General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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I need ten Earth years long day-night cycle on my planet. Hemera is a world I am creating as a setting for my story. Name comes from Greek deity - personification of Day. Needs of storytelling hav...
First question on stack exchange I've been lurking and learning for years and finally decided to pose a question for a novel I'm working on. Given the appropriate advances in material sciences an...
I'm new to this and my scientific knowledge is massively lacking in this area (so please take it easy on me!) I'm writing a historical science-fiction novel. Parts of it set in the past (1977) and ...
Some people straighten their head-hair with what's named: Keratin straightening Keratin smoothening Keratin rebonding Keratin treatment It is an external hair straightening procedure in wh...
What will be the view of the sky and the distances between stars, living on a planet or in a habitat in a super galaxy that has merged with all its nearby galaxies in its cluster, at a time in the ...
My friends and I are building a world with a 50 mile high volcano on it. The mountain is the result of some bored god deciding to play a joke on everyone. Or, some other god got angry and decided ...
I want to have air transport as the dominant means of public transportation in my fictional city. But how would such a system operate to handle many commuters with maximum efficiency? Specifically ...
For a story, I need to find a way to justify the limited cognitive capacities of an entire race that thrives on biomass, capable of eating anything that is inherently biological. This race is dri...
So in my setting there is a small and exclusive group of people that have access to devices that work like computers (but which are not the same as computers. They do not use semiconductors and ele...
I have a species of megafaunal carnivore that are extremely mobile with territories spanning hundreds of square miles and lifespans of 120-150 years. They lay clutches of 2-3 eggs every 20-30 years...
Vertebrates on land are limited in size by various factors. However, in the water, they can get much larger. How large could an aquatic humanoid creature (like cthulhu) realistically get, and what ...
What hypothetical scientific procedure could be used to reanimate someone who is brain dead. I am aware that it is possible to bring someone back if they are clinically dead which is where a vital ...
I'm building an earthlike world that has a moon orbiting a gas giant. Is it possible for the moon to always be between the planet and the sun? Also, is it possible for a moon to rotate around its o...
EDIT: Calculations were incorrect, the earth in my comic is not 5.8x larger, it is 2.4x larger. Its surface area is 5.8x larger but the diameter is 2.4x larger. Anyway I'm working on a comic tha...
In Greek and Roman mythology, the Astomi, also known as the Gangines, are an ancient legendary race of people who had no need to eat or drink anything at all. They survived by smelling apples and f...
There is a planet called Galileo with life on it. The life is getting extremely complex, in fact, with some of the life on Galileo beginning to form tribes and clans and learning language. Humans w...
In modern day society, few or many people have been fascinated with integrating robotic parts to their bodies. But sometimes that idea is taken to the next step, in which people want to have their ...
Is a colony on earth's moon must be deeply underground to ensure more natural gravity (by getting closer to its core) as well as more natural heat? By natural heat I mean "without the need of arti...
I am workin on an ecosystem based on life within the rings of a planet. I will create creatures from single celled organisms, to algae/ lichen, plankton/worms and scales of predators leading to lar...
You are Alien McGee. For some reason ( don't ask why ) you need to hide an artifact in our solar system for roughly 20,000 years before coming back and taking it. Said artifact is a magical vase ...
In the game Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, characters wear exoskeletons with an ability called "land assist", which allows them to slow down their fall using a jet of compressed air (or some speci...
Premise/question Hydraulic mining is the process of spraying high-pressure jets of water into the ground to dislodge sediment and rocks. The muddy water from this is directed into sluices where va...
I'm currently working on something where breechloading rifles and cartridge shot are developed very quickly over matchlocks and flintlocks. What major technological hurdles need to be overcome for...
Most arthropods have at least six legs. Some mites have four and some insects have none, but for the most part, they have six or more. What would the anatomy of a large quadrupedal arthropod be li...
This is yet another "literal worldbuilding" question, as in, building worlds. Inspired, in part, by this question. What if this world is a very long (effectively infinite) hollow cylindrical cavit...
Good day everyone. I've recently finally gotten around to writing a sci fi novel but need help on some of the science of a few concepts I would like to incorporate in the novel. I'll start with ...
In the story I'm writing, Earth gets destroyed and the few million humans that survive go to live on another Earth-like planet. Since the destruction of the planet, the humans do visit their star...
Okay so i have this world that is inhabited by an alien race that outwardly is basically undistinguishable from an ordinary earth-human. Due to the specifics of this planet they live on they can br...
Somewhere on DeviantArt, there is an insightful tutorial by someone named "Uzlo" on how to create anatomically believable angels. Among the instructed details is the possibility of developing a se...
After 150 million years, the most successful empire in the history of Planet Earth finally collapsed 66 million years ago. A five-mile-wide space bomb--there's still disagreement as to whether it ...
I have a mountain in a story that basically needs to be taken down (inadvertently) by human action in a world with premodern (so mediëval/ early renaissance at best) tech levels. I have been thin...
in most science-fiction stories that include alien races, said aliens have a roughly humanoid appearance (being an erect bipeds). now while it's likely that the vast majority of sapient life (being...
One thing that nearly every multi cellular organism and complex thinking species is communicate, either it be pheromones, chemicals, chirps and sounds, symbols and shapes, to even complex sentences...
After the fall of the lizard empire, most of the lizard people fled to Node to avoid genocide (This is in the Lovecraft universe, racism is mandatory). In short order, this former bomb shelter beca...
I want to make an atmosphere rich in carbon monoxide, but as it doesn't stick around for very long, it will need to be replenished. I'm looking for concentrations comparable to those of carbon diox...
It's the 22nd century and we have discovered a derelict alien craft somewhere in the Oort cloud. The craft contains a star chart showing its origin on an alien planet some 30 light years away. Let'...
This lifeform is a carbon based humanoid that uses ammonia instead of water, breathes chlorine gas, and its body uses the mineral olivine to toughen its skin. Its blood is blue; apparently an ammon...
Earth sized planet in the goldilocks zone. Similar mineral composition and surface water. Photosynthetic life evolves and thrives on land and sea. Atmosphere and climate comparable to the beginnin...
I have settings with orbital colonies around the earth. First off my idea is, if it is not profitable we would not fund it en masse. Therefore I came up with the idea that in the future we discover...
What needs to be improved or added to the structure (device) of human lungs to be able to filter toxic chemical compounds in the air (for example, in mines the air may contain nitrogen, methane, ca...
"The Dark Knight" is a nickname given by astronomers to the exoplanet TrES-2b, a gas giant with an albedo of one percent, blacker than paint, blacker than coal"”in fact, blacker than anything on Ea...
A long time ago during the last ice age an early hunter gather human encounter an unknown entity (likely a alien) who granted him the power of immortality with him living at least up into the middl...
i am not talking about xenomorph or moray eel type of jaws or multiple mouth or lower jaw inside the mouth. but this type of mouth/jaws or i called it double chin jaws where the chin also work as ...
Many planets out there will be water worlds. Those generally come in two flavors: either the oceans are so deep that the water turns into high-pressure ices like ice-six, -seven, -ten and -eleven o...
I think it will be possible in the far future to take a single person`s cells, genetically enhance and change them using genetic engineering and synthetic biology using new genes, and put it in a 3...
The species I have created looks eerily humanlike, practically indistinguishable from human except for a reptile-like tail and an exposed brain. The top portion of the skull is replaced with a gla...
Basically, in a sci-fi roleplaying group I am apart of, I have began to work on a long-standing human colony world. The tech-level is pretty much bog-standard sci-fi, and such, colonisation is poss...
I have done some research and so much contradict one another or I simply fail to understand. Do seasons occur on a tidally locked planet that isn't tilted on its axis?
I got motivated to write a novel after reading about ocean slugs that managed to evolve into fish. In my fictional world I'm writing how a few fish shaped slugs made their way on land and managed t...
You know, dragons like myself are no strangers to falling. It's a natural part of flight and I used to do it a lot when I was a tiny and very adorable wyrmling. The problem is it hurt, and sure it...