Fanghur

Does anyone know whether there would be any interesting applications if we could somehow figure out how to selectively extend the range of the Strong Force on the matter occupying a desired area? I recently finished reading a sci-fi book where a hostile alien species attacks the solar system with a probe like this. It says that they extended the range of the Strong Force from the subatomic to the molecular range, resulting in the probe being effectively indestructible (essentially it had the strength of neutronium but without the enormous mass). But I have no clue whether there’s any realism at all in the idea, even assuming that such a means of manipulating the fundamental forces could be found.

Does anyone know whether the whole ‘syzygy’ thing in the lore of the Destiny series is actually scientifically plausible? Basically, the idea is that that the species that would become the Hive lived on a water giant (the lore calls it a gas giant, but I’m almost certain that was just a goof) called Fundament with a huge number of moons, and they learned that at some point all the planets moons would align, and their combined gravity would produce a massive tidal bulge that would be abruptly released once they moved out of alignment. Producing what basically amounts to an apocalyptic mega tsunami. I’m very skeptical that this could happen as described, but I’m just curious if there is any scientific validity to it whatsoever? Note: what I’ve described here is entirely within the game’s background lore. There are no actual plot spoilers here.

Something I was thinking about the other day. With our advances in the fields of in vitro fertilization and cellular manipulation, is it theoretically possible that we could, for lack of a better term, ‘engineer’ a person so that they literally have two biological mothers and no father per se? I’m not talking about in the sense of one woman providing the egg and the second woman providing the womb to carry it, though of course they could do that as well I suppose. Obviously in that case, only one of them would truly be their biological mother in the genetic sense (to be clear, I’m not making any sort of normative or judgmental claim here, I’m merely illustrating the thing I’m asking here. Nothing at all against that). I’m talking about a situation in which a female embryo is created which has one X-chromosome from one mother and the other X-chromosome from the second mother, whether by modifying/creating a sperm/sperm analog somehow to have the X-chromosome of one of them, or by some other means. Is this something we are currently capable of achieving, legal and ethical issues set aside for the sake of argument, since I suspect that this would probably fall into the same gray area as human cloning would. It seems to me that in principle at least it should be possible. Though whether we’re at the point that we could even contemplate making the attempt, I’m not sure.