General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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I want to create a world set on our Earth but with humans converted entirely to machines, so the population can be larger than would be possible with biological humans. In contrast to biologically...
For the sake of this question, let's say that there would be a space mission that would send one man on a 40 year journey that will require him to be in a completely self sufficient habitat for the...
I am doing some work within the setting of the Exalted tabletop role-playing game. In broad brush strokes, the defining feature of the world is the five elemental poles: Water (west), Wood (east), ...
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 ...
What significant technologies would be lost in a world without "Advanced" Mathematics? Specifically, what technologies required to get to the next level of scientific progress in an area would be l...
Could a planet have an orbit in the shape of a figure 8 around twin (possibly binary) stars? Mostly curious about the physical possibility of such an orbital arrangement; is it stable over a long ...
Conquest and discovery has been an important part of developing the global political structure of today's Earth. After we expand and settle other planets, whether within the same solar system or n...
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 ...
I inherited a worldbuilding project, and the former authors liked some things that seem unrealistic. One of them is that one of the world's biggests rivers splits into two other rivers some 300-400...
In this setting, humanity has advanced to the technological capability of extra stellar travel via faster-than-light drives. However, due to distances between inhabited areas being extremely large,...
Most aliens tend to be humans with bumpy foreheads and/or pointy ears. Even when they do have differences then usually it is an entire species being portrayed as a particular brand of human. For ex...
What would happen if a powerful explosive went off in the core of a planet? On Earth, you have several layers of the planet, the crust, the magma, the outer core, and the inner core. Right now, hu...
A lot of species on earth do not care for their offspring; they spawn thousands of eggs, that hatch into larvae, and then grow up towards full size. If a hypothetical species was sentient in the f...
One of the solution to make a cold planet habitable for us is to increase the greenhouse effect. It works with planets like Mars that are inside the habitable zone but would it be enough for a plan...
My answer to the question Is there a scientifically sound faster-than-light travel system for a spaceship? involved an Alcubierre-drive starship. However, that then got me thinking. What would an ...
The grey goo end-of-the-world scenario in which lots of little microscopic Von Neumann self-replicating machines basically eat everything to make more of themselves. Eventually everything is grey ...
This question asks what would happen to the solar system if the sun vanished for about three days, the mass and energy of the sun simply ceasing to exist. This answer (as of this question, anyway) ...
Recurringly in Sci-Fi spaceships manage to make it to lightspeed and above. Is there a scientifically plausible explanation of such capacity? How does it impact the spaceship's design and its passe...
Related: How would a completely urbanized city-planet be maintained? How would the global environment of a completely urbanized city-planet be affected? Why would a completely urbanized city-plan...
Note: This question assumes an earth-like biology. Could a microbe (probably virus) be created that transformed humans into plants? What I mean by this is that the microbe would take human cells, ...
Suppose the universe contained a species of planet sized turtles1 that can travers at least interstellar space. How can I explain (without invoking magic) that these turtles are not spherical? If ...
When you look at the history of earth, the last ice age had major impacts on the flora and fauna of the world as well as biological migration. If I am creating an earth-like world and am developin...
I would like to destroy a Dyson Sphere so it leaves big chunks of scrap metal with no habitable zones left, but still with enough structure to hold building-sized blocks. The destruction shouldn't...
I was thinking about a different possibilities for habitable planets. And I was wondering what actually causes a planet to be tidally locked? I am assuming it more than chance that the bodies rot...
As a child, I was always fascinated by the propensity of water going down a drain to form a vortex. I created a world with a global ocean where there was a narrow body of land running north-south...
Mankind has been always interested in making contact with another (extraterrestrial) civilization. We have launched the Pioneer 10 and 11 probes with plaques explaining where the Earth is located. ...
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...
I want to be able to apply tools or methodologies to help ensure consistency in my world. For example: Burning world Imagine a planet with a land mass around the equator on which a great fire rag...
By "short period of time", I'm referring to the timeframe of weeks to months (not days or hours). For example: at the start of one day the land is flat, but after a few weeks or months there is a m...
Could a civilization grow or develop to advanced levels if they don't hold religious beliefs? I have just watched Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Who watch the watchers" (season 3, episode 4). It...
