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Questions tagged [radiation]

For questions about electromagnetic waves and particle radiation.

6 votes
4 answers
210 views

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 ...
the-protean's user avatar
11 votes
12 answers
3k views

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 ...
Cami's user avatar
  • 111
2 votes
1 answer
93 views

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 ...
BigDumb's user avatar
  • 377
2 votes
1 answer
127 views

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 ...
Neil Iyer's user avatar
  • 1,553
4 votes
3 answers
139 views

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 ...
Neil Iyer's user avatar
  • 1,553
-1 votes
2 answers
148 views

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 ...
Cetus Koi's user avatar
8 votes
3 answers
306 views

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 ...
Thunderhammer's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
756 views

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 ...
Alastor's user avatar
  • 3,422
2 votes
2 answers
340 views

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. ...
skout's user avatar
  • 2,058
4 votes
0 answers
182 views

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 ...
KEY_ABRADE's user avatar
  • 13.1k
2 votes
1 answer
401 views

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, ...
tiluchi's user avatar
  • 131
2 votes
2 answers
329 views

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 ...
user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
146 views

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'...
Nous the Space Alien's user avatar
7 votes
4 answers
2k views

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 ...
Fredrik Hansing's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
753 views

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 ...
Fulano's user avatar
  • 293

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