General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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I am writing a story where a person suffers from a medical condition where the gut produces too much of a liquid called diphosphane. Diphosphane is pyrophoric past a certain small concentration, an...
Skippable Introduction I asked a similar question 2 years ago and never got a real answer. I was told the question was too broad or "it can be whatever you want" "magic can do anything" so I thoug...
In my setting there is a civilization that has a decisive advantage in a fundamentally agrarian world; a crop of exceptional yield and nutritional value. Would it be feasible for a plant to have ...
Landia, a land based civilisation, has recently established diplomatic relations with Aquatica, a civilisation of fish people. The two peoples exchange gifts to each other - including from Landia, ...
It's the late 2020's, and humanity has expressed an unprecedented and powerful renewal in the interest of space exploration. Sometime between then and the turn of the next century, a practical form...
Hello there, it's my first time posting, so I'm sorry if I'm going against formatting. I'm making a continent for a fantasy setting, and have been firstly focusing on geography. This continent s...
Let's say you have a planet about the size of Earth. It has three moons, each roughly the mass of one-third of the Earth's moon. Would this cause tides of different magnitude than those on Earth? A...
If you were inside of a gas that was producing its own light (for example, air at 900°C), what would it look like? Would it look foggy, or would objects that aren't the same colour as the glow sti...
In many fantasy worlds, dragons are depicted with six limbs: four "legs" (two front limbs and two hind limbs) and two wings. In the real world, we don't really see vertebrates with more than four l...
I've got this idea of a rogue planet that is moving that fast through the intergalactic void that the cosmic microwave radiation, thanks to the Doppler effect, actually provides enough heat that it...
If you took a giant drill (~one hundred meter circumference) and bored down two kilometers into the moon, what would it look like (assuming the lighting was good)? Is there a gradient, or is it a u...
I'd like to randomly generate between 1 and 20 million stars for a spiral galaxy resembling our Milky Way. This is of course far fewer than our galaxy (estimated between 150 to 300 billion), but I'...
In my world a moon is reached and colonised but only in space stations for a long time. They gain the ability to reach the surface and then story happens. It needs to be something that can be bypas...
Many physicians apply numbing agent creams/ointments such as Lidocaine+Prilocaine or Benzocaine+Lidocaine+Tetracaine (BLT) preparations topically some 30 minutes before laser hair removal treatment...
Tengu are a race of upright, humanoid creatures with the ability to fly and other avian characteristics to a varying degree. Konoha-tengu (foliage tengu) are six-limbed humanoid avians. The bird s...
Imagine a dragon as tall as average adult horse with a wing span of 12m long measuring from tip to tip. I wonder what evolutionary traits or techniques could allow the dragon to lift itself off the...
I want to design a realistic interstellar spaceship that uses centrifugal force for only the crew quarters. But while looking up for designs I found the most common ones are the torus or ring desig...
This is the world's tallest tree--the coast redwood. It can grow as high up as 115.5 meters. Any taller, and the transportation of water in its vascular tissues would not climb all the way. Bu...
In my setting, there's a gas giant orbiting in the habitable zone of a red dwarf (for specificity, its radius is about half Jupiter's, and it's 0.35 AU from 61 Cygni B. Ignore the effect of the oth...
bucking the trend of mermaids I've decided to take a different approach with my mermaids. A long time ago a group of Australopithecus diverged from us taking to the sea. some characteristics of the...
Throughout the ages, The Summoners were a prominent family of mages (but technology is magic here), who possess the ability to call forth creatures from cards. Of course they can only summon creatu...
Say there's an in-universe weapon so odd looking that it is rumored to have been stained by the blood of a "holy" mortal, so much so that no amount of water can wash it away. Is there a chance hu...
Imagine a spacecraft in a highly eccentric orbit. Say the craft burns at periapsis towards the planet such that its orbital eccentricity does not change and the craft's periapsis moves with the shi...
An idea I'm toying with for a sci-fi story is a species where the individual organisms are colonies of smaller eusocial organisms. The idea initially came from "hey if a bunch of single-celled orga...
In a setting where an empire establishes an island colony far to the north, what is the coldest climate such a colony could sustainably survive were that empire to collapse and stop sending supply ...
In the deep, outer reaches of our galaxy, there is a rogue gas giant which, due to an unfortunate event, was flung from its native orbit into interstellar space. It has a mass 12 times that of Jupi...
In the 2002 documentary the future is wild, numerous biologists and other scientists speculated about the future evolution of various species. In the '100 million years in the future' segment, the...
so i want to know What organs or modifications are need for a biological creature to develop lethal force as a pooping machine gun. something like how skunk spray their stinky odor as defense mec...
This is a submission for the Anatomically Correct Series The orang pendek is a cryptid that reportedly inhabits remote, mountainous forests on the island of Sumatra (likely evolving from orangutan...
Consider a planet with Earth like gravity but an atmosphere that is 10x what Earth has at sea level (atmospheric composition is equivalent to Earth). If the vegetation is similar to Earth's, would ...
Recently I've been looking into Metallic Hydrogen as a fuel for the vehicles of my fictional future world. The only issue is that I'm uncertain if the blasted stuff is metastable. And while I kno...
My species lives on a world that is filled with very few storms, lush environments, and naturally forming metallic monoliths. The species are like humans, but one thing that sets them apart from hu...
Ancient Man feasted on megafauna. From mammoths to every variety of deer and flightless bird humans have made the most of large wildlife, to the point of tragic excess. So what happens when the ani...
There is a concern that's been brought up only recently--steel and concrete buildings are environmentally wasteful. In further clarification, they waste away too much greenhouse gases. And consid...
Let's say humanity is a type 1 civilization, ( essentially a civilization that can control there entire planet and harness its energy ), now let's also say humanity wants to make an intelligent spe...
Given current capabilities, is it possible for a missile launched from the surface of the Earth to impact the surface of the Moon? I would imagine the same "rocket" used send stuff to the ISS coul...
So, strength is a bit unusual in that though he's a kaiju that's clearly inspired by Godzilla, he's completely artificial and was created deliberately to serve as a mobile fortress in The Union's (...
I'm positing a non-planetary world but within Euclidean space. This world has things that resemble mountains (but probably not plate tectonics). Elevation varies considerably, but on average it is ...
Could a life form that uses superfluids as part of its biology exist? I've read in places that the issue for life outside of Earth and especially the theorised silicon lifeforms is that the existe...
So, I'm having trouble with one of my character designs. Guardian angels are former humans who died in such dumb ways that Heaven simply couldn't let them in, not before they proved they can preve...
A group of English-speaking settlers travel to the Earth-like exoplanet of Rataan, which is 5 light years away. They board the generation ship Genesis that will reach Rataan in 200 years (0.25% of ...
Imagine a race of humanoid alien living somewhere in the universe evolves weird sensory organ which can only picks up frequency of light ranging from 800MHz up to 2.5GHz which is in the microwave s...
After looking at concept art of various humanoid creatures portrayed in science fiction I noticed many artists tend to make the abdominal muscles of their creatures/aliens look similar to those mus...
So I remember reading a long time ago about how a theoretical "wave" could exist, as the laws of physics suddenly changed in one place and then this rippled across the universe, basically at the sp...
(or some other Lesser Canyon) I'm playing with story ideas for a videogame that takes place in the post-post-apocalyptic US. Everything is overrun with monsters and ocean horrors and whatnot, you'...
Context: In a near-future version of our solar system, humans have established multiple underwater colonies on Jupiter's moon Europa. Many of these outposts are situated next to hydrothermal vents ...
Ecosystems like the african savanna have lots of megafauna which to some extent compete with each other for the same prey/vegetation, but still coexist just fine. So how do I construct similarly d...
as the title, my question is how big a pelican like creature with its pouch mouth need to be in order to carry grown up human and still fly. since as far as i know hollow bone is to fragile for hu...
So, Georgie, the paladin who's still unsure about going down the path of lawful stupid, decided not to kill the dragon. Now, this means they can finally use The Orb of Dragonkind for something afte...
Please note: I am asking about planet orbiting a star, not a moon orbiting a planet. So I've been trying to get this planet down for a long while now but there are still so many pieces of the puzz...
