Questions tagged [radiation]
For questions about electromagnetic waves and particle radiation.
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What kind of damage would a maser (microwave weapons) cause to targets and bystanders?
If you don't know, a maser is the "father" of a laser, it is an acronym for microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.
Unfortunately, I'm facing difficulties in finding ...
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Preventing sunburn from a thick enough ozone layer
How much thicker would a planetary ozone layer (like Earth has) have to be to prevent sunburn from being a huge risk on the surface? Assume the planet orbits a similar star to Earth (G type) and other ...
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What is the best kind of nuclear reactor to use for a criticality accident if I want to expose my crew to a huge amount of radiation?
I've recently been making an attempt to write a short story that leans very heavily towards hard sci-fi. My area of expertise is primarily in biology and neurology, and the backbone of the story is ...
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How can a society have a group of people who are sick (from radiation?) while others are kept healthy?
I'm trying to plan out a post-apocalyptic novel that takes place on earth centuries or thousands of years after the apocalypse. The circumstances surrounding the apocalypse are vague as society has ...
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Could an exomoon be bombarded by electromagnetic radiation from its parent gas giant and still be habitable enough for life to evolve? [closed]
What I'm trying to accomplish here is having a setting where complex electronics are not feasible or so difficult to shield that they're not worth the time. Mechanical technology is the rule on this ...
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How do these plants capture cosmic rays?
The planet is a cold ammonia world. Its ocean is mostly made ammonia, with some traces of ices (mostly water ice) at the bottom of the ocean. The ambient temperature is 225ºK, and the pressure is 4 ...
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Radiosynthesis using radon?
I have made a few chemosynthetic and photosynthetic organisms as bases of the food chain for my worldbuilding project, and I thought why not make a radiosynthetic one?
Radon forms from the decay of ...
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What effects to expect from 100+ generations living subterranean with constant low doses of radiation
Back story is that humans settled a foreign planet and the star began to die so humans went subterranean until the worst of the star death cycle passed (yes I know this process theoretically takes ...
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How to protect a water planet within a water ring of a quasar from radiation?
Tags: science-based habitability radiation
I am using this discovery as my starting point (Source)
An international team of astronomers led by the California Institute of Technology and involving the ...
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Radioactive planet wrecks civilisations every 5 millennia- How stable will it be?
Backstory
Okay, so for now, let's pretend the creatures on this planet are just the same as those on Earth. Humans, cattle, pets etc, are just the same, cause I haven't yet thought up the biological ...
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How much stuff can I alter using the weak force before I kill myself
Weak Nuclear Alchemy, that is the power I am asking about today, a power that was already discussed in What Would Powers Based of the Weak Force Look Like, but I am asking a more specific question. ...
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Ecological consequences of 750-gigaton natural nuke [closed]
A monazite sand placer deposit rich in thorium dioxide is slowly crushed into a sedimentary rock by plate tectonics. Water in it acts as a neutron moderator which ensures the ore formation doesn't ...
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Orbit of an earth-sized moon around a gas giant planet
I'm working on a world that is the habitable moon of a gas giant planet. For simplicity's sake, assume that the moon is about exactly Earth-size, and the gas giant planet is roughly Jupiter-sized, ...
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Would colonists living on a planet orbiting an F-class star need underground shelters to protect against radiation?
In my fictional universe, people have colonized a planet that orbits an F-class star. I know these stars give more intense radiation and solar flares than G-class stars. This leads me to think bunkers ...
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Reality Check: Decay in Intense Radiation
What would decay look like in an environment so intensely radioactive that no bacteria can survive it for any appreciable amount of time? This is in a bunker that's been hit by a malfunctioning 'dirty'...
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How would a photon-based intelligence work in regard to relativity?
I want to do something interesting with Caleb Scharf’s speculation that hyper-advanced aliens could make themselves immortal by uploading themselves into the cosmic background radiation. These light ...
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Would an aircraft covered in radiation-absorbent sponges be invisible to radar?
Context:
In this semi-futuristic war history, some militaries looked at the ultra-high performance concrete used in bunkers and thought: "hum, the only problem with bunkers is that they can't ...
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How far away can (non-dusty) rocket exhaust be detected?
There are several questions around regarding stealth in space, where the general conclusion is that stealth is not really feasible because (among other things) heat radiation from a spaceship doing ...
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Could a planet support life if its only energy came from antimatter striking its atmosphere?
This planet is a rogue planet without any star or without being volcanically active. Antimatter continually collides with the planet, and annihilates with hydrogen in the upper atmosphere. This ...
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Why does my chaff like particle cloud reflect or "jam" enemy radar?
I have a hover tanks zipping around in my setting. None of these vehicles utilize physical optical view ports. All information is gathered from sensors. As such there are a multitude of cameras, ...
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How much radiation would a pulsar planet receive?
I have a planet, let's call it Davy-Tim. Davy-Tim has 2 times the mass of the Earth and has a magnetic field. Davy-Tim has a negligible atmosphere and orbits an average millisecond pulsar named Dad, ...
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How radioactive could I make some materials, while keeping them "cold"?
I have some radioactive alien ruins on an icy planet. Radiation means energy is being emitted and particles are moving about, which would heat up the surrounding area. I would like to maximize the ...
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Could a substantial atmosphere protect a large moon from radiation belts like those seen in Jupiter's magnetosphere?
I'm imagining a moon with a mass of 0.25M (so 10 times larger than Ganymede), in Ganymede's position orbiting a gas giant like Jupiter. Maybe the atmosphere is anywhere from 0.1 - 1 bar. Would the ...
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How would a radiation gun work? [duplicate]
I am worldbuilding my own Sci-fi story and I wanted some sort of weaponry that wasn't just a regular gun that would shoot a projectile. So I had the thought about a radiation gun that well, shoots a ...
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How close can I get to a nuclear explosion with extreme shielding?
Imagine you are in empty space, and a 15 megaton nuclear bomb is very close to you (D=200 meters), but what's also very close to you is a giant (Tungsten?) cylinder (2? meters in diameter, 100? meters ...
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Alcubierre drive - related blueshifted radiation and radioactive poisoning
Transportation using the Alcubierre drive is associated with blueshifted radiation at the point of arrival. Let's imagine that we're dealing with non-FTL bubbles. How effective would be arrival ...
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How would a "plasma torus", generated from Phobos to create a magnetosphere, look from the surface of Mars? How would it work?
One theory for how to create a magnetosphere around Mars is to generate a plasma torus by "evaporating matter from Phobos or Deimos, ionizing it and using electromagnetic current drive techniques ...
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Self-propagating radiation that turns humans into walking radio towers that are part of a 'collective unconscious'; feasible, or no?
A little background...
I have a story idea revolving around "Agent ROY-G-BIV" (the name is a reference to the 7 colors of the rainbow), a self-propagating form of electromagnetic radiation ...
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Nuke them until they glow -- am I right it's impossible?
Of course you'll kill them first, ignore that.
I'm not talking about any waste that may get deposited, that can be washed off.
The only mechanism I can see to glow is radioactive decay of isotopes ...
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How safe would deep-sea investigation of a nuclear battleground be?
Jormungandr, the snakebot of doom, is no more. Its remains are lying on the bottom of the sea in the Aleutian Trench to the south of the Rat Islands, where it was nuked to pieces by three hundred ...
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Absorbing Radiation
Everything was fine and dandy on planet Earth until a stargate like portal appeared and connected Earth to a different version of Earth aka Earth2. On this other Earth, humanity evolved differently, ...
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Is terraforming of Europa going to make Jovian system much more dangerous?
I’ve terraformed Europa. The now oceanic moon with floating islands was given thick atmosphere (pressure, thickness and composition to be established later, but I’m aiming at something thick, murky ...
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Radiation poisoning and primitive peoples
I'm working on a project, a world filled with radiated ruins thousands of years old. People still search these ruins as even now they may hold valuable treasures. Many of these 'Ruin Haunters' come ...
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How long would (dry) food in a glass jar survive in space?
Say you eject a jar of jerky or something through the airlock of your space ship. Does the lid pop right away due to the vacuum? Does the food get so much UV it gives you cancer? (Does that depend on ...
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Best method to convert gamma radiation to electrical or any other form or energy
I would like to know the best method to convert gamma radiation to electrical energy. I have already considered silicon semiconductor cells so please comment or answer if u have any other answers.
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Is radiation from collisions with interstellar material a serious threat to occupants on a system sized ringworld?
I want to know if living on a ring-world with an outer velocity of 1200km/s would be survivable by humans or would you get baked from the constant collisions with stray hydrogen and space dust?
I'm ...
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How could people hundreds of years ago have protected themselves from radiation?
In my world, there is a civilization with about 1800's-level technology. There is a nuclear accident in part of the world that they need to access. Is there a way for a civilization with this level of ...
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Could internal exposure to electromagnetic radiation be contagious or leave a trace? [closed]
This is linked to another question I asked a few days ago but my story concerns an inter-dimensional consciousness that lures children into itself by manifesting as magical wonderlands with wacky ...
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What habitat is the most likely to be used in this location and state of development on Mars?
In my story, people have been on Mars for around 15 years in the mid to late 2040s. The base lies in Arcadia Planitia, where the atmosphere is slightly thicker, offering greater radiation protection. ...
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Antimatter accident afterglow?
Per this question I've been giving thought for some time to restricting the use of antimatter and it occurs to me that an object lesson in what can go wrong might go a long way to discouraging its use....
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How much ionizing radiation would a baby need to absorb to develop acute myeloid leukaemia by the time they were 8?
My story concerns an inter-dimensional consciousness that lures children into itself by manifesting as magical wonderlands with wacky characters (think a creepy Sesame Street or Lazy Town).
The real ...
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Would spacecraft suffer from fevers?
Spacecrafts produce a lot of heat, which must go somewhere if the inhabitants don't want to die. And in space, the only way to get rid of the heat is to radiate it away
One way of achieving this would ...
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Can cosmic rays be considered as a "galactic resource" in a hypothetical planetary colonization science fiction world?
Like a star's energy, planetary biomass, etc are precious resources for any spacefaring civilization.
Can cosmic rays (for producing energy, causing beneficial but erratic effects like hulk's body ...
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How to explore a radioactive wasteland with mostly low tech equipment? [closed]
I'm writing a story based on people trapped in a city which has had multiple nuclear bombs set off in it, and so has some very irradiated reason. The people in it have slightly more advanced than ...
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What quantity of neutron radiation could a water-filled inflatable mattress functionally negate?
I have a character who's a paranoid lunatic that's convinced that a nuclear war is about to break out. As a result of this, they've pumped several inflatable mattresses - you know, the type used for ...
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Would an ultra-heavy tank be a resource-efficient zombie-extermination unit for an CBRN-contaminated environment?
The question, before you get into the rest of this textual abomination: with all of the context, objectives, and design features mentioned below, is an ultra-heavy tank a resource-efficient means of ...
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Speed up Venus using radiation pressure from the sun?
The amount of energy required to change the rotational velocity of Venus in any meaningful way is immense. Requiring far more energy than humanity can muster at the present date. But I wonder if we ...
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Would evolution come to a standstill on an ancient planet with (near-)zero radiation?
(Note: changed the question title, changed the expedition paragraph to mention weather stability (thx Christopher), voted to reopen, removed additional question section 20-jul)
(Note: some finds ...
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How to foil assassinations by irradiation, when the perpetrator is a state
Hugo Chavez said regarding his cancer:
It would not be strange if they had developed the technology to induce cancer and nobody knew about it until now ... I don't know. I'm just reflecting
What he ...
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Can a planet harboring complex life be radioactively hostile towards Humans?
I am writing a story that involves the colonization of an exoplanet with very similar properties to Earth. This exoplanet would be orbiting a red dwarf, but due to certain factors (it's atmosphere and ...
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