Questions...
... that come up when doing research for my novel:
- Has anyone developed predictable rules concerning linguistic drift, based on sociological factors? Has anyone considered the potential differences between industrial and post-industrial/information age civilizations?
- What would be the experience of a fully conscious, developed mind awakening in the womb? The old school sci-fi explanation ("they would go insane!") seems like a tremendous cop-out.
- What sort of agriculture could the Aysén area of Chile theoretically support?
- Since quantum computers will have to be virtually sealed off from external EM and heat disturbances anyway (ya know, buried in a mine way down deep, submerged in a pool of chilled ammonia) what sort of life expectancy would they have, if left undisturbed?
- Does re-living/visualizing psychological trauma really help "process it", or does it perpetuate it? I know what the psychiatric mainstream thinks, I'm just not entirely sure I agree.
- Is a compressed air engine really good for anything?
- Why the hell are there so many Sanskrit-derived names that mean "fearless?" I wonder. The Eskimos have lots of words for snow, did ancient India have a big thing about categorizing sub-varieties of courage?
- If we assume (as Kip Thorne theorized) that wormholes are only physically possible if they do not join two disparate reference frames (i.e., try to make a time machine out of them and they go boom), then are they possible at all? I mean, how can you guarantee perfect relativistic synchronization?
(EDIT: the Roman Ring configuration seems to suggest that this doesn't matter.)
(Oh, yeah. I'm taking the plunge and writing one. Guess that wasn't common knowledge yet.)
- Has anyone developed predictable rules concerning linguistic drift, based on sociological factors? Has anyone considered the potential differences between industrial and post-industrial/information age civilizations?
- What would be the experience of a fully conscious, developed mind awakening in the womb? The old school sci-fi explanation ("they would go insane!") seems like a tremendous cop-out.
- What sort of agriculture could the Aysén area of Chile theoretically support?
- Since quantum computers will have to be virtually sealed off from external EM and heat disturbances anyway (ya know, buried in a mine way down deep, submerged in a pool of chilled ammonia) what sort of life expectancy would they have, if left undisturbed?
- Does re-living/visualizing psychological trauma really help "process it", or does it perpetuate it? I know what the psychiatric mainstream thinks, I'm just not entirely sure I agree.
- Is a compressed air engine really good for anything?
- Why the hell are there so many Sanskrit-derived names that mean "fearless?" I wonder. The Eskimos have lots of words for snow, did ancient India have a big thing about categorizing sub-varieties of courage?
- If we assume (as Kip Thorne theorized) that wormholes are only physically possible if they do not join two disparate reference frames (i.e., try to make a time machine out of them and they go boom), then are they possible at all? I mean, how can you guarantee perfect relativistic synchronization?
(EDIT: the Roman Ring configuration seems to suggest that this doesn't matter.)
(Oh, yeah. I'm taking the plunge and writing one. Guess that wasn't common knowledge yet.)