General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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So essentially in my story, aliens put something around the sun that doesn't stop all the light from it hitting Earth, but only some of it, effectively dimming the light without outright extinguish...
Premise In the movie Gravity, gravity embodies the persona of the film by virtue of its absence. It purportedly leaves the audience with a sense of fear of the chaotic zero-G environment and likew...
Humans with a level of technology roughly equal to the present day, not more than a decade or two more advanced (e.g. they might have slightly more efficient rockets, or a more miniaturized comm sy...
Given eggs and sperm, and the means to preserve them for centuries, could an artificially intelligent machine possibly produce its own "children", so to speak? Assume it has everything it and its ...
I've been trying to create a water planet with certain aspects. I wanted it to have a breathable atmosphere and to be a microgravity environment. I'm developing humanoid characters that can breathe...
And I mean only making the moon orbit the Earth faster: no change in distance from Earth required. Is such a thing possible?
I have a binary star system and have come up with some stats for it. My primary star is an F-type, with a mass of 1.3 sols and a luminosity of 2.197 sols. My secondary star is a K-type, with a mas...
I've tried researching this question myself, but the only data I can find is over huge timescales, like situations where the continents have reformed back into a Neo-Pangea. I'm not looking for an...
I'm trying to layout a scientifically correct evolution path for the octopus to develop intelligence on the post-human Earth. I'd like to know if it's possible for an octopus mom to choose, or use ...
If there was a supermassive structure built on earth (30km tall, 10km wide/deep tower with slightly slanted faces), what sort of effects would this cause on the surrounding areas? Specifically, wha...
Would it be possible to have a cold and remote polar region if the oceans are made of fire? By that, I mean that in the place of water, there exists lava.
Explorers are in a spacecraft located 9 AU from a planet. Is it possible to detect fairly small objects (i.e. space stations, artificial satellites, etc., both powered and unpowered) using some sor...
I read somewhere that the lowest depth for a sustainable underwater habitat is estimated to be three-hundred meters. Any lower and the pressure becomes too great for structures that are currently w...
Suppose NASA, SpaceX or any other aerospace company has managed to build a technology that allows them to fire a rocket to the moon, from "space". Basically, they have created a huge weather balloo...
I've been mulling over an idea for my preferred RPG setting, and I wanted to check if anyone knows the following: Is it possible for a river to flow underground for miles, and then suddenly be put...
How genetically different do my human-arthropod hybrid have to be to humans to not be at risk of prion diseases when eating humans? I don't want my monsters to eat a brain for a quick snack and the...
How could complex life like humans of or other animals evolve to exist in temperatures in excess of 100 degrees centigrade. This does not need to be natural as long as it can in theory be achieved ...
Recently, looking for information for worldbuilding purposes of my story, I found a post about how in a more oxygen rich atmosphere, the oxidation processes would take place more quickly. Subseque...
I am looking for information on how the trees and the flora would be in a world with a denser atmosphere and stronger winds. I have read that due to the greater kinetic movement of the wind, that ...
So Chlorine Trifluoride is a very dangerous chemical known to burn through things like concrete and asbestos. It's so bad that the Nazis, THE NAZIS, decided it was too dangerous to use. So I need a...
So I'm working on a story that at its groundwork has a lot of sciency things, and then has a lot of unsciency things attached to it. The story has an FTL drive which is the good old "fold space, pu...
Since Tolkien put people riding on giant eagles in his books (or maybe even before that), the imaginarium of riding the winds on the back of magnificent birds has generated a plethora of images and...
I have a creature (a cat person) that wants to set its own fists/claws on fire, because it attacks via its fists/claws, and is fighting enemies that are fairly flammable. What can this creature do...
Plants can have very different pollinators: The wind, insects, and even birds. However, is there a conceivable scenario where a plant could naturally have evolved to depend on humans as pollinators...
Note that the distinction between science fiction and fantasy breaks down when you add rigorous rules. If you have dragons or hovercraft is beside the point, if the distinction of being "hard" is w...
I'm writing a game script at the moment that involves the protagonist exploring various planets in several solar systems. The character starts the game with nothing to their name, but I want them t...
I've been thinking of using a binary model (a planet that rotates around two suns) for a possible story. The specific model is a S-type planetary system, where the planet orbits the the primary st...
So in most fantasies elves and men are very similar in their physical appearance to where they look mostly the same, the only way they tend to be physically differentiated is by their ears and clea...
I am thinking about the miniature kind of fae, like Tinker Bell. I think that class of faery would be the most likely to be able to fly realistically, due to the wingspan/body weight ratio. But wo...
After I reworked my map, I have a big plain (roughly 1165500 square miles). Can I still credibly divide the plain into different kingdoms and cultures or would a big empire with few cultures inevit...
[Critter's descriptions] (D1) appearance closely resembles a cat (D2) no bigger than a dog (D3) toothless (D4) strange claws to climb any surfaces (D5) powerful hind legs can sprint like a cheeta...
What exactly happens to leather armor in different environmental conditions, for example battles or long exposure to rain or desert heat? What can be done to negate or care for it?
Many games have various side bonuses on their armors other than just defense. These bonuses can often be active things like having a ghost thrall to protect you when wearing a special armor or mor...
If a Kardashev Type III alien civilization wanted to monitor the earth (and its inhabitants' progress) via a satellite/orbiting object, how would they realistically transmit data from this object? ...
Assume that you are in an alien star system. Your ship is currently being hit by a phenomenon called solar overflow, which messes up your electronics and can kill you without good shielding. It is ...
In a question about mermaids, it was proposed that they might have evolved to look like humans to lure them in and prey on them. How could a creature survive on a diet of nothing but lured-in huma...
After reading this post about a sort of translucent biological visor I was inspired to incorporate a similar design. I'd like to create an organism with a translucent upper cranium, serving no purp...
Background: I'm toying with the idea of an alternate Earth that never developed wireless technologies. Radio transmitters, Wi-Fi, etc... were never invented, meaning that light-speed communication ...
In my story, set in the far(ish) future, humanity discovers a way to extract energy from black holes (perhaps via the Penrose process?), which sparks conflict as various factions attempt to take co...
[![enter image description here][5]][5] Model Lightcraft under laser power While sadly the funding for this research has not been forthcoming, there have been proof of principle flights and ope...
So as an experiment, I took a bunch of machine learning algorithms (neural nets, genetic programming, traditional optimization, etc ...) and connected them in a mess of reinforcing loops, along wit...
Recently, I've been struggling to create an avian race that evolved hands to replace its wings. The consensus on that question was that it was not evolutionarily realistic for the bones of a wing t...
Basis We are in the universe we call our own, on the planet we call Earth, in the physics-set and known reality we assume. There is no flat-out "magic" or other things along those lines, so far a...
It is a somewhat common limitation of spaceships in some universes, that they cannot go underwater. They can land on the planet, take off into orbit, hyperdrive into the next star system, but they ...
In the world I'm building, there is a race of people whose main shtick is that they can detect the magnetic fields of their planet and use them to navigate. In one of their cultures, the people are...
Does matter, physical things that can be observed and measured by our five senses, have wavelength (or phase) the way that radio waves do, and if so can that be manipulated somehow? Let me explain....
What I'm thinking about is simply an animal,any with a protective bony-like shell covering its eyes. The shell must be openable for clear vision but when closed the animal still has the ability t...
A book that I'm currently writing called Surge features an enemy faction called the Degenerates that are heavily inspired by the Scythians (Indo-Iranian horse nomads that ruled the Eurasian Steppe ...
On Earth, most animals have tongues, albeit in many forms. This is due to the evolution from a common ancestor. Tongues are not necessary for communication, be it auditory or otherwise. However, th...
I asked a similar question earlier: What would happen if electricity stopped working?. But I was also thinking about what would happen if magnets stopped working. This question is very related to w...
