General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
Filters (None)
In my world, I am looking for a crater formed by a meteor impact that deposited a large number of resources there. The final crater should be 200 miles in diameter. I would like to do this with min...
It's become a popular speculative evolution trope for the likeliest candidate of the mythological "wyvern" to be a Cenozoic family--if not superfamily--of scansoriopterygid dinosaur. Now the first...
One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into Legosi from Beastars. He felt a dull pain a bit above his behind, as he li...
So you decide to clone yourself, obviously the clone is a infant, but other wise looks perfectly identical. However, you start to think of how your new clone could be perfectly like you, in body st...
One trope seen in movies is mind control. This trope involves a person or thing taking over another person's body, whilst visual or auditory cues and friends try to help the original person regain ...
Nyarlethotep (the crawling chaos, the evil with a thousand forms, the messenger of the outer gods) originates from the literature of HP Lovecraft and is by far one of the most evil, sadistic, and i...
So I'm designing a world where the air has its own ecosystem, separate from the one on the land, because sky whales are cool. However, I'm having trouble figuring out what the plants and other prod...
My story takes place on the moon of a large gas giant planet. I have been trying to decide on a way for the moon to be as Earth-like as possible, but I have now decided to ask the community for hel...
Are there any holes in the following reasoning? Black holes form gravitational lenses. So they bend light. Is it possible for an observer to see his own past image as a result of light bending aro...
Early life, and many modern organisms have what we call 'blind guts'. Food enters and exits via the same opening. However, that is inefficient and has been widely replaced with 'through guts'. Fo...
JordanTheCynic here again with another question relating to my Eosi Humans. Most of my questions are NSFW by the way so just a fair warning. I made a post in the past which discussed how Eosi h...
Inspired by One Piece by Eichiro Oda. from https://onepiece.fandom.com/wiki/Nikyu_Nikyu_no_Mi Fiction has many examples of humanoid animals - things like lycans or werewolves, cat/dog/rabbit fo...
It appears that there are gas giants in habitable zones of stars, and likely some of them should have moons that are big enough to have an Earth-like world, so that part should be plausible enough....
Many know that the Lantern Corps of DC Comics are capable of constructing objects of any shape or size out of hard light using their power ring fueled by their emotions. However, I'm wondering what...
I have noticed that there is a common theme in science fiction art to depict one or more very large planetary bodies in very close proximity to the surface of the other world being depicted. (you ...
Say in the future, humanity has developed technology to the point that it allows them to traverse through other universe, each universe having something either drastically different or not so diffe...
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...
This is not my question. In my story, I have a machine that you can connect to using electrodes. It allows one to enter a small virtual reality room where everything from gravity and electromagnet...
I had posted a question a couple of days ago asking if it would be possible for an artificial satellite/cosmic body at the L1 orbit to block out the Sun, but the logistics of that is a little too e...
So I'm not really sure whether I get it right or not, but apparently most mammals are dichromatic. Humans have three cones that detect light wavelengths, small for blue, medium for green, and large...
Mariam Nabatanzi Babirye is a woman in Uganda who has had 44 children in her life due to her bearing many children at one time. This unusual situation is because of a rare genetic abnormality that ...
Is it possible for a large enough Ion Drive with enough power to be dangerous to other objects "down wind" of the vehicle, even at long distances (100+km)? As I understand it, ion drives accelerat...
I need a huge natural plateau to form but with a slope. There can be some variation, a few hills or even mountains here and there, but the ground needs to be mostly gently sloping north to south. ...
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...
In my world, a "perfect" robotic eyeball has been created. This eyeball is electronic, but it emulates a human eye perfectly. This does not necessarily mean that it has millions of synthetic cones...
"At this very moment we face a threat insurmountable to Man. We are faced with two options. Stay on Earth and die, or leave Earth to space." - UN Preservation Council, CE 2047 Earth, year CE 2047 ...
Is it physically possible for a complex crater to form and remain stable after an impact event large enough to deform the Earth's crust globally, insofar that the surface of the planet becomes unre...
There are three "worlds" in this setting: Heaven, Hell and Midgard, Midgard being Earth and the entire Milkyway galaxy. When a demon or an angel enters Midgard, they can't just walk there, as they...
Our world is surrounded by a metaphysical barrier that separates us from other dimensions and the things which inhabit them. This barrier is made up of 7 layers, with the last one being the closest...
I am interested in the idea of a moon orbiting only the southern pole of a planet. Could it theoretically be possible (though unlikely) that a moon would, for instance, orbit a planet parallel to t...
Spacecraft in my Scifi setting use strong magnetic fields for many purposes. Fusion containment, magnetic nozzles, gauss guns, magnetic fields as pusher-plates for nuclear pulsed propulsion and def...
I fear this question may be somewhat premature as I'm suddenly skipping forward to a period in the species' history that is comparable to our own, a far cry from my last question about the building...
I like the idea of elves having a distinct weakness against iron, to the point where they're intensely scared of it and can't stand the touch of it. My question is: Assuming the Elves are mostly...
A world has grassy plains infested with larger-than-normal (perhaps even giant) blood-sucking ticks. Ignoring their main diet for the time being: They should be dangerous enough to threaten humans ...
I know things like flashlight fish exist; things with luminescence and all that. But how strong could the light be? I have this cave dwelling species with three eyes except the middle one isn't ex...
It is said that in dense rainforests, only 1% of sunlight (sometimes less) reaches the forest floor, which greatly restricts the types of plant and animal life that can survive there. My (limited) ...
Assume my kaiju is around 200 feet tall, weighs around 4,000 US tonnes and resembles a large lobster with two giant claws for its front legs and long spindly limbs with tiny pincers on the ends for...
How could a generation ship "steal" energy or resources from star systems which it passed without changing velocity?
In the distant future, humanity has encountered, made peace and wars with countless advanced civilizations, but one civilization that still baffles them, is the race of intelligent centipedes. The...
I was thinking of a situation, in which there is a mass extinction that wipes out all large land animals, and after this mass extinction some of the descendants of modern geckos evolve to fill the ...
The fleet in my setting are forced to leave the planet due to a volatile virus, and leave in pre-prepared spacefaring vessels capable of transporting ten million people per ship. The ships have alg...
The setting is fifty-five million years in the future on Earth, with multiple humanoid species that have different ancestors, but share similar characteristics. Their ancestors would be animals tha...
The Dyson Swarm is common in sci fi as an energy source, and sometimes also as a powerful weapon. As it is commonly understood, it harnesses the energy of the sun, which stores a vast amount of ene...
An alien automatic "beacon" tries to warn us about some imminent danger. It does so with launching a succession of large "veils" in front of their star so we can detect them via the transit method....
The metric system (SI units) is a base-10 measurement system based on the meter, kilogram and second. But it is tied to earth. A second, which historically was defined as 1/86,400 of a day, now d...
I'm looking to design one of my warring planets around organolithium chemistry with seas and precipitate primarily composed of a clear organolithium solvent liquid - possibly ammonia. I've searched...
I have a character that achieves an ability similar to scattering and reforming or elemental swarming by controlling millimetre sized surveillance drones to morph into different shapes or disperse ...
My advanced human civilisation often has high-acceleration ships travelling at near lightspeed. I know that time dilation would have a significant effect on the time experienced by the crews, but I...
Is there a way arachnids legs could have finger like appendages at their ends in a way that makes sense for their structure and wouldn't look like a cheesy design? This creature wouldn't be insect...