General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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The Greek gods were sufficiently advanced aliens with access to powerful technology. In the begining of our worlds formation, Zeus created mankind from his own flesh. These mortals were made in the...
Something like the above (Natural Springs by Ellie Cooper) - either where the water originates from atop the tree through regular rainfall, or is directed up and into the tree via the spring (or ...
Neutrinos have extremely low masses, and it's quite easy for them to reach high energies and speeds. As such, it almost always makes sense to treat a neutrino as being relativistic. I've been doing...
I read a theory once which stated that the natural pain, sickness and general discomfort that humans can experience during sex, pregnancy, and childbirth help control the human population by discou...
I want to write a story about a thought experiment that I have on the other day : What kind of catastrophe will happen if an asteroid, let just say about 70 meters in diameter, penetrated Earth's a...
We've found a habitable planet orbiting a red dwarf star some light years away and conditions are Earth-like enough that a colonization project was initiated. Before any humans landed on the planet...
The universe as we know it has ended. The concept of "natural" illumination ended when the last red dwarves and quasars died out. Now, only brown dwarves and blackholes dot the empty void that was ...
I am developing a fictional planetary system in which a large gas giant planet (slightly less than the mass of Saturn), has migrated into the habitable zone during the formational years of the syst...
Gargoyles are bipedal, slow-moving animals that lurk on rooftops and eat pigeons. The rumors of gargoyles being magical construct are false; in truth they're just animals that have adapted to urban...
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...
I am making a fish folk race, and I want to figure out if tattoos/ piercings could be possible. My ideas for piercings would be on the flesh itself or on the fins. If they had piercings in these ar...
The year is 2100. While climate change has wrought serious damage to the biosphere, humanity has at last managed to become carbon neutral, and has even developed technology that can be used to redu...
My world is a satellite of a gas giant. It has an atmosphere and is mostly covered by water (the percentage of water to its surface is somewhere in the high 80s-low 90s). Its rotation period is 28 ...
In my story, set in an earth-like world, a marine species that had evolved a melon organ, much like that found in our dolphins, made its way back into the "land" (a large system of underground cave...
This question is based off videos of octopi running using their tentacles curled under and their body raised from the ground. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23qzi88k3aM I saw this question Anato...
In a humanoid mammal, say 15-20 feet tall, how would the brain, heart, reproductive organs, facial feature and other attributes scale up? In very large mammals, the brain seems to be comparatively ...
Humanity discovered a new energy source, virtually infinite, that can produce gigawatts of electric power using devices of few kilograms. Land and sea transport obviously will switch to electric m...
Now, I know that planets can't be disc-shaped. However, if a relatively small planet had a very strong magnetical pull, could it have a ring system that could make the planet from afar seem disc-sh...
What possible evolutionary adaptations could you foresee in the sensory organs of wildlife in an environment beset by a nigh-permanent sandstorm? e.g. in the case of vision, ways to protect the ey...
I once before asked a question on how to quickly submerge a large landmass/continent. The answers there basically concluded that literally ''Sinking'' (a la Atlantis) is pretty much impossible to...
I've got my wizards, who operate by vanilla human biological laws and metabolism. They've got an organ in the pelvis which has its own mechanism - not breaking the laws of physics - which stores en...
This story takes place about 300 years in the future and humanity has since come into contact with hundreds of alien races, you get the picture. Basically, I have this character who is half human a...
This is a another sequel to my Plutonian questions, but I've decided to take a break from them and focus on another part of the world. Basically, my version of Pluto has five continents, each a si...
In short summary A cockatrice is is essentially a a two legged dragon that has the head and body of a rooster, it also has a serpentine like tail and either has feather like wings or webbed like ...
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...
Suppose, for instance, you lived in a world filled with nasty monsters and other creatures of the night, all of whom wanted to kill you and eat you in various ways. Now, the good news here is that ...
If you had a device, similar to a Stargate, but that allowed seamless two way transfer, and that could be moved (You could essentially strap a rocket on it, and fuel it from Earth), you could just ...
The technical challenges for Breakthrough Starshot list the huge amount of power required for accelerating a solar sail to interstellar travel speeds and the precise targeting of laser beams of tha...
How many people can live comfortably on planet Earth, assuming that humanity reaches Kardashev scale Type I level? This implies: Energy is cheap, and available in an almost unlimited quantity, c...
I'm looking for a bullet that makes the target explode. A bullet filled with explosives and explodes on impact does not suffice. It has to make the target explode somehow. Currently, my only idea ...
What properties and side effects would an organism have if it were formed entirely from cancerous cells? Scientists collected a sample of a tumor from a patient for studies. Once cultivated the ce...
As the title: I want to know what kind of organs or modifications need for plants like tree to gain energy from lightning or electricity (and still fine or safe or alive of course). Since I have a...
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...
Following on from this question. Question Context : Mars second moon Deimos has been converted into a generation ship. A considerable portion of its mass has been shaved off during the process &...
Imagine a spacecraft travelling at very high speeds, say 0.3c. While a crew member could theoretically suit up and perform spacewalking maintenance on the outer body of the ship, will they be expos...
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...
I am working on a world where an event, like a celebration, occurs during every lunar eclipse. I would like to have lunar eclipses occurring more frequently--maybe even once a month--in order for...
So, it is relatively common to have various creatures grow crystals. This generally happens outside of the body (at least partially), but internal crystals aren't unknown either (see for example, e...
If hawks or eagles (or any creature that can fly like a hawk) had the same ability to pronounce words as parrots but also had consciousness (what I mean by that is that they can scout and describe ...
male Wyverns collect shiny objects in their dens to attract mates it quite common for Wyverns to get into territorial fight. Now Wyverns are capable of breathing fire but they are also covered in f...
Assuming the power and tech existed to do so (addressing the requisite heat, pressure, etc), would it be possible to draw in atmosphere, condense and heat/cool the particles, and then produce a hig...
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...
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...
I am an alien from outer space who is visiting a planet called Earth. The species living here, humans, have a very primitive and strange culture. They seem to spontaneously burst into dance and son...
My postulated creature will look something like this: or like this: Its description is as follows: it's a non-obligate carnivore its height is, on average, about two feet it lives in arid h...
I've created a genetically modified race of humans with an extreme height. I've taken into account the cube square law, and added some bones and muscles to help cope with that. I'm planning on maki...
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...
Set in the immediate future, social network evolves with the advancement of 10G network and a major breakthrough in medicine. Giant tech companies raced to develop state of the art VR technology wh...
When I say all-metal airships, I'm referring to something like the above from Jakub Rozalski's artwork - the design is more akin to a naval destroyer or battleship and less like a zeppelin. We'v...
I've recently been playing a alien game with various alien species. After playing for a bit, I wondered whether or not a 6-inch tall intelligent race could exist. I can already see some major disa...
