General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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In Star Trek, going faster then light will take you back in time (Possibly in real life too!). But I've noticed one inconsistency. Ships, even when going faster then light, have a finite speed. By ...
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...
I was thinking of a story with a Werewolf as a detective, using mostly conversational skills and his sense of smell to solve crimes similar to many of the UK types of detective stories (Morse, Lewi...
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 ...
In an Earth-like planet filled with humanoid creatures (upright, two legs, two arms, head, etc.) the inhabitants have evolved to grow bowlegs. The question is why? What advantage would it bring...
I'm trying to speculate on manipulating things on the level of quarks for a story. What could I do with that type of technology?
For my middle-grade science-fiction novel, I need to come up with an invention or chemical that could rapidly create icebergs to refreeze the Arctic and slow climate change. Kurt Vonnegut's Ice-9 i...
Genetic chimerism is a condition in which a single organism is composed of cells with more than one distinct genotype. Elves inhabit this world, but do not possess magic in this reality. Instead, t...
It's something that's been used several times as a plot device on Star Trek, notably in the TOS episode "The Tholian Web", and the TNG episodes "The Next Phase" and "The Pegasus". I'm certain it's ...
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...
In some birds especially owls, we can observe a structure called facial disk, which is mainly composed of feathers and helps to direct sound to their ears. While being more common in owls, adding u...
I was wondering what the best ways for turning minerals mined in the asteroid belt into useable materials would be, so far I came up with three methods, utilizing nuclear, electromagnets, and final...
Most of the humans on my alternate universe's Earth have gone extinct due to a global war, leaving a handful of survivors and the buildings to serve as a reminder of how great they once were. This ...
We may all have some familiarity with winged skulls - from Avenged Sevenfold's album covers to bikie shirts. However, for my science-fiction/horror story, I am curious about how these creatures wou...
I recently started to wonder what a tree would be like on an alien world, and one thing that popped in mind for these trees was their color. The hosts star and environment would have a effect on sa...
Around 5 million years ago, a group of primates diverged from early Baboon ancestors migrated into Sicily becoming Triclopes (here's a rough mock up of what a Triclops skull might look like): som...
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...
My planet has a day length of ~52 earth hours. This means storms like hurricaines and thunderstorms will be weaker. How do I combat this and generate really strong storms and winds on a slow rota...
I'm not sure if this site or Astronomy would be better, but I figured I would try here instead. I am attempting to create a [semi]plausible star system in Alpha Centauri for a series. The system w...
The Diclonii are an evolutionary offshoot of modern homo sapiens from the Elfen Lied series. Most Diclonii can get distinguished from humans thanks to small bone and cartilage horns resembling cat ...
This is a post-apocalyptic setting I'm working on. The world has been overrun by invisible monsters from another parallel universe. They can be heard and smelled, and they can form claw prints on t...
I'm thinking about a design like this generation ship, which obviously has spin gravity. Would the fact that the ship is rotating affect the use of a magnetic sail? The magnetic sail as a sort of...
So, If you're familiar with the anime GATE (not to be confused with Stein's Gate) or A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, you probably know what's going on and why I have a boiling hatred t...
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...
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...
As we know, bi-directional faster than light (FTL) travel can cause paradoxical situations. One possible way to resolve this would be a multiverse theory: Whenever a paradox could arise, the univer...
One of the respondents in this thread suggested a 7-sex system with the following features: An idea I came up with years ago was a variation on the male/female/carries-offspring idea. This spec...
The Apex predator of the Sea of Grass biome from planet Andromeda is mostly bipedal, but capable of facultative quadrupedalism, it has long limbs, powerful claws on its hands and is roughly the siz...
In the story I'm writing, a group of African penguins evolved to be fully upright (instead of having their knees bent like modern penguins). Now some basic characteristics of these "erect pengu...
The MC1R gene turns pheomelanin into eumelanins but there are another kind of pehomelanin called pheochromes. So if a brunette or black person used a cosmetic gene therapy to turn off this gene how...
Is there a way for a species to essentially become a living incubator of sorts? Not the other way around, as in Plausible ways for the alien species to be able to impregnate every and any species?,...
I want to create a glutton creature that can open its mouth wider than the prey item like snakes do, but also can bite through that big hard object and even chew it; this creature doesn't swallow p...
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...
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...
So, vampires here are created from humans with the help of a stone mask. Now, they're supposed to be weak for two things: Having their brains destroyed Prolonged exposure to sunlight The first ...
I found a previous question on using chitin from giant insects to make weapons and armor, but the answer left out something I had considered for the medieval fantasy setting I'm developing. The ans...
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...
Set in a distant future, every interstellar spaceship runs on antimatter propulsion which can achieve fractional speed of light travel. There is a doctrine stating that all spaceships with mass exc...
Amino acids, the building blocks of proteins and, therefore, one of the key components of life as we know it. There are many amino acids in nature, but they all stem from the same basic structur...
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 ...
So, I want my dragon to be able to do stuff like open doors and whatnot. Using the wings is kind of awkward and takes up considerable space, and because of the coronavirus, the mouth is also a no-n...
The TBD are a fantasy humanity offshoot that is fully adapted to life a few kilometers beneath the surface, settling in cracked earth near vents and hot spots. Air quality ranges from stale to tox...
I've seen several people independently come up with the idea of three or more sexes where one sex is responsible for brooding the young (pregnancy, pouch, feeding, something along those lines) but ...
An extension to another question about Why would humans be the dominant species? In my story Giants, humans, and a bunch of other fantasy races live along side each other and i'm curious as to why...
Overlord Larmark is a scientist from the 21st century who is interested in world domination, and needs powerful generals to lead his armies. He looks to the ancient world, as only that time period ...
Imagine the ability to shoot long streams of hot fire like a USM2 flamethrower from the palms of your hands. or shooting them out of your feet so you can push yourself off of the floor. An answer w...
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...
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...
I have some plasma life forms that have evolved within the photosphere of a star and also capable of existing on a neutron star and the ergoshpere or accretion disk of a blackhole. This lifeform c...
I have a mental image of a humanoid species with hands possessing three fingers and two thumbs, on opposite sides of the hand: *note: it could be animalistic or reptilian, it doesn't need to be ...
