General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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The antagonist of my story trades steel with a non-human, and non-humanoid, race, in return for a magical substance. They place great value in steel as they cannot manufacture it themselves. That i...
Marsupials in the majority of the world are overshadowed by their placental cousins, with the notable exception being Australia. There they have convergently evolved many similarities to their plac...
In my story Giants, humans, and a bunch of other fantasy races live along side each other and i'm curious as to what might be an effective mode of transportation for 10 foot tall Giants with Ancien...
I, Rey Skywalker, am officially the greatest Jedi in existence. I successfully took down the remnants of the empire single-handedly, defeated my arch-enemy Kylo Ren, and killed Sheev Palpatine, t...
is it possible for certain creatures that can use infrasound or even vibrations as a defense mechanism, like: - causing them to get a severe headache or even weaken them - temporarily stunning its ...
In a world that takes place during the Victorian era (1837-1901), how effective would period-accurate firearms be against something similar to a dinosaur? As a brief aside, I will accept weaponry f...
We played with technology too powerful for humans to wield and opened a gateway to a parallel universe, on a dark world with a dying sun. The dominant lifeforms on this world are semi-sentient flyi...
In a world I want to make, sailors would travel at sea for many years, perhaps up to ten, on sail boats. Obviously, they'd normally be stricken by scurvy and such, but I was thinking of some kind o...
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...
On Venus the surface is around 467 degrees Celsius. At the top of the atmosphere it is much cooler, and at around 60 km above the surface the temperature is around 40 to 50 degrees Celsius. This is...
What would cause/allow a planet with very high gravity to have tall, sharp mountains? Mountain height is generally capped off by gravity, erosion, and the mountains composition. On a higher gravit...
When elves decide to conceive, a male must add his genetic material at different intervals over several years to the female. Genetic material could come from a single male or various ones with no c...
Let's have your typical fantasy world, with many races. During searching what I could do to make humans a little special, someone give me idea of letting them to be only race that have ability to d...
After surveying customers about their new product, 2019-nCoV™, E.V.I.L. Inc. realized that many of them would pay for an upgrade which allows for the virus to be carried by the wind itself in order...
My fungus starts out as an extremely small spore, this small spore will bury and implant itself near the spinal cord and cerebellum, and will then secrete an enzyme that hijacks and later puts it i...
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...
Imagine an Earth sized planet consists of only ferrous metals, the creatures living on the planet move around like a maglev train basically they interact with the world and among each other electro...
In my story Orcs, humans, and a bunch of other fantasy races live along side each other and i'm curious as to what sort of environment (on earth) would best suit them? so basic characteristics of m...
In my story Giants, humans, and a bunch of other fantasy races live along side each other and i'm curious as to what sort of environment (on earth) would best suit them? some basic characteristics ...
So, Both birdfolk and gryphons have a head structure, similar to that of birds of prey, i.e: forward facing eyes. Sure, the color of the plumage and the beak-type can vary, but one problem is still...
In a world I'm designing, a group of Homo Habilis or even Australopithecus Afarensis migrated into a northern Scotland environment becoming Trolls. These are not D&D trolls, but something else....
I understand that one does not simply scale up the smallest of creatures to the size of megafauna without violating basic physiological constraints like the square/cube law, among others; so what w...
I'd like to create a land-based mammal that uses its electricity NOT for navigation or hunting, but only as a defense (enough to stun creatures approximately its own size or marginally larger, with...
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...
I am wondering if it is possible for whales to fly. I'm considering two different cases. How could we alter earth conditions (thickness, gravity) so that whales could actively fly (without changi...
So, lizardfolk are humanoid (and, so, upright) creatures with reptilian features and are also part-time endotherms. They're well-adapted to living in water and on trees to a degree. One adaptation ...
Imagine Earth was hit hard by some force so devastating that Earth now has an axial tilt of 90.0 degrees, a far cry from the usual 23.5 degree. The same force somehow eliminates the Moon. In my sto...
One problem, I think writers often overlook, is the problem of flying creatures communicating with each other. I call this the "I can't hear you over the sound of the f@cking headwind!" For my wor...
The present day atmosphere is roughly 21% oxygen. Historically high-levels might have been as much as 35%, over 66% higher. This made the carboniferous a period of giant bugs and constant devastati...
I've been thinking about this the whole day. At first I thought it was an easy fix, given my dragon's bones have a tensile strength of 3-6.5 GPa and an elastic modulus of 50-140 GPa, depending on t...
Imagine similar earth conditions of oceans and currents, and a renaissance type kind of ships of various sizes (ranging from sloops to ships-of-the-line), could a fleet consisting in 1500 (aprox.) ...
In this world, humans have a strange way of reproducing. When partners decide to conceive, A female must be inseminated at specified intervals by a male in order to pass on her genes. However, male...
I'm trying to come up with idea's that have some plausibility of sending information FTL. So we can entangle particles together. When you measure them you influence them. If you measure one up the...
Genetic chimerism is a condition in which a single organism is composed of cells with more than one distinct genotype. In animals, this means an individual derived from two or more zygotes, which c...
I came to SE WB while I was researching about space radiators for my sci-fi. I don't remember where exactly I found an answer to my question (Maybe? Idr) but I stunned with this site. You all looks...
My time traveller from the distant future is about to get stranded back in time, but realises that by travelling back a short time, maybe 100000 years, he is going to leave a trail of destruction b...
Now octopuses are quite smart already capable of camouflage and puzzle solving. given this I was wondering whether Octopuses could Convergently evolve sapience (human level intelligence) and wha...
Set in a distant future, reports of alien and drug traffickings have been on the rise and there was mounting pressure for Mr User6760, president of intergalactic interpol to resign. The traffickers...
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...
At speeds near the speed of light, interstellar particles and gas may affect the movement of the ship, and microscopic particles may even badly damage the ship. Would not it make sense to make the ...
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...
A long time ago, the 60 foot long Megalodon roamed the oceans. Fast forward to 2.6 million years ago and they went extinct. In the story I'm writing Megalodon hasn't gone extinct surviving at least...
I don't know much about hurricane/cyclone and how to created it (nor know the difference much, so bear with me if i make mistake), so I want to know what kind of plant organs or ability need to ach...
How might an enterprising spacer, mining the rings of Saturn, go about quickly measuring/estimating the velocity of and distance to a nearby moving object (asteroid, habitat, pirate, etc)? Bonus po...
Tetrapods evolved fingers from the inner-bones of the fins of lobe-finned fish, could hands ever evolve from ray finned fishes if they were to become fully terrestrial, from a mud skipper ancestor?
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...
This, ladies and gentlemen, is Melalo, described in the Book of Creatures website as "the oldest and most feared of Ana's children." His name literally means "filthy", "dirty" or even "obscene"....
I'm working on a bioweapon created by an extraterrestrial agent. The being is 2.5 m tall, humanoid, digitigrade, intelligent and mostly predatory. However, it does not require water, food or oxygen...
Tengu are humanoid creatures with many avian features, including wings and beaks. Now, this is a problem when it comes to disguises. Disguises in this setting work by covering one's body in utilit...
