General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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There are quite a few known drawbacks to incest. However, incest can be helpful when trying to help a desired trait spread. Incest does happen in nature to some degree but it's not exactly activel...
If some advanced race were to make a solid opaque shell around our Sun, say around Mercury's orbit, something like a Dyson Sphere, how long would it take for Earth to freeze over and end most life?
Airships are a hallmark of countless steampunk and dieselpunk constructed universes. Of course, in our world, they were around for a short while. I want to know what effects geographical circumstan...
I am building a habitable, Earth like planet, but instead of it being in a solar system, it is inside a Nebula. The actual composition of the Nebula is uncertain at this point, but I am considerin...
After asking this question, What's the worst natural disaster that could hit New York City in our lifetime, it looks like the most popular answer was a Tsunami. A tsunami, however, from the sources...
This idea comes up quite frequently in science fiction, but there has not been a question about it yet on Worldbuilding.SE. Is it possible that intelligent life was brought to Earth by an alien ci...
If you've read Chronicles of Ancient Darkness, you might get the reference. In that story, the protagonists, after fulfilling their duty, decide to journey over a large mountain chain to explore t...
Is it possible (for humans)? My main concern was heavy gravity because they are much bigger and heavier. But it appears that in our system, the gas giants (but not Jupiter) all have a similar surf...
Simply put is there an upper bound for the largest possible living creature in a scientifically rational world without incorporating anti-gravity, magic, the force, or other physical concepts we ar...
In many SF stories (or fantasy if you replace science with magic), there is one technology that is hyper advanced in one specific field, like robotics in Real Humans or in Extant, but almost nothin...
If a planet always faces the same side to the sun, so that it has a permanent night side and a permanent day side, it will have a twilight zone in between the two sides. This will be a band around ...
Suppose the Earth entered a period of intense global warming, say by 50° Fahrenheit (28° Celsius), and then levelled off at the new, higher, temperature. Obviously, anywhere near the equator would ...
The question Could we still live if Earth's spin speed slowed down by 90% assumed Earth's spin speed slowed down by undefined human activities (as if climate change was not bad enough). One answer ...
Plenty of stories have done AI's before, but many of them feel unrealistic. If you make an AI that is as smart as humans, but with faster reaction speed and ability to process and calculate certai...
Imagine a race of what we would call 'giants', each of them possibly around 8 to 10 feet (2.40-3.00 meters) tall. What differences would they need compared to us regular humans in order to function...
It's easy enough to figure out how a species might evolve a third biological gender in general (e.g. some sort of asexual drones/workers, ala insects). But what I want to build is a system where t...
This question was stimulated by the question How would an aquatic race develop computers?. The answers obviously were based on the aquatic civilization being earth based, but what about a totally ...
Once geological processes have created a landscape a number of factors come into play in order to reshape it. This includes weather and climate effects such as wind, rain and ice reshaping the terr...
Supposing you took Earth or a planet like it and doubled its mass, the gravity would obviously increase in whatever proportion to that. As a result, humans as we know them would be ... thicker, (...
On earth most of our sealife is fishlike (excluding a few other species such as squid/octopus). As far as I'm aware there are no legged creatures which live solely in the sea. In my world I'd like...
So last year I started writing a post-apocalyptic story, and then realized I had no idea what the world was really like, and quite a few things just didn't seem to make sense. One of the biggest t...
In almost all science-fiction stories that include alien races, said aliens are similar to humans in many ways: bipedal (and often humanoid), communicate with sounds coming out of a mouth, orient i...
There is this setup that I've seen a few times of a ring-shaped world where people live on the inner side. My question is: what is the minimum advancement of technology for such a thing to happen? ...
Inspired by comment under this question "Darling, does this dress make me look fat? QUICKSAVE "Uhm ... no?" WRONG ANSWER, WANNA TRY AGAIN? We all dreamed about having possibili...
I'm working on the timeline for my world, but I keep getting stuck at the origins. I want to have had an advanced civilization (modern levels, maybe a bit beyond) that was destroyed in a vaguely de...
Visiting the Worldbuilding site plays with my creativity and imagination. So I am going to describe the dream I had: I am member of a different (alien) culture, from a different star system. Also,...
Meaning, cause a seemingly normal winter to suddenly take a turn within hours or a day/two into a completely frozen territory? From what I've read, abrupt climate change happens from ocean currents...
Imagine someone wanted to divert a specific asteroid to impact the earth. The Current Impact Risks page at nasa.gov shows a list of known impact risks based on observations. Most of these asteroi...
If somehow Mars suddenly had our exact atmosphere, could there be lots of life in a few million years? Would the temperature rise quickly? Would the ice caps melt? Could the life be as advanced as ...
Can life exist on planets as barren as Mercury? How would it survive? It seems like it couldn't. Mercury is very hot, would any life break down becuase of the heat? What other challenges face life ...
In a world without enough land for a massive (and growing) population, but plenty of water surface, experimental cities have started to spring up along the edges of various continents. The first is...
If there was a majority of land on earth (66 percent land), how would it affect the animals and plant? Lets say somehow earth has been created with 66 percent land and 34 percent water? Would our p...
Gas giants can generate heat via the Kelvin-Helmholtz mechanism. It's oft-repeated that Jupiter actually generates more heat internally via this method than it receives from the Sun. Scale this mec...
Could a civilization exist on a planet/dwarf planet like Pluto? It is so cold and barren. Is it possible? What would they live off? They don't have to be humanoid.
Imagine a species (the cause is largely irrelevant - could be alien meddling for all I know) that is Homo sapiens in all except one detail: they have additional organ which is kind of like gills - ...
If a spacecraft is in low earth orbit ~400 Kilometres above earth. How big does it need to be visible from earth with the human eye without telescopes, with enough of its details to clearly distin...
Quantum physics today tells us that we may not predict outcomes with certainty. We perceive events as random. So is this old philosophical fantasy of an all knowing computer possible? Meaning that...
I put a force field dome over my city. How would that affect the weather inside the city, and outside it? Specification of the city: 10 × 40 km on the surface 1 km in height dome would be 2 to ...
I was reading this question and realized that I didn't actually know enough to give the answer that I wanted. Obviously in the near term, all our raw materials come from the Earth. The only oth...
The inspiration for my question comes from The Great C by Philip K Dick. To summarize, the Great C is a computer that has taken over a large portion of the planet. It uses proxy agents to keep co...
Some species that reproduce sexually, don't actually have sex as such. Instead the female might lay soft scaled eggs, which the male then fertilizes extrenally. I want to know what a society of an...
If the Earth all of sudden was instantaneously transmuted into pure light, what would happen? How much energy would be released? How much damage would it do to surrounding space? Would it destroy...
Important note: The orbits in the diagram are elliptical. They have low eccentricity so they appear to be off centre circles but they really are ellipses with the star at a focus. The habitable...
Giant Spiders are a traditional element of fantasy worlds. They prey upon most human's primal fears, and are easy to make as evil as possible. (Note: Not to scale) But are they actually plausib...
Picture a planet identical to Earth, but with rings. It has a satellite similar to the moon, except smaller; I'm not sure how big it needs to be but distance from the planet is more important so ...
If you want to have a smaller star but you also want to keep your planet in the habitable zone, you need to put the planet closer to the star. This means shorter years. It is also possible to have ...
Some Science fiction stories have generations growing up on Mars would be a lot taller 7'+. How would growing up on a much lower gravity planet affect a mammals size? I understand bone density wo...
Could underwater creatures with the intelligence of human cave men or possibly the intelligence of apes create technology (that is, more complex technology comparable to what we have now rather tha...
Some science-fiction books I've read (including more than a few by Ray Bradbury) have men from Earth living on Mars, walking around outside of enclosures. I know that this is currently not realisti...
And could it look anything like the universe we know? Don't get hung up on the terminology. In general, you seem to see through it easily, so I don't want any more answers mentioning that. I'll sa...
