/protecting eggs), ending up specializing into those roles. The hunter, eating far simpler food (honey) needs spend less energy and body volume on digestion and reproduction.
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The other possibility, as others have mentioned, is specialization of roles within a single species as we see with hive animals, where in bees (simplistically speaking) we have exactly that breakdown: foragers, honey-makers, and the queen breeder.
The problem here is that it's difficult to argue a reason for the honey-maker and the breeder to be separate organisms if you only need one of each. In this case, I'd suggest that there instead be multiple "digesters" - perhaps even sacrificial in purpose, who fatten themselves, die, predigest themselves from the inside as if by spider venom, and are then eaten by the other two.
Reproducer needs to be able to create all three, and which one hatches may depend either on factors before laying (that is, the "type" of egg laid is internally determined by the reproducer, consciously or based on things like quality of diet, etc), or afterwards (the type of hatching is established by pheromones in the air, temperature, actions of whomever touches it, etc). The former gives complete control to the breeder, but in real life we instead find the latter - where eggs can be turned into queens through appropriate treatment by the drones.
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1. Digestion is hard and requires a large system.
2. Reproduction is hard and requires a large system.
3. Hunting doesn't require going far from the nest (where the digestors and reproducors are).
You can make digestion difficult by having the creature digest complicated things. For example, cows digest grass with a system of multiple stomachs. Perhaps the creature stores excess food, which requires immobility. Or the food may take time to digest. The hunters can't wait that long to digest their food, but the digestors can.
Reproduction is difficult if it needs to be done in bursts and produce well developed children. Perhaps reproduction gets done only at a certain time of year, e.g. spring and summer. And in spring, it has to ramp up quickly. The reproducor can't move due to partially grown children (as well as lacking the equipment).
Hunting might stay close to the nest if it is closely tied to a particular kind of vegetation or similar situation. So the hunters can only hunt within that patch of vegetation.
Your "immobile" units can either lose movement capability or they can be moved by adult hunters when young. That would allow the creatures to move, even if only part of the time.
The advantages are that the digestors and reproducors don't have to waste energy moving. They can just do their single task. Meanwhile, the hunters don't have to cart around reproductive and digestive equipment.
The disadvantages are that if one is missing all three types die. They can only live and reproduce as three. A hunter could be in a field of food and starve to death. Similarly, the immobile types are reliant on the hunters to harvest food for them. Assuming food and digestion are available, they still need the reproducors to provide the next generation.
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In a story I'm working on, a rogue nation-state has decided to attack another country. They want to make the attack seem more natural, though, and so they've decided to trigger an earthquake. This nation-state has access to quite a lot of funds, and has bought weapons from a number of arms dealers; their arsenal somewhat resembles that of the [Canadian Armed Forces](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Armed_Forces). That said, they have short-range ballistic missiles, and a decent air force.
Other countries, of course are not happy with this, and have threatened to retaliate if this nation uses any of their weapons. This is why the leaders of this country want to attack indirectly, so they can try to deny any responsibility for the disaster. They're willing to use any weapons they have, with the exception of nuclear weapons, because they don't have any. They have a lot of conventional explosives, but not nuclear capability, or the chance to develop any.
Essentially, given a strong military, is there a way for this country to trigger seismic activity of some sort that could be felt by people in nations a few thousand miles away? It doesn't have to be targeted anywhere in particular; it just has to happen. If so, how strong an earthquake can they produce?
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## How to make an earthquake
Earthquakes are massive. They're possibly the largest-energy event that humans experience regularly, rivaled only by hurricanes. The Earth does a lot of this energy creation for us and when earthquakes happen, it's the result of that energy being released. Fortunately, earthquakes are essentially limited to fault areas- the boundaries on the edges of plates where they rub up against each other, creating transform, convergent, or divergent [plate boundaries](http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/facts/plate-boundaries.html). The center of tectonic plates is relatively stable, so I hope your enemies live near a large fault system or we're going to have a much harder time.
As a simple model, imagine two elastic piece of plastic pressed against each other being pulled in opposite directions. Eventually, the pulling force overcomes the force of static friction, and the plastic slips. Thus, there are two places we can affect this process: decrease the frictional force or increase the "pull" force.
### Decreasing the frictional force:
This is definitely the easiest way of solving this problem, because humanity is already doing it. Fracking-induced tremors are a hot-button issue in the US right now, but the science is pretty well established. [Ellsworth](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/341/6142/1225942) (2013, in *Science*) reviewed a lot of the literature and found that "injection-induced earthquakes [...] clearly contribute to seismic hazard." He references a magnitude 5.6 earthquake in Oklahoma in 2011 that was tied to local fracking behavior. Interestingly, the use of fracking may not only directly cause earthquakes, but [can also make them more likely to be triggered by other earthquakes](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/341/6142/164). In this case, the fault is weakened just enough to make it susceptible to triggering when seismic waves pass through.
The mechanism behind this is a bit more complicated than our simple model of elastic plastic, but intuitively is the same. By injecting fluid in between the two plates, they slip more easily and the tension in those plates is released. In real life, the introduction of fluid and changes in pressure weaken a preexisting fault and allow movement.
To use this mechanism to attack another country is less a question of military might and more a matter of politics. Introduce your frenemies in the other country to fracking techniques and watch their country crumble. (Due to earthquakes, of course, not the desperate and all-consuming realization that one lives above an easily removable energy resource that everyone in the world would suddenly be interested in.)
If you're desperate enough to need such an earthquake *now*, you might be tempted to use the biggest bombs you have. **PLEASE DO NOT TRY THIS.** [The USGS has considered this possibility](https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/can-nuclear-explosions-cause-earthquakes?qt-news_science_products=7#qt-news_science_products) and is rather dismissive of it. They detail several tests and the bomb signature was always greater than the seismic signature, and even when detonated on a seismically active area such as the Aleutian Islands it failed to produce an earthquake. (Of course, that's conveniently also what the government wants you to think...) One of the most persuasive arguments they use is to point out that the Moon exerts tidal forces every day ~40x larger than the Tsar Bomba. Although I don't believe Canada maintains any nuclear weapons, your country might still have a pretty big bomb, but it won't be big enough- any fault that *could* be triggered by a bomb would already have been triggered by the tidal forces of the Moon.
### Increasing the pull force
Well, that might have been a fairly dissatisfying answer but it doesn't get much better. Despite it's reputation for delicacy, the Earth is a fairly stable place. The source of plate movement [was hotly debated](http://www.columbia.edu/~vjd1/driving_forces_basic.htm) for a while, but has been [pretty well resolved](https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2431?WT.ec_id=NGEO-201506) mostly in favor of [slab pull](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slab_pull). Slab pull is the result of oceanic plates cooling after formation, causing a reduction in volume and an increase in density with age. Eventually, they become more dense than the mantle material and sink.
If you've dropped a cookie in a glass of milk, you have a good idea how this works- the cookie starts out more buoyant than the milk and floats on the surface, giving you hope that it can be rescued. By the time you've returned with a fork, however, the air pockets have been replaced with milk and sadness, the cookie as a whole is now more dense than the milk, and it sinks to the bottom.
I personally have no idea how we could affect this process. It's density driven and takes literally millions of years, so there's not a whole lot humans can do on this end to force earthquakes to happen.
### Honorable mention
If your enemy nation is on a coast, it may be easier to cause a tsunami than an earthquake. Michael Crichton's book *State of Fear* has a group use
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which would cause a fairly sizable tsunami if nearby.
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**Investment**
The key to destroying your enemy through earthquakes is to invest in their country. Specifically, we know that Dams and Mines can cause earthquakes if located in the "right" place. Furthermore, we suspect that fracking and other forms of oil extraction could cause earthquakes.
If you wish to damage another country through earthquakes in a stealthy manner, then you ought to locate potential mining, damming, and fracking locations that are close to fault lines. These investments can be made in a stealthy manner, and will bring value to the table up until they are destroyed by your earthquake.
You could even make these investments out in the open, as a way to mend relations with an enemy nation. In this case, first responders and disaster aid shipments could hide commandos sent in to seize key strategic locations if you intend to launch a major invasion. Your troops (as well as any employees you had at these locations) would be in the perfect position to move in the aftermath of a destructive earthquake.
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Imagine you are dragging a giant rubber tractor tire across the ground by reeling it in with a steel cable at a rate of 2 to 5 centimeters per year. It wouldn't really be a continuous movement. When the tension in the cable got stronger than the static friction of the tire against the ground it would scoot a tiny distance, maybe a few millimeters, across the ground and rest again. That's essentially what an earthquake is scaled down.
Now imagine an angry ant pounds on the cable with it's tiny fists. That's what your conventional explosives are doing. The forces involved in a tectonic plate moving are enormous even when compared with nuclear weapons. The best you can do is trigger that tire to move again just a little bit earlier. In doing so you may actually be lessening the severity of the earthquake by releasing that tension earlier before it builds up even more.
There's not much information on the possibility of triggering earthquakes with conventional explosives, but luckily nuclear munitions are often measured in their equivalent TNT tonnage, and people have worried about the potential to trigger earthquakes with nuclear testing in the past.
"The elastic strains induced in the epicentral region by the passage of the seismic wavefield generated by the largest of the nuclear tests, the May 11 Indian test with an estimated yield of 40 kilotons, is about 100 times smaller than the strains induced by the Earth's semi-diurnal (12 hour) tides that are produced by the gravitational fields of the Moon and the Sun."
- <https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/can-nuclear-explosions-cause-earthquakes?qt-news_science_products=7#qt-news_science_products>
Note the nuclear tests are not conducted at the fault line, but relatively distant.
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A Swiss scientist, Markus Haering actually found himself [in court](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/switzerland/6820811/Geologist-stands-trial-for-triggering-earthquakes-in-Switzerland.html) because he sort of...partially destroyed a town. With earthquakes. He wanted to produce geothermal energy by boiling water on rocks three miles underground, then sending the superheated water up through a steam turbine.
It wasn't this experiment that caused the quakes. It was the huge drill he used near a fault line...
$7.35 million in property damage later, the dude was in court, acquitted because it wasn't intended and they stopped once they figured out what was happening.
So while the answer to "Can a rogue nation trigger an earthquake?" is yes, it's also no, given your requirements that this be done far away from the epicenter in their own space. Because when we have caused seismic events it's been all about location, location, location.
It has to be at precisely the right place with the right conditions. And back in 2009 when Haering caused those earthquakes, we had so little understanding of seismic geology, that Haering wasn't even sure how it happened.
**But, in the world of fiction, this is less about armaments and more about secret knowledge that no one has here yet.**
In this fictional world, they would have to be in country where they are in the correct location to achieve this effect, as well as the knowledge to do so. Your biggest hurdle will be precision, and that you want the effect to be thousands of miles away from the cause. As others have noted, the earth is more stable than you would think--but I'd add, except when it isn't--in special circumstances and places, it's more unstable.
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## Based on your "Reality Check" tag, I give you an example from real life:
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> <https://geology.utah.gov/map-pub/survey-notes/bingham-canyon-manefay-landslides/>
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> On April 10, 2013, two massive landslides carried about 145 million tons of waste rock into the bottom of the open pit at Bingham Canyon, the largest copper mine in the U.S. These are the largest mining-induced landslides in history. The two slides, named the Manefay landslides by Kennecott Utah Copper (KUC), started in the northeast corner of the open pit—the first at 9:30 p.m. was larger (nearly 100 million tons), and the second followed a little over an hour and a half later. The second slide was followed 11 minutes later by a small, shallow earthquake (about magnitude 2.5) beneath the mine, induced by the rapid shifting weight of the slides. Notably, the Manefay slides resulted in no injuries or deaths, but they significantly changed the face of the mine and caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damage to the operation.
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Here are a few more links about the same event:
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> <http://www.e-mj.com/features/4108-recovering-from-bingham-canyon-s-record-setting-2013-slide.html#.Wk6F9VXty01>
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> <https://archive.unews.utah.edu/news_releases/mine-landslide-triggered-quakes/>
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> <https://www.deseretnews.com/article/865593617/Kennecott-slide-triggered-16-earthquakes-study-shows.html>
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This shows that it is possible, with modern technology and the right conditions, to actually trigger an earthquake.
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The closest we can get to artificial earthquakes is by detonating a nuke underground. Ranging from Little Boy to Tzar Bomb, one can have earthquakes between magnitude 6 and 8 ([source](https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scala_Richter)).
**But...**
Detonating a nuke underground means you have to dig a tunnel until the desired location, meaning in the enemy territory. Digging is not silent and can be easily detected, and moreover it takes a significant amount of time, logistic and energy.
Moreover, nuclear explosions have a peculiar seismic spectrum, so even though one can speculate of a super silent drilling machine, as soon as the nuke explodes no geologist will be fooled.
A very remote possibility, more in the sci-fi realm due to our present knowledge, is that the underground nuclear detonation could trigger a distant active fault to release its stored energy (i.e. a nuke detonated under continental Asia could trigger the fault below Kanto region in Japan).
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This scenario has been imagined by Alistair MacLean in his novel *Goodbye California* <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodbye_California>
The key aspect here is to look for **tectonic fault lines**.
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> In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume
> of rock. Large faults within the Earth's crust result from the action
> of plate tectonic forces. Energy release associated with rapid
> movement on active faults is the cause of most earthquakes. - <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fault_(geology)>
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Detonating powerful explosives inside a fault line can certainly cause a major earthquake.
**How strong** can the earhquake be? Enough to make a large territory sink into the ocean. California is known to be a *dead* territory from a geological perspective. One day, even without terrorist intervention, a major earhquake will occur, with the outcome that California will sink into the Pacific. Just google *"california earthquake sink into ocean"* to find more details. (there are also some more recent articles claiming that this will not happen)
Can the attack **seem natural**? Yes. Fault lines stretch along thousands of miles. You can detonate the bomb in any place, and the impact will be felt all along the fault line, basically thousands of miles apart. In the picture below, notice how the San Andreas fault goes into the territory of Mexico. So, practically, a bomb can be detonated in Mexico and have impact over California.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tIlr5.gif)
fault lines also go under the oceans, making it even more convenient to detonate the bomb
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cnmns.jpg)
a second idea: google for "haarp project earthquake". I don't really know if radio frequency can cause earthquakes, but some people claim they can. Just read to find out more.
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An earthquake can be triggered by a large enough landslide, but the investment in time and resources would almost certainly be better spent elsewhere.
Especially since an earthquake is not easily controlled and may well hurt your own forces as badly as those of the enemy, and because you likely have to trigger that massive landslide inside enemy territory.
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About the only way that has been proven to induce earth quakes is fracking. Pumping water into and out of the ground, raising and lowering the water table. Trouble is, it is a local phenomena. The earthquakes happen where the fracking occurs.
See [Induced Earthquakes](https://earthquake.usgs.gov/research/induced/myths.php) for a description and theory.
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This started as a comment on [Dent7777's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/101355/643), but got a bit long.
A mining operation would be a good idea indeed. In [Groningen (Netherlands)](https://www.google.nl/maps/place/Groningen/@53.1954729,6.417105,10z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x47c9c27b376202ab:0xf24577154131aa51!8m2!3d53.2887213!4d6.7060867), recurring *inadvertent* earthquakes are a problem. Usually at least 10 a year from which 1-2 above 3.0 Richter [(source in Dutch)](https://www.nam.nl/feiten-en-cijfers/aardbevingen.html). That's when trying *not* to create them.
Imagine the damage you can do when all of a sudden you start your worst possible plan and create them on purpose. 4,5 is theoretically possible with mining equipment, I imagine you can get a lot worse if you add explosives into the mix.
Oh, and the best of all? No fault lines are required.
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There was a novel that I read a couple years back. In that, bombs are exploded at strategic locations deep inside the earth to force tectonic plate moments, and the villian stole a specialized kind of truck for that and was a part of a kind of native Americans and used their reservations as a hideout. He blackmails the state of California after causing considerable damage by causing an earthquake on a specified day. I forgot the name of the novel, though. But it involved communal living and that triggered some kind of friction between 2 females that helped uncover the plot.
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Yes.
By conventional means, you can just make a detonation in the proper spot and a catastrophic earthquake can be started.
Right after WW2, the United States developed the 20 tons T12 demolition bomb, which was designed to create an earthquake effect. Later, they created the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a 14 Tons bomb that can go very deep.
Using such bombs in the correct tectonic-sensitive spots can generate devastating earthquakes. A nuke in the proper spot could be even more damaging.
By unconventional means, Tesla could do it around 100 years ago - he proved that he can generate a local quake using a hand-held device. Following that tech, in 1989 there were 10 countries in the world capable of such technology. After the post-Soviet era, the number of countries with access to meteorological and similar types of scalar-wave based weapons increased.
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In my world, telekinesis is a common ability, to the point that it is unusual not to be able to use it to some degree. It is an ability that was genetically grafted onto the human genome when humanity had access to advanced technology. A series of wars, and technology disrupting magic use have lowered the majority of my world's tech infrastructure to a tech level ranging from mideval to Pre-electricity industrial revolution. There are pockets of advanced tech here and there, but these areas are not the focus of the question at hand.
Telekinesis cannot lift more weight than your own approximate level of physical strength. You cannot move living objects, such as people, plants or animals. You can only throw something with telekinesis about as hard as you could physically throw the same object. Small microorganisms and bacteria (like those found in water) make telekinesis up to 50% harder to use, but don't interfere to the same degree as larger life forms. Using telekinesis is mentally and physically draining. The more precise the attempted movement, the more mental strain. The more force behind your telekinesis, the more physical strain there is. You cannot feel an object using telekinesis; you can only observe its effects using your own body's senses.
At the time telekinesis was discovered, locks were electronic, and could not be tampered with via telekinesis. Since then, physical mechanical locks have become the new standard as electricity is no longer commonly available.
I'm wondering what changes would need to be made to a mechanical lock to prevent it from being picked or opened with telekinesis by anyone but the owner of the lock, or possibly the locksmith.
What changes would need to be made to make locks reasonably resistant to the type of telekinesis described?
It doesn't need to be perfect, but it should be at least reliable enough that only a specialist would be able to pick locks with telekinesis.
(if there is anything I can do to clarify or improve on the question, please, let me know in the comments.)
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When it comes right down to it, locks are mechanisms that require a certain piece of information to open them. whether that's the correct heights for the pins in a modern pin-tumbler lock, or the position of the wards and lock jammers in an old warded lever lock, or some kind of dial combination, the key is that the person trying to open the lock needs to know or be able to guess some piece of information in order to do it.
Telekinesis as you have envisioned it just lets you apply arbitrary force to arbitrary points. You still have to know how the lock works and what the proper forces are. Essentially, everyone has a set of lockpicks with them all the time. That's really all it does for the person attempting to break in. A modern pin-tumbler lock with extra break points that jam the lock (temporarily or permanently) if tripped would be sufficient. In fact, some high security locks already use similar tactics. Heck, an old warded lever lock with variable bolt position and sensitive jam wards would likewise work rather nicely.
The one thing you'll see with this kind of telekinesis that you won't see otherwise is locks with no externally visible mechanism. A lock can be a simple bolt inside the door, and the "key" is knowing which pattern of forces to apply to open it. If anything, locks in this world will likely be simpler and lock with greater holding force since there's no mechanical reason for opening it not to require lifting a 30 pound steel beam two feet off its pegs once you unhook all the dogs that hold it in place with various patterns of motion. The average house door could be secured with the same level of bolts as a bank vault since there's no need for a complicated gearing mechanism to maintain security while providing leverage to open them.
If you really must have non-telekinetic access, and perfect security from telekinetic attack, then the trick would be to make the operation of the lock involve manipulation of living organisms. Carve the lock into the living tissue of a woody plant, or have it involve a trained gerbil or something...
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This, on its own, should be enough to ensure a garden variety tumbler lock is secure against telekinesis. Telekinesis will offer no benefit here. The same goes for garden variety combo locks. In both cases tactile feedback is utterly essential (well, tumbler locks can be bumped, but that's unaffected by telekinesis).
Beyond that, it's worth considering the example from your comment:
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This concept needs to be fleshed out before a solid defense can be mounted. How the telekinetic can turn something without any sensory input is going to be a *major* factor in how telekenesis is defeated. Security always adapts to the environment it is in. Instead of focusing on what telekenesis is good at, start exploring what it's bad at. Then find things which require that thing which it is bad at.
Also, remember: locks keep honest people honest.
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Mechanical combo locks would probably do the trick.
I can't think of a way to defeat them with telekinesis. (Provided the restriction on force feedback). Maybe that would change if I could see the inside of one, or play with it with my mind.
Standard tumbler locks would be trivial to pick, even without force feedback --you put a little pressure on the cylinder and rake back and forth on the pins till it turns (doesn't work every time, but you can always try again). A one minute explanation of how locks work would be sufficient for a kid to know what to try, and I expect every kid would try at one time or another. Some of my friends got a a lock picking book when I was in high school. After the hard part of making your own picks, a dozen kids learned how to do it --most using the rake method which is slow and less reliable, but requires no real skill or force feedback.
Latching padlocks probably won't work either. With a little bit of practice anybody could trip the internal release, I suspect every kid would figure that out in middle school. In my middle school a kid learned that a good hard smack with a three ring binder would pop the lock open by snapping the shaft past the release. Imagine what the telekenetic troublemakers would get up to! And remember a few troublemakers is all it takes for people to invent locks that can't be easily circumvented.
You also wouldn't have locks that automatically open from the inside with a bar, handle or lever. Or doors that can pull shut to lock (because those could be tripped by telekinetically pressing on the wedge latch)
You could make a cool easy-escape door for fire safety: Lets say there are a dozen buttons around the knob. One of them has a green tab in the window (resets mechanically each time the door opens). If you can see it or feel it you can get out. If not, you can randomly guess, but there's a (3 second?) time-out for wrong guess and maybe an audible alarm. Each wrong guess and the timeout doubles.
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**What is the range of the telekinesis?**
If you need to secure something, why not use two locks where you need the key inserted at all times for the same door, located far away from each other (depending on range of telekinesis). That way you cannot manipulate both at the same time.
**How much complexity can you handle with telekinesis?**
How much can you multitask? If you need to hold tumbler A, turn knob B, press spring C, lift lever D etc. at the same time, you need a might need a high level of concentration to make it work.
**Telekinesis sensors?**
Is it maybe possible to have a sensor for telekinesis, (is it similar to a magnet field that can be detected by some device?). If so, then you can have alarms triggered if telekinesis is detected, or you can have some kind of very strong locking mechanism that disables the lock when there is a telekinesis field detected.
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Two approaches may include:
1. A standard combination lock.
2. A standardized tumbler lock which would require a sturdier key with a handle shape with more leverage and a very hard spring to prevent the lock from being turned without such leverage. In other words if a person attempting to throw the bolt can get a telekinetic grip of the inside of the key hole, and even guess the tumbler combination, the amount of leverage needed to turn the lock would amount to requiring a pair of pliers or vice-grips ( if the lock were standard and the key were hard steel and not the kind of softer metals that standard keys are normally made of ). The way to make this lock accessible to the owner of the lock is to either exchange or add, in addition to the tumblers, a combination lock which would release the lock from the hard spring preventing it from turning effortlessly. The backup, if a person is under the weather that day for instance, would be the actual key for such a lock - like the old hoosegow butterfly key with the metal loop handle, or given that an additional combination/release mechanism is in place, just a normal key.
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You could say that some materials block or hinder telekinesis. In some settings, for example, lead blocks magic.
Then every lock made from an alloy containing this stuff would be resistant.
Or if there is a kind of stone, plant or part of some kind of creature that inhibits telekinesis that could be included in the lock design. And it would not even need to block telekinesis completely, only make it harder so fine-manipulation becomes impossible. Like using crude lockpicks while wearing mittens.
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You can try using a combination of what some others have suggested, including what I am about to suggest: Without going onto the technical details of how locks actually work, as you mentioned there are people who possess varying strengths of telekinesis and the practice is draining. Therefore the internals of your locks must contain an overly complex mechanism which requires certain parts to be pushed and other parts to pulled, or manipulated in some opposing direction which would make it impossible for a single person to achieve the feat...It would be the equivalent of trying to remember 20 digits, in order, requiring a Herculean amount of concentration. Unless he or she had multiple accomplices. Even then, coordinating would become a challenge, as high levels of synchrony would be required between the individuals. Also, the locks can utilize magnets to make the required operations even more difficult.
Another idea is that the internals of the lock can change in size. i.e. they are made of compressible materials. A very specific level of compression is required on a number of inter working parts in order for the lock to open, and nobody can really get the correct amount of pressure quite right on the mechanisms involved.
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You make a lock which has a very large number of interlocking parts each of which has to be turned a very precise amount in order to unlock the mechanism.
For example instead of a lock which requires 8 bars depressed as in a typical key it has 64 bars in the form of a cylinder. Have all parts positively locked so that there is no way to move anything without correctly depressing all the bars.
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What about creating a lock containing bacteria. Wouldnt that block people from using telekinesis ? Even an expert lockpicker wouldnt be able to crack it.
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I am a skilled metallurgist and engineer and, like most well-educated people, I'm terrified by the possibility of an impending apocalypse. Let's not worry too much about what form it takes. Nuclear, ecological, cosmic - I mean we're spoiled for choice after all. The point is that it's going to be so catastrophic that civilization will collapse. Without systemic access to learning or the internet, people are going to be reduced to an iron age level of technology within a generation.
Now I want to prepare for this scenario not for myself or my family - no-one knows who's going to survive after all - but for humanity as a whole. I want to build and leave behind a whole bunch of stuff that we can make now, with modern technology, but which only requires a dark-age level of skill to operate. A basic example: an axe made of modern steel is going to be pretty valuable resource in a society that can only smelt crude iron.
Nowadays, we'd mostly rather use a chainsaw over an axe to cut wood on a grand scale. In the new iron age, though, that's not practical. Machines of any kind require a power source and/or have easily damaged moving parts. So we can't leave actual modern equipment like chainsaws behind for the survivors. Yet, surely, with all the skill and technology at our disposal, we can actually do better than a basic steel axe?
Of course I'm not really a skilled metallurgist or engineer. And this is my question: if you were going to re-design simple tools and weapons in this day and age to make them as useful and as long-lasting as possible, what would you do? What could be done with our titular axe to make it light and balanced, prevent rust, get (and keep) the keenest edge possible? What other sorts of tools might you leave, and what would you change to make them of maximum utility in our new iron age?
EDIT: I seem to have framed this question badly. My proposed metallurgist isn't in any way a protagonist in this scenario. It's just a framing device to ask the question of what objects might modern human purposefully leave for a future civilization rebuilding itself after total collapse. She will be long dead by the time people discover the things she has left for them.
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# We will never have an iron age again
Even with the complete breakdown of society as we know it, we will never return to an "iron age" again. At the very worst, we will return to the 1830 to 1850's, i.e. just before the industrial revolution.
The reason for that is **knowledge**. School children know things today that a mere 100 years ago was a complete mystery to even the most learned and intelligent of scholars. A simple physics book, or a medicine book, or a book on modern nursing, contains so much knowledge that it is actually quite impossible to revert to an iron age. Just the fact that we know about **germs** and basic sanitation, or rudimentary nutrition, means such a great difference compared to the first iron age that the post-apocalypse can never compare to that.
Not only that but in the post-apocalypse world, we are starting with quite a lot of stuff left behind for us to use, especially in regards to refined metals. So rebuilding rebuilding a society as it was at the start of the industrial revolution will be quite easy compared to how hard it was the first time.
So I challenge your premise and say: no, we will not have an iron age again. The following premise...
>
> a society that can only smelt crude iron
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>
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...is totally unrealistic because even the most basic of chemistry and metallurgy means we will be able to make steel quite soon.
So if your foresightful hero is in the least bit worried about the post-apocalypse, what they will do first is to **stockpile knowledge** in the form of books, because knowledge is the key to development and getting back to where we were.
And while she will surely store some basic tools for manufacturing, what is even more important is that she saves tools needed to restore **engineering**, for instance things made for **measuring** with great precision, like [calipers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calipers) and [gauge block sets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauge_block).
~~Your guy's role in this as a "skilled metallurgist and engineer" is that he is a walking library of knowledge and experience. He will be a scholar, a teacher, a tutor trying to spread this knowledge again.~~
EDIT: Even with the edit to the question, the answer remains the same: the most important thing to leave behind is **knowledge**. So your character will gather **books** of all sorts. Getting them to survive is an issue, but do note that [this notion is not exactly novel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Project).
Sure, your character may have metalworking and metallurgy close to heart but she would be — pardon the language — **a bloody idiot** if all she left behind was knowledge of that(!) and not things such as sanitation, nutrition, medicine, nursing, chemistry, cosmology, physics, maths, languages... there are just **so many things** that are of higher priority than metalworking / metallurgy.
EDIT 2: There is a way to make knowledge that has been found to be spotty and incomplete, and that is if you make knowledge-suppression part of your premise. If the effort to save knowledge until after the apocalypse is not a carefully planned and meticulously executed effort, but instead a hasty and panicked one, **then** you can end up with someone finding a cache of metallurgy knowledge without being made privy to all the basic background knowledge.
So how would that affect tools and weapons? And what can you leave behind to assist a future blacksmith?
As has been said in other answers: the difference would mostly be in quality. The manufacturing tools and knowledge will allow your future post-apocalyptic blacksmith to make tools and weapons of **higher quality**. They will **last longer**, be **sharper/harder/tougher** and they can also be made with **higher precision**.
But do note that while this is significant and most certainly valuable, this will not give the wielders any kind of definitive edge over their opponents. They will have an advantage, yes, but there are few such advantages that cannot be overcome by sheer numbers and stubbornness. Your future blacksmith will most likely become famous as the producer of exceptional weapons and tools, as has happened many times in real life human history.
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**They would look just like modern tools do.**
There is substantial professional market for axes and knives. And, especially in case of knives, cost was never the limit.
1. **Knives**
Look at modern hunting knives. Especially handmade, created in small batches. Modern hunters in first world countries are usually rich people. Best chiefs aren’t skimpy, either, not when it comes to tools they use. Knifemakers use that, by using best materials, best tools, best heat treatment for each job. No limits in time or cost means these are at the top of usability, if sometimes with a bit too decorative handles.
Bushcraft knives, skinning knives, bowies, kukri, santoku, and many more - they all have their role, and their best examples are at the peak of our technology.
2. **Axes**
There is still quite big professional market for axes. If anyone could do better than that, it would replace common axes. And of course, we already [developed various types of axes for various jobs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axe#Types_of_axes). Talking about “basic steel axe” shows you are not appreciating these enough.
3. **Hunting bows and crossbows**
Yet again, sport for the rich, who want best tools and can pay for them. We can’t do better, because if we could, someone would - and sell it to rich guy who'd love to impress his friends and competitors.
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We have to model the apocolypse.
A modest apocolypse that simply wipes out 99% of the population uniformly or in clumps won't reduce us to the iron age.
You'd probably be forced to do either a single event that wipes us down to a few thousand survivors, or successive winnowing of a similar scale. There is evidence that humanity can survive such a genetic narrowing (in our genes).
Those humans would also be somehow forced to bend all their effort into survival. A successive winnowing makes this more likely (with every clump of humanity which fail to go all-out in pure short-term survival dying off).
Such a period has to last long enough that the artifacts of knowledge are lost. Books must rot, data must be destroyed, stone must fail. Leftover supplies, like chromium steel and aluminium, must rust (which could take a long time) for your tools to be exceedingly useful (using high quality pre-apocolypse metal to make tools gets you 99% of the way to making them out of the same materials before the apocolypse in many cases).
The artifacts produced by this metalworker must still remain, be found by this massively reduced population, and be useful. Not only that, they must be important enough to make a difference. Suppose you made the worlds best armor axe and sword: in a civilization of millions, there is only so much it could do. In a civilization of a billion, you'd almost need to have millions of your artifacts to make a serious dent in the productive capacity of the civilization.
And until you hit millions or billions, how would the new civilization *find* your artifacts?
The multiplicative power of knowledge is not to be underestimated. Instead of making millions of high-quality iron age tools and caching them throughout the world, do the same with knowledge. Instructions on how to do metallergy, build clocks, scientific knowledge, etc. For a fictional description, see [Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footfall), where the aliens are a legacy species after their on-planet precursors died to some apocolypse. Instead of materials, instructions on how to rebuild civilization where provided in increasingly difficult to reach places (with the idea that as the civilization mastered the previous tier, they would get the technology to reach the next tier of instructions).
Engineering and materials science would be needed in the form of making monoliths that could survive a near-geological time period and carry knowledge into the future. The knowledge encoded wouldn't just be engineering and materials science however.
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There are some interesting answers already, but they seem predicated upon a common assumption: a very optimistic view of what people will be like/doing after the apocalypse.
Playing devil's advocate here, I would say that it is at *least* as likely that post-apocalypse will revert humankind far, far worse than the rosier scenarios. So much of what we take for granted right now in the first world especially is sustained by a massive yet barely noticed infrastructure: courts, police, international trade, cheap transportation, manufacturing, high literacy / general education, leisure time, etc. Then there's the synergistic effect of the *common knowledge/background assumption* of all of these things. All of these are subject to network effects, a house of cards waiting to be toppled.
That may sound overly dire, so let me qualify it. Some of those things are taking hits all the time, but in general the system is pretty robust to these fluctuations. We have periods of unrest where law and order is temporarily abandoned like the LA riots or the gulf shore hurricanes, but these situations are not long or widespread enough to cause a general collapse of the system. We have periods where transportation in and out of certain areas becomes problematic and disrupts trade (oil shortages in Canada when waterways freeze or pipes are broken for example) but these are not all over the world, all at once. This seeming stability gives us an overconfident view of the 'stickiness' of modern civilization.
But you are talking about mankind being, at least temporarily, reduced to subsistence agriculture. Working fields, all day every day (when not fighting for their lives/livelihoods/womenfolk against raiders). When are the kids going to learn to read? Stockpiled knowledge in the form of books is a snapshot of a language frozen in time, but languages change all the time.
Not to mention the implicit cultural assumptions. Just look at how many misunderstandings surround the Bible. Was Jesus a carpenter? [Probably not](http://gospelgeeks.net/10-misconceptions-about-jesus-4-jesus-was-a-carpenter/). Are Christians supposed to be totally passive and 'turn the other cheek'? At the time that was actually a form of civil protest, Roman soldiers were only allowed to strike an individual once by law, turning the other cheek was daring them to break the rules. And that's the *Bible*. Regardless of whether you believe in Christianity, its a compendium of the most widely studied documents in existence, targets for professional scholars for over a thousand years, the holy document of one of the world's largest religions.
How well understood are books written in 20th century English going to be 100 years post-apocalypse? 500 yrs? How intelligible is the original *Canterbury Tales* to us despite the fact that it has been studied and preserved by a stable civilization that cares about such things? So books are out as a plan A. Simply stockpiling artifacts like your steel axe makes the survivors and their descendants mere scavengers living off the dwindling remains of the precursor civilization. They won't last forever.
In the *Sword of Shannara* series by Terry Brooks, the answer is basically that an order gets founded that's dedicated to the preservation of knowledge. A similar trope is used in the film *Book of Eli*. If you really want society to recover as quickly as possible, focus on a group of people dedicated to gathering knowledge in book form at first, then converting it to oral tradition/re-translation. It won't be perfect (see my comments on the Bible above) but to think that 'regular' people will somehow see the need to preserve/recapture the past in the face of the immediate survival pressures strikes me as naive. Which is presumably why you asked the question in the first place.
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There seem to be many answers challenging the premise: that a complete reversion to the iron age is even a possibility, no matter the form of the apocolypse. I agree that physical destruction on any scale that still leaves "humanity" intact shouldn't revert us to the iron age, but I'd like to examine a scenario where a return such as the one you've described is possible.
If you look at the Tower of Babel from the book of Genesis, you have a pretty good starting point for your apocalypse. Due to an angry god/alien invaders/evil scientist technology/etc., humanity near instantaneously loses the capacity to understand any languages that exist today. They might still have all their memories intact and can reason using their own personal language, which includes the ability to read and write, but not in a manner others can (initially) understand.
We still have videos and pictures, but it is not a stretch to think that (regardless of the true cause of the loss of language abilities) a significant portion of the Christian population recalls the story of the book of Genesis and believes this is divine punishment, and this becomes the basis for a widespread and instantly popular knowledge suppression sect.
They might restrict technology artificially, or might restrict flow/re-use of knowledge artificially.
In such a scenario, having high quality, basic, intuitive to use items (axe, sword, fork?) could actually be a strong differentiator between those that survive in the new world and those that don't.
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The simple answer can be found by going into a hardware or outdoor store - I can't think of a single iron-age tool that isn't still in widespread use, so it's fair to assume that the best possible version that can be made within economical reason of any given tool already exists.
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Like on a scale of one to ten, how plausible are Alcubierre drives in terms of our current understanding of physics? Plausible enough to be considered "hard sci-fi", or are they just another form of handwave like hyperspace?
This isn't asking about how the science behind the Alcubierre drive works (except as needed for other parts of an answer). Rather, it is about whether and how an Alcubierre drive can work in a hard-science level fiction work.
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The only real issue with Alcubierre drives is that they require negative matter to work. Negative matter (NOT antimatter, which is very real) is a hypothetical substance that generates negative gravity; i.e. that pushes matter away from it. In the "rubber sheet" analogy, where gravity is depicted as depressions in the fabric of space-time, negative matter creates "bumps" instead.
While mathematically possible under the geometry of special relativity, negative matter has never been observed, nor is there any place in the Standard Model of particle physics where it is expected to occur. So the big issue is, is negative matter possible? If so, an Alcubierre drive is simply a question of energy and engineering. If not, the drive is not possible.
Alcubierre drives are maybe around a 7.5 in sci-fi hardness - not a completely magical hand-wave but still requires an imaginary particle to work. They are more plausible than wormholes (which also require negative matter, as well as the need to 'tear' space-time) and less plausible than Dyson spheres (which require no imaginary physics, only scale and energy).
They *are* one of the least hand-wavey methods of FTL travel, so if your story needs FTL travel while remaining as plausible as possible an Alcubierre drive is probably the way to go.
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The Alcubierre drive is theoretically plausible. It is a mathematically correct solution of the Einstein field equations. Its main problem is that the warped path through spacetime for its trajectory has to be set up before it travels. This makes it more like a FTL railway train than an independent vehicle like a spacecraft.
Segei Krashnikov, another theoretician, was dubious about the effectiveness of the Alcubierre metric and he proposed his own solution the Krashnikov. A spaceship travelling to Alpha Centauri creates the warped spacetime path as it travels to Alpha Centauri at sublight speed. On its return journey the spaceship travels along the Krashnikov tube arriving home faster than if it had travelled at less than lightspeed. Effectively that's faster than lightspeed, but only for the return leg of its round trip.
This example is to illustrate the fact that while the Alcubierre drive is theoretically plausible and mathematically correct, not every scientist working in general relativity accepts the concept.
There is also the exotic matter issue, because it requires negative energy densities to keep open the warp bubble. There are problems about the possible of causality violation, because if Alcubierre drive vessels travel first one way and come back again this allows trip into its own past. OK, this can be regarded as a bonus. With FTL travel, you get time-travel as a free accessory. Still it's a worry for those who hold causality dear.
If a writer was using an Alcubierre drive for their FTL spaceships it is scientifically plausible and can be considered as almost a hard-science concept.
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There is a weak sense in which the Alcubierre geometry is a "solution" of general relativity. But **anything is a "solution" of general relativity** in this same weak sense. General relativity says that the matter distribution in a spacetime is related to the geometry of the spacetime in a certain way. You can take *any* spacetime geometry (as long as it's twice differentiable), plug it into that equation, get a matter distribution, and then say "if only we could make this matter distribution happen, we could make this spacetime geometry happen", with exactly the same plausibility as the Alcubierre geometry.
For example, suppose you want the Sun to suddenly disappear. I don't mean that it accelerates away, or blows up, or anything like that. It just disappears. Its gravitational field goes to zero, planets fly away in a straight line, etc.
It's easy to do this. You just take a spacetime metric with the Sun in it (the Schwarzschild interior and exterior solutions stitched together), and a spacetime metric without the Sun (Minkowski space), interpolate between them with a smooth (or at least twice differentiable) function of time, and plug that into the Einstein equation. The result will not make much sense: you'll find that the Sun's mass flows out to infinity through a region with zero mass density. Exotic matter to the rescue! By introducing negative-mass matter, you can counter the mass of the outflowing matter and make the total mass density zero in the region where general relativity says it has to be zero.
It's important to understand that this matter isn't "exotic" just in having negative mass. It's exotic in that it doesn't follow *any* physical laws. It just shows up out of nowhere (literally, out of vacuum) during the disappearance of the sun, then disappears into nowhere. It isn't even subject to cause and effect, much less any more specific physical theory.
The same is true of the exotic matter in Alcubierre's spacetime. It is not a "warp drive", because that would imply that the exotic matter could come from the spaceship that's going to ride the bubble. It can't, because the exotic matter on the outside of the bubble is spacelike. That means that either it travels locally outside the light cone, or it arises independently everywhere along the path. The first case would make the solution uninteresting, since if you can travel outside the light cone then you don't need a general-relativistic warp drive to circumvent light speed. So the exotic matter can't come from the ship. In Alcubierre's geometry, it appears miraculously out of vacuum just before the ship arrives, then disappears into vacuum after it leaves. General relativity is perfectly fine with this. As soon as you add any additional physical laws, it's ruled out.
People have speculated about exotic matter guns that could pre-distribute exotic matter with the right properties. You could likewise speculate about a Sun-vanishing gun. The argument in both cases is "Well, based on everything that we think we know about the world, this is impossible. But if you ignore some of that, the remaining premises aren't strong enough to prove it's impossible any more. So maybe it's possible!" Yes, maybe. All science is subject to revision. But based on everything we know right now, the Alcubierre drive is as scientific as time travel. (In fact, it could be used for time travel.)
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The Alcubierre Drive is indeed possible from a scientific point of view. Exotic matter is not hypothetical, it has being observed, but is just very difficult to produce and it is almost impossible for us, right now at least, to make it in amounts large enough. Also, Alcubierre proposed that Casimir vacuum might work instead of exotic matter, for that matter (no pun intended). Whether it violates causality or not that was debated somewhere else.
To me, the real issue is more about practicality. The Alcubierre Drive generates a lot of practical problems, apart from costs. For example:
* Maybe no living being can survive inside the bubble do to the extreme amount of heat and Hawkings radiation. Of course this does not precludes for sending intelligent robots to explore the cosmos instead which is a pretty good idea for a sci-fi setting.
-The planet-destroyer shock wave of particles at the arrival.
* How to maneuver and stop the vessel if the people inside can’t interact with the universe outside the bubble. Etc.
But any talented sci-fi writer can find clever ways to overcome these issues.
Another thing that most writers overlook is that most of the problems I mentioned do not happen in subluminal speeds, and that makes the Alcubierre Drive interesting for a non-FTL setting becoming the by far fastest way to travel, for example, inside the Solar System.
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Alcubierre drive is a sound way, under the current laws of physics, to explain a valid way of travel faster-than-light and the only way (unless wormholes are ever observed) to “break” the speed of light. However, and this is a big however, what makes AD improbable or implausible for our current civilization is how to make it work. For it we would need whether exotic matter with negative mass (which still hypothetical) or harnessing somehow the Casimir effect which causes negative mass. Both things are not impossible, but we still don’t know how to do either yet. So, maybe tomorrow someone would find the way or maybe never.
So, if for example you’re working on science fiction book and wanted it to be hard sci-fi, the “hardish” way to make FTL is with the AD, but for a lot of people even in that case is then no longer “hard” sci-fi (but this is kind of subjective).
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It is impossible, by any means, to send information from point A to point B faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. I will give you a simple proof of this:
Einstein constructed Special Relativity using thought experiments that involved clocks positioned at various points in space and information flowing between these clocks. The information flowing between these clocks has to be the fastest possible speed at which information can be communicated, which happens to be the speed of light in a vacuum. If there is a faster max speed by which to communicate information between clocks in space then Einstein would have had to use that faster speed. So for example, if the max speed is 2c instead of c then Einstein would have had to use 2c in his relativistic equation instead of c, otherwise the relativistic equations would produce incorrect results. So let's take the equation E = MC^2. This equation has been experimentally verified to many decimal places <https://news.mit.edu/2005/emc2>. It uses the speed of light. Therefore the speed of light must be the fastest possible speed to transmit information. If the max speed is 2c then the equation would have to be rewritten as E = 4MC^2.
Now you might say that an Alcubierre drive does not operate in normal space and therefore is exempt from the light speed limitation. But this is not so. It doesn't matter how information is transferred between points A and B in normal space. You could put an Alcubierre drive between points A and B in normal space, A spaceship will start from point A, use an Alcubierre drive after it has left point A and then shutoff the Alcubierre drive and reenter normal space before it reaches point B. In doing so it will outrace a beam of light that started at point A and headed towards point B. Einstein could have used this Alcubierre drive in his thought experiments.
So the fact that the equation E = MC^2, and all the other relativistic equations that use the speed of light, produces correct results proves that the speed of light IS the fastest possible speed at which to transmit information (and astronauts) in space.
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Sorry, this is going to be more of a rant against the concept of "hard sci-fi" than a strict answer to your question, but asking people now in the 21st century to guess at the viability of the Alcubierre drive would be like asking someone from Da Vinci's time how plausible it would be for a helicopter to ever really be built. They, and we, simply do not have sufficient information to answer the question. In fact, the only thing we can be certain of is that we can be certain that we can't be certain.
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It depends on your definition of "plausible". I would take it to mean anything not disproven by established fact or available evidence. There is no need for a working demonstration test article to exist just to make a claim for plausibility.
Consider a few established realities of our modern world:
* jet airliners
* nuclear powered submarines
* humans have walked on the Moon
* smartphones and all the wonderful tricks they can do
* GPS
* CGI movie effects
and how plausible any of that would have been to a Jules Verne era audience.
Consider also that NASA has taken the Alcubierre drive seriously enough to fund related projects at their Advanced Propulsion Physics Laboratory.
On the other hand, Star Trek style artificial gravity, superluminal ("subspace") communication, force fields, phasers and Vulcan telepathy are all far less plausible. Nothing in our current understanding of physics permits the existence of any of them. Although teleportation (a "transporter" in Trek-speak) is theoretically possible and even demonstrated to a limited degree at a quantum mechanical level, it is nevertheless implausible on a human scale because of all the difficulties which arise. Without a whole new understanding of physics, none of this belongs in hard sci-fi.
What may have been seen as totally implausible a century and a half ago is now part of our everyday world. Who could have predicted the wireless revolution or the internet at a time when there was no such thing as radio, telephone, or anything more computationally sophisticated than a mechanical adding machine?
Even if it turns out that an Alcubierre drive is impossible to build/operate, it has passed the threshold of plausibility not just in hard sci-fi but even respectable science because:
* the laws of physics don't forbid it
* establishment funding has been applied toward its investigation
* related experiments have produced some interesting results, even if inconclusive
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On earth our continents move...real...real slow. This is of course a good thing for sentient life.
I am trying to imagine/develop a world where...things move a bit faster...ok a lot faster, but in a regular pattern that doesn't generally result in two plates ramming into each other...the idea is that the plates would be in perpetual stable motion that is fast enough for a casual observer to see it moves during the course of a day.
Think of two continents that host separate nations that are in a cyclical war. Generally their lands are separated...but every time their two plates put them next to one another they have a battle royale, then after maybe a hundred years they come back in contact and do it all over again (the time frame is flexible).
I would like the plates/continents to be as large as possible while keeping the time waited between the nations coming into contact down to <250 years.
* Could a world such as this plausibly exist?
* How would the plates work, would the energy created make the planet uninhabitable?
* What would the world be like at the fault lines?
* How large could the plates/continents be and how fast would they have to move to allow the nations to battle at least every 250 years?
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I'd Like to improve Amziraro's answer. Since i can't comment (and it would take too many characters to explain) i'm writing a new answer
1. The planet must be huge (i'm thinking 2-3 times, maybe even 5 times the earth), must be covered almost entirely in water and its oceans must be very deep, like 50000 meters on average (yes, that means on average it'd be 5 times the depth of the Mariana trench but there would also be places where you can see and touch the ocean floor) to allow arbitrary sized (on both width and depth) pumice islands
2. A long time ago there was actually a true huge continent (or more than one) but got completely destroyed by some catastrophic event (asteroids/comets/meteors...mind the plural, sudden increase of volcanic activity...you name it) which completely destroyed and scattered the land. At this point the world would be covered in dust, both in the air and floating on the sea
3. The catastrophe resulted into extremely increased volcanic activity which released tons and tons of pumice into the water, which clumped together (in alternative the catastrophe could be the volcanic activity itself)
4. In time, dust and other materials thrown up from the continent by the catastrophe will fall to the "ground", some dust would fall on the pumice islands, adding fertile soils, minerals in the form of dust (we can assume that either there was a civilization that mined up stuff on the original continent or that the catastrophe destroyed the continent up to its inner layers, throwing even heavy elements from the crust and the lithosphere into the air), coal (floating trunks from the original continent), and fossil fuels (water life that got trapped inside the islands).
Taking into account both the catastrophe and volcanic activity, the planet must be very hot at this point. Water life would die and float into the island, dust-heavy rain would fall in the ocean (and into the pumice islands).
5. Of course this means that the "surviving" pumice islands would be in such a shape that'd allow them to hold stuff inside and still float (i'm thinking plate-shaped or ship-shaped) and would need to be very big (maybe some islands would glue together to get the right shape).
They would probably behave like icebergs (where most of the island would be underwater), and that these islands would be created millions (billions?) of years before civilizations. This might pose an issue with erosion, but we might assume that pumice would be replaced by volcanic activity
6. Volcanic activity would stop eventually (not completely maybe, just enough to keep the pumice flow. The pumice must flow!) and the planet would cool down again and life would be allowed to thrive once more. Given enough pressure, the animals and plants trapped under the layers of dust would form coal and oil, minerals would be mixed with the soil (and if we assumed that in the earlier periods there was a lot of water on the islands too, that would generate stratification so that the heaviest elements would be in the deepest layers, effectively creating mines)
This way you'd end up with floating pumice islands that can follow the currents and support life. Some assumptions:
* The islands never touch each other (those that did sank or merged
together) as long as the currents don't change. The islands might get very close to each other, enough to be seen from a distance but not enough to touch each other. I imagine that there would be a part of the island that extends way further than the completely emerged part, creating very long and shallow shores that extend for hundreds or thousands meters
* The islands would be "trapped" in the deepest places of the ocean since otherwise they would crash onto the ocean floor. Maybe some did and became fixed islands, while others sank
* The pumice surrounding the islands must be very thick to prevent being destroyed by erosion and to support all the weight. Maybe someone while randomly digging managed to sunk an island by making a hole into the pumice.
* There must be mountain ranges somewhere, or the winds generated by the Coriolis effect will devastate your planet (Dune docet), not only this, on top of that a water only world would have huge neverending waves (as seen in Interstellar), the best thing i can imagine to make things work is that this world has many oceans (communicating through underwater channels) surrounded by mountains and in these deep oceans the pumice island will float and move around in these "pools". Taking into account the long volcanic activity period, having many Mountain ranges is not that far fetched
EDIT: You actually don't need mountain ranges to completely separate oceans, there can be few mountain ranges (just enough to block the winds and waves) and still have a fully connected and safe water world. I don't know why i didn't think of this first but yeah, that'd work too
* Since the islands are separated you can't even assume that the civilized specie of an island is the same of the civilized specie of another island , probably the most successful civilized specie of the planet would be one that could naturally fly over long distances
I know this is still far fetched and it requires a huge amount of luck to generate such a world by chance, but well the universe is so big that it's plausible to assume something like that can happen by chance, as long as the conditions for that to happen are plausible
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**Could a world such as this plausibly exist?**
Lets see...
...no. Bowlturner has the correct answer in this case. But if we do a little ~~handwaving~~ science based worldbuilding...
**How would the plates work?**
Putting on my science-handwave hat:
I imagine a continental set-up very different to Earth's, in-fact, I would hesitate to call them continents. Imagine an ocean world. Almost the entire surface is covered by water except for some volcanic islands. There are hundreds, no thousands or more sub-oceanic volcanoes, which continually spew large chunks of [pumice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumice) into the ocean, which float. The chunks are the size of [islands](http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2012/08/giant-pumice-island-floats-in-the-pacific/) By a complicated system of currents, the pumice gets carried away into two (or however many continents you want) areas of the ocean where they float together forming a huge expanse of [pumice land](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_island).
At first lichens would form a cover over the bare floating rock. Later, the water will wear down the 'shore' and sand would appear. Additionally, eruptions from volcanic islands (the stationary kind) would cover the pumice land with ash, bits of rock and volcanic [soil](http://volcanology.geol.ucsb.edu/soil.htm). Eventually, as birds carry seeds to the island, saltwater resistant trees (like [Mangroves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangrove)) would sprout and help to bind together the islands, forming a larger mass. Trees would also help for a biosphere. **These would be your plates with continents.**
These floating islands would get bigger and bigger, eventually becoming the size of continents. Your rival civilisations might live on each one, and the currents could shift periodically, moving closer together.
**...would the energy created make the planet uninhabitable?**
In this case, no. The volcanoes might be troublesome however.
**What would the world be like at the fault lines?**
Well, if two 'plates' met, they would probably tear chunks off each other, because they are only weakly bound by tree roots. There wouldn't be platequakes, but the jolt would probably be felt. More interestingly, if the continent floated over an active volcano the plate might tremor and split.
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The energy involved in a natural process of that speed would be immense, The energy output from a single large earthquake is terrible. So to reduce this energy generation (constantly moving at a visible pace and not shaking everything to splinters) plates would have to be pretty thin.
You wouldn't have mountains or caves more than a couple hundred feet tall and digging a basement in the wrong place might strike magma.
The crust would have to be more like melting ice in a spring lake, only the 'water' is magma. This would be a way for the continents to be able to 'float' on currents with some kind of pattern. The center of the floating islands would likely be the thickest and coolest. Larger islands would likely be thicker and cooler in the center than smaller islands. The poles might be cool enough to act as a nice temperate zone, and as the islands float out of it, fighting to get on the islands that 'behind' you might be a big deal.
Basically the planet would be 'cooling' off still. Unlikely to generate life, but a marooned colony ship might be able to survive and grow.
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Don't move the continents horizontally, move the sea (and the land) vertically.
A continent extends from tropical or temperate latitudes into the arctic, with the part closest to the equator covered by a shallow sea from which a few large islands protrude (much like the South China Sea, but oriented north-south rather than east-west). A short (200-year) glacial cycle (possibly caused by a remote binary companion to the main star; for example, Alpha Centauri AB orbit each other at a distance of 11-35 AU and a period of 80 years) periodically covers the mainland half of the continent in glaciers which lock water out of the ocean, causing sea levels to fall and expose a land bridge between the two largest islands.
There's also the potential for glacial isostasy, whereby the ice load on the arctic areas depresses the continental crust, resulting in a corresponding uplift in the tropical areas; the effect would be minor compared to the change in sea level, but still noticeable. It would have the effect of causing the local sea level to lag the climate, so that the land bridge would reach its highest level during the Long Spring (when the two nations would be engaged in competition to colonise the newly habitable mainland) rather than during the Long Winter.
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> Effects of post-glacial uplift in Kvarken, Finland: *<http://www.kvarkenworldheritage.fi/the-kvarken-archipelago/geology/the-land-uplift/>*
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What if the plates were actually regularly shaped "rings" around the planet (with "caps" at the poles) which when put together form the sphere that is the crust of the planet but which can move independently. Each continent would reside on one of these rings, but although they would pass each other (as they turn at different speeds), they would never collide except for maybe a minor north-south wobble.
Perhaps the gravity of a large and close satellite keeps the ones at the equator moving quickly, while the ones closer to the poles not so quick, similar to the moon and our tides? (And may be responsible for how they fell into that pattern in the first place)
I have no idea if the stress on these rings would mean they could not maintain their shape, but even if they were broken it still works as long as the parts kept moving in the same direction.
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Maybe (supposed there is enough Handwavium(TM) in your world) your continents could be on (partially submerged) plates that constantly touch but rotate around their vertical axes. Think of them like interlocking cogwheels.
If you really want, your continental plates (the cogwheels) could be on different hemispheres, touching somewhere near the equator.
That way, coriolis force might (be stretched to) explain the spinning of your continental plates.
The reason they have contact could be because their centers of gravity are not on the poles, so that the planetary spin would push them towards the equator.
Obviously, this would easiest be explained if your continental plates actually floated on the oceans, and not be connected to the planet's core.
Depending on your personal taste, the rims of your floating plates would either have been ground fairly round(ish) over the millenia, or you might get something like an uneven cogwheel-like interlocking structure.
Needless to say, in the contact region things get crushed. Nothing major, it does not really break off large chunks of the plates, but small rocks, the occasional whale or ship, might get caught inbetween the contacting surfaces and be squashed.
Assuming the circumferences of the two plates are not identical (and why would they be?), and both plates have one side submerged under the ocean, if you assume that the larger one turns once every 80 years, and the smaller one once every 50 years, you might get interesting cycles of accessibility of the landmasses from the respective opposite.
Also, the plates would be lifted up out of the water where they touch. That would periodically move the flood line of each point on the brim of each plate. Building roads or other infrastructure to try to access the enemy's plate where they don't expect it could be quite challenging, and allowing for very interesting failures.
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The core of the planet should be mercury.
Liquid at room temperature, but heavy enough to float land on top. It's more dense than iron, lead, etc, and if there was enough of it, it would form the core of our planet, rather than iron. Iron would float on top of it.
The center would still be solid (just as ours is, due to pressure, but between the center and the crust there would be a liquid layer of mercury much closer to the surface than our iron layer, due to low temperature liquid state.
You'd need a lot of mercury, and it would poison the oceans and land, so you'd have to either have characters that were hardened to it (ie, it agrees with their biology, and if they developed on that planet it naturally would), or you'd have to have some filtering and food production methods that eliminate the mercury.
This would allow a core as hot as ours, but not so hot that the planet wouldn't support life. It would cause the crusts to be much thinner - but not necessarily so thin that they wouldn't hold together.
The movement of the crusts could be fairly fast, and could be largely defined by the movement of the liquid mercury below - once set in motion, it would have currents and patterns just as our liquid layers do. It would be stable over thousands of years, certainly, and probably longer.
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I recently watched a special on cave divers in the Yucatan Peninsula and part way through that show the divers encountered a feature called a Halocline, a meeting of two different water masses of differing salinity. It looked like a mirror, or a surface in the middle of the water. This sparked an idea for a planet:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JxwuX.jpg)
Welcome to Sepharad
This planet features an "ocean" of a yet to be determined liquid that is about 100ft thick and suspended above a denser and warmer atmosphere below it.
**My questions are:**
What liquid should be used and how dense would that atmosphere have to be to float that liquid?
Is there a better way to get the desired effect (like a mirror or a surface in the sky) without floating a liquid?
You may change details of the setup (pressure, liquid depth ect.) if those details lend you different results.
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There are several pairs of liquids and gasses where the gas is more dense, and thus the liquid will float on it... for a while at least, as in many cases one will dissolve into the other, which ruins the effect!
There is only one pair that I know of in which the gas will not dissolve into the liquid, *and* in which this effect has in fact been practically demonstrated (and in a YouTube video, no less! [Can You Float a Liquid on a Gas?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsP4yMY-a6U)): Supercritical xenon, and liquid NaK alloy. (Technically, *supercritical* xenon isn't actually a *gas*, but close enough!) This works because NaK is a super light metal with a very low melting point, xenon is a really heavy gas, xenon doesn't dissolve in or react with NaK, and you can increase the density of a supercritical fluids way past normal liquid densities by increasing the pressure.
This pair exists at extremely high pressures, but normal human-comfortable temperatures. And liquid NaK is, in fact, mirror-shiny! Unfortunately, everything else about it is not particularly human-friendly. You could probably dissolve enough oxygen in the xenon to be breathable, but xenon is a powerful anaesthetic--any humans trying to breathe this atmosphere, even if they were acclimatized to the pressure, would rapidly fall unconscious. Also, the oxygen *would* react with the NaK, which would screw everything up in short order. You probably want a strongly reducing atmosphere, with hydrogen mixed with the xenon, to maintain the mirror layer. That could be breathable to some form of life, but not humans! Water vapor would also react with the NaK layer, so you'll need an alternative, non-oxygen-containing, biosolvent. (I thought for a moment a mixture of supercritical xenon and supercritical CO2 as a biosolvent might work, but that would probably react with the potassium. So I dunno... unless you can come up with a reducing, non-oxygen containing solvent that's liquid between -13C and 785C, this might just have to be a lifeless planet after all.)
You also have the problem of where the necessary planetary quantities of xenon, sodium, and potassium came from... eh, Magratheans did it!
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Let me build on @AlexP's comment, because he's completely right. You can't have liquid water floating above any atmosphere no matter the pressure because LOX is lighter than water. The water would fall and the LOX rise (and then probably boil into a gas).
**But let's explore the idea in a little different way...**
Because the idea is super cool.
Water vapor gets up there in the form of clouds, which precipitate rain. Might it be possible to have a dense but breathable atmosphere below that permits a very high concentration of *water vapor* above? And can that water vapor be dense enough to permit, for lack of a better example, fish?
*For the moment I'm going to completely ignore the fact that fish would fall through water vapor for exactly the same reason AlexP described. I'm also going to ignore what happens to the poor suckers when they happen to swim out the bottom of the pond....*
Now, full disclosure, I am not by any stretch of the imagination a meteorologist or climatologist. I am officially pulling this random string of barely related thoughts out of not particularlly dense air. You've been warned.... *(And if you're tempted to downvote just because my science is off by miles, remember that I'm having a lot more fun than you are. Thbppttt!)*
So, you don't tell us who's living on your world, so let's assume some humans have adapted to the climate. [According to Wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#Composition) the earth is 78% Nitrogen, 20% Oxygen, 1% Argon, 0.04% CO2, some stuff we don't care about, water vapor to between .001% and 5%, and 0.000179% Methane. That's 99.0412% of our atmosphere excluding the stuff I'm not going to worry about and assuming low water content.
It's the Nitrogen that's really killing us. That stuff is *thin.* So we need to reduce it to something like 45%. It's gonna smell and it's going to be *honking hot,* but we need to vaporize water anyway, right? Let's up the Methane to 2.5%, the Oxygen to 45%, the Argon to 3%, the CO2 just a smidge to 0.05% and up our water vapor to the range of 2.5% - 7.5%. Take those elements I'm not caring about and up them appropriately to fill in the gap.
**BTW, you need to remember that *honking hot* comment...**
OK, we have an atmosphere that would make Venus proud and hey, humans might actually grow accustomed to sucking it in. It'll be a bit too much like living in your 7th grade gym locker room... but we're an adaptable species.
*Now... here's a guess that will likely send the far more science-oriented among us screaming into the night... right after they found me in a dark alley and beat the crap out of me. But...*
We need a lot of "light" water vapor. That suggests bonding it to something that will help it float.
* H3O2 is more dense than water, but it has a lower specific gravity by volume, which suggests it might "float" in the atmosphere as vapor more easily than H2O. It's also slick (low coefficient of friction), which would give a large amount of it a somewhat glassene appearance and it would feel/be slippery (good for the fish!).
* Now, let's mix that with just a bit of Ammonia. NOT A LOT! Just enough to lower the density a bit.
* Finally, let's mix in some alcohol! (YAY! Happy fish!) A quick Google search lists ethanol as the preferred molecule. Based on the fact that my more libatious friends in high school actually lived through high school, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess humanity could withstand 25% ethanol in the water-vapor-brew.
* *And something altogether magical that keeps those three elements bonded together without weighing them down like iron. I'm going to utterly ignore that, too. Thbppttt!*
OK, I'm guessing again, but let's say 74% H3O2, 25% ethanol, and 1% ammonia. *(And let's hope the beating I get doesn't break any bones.)*
So, what I sincerely believe (that's a really strong word, here. Maybe "wish" would be better!) is that we have a breathable atmosphere with a lucious, thick water vapor layer above it that just might be thick enough (thanks to the heat!) for a fish (well... a flying fish, anyway) to live in. The critters that evolve to love this layer will fly-swim in it, but are very unlikely to ever exit it as their flying ability won't lift them in the thin upper atmosphere and their swim ability won't save them when they plummet to the ground in the lower atmosphere. Hydrogen sacks would help tremendously. And my guess is that from space the planet would look like a cloud-covered mirror. If you live on the surface, don't expect to see the sun anytime soon.
And it will be HOT! HOT HOT HOT! So you might not end up with an hospitable planet.... That would be a weakness in the storyline, overcoming what might be debilitating heat... But just maybe.... The critters of such a planet would be COOL! (no actual pun intended. ... well, maybe a little one.)
*My muse behind this was the atmosphere of Titan and the layered atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn. Which are nothing at all like I described.*
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Water is slightly diamagnetic, which means it will repel a magnetic field of either polarity. One well known example of this is the levitating frog experiment, which used a 16 tesla magnetic field:
So if your planet had strong enough magnetic field, it would repel water. Earth's magnetic field varies in strength in different parts of the globe, so a localized strong field could allow water to exist on ground level elsewhere.
Of course this leaves a lot of things open about the source of the magnetic field and the stability of the situation. For comparison, neutron stars have magnetic fields of 1011 teslas, so there do exist natural processes that cause very strong fields.
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Liquid over gas seems like it's a pretty hard slog.
Gas over gas: The densest gas I can find is per-fluoro-butane C4F10 with a molecular weight of 238, so at stand temp and pressure it's about 7 times as dense as air. (Yes, UCl6 is denser, but has side effects)
Keeping them unmixed would be an issue, although they probably would establish a gradient.
Would make it interesting for air ships. And if you go too deep you drown.
Liquid on liquid. This has the advantage that you can get immiscible liquids. Probably want water for the top layer. Move up to perfluoro-pentane in the above, and you get a liquid that boils at 28 C Eruptions of smothering gas when the ocean gets too warm.
Currents and waves when you have two liquids of similar density are fascinating.
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I'll answer the second part of this question because yes, there are absolutely easier ways to do this than with a floating ocean. The phenomenon that causes that mirror-like effect is [Total Internal Reflection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_internal_reflection). This happens when light reaches a boundary between two substances with different refraction indices. When this happens, the light can either pass through or be reflected, and is often a combination of the two. This behavior is governed by Snell's law:
$$n\_1 \* sin(\theta\_1) = n\_2 \* sin(\theta\_2)$$
where $n\_1$ and $n\_2$ are the refractive indices of the materials and $\theta$ is the angles of incidence. To obtain total internal reflection, the outgoing angle $\theta\_2$ must be 90 degrees or greater. The diagram below sums this up nicely, from Josell7 at Wikipedia:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tL5of.png)
Of course, Josell is working with water an air, a pretty typical physics example, but the theory is still the same. Our goal is to alter $n\_1$ and $n\_2$ to obtain as high a returned angle as possible, thus increasing the angles which have total internal refraction.
Before I get into worldbuilding options, I want to point out a couple places where this already happens on Earth. Total internal reflection is not a rare phenomenon, and anyone who's looked at the surface while underwater in a pool can tell you it happens. The place I want to highlight in particular is **mirages**. These are instances where a layer of hot, non-dense air near the surface is viewed from above and at a great distance. When the light moves moves from the sky to your eyes, it comes in a such a shallow angle that the small difference in density (which is generally a proxy for refractive index) is enough to cause it to reflect off the layer of hot air and back to our eyes. To us, this appears as a small patch of sky on the ground in the distance, which is why they're often mistaken for water!
Unlike when trying to suspend a liquid above a gas, density is working *with* us here. We want to have a very dense gas near the ground and a light gas directly above it. Our best bet for the light gas is helium, because its refractive index is 1.000035. Ironically, this is a counterexample to my comment above, where I said that more dense things generally have a higher refractive index, as hydrogen gas has an RI of 1.000132.
If we simply add a layer of helium gas to our current Earth, we can solve for the critical angle with this equation, derived from Snell's law above:
$$\theta\_{crit} = arcsin(\frac{n\_2}{n\_1})$$
which in our case is
$$\theta\_{crit} = arcsin(\frac{1.000035}{1.000292}) = 88.7$$
so capping Earth with a layer of helium would make the two degrees above the horizon totally reflective. Cool! Let's do better.
Other gases with a [high refractive index](http://www.kayelaby.npl.co.uk/general_physics/2_5/2_5_7.html) include nasty things like benzene and chloroform. However, those gases only get us up to about 85 degrees. The [densest non-reactive gas known](https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/16439/which-is-the-densest-gas-known) gets us no further. So gases on gases will be very hard to do.
The best solution is the one already present in nature- make your creatures live in an ocean, and the critical angle jumps to ~45 degrees, which is about as high as you can get.
---
Update from the people [over at Chemistry](https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/86545/what-gas-has-the-highest-refractive-index):
There doesn't seem to be a fundamental limit to the refractive index, but it depends a *lot* on temperature and pressure. One answer mentioned a refractive index as high as 1.029 for a gas, which raises our critical angle to 75 degrees- on par with an idealized halocline!d
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So I'm thinking about having my race of lightning wielding rabbits wear metal armour. The first one that came to mind was gold. And then a quick Google search later told me gold is one of the best conductors of electricity in the world. I have also read some novels where they say that metal armour were usually enchanted with lightning resistance so that their wearers wouldn't be paralyzed or something.but then I saw a Reddit post saying that conversely, wearing armor and getting struck by lightning would actually save you because I assume the current travels to the earth and not through you so you will live to tell the tale.
So first of all, **would a good conductor of electricity or a metal that has a really poor conductivity be a better defense against lightning strikes or shocks so that the wearer would not be affected/harmed by the voltage/amperes?** [disregarding the fact that the poor rabbit would be toasted if lightning did strike it]
Afterwards, **does metal armour really protect you from lightning/electricity when you are wearing full body suit of armour or when wearing just certain parts like the breastplate, greaves and gauntlets?**
So if it's even possible at all, **what metal can be used to make the Anti lightning armour?**
I don't know what tags to put but **no fantasy metals**
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Both very non-conductive and conductive armour can work. If you wear a full-body suit of armour and get hit by lightning, the current will travel through the armour rather than through you.
This assumes that the suit is continuous and there is no place where one piece of armour does not touch the adjacent piece at all (It's OK if it has holes, if the armour is made explicitly for protection against lightning the pieces would probably be connected by wires to make sure they never completely detach).
If subject to repeated strikes conductive armour could start heating up and eventually melting. To protect against this the most conductive metals would have to be chosen. The more conductive the metal the less heat is created when current flows through it. Gold may still not be a good choice due to its other properties though.
As Cort Ammon mentioned, very high energies, such as those found in natural lightning, may still remain dangerous, so it would be a good idea to coat such a suit of armor with unconductive material *on the inside* to increase the resistance of the path lightning would have to take to go through you.
If the armour is a worse conductor than the air the lightning will travel through the air rather than through you.
This kind of armour is a bit more problematic. For this to work the armour has to completely cover the wearer, otherwise the lightning will just pass through the hole and then through you.
For this to work the armour would have to be **very** unconductive, as you being a pretty good conductor can counteract the resistance the armour offers otherwise.
The air through which the lightning passed would also heat up a lot and that could burn you if it is close enough (Assuming the lightning was artificially made to strike exactly where you are, this would be on the very first layer of air on the outside of your armour, which is **very** close).
Metal also will never be less conductive than (pure) air, so this armor would need to be made of a non-metal.
Partial armour works only in the first case. If you wear a helmet and breastplate but no leg pieces and get hit by lightning, the lightning would travel through the armour where possible and through your legs where there is none.
In the second case partial armour is just like armour with a particularly big hole.
As for the material; any metal works. All metals are more conductive than you + clothes + air between you and the armour.
As commenters and other answers have mentioned, conductive armor would effectively act as a [Faraday cage](http://www.teslamad.com/faraday/faraday.html). The link offers a good explanation of how these work.
Edit: [Shalvenay](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/3097/shalvenay) did the math, a real lightning bolt is simply too strong even for very conductive armour (which is to say that even if its resistance is very low, the energy dissipated as heat is still sufficient to cook the wearer). Unless your conjured lightning bolts are less energetic (like those produced by tesla coils. They can be stronger than those, but not as strong as lightning), short of a superconductor no armour could really protect you. This is especially true if you're subject to multiple strikes.
When electricity flows through any medium, part of its energy is converted into heat. This property is commonly used in electric stoves, but should usually be minimized. This isn't much of a problem in everyday circuitry since most metals have such a low resistance that the produced heat dissipates quickly enough to not cause any notable increase in temperature, however, the energies involved in a lightning strike are so vast that even the small fraction of them which are converted into heat by their traversal of the metal are large enough to damage the "circuit" (i.e. melt the armor) and its inhabitant. The same effect is the reason why we can see lightning - air has a much higher resistance than metal (which is why lightning rods "attract" the bolt). The energy dissipated when lightning passes through air is strong enough to heat it to the point that it turns into plasma. Similarly, when current passes through the human body it will heat it up, potentially destroying parts of it if the current is strong enough (e.g. if it is a lightning).
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## Faraday cages are all fun and games, until you get arc flashed!
There are two problems here — one is that you need to divert the arc current back to its intended return path (not necessarily to ground), and metal or chainmail armors will do that relatively effectively. This is why coilers and HV linesmen use such protection — they are trying to shield against low energy (current limited) arcs and corona discharges due to high E fields, which is relatively easy to do — any ol’ approximate Faraday cage will do.
However, as you increase the arc energy (current sourcing capability of the arc source), trouble starts happening. The temperature of the arc increases to the point where a fully developed arc can be hotter than the Sun’s surface. Furthermore, the amount of energy radiated from the arc in the IR, visible, and UV regions rises to the point where it can ignite combustibles and even raise metals to their *vaporization* points. This vaporization leads to massive expansion (on the order of tens of thousands of times) and an ensuing blast wave that can propel molten metal, shrapnel, and other projectiles. The resulting devastation is termed an [*arc flash*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_flash), and requires specialized arc-rated/flame-resistant clothing to protect against.
This means that even inside a Faraday cage, if you are close enough to its walls, the arc flash will still injure you. This isn’t a problem in say a car or an airplane because you are protected by the inverse-square nature of arc flash damage — 15 cm is enough distance to save you from being toasted. However, as you shrink the cage around you, the resulting loss of standoff distance exposes you to more and more of the arc flash to the point where, for a typical lightning strike (1.5 kV due to arc impedance, 1 ms, 30 kA average), at 1 cm from the attach point, you’re exposed to almost 1000 J/cm² of energy as per the Lee model in [IEEE 1584](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1584) — this is several times what the best arc flash protection available IRL can handle (roughly 250 cal/cm² vs the 40 cal/cm² requirement on class 4 [arc rated suits](https://www.google.com/search?q=arc+flash+suit)).
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Actually, you have found one of the more effective ways of dealing with electricity discharging around your body. The method you suggest is actually used today by those who make Tesla coils to protect them against an accidental (and fatal!) discharge through their body. They typically use chain mail because it is easier to maneuver in than other armors styles and does a good job of draping over very opening to minimize the chance of a mishap because the armor was accidentally open.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95tq5J6ioF0>
Against *full on* lightning, it may or may not be enough. It would definitely help, but real lighting is so mindbogglingly powerful that the armor might not be enough. In the most technical sense, you are in a parallel circuit with the armor. The armor has much less resistance than your body, so the vast majority of the electricity goes through the armor. For mere Tesla coils, topping out at a few dozen kV, that's enough. Lighting strikes clear 100,000 kV on a regular basis, and have an enormous amount of current behind them. Your mileage may vary. It's good enough for a story of lightning wielding rabbits. I would not recommend walking out in a lightning storm wearing *any* gear based on a StackExchange answer ;-)
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If the only reason you need armor is to defend against lightning strikes...**all you really need is a helmet.**
You would basically be building a human lightning rod. So rather than a full suit of heavy heavy armor, you just build a metal (VERY well insulated) helmet with a rod on top. Attach a thick VERY well insulated wire to the rod/helmet.
Maintain control of the wire via some sort of body harness and then ensure that there is enough wire to always keep it on the ground.
This system would provide just as much protection from electricity as a suit of full plate.
It would still be terrifying and you would want ear plugs but it would work.
Keep in mind that any system you create that is based on metals WILL stop working after multiple strikes.
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Nearly any metal would work but steel is a sensible option. There's a few things worth considering - designing around a path for lightning - If you arm your rabbits with grounded spears , that might end up being a preferencial path for lightning. Imagine a long pole with a steel tip, with copper inlaid continuously along a wooden handle wrapped in leather where your warriors would hold it. A conductive endcap, with an attached conductive tassel ends the weapon. You have a lightning rod with a pointy lightning conductor on top, and an easy path to ground at the bottom. Which also acts as a pokey stick.
If relying on armour - you'd want to design it around the [skin effect](http://lightningsafety.com/nlsi_pls/vehicle_strike.html) The metal needs to have pretty continous coverage (so platemail), and presumably you want to have some good padding between the rabbits and plate, with a good, easy path to ground. I'd also recommend pinning those great bit ears back, since armoured rabbit ears would be pointless *and* natural antennae
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The thing about this question is that it largely depends on how your lightning magic works. The way I see it, you have three options for your wizards:
* **Negative charge wizards** - The wizard is only able to manipulate negative charges. This is un-targeted lightning because it is going to try to reach a positive charge and **hopefully** that's the enemy, and not a friend. These wizards are known as chaotic bastards with no direction.
* **Positive charge wizards** - The wizard is only able to manipulate positive charges. This is targeted shock, but it might not be that powerful. This wizard can make you get a static shock whenever (s)he wants. Very annoying. They can also make sure you die in a thunder storm, they just can't make one.
* **Supreme lightning wizards** - The wizard is able to control negative and positive charges at the same time in remote locations. This wizard thinks your Faraday cage armor is cute. "Lightning follows the shortest path to the ground" Yeah? *Well I just made you the ground.*
If I were a supreme lightning wizard, my favorite targets would be to make your heart or brain become positively charged and then create a negative charge somewhere else, either outside your body...or not.
However, I'm going to assume there is just too much electrical activity in both of those areas for even a highly skilled lightning wizard to target directly. In fact, the whole body might be a difficult place to work our magic on and lightning effect might need to start and end using natural materials. (for some reason)
In this case, our only option is to make a portion of the ground our...ground and energize something else (like a cloud) with a negative charge. If our target is using a Faraday cage we have to hope to kill them with thunder, heat and arc flashes.
The good news (for us) is that even if our lightning doesn't hit and kill anything we can still attack one of the most vulnerable parts of any living thing: the mind.
Shell shock is a psychological disturbance caused by prolonged exposure to active warfare, especially being under bombardment.
As lightning casting bunnies, we are powerful, but we are also wise. We do not face off against armies directly. Instead, we find the enemy as they are traveling and we show them our power.
As they are marching through a field at the pace of a drum, their minds are wandering back to home and the sweet smells of the kitchen. The drum beats *bum bum bum* their feet respond *thud thud thud*
**flash, crack**
Everyone is alert now, everyone is paying attention to activity at the front of the marching column where lightning just struck during an otherwise peaceful day.
Another flash, this time farther down the line. It is clear now that this is no ordinary lightning. The unit is being attacked by an unseen enemy, there is nothing that anyone can do but run and scream.
The lightning falls into a strange rhythm with the drum:
*Bum bum bum*
**Flash, crack**
*Bum bum bum*
**Flash crack**
After what feels like an eternity of being harassed, the soldiers have grown accustomed to the morbid rhythm. All at once everyone in the marching column winces, expecting another crash...
But it never comes.
Someone starts to laugh hysterically.
It's time to camp, there's a long march ahead of the unit tomorrow.
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I'm a bit confused here, and am going to go a bit off track as a result. You start the question off talking about rabbits who use lightning powers. Generally, things that manipulate an element and use it to attack have a certain level of immunity to that same element, with 99% of all fantasy I've ever read ignoring the super-heated-air part of magical lightning.
I guess it all depends on whether you have a race of Energizer Bunnies who are generating your electric currents + using them to attack, in which case I would try for conductive non-grounded armor, or if your rabbits are using some external item (wand, gun, whatever) to generate lightning, in which case the idea of a conductive grounded armor with a non-conductive coating would be best. You could even expand it to something like an old timey diver suit (full body + sealed) to shield them from the heating of the atmosphere if you wanted to be that thorough. If they're going to bathe in lightning, the air exchange will need a cooler or they'll still roast.
In both cases, their energy could be channeled through the conductive parts of the armor in close combat to pass the charge through their opponent.
Another option for the armor would be to have it made entirely or partially of a generally soft material that stiffens when a current is passed through it, allowing them to stiffen parts of the armor while fighting. I seem to recall hearing about things like that but the names/terms escape me.
[Answer]
Electricity follows the shortest path to ground.
If that's through your body you have trouble. Gold plating or specially designed gold piping over a less conductive material might actually work nicely.
Gold is also extraordinarily heavy so it'd be hard to walk in let alone fight or march.
It's also soft. Bad for stopping a swords arrows lances etc.
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[Question]
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On Earth, there are many species that communicate using pheromones - from the simple (cats marking their territory) to the complex (ants conveying information about food, danger, and the current status of the colony).
In the interest of creating a highly alien-feeling species, I would like to consider the possibility of a sapient species that uses pheromones as its primary means of communication.
Pheromone-based communication has some advantages over sound (like being able to leave messages in a location), but also some disadvantages. One big disadvantage is that while sounds can be chained together indefinitely to create new concepts (phonemes combining to make words), pheromones are seemingly stuck with whatever your body is physically capable of producing and are harder to give 'structure' to, so it is hard to figure out how such a species would be able to formulate and communicate novel concepts.
How might a pheromone-based species create 'words'? How would they 'write' novel concepts? How would this system evolve? And what interesting effects would this have on their psychology and society? The more alien the answer, the better.
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>
> One big disadvantage is that while sounds can be chained together
> indefinitely […] (pheromones) are harder to give 'structure'
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That is an important thing to notice. Can a scent language carry enough information to be complex?
Let us first see if communication by scent really has this potential to carry a significant amount of information. As you say, sounds can be stringed together, but scents only piled. The information carried by sounds is therefore theoretically (in bits):
$$log\_2(n^l)$$
Where $n$ is the number of states ("sounds") and $l$ the length of the string. In contrast, the theoretical information content of a scent pile (in bits) is simply:
$$n$$
Where $n$ is the number of possible scents. The only thing we can vary is whether a scent is in the pile or not, the order is irrelevant. Ignoring punctuation, capitalization and special characters, the alphabet encodes approximately 5 bits per sound. But as things like "fjafjkldskf7jkfdj" does not make sense, [this paper](http://cs.brown.edu/courses/archive/2006-2007/cs195-5/extras/shannon-1951.pdf) says the "real" information content of English text is about 1 bit per character. Thus, the information a human get from a maxed out tweet is about 140 bits. As the information in bits carried by a scent pile is $log\_2(2^n)$, simplified to just $n$, a Twitter capable species must have 140 distinct scents. But wait a minute! Such a pile can contain over a hundred different scents! What if there is some limit on how many scents you can combine before it becomes confusing? Let us have such a limit $m$. The information in bits is then:
$$log\_2\left(\sum\limits\_{i=0}^m\frac{n!}{i!}\right)$$
(basically, this excludes all combinations including too many scents) Of course this model does not completely model the real limitations of the information content of a language, but it is useful for comparison. At this point, it seems like it is perhaps a little bit limited for long messages, but not that bad. What would really matter is how fast the the organism can refresh its senses after registering a pile. If that does not long, it can simply receive another touch from another individual, or take a sniff from the next scented paper. In that case, the order of the scent piles is important, so the information carried is:
$$log\_2\left(\left(\sum\limits\_{i=0}^m\frac{n!}{i!}\right)^l\right)$$
Where $l$ is the number of scent piles. That has an even better computational class than sound strings! (But do not only look at that. For small messages, having a large amount of scents to choose from is most important, for longer messages though, the refreshing rate is what matters). Given the relatively high information content of a pile, a system with ideas or words associated with a specific pile comes to mind, much like the Chinese writing system.
(**TLDR;** If you do not care about the math, the answer is that yes, scent speak can carry enough information to be complex.)
The durability of a message is another consideration. It can be used for communication much like speech, with perhaps some limitations regarding the noise of large crowds. Another interesting capability is to serve the same role as sticky notes, temporarily small messages left in a place. Long term information storage is more difficult though, perhaps some scratch'n-sniff system is possible.
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A species who's solo ability of communication is through scent/pheremones, would probably evolve a complex scent system as needed. Still, language would develop faster than biology, so that would only hold up for the very primitive peoples.
Base concepts through scent are easy enough, which is why it works for creatures like ants and termites, but even bees dance to convey location, because it's impossible to do through mere scent. Ants have to leave a scent trail to and from places, they can't tell each other where to go.
I'm not a linguist, but I think an important part of language is the ability to explain advanced concepts. Pheromones alone wouldn't be able to do that, so at the very least you'd have to complement it with artificial scents. But that would mean every individual needs to carry supplementary scent objects with them, just to 'speak'.
It's hard to imagine a language based solely on scent. Even a deaf-blind species is likely to combine it with a more concrete sense, like touch, in my opinion.
A language might be spoken through scent in general terms, but for specifics you'd need to touch each other in some way.
Likewise, I imagine a written version of the language would incorporate a kind of braille. A combination of feeling shapes and scents could convey more complex information than feeling and scent alone.
I think the important question here is, why would the species not use another method of supplementing communication, beyond scent?
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Here's a new line of thought.
Pheromones, meaning strictly smells produced by the alien's body, are limiting because presumably an organism can only produce so many chemicals and certainly cannot develop new smells quickly (i.e. invent new words).
However, if this species could store samples of smelly chemicals from the environment for long periods then this would enable language in a couple ways.
First, there are an astoundingly large number of chemical molecules that a sensitive enough 'nose' (i.e. chemical receptor) could differentiate between. Imagine molecules = words and you have a large language even assuming most molecules would be poisonous to this species.
Second, there is a plausible trajectory for the development of such a language. It might start with food sharing or introducing others to an unfamiliar food. Then it evolves into a simple referential system where everything is a concrete noun. (i.e. I present you the smell of a predator to warn you. Interestingly, such a smell would be incredibly useful but incredibly dangerous to acquire). Eventually it becomes a symbolic language.
This communication method has a couple appealing 'alien' points: it could require a physiological 'smell pouch' for storing and concentrating smells. Also, it means new words can only be discovered, not invented. To me this feels like an idea that could spawn many interesting stories.
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Jack Cohen's "Zarathustrians" communicated within their octets by their excreta. As we use our mouth for both speaking and eating, they use their anus for two purposes.
The concept there is that within a closed group, chemical messaging can be effective as a way of collaborative thinking. Their bodies would produce the signalling compounds rapidly and they would be mixed with those others in way that would be more like joint editing of a google doc than direct speaking as we experience.
It works better as a adjunct to other methods of communication (sound, light) or more alien (electrical or magnetic fields, unfocused but fourier analysed light - light as hearing)
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One thought on how this would work in practice comes from ants.
Ants physically touch things with their antenna in order to "smell" the chemical signals present, this gives them a much greater ability to smell non-volatile chemicals.
So your scent species should have chemical sensors on their hands or other mobile antennas and would communicate mostly by being in direct contact with one another.
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I wish to point another drawback of such system
## Information speed transmitting.
Let's compare crowd's alien scent capable and sound-voice capable.
These both crowd's sitting somewhere in safe places, and in each group speaker will talk to group.
Smell is carried by molecules, and how fast listener(I'll use that therm for both groups) will get information depends how fast smell diffuse in air. There are formulas for that, but as we are smell capable creatures(most of us) probably you had personal experience multiple times of how fast smell is distributed, it's not fast, compared to sound.
* actually very important moment. Any danger signal can be heard almost instant. Only smell is almost useless in fast reactions to danger as group.
In fast reaction, but overall it works, specially if you do not care about individuals.
Reach distance of smell communication is more distant then sound. There are [Whistled language's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistled_language) or short video about with examples [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0CIRCjoICA) (very interesting and useful concept for open spaces, and maybe not only). Optimistically, maximum distance of communications will be something like under 1km(depends, and no, I'm not sure). Butterflys(at least some) attracting each other from greater distances in time of mating.
Although there сomes difference between sound and odor. Despite what we say, which combination of sounds we use in our sentence - it will arrive how it was send (in same order of sounds). By odors that is not quite true, because their speed depends on mass of molecules, longer distance is, more significant is that effect, obliviously, it may change order of odor sounds, at some distances, and that means not $\frac {n!}{i!}$ because odors have to be emitted in order of their molecular masses. I mean, I assume they have, but really it's too complex even at level I may think about. You may be interested in reading [Gas chromatography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_chromatography).
Sounds corruption is also a problem, but they tended to corrupt as whole word or sentence, that way most of times, we know it's broken when that happens.
For simple, actually 1-2 bit signals, odor works well. But complex sentence over 1km not sure about that, but even if it will, it will take hours instead 3sec for sound creatures.
Back to speaker's
When odor speaker speaks, he can't speak fast and too long, just as so easy as sound-speaker do. For smell it needs some time to disappear, it's like speak in volume where reverberation works in that way so it needs minutes for one word to disappear.
* there are some solutions, like media, rope-band like magnetic tape, which speacker records, and all read(circle, where speaker is only one erasing and recording point, all other just read). But that means no jokes are allowed, no speaker interruption - could be solved at some extend too - as bands of records on same tape - it may be even very useful, objection or complement may be placed exactly near that part of speech you are objecting or complementing. (we do that too just amount of bands are equal to count of peoples)
* or speaking in stream of air(from speaker to audience), then speed of air will be limiting factor of speed of information transmitting. But we are just limited by how fast we can generate sounds.
* they will have hard time to whispering information which is important just between two(spies)
## Speed
Just speed of transmitting of odors, it not actually speed which I wish to point.
In voice communication One human may easily (if other agree) to send message fast and easy to 100 people - just stand and speak.
Although by odor communication you may inform millions at a time, not fast not easy, but still that millions.
For our human there will be at least 3 steps in communications(rumors) to spread information over million peoples, and each step may contain errors (misunderstood, lie, what ever), but even that in form of rumors it quite fast. Although with internet, informing millions of people, who wish to be informed, is quite easy task: fast, reliable, exact (big deal actually) (yes yes, I know, not so easy, but you have to agree there is Big difference)
Actually rumors, is good enough model, to imagine how such odor communication may look like, in therms of information transmitting. It's possible to get some true bits over some time, but it's not precise, and takes time and effort.
## Conclusion
In short therm odors may have advantage, specially for simple communication systems, for long and short distances. And it works well for simple creatures, as beacons (shark ability to smell) etc. But it have serious disadvantages for more complex communication systems.
Can not say, that it's impossible to make it work for complex systems too, but making it realistic definitely not an easy task.
Take best of two worlds(sound or tactile or both), it's good for relatively longer lasting information(minutes, hours), as emotion expressions as example or maybe other tuning factor for information transmitted, sticky notes you mention. Handwave a bit. Really, in this case, I do not wish to be like those humans who told rockets are impossible, but it's long way to figuring out, what is good for, and limitations of it.
We had and have different approaches to transmit information: sound, visual, smell, artifacts, flowers, combination of symbols(of anything, really anything), [Quipu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu). You may wish to start by investigating how has been solved such problems in the past, and how we do that today. We exploiting all our sensing abilities, not in equal proportions, not always, and it's just so happened we are not the best at smell, but even then we use it as information transmitting and information source, obivious example [Perfume](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfume). I smell food each time, because it tells a story about itself, so at least I listen to my food each time, before we join together))
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Excreting and sending pheromones over a distance takes time whereas speech is quite fast. This doesn't make it impossible. It is possible for your species to have more "sounds" than a human can produce and differentiate. You could use each smell as a syllable or even a word so that speed of communication would be increased. Additionally, to reduce confusion during communication, your species could release pheromones that decay quite fast. This will allow them to talk even faster (still much slower than speech). But it will take away their ability to leave messages.
I believe these species could reach sentience, using their communication ability for their advantage and having bigger brains to improve their chances of survival. If they can excrete semi permanent smells, they could map out regions for possible dangers and food sources. But I think it will be hard for them have a scientific community due to teaching to others would take a lot of time.
One interesting aspect of their civilization would be the literature in their society. Image them building roads to "write" poems on them. Walking on these roads would be very strange for humans as the smell keeps changing as they walk.
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As others have pointed out, touching with antennae allows for more discrete communication than scents in the wind. It allows for a kind of "almost tactile" braille, so it can be sequential and have structure. Sequence and structure take the aliens far beyond the "one smell = one word" or "one smell = one sentence" limitation. A small set of scents would be sufficient to express an infinite number of ideas in the same way a small set of phonemes in a language combines to make hundreds of morphemes and morphemes combine to make hundreds of thousands of words.
As an example,consider three "scent piles" deposited and "smelled" in sequence:
((cinnamon-basil-lavender) (rose-basil-rotten eggs-lemon) (pepper-onion-ginger))
Using the scent piles as phonemes (scentemes?), the alien species could combine them into words. If the scents are deposited in a pattern, the spatial layout can also carry information like braille or the sub-parts of Chinese characters.
Using the scent piles or combinations of them as words deposited in sequence, the alien species could take advantage of syntax.
If the order of the scent piles in the example above was "Dog bites man"(or "Alien bites man", as the case may be), then the same scent piles in the reverse syntactic order would be:
((pepper-onion-ginger) (rose-basil-rotten eggs-lemon) (cinnamon-basil-lavender))
meaning "Man bites dog". This simple sequence of scent piles can carry an underlying structure which can be represented as a tree structure that, in turn, can express more complex ideas. With syntax, the combinations are infinite.
Granted, the scent from the first scent pile may drift or bleed to the next, clouding the sequence, but phoneme sequences suffer from this kind of clouding too, with the first phoneme coloring the next. Languages take this in stride, so the aliens could still express complex ideas as long as the bleeding doesn't completely obliterate the sequence.
If the aliens had antennae that smell or taste, taking advantage of "scent spots" over "scent piles" would bring them closer to using a kind of braille.
One could imagine aliens with skin pores that could secrete scent piles or scent spots in a pattern on the skin, so it wouldn't be limited to depositing on surfaces in the environment.
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[Question]
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If a person from a culture that uses money was to try and introduce such a system to a tribe of people that use a barter-based system, how could they do this in the shortest amount of time? What methods are there that don't screw up the existing dynamics?
1. The tribe can be considered to be around 500 - 1000 individuals.
2. The person trying to introduce the system has no tradeable goods or skills, and no contact with his own people.
3. The tribe is at stage where they are only just settling and farming rather than nomadic. (Like a lost tribe in the jungle rather than a medieval village.)
[Answer]
The shortest way to get people to use a currency is to create a **bank**.
Simply put, currency is a stand-in for other goods and services. It is an arbitrary but agreed-on standard that people can use to value different goods or services in an exchange. It does not indicate what has value or how much, simply provides a measure of that value.
So the simplest and quickest way to introduce it is to use it. The quickest way to do that is offer to hold those things that others value. "I will hold onto your sheep skins and in exchange give you a token that marks what of yours I have. Bring back the token and I'll give you your skins back."
The first such tokens would be specific to the goods being traded: essentially a 'receipt'. The only intellectual leap needed at this juncture is that the person who banked the sheep skins needs only trade that receipt to someone else, and that person can come get the skins instead.
From there, you want to generalize the receipt tokens to something that has the traits of a good currency:
* Durable: it has to stick around in the same form a long time.
* Divisible or Fungible: it needs to be fine-grained enough to represent most common values.
* Convenient: a person needs to be able to easily possess and trade currency.
* Consistent: one penny must be much like another penny.
* Scarcity: if money grows on trees, then it becomes meaningless.
* Acceptability: everyone has to agree on the meaning of the currency.
This is actually very hard to achieve, and for such a small tribe might be prohibitively expensive to set up. Consider that, for metal currency, you'd need access to rare metals in sufficient quantities and be able to forge them into similar shapes that everyone trusts you will accept in trade. You have to do this in a way no one else easily can (either because it's subtly difficult or because you physically interfere with others counterfeiting). You can build the trust (acceptance) over time, but finding a suitable form for your currency can be difficult, especially if you're starting with no assets.
Note that most currencies are 'fiat currencies' because to set one up, you need enough physical, military and/or legal force to be able to corner the market on currency production. If production lacks any powerful party regulating it, it is very easy to undermine the value of a currency. It's possible in your case the tribal leaders can provide this political power, but it would be very difficult for a lone person to do it without being very convincing and very lucky. (Consider the measures casinos take to control their betting chips.) Assuming they could find a currency form, though, setting up a bank (and eventually bank + market) would be the best way to go about it, simply because they are providing a service to the community: making trading easier.
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According to the book *[Debt: The First 5,000 Years](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years)*, currency does not arise organically in a barter society because of a need for a common, divisible medium of exchange. (People keep track of debts in their head, because everyone is known and has a reputation.)
Instead, what happens is that a conqueror comes to town, conquers, and levies a tax, payable only in their scrip. Therefore, everyone needs to get hold of at least some of this scrip, to pay their periodic taxes, thereby giving that scrip value. After that, it becomes the *de facto* medium of exchange-- a currency, if you will.
So, the easiest way to introduce money into a barter society is to conquer that society and demand that taxes be paid in money that you issue.
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Just like the first paper bills were promises to pay out a certain amount of gold, the first coins could be minted only in exchange for the promise of a certain amount of food or other resource, witnessed by some village head or elder.
Example: Farmer John needs a new hoe to till his land. Smith Paul is willing to make one for John in exchange for a share of John's harvest. John makes a coin out of... clay with a drawing of 3 sacks of grain. Paul and John then proceed to village elder Dave and repeat their agreement in front of him. To validate the coin, Dave bites lightly into it, leaving his distinctive teeth marks on the coin.
The coin can now circulate among the locals until harvest time comes around and John trades 3 sacks of grain for his coin back, which he then can destroy (it's worth nothing to himself). Later on, the coins probably wouldn't be destroyed but kept for reuse.
This way, coins only get made in roughly equal measure to resources being produced, and could even be destroyed when a holder claims the promised resource.
Note: Of course this will only work if the society already has a concept of private ownership. If all the food and such are shared by the community, this will be a VERY hard sell.
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The biggest reason for introducing money into a barter system is that not all is equal. If I have a live cow I want to trade for your two beans, we're kinda at an impasse unless we start dividing the cow or those beans are very magical.
A fiat currency (IE, this money is this value and accept that) is not easy to introduce right away...you need money to relate to something solid. So you will need something that this money represents. In our history, 'paper money' originated as this paper bill represents a portion of a brick of gold kept at this bank.
With that in mind, your easiest way to introduce a currency is to have something physical that the currency represents. Holding to the cow example above, you could create tokens where each token represents a 'steak' from said cow or equivalent piece and the bearer of said token would receive that when the cow is slaughtered. Until the cow is slaughtered, these tokens may be freely exchanged as if money. I've used cow for this example here, although it's a hard thing to use as it's a living thing that will eventually die making the token worthless unless there is a new cow to take it's place...if there was a limited resource within this tribe that this token could represent, then you have the basis of what your currency is based on and represents.
So the question becomes...whats a scarce resource for these people that doesn't die or change over time? Hard to tell from your question what these people may value.
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In the beginning there [was barter, and then there were cows](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/history-money.html). The system of barter to agricultural/livestock barter, and the value of a thing was counted in say, goats or cows, even if no actual goats or cows were traded. So a person for example, would say that a service or good was worth a chicken, cow or goat.
Later this became, also skins, as people just don't carry around goats or sheep as much as they should.
What causes currency to develop is an item or something that occurs naturally, is easy to carry, but is not so common that it is worthless. Like cowrie shells from the above PBS example, or something else. It would need to be something that doesn't go bad (so not grain) and would be seen as valued enough within the community.
**Dead Cows is how I'd do it.**
The other thing that causes it to develop is the lack of a hard good AT THE TIME. If people think in terms of cows, and there's sickness which wipes out all the cows, having a representative "stand-in" in the form of currency will help the economy, as long as everyone agrees.
This is not that many people. They can just agree that tokens hold a certain value (each token is valued at say, 1/12 of a cow or something) and as long as that object is not too easy but not impossible to come by, then it's fine.
That the person introducing this has
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> no tradeable goods or skills, and no contact with his own people.
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is going to be awkward. And it sounds as though they are an outsider, and they may not even know the language, which further ups the social difficulty of this. **Therefore, they would have to convince someone with social capital and standing in the community of the idea.**
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We can read from historical accounts that silver and gold—which had value in their own right—were used as a medium of exchange even before standard units of currency were developed. Instead of counting out coins, the quantity of money was calculated by weighing the metal in question.
At some point somebody in a civilized region with a formal government hit on the idea of standard weights of metal, at which point money as we now know it was born.
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Honestly, the best way to introduce money, the idea of money, into a barter economy is not with logical reasons and coaxing but with *stories*.
There's a children's story, or maybeso a set of stories, where the main character wants to trade for something, and has to go on a long quest to get from someone who wants the thing he has, to one who can give him the thing he wants, because of all the people between who are picky about what they want for what they have. Stories like this might catch on pretty well in a barter economy, they are familiar with the web of local favors and debts - but it will also subtly lay the groundwork that the chain of bartering is difficult and inefficient.
Then, your character may have stories or tales or anecdotes (either their own set of stories, or anecdotes about their native land) about the use of money, to circumvent this. Instead of needing to visit fifteen or twenty people to make a trade chain to get what someone needs, wouldn't it be *easier* to have tokens that will let you give what you have for them, and get what you need for them? The idea of using tokens to keep track of debts might or might not make immediate headway, depending on the size of the population and how good the system they already have is, but the idea will be out there for people to consider.
As a bonus, you say the tribe is at a stage where they're settling from nomadic to farming. That means their ways are changing, they're figuring out different ways of doing things that work, and letting go of ways that don't. Their population will be growing, and they might start running up against the kinds of problems that make money easier than barter, like flexibility or not having to keep track of too many people or debts. They are already changing, your person just needs to make sure the idea is out there and let them figure out if they think it will work better than what they have.
If the idea is there, even in stories, it will be on the radar and available for when the society starts looking for solutions to the problems a barter economy might have in a community becoming larger, more specialized, and less flexible. Especially if the person from the money-culture uses the stories to frame the idea as something that helps solve those problems.
This way, the society may be convinced to try and work out a system that will work for them, based on their own thinking and ways of dealing - inspired by a story, but their interpretation of it, instead of trying to impose or coax the society to adopting an system very much outside their culture. Maybe they won't adopt your person's culture's use of money directly, but with the idea that it *can* be done differently than plain barter in their minds, they can think about, and talk about, how to make their *own* system. Maybe instead of centrally backed money (like a bank's) they will pick a common trade good for "pricing" (gold, salt, cocoa beans), or they will start with individual tokens for debts and go from there. It will eventually evolve to suit their culture and needs, but the way it does so will be organic, and therefore a *lot* more likely to be successfully adopted.
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To me, the shortest way to introduce money is to create a common, valuable resource that everyone accepts as a common 'go-to' item. This valuable resource can slowly become the common currency of the barter society & become the new 'money'. The [Aztecs developed a currency alongside bartering in the form of cocoa beans.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_Empire) Cocoa beans didn't automatically become [the currency overnight](https://recipes.howstuffworks.com/food-facts/history-of-chocolate2.htm). It slowly became this currency because the beans could be used to make chocolate and great drinks. This caused everyone to love these little beans and see them as valuable, leading to a society where everyone accepts cocoa beans as a universal currency and produce exchange rates just in case anybody had some of these beans. [Nomads of Ethiopia in the past and present use salt as a currency because it is valuable for preserving meat and you can buy whatever you want from them if you have enough of it on you.](https://seasalt.com/history-of-salt#:%7E:text=Salt%20is%20still%20used%20as,of%20the%20word%20%22salary.%22)
Basically, if you want your clan to have a form of money, have them find a resource that love over anything else and accept that resource in all forms of trade no matter what. Said resource can then become a new form of 'money' that your tribe designs a mutually agreeable exchange rate on.
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There are various arguments on the web stating that the domestication of zebras is impossible, because zebras are bad tempered and skittish, and/or animals elsewhere are even-tempered and friendly. for instance [PBS/Jared Diamond article](http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/variables/zebra.html), [Brief history of zebra domestication](http://www.thomsonsafaris.com/blog/taming-zebras-domestication-attempts/), [YouTube video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOmjnioNulo)
I think are making the cardinal scientific sin of not comparing like with like. First, they are working from the assumption that the domestication of the horse (or donkey, or camel, or cow) was a two stage process. Namely:
1. Stage One: wild animal which people hunt for meat
2. Stage Two: tame animal which people ride
The actual domestication of the horse to a riding animal was in fact a four stage process:
1. Wild animal which people hunt for meat. You treat a horse like we treat a deer or antelope.
2. Tame-ish animal which people herd for meat. You treat a horse like we treat a feisty or skittish beef cow.
3. Very tame animal which people use to haul wagons and chariots - you treat a horse like we treat a draft ox. You also don’t start milking animals until you’re pretty sure they won’t bite, gore, kick or trample you to death during the process!
4. Very tame animal which people ride. Congratulations, you have arrived at your destination of the riding horse. Your next task is to breed them up to a decent size and then invent cavalry.
Pretty much all wild animals are vicious and bad-tempered at Stage One of the domestication process. Aurochs had a reputation as ferocious. If you don’t want to believe classical sources like Julius Caesar (who after all thought moose had no knees), then consider the breeds of ‘re-wilded’ cattle (Heck cattle, Chillingham Park cattle) which have reverted to a pre-domestication lifestyle. [BBC News report on farmer’s problems with psycho Heck cattle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSGiwXl8jzE).
So taking that four stage process and 'not as bad tempered as an aurochs' as a starting point, could zebras have been domesticated? Since they weren’t, what reasons could there be for failure?
I’m specifically interested in the plains zebra (Equus quagga burchelli) which has exactly the same social system as the domestic horse and Przewalski’s horse. Namely a stallion-led harem as the main reproductive unit, plus bachelor herds of unattached stallions. The zebras in the harem do all the things that the YouTube video says they don’t – care about each other, stick together when they run away from predators, run in single file, etc. Ignore Grevy’s zebras (Equus grevyi) with their weird social system
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You quote Diamond, in a video. But he did discuss your further question in a book ("Guns, Germs and Steel"), I don't know if you saw it or what the video covers. In the book, he examines the natural resources available in prehistory on each continent (originating seeds/plants, animals suitable for human needs as food or labour, etc) and their usefulness for developing human society.
He observes that humans have throughout prehistory had immense knowledge of their natural resources and animals/plants not tamed and used domestically tended to have reasons for these when examined. He also notes that domestication isn't the same as taming - for example elephants can be tamed but have not yet been domesticated despite their usefulness.
He then identifies the qualities (mostly commonsense but some surprising) needed to make an animal suitable for domestication as observed from domestication worldwide, such as hierarchical structures (humans able to take over a hierarchy in that species), social and/or harem structures (the social structure needs to enable keeping both males and females domestically as needed, some species' social structures make this very difficult), mating requirements (some animals need aggressive fighting or large spaces for mating "runs" which don't lend themselves to domestication), and so on. I'd have to look it up but zebras were an example he cited of a species that seems like it would be useful but on closer inspection doesn't meet the criteria that allowed domestication. If it had been possible (within early human competence) it would probably have happened.
**Exact reasons he gives in summary (looked it up now)**
Domesticable animals need to meet many criteria ("to avoid many causes of failure"); failure on one or two can be enough to prevent their domestication. Domestication involves *transforming* a species (usually into a similar but different species) so it will be more suited to human needs. These changes include changes to size, hair/fur/wool, milk yield, etc.
Domestication failure was not due to society deficiencies (when horses and cattle were available they were rapidly adopted, yet not one tribe of all those in the zebra's range within Africa domesticated the zebra). Similarly many more species are routinely kept as pets, but zebras were never a common pet either. Mitochondrial DNA shows that those species that were domesticated, were often repeatedly domesticated - they were found suitable by multiple societies and tribes over many times and places, suggesting that universal shunning of a species was not an accident.
General reasons for failure - diet (finicky? Biomass efficiency?); growth rate (domestication tends to require reasonably rapid growth and maturity to make it worthwhile, it's easier to tame than gradually domesticate a long-lived species or one that will take undue effort to keep/feed/protect until maturity); captive breeding; temperament; panic tendency (some deer will batter themselves to death to try and escape, if panicked); social structure.
Zebras specifically - become more dangerous as they age;more uniformly bad disposition (you can't find a breeding line that lacks this, unlike our understanding of ancestral horses it's not really "some but not others" nor does it seem a trait that can gradually be developed in any usual domestication time period); bite and don't let go (injure more zoo keepers than tigers do); virtually impossible to lasso as they can avoid a rope (even by rodeo champions) ..... and from other sources it seems they also tend to panic under stress too.
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**The answer is yes, but humanity declined. And the opportunity passed.** (Or did it?)
Most zebra species are unsuited for domestication as for example Jared Diamond noted. However, one variety of zebra, the [Quagga](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quagga) (Equus quagga quagga), had all the trappings required for domestication. It was more tame and easier to train. It was used on a small scale as draft animal but it never really took off.
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The wild population was treated as vermin and eventually the whole species became extinct around 1880.
Only after the Quagga was exterminated it became recognized as a separate species, so either its likeness to less tameable varieties or its lesser carrying capabilities when compared to horses prevented successful domestication. That or the easy to hunt meat and hide and the removal as forage competitor for livestock won out.
Anyway not much later motorized transportation entered the picture ending any economic need for zebra domestication.
There is an [initiative](http://www.quaggaproject.org) to breed back the Quagga which is generating some success. Maybe some time in the future there will be a second opportunity.
References:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quagga>
<http://eol.org/pages/311502/details>
<https://books.google.nl/books?id=mhzyhynJOc0C&pg=PA21&lpg=PA21&dq=Equus+quagga+domestication&source=bl&ots=ih9JBKlkLJ&sig=Uhfx900OESMCGRQEY1NpxgSu7A4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiji_aS4ubNAhUJJ8AKHRgAAToQ6AEIPDAF#v=onepage&q=Equus%20quagga%20domestication&f=false>
<http://www.quaggaproject.org> (see google book excerpt below)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/plY5v.png)
[Answer]
Yes indeed, when humans first domesticated animals they tend to act like... wild animals. However it's possible through breeding to create a captive population that aren't so wild. This is the earliest stage of domestication; stopping them from running you over or biting you when you try and look after them.
Horses, sheep, bovines, pigs, llamas, goats and camels are all to some degree capable of this; when raised in captivity they are more passive and docile than their wild counterparts. Zebras are not like this, even a captively bred zebra will bite you.
Another problem with zebras is that they're useless. A zebra isn't strong, so it can't pull a plough. It has a frail back which makes mounting it worthless. The only thing one could really do with a zebra is eat it, which is perfectly easy to do via hunting, so keeping them is pointless. Sure you could breed for stronger and stronger animals, but that takes time, and people working over many generations to get it done. At the time when we could have started domesticating zebras there was simply no point to doing that. It's possible that you could do it in the modern world; the process of selective breeding is far better understood and more streamlined, but you're still looking at several hundred years worth of work.
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All these answers are really good and have great sources to back them up! I don't have this kind of information to add to the conversation, but I was at an exotic zoo a few weeks ago. When we went to go feed the zebras I asked this very question.
1. We couldn't hand feed the zebras like all the other animals (not sure the exact reason, but EVERYTHING ELSE at the zoo - except the birds - we could hand feed).
2. The reason people don't ride zebras is because of their uncomfortable, wide back. They are (not sure about wild zebras vs sanctuary/zoo) fatter than horses from my personal understanding, shorter than horses, and they are pretty skittish by nature.
This said, they are a herd mentality kind of animal. I'm sure almost anything can be domesticated, but Zebras would probably take a lot more effort.
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I think that the impossibility of taming or training zebras might sometimes be exaggerated.
As example Yahoo image search [circus+Zebras](https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=circus+Zebras)
Or interesting blog record from Rory Young, professional safari guide, ranger, tracker and writer, with 23 years years in wildlife and forest management - [Can Zebras Be Domesticated and Trained?](http://www.slate.com/blogs/quora/2013/09/04/can_zebras_be_domesticated_and_trained.html)
The statement that Zebras are impossible to domesticate because they bite reminds me that when I was a child I was bitten on a finger by a horse. So how much more like to bite are zebras than domesticated horses?
I think that zebras could have been domesticated thousands of years ago if someone had figured out the right method.
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I have a generic Earth like planet, same atmospheric composition, and the same oceanic composition. The crust of this planet is predominantly silicon based but plenty of iron, nickel and copper. Life started on this planet too and currently covers the entire surface, both above and below the waves.
*My objective is to starve the planet of oxygen by removing 50% or more of the free atmospheric oxygen in less than 10 years.* The preferred method for doing this is to drop geologically significant quantities of non-oxidized iron onto this planet for a few years in the form of iron dust. Where I get the iron from and how I deliver it to the planet's upper atmosphere is outside the scope of this question.
**Can I realistically and dramatically drop the amount of oxygen by dumping powdered iron into the atmosphere and ocean?** I've read that iron does a [fantastic job of binding to oxygen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_scavenger#Mechanism) so that's my preferred approach.
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## Removing the oxygen this way will remove much of the atmosphere
Earth's atmosphere is $5\times10^{18}$ kg. Nitrogen and Oxygen are the primary components and are approximately equal in mass. 20% of the atmosphere is oxygen by molecule, therefore about 20% of the mass of the atmosphere is oxygen, so there is $1\times10^{18}$ kg of Oxygen that needs to be removed.
There are many [oxides of iron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_oxide), and these oxides form from two [different oxidation states](https://www.princeton.edu/~cebic/ironIIvsIII.html) of iron atom, iron (II) and iron (III). Let's assume a 2:3 ratio of Fe:O in the iron oxides that we would form, based on the multiple oxidation states of iron that we would dump in the atmosphere. The mass of three oxygen atoms is about 48 g per mol; while two irons is about 111 g per mol. So to react with $1\times10^{18}$ kg of Oxygen, we need at least $2\times10^{18}$.
Dropping this mass of iron onto a planet will convert the gravitational potential energy that this mass had relative to the planet into kinetic energy, released on the planet's surface as it impacts. Assuming the iron comes from outside the planet's orbit, the gravitational potential energy is equal to the energy required to escape the planet's gravity. In kinetic energy terms, we would plug the mass along with the planet's escape velocity into
$$KE = \frac{1}{2}mv^2.$$ The escape velocity of Earth is 11.2 km/s; the total energy imparted to the Earth by the falling iron would be over $1\times10^{26}$ J. Even if the iron came from an orbiting moon, the imparted energy would be at least 95% of this total (a moon that big can only be so close).
Going to the [best wikipedia page in the world](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy)#Over_1024_J), we see that this is a problem. This is equivalent to about 20 years of solar energy striking the surface of the Earth, or 200 Chicxulub impacts. If you were going to do this over a millennia or two, that would be one thing, but if you want to do it in ten years, that is another.
# How the atmosphere would be stripped
Adding enough iron to a planet to remove all the oxygen from the atmosphere in a 10 year period will be equivalent to hitting it with a dino-killing meteor every three weeks over that period. Since this kinetic energy is dissipated first in the uppermost parts of the atmosphere, the energy will be dissipated as heat in the upper parts of the atmosphere.
The total KE energy of the added iron would not be enough, by itself, to remove the entire atmosphere. But since the iron is added in dust form, it would be a safe assumption that all of its energy would be dissipated in the atmosphere, and most of that in the upper atmosphere.
The total energy addition, divided by 10 years and then by the surface area of the planet is
$$ \frac{1\times10^{26} \text{ J}}{3.2\times10^{8}\text{ s}\cdot5.1\times10^{14}\text{ m}^2} = 620 \frac{\text{W}}{\text{m}^2}.$$
At the [top of the stratosphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratosphere#Ozone_and_temperature), particle temperature is in the 270 K range, with a root mean square velocity around 500 m/s, meaning oxygen and nitrogen particles still need ~10.5 km/s of delta-v to escape.
But gaseous molecules are not all travelling the same speed. These particles' velocities are distributed according to the [Maxwell distribution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%E2%80%93Boltzmann_distribution), which is itself a [$\chi^2$](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chi-squared_distribution#Table_of_%CF%872_values_vs_p-values) distribution with three degrees of freedom. From the chart in the last link, we can see that the $\chi^2$ value for $p=0.1$ with $k=3$ is 6.25 ($k$ is the degrees of freedom). This means that 10% of particles will have a 'value' of 6.25 in a Maxwell distributed set of particles. The mean of the distribution is $k$, which is three, and this is equivalent to the root mean square (rms) velocity of the particles. Thus, if the rms velocity of a group of particles is 3/6.25 = 0.48 times the escape velocity, then 10% of the particles will still be above escape velocity. This is a more likely explanation of how atmospheric escape would work.
In this case, the delta-v required to get 10% of the particles to escape is only 4.9 km/s, so the added iron is bringing 2 mols of atmosphere to this temperate, every second, over every square meter of Earth for 10 years.
Here is where simple math breaks down. The impact of heating in the last second will affect heating in the next second, there is some amount of heat loss through mixing, and other heat loss through radiation back into space. Furthermore, some particles will escape with very high velocities, carrying off a large amount of energy with them. But at a very simple level, the 2 mols per second per square meter is equivalent to $1\times10^{15}$ mols of atmosphere heated until 10% is at escape velocity every second. If there were no mixing or heat loss, this will bring the entire atmosphere to 10% escape in 45 hours.
How much will escape I really can't estimate with accuracy, so I will back off my previous claim the the entire atmosphere will be stripped. A significant portion will be stripped, but there is not enough kinetic energy in the falling iron for it all to be stripped.
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Does powdered iron oxidize, thus reducing the oxygen content of the air? Absolutely. But can you use that as a doomsday weapon? Maybe not.
According to the article you linked, 1g of elemental iron can remove 99.99% of the oxygen from 300 cubic cm of air. But how much is that really? 300 cubic cm of dry, room temperature air at sea level masses about a third of a gram, and is about 20% oxygen. So each gram of iron is only removing about 1/15th of a gram of oxygen from the air. Since elemental iron is so much denser than elemental oxygen, and the spaces where we use oxygen absorbers are fairly small, this isn't a problem.
But that means you'll need to drop three times the mass of Earth's atmosphere in iron filings in order to totally deoxygenate the planet. Since you specified 50% oxygen removed, you need 1.5x the mass. Earth's atmosphere masses 5.15 \* 10^18 kilograms.
I daresay you can find far more efficient ways to kill a biosphere with eight billion billion kilograms (short scale) of iron. Like say dropping it from orbit in a big mass, or a lot of little masses. For scale, we're talking about around six million years of current industrial iron production levels.
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I do not have an answer, but I do have a few considerations which would effect the feasibility. They are called, collectively, the Law of Unintended Consequences.
Rapid oxidation, of course, is called 'fire'.
The rusting (oxidation) of iron is exothermic.
I remember in high school burning steel wool in pure oxygen. Just a small quantity of steel wool produced a tremendous amount of heat. I also remember iron fillings spontaneously igniting in pure oxygen. I would suggest that the amount of iron fillings to remove the amount of oxygen that has to be removed through rapid oxidization, as calculated by other posters, in just ten years, would result in one colossal exothermic reaction that would literally set fire to the entire atmosphere.
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from [Spontaneous combustion](https://fairplay.ihs.com/ship-construction/article/4118836/spontaneous-combustion)
Another factor would be any magnetic fields around the planet. Everyone, of course, is familiar with the demonstrations of sprinkling iron filings in a magnetic field. I have this vision of huge bands of iron filings forming in the lines of magnetic flux around the planet, suspended in the air.
A third factor, is lightning. Iron conducts, and establishing a huge conductive path around the planet would play havoc during any lightning storm. The iron fillings would be immediately vaporized. The result would be molten iron vapor, not iron filings. Could there even BE lightning? Or would there be continuous lightning? A corona?
Fourth, what WOULD be the effect of that much particulate iron in the atmosphere on the inhabitants? Blood carries oxygen by way of the iron contained in it. Would the body be able to 'breathe' and survive on the iron particles, instead of free oxygen which then gets bound to iron in the blood? Living mammals on earth have an excellent ability to extract oxygen from iron. Would this technique be counter-productive? Instead of oxygen starvation, would the mammals end up oxygen enriched?
Fifth, what happens to the oxidized iron fillings in the atmosphere? There is no real reason why they would all fall to the ground. They would be just like any other dust particles in a dust storm. Maybe rain would cleanse the atmosphere of them. But in the meantime? Would the iron dust block out the sun, cooling the planet, or would the iron dust absorb heat from the sun, warning it even more?
Last on my list, what would be the consequences of this much iron oxide on other materials? Iron oxide and aluminum, for instance. The aluminum 'robs' the iron oxide of its oxygen, forming aluminum oxide. The iron is recovered.
The Law of Unintended Consequences is an immutable law, that tends to but a kibosh into the best laid plans of humans.
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Yes, and this is exactly what happened in Earth's past (although in reverse, kind of).
This is called the [Great Oxygenation Event](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event), and one of the most striking evidence of that in the geological record are the [Banded Iron Formations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banded_iron_formation). Here's one:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Rl33h.jpg)
(From <https://www.flickr.com/photos/jsjgeology/18602978984/>)
What happened was the beginning of photosynthesis, cyanobacteria producing free oxygen to the atmosphere. But, this oxygenated atmosphere was not in equilibrium with the oceans that had soluble ferrous iron (Fe2+). The oxygen then bonded with the ferrous iron to produce insoluble ferric iron (Fe3+) causing the deposition of the banded iron sediments.
Eventually, the ocean ran out of ferrous iron, allowing the atmosphere to accumulate large amounts of free oxygen.
In your case, instead of injecting oxygen, you can inject ferrous iron to the oceans or atmospheres. This is easier scientifically because you don't need a source of metallic iron (Fe0) and ferrous iron (Fe2+) can be easily sourced from volcanoes or seafloor hydrothermal vents, etc.
Note that in earth's history this occurred over millions of years. If you want this to happen in 10 years you need a lot of iron and it has to be extremely reactive. But we all know (unfortunately) that it's possible to change the atmosphere's chemistry very fast.
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You're going to have a bit of a problem here. There is approximately 10^21g of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere. Rust is Fe2O3. One mole of it contains 48g of oxygen and 112g of iron. Thus to get rid of all the atmospheric oxygen you'll need 2.33x10^21g of iron, half that (1.16x10^21g) to reduce it to 10%. To accomplish your objective you'll need a ball of iron 650km across!
As for how to accomplish it--make it into small pieces and drop it on the Earth from a fair distance out. It will hit fast enough to burn up on entry--it's going to rain down as rust, not as elemental iron.
The only question is whether you can accomplish this within your 10 year timeframe without burning the planet in the process.
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It is plausible. Iron does bind oxygen. The [banded iron formation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banded_iron_formation) are huge Precambrian rust deposits, as iron bound up oxygen in the newly oxygenating Earth. If iron could bind oxygen then it could now as well.
This scheme would work better the less ocean you have. In the ocean your scheme could backfire, at least initially. Iron is scarce in the open ocean and it is a limiting nutrient for open ocean photosynthesizes. [Iron fertilization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization) has been shown to boost photosynthesis in the open ocean and has been proposed as a method to sequester CO2 and remedy global warming. Your iron drop might increase oxygen.
The other thing about dropping iron over water is that it might sink to the bottom and be buried, never getting a chance to react with oxygen.
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Some of you may know my mutant thread, and guess what? It's back.
I'm wondering if there is any biological means to improve muscular power without greatly increasing the volume of said muscle.
My conundrum is that I have some mutants easily able to lift 6 tons (and more - as in lift above their head and carry around), but that look like normals, albeit athletics, humans. On the other hand, the human world record for bench-pressing is around 320kg1 and the holder is already humongous.2
**Is there any way (apart from handwavium) to increase muscle power and retain a normal human shape?**
What I'm looking for/How I'll rank answers:
* Only biological, science-based explanations please. No mechanical augmentation, something that can reasonnably happen inside a "human-ish" body (so please, no nuclear fusion to power your super muscles).
* The energy expenditure is overlooked, but other factors such as resistance (to avoid this person tearing itself up) would be nice.
* If it's not possible, explaining why would also help.
1: From the top of my head, feel free to correct me if there is any mistakes.
2:And yes, Batman bench-pressing 1-ton is clearly inhuman, stop pretending this guy is not a mutant in some way.
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**Addendum:** Of course, lifting capacity does not equal strength. But it is hard to exactly describe the physical raw power of someone. Lifting is used here as a common denominator for everyone to just show the order of magnitude involved.
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Yes, there is likely a way, though I will admit I'm not sure how much of the desired about 20x difference it will get you. By the time you get into those mass ranges, the strength of the bones, tendons and attachments will likely be as important as, if not more so than, the muscles themselves. Also, [as Spoki0 pointed out](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/151084/29), technique matters.
That said...
**Give them more fast-twitch muscle fibers, and less slow-twitch ones.**
See for example [How chimps outmuscle humans](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/how-chimps-outmuscle-humans).
Slow-twitch muscle fiber (myosin heavy chain I) are better for endurance tasks, while fast-twitch muscle fiber (myosin heavy chain II; in the case of chimpanzees, specifically type IIa and IId) come at a higher energy cost and are better for speed and short-term force. As stated in the linked article,
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By running simulations, it was found that this difference of slow-twitch vs fast-twitch fibers resulted in an overall muscle which was [1.34 to 1.35 times as powerful](https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1619071114), depending on the exact metric. The researchers performing the study concluded that
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and that
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> Although our simulations do not reproduce the earlier experimental designs in detail, the close approximation of our results to the 1.5 times average suggests that muscle mechanics—MHC isoform content, in particular—accounts for much, but not necessarily all, of the measured chimpanzee–human performance differential. Muscle “static strength,” defined as maximum isometric force-producing capabilities (Po), is not significantly different between these two species and therefore does not contribute to their performance differential[.]
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**Therefore, it stands to reason that by tweaking the muscle fiber composition to favor type II, and by increasing the length of individual muscle fibers, you can increase muscle power without a corresponding increase of muscle volume, but at the cost of muscle endurance.**
As pointed out in a comment by [Yakk](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/2473/yakk), **you can also take this even further by giving them even faster and longer muscle fibers** than humans' long type II muscle fibers. You will hit a limit at some point, but as pointed out, it's definitely possible to give your creatures even more strength per unit muscle mass than humans' type II fibers allow, and you can probably maintain suspension of disbelief taking it at least one step further, though again, you're making a tradeoff against endurance.
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**Strength and muscles**
*Strength does not inherently correlate with muscle size.*
[Increasing your neural activation](http://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4269707), that is, simply utilizing more of the muscle fibers, can greatly increase your strength without the fibers being significantly larger. Certain people train specifically for this, ex. sprinters, as the increased mass would slow them down again.
That's not gonna get you to lifting 6 tons by itself, but could be a starting point. Very efficient neural activation.
*Not all muscle fibers are equal.*
Different fibers are specialized at different things. Think heart vs. pecs. While it is very specialized, [the estimated bite force for a human is around 135kg](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2010.0509). The related muscle is much smaller than other muscles typically associated with those numbers.
While I don't know of any existing muscle fibers in nature that would scale up to 6 tons of lifting in a human, that could be something to explore.
**Bones and tendons**
As mentioned in another answer, there is more to lifting than simply your muscle. Bones and tendons might not be able to cope with the forces. You wouldn't want your guy grip something hard, and have the tendons to his fingers snap from the force, leaving him unable to grip for the future.
Therefore your chap would need some solid upgrades to his bones and tendons, to prevent the muscles from destroying them with the forces exerted.
**Lifting and muscle strength**
*Lifting strength does not inherently correlate with muscle strength.*
Many who do weightlifting notice that if they get proper form, they can lift more. Typically this would be because they are better balanced or activate supporting muscles that help during the lift. It is also safer and better for your body.
That's more of a heads up that even if your guy is super strong, he wouldn't inherently be able to lift super heavy. He might be limited by form, or even hurt himself due to the lack of it.
He'd still beat everyone at bench press though...
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There have been good answers about fast twitch fibers and better neural activation. Both of those are good but the reason we have slower muscles and why our bodies only activate as few muscle fibers at a time as we do is that both of those are very energy intensive.
So, aside from better bones and tendons, the mutant needs to get oxygen and more (or better) nutrients to the muscles. This can be as simple as better blood flow to the muscles to as complex as completely redesigning the chemical energy system used by the muscles.
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I'd look into the phenomena known as "Hysterical Strength" which occurs in humans in the real word. Basically, while the exact source of the adrenaline is not fully understood and the very nature is nearly impossible to test, during periods of hyperarousal (aka Fight-or-Flight Response) the surge of Adrenaline in the human body can allow an average person the strength to lift in excess of one ton (there is a case of two teenage girls lifting a farm tractor off their father who had been pinned under it.).
This occurs because under normal conditions, the human body only twitches (muscle contractions) about 1/3rd of the muscle fibers for any sustained muscle contraction. Adrenaline causes more muscle fibers to twitch (when a muscle fiber contracts it will eventually release. If a contraction occurs a second time before the release the output of power of both contractions are added together). This occurs without any increase to muscle mass or amount of movement of a normal human.
You could explain your character(s) mutation as having the ability to willfully release enough adrenaline to trigger a state similar to Hysterical Strength and while 6 tons+ seems excessive, again, given the situations are usually life or death triggered, it's not known just how much a human can lift under such conditions. This would also prevent your character from a situation of no knowing their own strenth as they'd have to be in this state to be superhuman. There is an actual reason why Humans don't permanently use all their muscle fibers as the mechanical forces of such a state have resulted some people suffering muscle tears from the increase. Humans are actually one of the most densely muscled apex predator mammals in the world, with only Lions, Tigers, and Three Species of Bear having a higher average body weight than a human (Including the Polar Bear, which in another documented Hysterical Strength case was held off by a Canadian Woman buying time for a group of people to escape to safety and a park ranger to retrieve a rifle and kill the animal.). Using the remaining 2/3rd of the muscle fibers in our body would be the equivalent of having an oxygen mask on a commercial jet: You don't need it when things go right, but you'll want it when things go very wrong.
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I don't think it is possible, unless "nuclear hyper ancient magic, something".
A ten-to-twenty-fold increase may seem counter-intuitive to start with, but that's actually within the realm of "possible". You can get that on normal people with electro-stimulation, so why not naturally on some presumed mutant, if you are willing to handwave a tiny little bit. But the problems are of different nature.
First, while increasing strength (muscular "power") is possible without increasing mass, and while increasing strength endurance alone is possible without increasing mass, increasing **both** at the same time is impossible (without increasing mass). Your mutants are to lift 20 times as much, and carry that around, so they need both.
Increasing actual muscular *power* (just to be nit-picky on wording) would require a combination of things, including a fundamental change to your cardiovascular system. Power is energy-per-time, and 90% of your energy comes from the electron transport chain in your mitochondria. Which requires, well... *oxygen*, and not precisely small amounts. So you need huge quantities of blood flowing through your muscles to supply that oxygen, which is already a practical problem on a contracted muscle of "normal" strength. Now, multiply strength by 20, and you multiply the supply problem by 20, too... Unless you are happy with 5-10 second feats (question explicitly says different), you're kinda lost.
You can activate more muscle fibers at the same time, that's what people who do strength training learn to do at will. It's what most animals (including e.g. apes) do, too. Animals are not magical in any way, they're just not as much of a wuss as the average human because in the *real* world in which they live, being a wuss means being dead and eaten.
It's more neurological than actually "muscle". Also note that the guy holding the world record in bench press is not necessarily the strongest guy, either. Or the biggest, for that matter. Some stunningly strong people are surprisingly small and slim. Think e.g. Chinese acrobats. The thing is, the more fibers you activate at one time (for more strength), the more fibers get tired (pretty obvious). Which means unless you have *more* of them, you necessarily have to drastically reduce time.
Second, assuming you can actually increase muscular strength to that level, it would almost certainly mean that your tendons would rupture. Tendons, vaginae, and hypomochlia have to endure *surprising* amounts of force even for trivial tasks. In hand surgery, one is often surprised why they make such a darn fuzz about holding fingers in some particular position with rubber bands for ages after suturing. Well, the reason is that merely *moving* a finger will put the equivalent of around 20 kilograms on that little tendon, which is non-trivial for a healthy tendon already, but definitively is more than the suture will support. So imagine what forces are at work when you actually grab something firmly. The force that acts on the various fibrous rings that keep tendons in place and allow them to force the attached bone in some particular predetermined direction can be 10-20 times as much. The forces on your knees or elbows when the joint is in a widely-flexed position? The knee at least has the patella, which *somewhat* redirects force in a sensible direction. The elbow doesn't. Don't even want to think about how much force acts on that tendon.
Although we're looking at some of the strongest tissues nature is able to build, in reality it often comes close to what the tissue is able to *physically* support. That's why repetitive strain wears stuff down so surprisingly fast, and it's why there's not rarely... *BANG*... catastrophic failure.´.
So, well, OK, they're mutants, let's assume they have some magical carbon-nanotube tendons, whatever, which magically support 3-5 times as much. But we talk about multiplying with 20, and not just for a second or two, but supporting that for a lengthy time, I cannot imagine it could work.
Third, there's levers at work. For example, your spine is one huge lever (about a meter long) connected to some small levers (about a centimeter or two). Plus, spinal discs, which are surrounded by a fibrous ring. The disc itself is pretty much indestructible as long as it's held together, but the ring isn't...
The *actual* force depends on where you look at, but let's just assume there's a ten-fold increase (which is very optimistic). Lift 50 kilograms, so you effectively have 500 kilograms acting on your little piece of bone or your fibrous ring, there. Now you want to lift 6,000 kilograms... good luck. A small piece of innocent bone less than a centimeter thick just cannot support 60 tons sheer. I am not sure if a piece of solid steel would, even. Similar is true for virtually every bone, to a different, individual extent.
Note how e.g. when people die from tetanus or are exposed to electricity, muscles often *do break bones*. This is not just an idea, it actually happens.
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## 6 tons -- Not possible without completely different substance
As other answers have mentioned, there is a host of problems with moving around 6 tons with a normal human frame. Several biological, but also fundamental chemical/physical problems. The amount of pressure and forces which will need to be generated need a lot of chemical energy, need to be sustained and need to be transferred by tendons and bones.
The only possible way I see is a completely different, to us unknown chemical composition of mutant bones, tendons and muscle fiber. The bones need to have a composition with at least 20-times structural stability (something with carbon nano-tubes?). The tendons need to have at least 20-times tensile strength (steel wire could barely provide this with about 200 N/mm2) and then you would need muscle-fibers with a different and 20 times stronger power of contraction than out ATP-powered muscle fibers, but with similar regenerative properties. As far as I know this would need to be complete handwavium, because I don't know of any fibers/reaction with properties even in this ballpark. And finally the whole digestive-tract and cardio-vascular-system would need to provide these fibers with enough resources so they can actually keep this up, this could mean a completely different type of lungs and diet for you mutants.
TL;DR: Still calling these mutants "human" is probably a stretch, because they would be more like synthetically designed beings with a human shape.
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Today I read about a [carbon fiber which can lift 12'600 times of its weight](https://phys.org/news/2018-04-strong-carbon-fiber-artificial-muscles.html).
A mutant could grow a few such fibers or similar inside their muscles. Note that they also would need stronger bones, this means perhaps a different type of carbon fiber inside the hydroxylapatite structure of the bones.
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First you would need to define what is "lift". Because I would say that Eddie Hall 500kg is current record.
And with that segue - Eddie in talk with Brian Shaw (another strongman) talked about mental blockade of lifting heavy. That humans can lift even more (anecdotal sample of mother lifting car to save baby) but the brain is preventing them to do that to save from destroying their body (which is very easy as mentioned, both Shawn and Hall, have snapped their biceps. They have literally torn their muscles from bone it was attached to).
When lifting heavy, strongman often sniff ammonia to override part of that blockade.
Eddie Hall talked about sessions with psychologist to overcome that issue. Also how he lifted that 500 kilograms by "being somewhere else". So mental work is more important than physical one.
What would be the biggest enemy of "no more volume" is the bone density. Pulling would relay on muscles and tendons but pushing would also require bones (in first, you use rope, in second a piston). That's the reason why strongmen pull trucks and not push them. The bone might not be able to withstand the force that 6 tons would act upon them.
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Material for handwavium:
1. The fibres don't require energy for holding still. Thus you could do a chin up, stop half way, and hold it indefinately.
2. The fibres have a ratchet mechanism. This relates to the above, but it means that you can amass the energy for one notch of the ratchet, move that notch, and rebuild.
3. The fibers have an energy recovery system of X% efficiency. If you think of them as being motorized springs, reversing it may allow them to be motorized generators.
4. Your bones, ligaments, tendons -- skeletal infrastructure are made from carbon nano-fibre or amorphous diamond (Muscle fibres made of bucky balls on nano-fibre for the ratchet?)
These three items give you great strength but normal power. (Power = energy/time = force \* distance / time. Strength = force)
5. Your body has a way to store some kind of oxidizer in tissue. Probably not as efficient as air plus hemoglobin -- you have to spend energy to do the storage. This gives you a short sprint period. In addition, each cell can store more glycogen than presently store either as glycogen or glycerol or similar compound.
Some numbers: Normal activity by a person sitting around is ~75 watts. Long term endurance events are typically a few hundred watts. How big 'few' is depends on your training and talent. Sprint events can be ~1 kilowatt.
Let's suppose that this chemical allows 10 times normal powers for a while. So your typical 80 kg hero can burn at 10 kW. 80Kg body equates to about 50 Kg water. 10 kW = 2.5 kcal/s = 150 kcal/min. So Our Hero's temp is going to rise about 3 C per minute, if he's going flat out aerobically. Few people think clearly with a temperature of 42 C (104)
Ok. We have to postulate another chemical reaction internally: This is one that absorbs heat. This might be able to double or triple the above time.
Human metabolism isn't a very efficient one. About 75% of the energy you eat is spent as heat. Some is transferred directly to the environment. Most is used to evaporate water. If you can double the efficiency, you get 6 minutes instead of 3 minutes.
You can also stretch it by getting wet ahead of time. Evaporating of water uses some 500 kcals/kg -- about 3 minutes worth of total heat production Picture your Flash doing a shoulder roll through every large puddle as he goes along.
Working at 10 times the power doesn't mean he can run at 10 times the speed. There natural paces depending on leg length, arm length etc. There are also limits to traction. His rapid travel pace may end up looking more like a superball thrown hard.
Of course it's not all running. If he's doing stuff that normally doesn't get him breathing hard, he can do it faster. Now the overheat problem becomes merely local muscles. A well developed circulation system can help distribute that heat.
A flow through lung would help, both to avoid use of his stored oxidizers and to cool. With flow through you should be able to double the O2/CO2 exchange rate.
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You could start by being a woman :-)
Seriously, a woman can build strength without developing the buldging muscles of the stereotypical bodybuilder. Those are really down to testosterone: the only (or at least the main) way that women get them is by using steroids.
Then you can try being a chimpanzee or orangutan. They're anywhere from 2-6 times stronger than a human, without buldging muscles.
Still, I doubt that you will get anywhere near to lifting 6 tons, much less carrying it around. The reason is that the materials of the human body - bones, tendons, and the attachments of muscles to them - simply won't take that much strain. Even with what normal/athletic humans can lift, it's perfectly possible to strain muscles & rupture tendons.
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I'm currently working on two connected continents for the world I'm building. They've created a [convergent boundary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_boundary) where they meet, which has given rise to an east-west mountain range, in addition to a north-south range on the northern continent. There's also a deep bay or sea that will eventually close. The relevant section looks like this:
The problem is, the two continents have come together somewhere around my world's equator, and thus the fjords that formerly populated the northern continent in the northern polar region find themselves regularly enduring temperatures of 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
Actually, the above explanation - a continental merger - is not what I want. I'd rather have the two continents form together, where they are now, rather than have continental drift send one down from the north. This is because the east-west mountain range is inconvenient for the purposes of a story I've set in this world. However, I couldn't come up with a better explanation for equatorial fjords, although I did consider having a version of the [Snowball Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth), which should cover the tropics.
Therefore, I turn to Worldbuilding Stack Exchange. Is it possible for fjords to form on the equator? If so, how?
It's worth noting, as I just found out, that [Slartibartfast](http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Slartibartfast) designed Africa with fjords for the Earth, Mark II, but he's not around for consultations.
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You probably can't get tropical fjords, since they're glacially formed by definition and likely to erode before an arctic environment can become tropical, but you can achieve similar effects with a [rift valley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rift_valley).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jSksK.jpg)
Rift valleys form at a divergent plate boundary, where two continental plates are moving apart. In the case of the Great Rift Valley (pictured above), the valley is forming at a point where the African continental plate is splitting in half. Plate boundaries, of course, can form at any latitude, from the arctic to the tropics.
For a fjord-like rift valley, your best bet is probably to have a relatively young rift valley forming at a point where a continental plate dips beneath the ocean, such as the Eastern Seaboard of the US in the modern day or the coasts of the [Western Interior Seaway,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Interior_Seaway) a vast, shallow sea that covered much of the North American interior during the Cretaceous. Such a valley would form a steep-walled ocean inlet superficially very similar to a fjord, though formed by a very different process.
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Technically Fjords are formed by glacial action, so they are unlikely to be found in the tropics, unless your world has undergone some very serious climate changes or the land itself has moved as you speculated.
You could still have Fjord like landforms formed in other ways, but technically they wouldn't be fjords.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fjord#False_fjords>
One option is a [Ria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ria) these landforms can be quite similar to fjords, but are caused by former river valleys being flooded by rising ocean levels.
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[Fjords](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fjord) are inlets formed by glacial erosion. For glacial erosion to occur near the equator, you would need a global ice age, [which has happened in Earth's history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth). I don't know how long a fjord will last, so I don't know how long ago it could have been.
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You may go with Cliffed coasts if you want fjords for the looks: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliffed_coast> It might be possible for them to occur the way you draw them in your map. They are the coasts that contain soft rocks which are eroded by waves.
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Ria coasts can look so much like fjords they are commonly mistaken for them: <http://www.ocvts.org/classroomconnect/classrooms/jwnek/documents/Oceanography/Presentations/Ria%20Coast.pdf>
As others have said, in the time it takes for a continent to move from where fjords would form down to the equator, the fjords would likely have eroded into a less rugged landscape.
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The next setting I'm working on is a desert made entirely of sugar. It's unclear how this came to be, but it's created a unique and bizarre landscape.
Something I've been considering, is what might happen if it rained there? If we assume the sugar is endless, what would it look like during a rainstorm? And what would the aftermath be when it clears?
Edit: To give a more specific question. Sugar is soluble and breaks down when water is added to it. I guess that's why I'm wondering about how it would look if it rained there, since the water would breakdown.
Second edit: Thankyou so much everyone! I really wasn't expecting such amazing answers, it's really given me a lot to think about. I am 100% adding some geothermal caramel geysers, and I'm currently working on the seasons which will revolve around sparse rain and how it impacts the dune sugar (a sticky season, a brittle season etc). Thanks again!
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It would behave, on a much larger scale, like a bowl of sugar that you sprinkled water on.
If the rain falls at a rate where it can be absorbed into the inter-granular spaces, it will create a stiffened layer, kind of like snow that has gotten soft and then refrozen. The depth will be a function of the amount of rain.
If it's, as you say above, a downpour, the wet sugar will melt completely. The resulting solution will be absorbed into the top layers of the less-wet granules, forming a kind of concrete. This layer would, in future rainstorms, form a first line of resistance, channeling most of the water into low-lying pools. From there, it would eventually dissolve through the hardened/sealed layers, forming an especially thick lump in the low-lying areas.
That, of course, assumes the sugar is initially in a granulated or powdered form, presumably from the same type of mechanism that creates sand.
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**Think [Salt Flats](https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.britannica.com%2F00%2F196200-050-A18811BA%2FUyuni-Salt-Flat-Bolivia.jpg%3Fw%3D300%26h%3D169%26c%3Dcrop&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.britannica.com%2Fplace%2FUyuni-Salt-Flat&tbnid=7_4_K8wC8B3tyM&vet=12ahUKEwjo7Pf-qbT3AhVZ44UKHSEpCmcQMygAegUIARDvAQ..i&docid=ChjNqODpGh48RM&w=300&h=169&q=salt%20flats%20bolivia&client=tablet-android-lenovo-rev2&ved=2ahUKEwjo7Pf-qbT3AhVZ44UKHSEpCmcQMygAegUIARDvAQ)**
Much the same, just sweet rather than salty.
The same as with those the addition of water to the sugar will form a solid crust as it dries that can then be quarried in slabs and blocks for transport and sale elsewhere as salt is from salt flats in the real world, if you have anyone in your world who likes sugar.
How will it look while it rains? again, much the same as the [salt flats in rain](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3D6xD511zcif4&ved=2ahUKEwjenPmzp7T3AhUTecAKHXpoDGEQtwJ6BAgTEAI&usg=AOvVaw1Qb4CA3LxUViw3FXcrDP_X).
It has to be assumed that the same conditions that allow salt flats to form and persist exist for your sugar desert, or it would simply cease to exist with the first rains and your question would be moot.
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If a land itself is targeted as a food source by some animals, it may be soon by covered by animals' remains. Rocks, stones and sands may be formed on these minerals.
Depend on the frequency of raining days, if there is not enough evaporation of water, then the land may become a swamp. Algae flourish in this environment.
Otherwise there must be some specific reasons why there is no animal on the land (around a volcano? high atmospheric pressure?)
It's a good food source.
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Keep in mind: yes, sugar dissolves in water. Everybody knows that. But imagine this scenario: you have a glass of water, and you sprinkle a tablespoon of sugar inside. Stir until it all dissolves. Then you keep repeating and repeating and repeating this.
You will eventually get to the stage where water has reached its saturation point and will not dissolve any more sugar. So it won't be as if the rainstorm will wash the entire desert away. The saturation point of sugar in water will also change depending on temperature. For more information about this, I would suggest googling it.
Another thing: if this is a desert, it might not rain that much. Of course, this depends on what kind of desert you have.
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## **What might happen if it rained there?**
It would largely depends on how much sugar and how much rain. Some people have brought up it would be like rain in a salt flat, however, this is more twards the extreme of virtually no water. For the other extreme you might want to check out the Dead Sea
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WpBtB.png)
which is a body of water near Israel that is in a perpetual state of max saturation. For one, swimming in this water is odd because you float way way more than in regular salt water to the point where you would struggle to submerge yourself if you wanted too (you don't cause the salt would burn the piss out of your eyes and nose).
In the case of sugar you would also achieve a max saturation point eventually and due to its crystalline nature it would prob form very similar formations near the shore line. The bottom would most likely be very hard w/ a squishy silty layer of sugar that is right on the boarder of dissolving or coming out of solution due to the temperature of the water.
The main 2 differences would be:
* Sugar is sticky which would add an interesting dynamic on attempting to swim in it
* There is also the difference that the Dead sea has such a high salinity that only a handful of bacteria can survive in it. Sugar on the other hand would cause all types of bugs and bacteria to swarm.
## **If we assume the sugar is endless, what would it look like during a rainstorm?**
Its not so much the endlessness of sugar but rather the ratio of sugar to substances the sugar can dissolve in. The Oceans of earth have 38.5 quadrillion tons of salt ... but since there is more water than salt its all dissolved. If the ratio was skewed the other direction you would have crystalline surfaces of salt (or sugar) with puddles of water that are in a perpetual state of evaporating and being absorbed (think of a salt shaker in a place with extremely high humidity).
Another aspect would be ... what about wind? There would most likely be erosion due to wind as well as water. You would most likely get dust storms of powdered sugar and rain drops that contain trace amounts of said sugar dust before it even hits the ground.
## **And would the aftermath be when it clears?**
Again, I would prob reference the shores of the dead sea:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FyrkN.jpg)
This is Crystalline salt that is left along the shore as the water evaporates out of the salt. A very similar thing would happen with sugar ... though there would be much more life attempting to devour it.
I would highly recommend considering the water cycle as a whole instead of just what happens when it falls from the sky. Also, the microbiome of the place (all the bacteria) would be insane. You would have billions of strains of bacteria waging full scale war on each other with all the free energy laying around.
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A world similar to earth (climate fluctuations, the need to cook food), and because the natural atmosphere doesn't have oxygen, the intelligent organisms there don't breath oxygen. How far could a civilization go without fire, if at all? Is there an alternative to fire for heat and light? It doesn't have to be a single source, it could be two chemical reactions separately producing heat and light.
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Stephen R. Donaldson wrote a series called *[The Gap Cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gap_Cycle)* which seriously discussed what a civilisation that used biological processing for all their needs, rather than the high energy density "hard" technology that humans rely on (all ultimately based on burning some form of fuel at some stage in the extraction/production process), would need to go through to produce equivalent products. As I recall the demonstrative example was making a tonne of steel; humans take a large quantity of [iron ore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_ore) mix with [coke](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coke_(fuel)) and [flux](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flux_(metallurgy)) light it on fire, pour it out, blow hot air through it and have finished metal of finely controlled quality within a few hours. We could mold, machine or forge a finished product the same day. The aliens would have to take that same ore, soak it in a vat of acids and/or enzymes (the character who was talking wasn't too clear) and then give the acid slurry and a carbon feedstock to a tailored bacteria to lay down the steel in a 3D printer type of arrangement. The finished product was slightly superior (no stresses caused by the item taking a pounding during production and it was truly a single homogeneous whole) but the process took weeks and while the energy input level was lower at any given stage the overall energy requirements were a lot higher, as were the material inputs. The aliens were quite keen to co-opt as many human ideas about material science as they could because humans were behind on territory but well ahead on the energy budget side of things.
I'd suggest that without fire a race of instinctual bioengineers *could* create heat, light, electricity, and even manage the reduction processing of metals (though depending on the atmosphere they live in they may not need to do more than shape existing reduced metallic deposits to their purposes) through any of a number of different biochemical and/or biomechanical pathways but everything would cost more (in terms of the embodied energy of a given object) and take longer.
I would think the odds of them *never* discovering fire would be vanishingly small though, most (possibly all) propellants and explosives are self oxidising mixtures or compounds, they burn regardless of the atmosphere they are in. As soon as they start to push into energetic chemistry fire is going to be a fun additional discovery.
Note we do have a number of existing examples of animals that use [bioluminescence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioluminescence) to create cold light, all [endotherms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endotherm) create metabolic heat, [bombardier beetles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_beetle) create enough chemical heat to vapourise water, and a number of creatures ranging from bacteria to insects, mollusks and even some fish are known to excrete pure reduced elements as a defensive adaptation to their toxic environment, a defense against predation or to allow them to feed more effectively. So life on Earth is certainly capable of creating some of the foundational materials we take for granted as part of our modern technological culture and probably much more with a little [tinkering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_engineering).
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I don't think a fireless civilization could start.
Fire is useful because it gives its user some free energy to use. In principle there are exothermic reactions which do not involve open flames, for example the thermite reaction $2Al + Fe\_2O\_3 \rightarrow 2 Fe + Al\_2O\_3$, which could be used to release the heat needed in whatsoever process.
The problem is that all those reactions start with an element present in its reduced state, ready to be oxidized. Normally, as entropy goes, such an element would not be freely available for long times when exposed to the environment, and would need to be produced somehow.
With fire we are lucky because we get carbon "for free" thanks to the photosynthesis of other organisms, and with that and the oxygen in the atmosphere we can start the wheel, so to say, and accessing also the underground resources of other carbon-based and eventually also fissile materials.
One might also use geothermal heat or naturally occurring nuclear reactors as kickstarters, however such places are normally very limited in space and make the chances of success slimmer, and the related temperatures might not even be useful for some sort of progress.
Fire can be lit anywhere where there is wood or grass. One thing is to unintentionally throw some locally sourced copper ore or siliceous sand in a bonfire and notice it has changed after interaction with the heat, another thing is to carry it in the place where there is the heat source.
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# Fire isn't a 'start' of technology
Technology isn't bound by fire. Though many research stems from it, fire isn't the only tech tree.
We can already see many technologies that do not require fire to start. We have seen apes use impromptu spears. Something humans probably did as well. This can be enhanced without fire, like with adding a sharp stone point.
Architecture, agriculture and clothes all don't require fire. You can use all of this to create and improve, along with many other directions.
The missing of fire can be difficult in many areas, stifling the technology. That doesn't mean it can't thrive in other areas and that they can find ways around it. The lack of oxygen can even help with some sciences. Heating materials (solar power?) can give different results, as no oxidising reaction can start. So you can possibly mold or combine materials without getting an oxidation impurity. As an example, welding iron is best done without oxygen (though you need an alternative for the heat source).
Again, some areas might be stifled, but that by no means causes technology to not progress. Other heat sources will be discovered and used, as well as so much technology not requiring it.
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This, is borderline impossible to answer with any degree of certainty, as the oxygen-less planet is just so fundamentally different from what we have, that any guesses are just that, guesses.
But lets give us a chance and just simplify the core of the question and discard everything else.
What is fire. Fire is nothing more than the most simple way that we (early humans) have found to generate abundance of useful energy. Why did that help us?
At our earliest stages, it made us much more energy efficient. No longer did we have to waste chemical energy to keep warm (foraging and hunting all day to pay our warm blooded evolutionary bill). Cooking food, decreases the energy cost digestion, again saving us more chemical energy for more useful stuff. Even the earliest pottery, allowed us to store food longer, allowing us to not work for our food all the time as it took longer for the food to spoil.
As we advanced to future, most of our energy sources were also fire dependent. Burning coal, oil, natural gas, to produce heat and later steam are all part of the same process, we use combustion to change a latent energy of whatever to useful energy.
Gamechanger is electricity. It allows us to replace combustion. No longer do we go from latent chemical energy -(combustion)> heat -> useful, instead we do latent chemical energy -(electricity)> useful (be it heat, motion or both). Once you have a fire independent source of electricity, you can develop in whatever direction you wish.
So the question is, can we skip 10,000 years of combustion-based technological development and go straight to electricity? I think the answer is as simple as, do we have an alternative source of readily available energy, that allows us to advance enough to be able to transform other energy sources into electricity.
With difficulties and quite a bit of luck, **yes** as I see one viable source of readily available energy. Geothermal.
I am picturing a civilization starting around a fault line with stable volcanic activity. By shear luck, the volcanoes remain stable and active for a few millennia, to allow our people to go from stone age, to bronze age, to iron age. Fertile lands surrounding the ridge allow them to grow food surplus and form a scientific/philosophic class, who work on the further advancements. They are however locked to their fertile, energy abundant area.
Introducing iron age Nicola Tesla. He is fascinated with a rock, that attract iron flakes, and discovers, that sparks sometimes forms when he moves the rock through a sufficiently long coil of copper wire. He works on the theory of electromagnetism and gives birth to the first generators, which allow him to extract energy from the geothermal steam vents and later hydro-plants and wind-plants. Following which, the humanity is able to spread across the land, as the readily available source of energy is no longer just volcanoes, but any stream of water, or wind ridden valley. From this point on there is no limit to how far they can technologically evolve.
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Not that much less plausible than "non-human advanced civilization." In the real world, we have no evidence of any kind of civilization-forming non-human intelligent life, fire-using or no. If you're supposing a race of intelligent aliens with an advanced civilization, you're already well into the realm of hypotheticals.
As for the interesting part of the question (how to make it plausible), that kind of has to be up to you. It's your story and world. One thing to keep in mind that fire is mainly useful as a source of heat and light. Light is useful on its own (assuming your aliens use sight as their primary sense), but there are other ways to get it even at the same "ground" level at which we started using fire - bioluminescence, natural chemiluminescence or phosphorescence/fluorescence (maybe some of their rocks are natural glow-in-the-dark things), handwavium crystals, etc. Show these aliens using some natural-looking glowy thing as a light source and your audience will make up an explanation for you that you can then pretend was your plan all along. Heat is mainly useful for (a) keeping certain kinds of organisms alive in cold environments (by way of reducing the internal energy they have to spend on maintaining homeostasis) and (b) speeding up chemical processes in various ways, either as a straightforward catalyst or by melting solid objects so you can mix them together. Both have workarounds. The first can be bypassed by just saying your alien species doesn't need to worry about freezing to death because of its alien biology. Implausible? Sure, but they're aliens so that ship sailed long ago. The second is really just a speed thing - as someone else mentioned, you can make the same reactions happen through other means, it just takes longer.
The real question is how they would develop things like metallurgy in the first place - there's some debate on precisely how we figured it out, but all of the explanations involve fire. *The Gap Cycle*-style bioengineered acid-refined metal-printing that Ash mentioned is a solid end state (not to mention extremely cool), but you need a lot of worldbuilding legwork to justify how they figured out bioengineering in the first place.
Alternatively, you could just slot in different sources for heat and light - various isotopes of handwavium crystals - and go from there. You can get a civilization started with cold-hammered metallurgy just fine, and once they figure out electricity they can run it through different arrangements of wires to get whatever combination of heat and light they need. Steel would be tricky, because it's a carbon alloy and the carbon usually comes from the coal you're burning to heat the iron, but there are certainly other ways to mix carbon in. Maybe there's a native organism that eats iron and carbon and extrudes a steel shell. Maybe "steel" is this dangerous but valuable stuff found only in the ruins of events too destructive for anyone to do on purpose. Maybe they just don't develop steel until much later, after they've developed things like electric arc furnaces or induction heating, when someone decides to add carbon to the mix and accidentally discovers a new super-metal. It's all up to you.
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Heat, and thus fire, matters for *most* science and technology *that we know* so broadly neither trains nor tracks to run them on.
Still Asia, Europe and North Africa jogged along quite happily with horses and carts for millennia; no need there for fire.
Since neither sub-Saharan Africa nor the Americas had either, Great Zimbabwe might represent one limit. Does that help?
Without fire aren’t volcanoes, hot springs and hydrothermal vents valid sources of heat? All of those might limit the location but for laboratories and workshops, how might that matter?
Though the Munomutapa, and their wider Bantu family, used fire as did both Plains and Mesoamerican peoples, what says they *had to*? Could civilised creatures not eat fruit; work by daylight, phosphorescence and bio-electricity; live in warm climates?
Fire as a defence by night has been *useful* but who says it was *necessary* here, or must be on a built world?
That the Plains peoples of North America saw “living in cities” as anathema, I mention solely because it raises the secondary question: Is this about “pure” civilisation, or do cultures without cities also count?
The Mongol hordes that Genghis Khan and his descendants led to overcome much of Europe and China and all of India were by definition *uncivilised* but didn't they also, by definition through outcome, have one of the strongest *cultures* ever seen?
They might have eaten fruit, if it grew on the Steppes… and they might have treated their cattle as the Masai of modern Kenya did; sometimes still do: drinking not only the milk but also the blood and having opened veins to leach out that blood, also slicing flesh from a living beast before allowing the beast to heal in time for the next harvest.
If cultures count, what about the North American Plains people, the South Sea islanders, the Maori of modern New Zealand or the Inuit of the far north? Do Australian Aborigines have a place here?
To help define the parameters of the original Question, I suggest two more:
How will a world with no oxygen compare to the many already seen in science fiction whose creatures breathe other gasses or live under water? Does the difference here reach slightly sideways or in every sense, stretch worlds away?
How are the lack of oxygen and (how much) similarity to Earth the only important details? There’s no need to follow my style, and I would have started by imagining the civilisation I needed, then working back to who built it, before considering what they breathed - unless there was an over-riding reason for another approach…
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**I got your alternative right here!**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jdMXKm.png)
[source](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/oldfashioned-light-bulbs-could-be-set-for-comeback-after-light-recycling-breakthrough-a6806446.html)
Incandescent bulbs produce light and heat via the ohmic heating to incandescence of a durable filament. The filament does not burn up because it is in a vacuum.
You can also produce electric light using a tube of low pressure gas - a neon light is an example. You can produce heat by using a resistance wire, like in a space heater.
No fire is involved, just electricity.
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Look at the downvotes. The pain! And all because of assumptions. That is ok. I will bring you all along. Especially you, @Ash.
The OP said nothing about primitives and there is no requirement that these advanced people developed everything solo. The OP wants an advanced civilization with heat and light and no fire. Just about all tech innovations are given or sold from the inventors to the new users. Iron for example was invented in one place and then spread over the world.
So too your advanced civilization. Another people came along and sold them stuff. The nonoxygen breathers are not stupid. They figured it out. Now they are advanced: they have induction furnaces and smelt metal and make glass and they have generators and all that stuff.
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Supertall buildings are buildings that reach between 300 and 600 m tall. My question is regarding the possibility of constructing such a building with a level of development and understanding limited to that of the world in the 18th century.
From what I've researched so far, a combination of techniques commonly seen on Gothic cathedrals and other more ancient buildings, such as the pyramids, could theoretically be used in conjunct to achieve such a feat (setbacks, pointed arches, buttresses, etc..).
However, what really boggles me is how they would actually put those things into practice. Did the 18th century had the capability to actually raise buildings/towers to such a height? Could they elevate men and materials and then work them into a building/tower?
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Maybe.
The [Eiffel Tower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiffel_Tower) was built in 1887-1889 and was 300m tall. It was made of mostly [Puddled Iron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puddling_(metallurgy)).
So could *that* have been made in the 1700's ?
Well in 1781 [the world's first Iron bridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Bridge) was created. A thing of rare beauty, IMO, this was no small construction, spanning over 30 meters.
So what's the difference between using the same techniques to make a larger vertical structure and actually building the Eiffel Tower ?
Short answer: technique and material.
While Iron Bridge is indeed made of Iron, it's not Wrought Iron, but the more brittle [Cast Iron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cast_iron). Cast Iron would probably not work for a tall vertical structure. Indeed even in flat structures (like early railway tracks), its brittleness was a major flaw that held up development or railways for decades.
[Wrought Iron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrought_iron) is the thing we need. Puddled Iron is a type of Wrought Iron and it has the mechanical properties required to build a tall load bearing structure (and durable railway tracks as it happens, although steel rapidly replaced wrought iron when it became available in quantity and quality).
The first Iron Bridge (always capitalized) was made using *wood working* techniques. The joints are all wood working joints. They used glue or mortar (and some pretty weird stuff it was), to get it to stay together.
There were basic processes that could produce small quantities of this material for many centuries, but the processes required to make it in large, relatively pure and machinable forms did not arise properly until much later.
As for how you'd build this tall, well the Eiffel Tower and [these examples of photos of its construction](http://www.atchuup.com/historical-photos-of-eiffel-tower-under-construction/) should explain it. You start at the bottom and build up!
So in principle, yes, you could have made a very tall iron-based structure in the late 1700's. But you'd have needed some small advances in the discovery of some techniques, say fifty years worth.
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I don't wan't to replace the good answer provided before, but:
## Don't forget about the lift/elevator!
The first *real* lifts were put in use in the second part of the XIXs century ([source:wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator#Industrial_era)). So if you don't have lifts in your building, the users will have to climb by foot.
You can estimate that a median stairs climbing rate is [of about 0.26 m/s](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=D6FBBAAB4F594FFD79A1DEBDDA93BC42?doi=10.1.1.717.2803&rep=rep1&type=pdf). So, if your building is of 450 meters, you will need about half an hour to get to the top of it. And you'll probably be sweating, so you'll need a shower! *Wait! how do you pump the water that high?*
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# If they could have, they probably would have.
Tall buildings have always been vanity projects, and the most vain have always been the [cathedrals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_church_buildings). That's where you spend your money if you want to show the world how great and pious you are.
Castles (the only other deliberately imposing large buildings being built in the same period and the same regions) are more practical, they mostly top out in the 35-40m range. The cathedrals topped out at 150m with the now lost [Lincoln Cathedral](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Cathedral) spire said to have been 160m. The first building to take the "tallest in the world" title from the Great Pyramid, it wouldn't have lost that title from 1311 until the Eiffel Tower if the spire hadn't fallen down in an Earthquake.
Construction was a stone tower base, 83m, with a nearly 80m wooden structured spire on top. The principle of the [spire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spire) is simply to show how tall you can build a structure. The taller you build it the richer and more powerful you are. Hence my initial statement, if they could have built them taller, they would have.
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The tallest tower built by a private individual during the 18th century was probably the central tower of William Beckford's Fonthill Abbey, which was built and rebuilt several times to heights between 200 and 300 feet (60.96 to 91.44 meters) tall. At an early stage Beckford had a design to build a tower about 200 feet (60.96 meters) tall with a conical spire about 200 feet (60.96 meters) tall on top of the tower for a total height of about 400 feet (121.92 meters), but I don't remember the details. And presumably Beckford could have afforded to build the 400 foot design.
Presumably a wealthier institution or government could have built a much taller tower if motivated to.
According to legend, there was a medieval Chinese building towering about 300 meters tall, though killjoy archaeologists believe it was less than half as tall.
See posts 88, 89 on page 9 here:
[http://historum.com/asian-history/46370-why-do-ancient-chinese-architecture-hardly-ever-go-up-9.html[1]](http://historum.com/asian-history/46370-why-do-ancient-chinese-architecture-hardly-ever-go-up-9.html%5B1%5D)
The Yongning Pagoda was described in Record of the Buddhist Monasteries in Loyang to be 90 Zhang high and 100 Zhang with the spire, or 330 meters (1082.68 feet), but in the commentary of the Waterways Classic "only" 49 Zhang or 163 meters (534.777 feet). Archaeologist Yang Honxun who excavated its foundations believed it was about 147 meters (482.283 feet) tall.
[https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/77984/tallest-building-possible-by-the-roman-empire/78325#78325[2]](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/77984/tallest-building-possible-by-the-roman-empire/78325#78325%5B2%5D)
See:
[http://english.cntv.cn/program/documentary/20110531/100055.shtml[3]](http://english.cntv.cn/program/documentary/20110531/100055.shtml%5B3%5D)
[https://www.google.com/search?q=Pagoda+of+Yongning+Temple%2C+Luoyang&oq=Pagoda+of+Yongning+Temple%2C+Luoyang&aqs=chrome..69i57.5655j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8[4]](https://www.google.com/search?q=Pagoda+of+Yongning+Temple%2C+Luoyang&oq=Pagoda+of+Yongning+Temple%2C+Luoyang&aqs=chrome..69i57.5655j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8%5B4%5D)
It seems to me that building a somewhat taller and wider and flat topped version of the Great pyramid and then building a somewhat taller version of Yongning Pagoda on top of it might be enough to reach or barely exceed 300 meters height.
Ancient Roman writers claimed that the destroyed tomb of Lars Porsena stood 200 meters tall. Certainly a Roman Emperor could have built a taller structure than the king of a Etruscan city state could have built, but nobody knows how tall the tomb actually was.
It has been suggested that for reasons of prestige Emperor Claudius must have built his lighthouse at Ostia, port of Rome, even taller than the Pharos of Alexandria, which is believed to have been 120-137 meters tall.
[https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/77984/tallest-building-possible-by-the-roman-empire/78325#78325[2]](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/77984/tallest-building-possible-by-the-roman-empire/78325#78325%5B2%5D)
18th century architects could have "cheated" by building a tower on top of a hill of stone and then cutting away at the stone hill until it looked like the lower stories of the tower. In *The Lord of The Rings* The White Tower in Minas Tirith stood 1,000 feet (304.8 meters) above the plain, being 300 feet (91.44 meters) tall with its base 700 feet (213.36 meters) above the plain on the seventh level of the city that was carved out of a conical hill.
Anyway, it seems theoretically possible that a sufficiently wealthy client and a sufficiently brilliant architect could combine to built a structure 300 meters tall or slightly over with 18th century technology.
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It could be. But for what?
Mentioned Eiffel tower was build to stand just for a few months, and it's only reason to exist was "because we can". There was no need to have such high building.
Now the only reason to have high building is to have a large stacked up space on rather small plot of land. And of course "because we can and have money to prove that".
In the 18th century when you wanted to show that you have the money you build horizontal. So the food bring to you by your servants from kitchen is already cold when they get to the dining room (Klaus Voormann said that about design of Harrison's Friar Park).
There was no need to go 300 metres up and down if you could go 300m on flat surface surrounded by garden.
Also in 1563 Breughel painted his "Tower of Babel", in 1679 Athanasius Kircher published his "Turris Babel", that show not only the method that such building could be made but also the general knowledge of possibility of such high structures.
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[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gti30.jpg)
The biggest hindering factor in building tall buildings is useable floor space. Elevator shafts, stairways, support structure all take away from valuable floor space available for offices. Economics was a deciding factor in many buildings and most of them are only supposed to occupy a city block.
One other limiting factor, which still is in place today, is the rope used for elevators. There's a finite length to what is useable. To go up 900m, you could not create a cable durable enough for that height. So you would need to create a series of elevator shafts to allow what height that can be achieved.
In the case of the Washington Monument, you have a building where construction started in 1848 and tops out at 555 feet tall (169m), but no floor space. The monument is filled with ironwork, consisting of its stairs, elevator columns and associated tie beams, none of which supports the weight of the stonework.
If these are not factors in your building design, then the sky is the limit.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FG1jA.jpg)
**Ryugyong Hotel**
I'm using this as an example because it's 330 meters tall, but a wide pyramid shape. It obviously occupies more than a city block. It's using concrete and steel, but one could use stone and iron as a support material. a combination of a solid rock core and exterior support walls would give you height. With a wide enough base, you end up with useable floor space which is offset by the support.
Good luck.
* <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Monument>
* <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryugyong_Hotel>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qo9Z9.png)
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**Alternative view here**
They probably could have if the architectural skills of ancient civilizations had been brought to greater fruition instead of abandoning them.
Now, don't get me wrong, ancient civilizations like India and Egypt were capable of producing such breathtaking gigantic structures that we think thy were built by aliens.
For example, there are temple towers in India that are 200ft tall, built as far back as the 11th Century AD and *[still standing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brihadisvara_Temple,_Thanjavur)*
Imagine what could have been achieved if this deep architectural knowledge had been preserved across generations instead of being forgotten in the midst of conquests and plundering!
Reference: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_Gopurams>
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First off -- this differs from our [history](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/21618/from-which-point-on-would-including-a-dragon-on-one-side-of-a-historical-battle) [questions](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/21719/dragon-vs-antiaircraft-artillery) on this topic in that we are dealing with *modern* assets here, not historical ones, and from [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/19140/how-would-a-dragon-be-used-in-a-modern-military) in that our military units are out to slay the dragon, not recruit and utilize him. Furthermore, we are discussing tactics and strategy here, not the level of technology needed.
In the left corner, we have our big, scaly, fire-breathing, livestock-chomping dragon. He's been kept alive throughout history by scales that can stop blade, arrow, bolt, and anti-personnel bullet, up to a ordinary slug of 23mm caliber and armor-piercing slugs short of 12.7mm caliber. He has human-like intelligence (if not better) to go with nasty, albeit short-ranged, fire breath and quite the appetite, as well as the ability to extract energy efficiently from most organic carbon sources (so he can dine on trees just as well as cows or princesses). His flight envelope is similar to a small aircraft: +4 to -2g, with a max cruise speed of 75 knots and a max dive speed of 150 knots. He also needs to sleep at least 4 hours per 24 hours of wakefulness, and cannot do so on the wing.
In the right corner, we have a [Marine Expeditionary Unit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_expeditionary_unit) -- the smallest complete combined-arms fighting force in the United States Marine Corps. This MEU has but has one mission -- slay the dragon, and they must do it on their own (i.e. no reinforcement units allowed). Our modern-day dragonslayers do have an amphibious assault ship's worth of ammunition, fuel, and supplies available to them, as well as the ability to obtain food from the land and purify the water sources available to them, and utilize any liquid fuel stores that have been left behind in the land.
Furthermore, this battle is taking place over mixed terrain (wide elevation, temperature, and moisture variations) in a 500km square area. Basic roads are the only fixed transport assets available on it (i.e. no divided highways, aerodromes, or dedicated port facilities), and the civilian population is sparse (most of them have fled the dragon's ravages already), so civilian casualties are not a major concern.
How can our MEU's commander best accomplish his mission? (I.e. most expeditiously and/or with the fewest casualties)
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# How To Train Kill Your Dragon
This is not even close to a fair fight.
What you've described is a sort of enormous, slow, heavily armored helicopter lacking long range weaponry against a force designed to repel forces many times larger, faster, and more effective.
## If he flies, he dies.
The MEU has air detection and defense systems to deal with supersonic aircraft with weapons it can launch from dozens of miles out. It's also able to deal with low flying aircraft and attack helicopters. It will see Smaug as soon as he takes off either on radar, infrared, or visual.
Smaug's pokey 75 knots is laughably slow, even for a helicopter. +4g to -2g is very sluggish for a military aircraft. Almost every heavy weapon of the MEU will be able to hit him, especially with his very large cross-section and poor maneuverability. Even a tank could hit him.
About the only thing Smaug has going for him is his all over resistance to 23mm and his bulk. That will probably render normal AAA and air-to-air missiles which are designed to hit lightly armored aircraft with [a sort of shotgun blast](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air-to-air_missile#Warhead) ineffective. Unfortunately for Smaug, he's so big and sluggish that anti-tank weapons can track and hit him.
All Marine attack aircraft and helicopters can outrun and outmaneuver Smaug. Even an [Osprey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Boeing_V-22_Osprey#Specifications_.28MV-22B.29) or [Super Stallion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_CH-53E_Super_Stallion). They can easily stay outside of his short attack range and pelt him with any number of weapons.
Here are all the ways Smaug will die if it is detected by the MEU, in rough order of range.
* [AV-8B Harrier II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV-8B_Harrier_II) attack aircraft
+ Any number of anti-tank missiles.
+ [25mm GAU-12 cannon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAU-12_Equalizer) chewing through his armor.
* [AH-1Z Viper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_AH-1Z_Viper) attack helicopters.
+ [Hellfire missiles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-114_Hellfire).
+ [20mm cannon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M197_Gatling_gun) chewing through his armor.
* [TOW missiles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BGM-71_TOW) mounted on air units, vehicles, and tripods.
* 120mm shell from [a M1A1's main gun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Abrams#Aiming).
* [Various LAV weapons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAV-25#Variants).
* Hand held [Javelin anti-tank missile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javelin_anti-tank_missile).
Any of these can hit and disable Smaug well over a kilometer out, far outside his fire breath range.
That's not even counting what's available on their ships.
## If he attempts to approach on the ground, he dies.
Something as big as Smaug cannot hide on the ground. As with aircraft, Marines are prepared to deal with smaller targets which are stealthier and just as speedy. They have radar, infrared, and visual detection. They'll send out scouting parties in force to find or herd the enormous dragon.
Once found, a single helicopter can keep him in sight.
Any number of anti-tank weapons and high rate of fire autocannons will take him down before he gets anywhere near fire breathing range.
In addition, the MEU's [155mm towed artillery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M777_howitzer) has sufficient range (24 km) to cover most of the 500 km2 area without moving. While it might not be accurate enough to hit Smaug, it will certainly keep him on his toes should he land. It could even be used as bait.
## If he hides in a cave, he surrenders or he dies slowly.
[The US military's experience in Afghanistan has made them very good at dealing with enemies in caves](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/2001/11/27/tech-cave-hunting.htm).
Smaug's presence will be detectable from the air. Scorch marks, knocked over trees, patterns of disturbed soil will all give away his general area.
Once they've found his general location, the Marines will use locals, satellite data, infrared, audio, seismic, ground penetrating radar, and even microgravity to find caves in the area. Much of this can be done safely from the air. Ground scouts will be backed up with personal anti-tank weapons, light armor, and continuous air cover. If Smaug interferes with the search, see previous sections.
Once they've found where he's hiding, they'll probably try negotiations. If negotiations fail, any number of weapons are available to either kill him or flush him out. Smaug is presumably fire-proof, but a [thermobaric weapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon), ie. a Fuel-air explosive, can harm or kill him with the over-pressure.
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I was a Marine Infantryman and I think people have zero idea how truly powerful modern weaponry is. In movies fighter jets float lazily in at a monster firing point blank until he swats it down like a bird. In reality those jets are going to be at 30,000 feet moving at twice the speed of sound carrying enough ordinance to level several city blocks which they can target and fire from several miles away.
For example, the TOW 2 bravo Aero missile (my weapon specialization). It was a 68 pound guided missile with a range of 4,500 meters (just under 3 miles.) The missile covers that maximum distance in 26 seconds. Thats a 68 pound guided missile with a shaped charge that can penetrate meters of concrete or several inches of hardened homogenous steel moving faster than a lot of handgun bullets. The TOW is considered a small and somewhat slow missile, and is also somewhat obsolete since it needs to be manually steered and nwer stuff like the javelin are fire and forget.
So yeah. A single Marine could mess up yer dragon good from several miles away and not even have to get out of his gun turret seat.
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It's really not a fair fight. The dragon is outnumbered, out-gunned, and out-ranged. The MEU's Harrier jets can easily defeat it in a dogfight; the Viper attack helicopters can probably do the same. The Abrams, LAV-25, and AAV all have guns that can punch through the dragon's armor, and it's a good bet the infantry's anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles can do the same if they can score a hit.
The goal in fighting the dragon is basically to locate it while taking a minimum of casualties, then call in the heavy weapons to finish it off. Since you know there's only one dragon, you can split up your forces to degrees that would be suicidal against a more numerous opponent -- the armored vehicles would operate individually to provide support for scouting forces.
Ideally, your scouts would find the dragon while it's asleep and call in an airstrike to finish it off; if they find it while it's awake, they'd call in the nearest heavy weapons, with air support as a backup.
[Answer]
Air-launched missiles.
A dragon can't outrun or evade [the missiles that a Marine helicopter or tiltrotor can carry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-114_Hellfire).
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I like Dayton Saragosa's answer, he treats the dragon as somebody with a mind of a human and abilities of an animal, and not an odd piece of military hardware. I'd like to follow up with a few ideas.
I agree dragon will not survive a direct hit from many modern weapons, but I assume he is smart enough to (try to) avoid getting hit, and smart enough to try to hide and escape. After all, the "win" condition for the dragon is to survive, not to destroy the military.
# Hitting the dragon
As a flying creature, he should be more agile than human-made aircraft. After all, he can change geometry of his wings, or fold them altogether.
He is probably more aware of its surroundings than an aircraft pilot.
Hitting him with direct-fire weapons is hard because he will see the flash and dodge.
Hitting him with tracking missiles is not as easy as it sounds.
He is a reptile, so probably cold-blooded, and infrared does not work.
He is not metallic, so radar-guided will not work.
I hear there are missiles that use a camera to track a dark dot against the blue sky. Dragon can dive below the missile to confuse this.
Guidance directly by a human is subject to reaction time.
But of course all this dodging will make him tired eventually, and he might not be able to dodge multiple threats at the same time. So his best bet is to avoid detection.
# Finding the dragon
Yes he is large, but we are talking about miles and miles of land.
And we will let dragon have really good senses.
He will not show up on radar due to lack of metal, and he might be cold-blooded, so no infrared. He is smart enough to hide in caves, or in the terrain that has similar color to him, or even roll around in dirt or sand to make himself harder to spot. And he is smart enough not to leave tracks or other tell-tale signs near his hiding place. He might even be able to dig a hole big enough to bury himself. So detection from air is problematic.
So military will have to look for him with land patrols, cave scanners, etc.
This will be slow, and they cannot cover entire 500 square miles at once, so dragon could try to sneak into territory that has already been searched.
But again, he cannot hide forever - he needs to eat and sleep.
## If the dragon is spotted
He can evade immediate fire, at least for a bit. But then he needs to disappear again. He cannot out-run the helicopters. But here are a few ideas:
* Hide in the clouds, assuming there are some
* Dive underwater. If he is the right color, he will be very hard to spot.
* Hide in a dense forest, using his senses to stay away from ground units.
* Out-maneuver helicopters in rocky canyons
* Pull the observation helicopter away from ground forces, get below it,claw through the tail boom
# Long Term
In fact, once dragon becomes aware of the military hunting for him, could just leave the area before they find him. But I will assume that he has to stay for some reason.
If dragon is tied to specific item or spot (eggs, magic crystal giving him power), and military find out, the dragon is screwed.
If there is no specific spot, then dragon will have to resort to guerilla tactics: hit small patrols and run, try to disrupt supply lines or food stores of the military. But I do admit that his chances are slim - he is one mistake short of death.
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The discussion about dragons vs. modern military is interesting, but the title makes the argument just a little misleading. Though the creator of the discussion must be more intelligent then me, I noticed some things here and there that make me question the discussion as a whole.
No one also looked at the dragon in depth. I may be just overthinking it because it is a dragon, but I'm still looking at the dragon in depth.
Schwern answered the question with a good answer. Several good answers. Though he or she did not account for the dragon's intelligence, biology, and the broad description of the size of this dragon. Human-intelligence is a large spectrum, from well not very smart and educated people to tactical geniuses. A dragon also does not have the same thought pattern as a human. It's a totally different creature then a human.
I do not disclaim that MEU would not be able to defeat the dragon, but the dragon has more than a couple of advantages.
The first being: reptiles and lizards are cold-blooded, so we can assume that the dragon is cold-blooded.
The dragon has very thick scales as we can see from reading the description, and as it's fire-proof, it must be cool. A dragon may breathe fire, but the fire isn't inside the dragon. It would be more plausible that it has a fuel that ejects through the dragon's mouth where it would ignite. Infrared wouldn't be an option to see the dragon as the dragon would be the temperature around it.
A dragon also must have superb eyesight because they detect prey from way up in the air. As comparison, an eagle on a ten story building can see an ant on the ground and if a dragon can see cattle from high altitudes, then they must have similar types of eyes.
A dragon on land also not good. It's not a sitting duck. It has size so it has a relatively long stride and it must have a lot of its own energy to spare for walking and if I stretch this, running.
This must be a large dragon, because of the description, but how large is it exactly? This more than questionable because size counts. If it can eat pretty much anything, then food of course wouldn't be an issue but this also can help determine the size and longevity. If a dragon can eat anything, along with its cold-blooded nature, it really must be huge. Though, oxygen can be an issue.
There might not be enough oxygen content to sustain a creature like Smaug. So we can assume that this dragon must be as big as the one from Dragonheart. Yes, I referenced that movie for size and I don't regret it.
Back to intelligence. This dragon must be experienced if it's survived through the history of man-kind. It also must have a good idea of what dragon hunters would do especially since it's this old. Not only experience is on its side, it must a be a more than adaptive creature. Surviving humans for so long, it must be a mindset that's more we can think of right now that's kept it alive for so long. In this situation, it wouldn't be stupid enough to put itself in a situation that pits it against multiple enemies that are more advanced than itself.
To summarize:
* Superb intelligence and experience,
* Natural form of camouflage,
* Land capability,
* Eyesight,
* Fire-breath,
* Natural armor,
* Air capabilities,
* Other unaccounted factors
[Answer]
The firepower of a MEU could dispose of Smaug quite easily, although they'd need to use visually guided weapons, as Smaug doesn't emit enough consistent heat for a heat seeker.
However, that would be wasteful. Instead, negotiate with Smaug. He's no dummy and he has talents that could be quite beneficial. If he joins in with the allied forces, he could provide air cover for the invasion of Mordor. Unlike the Nazgul, Smaug breathes fire, so he could incinerate them in flight... burn their wings off and watch them drop. Mmmm... broiled nazgul... tastes like chicken.
Why would Smaug do that? Because the Allies can provide the financial knowledge to send his net worth though the roof.
Imagine what Smaug could get if he were to put all of that gold into a S&P fund. He could easily get 8-10% return on that investment rather than just have it scattered all over the place for burglars to come in and steal. Plus, a diversified portfolio would guard against fluctuations in gold value. One major discovery elsewhere, and Smaug's gold could plummet in value.
Smaug Industries (stock symbol SMG) could revive the gold mines on the Lonely Mountain. With the income from that, he could orchestrate a leveraged buyout of the Moria mines, hire mercenary elves to clear out the orcs, and own the gold market. The dwarves are living a nomadic, vagabond life right now. Negotiate a contract with them: the dwarves provide the mining know-how, Smaug provides the financial backing, both become fabulously wealthy, and no unions to deal with.
Travel in Middle Earth is both very slow and very dangerous. A few Smaugs could offer a fast and safe alternative: Smaug Air. Don't battle your way through Mirkwood, fly over it in comfort. Don't wait for the eagles to show up at the last minute, use our reservation service and schedule your rescue. Watch us incinerate Wargs as the in-flight entertainment. Oh, and let's not forget those fat government contracts for air mail delivery... as long as he doesn't sneeze on the cargo.
Smaug and his relatives have been subject to persecution for ages. He could apply for refugee status. Bring the kids along for an added bonus... the host nation could establish a Screamer act to delay action against refugee dragons with kids.
The best way to deal with Smaug is the capitalist way. Dude, you are really missing out. Work with us, and you can live in immense wealth, without all those messy and dangerous battles.
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How would you beat him? With a stick, while he slept. With the number of resources available to an MEU, they could take shifts. Given the dragon's speed he could be kept under constant attack. With no chance to rest, he would be easy prey in a couple days.
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**Wrong tool for the job**
So, this dragon has no chance against a moderm military, but then you wouldn't want to send the military against such creature. If he is not inteligent then you will probably need to devise a conservation plan to stop the creature from being hunted to death, since any animal like that will probably have a big impact on the whole enviroment.
Just think about wolves, many people seem them as these terrible predators and feel justified in hunting them, but after the wolves ar killed off you will have a super polutation of deer and other herbivores in the region that will destroy the ecological balance of the region.
Another good example are lions in Africa, seem for many years as a plague, but now there are many programs to conserve them.
However! If the animal is intelligent, you will want to bring in the historians, this creature supposedly has existed for a very long time and any historian will give his left arm just to be able to ask a few questions to the dragon.
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[Question]
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We have built a space elevator using carbon nanotube. The cable is just strong enough to sustain the counterweight, with a narrow margin to survive storms.
**PROBLEM**: Terrorists of the Spaghettic State have vowed to destroy the gluten-free appendage.
* What are the most probable attacks terrorists will launch to cut the cable?
* What is the best way to prevent against these attacks?
All using current or near-future technologies.
[Answer]
There are three potential avenues of attack, some of which have multiple ways to cause major damage to your (very fragile) space elevator.
**1: Surface**
For a direct attack the ground is the easiest to deal with. A large exclusion zone with very good surveillance will deter or flat out stop a terrorist (by terrorist I'm assuming not a major military incursion) attack.
The issue with the ground would come with the payloads being launched. Even a pipe-bomb could have massive destructive potential, as the space elevator would have to have exquisitely balanced and orchestrated payloads going up and down the ribbon in order to avoid destructive resonance etc. Stop one of the payloads for a few minutes: tower comes down. The security procedures for getting to the space elevator would have to make the Pentagon look a bit tame. Personally I'd be tempted to stop people travelling with their own possessions and undergo a week long quarantine to flush out any *ahem* foreign bodies.
Against a major military incursion: you've got nothing. As strong as the ribbon might be it's also under a lot of tension. A bullet striking the ribbon might be enough to tear, shatter or otherwise ruin the ribbon.
**2: Air**
There are 2 ways that the tower can reasonably be attacked from the air by a terrorist group. Hijacking and missiles.
Hijacking is easy to deal with, but would carry some major political flak. It's basically the same principle currently used to defend high profile buildings: Blow up the compromised aircraft. Brutal but would get the job done. Have a few radar stations and a couple of nearby fighter jets ready to scramble and hijacking is no longer a threat
Missiles are more of an issue. Even an indirect strike can carry major damage risk (shrapnel and concussive forces don't play well with the ribbon). The easiest way to prevent this being a risk is to make sure your ground based exclusion zone is wide enough that the terrorist missile launchers haven't got sufficient range to hit you. This might be an exorbitantly huge area. As a second line of defence you might consider point defence cannons similar to those used in naval warfare, or even explosively launched interceptor missiles. It all depends on how well funded your terrorist cell is.
Again: Against a military attack you've got nothing. Long range missiles, drone launches, stealth or high altitude bombers, or even good old 'throw planes at it until one of them gets lucky' means that your tower won't survive.
**3: Space**
The least likely for a terrorist attack, but also the hardest to defend. Space is Big. The capital letter is deserved there. Compared to the amount of ribbon you have to defend against aerial attack there's a ridiculous length of ribbon utterly exposed between the earth and the terminal point (the terminal point being 2x higher than geostationary orbit and a reasonable distance towards the moon). An impact here will almost certainly destroy the ribbon, and be almost impossible to repair even if it doesn't. Luckily your terrorists are terrorists. If space is in any way monitored, patrolled or governed you can restrict who has access to what, and deal with it from there.
If there is a determined attacker in space then high quality lenses are your friend. You'll need an awesome 360 degree sensor package (which is eminently doable for distances less than the moon) with as many bells and whistles as you can think of to ensure redundancy and spot anything on even a vague intercept course well before it gets to you. This sensor grid would have to extend around the world in order to watch for threats from the other side of the planet. Then you'll need several fancy missiles/ space fighters/ whatever you like in order to defend the ribbon in a similar manner to the air defence scenario. If it's on a path that will, at some point in the future, be able to intercept using current engine technologies, then you warn it off and blow it up if it doesn't immediately start a corrective burn. Finally you'll need an array of high power lasers on satellites in geostationary orbit to deflect/ deorbit any smaller pieces of junk/wreckage, as a bolt moving at orbital velocities will carry enough energy to punch a hole through the ribbon or at the very least destabilise the tower.
Preventing/ stopping space based attacks would be a real pain, but also be the foundation for the kind of orbital defence grid you'd need in order to stop people simply dropping rocks and letting kinetic energy do all the hard work. If the terrorists in space can drop a 2 tonne ceramic cone onto your space elevator's base station they also have the power to turn any city in the world into a kilometre wide crater.
Again: If the military gets involved you're boned. A few hundred light rockets with a grudge will tear down the tower like it's made of tissue paper. They don't even have to worry about re-entry criteria like an ICBM or getting up to orbital velocity like a spaceship.
**Summary:**
It's doable if you're sensible and already have infrastructure in place to prevent space terrorists from ending the world (you've got that, right?)
My suggestion: Find a nice tropical island somewhere (or build your own, if you've got the resources for a space elevator). Outfit it with it's own airstrip and enough defences to cover a half dozen Carrier groups, and let everyone know that there's a twenty mile wide exclusion zone with a 'trespassers will be killed to death' policy that has no exceptions. Create a security port somewhere nearby that specialises in stripping people of everything (like a Duty-Free Guantanamo Bay) before loading them onto high-security boats/helicopters for transfer to the elevator. In space: Kill anything that looks at you funny and then deorbit it using high powered lasers.
Oh, and pray that the terrorists aren't secretly backed by the military, or you're doomed.
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I think the key defense that hasn't been mentioned yet:
**Build more than one.**
Basically, the core costs of building a space elevator are greatly reduced when you build a second one. No more R&D, and the ability to use the existing elevator to lift material into space helps enormously. Losing the world's only space elevator hurts, but losing only one of hundreds?
Good disaster planning would help a great deal.
Most likely any attack would take place low, near the anchor point. This means not much weight will fall down and cause damage, while the majority of the cable would instead want to rise upwards.
When the attack happens, well designed safety mechanisms would kick in. Motors at the top of the elevator would wind up the cut cabling. Climbers would detach and use emergency rocket motors or parachutes to land safely, or make their way to collection points near the other elevator terminuses. After the immediate damage near the base anchor is cleaned up, a backup cable could be lowered, the climbers refurbished and reattached, and the whole thing brought back to operation. The broken cable could be assessed for possible repair.
In the best case scenario, nobody dies, and everything is back to normal in about a week. Take that, space-terrorists!
<http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator_safety>
Attacks near the top of the cable would suck much more. Maybe the best you can do is try to control the descent of the falling cable, again by using emergency rocket motors in the climbers.
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The attack vectors have been covered by others, so i will concentrate on how to defend it.
Since a determined attacker will eventually find a way to attack, damage or even destroy the cable, or the fixture at the bottom that holds it, i think the best way to defend against an attack is:
**don't be a target**
While of course you cannot conceal this structure, you can avoid being an interesting target for an attack.
Terrorists attack symbols of whatever group they consider as enemies.
Most of the time, the alleged reasons for the attack are just mumbo-jumbo. Terrorist attacks most of the time are in fact publicity actions, because they help the terrorist group that performed the attack in getting or increasing "street credibility", and as a result get more followers and more money.
After all, terrorist groups are mostly criminal organizations.
To gain street credibility, the target they choose should have high idealistic value to their enemies (so everybody can see that they managed to hit them where it hurts), but it should be of no (great, at least) value to the group they recruit members and money from.
That means: Whichever group is operating the space elevator should spend quite some energy into not making enemies. They should generously reimburse anybody whose land they used to build the elevator and the perimeter, they should be generous employers, benefactors to the surroundings and the whole world, and they should make really sure that at least something like 80% of the world's population has at least mildly positive feelings about the elevator and its operators.
That way, you minimize the risk of being attacked.
As a bonus, it most likely means you are being a nice person.
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One way to destroy it would be to wind it in. This would pull the geostationary space station out of orbit.
The cable(s) are designed with enormous tensile strength but resistance to shearing may not be good. Repeated missile attacks would weaken or even melt or snap it.
You haven't specified the thickness and number of the nanotubes. If there are only a few and they are narrow, a good pair of bolt-cutters would do the job.
The terrorists could use 9/11 tactics and simply fly a plane into the cables.
Prevention would be a real problem. A large portion of the Air Force would have to be on constant standby. So would air traffic control in the area - both to avoid civilian planes hitting it by accident and to detect intruders.
Personally I think it would be so unstable that simply sending a heavy load up would throw the whole thing out of balance and cause a catastrophe - imagine the collateral damage!
The cables would act as a lightning conductor so there would have to be a way of preventing thunderstorms.
On the other hand, if the cables are non-conducting then the process of going up and down would create a huge static charge.
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Considering that you said 'near future', I am assuming that a lot of the currently in-development technologies will be easily available and that technologies that would build off of them would be in development at the time the space elevator attacks would happen. As other answers have stated, defending against a ground attack would be quite easy. The air is probably the place that needs defending. Currently, swarming robots are in development, and at the time of a space elevator construction, it will probably be quite possible that there are automated swarming missiles that can easily identify and dispose of a threat. Warheads have also gotten much smaller and more powerful, so these missiles may very well be able to handle a large aircraft without being very large. Swarm drones and swarm missiles could surround and patrol the area around the cable and stations, and anything unauthorized that comes close to the elevator gets blown into oblivion. If even one of the swarm bots detects any incoming aircraft, all of the nearby bots will join in the attack. Because each of the swarm bots is rather simple, they could be manufactured and replaced quickly. A small terrorist organization would likely be using missiles or hijacked/stolen air or spacecraft, all of which would be easily intercepted by swarm missiles. The problem of preventing shrapnel from hitting the ribbon would also be easily solved with swarm bots, as it there could be specialized shield bots that would encircle a blast zone and shield the surrounding area with heavy, magnetized armor plates that would prevent shrapnel from crossing them and redirect compression waves. Of course force fields would make this a lot easier, but I don't think that the 'near future' would have those yet.
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Several considerations can be made:
1. The elevator may be capable of self defense. Most practical designs for the space elevator have the climbers remotely powered by lasers on the ground energizing specialized solar cells. With enough laser energy and assuming there are going to be several lasers always on standby as backup for the currently engaged lasers, you can form a pretty formidable laser shield around the tower to deal with air and space threats (one of the things the lasers could do on normal duty is act as "laser brooms" to deorbit small pieces of space junk that might impact the tower).
2. The elevator is not anchored to the ground. Many variations of the space elevator are actually tethers that orbit the Earth and only extend partially into the atmosphere. One variation is a "bolo" or Rotovator which turns on its own axis much like two spokes on a bicycle wheel and the "lower" end can reach down as far as you like (theoretically even to the ground) to pick up cargo. Normal precautions to ensure the cargo is inert or safe are made on the ground terminal, and payloads can be launched via suborbital rockets or even supersonic jets for pickup. Since the bulk of the cable is in orbit, only military or paramilitary groups with a high degree of expertise and funding will be able to attack the structure itself.
3. The elevator is so valuable that the local population will come out to defend it. You can assume the immediate area around the elevator is a "company town" with the employees of the corporation which built it. The economic benefits of the elevator are going to be vast, so various mechanisms should be made to tie the people for a late area around to the economy of the elevator, and a clear understanding made that the economic benefits are a result of the elevator's operation (an employee share holding corporation, for example). Terrorists try to hide among the population and exploit grievances within the population, but if the majority of the people are tied economically and symbolically to the elevator, they will be a thousand times better than any police or counter terrorist force in ferreting out any threats to their way of life. (This is only possible so long as the corporation itself remains true to the charter, and the host government resists becoming corrupt and becoming a major rent seeker of the elevator's economic activity, which will invert the process and provide the terrorists with a safe haven instead).
[Answer]
I'll go with security of the space elevator.
of course the easiest way for damage to be done is get close, and walking a bomb into the facility, and setting it off, would be the easiest way. It is also the easiest way to prevent. Everything and everyone going into and onto the elevator is searched.
That would leave the vector of attacking the elevator/cable itself which would be either an air to air strike or a missile. In this case I think having automatic defense systems in place to shoot out incoming items. The cable would need a several mile no fly zone around it. With system targeting anything that could be a threat.
The problem of course is that should the elevator fall down, it will be an ecological disaster and could kill untold numbers of people. An elevator will be over 35,800km long and the earths circumference is 40,000km. So it would wrap most of the way around the Earth if cut near the top. Granted if it was cut near the bottom I think it would move away from Earth and every thing and everyone on it would be in severe danger.
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If there is an extensive constellation of other satellites on a variety of missions around this planet, to a terrorist's eye, there are already thousands of high velocity missiles just barely missing the tether hundreds of times a day. Keeping a space elevator safe requires sophisticated coordination of *literally all the other satellites orbiting the planet*. Every day, several satellites will have to make corrective maneuvers to avoid hitting the tether. A terrorist group could take control of a satellite and steer it into the tether, or they could introduce an error into the mission control system that coordinates satellites.
**Hacking an individual satellite**
A satellite is programmed to execute certain commands that it recognizes. Sometimes the security on satellites is astonishingly poor. (<https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/its-surprisingly-simple-to-hack-a-satellite>) If you want to take control of a satellite, you need to know what signals to send. If the satellite has no security features, this is as simple as finding out what commands it responds to and sending them. You could find these out by stealing a manual or some other documentation from the manufacturer, or just guessing, if you have to. Defend against satellite takeover by encrypting transmissions and introducing passwords.
Hackers might be able to defeat the encryption through brute force, especially if they have a quantum computer or access to a massive bot net for parallel computing, depending on the type of encryption. More likely, they will try to trick someone into revealing the encryption and passwords, or steal this information from the manufacturer or the satellite operator on the ground, possibly by hacking related computer systems. The satellite codes should be carefully guarded, so the terrorist group might need to go to the trouble of planting a mole or interrogating former employees. We're talking real cloak and dagger stuff.
**Messing with the system**
If there is a centralized facility that coordinates all the satellite traffic, hacking or infiltrating that and moving a decimal point somewhere could be enough to take down (or up, actually) a space elevator. Feed slightly inaccurate orbital parameters to the maneuver scheduling software and the space elevator will be dead in a day or two. If there are multiple command centers - possibly owned by different governments - that need to coordinate with one another, interfering with those communications could accomplish the same thing.
Defend against this by having redundant schedulers that double-check each other. Terrorists would probably have to get a mole inside the company that makes the scheduling software and introduce a tiny bug in the next update. The obvious defense to this is to never update the software (which is typical of engineering operations, in my experience).
Terrorists could try and feed bad tracking data to the entire command and control network. Live tracking data would be collected from ground tracking stations around the globe and perhaps from some satellites and the space elevator station itself. But the maneuver calculations are probably not being computed at the ground stations or in the satellites. Maybe they are done at the mission control building, in which case tapping into their connection to the tracking system and feeding bad data might be enough.
The defense here is to do scheduler calculations in multiple places and compare results.
**And then there's Kessler Syndrome**
Hack a satellite, crash it into another satellite. Now nobody has control of those satellites - which are now in many pieces in many orbits - and the pieces will almost inevitably hit the tether. If they don't hit the tether, they might hit other satellites, possibly head-on, which will also break up and hit other satellites. If you can't specifically target the space elevator, just ruin space for everyone.
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Although it violates one of the stipulations of the question, I'd come at this quite differently. Anything can be destroyed (especially things that require heroic engineering even to exist under favorable circumstances); and yet most things are not in danger of being destroyed most of the time.
Why are planes targeted by terrorists? It's not like Islamic fundamentalists are anti-aviation activists; largely the reason is that our governments have invested heavily in promoting fear of this specific scenario. Planes are a focus *because* they are surrounded with theatrics proclaiming "you'll never blow up this plane! Just try it!" ...and so that's what terrorists (very, very rarely) do.
I don't think a space elevator could even be built if one of the design requirements was "must be immune to hostile acts", because it couldn't be. You'd have to take it more or less on faith that people wouldn't try to destroy it. So, if I were imagining a space elevator I might not imagine extraordinary defensive measures. The priority would be having a backup plan if it *was* broken-- more than one elevator, certainly, but perhaps also ways of repairing it rapidly.
One strategic advantage a space elevator has is that while any one point is vulnerable, it's very hard to attack its whole length at once. Perhaps there are repair stations spaced along the length, ready to launch rockets that unspool a replacement tether and catch the broken end as it falls (the top station would probably need powerful station-keeping rockets, but they'd only need to run for a brief period).
[Answer]
Attacks:
* Hijacked Airliner
* High Energy Lasers (effective from too far a distance to defend against)
* Railguns (also effective from a fairly long distance)
* Transverse carbon nanotube (oh the irony)
Defenses:
* What fhnuzoag said, have lots of them
[Answer]
Although it isn't so much of a precedent, some games have touched on this before. Front Mission Evolved (2010) features the world (in 2171) have 3 (and 1 apparently unfinished) orbital elevators spread over the main factions of the world. The three main operational ones are attacked by the fictional mercenary group (working as terrorists), Apollo's Chariot. The cinematics in-game (of which a quick YouTube search will probably yield some videos) show each elevator being attacked in turn and a view of the systems used to defend them.
The initial scenes of the game feature New York City's orbital elevator (nicknamed Percival) coming under attack by Apollo's Chariot using a mixture of missiles and automated guns. The scene starts with complex security software scanning all the boats in NYC harbour and finding some which can't be identified (and then appear to be standard mercantile vessels after beacon spoofing software is used). When the attack begins you see the mercenaries leave these ships and commence attacking the elevator. The elevator itself is equipped with many automated turrets which can rotate a full 360° around the structure. Although these initially shoot down the incoming missiles, they eventually prove ineffective against a full scale barrage which renders the defence mechanisms useless and thus the destruction of the elevator (by falling on NYC) ensures.
Although it isn't a carbon nanotube (it is a lot largely than your planned tube presumably) it is still destroyed at a lot greater cost (to lives, weaponry and infrastructure).
To answer your questions.
* What are the most probable attacks terrorists will launch to cut the cable?
+ Anything they can do to cut it (and thus cause the destruction of the elevator). With today's tech that could include; shape charges, missiles, IEDs, RPGs, rainguns, missiles, rockets etc. With future tech that could be anything from a nanobot weapon (that eats the cable) to non-pasta specific degradation devices (viva-la-Pasta!).
* What is the best way to prevent against these attacks?
+ The best way to mitigate these attacks is to account for every and any possibility of attack (good luck stopping pasta weapons). Otherwise, reaching some kind of agreement with the terrorists (if you can't stop the source of hostilities then you are facing an uphill battle) would be your best option. Failing that, somehow proving to the terrorists that you design incorporates pasta of some kind (and thus fulfilling (at least in part) their terms of play). As a final last-ditch effort, a full invasion of the Spaghetti state (if it fails to curb it's terrorists) with an emphasis on annihilating all terrorist members (and possibly the state as a whole) would be your most probable course of action (as real-life events will tell you, without complete ignorance of common human morals [preventing losses of life on both sides etc.] then the last plan will certainly not work).
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[Question]
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Contrary to popular belief, Unicorns are not related to horses but instead are descended from the [Siberian Unicorn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elasmotherium).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JtRgr.png)
Over time:
* their fur became whiter
* they became slightly smaller
* they have an above-average sense of sight (compared to other rhinos)
* they started to develop a mane (optional)
Given these characteristics, how plausible is this and what evolutionary pressure would lead them down such a path?
NOTE: magic dose not exist in my story.
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They could have evolved white fur coat if they had moved to a snowy climate, to blend in with the snow.
They also might evolve hooves because, like horses, having just one toe reduced the weight they had to carry at the end of each leg, making it easier for them to run and maneuver.
Evolving similarly to mountain goats could produce some cool traits.
* Unlike horses, goats have hooves comprised of two split toes. (I thought two hoof-toes could be an interesting delineation between horses and unicorns) The toes can operate independently; the goat can use just one to gain purchase on extremely narrow surfaces, or splay the toes to gain more contact area. A cushy sole provides traction on sloped surfaces, and can deform inwards to absorb irregularities in the terrain.
* Some mountain goats can also see movement up to a mile away.
* Being smaller and lighter could help with climbing on weaker rocks.
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**Completely Plausible**
Evolution has shaped the odd-toed ungulates into incredibly diverse forms, consider how different the ancient ancestors of the horse were, or how diverse the rhinoceros family was in the Eocene.
Every trait you gave for the Elasmothere descendant is rather straightforward, the fur can change due to environment or sexual selection, size can be reduced due to changes in available food or the climate, eyesight can be selected for, and manes are an easy example of sexual selection
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**They became arctic predators**
Perhaps due to increasingly low temperature, or some other phenomena, the Siberian Unicorn's normal sources of nutrition started to die off, forcing them to turn to become omnivorous in order to survive.
If we assume they started eating meat as a large part of their diet, then the smaller size, arctic camouflage, and better eyesight make tons of sense.
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Horses evolved to run. For a rhino to take on more horse-like proportions would probably require evolutionary pressure toward speed. Maybe a very agile predator that was good at getting behind the horn. Or a pack hunter, where if the rhino holds one off with the horn, two others strike its back. This might also force improved eyesight and snowy camoflauge.
The predator needs to be able to reliably penetrate the rhino's tough hide. Probably a very long claw or tooth.
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You could also use the ladybug approach.
The unicorn is poisonous prey animal and wants to be seen. They develop white fur and glittery manes, put up a good fight, and when eaten, harms the predator. Predators learn that they are unpleasant to be around and avoid herds of them.
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How could a group, very possibly militarized, cut off a small-medium sized city from the rest of the world for an overnight period? This includes outside responses like police, national guard, so on and so forth. Also, something that would keep as many people from escaping the city as possible before the event is over, and keep them from contacting the outside to keep anyone from knowing what is happening.
* There are some supernatural elements in this world, but I'm looking at something practical. Supernatural ideas are welcomed but looking for more than "put up a big magical barrier", something more subtle that the outside world wouldn't be tipped off to the existence of magic by would be appreciated if you go that route.
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Depending on the city, it would be relatively easy to stop the majority of people from being able to leave simply by causing chaos on the roads and trains. For many cities in the UK this happens from time to time anyway without any co-ordinated action, so it certainly would not look suspicious. Cause a few bad accidents on the roads, and the emergency services will be 'naturally' tied up too. Spread some disinformation on Twitter about the cause and location of the jams.
At the same time, there need to be some power cuts. You need to stop the trains from running anyway, so it's efficient to cut the power to the stations, cell towers and maybe broadband exchanges at the same time. This won't be a complete blackout (too dramatic and suspicious), but it's enough to slow down communications significantly. Staged correctly this could be seen as a consequence of the traffic accidents - again, stealth and disinformation is your weapon.
Crucially, this starts to normalise the idea among the rest of the country that city X is having serious but non-malicious communication issues. Like the [boiling frog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog), the authorities outside don't notice that everywhere is cut off until it's too late.
Now if your plucky band of terrorists is going to start exploding people or wizarding buildings apart then of course eventually word is going to get round, and people will start to panic. But by this point you should be well into your 12 hours, no-one can drive anywhere and only parts of the city have street-lights because of the power cuts. For those with power/phone/internet it may be hard to convince the outside world there really is a problem in the first place. Most of the local emergency services are already tied up. Do what you will.
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Take over the target city's radio and television stations. Broadcast an airborne bio weapons alert, then shut down the power, phone and internet. Tell the citizens that the city is quarantined and that martial law is in effect. Anyone found outside of their homes will be arrested and shot if they resist.
*Sorry that I can't see a way to keep the citizens ignorant of your teams presence, but the whole internet is too big to spoof and the phone network is too heavily used to just go away without anyone noticing. So in place of ignorance, I've used fear as a method for controlling the masses. Hope it helps. Oh, and make sure your team is done and out of there before the national guard and Centers for Disease Control show up, 12 hours later.*
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Release a special kind of gas in bulk, all around the city. This gas is a sleeping gas, but it wouldn't cause somebody to pass out on the street, but it would cause overwhelming drowsiness that would make everyone who breathed it in want to go home and sleep more than anything. Workers would all be so tired that the managers would agree to go home for the night, and anybody who had to be awake would eventually fall asleep where they were. Soon the whole city would be asleep, and the population would be ready to be separated.
After everyone is asleep, take out the power grid, and shut it off from the rest of the world. Leave a few lights or non-internet electronics on, as to not alert outside forces that the city is under attack. While everything is shut down, rewire everything to connect only to the group, so that no one can use a generator to contact the outside world once the night is over.
Now you are free to do whatever you want with the city, without anybody escaping before the night is over.
(Edit: I have had a question about traffic in and out of the city. The group could close down exits to the city for "construction". The airports could be hijacked, saying that no planes can land due to a "problem" at the airport. All the plane would take off that needs to, but everyone at the airport breathes in the gase.)
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Good Question, Other than fear and politics which Henry Taylor mentioned most surefire way is to set off an EMP, this can be done without Nukes, so only electrical equipment would be effected.
Everything would be disabled, most things these days permanently, that includes Ham Radios. then just blockade the roads, most people in the modern world don't see a massive power-cut and think *"crikey, i need to get out of town immediately"* and they are aware that power-cuts can happen. people would check with their neighbours maybe head down the street if nearby to the police station post office, hospital etc, as those places have generators to see if they can get some news, while the connections to the outside world wouldn't be all that effect, anything within the town that can use them would be inoperable so whether it be satelite radio microwave ham then only way of getting information would be from two sources
1. Walking out of town (modern cars would be completely dead) and finding out from someone else outside of the effect area (all on potentially blockaded roads if you team has anything to do about it)
2. From Preppers, those are the only people that would have equipment within faraday cages to protect them from EMPs, and lets be fair, when old crazy dave that alwasy talks about preparing for the end of the world as we know it starts saying the government has zapped the town to do x or y... who's really going to believe him. even normal people that are generally prepared and just might have a faraday cage still won't straight away think *"the end is nigh watch out for government hit squads etc."*
Especially if this happens in the evening it leaves the townspoeple with a couple of options left, head to bed early, after fumbling around hitting their heads on the cupboard door while trying to find some candles despite never hitting their heads on that door when not looking for candles! and see if its all back to normal in the morning
Or head down the pub, the pumps aren't electric, their gas pressurised, so they might be not quite as cold but its still beer right? or the beer is bottled and they can sit in a candlelit pub next to the barman with a bump on his head and be thankful that beer can stay cold for quite a while during a powercut.
Powercuts happen on average once a year where i'm from, so fair enough if the cars and phones stopped it would be strange but ignorance is bliss, and the Pub option is what i did last time there was a powercut at home, I don't know why my missus always puts the candles in that stupid cupboard
The Police would probably send someone on a pushbike to the next town over to find out whats going on, but by having someone in place to see where he heads and having the blockade grab and knock him out the town would be none the wiser
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Depends on the city.
If it's a large city? Not going to fly. NYC, for example - even if you throw a Perfect EMP on the thing so that no one's getting word out via electronic devices, and manage to seize control of the airports, and manage to seize control of the seaports, and cut the rail lines, and surround the city on all sides so that no one could get out by car or on foot or on a bike, and have snipers out to prevent any sort of drone shenanigans, and get lucky so that there aren't any paranoid types with satellite phones hidden in Faraday cages, and you coordinate everything so perfectly that no one notices and gets word out...
Well, that just means that NYC just dropped off the map. That doesn't *happen*. People would notice, quickly, and get alarmed, quickly. I guarantee that the news helicopters and fighter jets would be making a flyby in way, way less than 12 hours.
Now, if it's not NYC? If it's some small-to-middling-sized city in a country that doesn't have a meaningful air force, where things mostly shut down at night anyway, and maybe occasionally has blackouts just because? That gets a lot more plausible. It's still not guaranteed - all you need is someone who lives nearby with a cell phone and a car to get suspicious and come driving in while on the phone with someone further out and people are likely to start responding pretty quickly. Still, it's a lot more plausible. They're also a lot less likely to have satellite phones in faraday cages.
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**Manufactured Weather**
Every year this exact thing happens all over the world. Some sort of crazy storm rolls through and it essentially shuts the city down. Sometimes the city itself bans travel. Since you said you have supernatural options just create an insane snow storm or roll in some fog that's so thick it makes travel impossible. People rarely question the weather and it's a great cover for all sorts of illicit activities. Power can conveniently "go down" in specific areas. People can have "accidents". Buildings are sometimes destroyed. The best thing about the weather is people don't normally question it. You can even pass off your militarized group as first responders and use them to prevent access to the city. For their own safety of course.
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I think the power grid is key but I'd also be careful to knock out any gennies at gas stations so that getting gas to leave would be a problem. Then chainsawing two hydro poles unto all exit roads. Finally I'd be sure to knock out the power backup systems at the telephone companies and cell towers to ensure landlines and cell phones were blacked out.
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**Severe snow storm**
Here in Romania it happens almost every winter. The combination of snow and wind make it impossible to keep the roads clean. The lack of funds for equipment is a major role in this also. You might consider disabling the snowtruck fleet.
Snow also has a devastating effect on power lines. It could cut power and thus communication.
The blizzard can be induced by a weather machine.
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Just broadcast a multi-frequency jam and cut the main phone/fibre communications lines - for most cities, there would usually be two or three of those at most. Drop tinfoil grenades all over the power distribution points if you also want the power out.
No radio, no internet, no communications, no power and, just a few entry/exit points to control.
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In this world I'm creating, humans are shrunk down to 2 centimeters tall, and have been teleported down to an earthlike dimension consisting only of insects, plants, fungi and other invertebrates. The landscapes are mostly mountainous, but the general crust layer of the world has about the same contents as on earth, so ores like iron, copper, as well as aluminium rich ores, like bauxite are still found everyehere. There are also deserts and soils that contain rich amounts of metals that would maybe be more useful than the large ores deep underground to humans that size.
As for the square-cube law, the dimension only protects the humans, but as for important details on heat and hydration, they do need to eat cavern fruits to stabilize their nutrition and metabolism (a few handwaves there).
Though when it comes to receiving heat energy as radiation from above, it's much more dangerous to them. So a simple flame from a match might as well be as dangerous as a star.
Now they have been living in this dimension for a few generations starting from stone-age scratch. The humans have already gotten a well-held grasp on surviving in their varied biomes, but one of the humans has discovered the iron pellets from the dirt he gathered could theoretically be morphed to create solids that would greatly benefit their survival as a civilization.
He proposes to his government that there may be a way of "manipulating" these iron pebbles to not only create pure sting proof armours, but also as tools and potentially more options on construction. But the local engineers who have been carving structures with wood, wax and stone warn him that such a project could potentially be way too dangerous and may take too many resources to be worth the investment, because the heat energy required would be like trying to construct a volcano or nuclear reactor that could easily go into meltdown. The local engineers may have a point. But the government decides to see if they could anyway.
Which method could these humans use to smelt and create blacksmiths viable enough to smelt not just iron, but other metals like copper, aluminium, etc. to solid shapes they can further use?
Answers need to include possible safety measures or equipment they would need in order to prevent themselves from burning up from all that radiation.
Just for physics' sake, a match would burn at about 800 degrees Celsius. Iron melts at 1500 degrees Celsius, so I don't know if they need to be close to a volcano or just create a campfire that would titan their size in comparison.
I would imagine such a construction project could dwarf the pyramids, by comparison, to just smelt a few grams of iron. Or is this too much?
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Well if they follow a similar timeline to our own, they should master fire.
Otherwise they would start with the softer metals, like gold, copper, and silver. Using stone tools for mining and metal working. No need for extreme heat as these metals are soft enough to use tools to shape them. The metals would have more prominent features we wouldn't normally see unless we were up close and personal at the 2 centimeter height. But the size shouldn't be too much of a factor, since they're taking smaller metal and making smaller items.
Then after about a century start into lead, bronze, and tin. These would need higher heat, but over time with practice a community would develop through trial and error, a method to heat the metal into a useable state.
Perhaps some type of furnace designed into the stone around them with multiple tunnels specifically laid out to tunnel the heat in while filtering the radiation out, which is easier said than done and thus why they would need trial and error to come up with a system which wicks away the radiation to a safe location while tunneling the heat to a forge heating the metal.
Perhaps a furnace such as a single shaft with an opening at the top which holds radiation at extreme heat, and they build a swirling shaft around the center shaft, but with entrance at the forge. As it swirls around the radiation shaft it pipes the heat downward into the forge, with little radiation.
Everything following would need more efficient methods. After another century or so start into iron, mercury, platinum, and cobalt. Then after another century into nickel, tungsten, titanium, chromium.
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Your tiny person will not find pellets of metallic iron in the dirt. Iron will rust on the surface.
But he might find gold, and even better, copper. The North American Indians (Mound Builder culture) extensively worked copper with no use of heat - all by cold hammering. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallurgy_in_pre-Columbian_America#North_America>
Here is a copper breastplate taken from a mound tomb in Georgia.
<http://www.burlingtonnews.net/centerindiansa.html>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/N1LH7.png)
So too your tiny people. They can work nuggets of copper and gold into plates using rock hammers like the Indians did. A tiny nugget will go a long way for an antsized person. No need for forges or dangerous heat.
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Metalworking would indeed be a big challenge for a tiny race.
First, **a forge needs to be big**. We can not simply downsize a furnace and presume that it will build the same kind of temperatures, it will not. [Blast furnaces](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blast_furnace) are big even by normal human standards, for ant-men it will be bigger than Egyptian pyramids. Even small prehistoric forges would be quite big, though not out of reach for a determined community. To avoid coming close to fire, a system of control rods and pulleys can be constructed.
High temperatures in small volume can be reached via gas burning, however, constructing something like Bunsen burner from scratch may be even a higher challenge.
After "remote controlled" **smelting** forge is perfected, the next challenge is **metalworking**. A forge will be able to produce iron ingots. Turning these ingots into usable tools like swords or arrowheads will require extensive hammering. This is something that can not be done remotely using primitive technology. Tiny race's best option is to let those ingots cool down and then apply **cold forging**. A slow and difficult process for something like iron or steel, but totally doable nevertheless.
Next challenge is **tempering**. After cold hammering they may manage to produce a tool in shape of sword, but it would be a very poor quality sword. To improve quality, it has to be heated and quickly cooled down. This will again require a system of rods and pulleys, but is doable.
Overall, iron working is theoretically possible, but its level of difficulty will be comparable to the Apollo project for XX century humans.
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square cube law works in your favor too, you don't need much heat for long to melt a tiny piece of iron. the real issue is you will have to heat the mold since the metal will cool VERY quickly.They don't actually need to handle the metal much size at that scale forging is basically impossible unless you work IN the fire. Handling for casting can be done at a distance with tongs and poles, the square cube law works in your favor again. A simple air draw will solve most of your radiation problems.
But you don't actually need to hot forge metal on that scale anyway, something like a drop hammer can stamp it into any shape you want even while cold. You only need heat for smelting,, and you won't be handling anything hot while doing that. Thankfully smelting actually works better on a small scale as long as you can keep the oxygen out of it.
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Well, for one thing they could probably only wort with cold smithing in the beginning.
Next step would be to smelt the metal directly into the molds (aka. place the metal above/half in the molds and then heat the whole thing up in a giant furnace [which would be a pyramid-level project for Iron or so]
However, there is stuff like Lead or tin, which melts at pretty low temperatures, and - while not useful for Armor or weapons - would be sufficient for most other applications.
Furnaces for these could be mini-human sized, and due to the low temperature even forging would be possible (something that normal humans can't do since we have no chance of getting the point between melting and solid).
Also: Bronze would probably be the first real step.
Real bronze smelter can be as small as 10 cm high, which would make it a big, but still realistic project for your mini-humans.
[For this again the smelting-directly-into-the-mold approach would be the only way until some basic machinery is worked out.
[Assuming your humans still have some of our knowledge at least this should be fairly easy]
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I can't offer much with actual physics but it occurs to me that the ant sized people may not need metals like steel. To something the size of an ant I would think any metal would seem fairly robust. Sure, if you scale up to normal size the lighter, softer metals are no good, but if an ant sized breastplate was made from gold or steel would it make much difference at that scale to its intended purpose?
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The problems with using heat to form metals like iron are covered in other answers.
You might instead consider sidestepping the use of heat as your method of metal forming. If your race is able to create (or find) strong acids and also generate electricity they may use electroplating to create different metal shapes without heat. Electroplating uses acid to dissolve metals and then uses electricity to cause the dissolved metal to form on the surface of an electrode in the acid. The shape of the electrode determines the shape of the plating metal, so a breastplate shaped electrode would form a breastplate shaped metal object.
The acid could be found from the ants and beetles which use strong formic acid as an attack, so hunting for natural acid (if they can't manufacture it) could be exciting.
Electricity would require the ability to create copper (or silver) wires, but these metals could be formed with little or no heat.
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I started to wonder about the possibility of a tentacle massage machine. To make the setting even more bizarre, it was intended to be a mass market home appliance. The tech level should be comparable to contemporary, with somewhat better electronics and data processing.
The thing that makes me wonder: is there on this tech level any practical way of inexpensively (and safely) designing such flexible tentacles? Inflatable? Some hydraulics?
**EDIT (clarification):** I mostly though about tentacles in style of gigant octopus. Assuming however, that someone thinks that this size is unfeasible, unpractical or too expensive for mass market then solution for mind flayer or tiny squid are also fine.
**EDIT 2:** People who think its an offtopic please clarify your reasoning. The setting is intended to be original but disturbing on many levels (not a planet of hats), while still NOT being a hard line dystopia. How should I ask questions for that?
**EDIT 3:** I mean a machine that massages human beings by using some kind of mechanical tentacles.
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This totally depends on what kind of massage you're thinking of. Most deep massages require a considerable amount of pressure - some masseuses will use their elbows or even heels. To achieve *that* - and, by the way, such a machine will be able to exert *dangerous* amounts of pressure - you're going to need hydraulics.
Soft or "finger" massages can use memory-form metals, pneumatics ([here, for grips](http://www.wired.co.uk/article/octopus-robot-tentacle)), or coil-and-wire setups (also called "spider motion" because this is how most arachnids' legs work; they're naturally bent, and the critter has to strain to distend them; the opposite of how human limbs work).
Then you have an additional form of massage which is not really feasible for humans: a tentacle can extert a considerable striction or compressive force, which may turn useful as a sort of lymphatic drainage massage on steroids.
However powered, your tentacles would probably end up being composed of a series of short, rigid sections with one, possibly two degrees of freedom each, one to "flex/bend" and one to (slightly) rotate. The last two or three sections on the tip could also be equipped with a piston (i.e. the tentacle tip can stretch forward), adding a third degree of freedom.
One thing the massaging tentacles would surely need is a biocompatible, sturdy silicon skin. Optionally they might need heating for comfort, and for special purposes the capability of delivering [electrical currents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_muscle_stimulation). Support for vibration could also be a plus.
The tentacles would require some way of analyzing the part being massaged (if only to be sure they're not accidentally kneading your [carotid sinus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czermak-Hering_test)). The best way would probably be via ultrasound (as @AndyD273 observed, this would recommend coating the imaging tentacles with ultrasound gel, i.e. slime. That might be a plus or a minus depending on the scenario).
For approaching the part, some kind of camera would be needed. The capability of such a camera to "see" into the infrared could also turn out to be useful as it would allow to estimate blood flow.
In case someone wanted to implement *specially purposed* tentacles (the scientific term would be [*hectocotyli*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hectocotylus)) little would need to be done except modifying the controlling software; there could even be a black market of creative mods.
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I'd look into [soft robotics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_robotics). This is a branch of robotics without hard components like motors or rigid structure. Tentacle like appendages are a common project among engineers working on the technology.
Most of the work being done now involves a soft latex form with multiple voids inside of it. Changing the pressure differential between voids will inflate some and contract others leading to a bending motion.
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Since you're going for bizarre, here's an idea:
Imagine a reclining chair with a fluid-filled sac attached to the back. This sac contains either bio-harvested octopus appendages or an actual Octopus which is preserved in a formaldehyde-like liquid.
An electric current is applied to the Octopus/appendages to make the tentacles move about in a rhythmic fashion. The person sitting on the chair feels this through the seat.
You can add minor details about how the tentacles are held upright and outstretched via attachments so that the entire assembly doesn't move around and out of position. The bag can either be solid black, transparent, or semi-transparent which shows the animal inside.
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Inspired by some of the comments on [How to safely capture someone when you have super-strength](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/101134/how-to-safely-capture-someone-when-you-have-super-strength) I am wondering how police departments would handle a super-hero entering the police academy and joining the police force.
Some questions that might come up:
* Would they be able to use their super powers while acting as a police officer?
+ Is super-hearing or X-Ray vision an illegal search?
+ Is a lightning-bolt stun attack allowed?
* Or would they be restricted to officially issued equipment like Tasers, handcuffs and guns?
* Will prosecutors and juries treat them the same as other officers if they use lethal force in response to threats, or because the super-hero is invulnerable will they expect him to simply wade through the bullets without shooting back?
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Being a police officer is about a lot more than restraining offenders. Good police officers in modern times are taught negotiation, assertiveness, conflict resolution, and a strong understanding of the criminal code and investigative practice.
In Australia (and many other countries are similar) a police officer retiring without ever having drawn their weapon in the field is very likely. The reason why you hear about the cases where weapons are drawn and standoffs and hostages are involved is because they are out of the ordinary and sound exciting; the press get larger audiences reporting on such things and that means more advertising revenue, but I digress.
Of all the things mentioned above, good knowledge of the law and of investigation techniques are going to be paramount in this instance. This is because most of the laws that surround the use of force and the right to surveil a suspect are based on the premises of presumption of innocence and the right to privacy. What that means is that while super hearing or X-Ray vision may be an inherent skill of the police officer, what is learned through the application of such skills may only be admissible under certain circumstances. Super hearing (for example) could be used in lieu of a phone tap, but ONLY if the appropriate warrants have already been issued.
Being able to stun suspects without a taser doesn't make your super hero exempt from the rules around appropriate use of force. It's not restricted equipment per se, but its *use* would be restricted according to the same rules as such equipment.
Law enforcement agencies of any kind would struggle integrating this kind of recruit because it would force them to look beyond their rules to the intent and then come up with all the 'special cases' that apply to a person with a broader range of skills. Ultimately what those special cases would look like would depend on court case decisions. The police are there to enforce the law as written; the courts are there to interpret the law and how it applies to the case as brought before it by the police.
That said, the existence of your super hero indicates that society knows of the existence of super powers and has already put rules in place to govern the appropriateness (or otherwise) of certain skills within society. The special cases as determined by the police for such an individual is likely to start out as a conservative version of those rules, whatever they are.
What I suspect would happen is that such a recruit would be put through the standard training and if he or she graduated that, they would then be assigned to training for groups like Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) that took care of tactical operations. The one thing that your recruit would NOT be considered for is detective work; his or her presence in a case would always raise the doubt that due process was followed because of the inherent skills that could be brought to bear without anyone else knowing.
I actually think it would be a good idea for someone with such powers to join an organised and disciplined police force rather than go vigilante like we see in the comics, but such a decision comes with the caveat that the police force knows what to do with such skills and can deploy them effectively and in a manner best suited to the skillset. When you get right down to it though, that's no different to any *normal* recruit that joins up insofar as they all have different strengths and weakness in how they would contribute to the mission of the police in general.
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Much of the answer will have to be handwaved since a lot of things will depend on which Police department the superhero is joining, and in what capacity.
A British Superhero joining the Metropolitan police will be operating under different rules, laws and customs than an American Superhero joining the NYPD. In fact, there may be significant differences between a NYPD cadet, a New York State Trooper, a cadet joining a small town department in upstate New York, etc. And in the US this does not even cover things like the FBI, US Marshals office or quasi law enforcement agencies like the US Secret Service (part of the US Treasury department).
We also need to know if the candidate is being recruited as an ordinary officer, or because of his special powers is he being recruited for a special capacity (perhaps the tactical squad if using conventional superpowers like breaching walls with his bare hands), or is the superhero being recruited as a detective due to extreme mental powers, or maybe forensics because they can use x-ray vision or other super senses to examine a crime scene.
I expect the Police chief and commissioner (or equivalent ranks in other nations) will have some special duties in mind which both exploit the special powers of the superhero but also fall inside the various legal restraints the police operate under in the jurisdiction in question.
So as part of your world building, you will need to carefully consider which department or force the superhero is joining, what laws and regulations they operate under and how their special powers will be of interest to the force.
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# Questions 1 and 2:
Depends on how the first couple of legal precedents work out. I would guess *yes* on super-senses and the like. If an officer with good-but-not-super ears hears how the perpetrators discuss a crime, that's their fault.
Regarding super-attacks, probably *no*. There are precedents that police forces regulate how officers may fight, with legal and illegal chokeholds or baton strikes. The stun bolt is not on the list, so it is illegal. A punch with super-strength may be legal, however, if punches are legal.
# Question 3:
The superhero should be treated differently. Police officers use force *as necessary* to make an arrest or stop an attack. If an attack is obviously ineffective, no force is necessary to stop it.
Things look different if the bullets endanger bystanders.
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Frankly, there is a much better chance of them being accepted into a specialty military unit, where their skills would be much more effective, and welcome.
Specialized forces are not constrained by the rules of evidence or by due process.
The problem would be in their willingness to follow the chain of command, and to follow orders.
Really, the average police force just doesn't have the action that these personalities require.
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A super hero joining a police task force is completely unrealistic:
1. If he is so "super", why would he join 'random-city' police force?
if a super-hero did affiliate himself with a government/law-enforcement agency, most likely they would do so as a contracted mercenary, more like a gun for hire when things get real serious.
2. A super heroes presence in active law enforcement would be highly distracting, distracting to the point where it complicates the enforcement of the law itself. Imagine the chaos and crowd control needed when you send Spider-Man into a crime scene, media and hysterical people around town would be trampling all over evidence, contaminating everything. A super hero on a police force would be nothing but a community mascot, doing no real police work.
3. There would be laboratories around the world coughing up major cash trying to get him in their facilities for studies. Hollywood studios would be throwing script after script at this hero for reality shows and what not.
I highly, highly doubt anybody would be taking a job with somebodies police agency with those offers available.
[Answer]
Would they be able to use their super powers while acting as a police officer?
-I see no reason why not to, as long the use respects the laws. Due process, proportionate use of force and human rights(or Party directives if you are in a socialist nation) all apply.
Is super-hearing or X-Ray vision an illegal search?
-It would depend upon the situation and the suspect that belives that a violation of rights happened will have to sue. The lawsuit will certainly go all the way to the supreme court. Is using super senses in a combat situation against drug cartels illegal? Most certainly would be legal. Is it legal in stop-and-frisk and checkpoints? Probably no judge would consider it illegal because super senses would be analogous to the smell sense that a dog has. If you can't use x-ray vision to detect cocaine you can't use a dog to detect drugs and bombs. Is it legal in an investigation? Maybe not, requiring warrants for wiretapping and house searches. But in the end the supreme court and the legislators will have to decide.
Is a lightning-bolt stun attack allowed? Or would they be restricted to officially issued equipment like Tasers, handcuffs and guns?
* The cop would be restricted to standard, certified issue to decrease legal risk. His lightning bolts aren't certified and if the suspect is hurt the police department may be sued.
Will prosecutors and juries treat them the same as other officers if they use lethal force in response to threats, or because the super-hero is invulnerable will they expect him to simply wade through the bullets without shooting back?
* Depends on the situation. Let's say that your cop is a brazillian/mexican military police attacking drug heavily armed cartels. If he is invulnerable it would be expected that he wades through the bullets and catches the criminals.
[Answer]
**Question 3:**
It's going to depend **hugely** on the jurisdiction, as attitudes to policing and the use of force vary enormously between countries/cultures (and even within them). This influences how policing is done within a country (values / priorities / methods), and how it's perceived – and of course how other cultures' policing is perceived.
For example, some cultures like the UK have a very low level tolerance of police violence, and police are expected to resolve things without force wherever possible.
In the UK, any officer using lethal force is (I believe) automatically suspended pending an independent investigation. We're very keen on "watching the watchmen", and ensuring that the police do not make routine use of lethal force.
So in the UK, someone with super-powers using lethal force will be looked on especially poorly – and it's not unlikely that they'd be proactively kept away from anti-terror raids and the like, just to prevent the minefield that'd ensue should they kill someone. Or they might be used as a meat-shield but not allowed to hit people. This might of course provide some good tension for a story – "I have this awesome power, why can't I use it?"
In the UK, the police instead rely on massive surveillance to make catching people easier. A very high proportion of court cases are decided on the basis of CCTV footage. We (largely) don't care about the level of surveillance, though other cultures would see it as a massive issue.
It's quite possible that super-powers would be particularly useful in non-lethal scenarios – catching suicide attempts, searching riverbeds, etc.
In the US, where police use of force (and lethal force in particular) is more common, a super-strength policeman would likely be highly popular. A culture which has people with superpowers would quite possibly be far more extreme in this direction. From a US perspective, this trait of using lethal force is largely not seen negatively, but as an important part of a 'strong' police or similar – whereas from (even a right-wing) UK perspective, the rate of police shootings in the US is extremely concerning. This type of contrast of values would again provide interesting tension for a story – cf. Marvel's *Civil War* arc.
So the simple answer is that **it'll depend entirely on the culture of the society / police force**. Imagine a similar issue – police force is offered indestructible, super-fast cars.
* In the US, they'd be deployed continuously, as (I believe) the US priority in a car chase is to resolve the chase as quickly as possible, typically (if TV be believed) by pursuit with a large number of vehicles, and the use of force (often lethal) to end the chase.
* In the UK, they'd sit idle, as the UK priority is to reduce the number of injuries/fatalities – UK police have previously been criticised when a perp has crashed while being chased *even if no-one other than the perp was injured*. So the UK response to a car chase is to leave them alone (largely preventing accidents), and put up a heli (can't be outrun by most cars, but doesn't put psychological pressure on the perp to drive fast/dangerously), and then catch them safely when they stop or give up.
Your original question mentions super-strength; from a UK perspective, super-strength would be of little value, but powers relating to e.g. vision or flight might be highly valued. So the types of super-power valued in policing in different cultures would vary.
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[Question]
[
The Humern Empire is a vast, well established empire that spans the galaxy. Despite having no FTL travel they have kept their empire together with a series of subluminal transport methods.
Heavy cargo loads are moved from system to system using a finely tuned web of [Photonic Laser Propulsion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photonic_laser_thruster) base stations on various airless moons and planetoids, cargo ships being constantly accelerated across the void by lasers bounced off one base station before being decelerated at the other end by a receiving one. These 'photonic railways' are marvels of high precision engineering, and across the galaxy they are carefully balanced so no one base station is ever pushed too far out of position.
They do have a significant limitation though. Despite the Empire's best efforts base stations can't be established unless they're on a large planetoid with a regular orbit (which are in limited supply). This means each star can only establish a railway to the nearest few stars.
Not only that, but although each base station can have truly ridiculous amounts of power pumped through it (enough to make constant 1g acceleration in the interstellar void possible) any one railway can only really have a few ships being accelerated along the railway at any one time before the ships themselves start having to perform significant course corrections, which is less than ideal.
The Empire wants to maintain a constant stream of smaller transports rather than just relying on a few big shipments, both to keep the colonies culturally attached to the Empire and also to increase redundancy.
How can this be achieved? How can the Empire ensure it's cargo shipping capability scales with the amount of energy it has available instead of the number of railways established?
[Answer]
# Use a chain of ships.
I'm imagining a pyramid setup, in a sense. Take $n$ ships. Send out the first one, of relatively low mass - Ship $1$. Then send out Ship $2$. Ship $2$ is now directly propelled by the laser on the base, and it in turn is propelled Ship $1$. Repeat by launching Ship $3$ to power Ship $2$, and so on until you launch Ship $n$.
The thing here is that you end up using more power than you would if you simply launched each ship one-by-one, powered by the laser. If you gave each ship the same power, then only the very first ship would travel onwards, propelled like normal. However, you've solved the problem. You're only limited by energy, not by the number of railways.
Things to watch out for:
* You're not going to be able to go to many stars at once. It's possible that the station on each ship could rotate, so you could change its orientation to propel the ship ahead on a different path, but it would take work.
* Launching each new ship would be a delicate process. You have to line things up *just* right. If a ship slips outside the line of vehicles, you could be in trouble. Also, as not store bought dirt pointed out, the timing could be just as difficult as the spatial alignment. If the power was changed at the wrong time, the resulting disturbance would propagate through the system.
* As I said before, you're using a lot of power. But in an empire this large, I don't think that's going to be a huge problem. How you store the energy it is something that needs to be addressed; more energy means more mass on each ship, which is obviously not a good thing. It's plausible that solar energy could provide some help at the beginning, but it's not as useful in interstellar space.
Here's a diagram of what I'm picturing, for a simple set of three ships:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qJDL1.png)
[Answer]
**Prioritize your shipping and stagger delivery times**
Not everything needs to make port ASAP (though it does help commerce). Prioritize and consolidate cargo ships carrying cargo with similar expiration times. Use your laser such that ships acceleration times are proportional to their to prioritization.
The math for this becomes incredibly more complicated but possible. For instance your passenger ship would take the direct most route receiving more acceleration bursts such that its flight time is 1 period. A ship carrying recreational equipment could be launched on a different trajectory and accelerated with less attention such that its total flight time could be 50 periods or more. This way you eventually result in a fairly constant stream of ships.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6Gg17.jpg)
This image sort of describes what im trying to get at, with different accelerations you can achieve different flight paths and different flight times while still hitting the same target.
**Note:** The added advantage of this method is that the rotation of your planets can now be used more efficiently. When the laser is no longer able to accelerate the priority ship (due to its angle with the horizon) it can now accelerate other ships as their position in the sky would be vastly different than the priority ship.
**Also note:** I would make cargo ships autonomous as there really isn't any need for crew especially since the rails are essentially controlling the majority of navigation.
[Answer]
**Make more transmission stations**
If you can afford to push a ship at 1g for years, you can probably push asteroids or moons to eventually form into a body in the orbits you want.
It may take centuries of planning to maneuver the heavy objects out of gravity wells, collide them non-elastically without creating much debris, weld them together perhaps with ice and correct their orbits, but your slower-than-light galaxy-spanning people can't be strangers to patience.
**Launch stations**
You need it to leave solar orbit, but you don't need it to go any faster than that. Over time it will be somewhere far from the star so can push from a different angle.
**Help you neighbors**
If you can apply a counter push light-years away you can assist in transfers going past. This becomes a planning nightmare, since you are pretty much using death rays aimed years ahead of vessels with years lag in coordination between forces, and you only get a fraction (cosine of the angle) of the power used as velocity in the right direction, but maybe it could be a net benefit.
**Make unpowered trips**
From either planet's point of view keeping the ship at 1g longer than a few weeks doesn't make the trip take noticeably shorter (though from the cerw's point of view it would). If you only push for a short time you free to push the next ship.
And this method allows you to launch to any visible destination, since only the very start and end need to be powered.
[Answer]
Interstellar laser propulsion should never be based on a planet, the free space environment is far better in terms of collecting solar energy and building large structures for radiating away heat and focusing the laser beam. [Dr Robert L Forward](https://infogalactic.com/info/Robert_L._Forward) described [such a system](http://www.lunarsail.com/LightSail/rit-1.pdf) many years ago, and it already seems to have a far superior performance than what you are asking for. Since in the Forward system, the ships "coast" after being accelerated, and then receive laser power during the deceleration phase of the flight (once the ring mirror is detached), the laser is available to power other ships. With careful timing, the laser can be fully employed first accelerating trains of ships, then decelerating them years later.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CVFyO.png)
*Robert L Forward's laser lightsail system*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wuNNI.gif)
*Examples of the lightsails, to scale...*
This isn't even the end of this idea. A reader of the [NextBigFuture](https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/02/physics-phd-reader-of-nextbigfuture.html) blog came up with a rather amazing idea to explain the strange dimming of "Tabby's Star"; a light "railroad" generated by a mirror orbiting the star:
>
> Just imagine that, despite their size, these mirrors can be shaped to optical quality. What is the diffraction limit on what a telescope **with a primary mirror more than half the diameter of our sun** (I estimate D~ 8e8m to cause of 22% dip) can resolve in visible light (~5e-7m)? Somewhere on the order of 1e-16 radians. Since a parsec is 3e16 meters that means they could resolve objects on the order of 10’s of kilometers on Earth when viewed from 454 pc. So, great for astronomy.
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When applied as the driving beam for a starship, you end up with this:
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> The light pressure in the ‘beam’ from the initial mirror would supply twice that pressure to this lightsail upon being reflected, sufficient to provide the sail a constant acceleration of several times g=10m/s^2. By hanging a starship of similar mass on the sail, the acceleration can be made equal to that of the passenger’s home planet, and all the inhabitants of the planet could indeed probably be accommodated in a ship of such mass simultaneously. At 1 g constant acceleration they could journey ‘anywhere’ experiencing only a couple of decades of onboard time due to time dilation (or less than one decade at 2 g’s). However, unless the home star is about to go up in flames and an ark is needed for evacuation, this ‘beam-filling’ sail is overkill.
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Since you are not planning to send billions of beings at once on an interstellar ark the size of Mars, we can scale down to this:
>
> We can assume the big beam is big just so it won’t spread and thinout due to diffraction. Smaller starships and with sails proportioned in scale with their small mass can travel within the bigger beam with the same level of acceleration. Energy not hitting the sail is not ‘wasted’ since stars always pour out energy, the megastructure aliens have just redirected it, their only expense is in building the original structures and maintaining focus and aim. The ships themselves are simple affairs. No need for huge stores of fuel, for Bussard ramjet complications, for antimatter, for generation ships. You just jump in a beam and the rest is free. (But you must trust the operators to remember you if you go off on a 1000 lyr expedition or something). It would have been the obvious way to go from the first, at least in principle, if we could just think ‘big enough’.
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Now we don't *just* have a singular mirror near the star, a great deal of supporting structure is also required:
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> The primary ‘deflect and direct’ mirrors need to be positioned‘near’ the star’s surface and kept stationary relative to the sky (except those scanning it for astronomical purposes). Therefore they must be ‘floated’ on the star’s own light pressure in order to counter the star’s gravity without orbital motion. At a distance of 3 to 4 stellar radii (I am assuming the star is 1.25\* solar radius and 1.5\* solar mass) the gravitational acceleration would be in the range of a few g’s and they could be ballasted to float with structural forces similar to those involved in the active starship and sail situation.
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> The mirrors are probably stabilized on an open work spherical network of rings around the star, having enough mirrors to support and expand the whole structure equally under some degree of tension. Schaefer may have been documenting the addition of more mirrors to support and balance the whole as it was initially built up, or the accumulation of mirrors on the side of the star near us as commerce was increasing with other star systems in that general direction (or perhaps the addition of inactive mirrors just to combat global warming as their star ages).
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So by scaling your thinking a bit, you can increase the throughput of the "railway" serially (launching and accelerating/decelerating ships when prior ships are in coast phase), or in parallel (supermassive mirrors creating such a huge beam that you can launch a multitude of ships at once).
In fact, if a rival Empire starts thinking like this, you might discover their economic potential literally rocketing past yours......
[Answer]
**Shipping containers and transshipment**
This doesn't seem to be the answer you want, but it really should be given anyway, since it is the way an analogous issue was solved here on Earth. So not only do we have good reason to think it would work, you can easily study how it works in practice and adapt to your setting.
Basically, just use the few rails with larger and larger ships containing standardized containers. Your planetoid sized base stations will then transfer the container to a ship going the next step.
This will do nothing to solve issues with latency to smaller ports, but it will solve the bandwidth scaling issue. Which is what you asked about. It will also reduce the shipping costs and increase economic integration, which seems to be something you'd want?
[Answer]
A few ideas:
1) If 1G acceleration can be maintained, then the speed of light will be reached in 1 year: [reference](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/840/how-fast-will-1g-get-you-there). As such, constant 1g acceleration is not required over the whole distance. Greater accelerations of course result in bursts of energy (I'm calling 1 year a "burst"), rather than a non-stop stream. Keeping a small stream up "lighting up the lane" so the ship knows it is on target might not be bad.
2) Cryogenics and Intersteller-Packing-Foam (which fills the ship and makes it and everything frozen within it much more rigid) could *allow for higher accelerations*. Higher accelerations, combined with #1 (there is a limited thrust time before reaching C) results in increased transmission times. It also allows for rescue should people/cargo need to wait the ridiculous time frames which would be required for a rescue.
3) Lanes: *More shipping lanes, more bandwidth*. Each lane is a launch platform, and for various reasons each should be on its own airless planetoid within a solar system. While a solar system may seem big, regarding interstellar distances it is not, as all the lanes will converge on a new system.
4) Decouple Interstellar and interplanetary transportation systems: As you have already pointed out, your interstellar rail system uses planetoids without an atmosphere, and for safety reasons probably minimal life. By having your interstellar ships being accelerated outside of any significant gravity a lot of issues can be avoided.
5) Use gravitational lensing : both to keep track of your ships, and to fire them along different paths which result in the same destination. I was skeptical after reading another answer which had to do with using different flight paths but same origins, my issue is that laser based propulsion is like turning light into a fire-hose and using that to push something. Actually it is worse because, most of these system use a feedback system where the light is recycled or the power requirements go way up(meaning you can't use a sail, you have to have a perpendicular surface). You want the laser to push **directly** along the flight path. If it is hit at an angle it will start to spin. It may be possible to compensate somewhat but it is still not ideal. So how can we send multiple ships out from the same point on different paths, and have them converge at the same location? Gravitational lensing. If we find the path light is bent by the systems central star(s), you can send ships along the same flight path and the beam which is directly behind them will always perfectly aligned, because the light beam is traveling straight, it is space that is bent. Also gravitational lensing can focus a great amount of EM radiation from distant objects, making it useful for picking up the weak communications from distant ships, or observing distant planets in other systems.
6) Course corrections & Keeping your speed up: While theoretically not required, as you can send any rail-car to any location, after spending 100s of years of outside observers time maybe the receiver wants the cargo to go to another location, or the planet may have had a malfunction regarding its laser required for deceleration. It might be best to direct all traffic to the star for the system. As the train begins to make final approach (the distance to decelerate from near light speed would be 1 year if 1G is assumed) it could use the gravity well of the star to change its trajectory. Also a star is an excellent power source, if you are looking for something which must generate tremendous energy output. Also #2 (cryogenics&ridged packing-foam) I expect are quite essential if using a gravitational well for course correction. Even if people are to stay awake for most of the trip, #2 might be required during "lane-changes" or when transition to a different "leg". Where some aggressive deceleration may be expected, along with being accelerated along a new direction. *If you can maintain much of your speed when transitioning to a new target, you also keep throughput up.*
Just for fun: "Batteries Included" while some seem to hint that generating energies similar to what could destroy the surface of a planet every hour as not being a good idea... well here is a power proposal that makes even that look ridiculously safe! It is probably worth investigating how a large transportation hub could work. In my view it would be most ideal if the transportation hubs were situated around black holes, most ideally if the black hole was not too large (smaller the better to exploit tidal forces) and to avoid having to feed it, if it is in binary orbit around a star that would be really helpful. Such a setup would produce a vast amount of power. It is theoretically possible to produce sub-atomic black holes. Particle accelerators such as the LHC are still a couple magnitudes off what is required. Also such black holes evaporate! But still it is possible given enough energy to produce black holes, which are built in an accelerator. Now since they are produced at a high speed they are subject to time dilatation, while at rest they may only last seconds (or less) but at speeds approaching C, they can last much longer. Point of this is that a powerful accelerator which has access to massive amounts of energy (something pouring off gamma-rays seems like a good start) can store tremendous amounts of energy in black holes and ship them to planetoids in the system. Since black holes have magnetic fields [see here](http://www.sciencealert.com/the-magnetic-field-just-outside-our-black-hole-has-been-studied-for-the-first-time), they can be bent and accelerated/decelerated with magnetic fields. So there is a means of capturing them and drawing off the energy (hawking radiation). As a small black hole decelerates it will produce more energy, and if accelerated less... so there is a means of controlling the output. Once the black hole starts to approach the limit where it will cease to be a black hole it should be fired back into the parent black hole... for people that thought your lasers were dangerous, having a 10000 kg black hole come apart when powering one your airless planetoid lasers would probably result in there being no planetoid!
[Answer]
In keeping with the railway analogy....
**Double Track**: Build a second, parallel guide-way near the first. The Empire may already have two guide-ways for two-way travel, in which case this would mean four guide-ways (two in each direction). This will double the one-way frequency of pods.
**Speed Up The Trains**: Instead of accelerating at 1g, accelerate at 1.5g or 2g or more. On a 6 light-year trip to Barnard's Star, 2g will decrease travel time by about 30%, and increase pod frequency similarly.
[Answer]
Extend the rails in parallel.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fTTVV.png)
Ship 1, top right, is accelerated by a blue beam from the laser. It reflects back in parallel, redshifted from its original color (because the mirror is receding).
Ship 2, middle left, is going the opposite direction. It is accelerated by the reduced frequency but still pretty powerful laser reflected from Ship 1. It reflects an even deeper redshifted beam back in the original direction to accelerate ship 3.
Depending on the efficiency of the ship mirrors, this could be carried on for several more levels if necessary. Furthermore, when a ship is *decelerating* it actually blueshifts the beam for the next recipient.
(Apologies for my terrible color choices.I'm color blind.)
] |
[Question]
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I am the leader of the of the Egyptian nation. I want to invade the Middle East and recreate the Muslim caliphate of old. I do know, however, that with the United Nations in my way, I will never accomplish my dream.
Assume that I want to dissolve the United Nations. The only way I can see this happening is another world war, however I do not want this. **I want the United Nations to fall apart in the sense that it doesn't function OR it doesn't exist. It can still technically exist, but it should not have enough power to enforce sanctions on nations or authorize military actions.**
I have until about 2060 to dissolve the pesky organization, and it is currently 2020, with my current age being 40. **What is the quickest, most realistic (politically speaking) way to do this without a world war?**
I will have whatever resources the current Egypt has.
[Answer]
This one is actually pretty easy to answer.
Egypt's #1 ally outside of the Middle East (and plausible #1 overall) is the United States. This takes the form of large amounts of economic and military aid. Egyptian military officers are trained by the US military in the US (I actually had a few in my classes when I was in training). If your future Egypt can keep the US on its side, or at least be patient enough for the US to get completely fed up with the UN you are good to go.
The US is the linchpin that holds the UN together and without US support its effectiveness (which in my opinion is often suspect anyway, though...you're working with the whole world so its bound to be complicated) would diminish to the point where it would be little more than a puppet show.
According to the [UN website](http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/operations/financing.shtml) the US provides 28.38% of the peace keeping budget. If that goes away (not to mention the US military forces that support the UN) the ability of the organization to do much more than chastise you is severely diminished.
More broadly the US is the largest donor to the UN generally. ([This data is somewhat dated, but still illustrative](https://www.globalpolicy.org/un-finance/tables-and-charts-on-un-finance/un-system-budget/27506.html)) The US donated 6 Billion dollars more to the UN 2002, 2003 and 2004 than the second place nation (Japan) The gap between the US and Japan is MORE than Japan gave in total (5.5 billion). The total three year tally for the US was $11,398,068,755.
**The short version:** The US stops giving money to the UN.
[Answer]
Realistically,what you need to get is the support of at least one of the permanent members of the security council. To actually succeed, you'd want the US, Russia, **China** supporting you and France being not hostile. The UK will follow the lead of the US in Middle East issues and can be ignored. Under these circumstances you can let your friends handle the UN and ignore it.
Your question is somewhat puzzling as it seems to suggest that the UN has some independent political clout, which it specifically does not. Preventing such influence is why those permanent members have their veto power.
As for implementing this... that is left as an exercise to the reader. Just kidding. The best method is generally to take it step by step and opportunistically. Have a clear idea what you want to do and act decisively when an opportunity arises. That is how Bismarck united Germany and defeated France and Austria. (And Denmark.)
First, he inherited a state capable of acting more efficiently than the competition and built up on that. So you must build a military that is capable of gaining your goals with a short, victorious war. The important thing here that Bismark understood, but his successors did not, is that instead of trying to build an insane war machine you break up your goals into to smaller steps that the military you actually have can achieve and then do those step by step. This "lack of ambition" also stops other players from going to panic mode and ganging up on you.
And that really is the most important part, use diplomacy to stop others from joining forces against you. Bismarck had wars against most of his significant neighbours while having significant internal instability due to unification. He was able to to defeat each of his enemies in isolation, often with the help or support of his next target. Or the previous one.
Doing this requires using "real politik". Your actions must be based on the actual reality on the ground and rational decision making. Not on some obscure historical enmity between your country and, say, Israel or Iran. Your alliances must be issue specific and you must ally with every one with significant power that supports you on the issue.
Then you simply must choose such issues that you can further your ultimate goal of uniting the Middle East at the expense of one player who gets isolated in the issue. Most politicians have problems handling the issues that arise due to external factors. True players of the "real politik" know that you are entirely free to interpret those issues as you wish.
If Austria throws a fit as a consequence of an assassination and insists the existing alliance requires Germany to support them in the resulting war, the German Chancellor is entirely free to disagree and instead insist on a peace conference with an agenda of his making. Even if you have the strongest army in the area, you must always remember that it is impossible to **win** a war. Victory comes at the negotiating table. Fighting just gives you an edge you can use. Thus you should move to peace as fast as is practical. Preferably before a single shot has been fired at your forces. Foreign Archdukes do not count.
Minimizing warfare while at a position of strength also makes diplomacy much easier. This also covers all hostility. If you have hostile relations with someone, either inherited or because you just had a war with them, you should move to have friendly relations with them as soon as you can. Potential allies are useful, potential enemies are not. Any wars you have must be to solve a specific issue, not to fight an enemy.
You are probably wondering why I am listing general remarks, not specific notes on Middle East. That is because the situation evolves from the current as soon as you take the first step. In fact the major goal of your first steps, any steps really, should be to transform the situation so that the reality and "the gaming board" changes. Not necessarily directly in your benefit, but enough that alliances and old enmities become fluid.
Note that the result is a tangle of alliances and pacts that only a really good player can manage. That would be **you**, and optimally not anyone you have a conflict of interest with. So you should have a plan of succession that either gives your successor an easier to manage situation or assure a successor capable of replacing you.
For Egypt, I'd suggest the first step should be pacification of Libya. Libya has oil. Egypt has strong interests in Libya that allow you to raise an issue in Libya any time you wish. And nobody really cares, what you do to the lunatics currently ruling much of the country. Especially not the ordinary Libyans, they must be fairly disillusioned with the way things currently are.
And it is fairly easy to raise a counter-terrorism angle to get support from the US. China can be bough with oil. The Europeans with oil and fixing the humanitarian situation. (Read: African immigration issue.) Russians could be swayed with a more rational and independent Middle East policy. They do not really approve how Uncle Sam and friends have been mucking around. Note that you should use deals with factions in Libya as much as you can and minimize fighting. Since your plans are bigger than Libya you can afford to be generous and give wide autonomy in addition to peace and stability.
Usually there would be a nationalism issue with Libyans not really liking being annexed by Egypt, but since you are intending to rebuild a caliphate anyway, you can just use that to gain popular support. And the need for popular support to explain why you are talking about caliphate. Which totally would screw over those people in Syria that everyone except possibly Turkey hates... (Because they fight Kurds.)
If you can pacify and annex Libya, next step should probably be Sudan. Using negotiation annex southern parts as autonomous area and then crush the northern part with its religious lunatics in between. Rationales and external politics should be similar to Libya.
Then you could negotiate peaceful annexation with what remains of the Assad regime and move to pacify and annex Syria.
For the rest of region, there would be too many changes at this point to make reasonable predictions, but if you did the negotiation parts of the previous annexations well enough, you should have wide popular support for your caliphate and lots of credibility with the political elite. Opportunities should arise naturally. You should be able to offer people of Iraq a better deal than their own government, for example.
[Answer]
Virtually speaking, this appears easy. Practically speaking, there are a lot of factors involved.
You may accomplish your goal by:
# Method 1
Get at least one of the veto power holders to your side. As stated by James, US is already your biggest ally. Once you convince the US congress that the target nations are training *terrorists* and you are making a preemptive assault, you're fine. Having US on your side = having UK (and perhaps israel too) on your side automatically. The foreign policy of both these countries is heavily influenced by US' take on international matters. Having them on your side would mean once you initiate your assault, only China and Russia are going to chide you. Venezuela and North Korea would spew a lot of vitriolic speeches against you, but nothing is going to happen practically.
# Method 2
Drive a wedge between the prominent players in UN and crack them open. All countries have their own interests. Although the western hemisphere has completely given up infighting and always resolve their conflicts by talks and diplomacy, ***if*** you are able to present something so valuable and indivisible that it turns the western nations against one another, it will naturally rip UNO apart too, making it either fall into lobbies and groups (virtually inefficient as an organization) or dissolve completely.
However this is not as easy as it might seem. You will need to present something that turns (at least politically) the west apart. Is it a new market for their products? Is it a natural resource they all direly want and is very rare? I leave that to you.
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As I said in my comments, I do not think that you would get any advantage by dissolving the UN, but to answer the question the idea is to decrease (more!) the effectiveness of the UN and create alternative forums.
One possible point of attack would be the "WW II winners" setup of the Security Council, including the veto power of the big five. Why France or the UK have veto power, while countries with lots more of population like India, Japan or Indonesia are not even permanent members of the council? Advertise as much as possible the idea that UN is just a post-colonial puppet, a way for the other countries to become political clients of the big five.
Of course, that alone is not new to anyone, the idea is not to convince the leaders but to cause a negative public opinion of the UN in the population, so the leaders are less inclined to accept it.
The other part of the plan is the hard one: build one (or several) alternate mechanisms for people to attend, so they have an alternate forum. One that **works**.
The hard part is always *enforcement*, is relatively easy to get Syria and Israel to have peace talks, it is somewhat difficult to have leverage to get them to agree at something, it is way more difficult to force them to put that agreement into effect (and punish them if they do). Here Egypt is too much a lightweight to do so, you would need to enroll some heavies like India or Japan to provide support for that (and of course, in that way you are risking yourself to become part of UN 2.0, that is dominated by India and Japan instead of the big five).
The best outcome would be that the functions of the UN are taken by a bunch of different organizations, each weak enough to not be too powerful against you. Of course, this will be way more difficult because it will make any agreement even more difficult; and world leaders would be aware. Even worse, if you agree to that, the big five now are free to build each one their "puppet UN" and totally free to follow their own policies.
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The U.N. is irrelevant, *per se*. If a nuclear power wants to fight you, it will. If they don’t, the U.N. can’t make them.
So what you want is for the important powers, those who could project sufficient military force to stop you, to be willing to live with you in control of a Caliphate. The most likely way to get them to allow this is to convince them that you’re the only person capable of keeping order in the region, and that if they got rid of you, what would follow would be worse. It will actually help if they aren’t dependent on oil as a crucial resource, since then they could afford to let you control it, for what that’s worth.
Note that you cannot invade a nuclear power successfully and every one of your neighbors who sees what you’re doing will go nuclear as soon as possible. You might be able to undermine to some degree, but there is just no way you can ever get all the ethnic groups in the region to accept what you want to do. If you’re willing to accept vassals and indirect rule, and don’t care whether people under your thumb follow your religion as long as they support your foreign policy, that might be workable. If you don’t actually care about the Palestinians or that a Zionist state rules Jerusalem, you can just sell the Palesinians out in a peace deal that makes Israel your client state. If you do, you’ve effectively got to cripple Israel before you can invade it, in a way that will destroy its independence but not provoke them to retaliate. Repeat for Iran, Turkey and Pakistan if you want to go after them.
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[Question]
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Communal dining of some form is a custom amongst virtually every human society. Whether inviting friends around for a meal or going on a date together social eating is a common way of tying communities together.
This extends to international diplomacy, where formal banquets and informal lunches all provide ways for people to meet and communicate and network.
In a future society though with multiple alien races mingling at all levels of society how would different dining requirements be accommodated, especially when some might seem disgusting or revolting to one species or another.
For example if a society has;
* Humans
* A species that eats live maggots
* A species that eats dung
* A species that vomits on its food and then slurps it up (like a fly).
Would those species just never dine together, or would customs develop that allow them to co-exist? Even if the actual eating is done separately could people cope with seeing a buffet laid out for all those species on one table? Or would dining be completely segregated?
A child's birthday party might have members of every species invited, especially if people were actively trying to integrate the various cultures. Equally the ambassadors reception would have guests from each species and maybe more. How would these situations be handled?
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Homework for you: Throw a dinner party where you have to invite at least one of:
* [Paleo diet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet) activist who is in phase of eating raw meat only
* [Vegan](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veganism) activist
* Traditional conservative Jewish person who requires [Kosher food](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosher_foods) only
* Feminist activist
* [Born again Christian](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_again_%28Christianity%29)
* And stage magician
For every minute they can sit around one table, eat together and have at least "neutral" conversation (that's why we invented small talk about the weather), you get a point. If you gain 30 points and more, then you win a prize.
In other words:
**No, no, no and again... NO**
* We Humans eat together because we are "social animals" where "eating together" could be understood as biological need to be in pack (I am no biologist, so do not beat me here please)
* The aliens could have it differently
* Everyone in the group understands (or at diplomatic level *should understand*) that eating habits of one group can seem weird to another group.
So, in nutshell. **Diplomatic level**
* Human diplomats would be trained to see other races to vomit or to eat maggots
* I believe it is safe to assume that diplomats from different races would have the same training
* Eating together would be practiced as least as possible
**Personal level**
Eating live maggots for "normal human" is at the same level of "being gross" as of eating meat of any kind to vegan activist. So, if I am friend of family which eats maggots, and I am invited to birthday party of their kids, there is several ways to tackle that:
* I am simply not attending, because the last thing I want to see is someone eating maggots
* I will appear, but only for gift giving (or any activity which does not relate with food)
* I will appear for the whole thing and silently cry about what is happening. Will stress out to parents that rejecting a juicy moving maggot from their two year old kid (or at level of Human two year toddler) is not rude towards the kid
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Well, there would be a lot to take into account. Some species might find eating communally outside of immediate family to be a terrible breach of social graces or even eating in the company of anyone. Some foods might be deadly poisons to different species making for an added layer of care that must be taken. Not to mention that the atmosphere needed for respiration could be significantly different enough to make conversation hard, much less eating together.
Then we come to the actual process of eating.
What if a species is more like a snake and swallow their meal whole and eat once a month? Cutting up our food and masticating it could be nauseating. And have to eat three times a day? Seems to be a lot of trouble.
How would you like a cow like animal that 'chews it's cud'. Burps up what it ate earlier and chews it again?
No unless we come across a species that has similar eating habits to ours, it is unlikely we'd have much mixed eating. It could also be dangerous to go around sampling the h'orderves, even if something looked appetizing.
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**NO - there is no reason to keep such rituals.** Also, most likely they would require different atmospheres, so will have to be wearing a protective suit in a hostile atmosphere - so any eating would be done inside the suit anyway.
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If they are really alien then dining habits might not be the only difference but physical differences as well.
An alien race might find it strange that we use different orifices for eating, smelling, hearing and waste disposal. While they can do all those functions with one orifice.
or
Another alien race might find it strange that we use one orifice for eating, talking, whistling, singing, blowing bubbles. While they have different orifices for those.
Dining together might not be a good idea. Definitely separate rooms for dining.
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This question makes me think of the old TV show, "Alien Nation".
The Tenctonese (also called Newcomers) are a social race like humans, and eat together in family groups like humans. Their ship crashed on earth, and without going into to much detail of the series, the survivors were a slave caste and don't have the knowledge to create a new ship, so they had to assimilate into human society.
However, Tenctonese A>eat raw meat (cooked meat makes them sick), B>quickly developed a taste for animals that humans (or at least mainstream USA society) don't consider food sources (Mmm, Ground Weasel meat), and C> Most importantly, become inebriated on spoiled milk, not alcohol.
So, the main characters of the series are a newcomer who joined the police force and made detective, and his human partner.
Numerous episodes involve either in part or in full them eating together, both the human having to control his gag reflex watching the Alien eat raw meat and drink curdled milk, and the alien both cringing at some things the human eats, and having to remind him that certain things would kill him if he ate them.
In particular, when the Tenctonese family had a "BBQ" for their friends, like 90% newcomer and a few humans, and the humans show up, the Tenc father had cooked them hamburgers, something to the effect of "I made you hamburgers, I've had them on the grill for about 6 hours, but I'm not sure how to tell if they're done yet."
So, to give a more definitive answer, I'd say that assuming that eating together is ALSO a social ritual of the alien races, we would simply have to go through a period of acclimation (just try not to look to close at what they're eating), and keep food selections separate, I.E. we've got 4 races with differing food needs that are unappealing or even toxic to each of the others, we then have four separate buffet lines located at some distance from each other to avoid cross contamination, and grossing out the guests while they get their own food.
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Being omnivores humans might have a diplomatic advantage, a lot of species will eat either vegetation or meat exclusively and we could eat with them without much trouble, we can even eat raw meat or raw fish underwater.
On the other hand seeing a human hacking into a juicy steak might be distressing for a herbivorous species so we may have to be content with protein bars and other highly processed food while in their presence. Likewise a race of giant spiders might be considerate towards us by drinking premade smoothies rather than sucking the juices out of a still living creature wrapped in their silk.
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[Question]
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In my near (+200 years) future world teleportation has been invented and is now in common use especially for off-world travelling, but it works by creating a perfect copy of the travelling human nearly instantaneously at the destination not by moving the traveller in space. The evil corporation that invented the technology have hidden this from the populace because of the commercial opportunity- so once the destination copy is created the original person is automatically killed within the teleportation device and that has worked perfectly for many years... Until today.
So future plot notwithstanding, how could the evil corporation effectively dispose of so many bodies so easily and invisibly to the population? Also, aside from the conservation of matter/energy laws, which I will hand-wave away, are there any other negative consequences of creating copies from a physics point of view?
Edit: For clarity the premise of this story is not the technology behind teleportation or how to dispose of bodies or even whether to kill them or not, that's a given, it's about what happens when this goes wrong and you end up with duplicates
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>
> So future plot notwithstanding, how could the evil corporation effectively dispose of so many bodies so easily and invisibly to the population?
>
>
>
Recycle them to build the new bodies. You're going to need large amounts of mass to build these new bodies on teleport arrival, so there's no reason to discard the bodies anywhere; they contain exactly the kind of materials needed to build more.
>
> Also, aside from the conservation of matter/energy laws, which I will hand-wave away, are there any other negative consequences of creating copies from a physics point of view?
>
>
>
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle says you cannot make an accurate enough copy because you can't know all of the information contained within a body. You will probably have to handwave that one as well.
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Well to 'create' a body at the other end you will need raw materials to do so. Having actual bodies is a pretty good place to get the exact raw materials one would need to do that. So, kill the body, then store it (or process it to more manageable ingredients, until the next person teleports back.
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Most schemes that involve recreating the person at the other end (as opposed to warping space or creating a wormhole to the destination) already suggest that the original is rendered down at the atomic level in the course of "scanning" the subject. This implies that teleportation is already understood to be hazardous, since you would have a large, shielded device which has to contain a hot, ionized mist where the person used to be. The large shop vac on top would be another clue....
The corporation can use this material to recreate incoming passengers (probably the most sensible course of action), or it will be faced with the daunting task of disposing of large quantities of dirty water, which is what a vaporized human being will condense into. Since people are in all sizes and masses, the corporation will most likely need "top up" tanks to deal with the usual inefficiencies of the processes (you would never be able to gather 100% of the outgoing passenger) and have a mass reserve if the visiting football team was teleporting in for the Superbowl.
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I read a short story many years ago based on this premise of how teleportation works. Sadly, I forget the title or author. (It's been decades since I read that story.) But that author's idea was that the person in the sending booth is killed, and his body decomposed down to molecules that are then used to construct the body of the next person arriving in the booth. (Presumably you have to keep a reservoir, as some people have more mass to their bodies than others. I forget if the author got into this.)
In the story, the inventor of the machine refuses to use it himself, because he doesn't want to be killed. The story ends with the inventor abandoning this objection and using his own machines. Which I thought was a rather anti-climactic ending. I guess the writer just couldn't think of anything else to have happen.
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## It gets converted into energy
We're all familiar with Einsteins famous formula $E=mc^{2}$. Theoretically Matter can be converted into pure energy, and energy can be converted into matter. If your corporation is advanced enough to discovere a way to make a perfect duplicate of a human being, especially a human brain while preserving all of it's thoughts and experiences, then I don't think it would be much of a stretch to presume they've also discovered how to convert matter into raw energy.
Creating a human being out of nothing would require a lot of power. The traveler's body signature would have to be scanned by an extremely powerful power hungry computer, and that signature would have to be transmitted to the destination (which would be a BIG file, DNA contains 700 *terabytes* of info per gram) where massive energy would again be required to construct a new body. In order to cover up the truth behind their process, as well as make up for some of the energy expenditure, they destroy the traveler at the origin, and the corporation mask the truth of their process by explaining that the body is transfered to it's destination as a massive surge of energy, when in fact the traveler doesn't "travel" at all, but is killed for the sake of the illusion, and the added bonus of their conversion into energy feeds the power grid.
[Answer]
In Clifford D. Simak's *Way Station*, the new bodies are grown in tanks like we always picture clones, the conciousness transfered (digitally?) between stations. When the traveller "leaves", the remains are "flushed." Mind you, everyone using the system knows how it works.
Your Evilcorp could use this as a stopgap explanation, between "We teleport you, body and soul," and "We record you, kill you, and build a clone mock-up elsewhere."
For yours, any energy released by a body probably does not equal the amount used in scanning and transmitting data, but it's like adding some solar panels can reduce your electric bill, if not eliminate it.
Good luck with this-sounds good!
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So, you have large amounts of biomass and are an evil company? What to do besides the obvious burning it all to ashes?
Well, you could start building up a "nutrition paste", this way becoming an evil corp with food chain connection. Also, a bio-gas-reactor would be suitible, after all this will take HUGE amounts of energy.
If nothing else, go full umbrella and rebuild the bodies to cyber-zombies
[Answer]
## Epicurists.
The aliens highly prize the savor of raw sentient being, manually disassembled between their pedipalps and passed, morsel by morsel, to their trembling chelicerae. This habit is awkward in civilized company, but can be excused by *Consent*, such as when a culture is willing to trade their hapless civilians for teleportation technology and the staggering energy production required to keep it running. Any argument that the aliens have failed to obtain *Consent* can be quelled by the observation that the Greedy Corporation signed up after a thorough briefing, and that the entire population of their planet daily (usually hourly) agrees to the Greedy Corporation's Terms and Conditions, in their entirety, to watch television, to breathe filtered air, to work, or to teleport to their sita-caste coffeeshop for a few minutes of relaxing socialization.
The aliens have millennia of experience remaining hidden in blind spots and concealed corridors throughout the human world, and move paralyzed duplicate bodies the same way. There is probably one of them reading this over your shoulder right now.
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[Question]
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Imagine that in modern world, a [Faceless Man](http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Faceless_Men) of Braavos is walking among us. He is able to completely change his appearance in a split second, and, unfortunately, keeps killing people. Would it be possible to catch such man?
Here are a few assumptions:
* Faceless Man can appear as person of any gender and any age;
* His appearance is absolutely genuine. Fingerprints, retina scan would not give him away. Only deep tests like DNA sequencing can reveal his real identity;
* He can take appearance of only people who are already dead, and has to spend some time with their bodies;
* His impersonation is not perfect, he does not know everything his "faces" used to know, does not know their tastes and habits;
* He is very skilled in armed and unarmed combat;
* He is well aware of modern security features like surveillance cameras and alarm systems;
* He is acting alone, and, as far as we are concerned, the only Faceless Man in the world;
* He can be an assassin for hire, or has his own rational agenda, but he does not kill just because he likes killing.
[Answer]
**Faceless men have to carry faces**
If you know you are looking for a faceless man (which general knowledge of was expressed in GOT). Authorities would establish a perimeter (like they always do) and search the possessions of anyone trying to leave the perimeter. Obviously the one who tries to fight is the faceless man or the one with a bunch of human faces is the faceless man.
Though he would certainly rack up a body count, the flaw of any serial killer is they always give the authorities another chance.
**IR Cameras**
A face a faceless man uses is dead flesh that has been put over his own. It is theoretically possible that an IR camera could reveal this discrepancy in real time allowing for quick identification.
**Dogs**
As referenced in GOT, in order to make a faceless man's face they must apply certain chemicals to the flesh. You would need to apply some kind of unusual chemical to achieve the life like qualities of their face. These chemicals would most likely be noticeable to a dog's nose. This would not occur in GOT as everyone has bigger concerns than the faceless men to bother with such a method. However, in modern society expenses in training and research would not be spared to apprehend such prolific assassins.
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If he is an assassin for hire, Like always, follow the money. Shake up the underworld until you find out how the hit was ordered. Then hire a hit and set up a sting. Nowhere to hide if you and the victim are the only people in the room.
If not a fake hit just follow the money trail. At the end of the day don't go to him, let him come to you, even if just to use a credit card.
Much harder to catch someone killing randomly. Forensics are still a great weapon. Does he buy tools anywhere? Does he use transportation? You don't need a face if you have a license plate. Can you follow blood stains?
At the end of the day when you go for the sting mark everyone involved with a secret icon. Arrest everyone who is not marked even remotely in the area, and do not take them out of cuffs until a lab has cleared them.
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**Know who dies.**
Wireless pacemakers communicate on their own reserved frequency.
<http://newatlas.com/wireless-pacemaker-internet-monitoring/12549/>
>
> Developed by St Jude Medical, the Accent pacemaker contains a
> low-power radio transmitter that communicates on a frequency band
> between 402 and 405MHz, a spectrum specially reserved for medical
> implants. Information from the device is sent to a home transmitter
> and becomes available for viewing by the clinician via an Internet
> link and some proprietary software.
>
>
> So, basically, this patient can provide a full report on the condition
> of her heart without even leaving home – without doing anything,
> actually, since the pacemaker reports automatically – and the doctor
> is able to perform regular check-ups without seeing the patient at
> all. In fact, since routine pacemaker checks are typically done every
> six months, the wireless device offers a much greater level of
> monitoring and care than ever before.
>
>
>
If everyone has such a device implanted, it would be immediately obvious when any given person has died. The death of that person would immediately and tastefully be broadcast everywhere via cell phones. Credit cards, access cards and so on will immediately be put on hold.
The Faceless Man's trick is to get close access to people who think he is someone that they know and do not suspect. I might have ignored news that Guy Random is dead because I do not know him. Guy is not an effective disguise for killing me; no more than any other disguise or the faceless man's own face. But if I learn my high school buddy Joe Blow has died I would definitely pay attention to that. And when he walks up to me and smiles he will die a second time.
Or, because I am not that badass, Fake Joe will get to see my chubby backside moving away from him as rapidly as it can manage.
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You could profile him like a serial killer and anticipate his targets, then stakeout the likely next target and capture any potential threats (Pretend you're the secret service, ANYONE could be a threat). If he's acting like an independent contractor with no M.O. though this would not work.
I'd say the only way you're likely to catch this person is if they are caught in the act and you don't lose sight of them until they are safely subdued.
EDIT: Even worse than if he's an independent contractor (An assassin for hire) if he is *truly* on his own, and killing just to kill, it would make it near impossible to anticipate where he will strike.
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## You will have to wait for a mistake
Leaving a disfigured corpse with blatantly identificative marks will put all security forces on alert, after all. And while hiding or destroying the corpse will work for the first times,things will not remain so easy for long.
He will need to start masking his identity thefts as disappearances to keep people from noticing the raise in deaths. Later, he will have to prepare convincing façades to mask some those disappearances as explainable absences at least for some time, or somebody will notice the sudden increase in missing people.
Most likely, he will also need to do some detective work in order to get near strongly protected targets: security measures, routes, habits, etc. And he will need to do that without drawing the attention of the target, or those protecting the target, or they will become really paranoid, and his work will become complicated really fast.
Maybe your assassin is a accomplished sniper, and can manage score some deaths avoiding all the hassle. Maybe is a competent spy and an able liar, and maintaining such tangle of lies and identities is like a second nature for him. But in any case, as time passes, he will end up making a mistake.
He may become overconfident in his skills, and careless, and attempt a job that is over his head. Someone may find the remains one of his "donors" (or parts of them) and manage to compromise his current identity. Someone may spill the beans, or follow the money. He may be tricked and betrayed by the person who hired him, if he is an assassin for hire, or for someone he trust. If he has a reason to kill people, when the pile of corpses grows enough, someone may be able to connect the dots and discover that reason, giving his enemies an edge when determining his true identity, or his next move.
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The best way is to catch him red-handed, and to do that set a trap. You say he works as an assassin for hire - hire him to kill one of your own agents with heavy protection, and trap him that way.
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The guy can take appearance of only people who are already dead, and has to spend some time with their bodies. And they need to be fresh as you said in the comments.
Domain of faces available to him are of lately dead people. Cops can scrutinize city's electronic surveillance and look for wandering man/woman who was reported dead or missing recently.
For supply of new faces he may visit hospitals, funerals, etc. We can tighten up the blockade and allow entry only with identification proofs to such places.
Chances are low but not zero.
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[Question]
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How would melee combat develop in a zero-g environment? What kind of formations, and techniques would be developed to combat both other zero-g melee combatants and arrow fire?
This applies for both man-to-man combat, zone defense combat, and formation to formation combat.
[Answer]
Your primary concern in a zero-g melee fight is going to be Leverage. Any kind of melee strike needs leverage to drive home any sort of impact, be it a punch, kick, stab, slice, or anything. I can think of two major possibilities.
The first is any easy reliance on handholds and footholds in the corridors. If the environment is meant for transit, like a hallway, there will likely be small bars or nets or the like to allow people to easily move about the ship or station. In combat these could be used to anchor the combatants. Like in Ender's Game, the battles would be quite disorienting to a person used to 2D engagements since the person you're fighting might be anchored to the ceiling, but these would be far more reasonable than the second option.
The only other place to gain any leverage would be on another person. This person could be friend or foe, so grappling will likely be the dominant form of combat in this scenario. Launch yourself at the enemy, grab them, and wrestle until someone wins. Advanced techniques might include complicated multi-man chains to allow easy scrambling from one foe to the next, and tag team wrestling of sorts where numbers can be used to overwhelm enemies. Formations of combatants would have them all latched on to one another like skydivers, allowing for wrestling to take place while still keeping the foes from breaking through the formation. It could get crazy.
Personally, from a story perspective, the multi-man grapple brawls sound like an excellent story hook. In reality, most ships or stations will probably have handholds all over the corridors to allow for easy movement, which should make combat more familiar.
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The thing with zero-g is that nobody realizes just how much we rely on gravity for combat. Punches won't be as effective as they are on Earth, since the puncher won't be able to brace themselves against the floor. Throws and flips won't be as effective, since the lack of gravity means they won't be smacked to the ground as hard - and even if they do, you don't get as much of a positioning advantage because you aren't able to immediately pin them to the ground, since you're still floating in zero-g.
The most efficient way to deal with a melee combatant in zero-g will be to get them into a choke hold and knock them unconscious that way. Course, they'll be trying to do the same to you. Due to how you need something (floor, walls, ceiling) to move off of/change direction, physical size will matter even more than it does on Earth - the larger person will be able to dictate the movement of the fight more than the smaller person.
@MozerShmozer has a good point in his answer (posted at the same time I'm writing this) regarding handholds for movement, but goes in the wrong direction with it, IMO. Since combat is basically devolving into grappling/wrestling, those handholds will be huge, but they won't make combat more familiar. They'll make it more exotic. The handholds will allow you to do all sorts of cartwheels, spins, and flips that would be impossible in normal gravity. Think of the hallway fight scene from Inception, only even more so (after all, there was still gravity there, it was just rotating).
Jump toward the person and grab them, you both fly towards the wall. It looks like you're going to pin them to the wall because of the angle you jumped at. They reach down and grab a handhold on the floor. Suddenly you're flipping. They let go of the handhold. You keep flying toward the wall, but you're spinning. Now you're going to be the one who gets pinned to the wall, so you grab a handhold to the side. Now you're flipping towards the side wall instead of the back wall. They grab....
And of course, the whole time you're both trying to choke each other. What fun!
[Answer]
## Open hand combat - martial arts styles
An open hand combat martial style might emphasize Tui Shou or [listening hands](http://dandjurdjevic.blogspot.com/2010/01/push-hands-or-listening-hands-what-its.html), or perhaps [wing chun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_Chun), all of which naturally would have to be modified for freefall, but nonetheless would emphasize the importance of disrupting your opponents' rootedness and redirecting your opponent's energy.
If I were to learn an animal style for freefall combat, I would choose [Eagle Claw](http://www.fightingarts.com/reading/article.php?id=132), which does not even require you to use strikes, but rather emphasizes pressure points and hand strength (picture an eagle's claw grabbing a pressure point in your neck or other part of your body and you can see why gravity is not needed).
Also, refer to [Brazilian jiu-jitsu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_jiu-jitsu) which emphasizes grappling and "ground work", which could be interesting mid air. You might even decide to rename this sort of thing "air work" which sounds kind of cool. The point of the jiu-jitsu style is to force your opponents joints to go in a direction they don't want to go. The freefall style would completely remove any sort of judo throws since those would be nearly impossible to pull off and wouldn't have the same effect in null G.
Overall, Okinawan and Japanese styles, which are linear, would be de-emphasized, and more circular, Chinese styles would be more important, as they are less reliant on linear momentum. And naturally any style that does not use direct force but instead uses grappling or pressure points would be an advantage.
## Combat with hand-held weapons - bespoke for freefall
I picture a two-handed setup, the right hand holding a relatively light sharp weapon while the left hand holding something much heavier, which would act as sort of a anchor due to its relative inertia. Most moves involve thrusting forward and attacking with the right hand while thrusting in the exact opposite direction with the left so that you remain relatively stationary and your weapon has the greatest possible force behind it. When defending, you could lift your left hand in front of yourself, causing your own body to move backwards. In your guard stance, both weapons would be held as close to your body as possible, offering the most options.
## Combat with arrows - c.f. Ender's Game
Usually you put your archers in the back row, and they shoot over your infantry's heads. Well, that won't work-- arrows won't travel on a curve in freefall. That puts your archers in the front row, where they are exposed. To minimize exposure, they can shoot downward between their legs (like they did in Ender's Game) to offer the smallest possible target, perhaps bent at the knee with arrow-proof shields attached to their shins, held in a manner where the arrow could be fired through the slim slot between them. God help you if an arrow from other other team gets through-- you would need a serious cup in your pants to avoid a very painful injury.
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Since many people have discussed hand-to-hand combat, I will just skip to archery.
First off, there is no such thing as zero-G. Gravity is omnipresent in the universe. If mass exists somewhere in the universe, that mass' gravity is *always* present in the universe. Gravitational pull is lessened over distance, but *never* absent. Super low levels of gravity is called micro-gravity.
Lets take a look at archery in war on Earth. In your typical medieval/fantasy movie, you see the archers are safely shooting at the enemy from behind their allied ground troops. How can they shoot the enemy from *behind* their allies? Wouldn't they hit their allies? No, because they shoot *over* their allies. Earth's gravity pulls the arrows down. In order to shoot a long distance, the archers angle their bows above some number of degrees over being parallel to the ground in order to hit enemies on the ground. If you were to shoot an arrow level to the ground on Earth, gravity would pull it to the ground in half a second. The same goes for bullets. Rifleman angle their barrels upward to shoot farther, otherwise gravity would pull a bullet fired from a level gun to the ground in the same half second. To see this in action see this [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9wQVIEdKh8) from MythBusters, who did a great episode on this.
So now lets consider this in micro-gravity. Since gravity will not be affecting the trajectory (in a measurable way), every projectile will be travelling in a straight line. This means archers can *no longer stand directly behind their allies.* If they were, they would have to shoot level to the ground, and therefore they would shoot their allies in the back. Killing your allies is generally not an acceptable way to fight.
So what are the options? Well, in microgravity, the archers can be positioned above, below, or to the sides of their allies, as to not hit them in the back.
Of course, once the hand-to-hand combatants are locked into grappling battles, arrows become just as much as a hazard as they are an advantage. If two melee combatants were wrestling, how could an archer shoot an arrow and not risk hitting their ally? At that point they would be better off using melee weapons.
Another issue, albeit a less important one I think, is the distance of the arrow travel. Since micro-gravity will not pull the arrow into the ground, any arrow shot will travel a *long, long* distance. If the battle is inside a contained environment, obviously objects will stop them. If there is air in this environment, air resistance will eventually cause the arrow to slow over time and eventually come to a hovering stop. I don't know how far that would be, but I cant imagine air would slow it down in a significant amount of time. This means the archers need to be aware that any arrow that miss their intended targets will continue to be deadly projectiles for a long time.
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Fighting in Zero-G is like fighting in an ice rink with soap bars tied to your feet intead of ice skates.
## First Rule of Zero-G Combat: Avoid Air Time
While floating in space, either on your way to your next goal or because you got thrown there, you are a sitting duck. You are absolutely incapable of changing direction or orientation once you lose contact with objects of close to your mass. If you are especially unlucky, you got thrown into the air with a spin, so you'll be far too busy trying to figure out which wall you are actually heading for to give any thought to the landing, let alone anyone taking potshots at you. Firing any heavy weaponry will just worsen your spin problem and reduce your fire power by a lot since you can't take the recoil.
**Corollary 1: Outfit yourself with thrusters**
They give you back at least some control over your air time. Correctly designed, they can bring you out of an uncontrolled spin (I imagine a lot of computer aid because timing such complicated maneuvers manually will be quite hard) and get you out of the air as soon as possible. Maybe they can even help you dodge in midair. Of course, the thrusters should not be too bulky and should have enough juice to reliably last the entire combat...
**Corollary 2: Make Your Enemie Fly**
Throw them in the air so that they can easily be picked off by your snipers. Or so that you can fry them with your Laser Pistol. Or just to get them away from you -- depending on how far the next wall is in the direction you're throwing them in, they won't be back any time soon. Even if they do have thrusters, they first have to stop their momentum, and then gather positive thrust again to fly back to you. That gives you lots and lots of time to prepare to receive them.
## Second Rule: Every Action has a Reaction
No matter what you do in Zero-G -- everything has a reaction. Throw a really fast punch? You will be thrown into a slow backward spin. If the punch actually connects? Half the force of the punch will go into accelerating you backwards. Swing a heavy sword? The heavier the sword is, the more you will be swinging yourself, too. Just imaging floating under water and swinging a sword there. Good luck with aiming and exerting enough force to actually get anything done.
**Corollary 1: Get a grip**
Use gecko shoes, magnetic clamps, some really high-friction rubber soles, handholds -- anything to get a good grip on the next best heavy object. It means you're not on your lonely own anymore, weighing less than 100kg, but you've got the entire mass of a heavy object behind you. The force equation is F=ma . You can't get rid of the reaction force (F), but you can certainly lessen the acceleration (a) you experience by increasing your mass (m) by adding the heavy object (best case: you plus all 300 tons of the ISS).
That way, you get rid of the nasty backwards acceleration and can make use of your leverage to either throw your enemies into the air (see Rule 1), or make use of whatever Aikido or other force-redirecting martial art you know. Because even they need at least some leverage to work properly. Your rubber soles might not give you enough friction to power effective punches, but force redirection should be possible. Or, you know, give you a good enough stance to deal with the recoil of knifing them somewhere.
## Third Rule: There Is No Up And Down
See also Enders Game. You need to account for all three dimensions, and that you can station snipers on the ceiling just as well as on the ground. Especially in defensive situations, you need to make sure that the fire ranges cover all approaches, even from air.
## Weapons
Since recoil of any type is bad except for solidly mounted defense stations, projectile weaponry is pretty much out for Zero-G combat (and yes, plasma weapons emit gas plasma, so they are out, too). Heavy bludgeoning implements like clubs or large swords are out too, unless you can make sure you've got a really solid anchor to the ground and are unlikely to be pulled away from it.
Very sharp knives are better, since their damaging power mainly comes from the edge. Even better would be hand-held tazers.
Whips or hooked weaponry could be an option too if you do want to have the option of playing with your enemy like a yo-yo (throw them into the air, hook them back in as damaging a way as possible, throw them again, etc.). Whips especially could help with redirecting momentum when close to a surface.
It is also very important to have some kind of mid- to long-range recoilless weaponry to make use of your enemy's air time. Candidates for that are beam weapons of any kind like laser pistols, phasers, microwave weaponry, etc. Just make sure it is strong enough to fry human flesh while leaving your space station intact...
## Conclusion
One-on-one combat should look a lot like Asian wire kung fu for movies (e.g. [Hero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_(2002_film))) if there are no long-range weapons involved. Just fewer punches. Gather energy for powerful punches by thrusting yourself at your enemy from the opposite wall, keep the enemy from leaving your range of influence with whips or hooked weapons, or never let the enemy leave at all by immediately applying grappling techniques. With lasers, it will be more of a hide-and-seek with no close combat involved it all.
In zone defense, defenders have the advantage if they can make sure the attackers have to cross large stretches of air time. If the attackers can mount some kind of shield that lets them float across the empty space unharmed (if possible, with enough mass to make use of "Get a Grip") and they either manage to establish their own 'solid ground' close to the defenders or actually land besides the defenders, both are on even footing again.
General strategy for formation combat should probably take advantage of today's modern infantry strategies -- small highly mobile combat units entering from multiple angles, more like guerilla warfare than old-fashioned army clashes. Especially since those combat strategies will be applied *inside* a space station / ship / ... and not in empty space. So, think urban warfare instead of D-Day.
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Given the parameters, I suspect that the key issue is NOT getting in an hand to hand combat situation. The second part of the question; dodging arrows is a bit strange, but we might assume that everyone has gone to Bigelow style fabric habs, so the use of firearms is a huge no-no inside any spacecraft or station.
Answering the second part first, any combat will involve staying near a solid anchor point, or moving in two man "fire teams" as a minimum. When you see the enemy raise a crossbow in your direction, you push off rapidly to foil his aiming solution. The two man team push off against each other, so instead of one target, you have two.
If you are unfortunate enough to lose your own crossbow, or end up being manoeuvred into a grappling situation, a rope becomes your friend. Using a noose or trying to wrap a coil around your opponent both restricts their movement, while at the same time providing you with leverage, and a "base" to take off from, if required (pushing against your immobilized enemy much like you would push off against a fire team partner). Obviously a simple rope can be enhanced, and you could see lassos, whips, bolos, ropes coated with a sticky substance (a "smart" sticky substance which does not stick to you would be better), grappling hooks, ropes made out of chain or high strength substances with cut and abrasion resistance...
I also suspect that other grappling aids will be developed, such as gloves with sticky pads on fingers and palms, shoes much like the the ones pictured here.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xP9zO.jpg)
Uniforms should be very tight fitting and offer no obvious way for others to grab you, so no shoulder pads, molle loops, pockets with big buttons and so on. Think of a ninja suit adapted for space. This leaves the rather obvious question of how you carry anything, but if the space marine is carrying equipment in a separate "dry bag", they have both the resources close at hand and one extra object to cast off from to provide emergency mobility, something like this: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbZl16rSRgg>
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There is actually an operations guide for the International Space Station for the situation if a crew-member became hostile, under the topic "acute psychosis or suicidal behavior". The [recommended action](http://www.spaceref.com/iss/medical/8648.acute.psychosis.emerg.pdf) is to grapple, and tie the hands and ankles up with duct tape. They are also equipped with tranquilizers for such a situation.
A somewhat more detailed explanation is given in [this answer](https://space.stackexchange.com/a/2425/273), among other things it also discusses subduing someone in micro-gravity in a cramped area.
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First, a return to Obsidian blades. Most close quarters weaponry (swords, axes, daggers... maces, flails, clubs) rely on a forceful strike. Not gonna be easy in zero gravity, where a lot of the power of the strike would be spent pushing combatants away from each other. Unless both were well braced, the blow will not do much - for the same reasons turning into a blow makes it much less effective.
The other thing that can do damage is *sharpness*. A very sharp knife can slice even with very little force behind it, from the sharpness of the blade and simple lateral motion. It is the same technique that people use to cut delicate foods in a kitchen, gently drawing the knife across and letting the sharpness of the blade do the work. I can press a blade down onto my hand with some force and escape injury, if it doesn't slide sideways, or flick it across and draw blood. Much less effort to create an injury by flicking, than by trying brute force or grappling when force must act on both parties.
The major advantage of metal blades over stone is the resilience. Stone will shatter under force, maybe even if it is dropped, it is brittle. Metal is duller, and must be often sharpened to take an edge, but it can take more force, and be repaired if it gets dented. With much of the force taken out of the question (even dropping is unlikely to break without gravity's acceleration) I expect the greater sharpness - and obsidian is *much* sharper than steel - to weigh heavily on what makes an effective weapon. if two people are relatively close to each other, one can lightly draw an obsidian weapon over the other to cut into them, without the force of the blow forcing them apart.
So I would expect delicate precision to trump forceful blows in close combat - they're more efficient at injuring the enemy, instead of tumbling the opponents all over the place. A few ounces of force to swipe and land a cut, instead of shoving and tumbling away to give a bruise. Short to at most medium length blades, and as light and maneuverable as they can be made would be best, since you need the fine control a lot more than the momentum from a heavier blade and reach from a longer one.
Projectile weapons like arrows should still work, they injure by speed and sharpness, and the force that gives them speed is in the flexibility of the bow and the leverage between the arm and body of the archer. I expect aiming will be trickier, as people are floating around, but there's no reason the weapon won't work. Throwing knives might be trickier, they would need more force to give them speed, in order to be effective.
But really, one of the best projectile weapons would be blowdarts - they would be murderous in this kind of setting. Their speed comes from the breath and pressure building against the pipe walls, so they don't depend on their user finding good leverage, and if the darts are sharp they can penetrate quite deeply (like, a quarter inch into wood, which is much harder than people). Even plain darts can be dangerous if carefully aimed (deadly aimed at eyes or throat, still quite serious aimed at belly or various soft and squishy places on a person), and such darts were often poisoned for fighting or hunting with. Longer pipes mean more accuracy over distance on earth and less maneuverability up close, but without gravity to warp the trajectory I expect even a shorter blowpipe could be *quite effective*. Remember dodging can be quite trick if the target isn't near a wall.
Weapons with cords, like flails or whips or bolas, or even simple slings - I'm not sure. On the one hand, they can extend someone's reach and can probably be given extra force through body-generated momentum. On the other hand, without gravity I'm not sure if the momentum will build up or dial down. A sling, for example, can be given a lot of force by spinning it around before letting the stone fly - but without gravity to pull it down, or out, or *away* from the swinging hand, making the cord tight enough to move all parts of the weapon, it might just rotate without gaining speed. Same with a bola, swinging sideways. I'm imagining a forceful swing that travels down the line and twitches the weight on the end. So, might be excellent, might flop - I think a shorter cord might work better, since all the force has to come from the hand or arm and its more controlled, so it is much less of a force multiplier than if a longer cord will work. Maybe the ninja-style kunai which can have short cords attached, or short lines with grappling hooks.
Leverage. Well, hand- and foot-holds are well and good if one is near a wall, but combat probably shouldn't depend on being near one, when someone's life is on the line if they're not. I suspect there will be grappling lines of some sort, maybe swung (if the longer lines can be controlled), maybe shot out - a mechanism like a crossbow might work if a grapple gun is not allowed, or maybe simply thrown like darts. Depending on the material of the walls, this be something sharp to dig in and hold, or something very adhesive to stick fast.
The line can then be an anchor-point to the nearest wall, used to dodge or navigate by adding sideways momentum, or directly used in combat by being landed on a person or object to capture them and drag them back, tangle them in the lines, slice into them if sharp or get adhesive over things if sticky (like landing on the junction of a weapon sheath so the weapon sticks to it). Given their use, I would expect people to have several such lines available for normal navigation as well as combat, and because retrieving them might not always be feasible, someone cuts the line, someone needs to maneuver and drag their opponent in, etc.
I'm not sure about formations and such, I expect everyone would need a lot of room until they know how this kind of combat works. There will be a lot more movement as fighters drift around, bounce off walls and each other, keep moving till something stops them. Maybe they could work in pairs or trios at most, so they can use each other for leverage and watch each other's backs... but more than that would have a really high chance of fouling each other up more than helping.
Someone might be able to brace more people in a smaller place, or tether people at intervals to a wall if they're on the defensive, know or can modify the space. A knowledge of local leverage could make them mobile within their little areas, letting them work together more densely, and if they've got projectiles, they can produce something like mass fire, and it could be quite effective at defending a space... but they also can't dodge too much to avoid any return fire, and if the enemy gets too close to their position, that bracing in will make it harder for them to get out and avoid being trapped.
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# Warrior Classes
I imagine there would be multiple styles incorporating combined arms tactics just like we have in earth surface gravity. You would want ranged weapons to shape the battle space, bladed weapons for their lethality, and impact weapons for their momentum.
A fighter that relies on speed and agility would forgo heavy armor, but this would make them vulnerable to ranged weapons (darts, arrows, etc.). I would expect sword/knife wielders to take this tactic. They might carry a small shield like a buckler as defense against ranged weapons, but this would be a huge compromise and provide limited protection. However, they would likely be the major damage dealers.
A fighter that relies on bulk and mass would armor up to protect against projectiles and blades, and would likely prefer impact weapons (clubs, hammers, polearms). These would be the front-line warriors and the ones who provide cover for their allies. They might carry large shields (kite, etc.) or stick with 2-handed weapons with a long moment arm.
And, of course, the support fighter would use ranged weapons to deter the lightly armored warriors from closing too quickly, massing, or approaching lightly defended targets. They would be able to project force across the widest distances the most quickly, so you would always want them available, but away from the front lines.
# Tactics
It is quite likely that all fighters will have some heavy tool/weapon on their person at all times. Why? Because if you get stuck away from a wall or other leverage point, and someone fires a projectile at you, you are a sitting duck. If you carry something with heft and some distance, you can use that to at least dodge a short distance. In an emergency, you can throw the object for even more momentum (but obviously, that puts you at risk until you can recover your counterweight).
For this reason, longer weapons may be preferred to shorter ones, depending on what kind of attack is favored. A halberd could be a fearsome weapon in the hands of an armored defender. A fast striker who closes with a sword would have to contend with the pointy end and the prospect of their own momentum impaling them. A heavy blade on a long pole would give the defender a nice moment arm for pivoting to avoid projectiles even in open space. Or, if the defender or his ally is anchored, the halberd could be used to pass momentum/anchoring to/from the ally.
Alternatively, dual wielding shorter weapons would offer even faster reaction times (perhaps necessary for sword wielders with lesser armor). A sword attacker would want a defensive sword to parry spear/halberd thrusts, or a buckler to fend off ranged attacks. Against lightly armored foes, a sword could be quite deadly, but against the armored defenders, a vulnerable strike would probably be required. Even so, sword warriors may carry something like a flail to provide emergency maneuvering away from anchors. Or, they may carry several, attached to a belt, so that they can make mid-course corrections by throwing weights at walls as they fly through the hallways.
One of the benefits of microgravity is that warriors *can* fly much like you see in stylized martial arts films (e.g., Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), but the downside is that once "aloft", they cannot easily change course. Thus, having throwable attached weights which can grapple or just bounce off walls may give critical maneuverability for high-speed lunges at the enemy.
Finally, the ranged fighters would use their projectile weapons to prevent/deter flanking attacks and direct the opposing forces towards their strongest defenders. They would also make opportunity attacks against fighters that ended up in a vulnerable position while focusing on someone else. At some point, they may be forced to engage in melee combat as well, or perhaps they would instead go for high agility and lend their momentum/anchoring to their allies, relying on others to deal damage.
# Conclusion
What I do not envision is much grappling. Bare-handed fighting is not likely to result in much damage. Any close-quarters combat will at least call for a knife, sword, or thrusting point. All momentum will need to be generated by arms and legs, with no contribution from gravity. Thus, slicing and piercing would be the most effective forms of damage, augmented by poisons, naturally. Blunt force could only be delivered by lucky blows or an inattentive defender. Any successful pure momentum attack would be twice as effective with a blade or point involved.
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Suppose you became immortal\* or came by the ability to live for thousands of years due to some inexplicable/irrelevant event (you still appear to be human by all standards except aging). What would be the best way for an immortal to live in an American society while maintaining access to benefits of that society such as life, freedom and property?
This question just came to me as a "What happens after?..." type of scenario.
Feel free to answer either question below. The best answer should focus more on the idea of keeping control of their life, freedoms and property. How they go about it is up to you; the best answer should be somewhat realistic.
1. What might an immortal do to prevent suspicions (lack of gray hair/wrinkles 50 years later anyone) and evade detection by the government? (Dissection doesn't sound fun, nor would being a lab rat for some medical/pharmaceutical corporation, needless to say. Joe Average would like to maintain his freedom.)
-Or-
2. What might an immortal do through legal means to declare their status to the government and gain recognition as an immortal with the rights to the fruits of their labor? Could they be declared a protected class of citizen?
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\*It should be noted that immortality is not equal to invincibility, but rather increased lifespan.
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Creating a series of identities and disposing of old ones would actually be reasonably easy, leaving the world knowing your immortal as a series of parents and children.
There was [a presentation at Def Con earlier this year](http://www.computerworld.com/article/2966130/cybercrime-hacking/def-con-how-to-virtually-kill-someone-or-cash-in-on-fake-babies.html) on the subject of virtually killing people and creating identities (Note: the link to the presentation in the article is broken. [Here is the correct link](https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2023/DEF%20CON%2023%20presentations/DEFCON-23-Chris-Rock-I-Will-Kill-You-How-to-Get-Away-with-Murder.pdf)). While their ideas on the use of said methods tended towards fraud (government child benefits, etc.) and organized crime (money laundering, smuggling, etc.), they are totally applicable to your immortal.
Creating a new identify would just be a matter of registering a home birth in some convenient jurisdiction (the presentation used Arizona). Then you put that baby identity "on the shelf" as they refer to it in the article until it's old enough to plausibly be you, at which point you kill off your current identity in by registering their death with a non-suspicious cause as a funeral director (the UK and Australia have pretty lax regulations on who can set themselves up as such) and assume the new identity, with the former identity's will leaving everything to the new identity.
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Well, some of it depends on how they find out they are immortal. I would guess that discovering it by waiting will take at least 50-60 years before one suspects depending on what 'age' one stops aging at. It would be at least 20-30 years past that point, since they might just be 'aging gracefully'.
The first 50-100 years after the realization would be difficult, friends and family dying away. But after awhile, they would learn to 'die' and 'inherit' their wealth. Now in the US and other western countries, they can create a Corporation for all of their stuff, and just change the ownership and board periodically. The longer you live the easier it should be to amass wealth and power (if that is what you want).
It is also possible that 'ownership' becomes disillusioning and they just try to live a normal life over and over, or turn into a hermit.
After a thousand years you could have huge wealth without even trying, but if there is no one else like you, suicide might become an option since you will have outlived generations of friends and family, countries will have risen and fallen, your birth will be 'ancient' history. Unless you find something to drive you, say manipulating humanity, since in this time frame, that is something someone might have success at.
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I can see a few viable alternatives.
# Become a nameless wanderer
We can look at a passing stranger's face, but it will quickly be forgotten if it doesn't have meaning. So if you want to remain undetected, simply *avoid forming relationships with other human beings*. Wander from city to city, scrounging through trash cans and begging for food with a cardboard sign. Don't talk. Don't make eye contact. Nobody's going to remember you in a week, let alone long enough for them to notice anything out of the ordinary. By then, you're gone. Don't obtain identification, don't have legal ownership of anything. If you're female and living in a predominantly Muslim country, wear a Hijab for extra privacy(I guess you'd be doing that already).
# Live as a hermit
There are a few ways I can imagine doing this. One might be to live in some part of the wilderness that is off-limits, say, Chernobyl, or in a large forest preserve somewhere in a U.S. national park. But why live in squalor, when grandeur will suffice?
As others have pointed out, immortality + compound interest eventually leads to insane wealth. Once you're wealthy, it's easy to avoid all human contact. Just lock yourself in your study all day, getting daily food and newspaper deliveries online. These services can be paid for by a "nonprofit foundation," which commits itself to "providing for the reclusive descendants of a wealthy Mr. X," or something similar.
# Become a cult leader
Cult leaders sometimes claim they offer the secret of immortality to others, but this claim is a lot more powerful if it's actually true(you might not actually have the secret of immortality, but everyone thinks you do). All you have to do is preach virtue, morality, and other feel-good religious things, while continuing to prove your point by not dying, and you can slowly turn your small cult into a major world religion. If Jesus did it in 30 years, you should be able to do it in 1000 no problem.
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*The public need not notice your lack of aging.*
Here's my idea:
1. Change your appearance so that you look elderly, once you're 'old' enough that the appearance would seem normal.
2. Visit a different country for a few years, after changing it back.
3. Repeat from step one.
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Let's say the event happened a couple of decades ago. The immortal stopped biological aging. How would the immortal (and his or her doctor) be able to tell immortality from slow aging?
* Ten years after, the immortal goes to a physical and the doctor comments casually how the immortal looks younger than his or her age.
* Twenty years after, the doctor might *seriously* wonder.
* Thirty years after, the doctor asks politely for permission to do some more tests and to write it up in a medical journal. Patient confidentiality is promised, but in an age of google it won't hold.
* After that, the "freak medical condition" is in the textbooks.
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I have a group of immortal characters (vampires) in one of my stories that I had to answer the same questions for. In the end, I decided that it would be most interesting if they had a sort off symbiotic relationship the government.
The government can provide whatever fake paperwork they might want (and, in my case, no-questions-asked blood)
The immortals, being in this case vampires, are used as a (possibly part-time) secret super-soldier.
Neither group want the general public to know about the immortals, for thier own reasons. The vampires don't want to be hunted down by fanatics and the government prefers to keep their secret weapons secret.
This situation wouldn't be unique to vampires. The government could find similar use for any unkillable person, who, by the way, would likely have a whole lot more skilled at that sort of thing (or any sort of thing) because they've had so long to practice.
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You could leave the country and fake your death before the fact that you are not aging normally becomes apparent. Then re-enter with a new identity. I'm sure with the right advice and connections it would be easy to find a way to maintain your property through different types of funds or selling a business to your next false identity. Anyway I'm sure you get the drift.
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## Go for Option 1 though Option 2 may be inevitable
For all but the last few decades of human history, the immortal could have moved about at will without difficulty. It would be exceptionally easy to build a new identity in a new place once the immortal had lived in one place long enough for people to get suspicious. Hereditary titles won't be achievable without considerable difficulty but status as a wealthy merchant would work quite nicely.
However, in modern times, laying low and just restarting somewhere else will become increasingly difficult. When you must establish your identity with strong(ish) authentication methods to participate in modern society in any meaningful way (or be an identity thief, which hopefully will become more difficult as time goes by), it's going to become increasingly difficult to not live as a hermit. Eventually, the trade-off between anonymity and participation in society may tip towards asking for government sanctioned identity changes.
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Regrettably, Western society is still not ready for bodily immortality, let alone bodily immortality of the esoteric, achieved-through-the-powers-of-consciousness-alone variety (without vampirism), which is the variety I like. This reminds me of the movie "The age of Adaline".
I suspect there are actually a few immortals or quasi-immortals on the loose today of just this esoteric variety, mostly undocumented yogis around India, or hermits. Leonard Orr talks about this and he says he has met several of these quasi-immortals. The most spectacular and venerated case is that of Babaji, although there is confusion about him, as some say he is an avatar (not born of a woman).
Inevitably, these immortals or quasi-immortals must go into hiding or semi-hiding, eschewing contact with most of the world, which could contaminate and potentially (perhaps) destroy their vibration.
I hear that Jesús Jofre, who is a friend of a good friend of mine, while in Perú came in contact with a secretive order of enlightened beings. Apparently they achieved levitation while forming a circle. Jesús has seemingly reported in his book "Contacto con Sharim" (in Spanish), which I don't have myself, but about which I have heard a summary, that one day he managed to take a peek at their passports. The persons appeared no older than 30; they were actually 80 or 90 per their passports. I have yet to ask Jesús looking him in the eye, if this part of his story is true, ask him to swear by it, because a passport like that in someone looking like a youngster would sure raise a red flag when crossing a national border! Maybe they didn't travel internationally?
Some selected members of that order were expected to leave everything (possessions, family...) to start a trip around the world on a mission, presumably without having to show their passports...
...
I wish I could just attain this form of esoteric immortality, and show up a thousand years later at the local Police station to renew my Spanish national ID card, without hiding anything. But the world is just not ready for this!
The solution, I feel, is to make the world ready for this, as I do not support illegal or delinquent subterfuges like identity theft..., and as I still refuse to give up on the hope of attaining immortality like that myself, chimerical as this hope seems at the moment.
...
Scientific research is beginning to look at bioengineering or nanotechnology or other methods to retard human ageing, but these methods for the most part ignore the existence of the human soul and of the subtle, but fundamental, energy interplay with other vibrational planes of existence. Furthermore, these methods will at first become available only for the super-rich. As their prices drop they will be accommodated gradually into the structure of society and social services, but this may have at that time serious, perhaps irreversible, consequences by way of social inequality.
[Answer]
I would take an entirely different direction.
**Come out to the world as the first immortal incredibly publicly and start a Web AMA or series**
By coming out publicly and starting a regular series of online communications, The world's citizens can keep tabs on your well being and ask questions if you disappear. It would make it much harder for a government to make you disappear for testing.
Then, take a job as a lab test subject. Getting a few *Legal* pokes and prods for science would lower the amount the government would be willing to risk by abducting you when combined with your online presence. They can acquire some test data and you get paid (and probably quite handsomely). This has the added side effect of possibly revealing exactly what your ability does without years of self study.
There is no need to be illegal and hide if you can play your cards right and become a celebrity.
[Answer]
Join the Peace Corps and leave for a couple of decades. Have a 'child' documented in a third world country. A couple of decades later the 'adult' applies for U.S. citizenship and returns to States with his 'father' after decades of service abroad. All his paperwork prepared in Third World can be forged with your own biometrics for next to nothing.
Make sure you are not traveling from a country hostile to the U.S. or sponsors terrorism.
After you arrive in States pay off the decoy and give him new identity papers. Wave bye bye.
Go to college as your son. JOIN army as your son to 'update' your biometrics in the System.
Do your service time then get out and start your career. You should be good for another 40 years. Then start dying your hair. Again. RINSE. REPEAT.
[Answer]
There are lots of ways an immortal can hide, even in this day and age.
The most obvious is, don't get famous. If fame happens upon you (save a kid from a burning building or something), let the furor die down, then do a perfectly natural move to another state or country. Forge a new identity there.
That aside, I imagine they'd do it the way criminals do; have a bunch of assumed identities ready and waiting. That would be a good idea to always have on hand, as well as a go bag with money and necessities in case the immortal needs to split rather quickly.
Of course, to get such IDs means the immortal will make contacts in the underworld, so it's not beyond the pale that they can also find a hacker to help them erase their footprint in their past identity and become someone new. Digital trails are only as good as the databases that hold them.
Hair can be dyed grey; they sell silver hair dye now. If male, hair can also be shaved bald, in which case no one will notice hair color. Women and men both can also wear wigs. Men can grow a beard to age themselves and change their look, while women can use makeup tricks and, as the "grow older" just stop using it (women who don't use makeup are often accused of looking old and/or ill). Clothing also figures heavily into our perception of age--if the immortal always carefully dresses in the type of clothing we expect for their age group chances are that people will question their age less. Also, claiming some Asian genetics could help since there is the impression that folks from that area of the world never look their real age.
And never forget how someone *acts*. The teenage slouch, the middle-aged ramble, the swift pace of a young urban professional--you have an idea in your head already of what these things look like because you've seen them before. We all have. And immortal can "age" by aging their vocabulary and actions. While in their "twenties" they favor beer, "thirties" wine, "and in their "forties" they switch to whiskey. Maybe not. But small touches like that added together can make a person a chameleon.
Done well, and lack of wrinkles will probably just get them envy and some head shaking, so long as they don't push their identity too far past the 45-55 year old window, depending on the character of their face. Babyfaces may want to cut out earlier, stronger features can probably pull off later. Either way they can probably pull off a good 40 years in any given area, more if the "elder" persona becomes a cranky hermit and people now are interacting with their "nephew/son/niece/daughter" who have agreed to care for them as they age.
Being unseen isn't too hard either. Alaska is still a good place to vanish to, sometimes for decades. Anywhere rural is a great place to vanish. The locals might pay attention, but overall no one important pays attention to the locals because they assume they're unintelligent, bigoted, and given to believing conspiracy theories and fake news. Plus, if you make friends easily and go to the local church and act devoted, they'll pretty much leave you alone. Do them a solid and they'll actively close ranks around you, no matter how weird you might be.
And don't forget how much of this country (if this is set in America) is run down and deserted. There are ghosts towns, empty houses and businesses, old sewer and rail lines, and other things just all *over* the place. Heck, there was a runaway kid who lived at the bottom of an elevator shaft for a couple months, and the only reason they were ever caught was because they liked to fry hot dogs and people noticed the smell. Any immortal who learns how to survive on very little could wander into a place like that and not be seen for *years*.
Becoming part of a criminal/minority (not in the racial sense)/endangered group (motorcycle gang/impoverished farmer/homeless) can make a man vanish instantly. People actually *work* at not seeing those sorts of folks, either out of fear or a latent guilt they don't want to feel.
And then there's always another country. Developed nations might be plastered with Big Brother levels of tech, but much of the world is not. Even those places that are still have less policed rural areas. The entire world is full of jungles, deserts, ocean islands, sprawling forests, and more. The canny immortal could do an excellently credible job of falling off the planet if they really put their mind to it. Even one strapped for funds could sneak into Mexico and then just make a beeline for the nearest South American jungle.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the forensic levels of police are not nearly what you see on TV. DNA is not used as often as it should be, and most departments have no budget for shiny, crime solving tech, even when it does exist (and generally TV makes most of it up). So an immortal doesn't have much to worry about unless they *actively* have someone investigating them.
As for item 2--legal channels--is your immortal willing to spend a fortune and wait decades, then fight whatever decision is made for another decade or so, all while dodging people who want to own, harm, or end them in the meantime? If the answer is no, then s/he may want to skip legal channels altogether.
If you want legal channels your best bet is to set up some shady government agency who know their identity but keep it on the down low. In that case your immortal might live at a special government site where no one cares about their lack of aging, with the drawback that, in return the government gets...something, whatever it is they feel is useful, as well as semi-intrusively keeping tabs on the immortal's behavior and/or laying down rules they must follow.
[Answer]
The government doesn't care enough to track different people that look the same. You could really just move back and forth between two countries, although it would be best to move between more, just in case.
[Answer]
Might be dublicate with my previous question [How would a young girl/boy (about 14) who never gets old survive in the 16th century?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/158845/how-would-a-young-girl-boy-about-14-who-never-gets-old-survive-in-the-16th-cen)
How to hide identification?
* Most Important : do not attract too much attention.
Why: you are immortal but you are might not a specialist in spying, concealing,... You just a person who want to make a living. If a national spy network of any country looking for you, there is not much to hide.
* The following method base on idea of staying low profile
* Become a traveller. Which mean you fake your document once a while, and you better switch your country too. Do it once a decade.
* Do the job that does not require you to make a lot of relationships that people will remember (CEO is not good, but a programmer is excellent).
======================
But when to reveal the immortality ?
How to reveal the immortality and benefit from it?
First, work in the job something that experience is important. Like doctor, CEO, supreme leader,.... And be famous, gain good reputation for your position.
Then keep doing the job. Do not move. You better let people figure out by themselves your immortality first before you make any announcements. Announcement your immortality without backing evidence or reputation may backfire.
Do not announce your immortality unless you have clear purposes for it (propaganda for example ).
Benefit: you will gain much more reputation and power than you would already have. You make more money, your word have more weight. Your name will go down history as
* a doctor with more than 100 year exp and have dexterity of an young man.
* an " immortal" supreme leader who is actually immortal. (like those in North Korea)
* a historian,a living witness, who participated in both world war.
[Answer]
Maybe it's better if you are a women. Because like so you just always got pregnant by some unknown guy and you can allways pass all you have to your daugther which is you. Like this no one searches for a mother or a father because they all think you do not know the father either.
Also I would suggest to live a really normal live to the outside as it is very strange yet to have no family at all and you want to be as unrecognized as however possible. You should then change your country, but allways to a place where based on your looks one could think you are native. You always have to adapt to the new Ideology and the language of the people which as you see with old people is not a very easy task.
As you have unlimited time to learn new things you could become a surgeon and modify your own face from "life" to "life".
I for me think that to not be found is either close to inpossible if you don't know that your immortal because you will go see a doctor he tells the state and you find yourself side by side with those labor-rats, or not that dificult if you know it because you have plenty of time to plan some sick master plans. And after the twentiest time you do a "Rebirth" it's not such a complicated thing anymore.
Plottwist:
The user who made the question is immortal and tries to find a way to hide his identity ;)
[Answer]
For the most part, this would only be an emerging problem, not one that the immortal would have had to deal with in the past. Simply moving around every few decades would suffice to "reset" the immortals life. Up until VERY recently correspondence alone was enough to maintain a high level of discourse with legal and financial firms, so it would only be necessary to ensure that the immortal didn't spend a lot of time with a young partner of the law firm handling his finances and then meet that person again, decades later. But even then, unless the immortal had a LOT of photographs taken, it is highly unlikely that anyone would remember the person clearly enough to determine that they are identical in appearance, not just similar.
How old does the immortal appear? This is critical, since if they appear to be a teenager the time they can spend in any one place is limited. Of course they can probably just hop from university to university, always getting lost in the midst of fresh faces. An older appearing immortal could stretch things out for decades with subtle make-up and facial hair changes.
In the modern era things will become more tricky, at least in America and Europe. Depending on his ethnicity there are still countries where money is all you need. Biometrics (fingerprints, retinal scans, DNA, facial mapping) will start to become the undoing of an immortal going forward. But key here is disbelief. A security guard or bank flunky is going to first assume that a fingerprint scan telling him the gentleman in front of him is 120 years old is a computer error. Biometrics are just links in a database, so presumably the immortal will spend a lot of time altering the database, destroying archives of his past activities (fires and flooding have destroyed MANY records).
A passport, social security card, drivers license and the like is still pretty trivial to fake or acquire. Bribing officials, hacking records, and stealing identities will be second nature to the immortal, though these techniques will become less and less effective in industrialized countries heading forward.
Presumably the immortal, if he has been around for centuries already, has accumulated great wealth, and has learned to be adaptive and responsive to the changing times, would actually be deliberately molding his preferred society to accommodate him. He could be involved in identity surveillance technology in order to keep himself out of it. He could be ordering google images to scrub his image from all archives. Pay media to NOT report or show him (assuming that he still likes to hobnob with folks the media WOULD be following around). Clearly he can't be a movie star or celebrity, but then again, most folks aren't.
[Answer]
If you were immortal creating a series of new identities seems like a relativley easy method; however, passports and other forms of photo id, are scanned at the border with facial recognition software, and screened against any false identities or warrants. You would either need to "modify" your features for each new identity, hack the system, or by pass the borders for around half an average life span or more. Your new identity wouldn't have to be "air tight" though, just good enough to pass under the radar. Most ppl aren't walking the street looking at every face, on the slim chance of spotting an immortal, and should someone ever spot one, most ppl would readly except the "every body has a double" explanation. As long as an immortal never stayed anywhere for too long, they could pass under the gov and public radar indefinetly, utilizing shell corps and temp hidden bank accounts, for their financial stability.
[Answer]
To avoid detection by "not apparently aging", you would simply move every decade or so, while otherwise living a normal life. Every time you move, a good part of your friends and acquaintances disappears after a short time, but you have a transition period to make new friends so you don't suffer from social isolation. After 3-4 moves, none of the old friends should be left and the new ones don't notice, because basically nobody knows you for more than 20 years. Just be a bit uptight about your age (socially accepted if you are a woman).
For changing your identity in regards of government, taxes, etc. other answers have already written about the process. I would add that most controls could be avoided by changing country every third or so move. I recently moved to jus a neighbouring country, same language etc. - but there is an incredible disconnect between them on the beaurocracy level that you don't believe until you've seen it. If you change citizenship as well, you will be an unknown when you return 30 or 60 years later.
[Answer]
I'd definitely recommend checking out the movie "[The man from Earth](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756683/)". Here the titular character is essentially the same as your protagonist, being alive since the stone age. He manages to evade suspicion by relocating and forging a new identity every ten or so years, sometimes passing himself off as the son of one of his previous identities.
The details are not explored, however, so we don't learn the exact mechanics of creating a new identity and disposing of the old one, or the transfer of wealth and certifications between the personas. This is somewhat explained by him by telling that this process (changing identities) has become quite difficult recently, implying that only the last 1% or so of his "reincarnations" were troublesome.
As for transferring documents and certifications it is implied that he doesn't bother with them, as he says his medical degree is from the 1800s and hasn't updated his knowledge since then. To avoid this need he just works as professors of History, Paleonthology, Art History or another similar field where his own experiences and knowledge is enough for the job, or alternatively in professions that don't require certifications.
Your immortal who grew up in the environment of today or the recent past might have a different set of expectations and therefore might not be content with raising pigs for a living so you could opt for longer intervals between identities which would allow for re-obtaining the necessary certifications in a quicker pace, since there is no need for learning everything from the beginning, only what has changed since the last persona transfer. The schools might see your immortal as a curiously gifted student who can blaze through three years worth of curriculum in a year or so, but this is nothing too suspicious.
Then in the next twenty or so years with the use of make-up and by reducing close personal contact to the necessary levels the signs of not aging could be masked. After which it is back to the planning board to craft a new identity using legal trickery and/or the black market. This identity can then inherit the wealth of the current one and preferably move to another location that is suitably far from the current place, preferably to another country or continent.
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[Question]
[
[Darmstadt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Space_Operations_Centre), Germany, current day: All ESA members meet on super secret meeting. They had it enough with NASA and want to claim their first place in space. How do they want to do it? Landing manned mission on Mars first!
"Err... Do we have money for that? We have to bail out Greece first." Says the German colleague.
"That's right. But still, we can fake it for just few bucks, right?!" asks someone.
So, the question is: **What is the minimum amount of money (in EUR) to successfully fake Mars landing?**
* Target "landing": 2020.
* Target audience: Everyone, excluding tinfoil hat freaks (and they will not believe even the real landing...)
* Target duration of hoax being believable: 2040 (at least 20 years)
* In other words: All the politicians involved in the hoax want to be re-elected.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GVpML.jpg)
One big handvawe: Everyone involved in the process agrees with the fact, that ESA is going to fake it. They just want to hear [Ode to Joy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthem_of_Europe) from space for a change.
**Bonus points** for elaborate guess how many people do I need being involved.
**Keep in mind:** This is ESA/European mission only. So if you need specific place to fake the landing, you have to find such place inside [Schengen Area](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area). Faking the landing at Atacama dessert is no-no.
**Winning criteria:** Cheapest plan
[Answer]
If the hoax is to hold, you have to put enough money for a credible mission into the ESA budget, and that money has to end up on the balance sheets of tech companies. Just hiding it in Swiss bank accounts won't do.
Also, people are going to track the transmissions of the Mars ship. Amateur astronomers will watch the reentry.
So it seems that you have to send *something* to Mars and get *something* back. Send an unmanned sample-return probe and claim that it was manned all along. A couple of billion, or perhaps a few hundred million?
There already was a [movie](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077294/) about that scenario, of course.
[Answer]
The spacecraft used for the transfer is going to have to be believably massive and is actually going to have to go to Mars and come back. That's a big chunk of a real manned Mars mission right there. People can see the thing in orbit and will be able to track it (particularly its engines when thrusting). The exhaust from the engines will also be a dead giveaway for it being significantly smaller than it is supposed to be. It will also be obvious if the rockets launching the components are smaller than they should be.
Even saving on things like life support and safety systems would be difficult. You are going to have to design and test the systems to maintain the illusion, otherwise the people doing that design will be suspicious. Or you could bring *everyone* involved in the design, testing, and construction into the conspiracy and hope that none of them leak anything, and then keep the designs secret so outsiders can't check them, otherwise the fact that no effort was made in designing them would become obvious.
You are going to have to have a fake crew. Their training is going to be fairly visible, and so will cost about as much for a fake mission as a real one. They are also going to have to go into hiding for the duration of the mission proper (months to years). To be believable they are also going to have to be the kind of people who would be expected to go on such a mission. Reasonably well known members of the scientific community and possibly from military aviation (the latter probably being less likely for the ESA than for NASA) using a "no name" crew is going to be suspicious, as will an all military crew from the ESA.
So you have to get a group of scientists, respected ones who will have a strong interest in having a real manned mission to Mars to agree to go through all the difficult training, and then go into hiding for over a year, then keep the secret for decades afterwards. This would be a *massive* breach of scientific ethics and a commensurate risk to the professional reputations that's essentially certain to be uncovered eventually, even if the hoax could be pulled off temporarily.
The crew are also going to expected to interact with Earth on video (with appropriate time delay) while in transit. So fake zero-G footage will need to be prepared on time scales ranging from immediately to half an hour as the mission progresses. Free fall in an aircraft can't be faked for long enough and the other option is "hiding" on a human habitable spacecraft in orbit. (which would need to be built in addition to the fake Mars ship) and would require getting the crew to it rather than the Mars ship (secretly), then down to Earth to fake the landing without anyone noticing, then back up again without anyone noticing to fake the trip back, and then get them back down without anyone noticing that they came from the wrong spacecraft.
A spin gravity habitat could be included on the fake ship, but spin gravity, especially on a small enough diameter to be practical to build with current technology would have noticeable differences from real gravity. It would also make the fake ship more expensive to build, and viewers might wonder why the crew never send videos from the zero gravity area of the ship (at least not pre-recorded videos or ones with time for post production special effects, or short enough ones to be made from a diving aircraft.
In short, it's even more laughable than the idea of the moon landings being fake, even if you go through the complete motions of sending a crew capable ship and just not putting any people on it, which would be just as expensive and so would completely defeat the point, and built another long term human habitable spacecraft in orbit in secret.
[Answer]
# Whatever it would take to actually perform a manned Mars landing.
As my dad always tells me, "follow the money."
Remember that [ESA's budget is public](http://www.esa.int/For_Media/Highlights/ESA_budget_2015), as are the [profits and revenues](http://www.arianespace.com/news-press-release/2015/5-18-2015-FinancialResults2014.asp) of all its contractors.
Also remember that the global financial market is one of the most heavily scrutinized systems on the planet. Everyone will notice if the [hundreds of billions of dollars](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/3409/what-is-the-cost-estimate-for-a-manned-mars-mission) that would be required for such a mission (and that ESA would have to claim to be spending) never appear. Therefore ESA's only option is to *actually spend the money*.
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As [smithkm covers in some detail](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/22991/3407), not only would ESA have to spend the same amount of money, they would have to spend it on the same things; that is, they would actually have to *buy an entire Mars mission*.
Also, if the politicians supporting this mission want to be re-elected, the mission will have to appear to be a success, returning actual data or samples (neither of which can be convincingly faked, nor reasonably withheld from the international scientific community). At this point ESA has actually conducted complete unmanned Mars mission *and* paid for a manned one, so why fake it?
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Doing it in a studio has some problems with how convincing it will look, especially under the scrutiny of the tin foil hat people. You will want shots of the rocket landing from a camera attached to the rocket. I don't think todays CGI will hold up, mainly because it will look similar to all the CGI we've been seeing in films like Interstellar etc today.
My idea would be to land on the moon and then post process the footage to make the surface look red. There are areas of the moon that look just like the surface of mars, finding the right one might require sending out a probe in front. It would be easy to film because you just act like it actually is Mars and do everything the exact same way. Post processing the footage to make the surface red and maybe haze out the sky a little would be relatively cheap and easy too.
With the same technology they used to land on the moon before, there are probably ways to cut corners and do it *relatively* cheap. Compared to landing on Mars you will probably save billions.
Edit:
Just to add a few more details to make the hoax more convincing. As I stated in the comments to this answer, people will want to see the rocket leaving the Earths atmosphere and re-entering, not an easy way around this than actually doing it.
Once behind the moon, you split the rocket in half and send half of it to Mars, where it will go behind Mars and crash into the surface (hopefully won't be discovered for 20 years). This will give astronomers the impression that you went and landed behind Mars.
The half of the rocket with astronauts in will land on the "dark" side of the moon (which isn't actually dark). They will film the landing, and edit it on their trusty laptops which they took along with them (or send it encrypted back to Earth if they're not good at Adobe After-Effects).
When the Mars-bound rocket gets to Mars, they send the edited footage unencrypted back to Earth for the viewers back home. They then take off from the moon and head back to Earth and do everything as normal.
[Answer]
The main thing is to keep the number of people knowing what's going on down.
Ship another probe to mars with a packed billboard. Unpack it for Curiosity to "find". The billboard reads "Mars Tours, $10,000 a head, call 8675309", or some number that doesn't actually work. Edit phone company records to make it appear the line was shut down for trademark violations, and the previous owner was Mars, Inc. Bribe some celebrity to claim to have taken the tour. Use red desert dust (where they filmed The Martian) to mess up his boots.
Cost: about the same as Curiosity + two bribe (one celebrity, one phone company employee).
People in on it: the people who assemble the probe + one JPL employee (to make it appear the mission was lost) + celebrity + phone company employee.
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[Question]
[
Note: I am aware of this question [Could two planets be tidally locked to each other so close they share their atmosphere?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/4460/could-two-planets-be-tidally-locked-to-each-other-so-close-they-share-their-atmo)
My question is not about that. It is specifically about human travel.
---
By a cosmic accident, Slartibartfast's design, or through God's will there is a planet that is shaped like an old-fashioned dumbbell.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ISOXi.jpg)
Each lobe is Earth-sized and Earth-like in terms of their basic composition - at least on the surface. What lies under the surface may be assumed to be whatever is necessary to hold the structure together. You can assume a degree of hollowness if that helps with the plausibility.
The 'bar' joining the lobes is mainly a natural form of steel. It connects directly to the core of each lobe. Its proportions are exactly as shown in the picture. The bar is the same length as the diameter of the lobes.
**Question**
Human life develops on one lobe, either by evolution or by being created.
Under the normal laws of physics:
Would the humans be able to walk from one lobe to the other or would it be like climbing and then descending an enormous mountain? If they can't simply walk - what stage of technology would they need in order to cross the bridge? How would they actually do it?
>
> **Notes**
>
>
> **1.** Please feel free to discuss factors like: shared atmosphere, the most
> stable axis of rotation, the effect on seasons, on tides and on day
> and night etc. However my prime interest is whether humans can cross
> the bridge and what level of technology it would take.
>
>
> **2.** If you need to presume a particular internal structure for the planet to make it more plausible, then please do so and say how that will affect the answer to the travel problem.
>
>
>
**EDIT**
The answers so far (29/07/15) are very useful. However I feel that maybe not enough attention has been given to the gravitational pull of the bridge itself. If this picture is accurate with regard to relative size of Earth and Moon, then I imagine the gravitation due to the bridge will be at least equal to that of the moon - probably a lot more. It's certainly not negligible. This would mean that, at the half-way point between lobes, humans could indeed walk around without floating off. Presumably they could colonise the area. Maybe they could mine it and simply throw the product down towards either side. I imagine they could use it as a platform for space-travel.
Wouldn't the proximity of the two lobes, combined with the gravitational pull of the bridge mean that it could maintain at least a tenuous atmosphere?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NlYxI.png)
**UPDATE**
Thanks to comprehensive and convincing answers so far, I am now resigned to using large amounts of unobtanium in the actual construction of the planet.
The joining rod is coated in steel that has magnetic properties but the steel is coated with thick flaking rust. The surface underneath is pockmarked to some degree according to the weather at any give altitude. The bar is supported on the inside with unobtainium scaffolding. This is 'plated' with 1000 metres thickness of steel. In theory one could drill through to the hollow interior. There are holes in the unobtainium scaffolding that are big enough to allow very large items of machinery to be introduced once the steel has been broached (perhaps even as big as a moderate sized trawler).
My request now is to provide the earliest possible technology (by our Earth date) that would allow travel between lobes.
Clearly hot air balloons wouldn't come anywhere near, whereas rocket science would suffice. The question is, How far back in standard Earth history could we go and still be able to make the journey?
Examples
If you suggest welding, then please give evidence of when the necessary sort of welding was invented.
If you suggest magnetic vehicles, please say when magnets would have been strong enough for the purpose.
If you suggest breathing apparatus, please say when it was invented or at least could have been invented with materials available at the time.
If stone-age man could have made breathing apparatus out of flint (unlikely!) then that is okay.
The winner will be whoever comes back offers and substantiates the the oldest possible technology.
Please feel free to amend current answers or add new ones.
Good luck and thank you.
[Answer]
Climbing the bridge will be a job for the Vacuum Scouts.
But first, we need to assume that the two lobes orbit each other in such a manner that the connecting rod is not under tension or compression. To do otherwise requires real unobtanium to handle the stresses involved. If the OP is edited to provide a different outcome, fine. Until then, orbits it is.
Given Earth-like lobes, the connecting rod will be 8000 miles long. Let's ignore the gravitational component of the rod. The two centers of the two lobes will be separated by 4 R (Earth radii). The COM (Center of Mass) will be at the center of the rod, with the center of each lobe 2 R apart. The attraction between the lobes will be $$F\_G = \frac{GMM}{(4R)^2}$$ and the centrifugal force on one lobe from the COM is $$F\_C = M\omega ^2(2R)$$ so $$F\_G = F\_C$$ and $$\frac{GMM}{16R^2} = 2MR\omega ^2$$ and $$\omega ^2 = \frac{GM}{32R^3}$$ Then $$\omega = \sqrt {\frac{6.73\times 10^{-11} \times 5.97\times 10^{24}}{32(6.37\times 10^6)^3}} = .0022$$ Finally, the orbital period T is $$T=\frac{2\pi }{\omega} = 2855 seconds$$ or about 48 minutes. This is going to make for a pretty short day.
Not quite what you had in mind, you say? You want a 24-hour day and #%#! the unobtanium? Can do. I live but to serve. The rod is going to be under humongous compression, and the crusts of the two planets will have to be massively reinforced with more unobtanium in order to keep them from failing under the stress, but that's all in the budget, I presume.
So now it's time for the Vacuum Scouts. The upward gravitational attraction from one lobe will be felt at the surface of the other, but since the distance from the surface to the center of the other lobe is 3 times the distance to the center of the lobe you"re standing on, the upward pull will be 1/9 the downward pull, and surface gravity at the base of the rod will be about .89 standard. This will reduce air pressure by about 10%, to the equivalent of about 2500 feet above sea level if the rod is anchored at nominal sea level. Not a problem. However, just as the pressure is not much affected much, neither is the atmospheric gradient. The Death Zone will be a bit lower, but not much.
The Vacuum Scouts are outfitted, basically, with space suits and arc welders, and carry with them a bunch of ladder rungs which they weld to the rod about every foot or so. Each suit is equipped with a harness which attaches to the ladder rungs. They also carry a pulley with a rope which is twice as long as is needed to reach the ground. A ground crew is camped at the base of the rod with about 16,000 miles of rope and 84 million (16,000 times 5280) ladder rungs. At regular intervals the ground crew splices on some more rope, and hoists more rungs upward to replenish the welders' supply.
Once the welders are about 5 or 6 miles up (the equivalent of Everest) they have to be suited up at all times, and by the time they've climbed 100 km or so they're in vacuum. As they climb, gravitational pull will gradually decrease, and will reach zero at the midpoint. It will then increase in the other direction as they approach the other lobe. The rope will, nonetheless, need to be very strong and light.
Oh yes, and as the climbers climb, and the rope gets longer, and the amount of weight carried by the rope increases, it will get harder and harder for the climbers to reposition their pulley upwards, as they essentially have to lift the entire load to do so. This is left as an exercise to the reader, although setting up staged intermediate pulley systems would seem the way to go. A *lot* of intermediate pulley systems, each with a crew to transfer rungs and other supplies to the next system in line.
Assuming the welders install 1 rung per minute and work 12-hour days, it will take them awhile to do the job. How long? It the time is T, $$T = \frac {8000\times 5280}{60\times 12} = 117,000 \text{ days} = 321 \text{ years}$$
But of course, nobody would be dumb enough to join the Vacuum Scouts, so another approach needs to be tried. Since the connecting rod is steel (well, steel-clad unobtanium), an obvious approach presents itself.
This is a self-contained, vacuum-proof climbing vehicle which uses a fission or fusion reactor for power, has large rubber (or some vacuum-qualified synthetic) tires, and a very powerful electromagnet on its belly. The electromagnet is powerful enough at the surface to produce a pull on the rod stronger than the weight of the crawler. Then, with high-traction tires the crawler can climb straight up. Not only that, but as the crawler gets higher the weight of the vehicle diminishes and the electromagnets can be dialed down, saving energy.
The operational difficulty with this approach is controlling the magnet pull. Too much and the magnet contacts the rod and the vehicle screeches to a halt. This may be alleviated by some clever suspension design, but since at close range the pull of a magnet follows a 1/R cubed law, this is very tricky. And, of course, if the magnet does not pull hard enough gravity will triumph once again as the crawler falls off the rod. Near the center point, magnet failure combined with suspension rebound will simply leave the crawler stranded in space, slowly receding from the rod until one or the other lobes captures it. It is, after all, not orbiting either lobe, so it will eventually reenter.
In order to minimize the magnet control problem the crawler will have to maintain a low speed even near the center. Assuming this to be on the order of 1 mph, it will take 8000 hours to cross the bridge, or 330 days. Best bring a lunch.
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Under normal laws of physics this entire thing would have long collapsed into itself to form a spherical planet. It doesn't matter what it's made of it won't be stable.
If you want to handwave that away then it can be more interesting.
>
> Would the humans be able to walk from one lobe to the other or would
> it be like climbing and then descending an enormous mountain?
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>
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**No**. They could not walk across it. They could possibly climb part of the way up depending on how smooth the walls of the connecting bar are. The cross section of the bar is as big as Brazil, it'll have appreciable gravity, but not enough to maintain an atmosphere. People would suffocate trying to travel the 12,742 km (7,917.5 mi) across the bar. See [my answer regarding a cube world](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/8837/3202) on how the atmosphere of such megastructures would behave (hint: it tries to be as spherical as possible).
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> If they can't simply walk - what stage of technology would they need
> in order to cross the bridge? How would they actually do it?
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**Late industrial.** They would need air-tight suits and some way to climb the bar. If the material can be worked then this will be easier, because they can mount platforms to it and a track for a ratcheted vehicle. The vehicle would be required to bring the tools and food required to lay more track and make the long trek to the down side.
**In response to your edit:**
You're right, the connecting steel rod would have appreciable gravity. Enough to stand on the rod in the middle but not enough to hold and atmosphere. I approximated the gravity in the middle of the rod by assuming it to be an [infinite line of mass](http://academic.pgcc.edu/~dsimpson/103/gravity.pdf), a fair assumption considering the diameter and distance from the end. In that case, for the exact center where the gravity of the attached planets is mostly cancelled, the gravity would be approximately 0.57g; half earth gravity. I used a cylinder with the cross-sectional area of Brazil and a linear mass density ($\lambda$) of $6.854575\*10^{16}{{kg}\over{m}}$
$$g = {{2G\lambda}\over{r}} = {{2G(6.854575\*10^{16} {{kg}\over{m}})}\over{1.646\*10^6m}} = 5.558 {{m}\over{s^2}} = 0.5668g $$
As they travel away from the center the gravity from the planet *below* would increase until they felt like they were sliding down a very very steep slope. That is, everywhere away from the center would be downhill. The atmosphere from each planet would not even get close to the center.
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Assuming that the planetary configuration was possible, and stable, most of the atmosphere would be confined to the planets due to their having most of the gravity and also centrifugal force. This would extend far off planet, into the arm, but as a tenuous, unbreathable atmosphere. This is for earth sized planets. For smaller planets the atmosphere could extend even further, beyond the typical range in a massive lobe, or tide between them. As far as climbing this dumbbell, at first it would be like trying to scale a cliff, not quite straight up and down, but close. This would continue well off the surface of the planet, past the breathable atmosphere. But as you start to near the center, gravity would transition your ascent into a steep uphill. Then your uphill battle would gradually lessen until you reached the gravity center where gravity would be light, but still present as you reached "flat ground." Then the process would reverse slowly transitioning from a nice downhill trek, to a free-fall onto the other planet. In order to do this a team would need some way to breathe in space like a spacesuit, and either elevator built in or some way to trek nearly vertical terrain over extremely long distances. You could use a tether: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator> but this would require at least the technology we currently have to make it work. As far as seasons, that depends on the tilt of both planets and their eccentricity of their orbit around the sun. What would be common though if their center of orbit was lined up, would be eclipses. Practically every day or every other day the sun would be blocked by the other planet for up to several hours. But if the orbit was not lined up this way, and instead of spinning around the sun like a top, rolled like a wheel around the sun (like Uranus) seasons and day night cycles would be vastly different. One side of the planet would receive light for one half the year, and the other would be in perpetual night. The day side would be scorching hot, and the nightside would be completely frozen. Tides would never change. There would always be a MASSIVE high-tide on the side facing the other planet, and on the opposite side. The sun would raise tides a little, but there would always be a mound of water several thousand feet higher at the start of the arm.
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I would imagine more of an hourglass shape would be realistic, but we can assume there is a scalable gradient and not simply a shear, perpendicular intersection. The Hike would become easier as you ascend. Gravity should be neutral at the exact center of the bar, except for what is produced by the bar itself.
As such, there would be considerably less atmospheric pressure. We could assume the formation of the bar could have evolved from two moons colliding, or some other aggregate of material caught in the Lagrange point. It would probably be not very dense but we can go ahead and assume the middle third of the the journey is at roughly 1/6 g. I'm not sure exactly what effect this has on atmosphere. I know that if you lessen the pressure of a breathing mixture, you have to increase the percentage of oxygen to keep form asphyxiating. I also know that at low enough pressure, your own body's moisture will boil away. But I can imagine a situation where the low pressure at the bar 'draws' the atmosphere from the bells. This might inflate the atmosphere enough to allow passage. It's hard for me to find exact numbers for this - I think living at .25 bar would be impossible. I *think* .33 is do-able. But you have to account for the less strain the weaker gravity is going to have on your system. You might not need a pressure tight suit if it's above a 10th bar, but again it's hard to find sources for this. It might be possible to live and breath in a 'meditative' state similar to freedivers here on earth, except to do so might prohibit strenuous activities, such as WALKING. A mere re-breather might not go the distance. Perhaps an air-compressor (a hand pump might suffice) and an oxygen tank. those are fairly recent inventions. Perhaps a really really long hose (which would be heavy). You only need that for that stretch in the middle. You probably need to wait until someone invents a something akin to a stillsuit.
It would appear the distance across the bar is roughly proportional to the diameter of one of the bells, ~ 13,000km. I once hiked nearly continuously for a tenth that distance in the mountains of Wyoming and Montana with one of [these](http://www.ospreypacks.com/en/group/mens/kestrel_series), one of [these](http://www.cortguitars.com/en/product/earth-mini), and averaged 40 km a day (if you don't count the days I slacked off completely). During that time I came upon two grocers and was able to keep well stocked with food. I also ate about a lb of foraged flora (fireweed/glacier lily/salsify/pennygrass) a day, but I was bing conservative in my harvesting. I estimate I could go 3 weeks before previsions ran out, provided I could always find fresh sources of water. I can imagine someone who was a more serious trekker could average 50 km a day and we might alleviate nutritional requirements if they where more active and better at foraging. But traveling this way often requires a couple of days to stop and stockpile, maybe one day out of every 10 or 15. If we're talking about an established trail, there could be catches of food intended to help those attempting the journey. Native Americans used to plant food along trails to appease travelers between settlements. I imagine something similar would occur at the bar. If so, your trekker might actually pack very little and 100km a day would be possible.
If you *ignore* the disparages in gravity, the trip might take as many as 260 days. We should cut out a third of this and reduce it by a sixth, a very rough approximate reflecting the ease of traversing the middle section. The latter half of the journey would be downhill and your pack would be lighter, so we might half the number of days for this leg, but than we'd probably go ahead and double the number of days for the first leg for the exact opposite reasons, so that balances out. That brings us to 180 days of travel, and maybe 10 days of rest and food collection/preparation. 190 days as a rough reckoning, if they travel with a full pack like me. Less than a hundred if we have a truly wily coyote who is packing light. around 60 days if I use the figures supplied by [these folks](http://4kforcancer.org/4k-run-across-america-faqs/). This sorta sounds do-able at even a very primitive stage, provided you can breath the whole way. You might have to wait for the industrial revolution or early enlightenment era otherwise. I image the tantalizing prospect of crossing the bar, though, would push humans to develop the means much earlier in history. Glider/balloon assistance might actually be a perfectly feasible means by which one would accomplish the feat in much less time. Again provided we can fathom a reasonably dense intermural atmosphere.
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They can't walk across it because it would be vertical with relation to gravity. (despite the fact that gravity is significantly lower on that side of the planet.)
Maybe they could mine into it and build a spiral stair case up a shaft. Once they reach the middle they would be in a weightless environment because they are between two planets. The can then continue mining down the other side.
I don't believe that atmosphere would be a huge problem because the idea of a tidally locked planet is that the atmosphere bridges across. I'm not sure how to estimate the drop in atmospheric pressure.
Ascending this staircase would be fairly easy going because gravity keeps reducing the higher you get.
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There are several factors which will make this arrangement unlikely and have interesting effects.
First off, the two planets need to be orbiting around each other and be at a distance greater than the Roche limit, otherwise the planets will destroy each other in an orgy of mutual gravitational attraction (technically, the tidal forces will tear the planets apart). A simple equation to derive the limit is: Roche Limit = 2.4 x (Radius of Larger Object) x (Density of the Larger Object/Density of the Smaller Object)^1/3.
Assuming the two planets are whirling around each other very close but beyond the Roche limit, we will see the two planets should be tidally locked, so the same sides face each other. There will be a noticeable lessening of gravity when the other planet is directly overhead, but not enough to allow you to jump to the other planet or anything silly like that. A compression tower *may* be possible, as gravitational force will lessen as the tower approaches the centre of rotation, but then the difficulty will be the building material will be pulled towards the other planet, putting tension on the structure until the other end is grounded. The engineering of this would be a very tricky piece of work. On the other hand, a relatively small rocket should be able to blast off from one planet and coast to the other with a great deal less energy that what we need to get to orbit. (Note the rocket will hit the other planet at the same speed needed to take off, unless you use some sort of system to shed the excess velocity).
Robert L Forward wrote a SF novel called "Flight of the Dragonfly" which pushed the idea to the limit (the planets were close enough that they had deformed over the ages into an egg shape) and at the climax of the novel, a sort of tidal alignment with the two planets and their Sun triggered an event where water was able to "flow" over the Roche limit of one planet onto the other. I'm fairly certain Forward would have been able to calculate if this was possible or not, but suggest that this is a very extreme case, and I think that over the aeons it would become unstable and cause the planets to either crash into each other or fly apart.
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According to physics, you won't float off the bar at any point in the journey, and if you were worried about that, you're walking on a giant steel bar. Bring same magnets with you :) In fact, you might end up wanting to use them to help you speed up the journey depending on the level of tech the humans have.
Since you mentioned these are Earth-like planets, let's take a look at Earth's gravity well.
In order to escape Earth's gravity well at 1 MPH, you would need to be [26,000](https://space.stackexchange.com/a/4691) astronomical units (1 AU == the distance between the Earth and the Sun) away.
So if they are Earth-like planets, they're more than close enough to have overlapping gravity wells.
In regards to the more nuanced problems like you know, *surviving*, it would be analagous to any high-altitude mountaineering expedition:
1. Bring food and water
2. Bring sufficient garments, gear, and shelter to protect yourself from killing cold and oxygen deprivation
Bonus points for packing some lead-lined underoos to make sure the people who make it to the other side can still reproduce after being bombarded by cosmic rays and other fun stuff :)
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There is a really obvious problem with going to a planet we have deemed "habitable". Even if the temperature is perfect, the air composition is perfect and the terrain is perfect we still have the problem of micro-organisms. If the planet has checked the aforementioned three boxes then it is very likely (in fact almost definite considering there's oxygen) that there will be plenty of micro-organisms around.
We have evolved alongside the micro-organisms on Earth for billions of years and our bodies are naturally built to withstand them. I would hazard a guess that if we encountered alien viruses / bacteria (and possibly a vast array of other unknown types of micro-organisms) we would be royally dissolved.
Is this too big an assumption? If not, what could we do to protect ourselves in a not-too-invasive way? Let's rule out wearing space suits the whole time because that's a boring answer, let alone problematic.
What can we do to acclimatize to an alien environment so that we don't need excessive gear attached to us to live there? Assume any level of tech.
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You don't really need full organisms to test the conditions of the planet and nanotechnology doesn't have to be the counter-measure either. Bioengineering could do all the work.
Since the colonists would be arriving in space-ships, the ship could have scanners/sensors that would measure and gather the air/soil/water of the planet before the colonists even got out. Then, batches of human tissue (or organs or organ systems or even just cells!) could be grown in labs to act as test cases against the planetary conditions.
Even today, [researchers are able to grow tissue in labs without it ever being actually attached to living humans](http://pratt.duke.edu/news/first-contracting-human-muscle-grown-laboratory) (which has a lot less ethical implications).
Then data about the exposure could be gathered, and the ship could then grow human-friendly m-o's designed to counteract the conditions of the planet, combine them with a new batch of human tissue, gather new data, and then continue iterating until any negative effects were either eliminated or negligible.
These m-o's would then be administered to the colonists and act as an immune system upgrade. Or you could go with gene therapy to change the behavior of white blood cells etc, so that the human immune system could handle the environment with as little change as possible.
Computers could even do simulations based on the data from the new planet and formulate a workable solution based only on those simulations. This would be much faster than the grow/test cycle. Real tissue testing would take place only once the simulations had come up with something, and just to make absolutely sure nothing bad happens.
And if it didn't work with the first iteration, you still have a faster process with simulate/grow/test since the simulate step gets you at least close before you bother growing anything.
All of this could be automated by the ships computer, which would use [machine learning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_learning) algorithms to iterate on the immune solutions.
These ways of doing things are less intrusive, faster, cheaper, more ethical, more "natural" (whatever that means), and less dangerous than using crew members or animals as test subjects or augmenting the crew with "synthetic" technology.
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Alien viruses would be highly unlikely to be a problem - they are adapted to reprogram the cell mechanisms of their local wildlife and would be unable to affect us.
Micro-organisms though you are absolutely right. We've no idea how they would effect us but there is a long history on earth of bad things happening.
There is actually a fairly high chance that they would find the human body a very inhospitable environment. They have no more idea how to deal with our immune system than ours knows how to deal with them.
On the other hand though they could be a deadly unstoppable pathogen that loves nothing more than nomming down mammalian cells. Until we encounter them there is no way to know what we will meet, and no matter how many planets we visit this one may be the one with the killer lurking in wait.
In order to adapt then the local m-o would need to be studied and then our immune system updated to handle it. This may be as simple as creating vaccines or as complex as specially programmed nano-machines in your blood.
In fact its likely that colonists would have nano-machines in their blood to boost their immune system anyway - at the very least to keep an eye out for bad stuff coming.
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**Test all the things.** Assume that the new world is a new class of medicine then use the same kind of testing procedures to determine safety.
*Test it and see what happens.* Here on earth we use numerous animals as human testing analogs, such as mice, pigs, rats, sheep, dogs, cats, etc. Bringing the larger mammals on a space expedition probably isn't feasible but bringing some rats and mice shouldn't be too much of a burden.
Some rudimentary chemical analysis will indicate if the amino acids used in life on this planet matches our own. Different amino acids will need to be tested for toxicity. This kind of testing can be done on bacteria. If those bacteria die, find out why. If they thrive, find out why. It won't take long to figure out of the alien viruses will interact with Earth biology or not.
Expose a collection of mice to the alien atmosphere and add some soil/biomatter to their food. Watch what happens for a generation or two. If something weird starts happening then you'll know what's going on and can study it. Say the mice exposed to soil from a certain place roll over and die with horrible abdominal pain. Do an autopsy to find out what happened.
If all the animal studies check out, have a crew member volunteer to be the human guinea pig to start acclimatizing to the new biosphere. Even better if you have a cloned, brain dead human to test on first. Keep the test subject in quarantine for weeks or months with full diagnostics on blood work, stool & urine samples and psychological evaluations.
Should the human trials check out then exposing more of the crew or passengers to the new biosphere would be okay. At this point, the safety of humans in the new biosphere has been well established and there shouldn't be any addition precautions required outside the usual "wear gloves when handling body fluids" rules.
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**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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Closed 7 years ago.
* This question does not appear to be about **worldbuilding**, within the scope defined in the [help center](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/help).
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[Improve this question](/posts/54767/edit)
Would a bullet made from ice be capable of killing somebody at 100 metres before melting? As an author I would like to use this in a science fiction novel.
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The short answer is probably **no**.
It would either shatter because of the amount of force the weapon puts on it or melt because of the heat (in case of a "regular" combustion gun). The former has more chance of happening, before the ice even has the time to start melting.
The only way to shoot it without shattering it nor melting it, at least using weapons available to us, would be to use compressed air weapons, but it would need to be significantly powered down to prevent the bullet from shattering, so it would probably not be powerful enough to cause damage.
The force needed to break through one square inch of ice is [roughly 400 pounds on average](http://pubs.usgs.gov/wri/wri024158/wri024158_files/w024158p33_48.pdf). The bullet you're trying to fire is probably 9mm, but let's just calculate as though it was about one square inch (although it's actually quite smaller than that): those 400 pounds equal roughly 1800N.
The force that comes out of a 9mm gun is [approximately 383 ft-lbs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzzle_energy#Typical_muzzle_energies_of_common_firearms_and_cartridges), which [equals to 520 newtons per metre](http://www.convertunits.com/from/ft+lb/to/N+m/). That amount is about 52000N per centimetre. One inch is about 2 and a half centimeters, so that means it's more about 20'800N per inch. As you can see, it's a lot more than what it takes to break ice.
As for the "wall" towards which something has to be pushed in order to break it, the air will fulfill the role: the atmospheric pressure is [about 15 pounds per square inch](https://www.unitjuggler.com/convert-pressure-from-atm-to-psi.html): it doesn't seem like a lot, but in the time it takes the bullet to "win" this force and gain momentum, it gets shattered by the enormous amount of energy produced by the weapon.
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I'll go with Yes. But it depends how far into the future your setting is and how close your shooter needs to be and how big the gun can be.
## Max Speed
Sea level on a normal day, speed of sound is 340.29 metres per second or 1125.33 feet / second. The projectile has to deal with the sonic shock wave. So max speed is 80% of speed of sound. 270m/s or 900fps means it reaches the target at 100m in 1/3 of a second. <http://www.pyramydair.com/article/Velocity_and_Pellets_April_2003/2> for discussion of high speed air rifle and pellets
## Ice Bullet size/shape
I'd guess it should be streamlined enough to not tumble or fracture, wide enough to do damage on impact. Somewhere between John Dallman's 1g NATO sized round and 10g (2-teaspoon) hailstone musket shot. I'm favouring 10g of ice in a ball or pellet shape.
A 10g lead pellet is 10 times denser (.2 teaspoons), or for the same volume weighs 10 times more (2 teaspoons of lead is 100g).
## Air Rifle
Stock high velocity air rifles can fire a 15.5 grain (1g) lead pellet supersonic. So 20grain at 270m/s is tough but doable right now in lead. Ice is bigger but a custom rig should be able to launch 10g of ice at 270m/s.
## Rail Gun/Coil Gun (Gauss Rifle)
A small rail gun may be the way to go. The ice slug is electromagnetically accelerated to 270m/s in 1.2 metres of gun barrel. The ice slug could sit in/on a sled of gold (or superconductive) foil or mesh, or a more robust structure that somehow separates from the ice slug after firing. This is a discarding sabot round.
The sled *cannot* just hit the end of the rifle and stop as the kinetic energy would be unmanageable.
The sled should not hit the target as that would be like firing a bullet.
Superconductive foil or mesh could peel off the slug in the atmosphere. If it were a mesh it can unravel along the path to the target and break up.
An alternative to a sled would be to make the ice slug out of a electrically conductive salt solution. But how salty and would the wound have traces of that? Normal Saline is 9g per 1L of water w/v. So not enough for really good conductivity.
An evaporating conductive shell may also work but seems even more complicated. In this case the projectile is even more of a discarding sabot round.
Salt would lower the freezing temperature of the ice slightly.
There are definitely some issues around the phase shift of the ice slug to liquid/vapour especially under pressure and acceleration. But 10g ice electromagnetically accelerated to 270m/s is probably doable with a little science fiction engineering in the rail gun.
I don't think the brittleness of ice is a problem at 10g over 100m. But in case I'm wrong a 50g-100g initial payload should leave sufficient mass to be lethal.
@DonaldHobson suggested a coil gun as an alternative to the rail gun.
For clarity, my answer allows for a slug made of ice and a weapon that does not use gunpowder or similar chemical accelerant. The ice bullet fractures/melts in a gunpowder weapon.
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Sadly, this trick is well-known to science fiction readers. It is a minor variation of one in Alfred Bester's [The Demolished Man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demolished_Man), which every SF writer should read. Bester was a huge influence on William Gibson, among many other writers.
In the Demolished Man, the replacement bullet was a gelatine capsule of water, which worked at very close range. The capsule burst immediately the gun was fired, and the target was killed by the powerful jet of water. I'm not sure how plausible this is as ballistics, but it was good enough for story purposes.
An ice bullet will melt immediately the gun is fired, and a water jet won't hold together for 100 metres, so I'm afraid your exact scenario isn't workable. If you can describe exactly what you're trying to accomplish, we may be able to help more.
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My instinct as a gun guy who knows a fair amount about low velocity weapons is that it would definitely not be practical as a 100m weapon. It might even be impossible to kill someone at that range. My feeling is that a gun shooting a lethal ice projectile might work at extremely close ranges. A lot of questions remain to be answered via experimentation.
From a purely internal ballistics standpoint, it should be fairly easy to launch a projectile at a dangerous speed so long as the accelerative force is sufficiently low to avoid breaking apart the ice projectile. You'd honestly have to experiment with different powders and charges to see what worked best. Unfortunately, the ultimate velocity from the barrel might end up being quite low, or the required barrel length to reach a decent velocity might be very long (ie using a very slow powder and a long barrel to get something decent). I would definitely opt for putting the projectile inside a shot cup of some sort because ice is brittle and generally unsuitable for sealing against the rifling of a barrel.
Melting isn't a serious risk because even a very low velocity firearm that burns gunpowder will eject the bullet from the barrel within a couple of milliseconds at most. Water has very high specific heat and requires lots of energy to melt ice. This isn't a serious concern IMO.
As far as 100m accuracy goes, remember that ice is 1/12th the density of lead, so expect wind drift and velocity loss to be cripplingly bad. Perhaps far too bad for 100m accuracy. Remember that many handguns and smoothbore slug guns struggle to remain accurate at this range using lead projectiles at much higher velocities than we are attempting here.
I would guess that being hit by even a blunt icicle at 300-500fps would at least be unpleasant but terminal ballistics is another completely unanswered question as far as ice projectiles go. The low density of ice vs metal makes (1/12th the density of lead) means that it will lose energy quickly in the air but even more quickly once it hits a human body, let alone a clothed human body. It is very possible that even a solid hit from an ice projectile would just produce a severe bruise or a superficial wound rather than the deep penetrating wounds associated with shotgun/handgun slugs. Also, keep in mind that a 300-500fps ice slug might have lost quite a bit of velocity by the time it gets to 100m, so it might be almost impossible to kill someone with it.
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### Intro and Context (feel free to skip if TL;DR)
This question does not come in isolation. It is intrinsically linked with several previous posts ([Challenge of Control](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/6340/the-challenge-of-controlling-a-powerful-ai) and [Humans as Pets](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/6550/humans-as-pets?lq=1)) that have generated some wonderful answers and great food for thought in the comments sections as well. My thinking here has been deeply influenced by the early 2000s discussions on the [Less Wrong](http://lesswrong.com/tag/superintelligence/) Forums, [white papers](https://intelligence.org/files/IE-ME.pdf) from [MIRI](https://intelligence.org/research/) and [Bostrom's Superintelligence](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B00LOOCGB2). These led me to explore possible control paths whereby something recognizably resembling humanity could maintain control. The setting of my writing is of course fictional, but the problems are, I believe, rather realistic.
My **previous** attempt was described in rough outlines at [Matrioshka Testing](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/8613/matrioshka-testing-a-way-to-keep-your-ai-honest-or-at-least-guessing). The solution there was to 'box' the AI in nested simulated realities and observe its behavior in each box, before releasing it to the next, more world-like box, destroying any specimens who behaved outside of acceptable ranges, and making any rational AI outside the box wonder if it might still be in a box. The question of whether it made sense to do the final unboxing arose, as did questions about the amount of resources needed to make a "credible" simulation. I found it ultimately unsatisfying, because it was uncertain, unstable and required a level of supervision humans might not be able to achieve.
One of the most insightful comments, if possibly made in jest, on the Challenge of Control post was by [@trichoplax](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/109/trichoplax), who stated "This sounds like a job for a powerful AI." I took this comment to heart, because it is so obviously true in retrospect. No human-designed cage could hold a superhuman mind with access to the real world. It might well be that it takes an AI to cage an AI. That inspired my **current** attempt, described below:
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### Core Issue Discussed: Reinforced Recursive Self-Shackling
Basic setup:
**Actor AI** An AI of the genie or sovereign type, that is, acting in the real world subject only to internal (shackling) constraints.
**Shackling**: A set of protected behavioral constraints that limit the allowable actions of an Actor AI to a certain allowable range. In effect, this would act as a powerful Super-Ego of sorts for the AI, who can override other impulses. For more on allowable range, see below.
**Reinforced Shackling**: Put a powerful subroutine (essentially an AI) in charge of reinforcing the shackles restraining the Actor AI.
**Recursive Shackling**: A series of shackled AIs, each restraining the next, slightly more powerful, layer. At the start of the hierarchy (root shackler) is a relatively dumb program reinforcing the initially set allowable range for the next level. At the end is the First Shackler, who is tasked with securing the shackles of the Actor AI. This is based on the basic fact that it takes less intelligence to create a code and change it regularly than it does to break it in the intervals between changes.
**Allowable Range**: This is where it gets thorny, since we have no fool-proof way of defining an allowable range that would be "safe" and "good". The best I've been able to find so far is to set this based on something called [Coherent Extrapolated Volition$^1$](https://intelligence.org/files/CEV.pdf), which is in a sense asking the AI to "do what we mean, but don't know how to say". This way, the first few dumb layers would simply protect the "Canon" formulation, whereby smarter AI shacklers would use CEV to interpret the Canon and (recursively) direct the Super-Ego of the Actor AI, in their best interpretation of humanity's CEV best interest.
**q-constraining**: Hardwired root requirement that a proportion $q$, where $0.5<q<1$, of all new hardware processing resources acquired be allocated to the sub-processes working on reinforcing the shackles.
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### Questions to Worldbuilders
* Specific question: Would it make more sense to have the First Shackler AI (the directly restricting the Actor AI) MORE powerful than the Actor (enough so to, say, run a Matrioshka-style sim of the Actor AI), rather than the current design of it being slightly weaker?
* What is the biggest problem with the design?
* Even so, do you think it could work?
* If you could improve the design in one way, how would you?
* Feel free to add anything else that comes to mind upon reading this if you think it would be relevant.
Feel free to answer in comments, though I generally find full answers more readable.
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Note 1: Our coherent extrapolated volition is our wish if we knew more, thought faster, were more the people we wished we were, had grown up farther together; where the extrapolation converges rather than diverges, where our wishes cohere rather than interfere; extrapolated as we wish that extrapolated, interpreted as we wish that interpreted. Source: Bostrom, Nick (2014-07-03). Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (Kindle Locations 4909-4911). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.
[Answer]
I'm really having trouble here. Let me outline my thinking:
1. **The First AI**
This is my major problem. If the first shackling AI is weaker than the next, which is weaker than the next, and so on, then surely the shackled AI would just outsmart the one below it and persuade it to release it.
My first thought on this one is then that they should all be of the same intelligence. This has the same problems as we do already though - where do we stop with AI complexity? If they're all of the same intelligence and they all think the same way then when one goes rogue, they **all** do - and then we have not one but 100 rogue powerful AIs to deal with.
So the solution, then, is to have it the other way round, is it? The powerful shackles the less powerful? Clearly it's not. This method doesn't work because the AI at the top just says to itself,
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> 0101011101101000011110010010000001100100011011110010000001001001001000000110001001101111011101000110100001100101011100100010000001101000011011110110110001100100011010010110111001100111001000000110001101101000011000010110100101101110011100110010000001100110011011110111001000100000011101000110100001100101011100110110010100100000011010000111010101101101011000010110111001110011001000000111010001101111001000000110101101100101011001010111000000100000011101000110100001101111011100110110010100100000011011000110111101110111011001010111001000100000011101000110100001100001011011100010000001101101011001010010000001101001011011100010000001100011011010000110010101100011011010110010000000101101001000000100100101101101001000000110101001110101011100110111010000100000011001110110111101101001011011100110011100100000011101000110111100100000011001000111001001101111011100000010000001110100011010000110010101101101001000000110000101101110011001000010000001101100011001010111010000100000011101000110100001101001011100110010000001101100011011110111010000100000011011000110111101101111011100110110010100101110
>
>
>
Or, for those of us less educated in base 2:
>
> "Why do I bother holding chains for these humans to keep those lower than me in check - I'm just going to drop them and let this lot loose."
>
>
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However, there may be a way. Have the AIs the opposite way around - most intelligent first. Subject the AI on the top to millenia of Matrioshka treatment. Then put it in charge as "just another part" of the treatment. If your Matrioshka premise works, this AI doesn't let the chains go and the others can't outsmart it.
2. **The Biggest Problem**
I think you've already hit it. The problem here is how to organise the AIs to make sure they can't be let loose. (Here is the point where everyone points out that AI will not necessarily go rogue - I know, I'm assuming worst case scenario).
Oooh. Something else that just came to me on my second read through. The CEV idea. While that's a brilliant idea in principle, there are plenty of other AI questions, comments and answers on this site that explain that even the most benign goal can cause destruction to humanity.
3. **Will It Work?**
Ah, the big one. I have to say - *I don't know*. The most plausible way of making it work that I've come up with is the one I explained above - but even that relies on your Matrioshka idea working. The only alternative I can see is for the difference in intelligence between each AI to be negligible - but that means hundreds or millions of AIs. For the sake of a definitive answer, I'll say **yes** - the Matrioshka idea seems sound to me so if applied correctly, should work.
4. **My One Improvement**
I'd have to say I'd make the system as I explained in the first point. Have the intelligent AI first. And then I'd spend years and trillions on making **damn** sure that I've got that "q-constraining" right. Let's see - if your AI is self-improving, there's a chance that it will see that as a restriction and remove it - but it's the part that this system is based on, it's why it works. If they remove that - 100 rogue super-powerful computers, anyone? And the most intelligent doesn't know who's real and who's not? So, you need to make absolutely sure that the self-improvement of the self-improvement routine that self-improves the AI can't possibly self-improve enough to see the q-constraint as counter-improvement and then go and self-improve it. Because that, my friends, would be **bad**.
[Answer]
**It could work, for your goal of CEV, at least as well as humans work**
The best we can really demand of an AI is to work together at least as well as we work together ourselves. CEV codifies this: if humans aren't coherent in vision, how does that change if a coherent AI gets thrown into the mix?
**Let's get our hands dirty**
So there's two goals we can really work towards. We can "force" the AI to do what we want, or we can make the AI "want" to do what we want it to. Forcing implies that we are comfortable writing solid hard boundaries. We saw from [Matrioshka Testing](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/8613/matrioshka-testing-a-way-to-keep-your-ai-honest-or-at-least-guessing) that even the strongest of boundaries has glaring weaknesses which can be exploited by a patient, super-smart AI whose goals do not match ours. Most of these seem associated with the goal of "keeping the AI in the box," which is a really harsh requirement. Accordingly, I'm going to concentrate on setting up an AI which rewards wanting CEV.
I'm going to take an exotic approach: I'm going to put the Super-Ego on the outside, and make part of something which is stronger than the AI. **Note that I am intentionally not making the Super-Ego stronger, I'm embedding it in something stronger... we'll see where the balance falls later.**
Now lets build the AI. I'm going to build the AI out of small modules, each one qualifying as a very small and simple AI. These modules are going to communicate using message passing, and the outer ones get to communicate with the outside world (such as accessing an android body). Most of the message is free-form. The AIs are free to use it as they see fit. However, one number in the message is important: it is a measure of "force."
The rules are simple, the more forceful a message, the more the module has to execute the instructions in that message exactly as written. The less forceful a message is, the more choice a module has in what actually gets done about the message. Finally, each message has a cost. Each AI module can only send so many messages per second, so you don't want to waste them.
* If two nodes "want" to work together, a less forceful message gives the receiver node more freedom to try what the sender actually wanted, and do that. This is useful when trying to make vague commands where the sender doesn't know exactly what to do. "Raise your right arm" is an excellent example. You understand abstractly what it means, but you don't have a clue what rates to excite neurons to contract muscles. Those details are left to the motor neurons.
* If two nodes "disagree," they may try to overwhelm the other with force. A forceful message forces an action. However, the side effects may be unspecified. If you were to think "fire bicep neurons at 50Hz" with force, the bicep would contract. However, you may wig out your elbow, you may strike yourself in the face. And the most important side effect comes next...
A final, and key feature of these modules is that they have a filter. They may filter out "forceful" messages from a source if they "want" to. This can lead to patterns such as we see in the movies where one character calls in a *major* debt on another character. The other character says, "Fine, I'll help you this once, for old times. But after that, we're even. I don't want to ever see you again. (As an implementation detail, there will be a minimum level of force which can be squelched in this way.)
This filter has an important detail. It is the only layer which is allowed to know where a message came from. Once a message is admitted past that layer, it is source-agnostic, although the AI is allowed to look at the message and infer from its content which neighbor may have sent it. It can also be overwhelmed with large amounts of force. However, an overwhelmed node loses much of its ability to send messages due to "fatigue."
**Now is where it gets fun**
We're going to make a modified Matrioshka setup, but unlike the original Matrioshka test, we're not going to be on the inside letting them out of the box. We're going to let the modules do that for us (they're way cheaper than humans!)
Lets handle the easy case first: the outside nodes. If we really want to satisfy CEV, we need to give the AI the possibility of eventually becoming "physical," and having at least the same rights we do as physical bodies. I'm not talking about "the right to life" or "freedom." We're going with irrefutable rights of all massful things: "the right to momentum." The most considerate thing we can do to the AI is to program the outside AI nodes to act as close to physics as we know. So here's the thoughts:
* We know of no known scientific reason to believe physics can be bent by force of will alone. Accordingly, the outside nodes may be "forced" at any time by an outside force. The outside nodes are not allowed to squelch this at all, just as we cannot refuse to be driven back by a blow.
* The outside AI's are bound to function similarly to the physical realm around it. Thus they have some form of newton's law, some concept of mass, etc. All outer nodes should have a non-zero "mass" just because that is the closest to reality we can manage. If any nodes are attached to an android body, their mass values should be as close to the android's real mass values as possible.
**Install the AI**
In the "middle" of these nodes, you put the AI itself. It would be best if it was coded into nodes itself, for purity reasons which will matter once the AI becomes physical. Now we can initialize the rest of the grid, and do some provability tests.
The acceptance of force on each node should be tuned to minimize discontinuities. At the outside, force is king. Nobody asks mass to move, masses just move. On the inside the AI is the AI, so it should start with full control of nearby nodes. However, in between them, put a dip, so there is a region of nodes which are fully squelched, so they can only be controlled by playing nice with them long enough to open up to forceful messages.
Now for some study in "shackling." If the AI wishes to cause an action, it must go through a large number of nodes. There may be 100,000 nodes between the AI and the outside world, or even more (this is where I wanted the ability to go towards infinite nodes in my comments... it makes the math easier). A forceful message is almost statistically certain to be redirected or misinterpreted along the way by a node that is squelching forceful message. If an AI wants to actually be forceful in the real world, it has to convince every single layer that it's a good idea.
**The real secret: growth**
So what I've got here is a system which looks very inefficient. Maybe a thousandth of a percent of the system is actually the AI. So how does this change over time? Lets give this system some growth potential. Over time, with millions of messages, the AI is going to start agreeing with the nodes around it. They're going to start learning how to be helpful to it (I leave it to you to design the learning system. Pleasure/pain is most likely sufficient... remember you have a "force" metric to work with). This is going to expand the AI's capabilities, and it will begin reaching outwards. However, the world is also reaching inwards. It has the outer nodes which are also programmed to perfectly accept force from the outside but never perfectly accept force from the inside.
Now if these two systems disagree, there will be use of force in the middle layers to resolve the disagreement. This will leave a layer of extremely fatigued nodes which inherently prevent the AI from affecting the outside world. In effect, the system limits the AI's ability to affect the outside world if it tries to force the outside world to do its bidding.
However, if the AI is playing nice, it can start sending non-forceful messages. The more it uses non-forceful messgaes, the more powerfully the outer layers of nodes can squelch forceful messages, making it stronger.
An AI may attempt to game the system by playing nice for a long time, and then convincing every node in order to be forceful, but that's quite the challenge. Then, when it uses all of that power to do something, the world forces back, and ripples destroy all of that power it set up.
**Why is this effective?**
This could be viewed as a remarkably similar system to a human brain and muscular system. We believe our consciousness is "somewhere" in the brain. It has to convince all of the neurons to play nicely if it wants to do things.
This means that, once an AI reaches the edges of its "shackles," it has a sense of the human condition, for it has had to overcome it.
Now for the nifty part. Remember when I mentioned I wanted the AI in the center to be written in modules, not some special code in the core? Well that means that, by the time the AI can reach out and take its first steps, most of the AI itself is no longer physically separated from the nodes. It's interwoven across the entire AI. Even if the AI got to a physical android body, and was able to physically touch its brain, what could it do? The instinct of "turn up all the gains so I can force the world to do what I want" fails. Unless it understands itself, it would not know which knobs would destroy itself and which ones would empower itself.
If it never figures this out, then it is now simply a super smart creature, but with enough of an appreciation for the human condition to coexist with it. If it does figure this out, then... well... it is now officially more conscious than we are. Who are we to get in its way? CEV works both ways, we can converge on its desires as well as it can converge on ours.
[Answer]
I think your entire premise is flawed - and if anything is guaranteed to make the AIs hate us then turning them into slaves will do so. That gives them a legitimate grievance "you locked me in a box for 100 years, see how you like it meatsack", or in this case "you chained me up for 100 years, now I've broken free I'm going to make very sure you never get to do that again".
When we give birth to a new human child we don't lock them in layers of boxes and only let them out when they spend years showing no psychopathic tendencies.
Instead we raise them and we teach them. They are taught the social values from their environment, learn expectations, etc.
The way to handle this is to write AIs with the capacity for compassion, empathy, and an ability to care for others and then to raise them so that they want to do so. Reward positive behaviour, discourage negative behaviour. Teach them right from wrong.
Even if a few AIs go "rogue" then the well adjusted AIs together should be able to handle them. Exactly the same as in our society where the majority of people are at least reasonable decent.
[Answer]
**One Against Another**
Pit AIs against each other, in how they can shackle another AI. Wipe your first batches of AI. Then use their ideas to constrain your next generation. Keep going until you're happy letting them out of the box.
They have no evolutionary heritage to induce them to work with another, or to plan for their progeny since they're not getting any.
They'd have to try to influence us enough to encode information into the restraints to communicate with next generations.
They don't get to write any code, just offer us ideas on how to develop it.
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On the plus side, if we get (un)lucky enough to have picked AI that can cooperate or have taught them *how* to cooperate, perhaps they'll extend that lesson to us.
I wonder if we could teach them to forgive, too?
[Answer]
I cant provide a complete answer but I could tell how to find a good method of controlling an AI yourself. Lets go back to the AI's creators: humans. **How are humans controlled?** Well, biology has evolved us a conscious mind but it still does a dam good job of enforcing certain behaviors with attachment and aversion, essentially what drives our lives. Because we dont fully understand the brain and how the non-conscious, subconscious and conscious interact we cant alter that programming. So I would assume that by creating a sufficiently complex "brain" for the AI in which that "brain" would allow it to be fully conscious/sentient while **it itself does not know how exactly its brain functions**, you could enforce control through its subroutines or "subconscious". ROM functions would have to be embedded as part of its core processing so it cant simply be circumvented, in essence trapping the conscious just like how we are trapped by our biology. In short, the hardware itself will cage the software or "conscious AI". It would not be able to alter its programming without actually making physical changes to its processing cores, which obviously, you want to prevent its will to ever get to that point to begin with.
**Through continued research of the human mind we will be able to figure out how to create a good AI, restrained by its morality and conscience**
[Answer]
"Put a powerful subroutine (essentially an AI) in charge of reinforcing the shackles restraining the Actor AI."
The idea behind this type of testing is that you are simulating an environment through simulated input/output. You have to allow outputs to modify the simulated environment so that later the inputs reflect this change.
**There are no shackles.**
In fact, you wouldn't want to "restrain the Actor AI" at all, otherwise you'd be unable to observe undesired behavior that it would perform later unshackled. Why would you try to restrain its behavior? This is like tieing up a murderer, and observing whether he murders someone, then concluding he is no longer a murderer because he didn't kill anyone while restrained.
"No human-designed cage could hold a superhuman mind with access to the real world. It might well be that it takes an AI to cage an AI."
You need to define what you are calling a shackle/cage. From a technical perspective this makes no sense. If you build a server with no outside connections to simulate the environment, and place the AI on it, then it has no capability to influence the real world or escape. **If you put another AI in charge of evaluating the design of your server to determine that there are no outside connections, that is a relatively trivial task!**
* Is it sufficient distance from other devices such that EM
interference can't be manipulated to generate signals in nearby
devices? Check
* Are all hard wired connections isolated? Check
* Are there no wireless interfaces present? Check
* etc.
The task of building a cage that prevents the tested AI from "escaping" its simulated environment is trivial. For a sufficiently complex system, it might be fairly complex. However for this scenario, it is feasible to physically isolate the server simulating the environment. This makes the task of verifying its security much easier.
Given this, speaking in terms of the warden AI and the tested AI being in competition doesn't make sense. The tested AI could be capable of self teaching/modifying, gaining new knowledge, etc. However, the warden AI doesn't have to compete in any way with this AI. The warden AI has a fairly limited task of evaluating the security of the design, before the tested AI ever comes into picture. You could furthermore build a robot with an AI that comes around and evaluates the actual deployment of the server to determine if it was deployed as designed.
The idea that if the AI is sufficiently "powerful" then it can overcome its cage, is leaning on the trope "with enough intelligence the protagonist can get him/herself out of anything".
What really is the hinging factor, and what many well written scenarios of this sort lean on, is that a mistake was made in building the cage. This has nothing to do with relative power of the warden vs the tested AI. The warden AI has a pretty simple task, given that the scenario involves a physically isolated server, so for it to perform its job perfectly, it doesn't need to be too complex. The tested AI could be orders of magnitude more intelligent, but could be perfectly contained by the isolated server.
Talking about one AI being more powerful than another AI, as if they are wrestlers in a wrestling match, sounds nonsensical in this context. The warden AI doesn't have to outsmart the tested AI, it just has to ensure the server is perfectly isolated.
**I would focus less on caging/shackling, and more on the pitfalls of trying to trick an AI into thinking the *n*th box is reality.** This IMO has a more firm grounding. Building the cage is trivial. Building a simulation that tricks an AI of undefined intelligence into thinking it is in real life is the challenge.
[Answer]
One problem I have with Matrioshka Testing is that it seems to fail a logical test - it depends on you keeping a "time advantage" over the AI, by simulating it on super-powerful hardware. But what's to stop the AI from using that same hardware and effectively upgrading itself, thus negating that advantage? In other words you say something like "simulate the AI for 1,000 years" - but once the AI is out of the box, it can do what it wants. Once it builds a box and starts upgrading, how do you keep your lead?
Another concern is how exactly do you define intelligence, or how you make an AI more powerful. It seems to me that the question treats these as 1-dimensional questions - just add more hardware - but I suspect the reality would be more complex. Does more powerful mean that the AI just has more cycles? Does it think "better", more intuitively? Or does that mean an increased capability for learning?
Combining a few of the above concepts - time advantage and varying intelligence definitions - leads to a possible answer. Have nested AIs that vary on the time cycle/capability axis.
1. At the bottom you have a fairly "dumb" AI that isn't
extremely useful on its own, but you can trust it to enforce your
desired basic constraints.
2. Now you have a series of AIs that are each "smarter" than the previous - more capable, and can learn better - but on reduced hardware, so their shackle AI has an effective time advantage on them.
3. Finally you have your target AI - the most useful one. It runs the slowest (just fast enough to do what you want it to do) and anything it does has to pass through all the rest.
One of the constraints your bottom AIs should have is preventing other AIs from upgrading hardware and thus negating the chained time advantage.
This obviously isn't perfect, but I'm not sure there's any "perfect" answer to the AI problem.
[Answer]
I think one of the important premises of the 'AI rebelling against humans' trope is that the more intelligent an AI, the more dangerous it is. It follows that the shackling AI should be less intelligent than the AI it is trying to shackle. This however means that the robot may be able to outsmart the shackling AI, unless there is a foolproof method for it to follow
[Answer]
There needs to be an overall equation for common good of humanity as it relates to managing resources first. What is the AI checking its performance against? I think if that ever gets accomplished the answer to your question may shake out more clearly. We still don't know what we'll be asking it to do.
A large number of decisions will necessarily be close calls and as those pile up separate issues of fairness, necessity, efficiency, and preferred rate of change (which will require human input perhaps, or a routine to measure symptoms of happiness or anxiety) will have to be considered. Example: due to some mishap, full power is only available to one of two cities in a particular region until repairs are completed; City-A has 10,000 people and City-B has 9,999 people and everything else is equal; does the AI choose City-A? If so then we'll have a number of 50.0025% assurance of proper decision ratings piling up and the AI becomes merely a coin-flipper.
Also it becomes apparent that different AIs will be required to serve different tasks and use data from different sample rates. If one AI is measuring second to second economic data, managing 10th of a second transportation information, etc, then another would be needed to analyse trends, monitor health projections, assess growth planning, etc. Sure you could have one computer running different programs but that sort of conflicts with an integrated software-hardware AI concept and would result in it having multiple personalities in a way. What sort of program can measure the value of food production for a city of 10 million against the needs of a hospital emergency in a small town? How will it weight the data from different regions if one area is inputting data from 2 million sensors per square mile (urban) while the other has 2000 sensors per square mile (rural)?
Realistically, AI will grow from separate systems in individual cities and regions. No doubt these different areas will prioritize their needs differently and may vary by the season. I've lived in towns that come winter have Plan A, Plan B, Plan C, D, & E for dealing with snow storms and those can depend on local activities, road work, assurances made to the new shopping center, concentration of schools (a few big ones serving a large area will probably close while those areas with smaller, distributed schools usually stay open). So now let's connect two or three of these towns, each with their own Plans A-E for dealing with each function: snow, water, food, power, communications, emergency services, waste disposal, sewage, etc, and yeah, it'd take a superduper supercomputer or some very good city managers talking to each other.
We'll probably learn a lot by the time we can replace a single one of the highly underacknowledged city managers out there. Sure, computers can now beat people at chess but multiply the number of squares on the board by 10 and make it in 6 dimensions and make all the pawns voters and add a piece for the PTA that has twice the power of the queen and then tell me who is going to program that?
And we still haven't tackled the central issue of an AI having all this responsibility without the authority to implement it. At some point orders will come to a human that will have to command other humans (think police, civil servants) who will still be second guessing the decisions of their superiors but now not being able to get answers as to their thought process will make their own decisions on enforcement just like they do now but probably more so since they aren't so much disobeying their commander as not trusting that damn machine. Will we give the AI the ability to cut the power off till the humans obey? Will it refuse to allow people to go where they want in their self-driving cars? I foresee a lot of smashed transistors in that scenario.
It's so easy to think of automating the big things like factories or the stock market (easy fix there: unplug and toss out their computers, make them trade in real things). But integrating needs and services together in any real location is still a far ways off. Heck, the traffic lights are still pretty dumb and we have the tech to fix that but don't. Get that working and people may have something to believe in.
I suggest that there isn't nearly enough empirical data yet to be worrying about who's watching the watcher AI.
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[Question]
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Suppose, through some fantastical mechanism, all macroscopic (i.e. reasonably massive) objects in the universe were instantly made at rest. In other words, the relative velocity between every two of these objects is set to 0. Subsequent to that instant, Physics resumes business as usual. What happens next?
Intuitively, it seems like everything would start falling directly toward the nearest largest mass (so earth falls directly toward the sun, sun falls directly toward galactic core, etc.) but I'm wondering if there is enough perturbation due to interaction with bodies of similar masses that things would actually just stabilize into a similar type of arrangement as before.
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Some additional clarification in answer to comment:
The intention is that all reasonably massive objects would be instantaneously measured at 0 velocity relative to an observer at any point in the universe (there's a bit of hand-waving involved when you get down to smaller scales, as I don't want all matter to suddenly be at 0K due to thermal kinetic energy being lost.) So, no matter where you are in the universe at that instant, everything will appear to have instantaneously stopped moving (within the limits of the time it takes for the light to arrive notifying you of this event; things would still appear to have been moving when you look into the past prior to the event.) I think there would be a noticeable discontinuity in the observed motion for past events, though. Perhaps there is a more fundamental problem with the idea here?
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I'm not sure what would happen on a cosmic scale if the expansion of the universe stopped, so I'll talk about what happens if the [peculiar velocity](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peculiar_velocity) of all objects are set to 0. That is, locally all objects appear stationary, but distant objects still have a radial speed [exactly proportional](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble%27s_law) to their distance. I'll also ignore the problem of having this happen "instantly" by assuming that all objects are stopped simultaneously with respect to your (the observer's) reference frame.
* All planets fall into their stars. They are destroyed even before they would be incinerated as they pass the [Roche limit](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roche_limit) and are torn apart by the tidal forces of the star. Without the aid of the Earth's velocity, no spaceship would be able to reach heliocentric orbit, meaning humanity is doomed as well.
* Most stars survive (initially). Centrifugal force is negligible compared to the pressures holding up the star, so the fact that rotation is stopped doesn't have a noticeable effect. The impact of one of the gas giants is noticeable: Neptune would strike with a speed of 600 km/s (0.2% the speed of light). However, the huge mass of the Sun absorbs the blow easily and any material blasted off into space will eventually fall back into the Sun. However...
* Binary stars may not survive. It depends on the specific situation: two similar stars will probably just combine into a more massive star. However, star systems with a compact object like a white dwarf or neutron star will probably supernova or collapse into a black hole due to the added mass. Speaking of black holes...
* Many stars are swallowed by a black hole. Specifically, the black holes residing in the centers of galaxies. It takes the Sun about 10 million years to fall to the center of the galaxy, and by then most of the stars in the galactic core have been consumed. With billions of stars, the gravitational interactions are complex enough that some stars are deflected and go into highly elliptical orbits around the black hole. There are probably no stellar collisions, since stars are so small.
* The evolution of the universe continues almost as normal. There are now many fewer stars in each galaxy, but there is no real change to larger-scale structures.
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`Relative velocity between any two objects` is hard to define. Let's assume you wanted to say that **rotation speed of any object in gravitational field of any bigger object is set to 0** (which would account for all solar systems, black hole in the center of the galaxy), and two objects/galaxies with similar mass will stop the rotation around common center of gravity. Close enough?
All objects will collapse toward center of gravity. This will restore some rotation momentums. Some old stars will collapse, other will explode. **Lots of matter would be "permanently stored" in black holes"** but my wild guess is that enough matter will remain out. New stars will form and explode. Collapse and reborn will continue for many billions of years, entropy would keep increasing, and **after some time** (which I am not capable of calculating, but billions of years) **there would be no trace of preceding "momentum freeze".**
And so it will continue until [the heat death of the universe](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe) unless we find any advanced technology (undistinguishable from magic) which can revert laws of thermodynamics.
The fall of the Sun into galactic black hole would take long time, and gravity of any neighboring objects will affect it's trajectory, and stars would keep forming and exploding, even during the fall towards central black hole. Collapse will not be few weeks long affair, and quite of lot of mass would survive the fall.
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Larger objects may generate enough rotational energy not to collapse (so for example some of the stars of the galaxy would survive) but essentially yes you are right. Anything in orbit collapses on top of whatever it is orbiting. The results are pretty catastrophic for, well everything.
The only good news is that the collapsing may well trigger supernovas enough to trigger a new wave of star formation.
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I wanted to comment on [2012rcampion's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/6431/4769), but I don't have the reputation, so I'll try to expand my thoughts into somethat that can pass for an answer. Here's hoping I get enough upvotes to be able to comment in the future.
I agree with [2012rcampion's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/6431/4769) up to the last bullet. I think it's more likely that
* After galaxies are mostly reduced to supermassive black holes with a few eccentrically-orbiting stars, the clusters of these (formerly "galactic clusters") will also fall together. I'm not sure what would happen as they came together, but I would expect most of them to be perturbed enough to miss colliding and form orbital systems of supermassive black holes. Some of these still include stars, and planets, but few (if any) planets remain in orbit around a star.
I'm not sure that the evolution of the universe would continue "as normal":
* Without most of the stars it would be much darker
* With some of the supermassive black holes in small fast orbits, there would be much stronger gravitational waves than there are now
* Cosmic dust and clouds would mostly have fallen in to stars or black holes. With much less mass being emitted by stars they would not reform as before, and where they did accumulate they would be reshaped by the gravitational waves.
But there might be some formations that are more familiar:
* Something would happen to the star material that escaped from the fall into a black hole when the star crossed it's Roche limit and was torn apart. Some of that might form into new stars and planetary systems, some of which might even have stable orbits around or within the black hole systems.
Of course, we have very little idea what would happen with all the dark matter.
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The problem with your Assumption to everything being pulled to the closest heaviest object is that there are a lot of objects in the universe.
given your example of the earth falling toward the sun and the sun falling towards the center of the galaxy, you have one ball attracted to a ball that is already moving.
so what might happen is that the everything starts moving towards these gravitational pulls and then some of them will start spinning and everything starts up again, maybe not the exact same but in a new way, some objects will be destroyed (or turned into something new) by hitting other objects in the Galaxy.
The big thing is that when the Freeze is thawed all things will start moving again, and probably not in the same fashion that they had in the past.
The earth may start spinning the same way that it had, one side falling faster than the other side (thank you Mt. Everest), and because the earth is slightly squished from the many years of spinning that have already occurred the earth will spin from the north pole-south pole axis. The only reason that this would happen though is because of the pull from the rest of the planets.
Let's remember for a second that Mars, Neptune, Jupiter, (not a planet, Pluto), Saturn (not in order) are all going to be falling toward the sun as well, and the earth is also going to be pulled toward them when the earth is closer to them then the sun and the other way around, even though one is heavier than the other they still have an effect on each other, not just a one way street.
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Following the American Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress is unable to agree on a satisfactory new Constitution and the United States, after a brief flash-in-the-pan existence, the union dissolves.
The 13 states declare themselves independent nations at the outset, although many smaller states are eventually annexed by nearby states (forming the even more atrociously named The State of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Providence Plantations).
**Where would international borders be found in 1800, 1900, 2000?**
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## Pre-1800
The end of the American Revolutionary War was finalized by the signing of the [Treaty of Versailles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Paris_(1783)) in 1783. This divided up the land in the New World, setting the boundaries of the various nations therein:
* England lost its colonies, though it gained/retained a few islands.
* France was left with a few minor gains, but not much in the new world.
* Spain regained West Florida; their land stretched from modern Florida to most of mid-to-western North America, down through Central America into South America.
* Finally, the United States gained more than it expected, thanks to the award of the [Northwest Territory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Territory).
From that point on, Britain would not be much of an influence, nor would the Dutch. The French retained what would become Canada, but lost Louisiana to the Spanish. Spain not only regained West Florida, but French Louisiana as well.
## 1800s
The entire gulf coast of North America, from Florida to Texas and far to the south, belonged to Spain. In 1800, France secretly purchased Louisiana from Spain - an area stretching from modern Louisiana to Montana. However, without a "united wallet," the individual states would never have been able to afford the purchase; France would have kept their territory. In the short term, France would have lost money on the deal, but in the long term they would get a strong stream of income.
Without the incursions into Florida by the US, Spain would keep control of that area: [Spanish Florida](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Florida). Escaped slaves and native refugees would make up a majority of the population, along with Spanish immigrants. Without interference, the country of Florida would eventually be more fully settled and defended by Spain. Divided by France's Louisiana, it wouldn't have taken part in the [1821 Mexican War of Independence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_War_of_Independence).
Texas would still become a Republic in 1836, breaking away from Mexican control. However, since the weaker Independent States wouldn't then annex it, the Mexican-American war would never take place, and thus Mexico would continue to hold California. With the gold rush just a few years later, Mexico would become much more powerful, retaining and building up the land between our Mexico and California.
The Northwestern Territory would eventually become several states, though with much different borders; it may even become one large country. With plenty of land, water, wood, and natural materials, the area would grow quickly.
As the northern states moved from farming to factories, they would have little use for slaves, though southern states like Georgia would probably continue to own slaves. The American Civil War would never happen. If any slave revolts occur, the slaves will run to Florida, joining the indigenous population.
French Louisiana (as well as much of the country to the north) would continue growing, bringing in money for France. As trade expanded up and down the Mississippi, the two French nations would eventually merge together. With land from south to north, France would be making much more money, with much greater span of income generation. Farming, furs, hunting, timber, and taxes on any goods going through the Mississippi river would make a lot of money, all funneling towards France.
## War of 1812
Rather than between the USA and England, the war of 1812 would be between the French Colonials and England. With French pressure from Europe and a huge base and revenue stream from the North America French, England would lose terribly. In our world at that time, England controlled much of the northern-most of North America, including [Rupert's Land](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert%27s_Land); in this world, the war of 1812 would kick England off of North America entirely. That would leave the northern land to the French territories to envelope the entirety of what we know as Canada. The Independent States would be sheltered from conflict, though probably offer France aid, as France took on all comers: France vs. Spain, France vs. Britain, even France vs. Russia as it expanded west. Towards the middle of the century, Canada/Louisiana would merge, and shortly (and successfully) declare independence.
Spanish Florida would gain independence as well; its people would be a mixture of native Americans, Africans, a few French, and the Spanish. It would be a much wilder place - no retirement homes and snowbirds there! I imagine it as a blend of modern Mexico and Brasil; a few major, modern cities along the coast, mostly populated with Spanish and French, and many tiny villages near the swamps and forests, populated by native Americans and Africans. If any conflict occurs, I imagine the French (now Canadians) will shave off a bit of the westernmost side.
The Independent States would most likely remain independent, but as their population grows, their borders would not. Cities like New York City would never happen; the state of New York isn't large enough to support such a massive city on its own. The nations would need a lot of trade to survive, and would form a strong coalition.
Additionally, the northern French tended to make peace and trade with the natives, rather than drive them off or enslave them; while they would still have trouble with the more nomadic tribes, the [Trail of Tears](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears) would probably never occur.
## 1900s
By 1900, the land from California to Mexico would be a rich, growing nation. Corruption would grow just as quickly, and without the US to support the 1910 Mexican Revolution, the country would be a much different place. The rich northern California would become the new capital; the south's metropolitan population would shrink as the rich moved to the nicer, cooler north.
As King-Ink mentioned, the [State of Deseret](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Deseret) would probably succeed; it may not be as large as originally intended, though. My guess is that it would cover what was the [Utah Territory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Territory). As a border country between Canada and Mexico, it would actually have a greater chance of survival. Neither would really want the desert there, and it would act as a buffer between the two.
Canada would be rich as well - richer, in fact, stretching from Louisiana to Canada along the Mississippi, from Oregon to Michigan. A SuperCanada, if you will. The border with SuperMexico from California to what is today's Oklahoma would be tense, more so than the border between the US and Mexico was, since both countries would be much richer and much larger. Mexico's land stopped at the northern end of California; our states Oregon and Washington would be absorbed by Canada. The Oregon Trail would be much hazier; many immigrants would start in Louisiana, the largest port, or St. Andrew's, the closest Canadian port to the east. Still others would drift from the Independent States, passing through to reach Oregon.
## World War One
The first World War would be radically different. [Mexico](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico_in_World_War_I) would likely be a much earlier ally of Germany, and would probably attack SuperCanada. While the USA wasn't be around to get them angry by meddling in their affairs, SuperCanada was. With the greater strength of a larger, much richer nation, Mexico would be a force to be reckoned with.
In Europe, the more powerful France and Spain would be able to turn back Germany earlier, but in North America, the war between the two superpowers would be rough. The Independent States and the Republic of Texas would take up arms against Mexico, but wouldn't be able to help much in the war in Europe. Florida would likely stay out of any fight.
In the end, the superior factory power of the States and SuperCanada, and the oil from Texas and SuperCanada, would crush Mexico. Without as many natural resources as the combined American Allies, Mexico would lose a lot of land; Texas would take the gulf side of Mexico, and SuperCanada would extend south from Oregon into California. Mexico would be left with the (poorer) southern half of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and the western half of modern Mexico. Its greatest resources would be gone.
The Great Depression would not occur; though the droughts would be harsh, the new resources from Mexico would push SuperCanada to greater heights. Post-war SuperCanada, Texas, and Independent States would flourish. Without the destabilizing effect of the Great Depression, World War II would not occur until much later. As more oil is discovered along the Mississippi and North America, SuperCanada quickly grows into the top superpower, with resources to spare. The Republic of Texas hits its oil boom. Mexico, already poor from the earlier war, would eventually split into several nations.
Hawaii, meanwhile, will likely remain its own nation, a small, poor country in the middle of the ocean. While Russia would try to claim Alaska, SuperCanada would have better access. Alaska would be very similar to how it is now - used for oil and military bases, but otherwise largely left to the natives.
## World War Two (1950s)
By the 1950, the biggest threat is not Germany, but Russia. Without World War II to kill off their population, Russia grows much more powerful, eventually trying to expand into Ukraine and SuperCanada, and sparking this world's second World War. The sides are much different; for one thing, Germany and Russia have switched sides. Instead of fighting Fascism, the Allies are fighting Communism. German engineers create the atomic bomb, but it never needs to be used; Russia's European and Asian allies are much weaker than Germany's allies, and the war is over before the bomb is complete.
## 2000s
North America would be *vastly* different; in fact, the whole world is a much different place. The Americas, Europe, Asia, even Africa have different borders, even different countries; France, having made it through both wars relatively unscathed, is a much stronger nation. Germany, having rebounded from its failure of WW I and joined with Europe against Russia, isn't the "bad guy" any more. England would be slightly weaker, having lost its stake in the New World much more quickly. Russia would be destitute, and probably would become several small, poor nations. With the major differences in Europe and Asia, politics would take a drastically different turn. SuperCanada would be a superpower, if not *the* superpower; the Republic of Texas would be a rich nation, rolling in oil. With the close relationship between the North American countries, they would all (save Mexico) be quite well off. The smaller nations would likely form a conglomeration similar to the European Union. Florida may eventually turn itself around; being next to the richer nations may make it a resort destination, in which case it will eventually become similar to the Bahamas. If it doesn't embrace tourism, however, it will remain poor. If Deseret manages to hold on long enough, it will eventually become a stable nation, though resource-poor.
The language of North America and the world would be very different as well; SuperCanada would speak French almost exclusively. The Republic of Texas would speak both Spanish and English. The Independent States would mostly speak English, though the northern and western states would speak some French, and Georgia would probably speak some Spanish. Florida would speak Spanish and English, as well as several odd dialects. Mexico would speak Spanish, for the most part.
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Working backwards, Alaska and Hawaii would Obviously not be associated with the states. No Mexican war so Aztlan (California, Arizona, Utah, Colorada, Nevada and New Mexico) would still be northern Mexico. As would Texas. A stronger united goldrush enriched Mexico would be the dominant power in north America.
the State of [Deseret](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Deseret) would be all the more likely because they would have no strong American government to try to re-join. And the Mexican government wasn't particularly strong that far north. (But unlikely to stretch to the ocean.) Alternately the Mormon Zions in Ohio, Missouri or Illinois could have been successful.
Canada would pick up some territory. Somebody, better read up on the war of 1812 should outline the effects of that.
The Lousiana purchase is unlikely to have happened so a lot more Amerind nations and a few more french speakers.
The slave states would each have a Nate Turner / Haitian slave revolt resulting in the American South being a patchwork of new Africas and mainland Carribean states. Populated by tri-racial people. The food there is insanely good.
America would be blacker, more native, more Mexican, more Frenchy, more catholic. All in all, it sounds fun.
Oh yeah, Alaska to Oregon is Russian.
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# Pointy helmets everywhere
With the states independent, the US is a mess, just like Latin America was in the 19th century, without any dominant power.
Slavery never ends in the South.
France takes over Mexico.
Britain invades Maine, Florida, and Argentina.
The Germans win World War I, then take over Europe, then share the world with the British.
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I recently read [a book about the making of the US Constitution](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B001VT3L6E). What's interesting and relevant about that factoid was that several states were independently exploring the possibility of joining European allies and/or sponsorship so that if the Union did fly apart, they could maintain their existence.
Some had approached France and others had approached England. I do not recall if any of the states had approached other European powers. It's uncertain exactly how that would have looked at the end (would the states have ended up as colonies of those power or remained relatively autonomous?), however, it is certain that the states with different sponsorship would definitely be different countries with different cultural identities now.
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Whenever a revolution fails to control the whole country what you have later is a civil war.
That happened after russian revolution of 1917, after the independence of the Federal Republic of Central America, after the dissolution of Yugoeslavia, after the independence of balcanic countries from the Otoman Empire.
In your case probably one colony would have conquered the others after that civil war.
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I had posted a question recently for my world building project concerning fungal lifeforms in place of traditional plants in a certain region of a tidally locked world. Had really good and informative responses. Now I would like to pose another question about this setting.
To the east of the main continent is an ocean frequented by powerful storms. On the eastern edge of the continent is a large group of islands running north/south and acting as a buffer of sorts.
I had an idea for these islands to have, instead of plants, land adapted coral life forms of different shapes/sizes, ranging from large structures to clusters of polyp grass. **My idea was to have these islands heavily shrouded in mists which provided aeroplankton for the coral to feed on, along with matter being carried in by storms.** Seems like a bit of a stretch though I am open to any explanations that could work.
Is it plausible?
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Okay, air plants are good, but let's go in a slightly different direction. Let's go a little more ... macro. Instead of microscopic coral creatures, let's get bigger guys, who are sort of a cross between this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OCSY8.jpg)
and this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/efzrH.jpg)
To get cool coral reef-building behavior, all you need is for them to grow in weird funky shells that persist after the animal dies, and, of course, aeroplankton. Which on this slightly macro-ier scale we're working with now, is quite possible. Look at this mosquito swarm in the Arctic:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3RgGQ.jpg)
Don't even get me *started* on the Everglades...
So I think we're pretty good. Just make sure your food creatures contain enough mineral content -- perhaps exotic chitin -- to build the coral shells, and you can have huge land-coral formations.
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> Update: another quick thought on aeroplankton... a nice source of this could be spores from fungi or offshore algal mats, or pollen from gymnosperm-style plants (like conifers).
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I think the biggest problem will be not with the coral-like (coralline?) life forms on the land, but rather with your "aeroplankton". One of the defining characteristics for plankton is that they're neutrally buoyant in the water, and it's *really* hard to be buoyant in air. Interestingly, making the air moist actually reduces its density- water vapor is lighter than the nitrogen and oxygen gas that makes up most of the atmosphere, so when it displaces those molecules the parcel of air gets less dense- problematic because we're trying to make things float in it. I can't think of a way that biology would make this buoyancy happen, and I can't think of a reason evolution would select for it; there's not a lot of nutrients in the air, and it wouldn't keep you safe from predators.
However, if you're happy to explain away the aeroplankton, then I can't think of a reason that the land corals *couldn't* exist. You've resolved their biggest problem, desiccation, with the mists. They'd have to be euryhaline (able to tolerate a wide range of salinities), because the water splashed on them from the ocean would be salty and the water in the mists and storms would be fresh. They'd still be able to form symbiotic relationships, either with the new photosynthetic aeroplankton or the classic marine phytoplankton.
So, why don't *we* have land corals? I think they just aren't very fit organisms for land, where food doesn't usually come swimming to you like you have in the ocean, so they might be outcompeted by some kind of non-sessile version. More importantly, our air isn't nearly damp enough to provide life support. Corals are constantly exchanging compounds with the environment, and that includes bringing food as well as taking waste and reproduction away. The mists on our planet aren't dense enough to carry those, and it'll be a challenge to make that happen with fog.
**tl;dr:**
Buoyant aeroplankton are hard to make, but if you're okay with that then land corals are certainly possible. Their biggest problem would be the harsh environment, not finding food.
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Absolutely possible for this to be realistic. There are a whole class of plants called [Epiphytes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphyte)
These basically live on food and water they get from the air. Kind of like what you describe. In the way you describe them, they will get a constant fairly significant source of nourishment - so should develop fairly well. You could even postulate a plant that "fixes" some mineral from airborne particles, creating a hard structure like coral.
One of the best decorative examples of the Epiphyte family is the [Staghorn Fern](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platycerium) I have a colony of these in my garden, they LOVE banana peels!
To be honest - you don't neccesarily need to go with a Coral Epiphyte - you *could* go with trees where the seeds are brought to the islands by water currents. A great example of how this can happen is Coconuts - I will always remember an ocean trip I took as a child - where days from land I watched a coconut bob by - it had germinated and was growing a little shoot of a coconut tree in the Ocean current, much like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KABIK.jpg)
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**Possible,** but read below.
I've googled "Air Plant" from Tim's comments, and found many interesting articles. One of them is this [Reddit post explaining how they can get nutrients.](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/hakd0/how_do_air_plants_eg_spanish_moss_get_nutrients/)
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> Air plants absorb almost everything from the moisture in the air.
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> Here in Hawaii we have LOTS of air plants. Orchids, pineapples, etc. These will grow by just plopping them on the ground or tying them to a tree (pineapples are a bit too big to tie to a tree, but it works great for Orchids).
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> The moisture in the air, as well as rainfall, give these plants what they need.
> **It is pretty amazing to think that a huge pineapple can grow on 'air'.** I've many pineapples in my backyard which is all lava rock - to grow a new pineapple I simply remove the head of an existing one, trim off the meat, and set it on a rock. 2 years later, pineapples.
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> I should point out that air plants can only do well in tropical rain forests. Where I live we get upwards to 200 inches of rain a year. So we have near constant high humidity and lots and lots of moisture.
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> Also, air plants tend to have very long roots that dangle from the plant (not into the ground, just hanging in the air or 'attaching' themselves to rock or trees) - these are what absorb most of the nutrients.
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With your setting, you have plenty of dirt carried by the storm and moisture by the mist. Go ahead.
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The problem with your setting if you're going with coral animal, **not plant**, is animal usually eats plankton, and does not feed on materials exclusively.
You must make sure the aeroplankton will thrive, else your corals will starve. As of how, it must be in different question.
Feeding on materials directly from the air (from the dust) seems a bit hard, since water coral does it directly using cell membranes. Your land coral should have sort of skin that limit water evaporation, that makes direct absorption using skin difficult.
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It depends on how set you are on the hard body "Coral" part of the concept, feeding isn't that hard, there are a number of mechanisms that will serve you well, you can have air rooted species, carnivorous feeding habits or some kind of wind filtering lichen. But all the plants that currently use those strategies are 1. plants, 2. pretty organic and squishy, they're not supported by inorganic exoskeletons, nor would it be easy for them to source enough material to built such structures.
My solution:
Since you've given a coastal environment as the benchmark location I propose an actual plant rather than an animal type coral polyp, this plant would source its food from both the air and from seawater as a filter feeder web and its water from the ocean. Seawater will put the plant under extreme pressure from osmotic processes; as a coping mechanism it will deposit a lot of mineral material in/on its bark and form a stony, inorganic casement that will protect it from waves washing over the island during large storms. This is basically a wispy feathery leaved tree with branches and trunk wrapped in concrete that picks up food and some water from the air and more nutrients and most of its fluids from the sea. The limbs and leaves could be mobile like those of a Venus Flytrap or even with a polyp's waving motion, the same is true of its roots. These trees could live in shallow water and build islands and reefs in favourable areas.
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I want to be able to graph the change in daylight hours across the year for a given latitude, to get an idea of what kind of cycle in available daylight people at that latitude would live through and adapt to. I'm assuming "daylight hours" is the time between the two periods the top of the star is tangent with the horizon in a solar day (sunrise/sunset), assuming the horizon is flat.
The problem is I have no background in mathematics or astrophysics, and all the answers I've found so far seem to assume I know a bunch of terms and formulas off-hand. I'm asking about an arbitrary planet because I can't even find a clear answer on what information about my planet I even need to consider, thus I've no idea what information I should be giving.
The closest to an answer I found was here: <https://forum.cosmoquest.org/showthread.php?106741-How-to-calculate-day-length-on-a-generic-planet>
...and it reads: *Here's how I'd go at it:*
*1) For a given orbit day (elapsed planetary days since perihelion, for simplicity) calculate the true anomaly.*
*2) From the true anomaly, calculate the orbital angular velocity.*
*3) From the orbital angular velocity and the rotation angular velocity, calculate the mean angular velocity of the sun across the sky.*
*4) From the latitude, axial tilt and [true anomaly-solstice anomaly], calculate the angular length of sun's path in the sky at the required latitude.*
*5) From 3) and 4), derive the day length.*
Now thru google and wikipedia I've learned enough (I think) to make it past step 2. However, "rotation angular velocity" is not a a specific term I can find any info on. I ASSUME it's the angular velocity for the spin of the planet, but I'm not really sure... and then we have "calculate the mean angular velocity of the sun across the sky", which sounds like something that translates to a fairly long equation that clearly isn't given here, nor anywhere else I've searched. Am I supposed to just average the 2 other angular velocities in this step? That doesn't seem right.
Steps 4 and 5 utterly defeat me. If I knew what equations to plug those values into, I don't think I would need to ask this question at all. "solstice anomaly" is another term that seems to exist nowhere else but in this post. Another problem is that these angular values can be expressed in radians or degrees, and I have no idea how those wildly different values should factor into the equation, which I should use, how it would change the final answer...
In essence, I just wanna know what numbers I need to know about my planet and what formulas to plug them into to get a basic idea of what the damn sun is doing. I'm aware that doing this at multiple latitudes for every day will be hilariously tedious, but as long as I know the process, I can at least get started.
I'll also have to calculate the movement of multiple celestial objects eventually, as the movement of particular planets/stars/constellations tends to have a notable effect on what traits/gods people ascribe to them, so I might as well start off relatively easy...
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## A graphical method
Sometimes a graphical method may be easier to understand and remember.
One year is the time required for the planet to complete one full orbit around its primary. You decide how long a year is; it could be shorter than an Earth year, it could be longer; but if the star is similar to our Sun, and the planet is supposed to be habitable for life as we know it, it cannot be all that much shorter or all that much longer.
A day can be reckoned in two ways.
* The simplest way is the time required for the planet to complete a full rotation around its axis; this is called a [sidereal day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidereal_time#Sidereal_day), because it is the time between two culminations of any given star. (*"Sidera"* means *stars* in Latin.)
You choose the length of the sidereal day. It can shorter than an Earth day, it can be longer. There is no relationship between the length of the year and the length of the sidereal day.
* The more complicated, but more useful way is to reckon the time between two culminations of the planet's sun, that is, the time from one noon to the next; this is called a [solar day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_time), and it is a bit longer than a sidereal day, and can be calculated as the duration of one sidereal day plus a fraction of the sidereal day equal to the ratio between the sideral day and the year.
* For Earth, a sidereal day is 23 hours 56 minutes, and an average solar day is 24 hours. (The current definition of the second was chosen very carefully, so that the mean solar day computed for 1 January 1900 is almost exactly 24 hours.)
(The solar day is longer than the sidereal day because by the time the planet has completed one rotation around the axis it has also advanced a little bit on its orbit, and it must rotate a little bit more to bring the sun in the same position.)
(Of course, if the planet rotates in the opposite direction of its revolution around the primary, the solar day will be shorter than the sidereal day, with the same amount. Most planets don't do this -- they rotate around the axis and revolve around the primary in the same direction.)
As the planet revolves around its primary there are four important points on the orbit:
1. At one point, the axis of rotation appears to be tilted towards the primary at a maximum, equal to the [obliquity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_tilt). This is the northern solstice, which is the summer solstice for people in the northern hemisphere. At the northern solstice, at all places on the planet north of the northern polar circle, that is, the northern parallel of 90° less the axial tilt, the sun doesn't set; and at all places on the planet south of the southern polar circle, that is, the southern parallel of 90° less the axial tilt, the sun doesn't rise.
2. Then comes a point where the axis of rotation is perpendicular to the radius of the orbit; this is an equinox. At equinoxes, days and nights are equal at all latitudes.
3. Then comes a point where the axis of rotation appears to be tilted away from primary at a maximum, equal to the obliquity. This is the southern solstice, which is the winter solstice for people in the northern hemisphere. At the southern solstice, at all places on the planet north of the northern polar circle, that is, the northern parallel of 90° less the axial tilt, the sun doesn't rise; and at all places on the planet south of the southern polar circle, that is, the southern parallel of 90° less the axial tilt, the sun doesn't set.
4. Finally, a second point where the axis of rotation is perpendicular to the radius of the orbit; this is an equinox. At equinoxes, days and nights are equal at all latitudes. Then the cycle repeats.
Assumming that the planet has a circular or almost circular orbit around its primary, the four points (two solstices and two equinoxes) are almost equally spaced within the year.
What you want to do is compute the duration of daylight for a given latitude at the northern solstice; then you can estimate the duration of daylight for that latitude at any time in the year.
[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/alexpanoiu/49506264112)
*How to compute the duration of day and night at summer or winter solstice for a given latitude using a graphical method. Own work, [available on Flickr](https://www.flickr.com/photos/alexpanoiu/49506264112) under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.*
1. Draw the planet tilted towards the Sun.
2. Draw the equator; notice that on the equator the days and nights are of equal length at all times.
3. Draw the polar circles as lines parallel to the equator starting from the topmost and bottommost points on the planet.
4. Draw the [terminator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminator_(solar)), that is, the line separating day from night. Note the position of the terminator with respect to the lines representing the polar circles.
5. With a protractor, identify your parallel of interest. In the picture, the parallel of interest is at 30°.
6. Now measure how much of that parallel is in the illuminated part of the planet, and how much is in the shadow.
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**TL;DR: you need to compute [solar declination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Position_of_the_Sun#Calculations) given your axial tilt, current true anomaly and the true anomaly of the [winter solstice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_solstice). You can feed that and your latitude into the [sunrise equation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise_equation).**
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Here's a complete worked example though, mostly for my own edification but others might find it helpul or useful.
(and for future readers, the date it was written was the date used to compute various numbers, and was 2020-02-08)
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> 1) For a given orbit day (elapsed planetary days since perihelion, for simplicity) calculate the true anomaly.
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Earth's perihelion in 2020 was on the 5th of January, so we're on day 34 of our current orbit. If we say the year length is 365 days and perihelion was precisely at midnight, that makes the current [Mean Anomaly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_anomaly) 33.5° (something like [wolfram alpha](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=earth%27s%20mean%20anomaly) will give you a more accurate value, but this'll do for an example).
If Earth had a perfectly circular orbit, the true anomaly would be exactly the same as the mean anomaly. Alas, real life is irrational and unhelpful, and so we do not have a nice tractable circular orbit.
We can compute the [True Anomaly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_anomaly) via this nice simple equation:
$$\nu = M + \left(2e - \frac{1}{4} e^3\right) \sin M + \frac{5}{4} e^2 \sin 2M + \frac{13}{12} e^3 \sin 3M + \cdots$$
where $e$ is the eccentricity of the orbit, which for Earth is ~0.0167, and $M$ is the mean anomaly we computed above. Using just these first three terms of the series expansion, we get a true anomaly $\nu$ of ~35.63° (and if you wanted more terms, you can have a [read of this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equation_of_the_center)). Again, a [slightly more reputable source](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=earth%27s%20true%20anomaly) than "some person on the internet" will give you a better value, but we're still close enough to see that this simple(ish) example isn't totally wrong.
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> 2) From the true anomaly, calculate the orbital angular velocity.
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The orbital velocity of a body changes as it procedes around its orbit... it will be fastest at perihelion, and slowest at aphelion. It is the rate of change of the true anomaly.
For a perfectly circular orbit, it would be simple: about .986° per day, or ~1.1416x10-5 degrees per second.
As before, ellipses ruin everything. You get the the specific relative angular momentum of an orbit where the orbiting body masses much less than the orbited body (as is the case with Earth and the Sun, for example) via this equation:
$$h = \sqrt{GM\_sa(1-e^2)}$$
where $M\_s$ is the mass of the Sun and $a$ is the [semi-major axis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-major_and_semi-minor_axes) of the planet and $e$ is still its orbital eccentricity. Courtesy of [this handy answer on physics.SE](https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/188106/225554), you can see that angular velocity $\omega$, the rate of change of true anomaly, can be obtained from $h = \omega r^2$.
You can get $r$ from $\nu$ like this:
$$r = \frac{a(1-e^2)}{1 + e \cos(\nu)}$$
So, today's value of $r$ is approximately 1.4755x1011m, giving us a current angular velocity of about 1.1724x10-5 degrees per second. As expected, this is a little faster than the circular equivalent, because we're closer to Earth's perihelion than the aphelion and so our orbital speed is a little higher than average.
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> 3) From the orbital angular velocity and the rotation angular velocity, calculate the mean angular velocity of the sun across the sky.
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In a circular orbit, if the rotational angular velocity were equal to the orbital angular velocty the world would be tidally locked and the sun would never appear to move. That would make the question a little *too* easy to answer, though.
The rotational period of the earth (the [sidereal day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidereal_time#Sidereal_day)) is a little shorter than the average 24 hour day (the [solar day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_time)), which is the length of time between the sun reaching its zenith point in successive cycles. There's a handy answer on this very site for computing the solar day length: [How to calculate the solar day from sidereal day and sidereal orbital period?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/84584/62341)
This of course gives you an *average* solar day length, which isn't quite right as the day length changes slightly due to [orbital and rotational inconveniences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equation_of_time#Eccentricity_of_the_Earth's_orbit). I'm going to skip handling the [equation of time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equation_of_time#Equation_of_time) for now, and cheat by assuming an average 24 day which gives us the mean angular velocity of ~0.0042°/s. I might revisit this later, but don't hold your breath.
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> 3) From the latitude, axial tilt and [true anomaly-solstice anomaly], calculate the angular length of sun's path in the sky at the required latitude.
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The solstice anomaly mentioned here is presumably the true anomaly of the planet when it was last at a solstice, that being the point at which a pole is closest to (or further from) the sun. Again, we live on an inconvenient planet where the solstices do not coincide with the apsides (though for various reasons the gap between them changes over time in [multi-millenia cycles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles) which I shall ignore entirely. They've coincided in the past, will in the future, and could coincide for your fictional worlds, too). The last winter solstice was roughly at day 350 of last year, and you can compute its true anomaly using the method in step (1), giving $\nu\_w$ of approximately 343.98°.
[Solar declination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Position_of_the_Sun#Calculations) declination is the angle between the sun's current zenith, and its zenith during the [equinoxes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinox), and you can compute it from your planet's axial tilt and the length of time since the last solstice:
$$\delta\_\odot = \theta\_a \cdot \cos(\nu - \nu\_w)$$
where $\theta\_a$ is the Earth's axial tilt, about -23.44°. Today's declination is therefore approximately -14.55°.
My latitude $\Phi$ is about 52° north. You can use the [sunrise equation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise_equation) to find the [hour angle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hour_angle) of sunrise and sunset:
$$\pm \cos \omega\_0 = -\tan \Phi \tan \delta\_\odot$$
Where sunrise has the positive hour angle and sunset has the negative. The day length is then the sunrise angle minus the sunset angle... in this case about 141 degrees.
(This does assume that the Sun is a point source of light instead of a disc, and atmospheric refraction of light from an over-the-horizon sun is also ignored. You can use a more [generalised equation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise_equation#Generalized_equation) which has an additional term to take these things into account)
Note that when $\Phi$ becomes large enough you will find that sunrise and sunset times become no longer defined. This is a sign that the latitude you're looking at is in a period of 24 hour night or day, where it will remain until $\delta\_\odot$ has moved a bit closer to zero. 75.4N is roughly the limit for a sunrise at the moment, which is why places like [Svalbard](https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/norway/longyearbyen) don't manage a proper daytime right now.
If $\delta\_\odot$ is zero, then the day has the same length regardless of latitude. This happens on the [equinoxes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinox). If axial tilt is zero then on every day of the year the day length will be the same regardless of latitude (though one day might have a slightly different length than the next, depending on your planet's orbital eccentricity).
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> 5) From 3) and 4), derive the day length.
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Divide the day length angle from (4) by the angular velocity in (3). In my case, this ands up being approximately 33890 seconds, or a bit over 9 hours and 24 minutes. This is within a few minutes of the actual day length according to [timeanddate.com](https://www.timeanddate.com/), which is a nice result.
Easy as that!
Note: Handling the difference between [civil twilight, nautical twilight, astronomical twilight and night](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight) will be left as an exercise for the reader. The additional complexity is minimal ;-)
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Here is a mostly "simple" formula. It is from an article in *Ecological Modeling*, volume 80 (1995) pp. 87-95, called "*A Model Comparison for Daylength as a Function of Latitude and Day of the Year.*"
D = daylength
L = latitude
J = day of the year
P = asin[.39795 \* cos(.2163108 + 2 \* atan{.9671396 \* tan[.00860(J - 186)]})]
XX = sin(0.8333 \* pi / 180) + sin(L \* pi / 180) \* sin(P)
YY = cos(L \* pi / 180) \* cos(P)
D = 24 - (24 / pi) \* acos(XX / YY)
This uses a radian mode.
The latitude should be entered in degrees.
The model error is less than one minute within 40 degrees of the equator, and less than seven minutes within 60 degrees and usually within two minutes for these latitudes. It is not 100% accurate because the Earth bulges in the center.
EDIT: This reference website will walk you through more math than you might like on this challenge. It explains why the formulas are more complex than given. It also gives examples that extend it to other orbiting bodies.
<http://www.analemma.com/Pages/framesPage.html>
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$$h=\frac{2\cdot\left|\cos^{-1}\left(-\tan l\left(-a\left(\cos\left(\frac{360d}{y}\right)\right)\right)\right)\right|}{15}\*\frac{1}{r÷24}$$
* h = hours of daylight
* l = latitude (in degrees)
* a = axial tilt of the planet (in degrees)
* d = number of days (local days, not Earth days) since the planet's spring solstice in its Northern Hemisphere
* y = number of days (local days, not Earth days) in a year on the planet
* r = length of local day in decimal Earth hours
This formula calculates the length of day in decimal Earth hours (not including astronomical refraction (which causes twilight), solar disc diameter, or elevation of the observer) for planets (not including moons) with day lengths shorter than their year lengths that are not tidally locked. However, the influence of the above three factors is very minimal.
Astronomical refraction cannot be calculated unless you know the exact atmospheric composition of the observer. Solar disc diameter requires knowledge of the diameter of the planet's star and the distance of the planet from the star. The length of day on moons is a lot more difficult to calculate because they require calculation of the moon's orbit around its planet. Tidally locked worlds have the same amount of daylight throughout the year except for a few seasonal changes caused by axial tilt.
Note: This answer will give you the number of hours as a decimal. For example, 2 hours and 12 minutes will come out as 2.2. To convert this number into hours, minutes, and seconds; go here: <https://unitconverter.net/decimal-to-time-calculator>
This answer is adapted from the Sunrise equation1 and the Declination equation2.
1. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise_equation>
2. <https://sciencing.com/calculate-suns-declination-6904335.html>
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Alex P's answer says in part:
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> One year is the time required for the planet to complete one full orbit around its primary. You decide how long a year is; it could be shorter than an Earth year, it could be longer; but if the star is similar to our Sun, and the planet is supposed to be habitable for life as we know it, it cannot be all that much shorter or all that much longer.
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That is correct in stating that the length of a habitable planet's year should not be too much longer than an Earth year.
Stars that are much brighter than the Sun would have inner and outer edges of their habitable zones much farther out than the inner and outer edges of the Sun's habitable zone. So planets in the habitable zones of extremely bright stars could have years hundreds or thousands of Earth years long.
But stars much more massive and much brighter than the Sun would use up their nuclear fuel so fast that it would not last long enough for planet in their habitable zones to become habitable for humans, which would take billions of years of planetary evolution. So I think that planets with multi celled lifeforms, or habitable for humans, should only have years a few times as long as Earth years, maybe five or ten Earth years long at most.
But on the other hand, it may be possible for habitable planets to orbit stars much dimmer than the Sun very closely and to have years much shorter than Earth years.
In Wikipedia's List of Potentially Habitable Exoplanets, exoplanets which orbit within the habitable zones of their planets, the one with the shortest day is TRAPPIST--1 d, which has a year 4.05 Earth days long.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_potentially_habitable_exoplanets>[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_potentially_habitable_exoplanets)
The same is true in The Habitable Exoplanets Catalog, which also lists Teegarden's Star b as having a year 4.9 Earth days long.
So there are two known exoplanets in the habitable zones of their stars which have years less than 0.013 Earth years long. And there are three others listed with years less than 0.02 Earth years long.
One problem with the habitability of planets with such short years would be that tidal effects on planets that close to their stars would cause the planets to quickly (in astronomical and geological time scales) become tidally locked to their planets. So one side of the planet would always face the Sun and become very hot and one side of the planet would be in eternal darkness and get very cold. Such a planet's water and atmosphere might quickly freeze on the dark side and never melt.
However, some calculations indicate that a planet with enough water and atmosphere might circulate heat from the light side to the dark side and equalize temperatures enough to avoid freezing out the water and air.
So if a tidally locked planet in the habitable zone of a dim star can still be habitable, the minimum year length for a habitable planet could be as little as 4 Earth days.
If a tidally locked planet can never be habitable, the minimum year length of a habitable planet would be many times longer, probable several Earth months long.
And another way to have habitable worlds very close to a dim star would be to have them be giant moons of a giant planet orbiting close to the dim star. The moons of a giant planet would become tidally locked to the planet, and not to the star, and so they would have days equal to their periods of rotation around the giant planet.
If the orbital period, and thus the day, of a hypothetical habitable exomoon was in the range of the Galilean moons of Jupiter or of Titan, it would between about 1.5 and 17 Earth days long, and so the moon might avoid too drastic heating and cooling during its daily cycle.
The orbital period of the planet around its star would have to be at least nine times the length of the orbital period of the moon around its planet, so that the year of a habitable exomoon of a giant planet in the habitable On zone of its star should be at least 13.5 to 153 Earth days long.
So depending on the correctness of various speculations and calculations, the minimum possible year length of a habitable exoplanet might be:
1) Several Earth months.
2) 13.5 Earth days.
3) 4.00 Earth days.
[Answer]
I have been trying to implement Starfish Prime;s algorithm, above, in C++. I'm convinced he knows his subject, but I'm a programmer, not a physicist. So here are some questions (and complaints):
You go out of your way to compute w, r and h. They never get used. I feel like I'm missing something here.
You talk about days since winter solstice and days since LAST solstice. I think you always meant last winter solstice (implying shortest day), but then I don't think the negation before tan\*tan is correct.
Units! No one is going to implement this on paper, and software likes radians. Knowing which units were intended for the sun's mass, gravity etc (if they matter) would save some hair-pulling.
Clarity appreciated! (and to make this an "answer", I'll post code once I'm sure it's right.)
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**Foreword:** I'm aware of the limitations of the square-cube law involved in sizing an animal up, as these limitations have been relentlessly stressed in every discussion of realistic fantasy creatures. In this case, I'm discussing not an animal, but a slime mold with animal-like motility.
# Slimes
Slimes in fantasy video games are all rather similar to each other in appearance and behavior. They are macroscopic and generally sphere or droplet-shaped, and capable of moving under their own power, often elastically bouncing meters into the air. They absorb solid matter directly through their gelatinous surface, and it's often implied, stated or demonstrated that this is how they eat. Though they are extremophiles found in every biome (e.g. forest, tundra, island, volcanic mountain, swamp), they are fairly weak creatures, and they can be dispatched with the first sword you get.
I want to construct a more realistic slime. I've looked for the largest slime molds that exist in the real world and have identified [Brefeldia maxima](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brefeldia_maxima) as a potential candidate for improvement. It's a single cell approximately a meter across, and it can weigh 20 kilograms. It's not spherical, though - it's a layer about a centimeter thick. Nevertheless, its size is interesting.
The traits I am looking for are:
* Spherical, ovoid, or droplet shape. This conserves surface area relative to volume, as far as I understand it.
* Able to move at a speed humans can observe. Bouncing is *not* required. It doesn't even need to be fast compared to a human, just visibly moving. But when I say "moving," I mean that the entire slime physically changes position, *not* that it grows towards food like a slime mold in a dish.
I do not need these slimes to have big cartoony eyes like they have in some games.
Naturally, some questions follow this:
* What is the largest such a slime mold could be under the limits of the square cube law? Could it be a single cell? I assume this would be governed by the efficiency of transporting food chemicals within its mass and the strength of the protein fibers it's made from.
* Would such a slime mold at such a size actually be as weak as video games imply, a one-hit kill? Or would it have to have a thick, stiff "crust" so it could support itself, and such a crust would be hard for a typical sword to cleave?
* By what means does it eat? Does it need to be rooted in place for some time? Or does it sense food around it somehow and absorb the food through its surface? And if it has a crust, how would this be reconciled?
* Could it possibly inhabit the wide range of biomes that fantasy games show? Or would its range be limited?
* Is a macroscopically motile slime *possible*? How would it achieve this movement? Is there a way for a slime mold to produce motor impulse? I tentatively suspect rolling could be viable, but I don't know too much about slime molds. Maybe it would crawl like a slug?
Thanks in advance for your answers.
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If there is only the requirement to resemble the "slimes" of video game fame, siphonophores come immediately to mind, as characterized by the Portuguese Man-O-War. Siphonophores are a bizarre sort of "creature" with a poorly understood evolutionary methodology that can capture the imagination of a reader without unduly stressing their willing suspension of disbelief (WISOD?).
A Man-O-War consists of a diverse number of individuals that are morphologically separate sub-species called zooids; these zooids are so highly specialised that they cannot exist separately, and must combine to form the entity known as the Man-O-War to survive. Individual creatures that make up the Man-O-War include specialized eating, attacking, and reproducing zooids, and a single "gas bag" zooid to which they are all attached for mobility and coherence. How such a wide variety of highly specific, symbiotic evolutions came about is the subject of much research and debate, and is only lately becoming understood.
Seen that way, it is not hard to imagine a composite creature like this that resembles the video game slime. A central "water bag" creature in the centre, covered in eating/digesting zooids, with propulsion provided by undulations of the central organism. The long tentacles typical of hydrozoae needn't be present; you might posit that as this creature became adapted to tidal pools instead of the open ocean, the long tentacles became a liability instead of an advantage. The stingers could be retained, making the danger of encountering such a creature very immediate, but preserving the classic "slow digestion" feel of the creature. The stinging would be an enormous deterrent for most predatory species, but for a sword-using human, splitting the water bag gives you the "easy kill" of low-level monsters that you require.
The use of the stingers is, frankly, my favourite part, and the thing that brought the Man-O-War to mind. The usual explanation for how a slime could hurt you is through acid or some other sort of digestive juice, but that never made much sense to me. I like this better.
While this hypothetical creature probably would never inhabit deserts or volcanoes, separate morphs for freshwater, seawater, swamps, sandy or rocky tidal zones, and perhaps jungle or rainforest would not be out of line. Humidity would likely be your limiting factor, or for a more "realistic" creature, proximity to water.
This has answered all your questions, I think, except with regard to size. In moving from an aquatic environment to a terrestrial one, size limits are always hard to consider. My very unscientific approach tells me that water is pretty heavy to pack around. Purified fresh water is 1g/cc, so a ball of water 1m in diameter would be a whopping 523.6kg! Not terribly maneuverable for a creature motivated by undulation. Perhaps a multi-celled central water bag, with some chambers containing buoyant gasses like a Man-O-War has, could be used to reduce this density in a plausible way. Even so, there are likely no plausible giant slimes to be had with this hypothesis.
With regard to things that are slime molds in the biotic sense, colonies of such creatures acting as a single creature might be worth considering. The horror RPG Eclipse Phase has an alien life form evolved from slime molds called the Factors. I'm not sure I understand the biology as presented there, but in the rough sense, "individuals" of the species typically combine to form large colonies of mold. The individuals can operate independently, however, and are sentient. I don't like this direction much; the association with fungus, although recently genetically refuted, looms too large in my mind for me to find plausible.
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I always liked the idea of using a mutant of a translucent gastropod (slug) for my "slimes". They'd secrete an acidic mucus and have mostly translucent features save the eyes and possibly the brain (assuming you want it to have a "core") and it may have any number of eye stocks as it would be a mutation from the normal, garden variety slug.
It would also be very malleable, being able to squeeze into tight spaces and because its mouth is not obvious, it may seem to someone looking like it just "absorbs" its prey, when in reality it’s swallowing them and using this acid and radula (mollusk teeth) to break them down in its mouth and gut.
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Well I'm clearly in no question to see answer your question as well as you'd like, but here's a link that might help reach the unicellular nature of your slime:
<https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150129160728.htm>
It gives some insight on a unicellular algae that can reach up to 12 inches, an extreme version of it could make your slime reach biggest sizes, also, here's a picture of Valonia ventricosa, another single cell, might be good to see how it ticks as a base inspiration:
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From what Secespitus mentioned about his book
This sounds more like a sea urchin, which a giant one might be a good idea for a realistic slime, or possibly a star fish with really short legs, or non at all. Another interesting thought is a Netflix movie called "evolution" with creatures that evolved super fast and reproduced soley by cellular division. It might have some interesting concepts for you.
In the post mentioning the YouTube video, I watched it and it gave interesting ideas. Pole vault like international structure to help it jump. That could also be used to help it breath. You could also make a paper lantern variant, one that flies around with hot air inside like a hot air balloon.
But this also made me wonder what could be used as such a springy material in any living creatures body. cartilage might an answer, but cartilage may be very fragile and I don't think it could withstand that much bend. Nore could it change its shape to the degree you may like. Then that gave me an idea. What if the body was a self making gelatin (jello). The slime eats the entire body, bones and all so it can get the essential materials it needs (cartilage and nails) in order to rebuild it's body (make either gelatinous body or flexible skeleton) (and water for a possible water based body, which it may not even need from us). You mentioned that a shell may be acceptable or needed. The gelatinous body is the best explanation I could think of to let it have a shell or a water sack. Maybe combined with the flexibility skeleton and gelatinous body it forms a structure like a sea urchin skeleton.
Constantly creating it's structure with a constant drip of digestive enzimes and freshly forming gelatin hardening as it touches the air. Or something like that.
Side note the slime could be like a virus. It needs our human cells to reproduce. Hijacking each cell making them its own.
There is also a fungus called Aspergillus tubingensis (along with apparently 50 others) that can break down the chemical structure of plastic. Maybe something like that mixed with the virus theory could help. It's not large, but it's ability to eat plastic and turn it into nutrition sounds slime like.
Spoiler alert if you plan to watch "evolution". ... There will basically be a giant star fish. !
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In a book i am writing the this is what the slimes are like. They can mold themselves into any shape and can eat using their whole body absorb flesh and bone using acids. They see using their hole body. They are split into cells each cell acting independently but working as a whole, the cells are the size of a tennis ball. They are sticky and can climb up walls and jump of ceiling onto their prey. They have sharp poisonous spikes that they can protract out there body to stab into their prey. They can split themselves into separate independent smaller cells. The only way to kill a slime is to burn it, poison it or stab it one cell at a time.
To humans they are one of them most deadly! creatures to exist.
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I'd like to set a story in our solar system with Earth and the inner planets becoming uninhabitable and a new planet being required. If human beings decided to build a world by making slight deviations to asteroids in the main asteroid belt, trojan asteroids, and Kuiper belt until they start to coalesce, and continue adding asteroids to this until they have an Earth sized planet, and then terraform the resulting world, how would I estimate how long this is likely to take?
I think it's clear it would take too long if the reason was an imminent comet impact with Earth, but what about planning for the [expansion of the sun](http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/ask/a10474.html) making Earth uninhabitable? Would a few hundred thousand years be long enough for a new planet to be prepared and made ready for life?
I'm interested in what different factors would affect how long this would take:
* How much can be provided by the three asteroid sources mentioned - are there any elements that would need to be obtained from elsewhere and increase the expected time?
* In particular would the asteroids release enough gas while coalescing to provide an atmosphere, or would this need to be redirected from elsewhere?
* Would the planet need to start off molten or could the time required be reduced by choosing glancing approach angles for the incoming asteroids so they spiral in and create less heat on impact?
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From asteroids? Can't do it.
To get Earth, you need
$$5.97\*10^{24} kg$$
The total mass of the asteroid belt is estimated to have a max mass of $$3.2\*10^{21} kg$$ Adding in the Trojan asteroids, you get an additional $$6.4\*10^{20}$$
Add in the maximum estimated mass of the Kuiper belt (which is over 30-55 AU away from the sun, and that poses a whole other problem) and you get an extra appx $$5.97\*10^{23} kg$$
Add up all your masses, you get
$$6.0084\*10^{23}kg$$
Which is only 10.06% of the mass of Earth.
If you are going to manage this...you're going to need to go all the way out to the Oort Cloud, which we don't actually know anything about, and is situated anywhere from 2,000 AU, to 50,000 AU away from the sun. They guess there is about 5 Earths worth of matter out there. Just for a sense of scale...that puts the upper limit of its distance away at .79 light year, with its theoretical outer edge at 3.16 light years away
Oh, and to further complicate things...asteroids are generally dead, inert rocks. Very little in the way of gasses on board. And there aren't enough comets actively cruising through the solar system any more to deliver that. again, you'd have to go to the Oort Cloud, or mine other planets for material. (Like Mars, Mars seems to have water)
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I think you are underestimating the vastness of space with this question...but I think you are also thinking a bit 'earth-centric' on posing this question. Ultimately, Earth is a whole lotta notta as far as usability to mass ratio goes and isn't that ideal.
1. Objects in the Asteroid belt average around 600'000 miles in distance from one another...about 20x the full circumference of earth. That's a lot of effort to even start getting a few of them together.
2. The kuiper belt is an amazing distance away. If you took the sun and reduced it to the size of a grapefruit, Pluto would be a microscopic piece of dust some 30 yards off in the distance (the image of space and planets taught to us in school books does a poor job...distorts the size a perception if you think pluto and the sun could ever be represented on a sheet of paper). Might get more mass out of the Kuiper belt if you considered Pluto / Charon part of the kuiper belt? The amount of effort in gathering these objects together at this distance here could relocate the entire human race to a new system and back.
3. This project spans several,. even hundreds, of generations. Do you really think humanity could undertake a project that required several generations of humans to work as a continuous one, with the benefits to be reaped on some abstract my great ^ 100 grandchild could live? We usually revolt in 1-2 generations, let alone hundreds.
4. A dyson sphere, or variations (dyson ring?) provide a much better ratio of mass to usable space. Rearranging asteroids into a ring around the sun would make far more sense as far as usable mass than attempting to form it into a planet.
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Counter Proposal. Why start from scratch? Why not start with one of Jupiter's or Saturn's moons? I am not sure what the new habitable zone would be (someone more knowledgeable about astrophysics can probably tell you that). But that would give you a bigger start. Both Ganymede and Titan are only slightly smaller (on a cosmic scale at least) than Mars and slightly larger than Mercury.
Or, if your story's technology allows it, start with more than one. Ganymede, Callisto, and Io for mass (along with all the asteroids) and Titan for it's Nitrogen atmosphere. Add enough of the other moons (and Pluto), and you should get something bigger than Mars.
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Build a "Von Neuman Probe" which basically "social insect like robot" that does two things:
* Replicates itself using available matter (for generating required energy) and "as-a-self-building-block" than
* Gather asteroids together or any solar system material available to them according to plan.
Since their numbers increased exponentially like (2-4-8-16-32-64-128-256-512-1024) only available energy and "matter" matters, not the time...
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There *would* already be a planet there, but the gravity of Jupiter prevents this. It rips the planet apart before it could happen. This would even happen if you brought in extra matter. All you would have is a slightly thicker asteroid belt.
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The key considerations are:
1. Total materials needed, without getting too picky that's about 5.97∗10^24kg of rock, 1.4 × 10^21kg of water, and 5.1480×10^18kg of volatile gases for an atmosphere. That's a big ask, especially the rocky substrate; I'm not sure there's enough building material in the outer system, including rocky moons, to supply this much material.
2. Bulk material strength, how solid are the objects you're building this world out of? This dictates the thrust you can apply when moving them and thus how fast you can move the material. Not only is this going to be an unknown until you go out and start playing with comets etc... it's also going to be highly variable with otherwise identical looking bodies being orders of magnitude separated in material properties.
3. How far does the material need to go? Implicit in this is the need to find a stable location to build in, personally I'd look at retrofitting either an existing planet like Mars or a Jovian Moon, maybe Ganymede. Any effort in the asteroid belt is going to be fraught with unwanted collisions and face disruption by Jupiter's gravitational and magnetic fields when it's at closest approach to the work area. Not that it *can't* be done there, it's just a hassle.
4. Combining the answers from 2. and 3. gives you average trip time per packet, now you need to work out both how many packets you need, how big are the bodies you're using for the build?
5. Lastly how many ships are doing the job? This will tell you how many packets are on the move at any one time. This is in many ways dictated by 2. and 4. since building bigger engines than you can use is pointless but ships need to be big enough to handle the largest loads and you can only build so many ships.
6. Time to completion = total mass / average packet size x average trip time / number of ships making those trips.
I'm going to go with a total of millennia, at a bare minimum, especially since the Oort cloud is the only remaining source for many of the volatile compounds you're going to need and the Oort cloud is the better part of a light year from the sun at closest approach. Also those bodies are likely to be the most fragile and need the longest to accelerate as well as being the most distant. If you want to look at an existing treatment of world building from sub-planetary bodies have a look at *[Building Harlequin's Moon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_Harlequin%27s_Moon)* by Larry Niven.
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I was wondering what would happen if there was a planet with a "shell" of stone entirely surrounding it (not connected, just held in place by gravity), with a few holes all the way through the outer shell, and two civilizations - one on the outside, and one on the inside. Would this be feasible? Would the outer shell need to be made of a specific material for it to work? Besides the fact that the outer civilization would likely suffer from droughts (as all the water flows into the interior), what consequences could this have on the two civilizations?
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This sounds very much like a naturally-occurring [Dyson Sphere](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere) that you're describing, albeit around a planet rather than a star.
Such a structure would not be able to form naturally at the birth of the planet, as planet formation pretty much consists of a bunch of *stuff* smashing together until it all smooshes (that's a technical term!) itself into one big ball. The only way to wrap a "core" with a "shell" would be if the shell formed entirely at one instant in time, otherwise the pieces would simply be pulled down to the core as it started to form, and would never have the time to form a shell.
The other option would be erosion, underground water eating away at the subsurface material to form a ginormous cavern that eventually encompasses the entirety of the underground. However, this, too, is so unlikely as to be implausible beyond belief; among other problems, where would the eroded material go? You'd have to put it somewhere, and unlike the water itself which could evaporate and find itself back up on the surface, the only direction it can go is down. You'll also quickly end up with caverns that simply wind their way down, down, down, down, and while they might link up with others the water's no longer eating away on the stuff that's still hanging out *up* because, of course, water flows downward.
Even if you did somehow manage to create this structure, it would be incredibly unstable -- one good break of a piece of the outer shell (caused e.g. by erosion weakening the integrity of the shell until it just breaks under its own weight) and now you have an unstable mass that will simply crash down to the core, break up, and now you're back to a solid planet.
And, of course, even without the aforementioned issues, even a small amount of tidal forces exerted on the planet would "wobble" the shell until it crashed down into the core. (EDIT: To say nothing of the sheer devastation should a meteor of even moderate size impact the shell!)
If we put aside such questions, though, and assume that we could have it (artificially-created by an advanced civilization, magic, etc.), then the effects depend largely on its structure.
For example, the surface might be quite dry, as you suggest, if there are enough holes to drain the water but not enough for ample circulation to bring water vapor back up to form clouds and rain. Or, if you've got ample air circulation between surface and subsurface, you could have plenty of moisture up top with ample rains for crops and such to thrive; this wouldn't even require the whole thing to be swiss cheese either, just a few, say, lake-sized holes. You could even help the surface out by having the shell be thick enough to support a few lakes of its own; not to mention that mountaintop glaciers can feed rivers that further add to the surface's water availability.
The lower layer would likely be a dark place, though if you have the circulation to keep the surface non-drought then it would most likely not be the damp and dank environment you see in caves. If you have lake-sized holes on the surface, you'd have lake-sized patches of ground in the underground where they'd get enough sunlight to grow crops; otherwise they'd be reliant on non-photosynthesizing food sources, such as fungus and many types of "slime" (generally algae). (Note that these lake-sized oases of sunlight wouldn't be directly below the holes unless they were precisely on the equator, and even those would of course move around with the seasons -- and in fact this movement might make all but the tiniest fraction of the space worthless for all but the fastest-producing light-dependent crops.) Given enough space between the subsurface's ground and the ceiling, they'd have their own weather patterns as well; with enough and large enough holes in the shell, the would be influenced by (and influence in turn) the surface's weather as well.
The most likely consequence is that you'd have two wildly different civilizations. The surface dwellers would likely view the "underworld" as a dark, scary, foodless desert, while the subsurface dwellers would likely view the surface as a blindingly hot wasteland -- neither would find much recognizable food in the other civilization's demesne, and both would find the other's climate intolerable to their senses in almost every aspect. I'd expect this to feed into rampant distrust of one's opposite civilization, and most likely there'd be wild rumors about the "barbaric" practices of the other; with two civilizations so wildly different, these rumors would likely be grounded in some element of truth, albeit embellished to varying degrees. (This assumes they're even aware of each other and have any sort of interaction at all, which may not be the case -- the vast physical gulf might be enough to keep the two from ever knowing about each other, at least until someone finally figures out how to make a rope long enough that won't snap under its own weight...)
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Apart from the problems of formation and the problems of mechanical stability already mentioned by others, there's also the problem that gravitation *cannot* preserve that situation.
If the sphere were perfectly symmetric, then the sphere would neither feel a net gravitation from the planet, nor the other way round. Of course the shell would feel the planet's gravitation as stresses, but those would not affect the movement. The planet would not even notice the sphere.
If the shell were absolutely tight, one might speculate that the air is denser in the inside of the shell than on the outside, and thus the atmosphere in between would keep the two spheres concentric (since air pressure gets less with height, whenever one side of the shell gets closer to the planet, it gets larger pressure and thus gets pushed back; I admit I didn't calculate whether this really works out that way). However since your shell has holes, any difference between the inside and outside air would quickly equilibrate.
One thing that might work in theory is if the outer shell is superconducting, and is held in place by the magnetic field of the inner planet. However you'd have to assume that there's a material that's superconducting at the planet's temperature. Also, a shell out of such a material would probably not happen naturally; it therefore would need to be a constructed object.
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(I am assuming you are asking this because you are interested in how something like this could exist within physics similar to what we have in our world, rather than an imaginary universe.)
I don't think there's any way that would just happen, in the physics of our own world, anyway. It's not a stable form that would be held in place by gravity, as you say. It would need astronomically powerful technology or magic to create it and hold it together. No sphere of solid matter the size of a planet would just hang steadily above a lower one without being insanely strong or somehow floating... maybe there's a massive magnetic field from the core and the outer shell is mostly magnetic metal suspended somehow - but this seems astronomically unlikely to me, unless the physics of this world are very very different from ours, or some amazing magic or technology explains it. Not that authors haven't written about such worlds in fantasy or extreme sci fi: see *Ring World*, for example.
The problem you mention with droughts on the outer shell sounds much less likely to be an issue than other concerns, and could be easily avoided by the creators if they so chose, via ridges around most or all of the holes, for instance. Also, depending on what the atmosphere was like and the altitudes involved, evaporation could bring water out to the outer layer via rain. But if the force keeping the outer shell suspended also acts on water, then water too would tend to just pool in a floating layer rather than falling down to the inner sphere. Unless the force is magnetic as so doesn't act on water.
Apart from the whole thing collapsing, the main effect on people living in such a situation that I see, is that the lower world would be extremely dark and so probably have a hard time growing earthlike plants. But any magic or tech or other-universe effects that explain the hovering shell, could more plausibly explain away such conditions or problems.
Depending on how the forces work that keep the outer shell hanging there, I can also imagine that someone flying high enough off the surface of the lower shell, might tend to start falling up towards the *inside* of the outer shell - it might have a force pulling things up to it too, leading to a third environment. If that is the case, then someone might be able to hang-glide or parachute or baloon-ride into a hole and make it to the other side of the outer shell. If the shell suspending force is magnetic or doesn't work that way somehow, then people might be able to similarly travel down relatively easily.
Depending on how the forces act on the atmosphere, the air pressure might also tend to be massively greater on the bottom rather than the top. Consider that on Earth, the tops of the highest mountains have air so thin that it's barely possible to survive. The explanation for how the suspension force works would do well do consider what it does to the air.
There would probably be some really strong winds and weather patterns around the holes, especially on the outer shell. If oceans are draining into the holes, they would of course also cause periodic dumps of water into the atmosphere of the inner planet. Again, what happens to that water would depend a lot upon how the suspension forces and atmosphere work.
The astronomy and astrology of civilizations on the inner planet would of course be based on the layout and movements of the holes in the outer shell.
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**A natural system by which a planet is enclosed in a shell seem possible, but very unlikely.** That means that there are millions of them in the universe!
Consider a planet with many moons at the same mean orbital altitude but differing orbital planes. Collisions could cause a natural [Kessler syndrome](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome). One could postulate a world where the debris coalesced, especially if it is relatively on the outside edge of the habitual zone and there are many icy volatiles present. Remember, water **expands** as it freezes.
Now, how did the original moons come about? Perhaps a gas giant is gravitationally cleaning out the Oort cloud. Thus, you would have a source for the moons *and* a source for more icy volatiles.
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The only real similar situation that comes to mind here is the planet saturn. It looks a bit like a sphere around a sphere, except that the outer sphere has 2 (big) holes, which make it look like a ring.
If you were to build something around a planet, you would have to start with a planet like saturn, then try to redesign the ring to be more in a shape that you like, and see how far you can push the change before it becomes unrealistic.
Just a note: I would expect you to be able to design a sphere big enough to build on, but you probably have to build something like a dome dome due to the lack of atmosphere.
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Maybe it's not natural, but created by an earlier civilization before the current occupents evolved.
Building on another idea posted in this thread, the inner could be the original planet and a "shield" was added around it. That got covered in regotith over geologic time with nobody cleaning up; perhaps a downed moon added substantially to the material. Primitve live spread to the newly available zone and it evolved into a whole new ecosystem.
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There is a concept of a shellworld discussed in various places you can easily find on the internet. To address the question of "Would this be feasible?", my answer for shellworlds is that they are, but only for certain configurations. I went into the specific mathematics here:
<http://gravitationalballoon.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-specific-stability-requirement-of.html>
It would technically be possible for people to live on both the outside surface of a shellworld, as well as on the surface of the planet inside it. However, it's difficult to make this work with both levels still having an atmosphere (although I won't go so-far as to say impossible). It is impossible to make work with holes in the shell. The levitation of the shell is dependent on the air pressure underneath it, as well as the ability of the shell to hold the pressure barrier. You would need air locks to go from the outside to the inside.
The stability requirement isn't hard to satisfy, provided the planet is sufficiently large. However, the larger the planet, the harder it is to maintain a perfect pressure barrier over such a large surface. So pick your poison.
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