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Janissy
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05 May 2015, 11:20 am

StagtheStalker wrote:
.
Damn even sober me thinks that would be a cool Scifi story.


It would. I don't think you should worry about reality checking. Lots of cool sci fi breaks a law of nature, as any internet nitpicker will tell you. But don't pander to the nitpickers or your story will die. The key is not to be technically accurate in the details but rather to be internally consistent. If you break a law of nature in one part of the story it has to be consistently broken throughout the story. People can get enjoyably lost in a fictional universe but not if that fictional universe keeps changing its rules.

A good technique that I've seen done is to reality check some elements of the story for that "seems legit" feeling a reader gets and then add in your own impossible/improbable/unchecked stuff. Just make sure that whatever things you just make up out of thin air stay consistent throughout the story.



Adamantium
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07 May 2015, 8:44 am

This idea reminds me somewhat of the "Mote in God's Eye" series by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.

The fantasy tech allows interstellar travel and some kind of electromagnetic shields that can protect a ship while it travels inside the photosphere of a red giant star. No one who reads those books cares that such technology is pure fantasy.

The part that is like the original idea here is the civilization of the "moties" the intelligent, multi-species civilization on worlds and in space in the vicinity of that red giant. It would be a spoiler for anyone who hasn't read the book to go into too much detail about why it's like the idea here, but I think it can be said that Niven and Pournelle imagined a plausible scenario in which an intelligent, technological species would evolve through natural selection into many sub-species with a variety of characteristic adaptations to very different conditions.

They propose a good reason for strong evolutionary pressure after a civilization achieves technology at our level and beyond. It is not clear, but it seems likely that some of the observed difference in the resulting species and sub-species are the result of engineering on top of prototypes that evolved in very stressed environments.



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08 May 2015, 5:22 pm

Just start writing. Details fill in after the storyline. First the result, then the Radioactive Spider.

How does not interest me, what sub species, description, traits, does.

Accidental or Intentional?

Northern Europeans share 96% DNA with Chimps, also with current Africans. In all three, most DNA is non coding. It was left from some Flu an ancestor of all got.

European evolution seems to be by subtraction. It is the most inbred line.

Intentional reduction of non coding DNA, which we think does nothing, could produce results.

This is forbidden research, playing God, so good story material.



Adamantium
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09 May 2015, 8:50 am

Inventor wrote:
Northern Europeans share 96% DNA with Chimps, also with current Africans.
\

False.

http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics



rarebit
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02 Jun 2015, 4:04 pm

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:
Why does it need to be reality-checked? It IS fiction after all. Now, I know the "hard" scifi advocates will say otherwise, but to me, sci-fi is just fantasy, but with technology instead of magic. Do whatever you feel is appropriate.
...


I prefer well reasoned sci-fi and place fantasy into the fantasy section or the bin even, so as not to propagate it further.



rarebit
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02 Jun 2015, 4:28 pm

There's a lot of ideas that spring to mind, my first were to do with biomelecular motors and such (e.g. super strength). Those thoughts led onto things which could be most easily surmised by all the abilities in the series Heros...


However an old book I'll never forget is The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K Dick...

Quote:
an "evolved" human (meaning someone who has undergone expensive genetic treatments by a German "doctor" which are supposed to push the client "forward" on an evolutionary scale, and which result in gross physical, as well as mental, modifications)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_ ... r_Eldritch



mr_bigmouth_502
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02 Jun 2015, 11:27 pm

rarebit wrote:
mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:
Why does it need to be reality-checked? It IS fiction after all. Now, I know the "hard" scifi advocates will say otherwise, but to me, sci-fi is just fantasy, but with technology instead of magic. Do whatever you feel is appropriate.
...


I prefer well reasoned sci-fi and place fantasy into the fantasy section or the bin even, so as not to propagate it further.


You really don't like fantasy, do you? :P



rarebit
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03 Jun 2015, 7:50 am

I do if its billed as fantasy



aspieprincess123
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28 May 2021, 4:53 am

Explaining the technology depends if you are wanting to go down the Hard Sci Fi route or the Soft Sci Fi route.
An example of Hard Sci Fi is "The Expanse" series of novels as a lot of the science is explained and is quite realistic.
Soft Sci Fi I been told is something like the the novel "Dune" where the technology is either not explained in detail or is under the guise of "It just works" the focus is more on the story or in Dune's case also the social elements.



The_Znof
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28 May 2021, 9:29 am

How nanotechnology helps mRNA Covid-19 vaccines work

By Elizabeth Cooney Dec. 1, 2020

Quote:
While the first two Covid-19 vaccines relying on messenger RNA technology speed toward regulatory approval in the U.S., it’s worth remembering the vehicle that gets them where they need to go in the body.

Lipid nanoparticles are the fatty molecular envelopes that help strands of mRNA — the genetic messenger for making DNA code into proteins — evade the body’s biological gatekeepers and reach their target cell without being degraded. They are enabling some of the most advanced technologies being used in vaccines and drugs.

These carriers are used to package the active chemicals in drugs such as the chemotherapy Doxil or the cholesterol-lowering medicines Repatha and Praluent so they get to their targets with fewer unwanted side effects. And nanoparticles are being investigated to ferry the genome-editing CRISPR-Cas9 to target organs, in hopes of solving another delivery challenge.

In 2018, the biotech Alnylam turned Nobel Prize-winning RNA interference research into the first siRNA drug — Onpattro, for patients with an inherited neurological disorder — by packaging the small interfering RNA in lipid nanoparticles. Now, similar formulations are paving the way for messenger RNA vaccines.


read more: https://www.statnews.com/2020/12/01/how ... ines-work/

a 'novel' idea? :?



Fnord
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28 May 2021, 9:59 am

StagtheStalker wrote:
Scifi Novel idea that needs reality check.
ALL of science-fiction could use a reality check!
StagtheStalker wrote:
I have this idea of a world where somewhere in the timeline Nanotechnology was so able to alter our evolution ... I have no idea if nanotechnology could be used in that way and if it would ever be possible for us to understand the process of evolution well enough to use nanotechnology in such a way...
A nanobot or "nanite" small enough to directly manipulate individual base pairs in your DNA would likely have neither the power, nor the strength, nor the "intelligence" to do so.

To give you an idea of scale, 1 micrometer is one-millionth of a meter (1 micron), or about 0.0000393701 of an inch.  The diameter of a single strand of human hair is about 75 millionths of a meter (75 microns), or about 0.0029527575 of an inch, depending on the person.

Cerebellar Granule Cells (CGC) are the smallest cells in the human body; that is, between 4 micrometers to 4.5 micrometers long (0.0001574804 inch to 0.0001968505 inch).  Cerebellar granule cells are also the most numerous neurons in the brain.  In humans, estimates of their total number average around 50 billion, which means that they constitute about 3/4 of the brain's neurons.

In order to have a machine capable of entering a CGC and manipulating the DNA in its nucleus without damaging the cell would require a machine to be no more than about 3 nanometers across in any dimension.  That is 25,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair, and the approximate wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light and soft X-rays (more on this later).

Which brings us to the next question: How would these nanobots be powered?

Radioactive isotopes might work, but one nanobot per CGC would mean 50 billion nuclear reactors in your brain throwing off radiation in every direction all at once. Your brain would fry before the DNA could be touched.

Broadcast power might also work, but beaming enough XUV or X-Ray light into your head would also fry your brain before the DNA could be changed.

... and we are just considering 3/4 of your brain!  Your entire body is composed of trillions of cells.  You would be effectively cremated by either the nanobots themselves or the external energy used to power them!

Better to stick with rDNA/mRNA and retrovirii instead.


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