The Quick Questions About World Building Thread

I found this; it's about the fifth post down. According to them, the ratio of ranch hands to heads (of cattle) is one to two hundred. O_o

Holy crap, two hundred head per person? Well, time to raise the numbers for my two/three ranch hands. And maybe tweak the value of wool and leather in the post-WW3 world.

Is it possible for a race to span multiple ethnicity or vice versa?

Depends on your definition of 'race'. Like, do you mean 'the Caucasian race', which is just a broad sort of demographic of human, or 'the Elven/Orc/Whatever race', which might almost be a different species or subspecies^{on that subject} you know how speculative fiction likes Half-Human Hybrids? The only scientifically plausible way this could be possible would be if elves/whatever else humans can be half of were human subspecies, 'Homo sapiens [something]. But I digress.?

I could see either one of those definitions of race contain different ethnicities- like how the Caucasian race contains the ethnicities of Slavic, Latin, Turkic, Germanic, and so on, you could, say, treat different varieties of elf (Wood, High, Dark, etc.) as ethnicities.

Hope that helps!

The reason I bring this up is that in an intergalactic civilization, there are groups of people who differs only by physical traits while everything else about them are similar. There's also groups of people who share the same physical traits but differ in everything else. In-universe, this is called ethno-racial complexity where ethnic traits are found in different races and same race traits are found in different ethnics. Is this sort of situation plausible?

I don't see how it couldn't be.

Is it a possibility that dynamic Braille display where the Braille texts reacts according to commands from softwares exists, given 20 years of assistive technology development from now?

Thanks a lot.

edited 6th Jul '14 6:49:29 AM by murazrai

It seems that they exist already.

Is there any examples of fully artificial national borders?

What does "artificial" mean in this context?

Something that is actually built from scratch instead of basing the border with some natural markers, e.g. rivers, mountain peaks, etc.

Yes. Thanks for the information.

edited 15th Aug '14 6:12:16 PM by murazrai

...Like the Berlin Wall?

Find any border that's straight.

If it's based on rivers or mountain ranges, it's going to be really curvy.

I think that parts of the Caprivi Strip (and possibly the North-South border just to the south) in Namibia might qualify.

Is it possible for different planets in the same goldilocks zone to have different global climates for each individual planet? For better clarification, these are ten planets in a ring around their star.

Yes. For one thing, the goldilocks zone can host more than one planet at different distances.

Second, the amount of water and other gases on the planet can affect the climate. A water-poor planet without oceans is going to have a different climate than an ocean planet thanks to the oceans' heat capacity and greenhouse effect from the water.

Thanks!

Okay then, second question: One planet is in an Ice Age, one planet near by is in the same Goldilocks Zone, but is basically covered in jungles. Is that possible or do I have to hand wave magic (which is a big part of the setting)?

Well, if one planet has little water and lots of other greenhouse gasses due to its origin, there won't be enough water to produce ice-albedo feedback or glaciation at all. Whereas a neighbouring planet with more water might have enough for glaciation.

is it possible for there to be a region where it never stops raining? a mountainous/hilly region, mainly. on an earth-like planet.

also, i was thinking of having a race of gravity magic using bird people who, through the use of their magic created a sort of floating mini-planet with its own center of gravity to house their country. would this country's gravity affect the earth's rotation and/or orbit? and how badly? (the country's gravity would only be a bit weaker than earths- not light enough someone could carelessly jump or fly out of it without meaning to, but not heavy enough that they'd have to use gravity magic to make themselves lighter to fly like they do out of it.)

edited 16th Aug '14 8:39:00 AM by Tarsen

"Never" probably not, but certain fog forests like those that exist on the Canary islands and elsewhere can come close.

As for your gravity question, it's really a function of its distance law. Normal gravity decays at d^-2 (d is distance), but if the magic gravity follows a different distance law (like the Yukawa one, e^-mdkd^-2) it wouldn't affect Earth much while still working for story purposes (depending upon the choice for m, which has a dimension of a mass, but I don't think you'll need to get into detail about that).

I'm sure it's possible in some configuration of planet, but I don't know how far you'd have to go to make it work.

Keep in mind that constant rain would erode everything really fast.

oh i see. thanks.

Also keep in mind: Constant humidity like fog-forests or perpetual rain can SUCK for our skin, hair, and breathing if you're not used to it.

Is there any language that the space, as in empty space between words, exists as a letter?

Thanks.

edited 10th Sep '14 7:05:33 AM by murazrai

Yes, some alphabets (such as Ugaritic cuneiform ones) use certain letters for spacing. Semitic scripts also can use special letters at the end of a word.