General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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Language revolving around the Sun would probably not be used on a planet with a different star, right? For example, if a planet was orbiting Sirius, "siriuslight" or "siriusburn" seems a tad clunky...
Basically: I want a highly viscous atmosphere but I want people to be able to walk around. I was thinking earth's gravity * 0.6 or similar. I was thinking that an atmosphere of Sulfur Hexafluorid...
There was an orbital station; a huge torus, as known from sci-fi. It was a luxurious place for people from dusty planets to relax at, and spend hard-earned money in environments resembling Earth fr...
A McKendree cylinder is a rotating space station that is 920 km (580 miles) in diameter, and 4600 km (2900 miles) in length. This version would orbit the sun at 1 AU (at the same distance as earth...
Eyes that constantly emanates light, either just the iris and pupil (resembling a tapetum lucidum reflection, but visible from any angle) or the whole eyeball. Could a person still see or would t...
I'm building a world that orbits close in to an M-Dwarf sun. I've figured out a bunch of the physical parameters of the world, I just can't quite get a solid handle on my tides. I know my tides wi...
What could cause the continents to drift much faster than is today. I mean, much faster. Let's say it should take about 1-2 million years from this to this
In the fiction, A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones, one high castle in the mountains, the Eyrie, has so-called sky cells. Those cells are left open to the cold sky. The Eyrie is 600 foot/180 m...
When in space, the amount of force required to move goes down drastically, due to the virtual lack of drag. In this environment, would be feasible for engines in space (more specifically belonging ...
I'm trying to create an alien which has external lungs. Air can be inhaled normally however, is it plausible that the material the lungs are made of is semi-permeable. Containing the nitrogen and o...
Could a natural satellite in geosynchronous orbit be used as a counterweight for a space elevator? Does the counterweight need to be of approximately the same weight as the anchor? If so, I suppose...
You've got to love the rainbow, it's an awesome sight. But I don't want humans to have the pleasure of seeing the rainbow. What change to the earth, atmosphere and so on, is needed so that humans ...
As explained in this question, current rotary wing aircraft cannot surpass the speed of sound because of retreating blade stall and the fact that the sonic boom would literally rip off the rotor. H...
I have been designing a whole solar system for my story, and I am finally able to come down to creatures on the planets. I have already asked a question about one of the planets, Veynerth, so there...
Lightning is abundant in some places in Earth. Attempts had been made it collect it. Laser triggered lightning below is the closest attempt. By the time it reaches the ground most of the powe...
I'll confess that I have a real issue with iron--it rusts quickly. In fact, the History Channel program Life After People constantly states that, left to its own devices, the iron that makes up a ...
In my world, humanoid races are an afterthought added by the gods only after they'd spent millennia treating the world as their personal canvas, designing it however they found most interesting. Th...
(I bolded the actual question, below, so if you want to skip the preamble scroll down to the bold lettering) I am working on a world that is very similar to earth in some ways, exactly the same m...
Imagine if you will..a world where humans had large black pupils that covered most of their eye like the picture below The question: What would these humans see and could they see more/better/w...
Let's take a world that is based heavily on Elon Musk's specific ideas of Mars colonization, to whit: Launch technology from Earth evolves to be to <$100/lb cost to launch ratio, due to reusab...
I am writing a Sci-Fi story that involves space ships shooting each other, as is the custom. I'm using a lot of handwavium, e.g. reactionless drives, FTL, gravity plating, etc., but I'd like the ac...
Self-explanatory. After my previous question about a sextenary star system and a black hole, I decided to dial back to just two parent stars and a planet. How close could they be if we in the real ...
I'd like to keep this as science based as possible. I'm not even sure if this sort of question fits this exchange. Is there a possible world wide affect that when triggered (by human/cosmological i...
I'm trying to build a world that is orbiting a red giant but sustains life similarly to the conditions of earth.Since red giants are about half the temperature (3000 kelvin) of our sun (6000 kelvin...
This question (and the links I found for my answer) Can a "dune" worm actually swim in sand? got me thinking about how a sandworm might reduce friction while "swimming." One idea I hit on would b...
In my universe, there exist molecular level machines that can behave as a single entity. The humans use them for many purposes, including faster than light travel. The concept is as it follows: T...
To generate heat electrically inside a balloon for lift would a 20 watt LED light or a 20 watt heating element make more heat to lift a small closed hot air balloon droid and solar cell? Having a ...
On an hot planet at the wooded poles are two aliens species that coexist in a mutually beneficial relationship. The Honey Mouths use gecko-like feet to hang from the far larger Thorn Shredders, wh...
I have a species of ambush predators that are going to be sentient space-farers one day. But to get them on that path I need them to evolve hands, which will lead to tools, and so on. They come f...
I've been thinking about flag designs for colonies on Mars, and something occurred to me. The "official" Flag of Mars has a critical flaw The average wind speed on Mars is 10 m/s (20 mph); the fa...
I am writing a story, and it takes place in a solar system way far off from our own. One of the planets, Veynerth, is a dry, deserty planet, but in certain areas there is high volcanic activity. Ho...
In a story I have been working on, there is a planet called Ieuclite. I want to have its surface be entirely covered in ice and have the people live in cracks and fissures. But then I thought, what...
If an organism weighing roughly 20kg existed (same weight as a dog), similar also to the structural composition a dog. How much muscle mass would be required within those legs for it to jump 20m? ...
I want to create a convincing world where gunpowder is a rare and expensive commodity, allowing swords and plate armour to still be used effectively despite the world having current level of scient...
I watched this video. A network of pipes blows air at the bottom of a bathtub filled with sand. The sand behaves just like water. Objects can float or sink in it. Children can play in it. So, my c...
Inspired by this question about a fantasy World Tree, I thought I'd ask about the science fiction equivalent: a Dyson Tree. Dyson Trees are a living tree planted in a comet, which when fully grown ...
If I were to use handwavium to raise a volcano in the middle of the sea, would it contain metals or ores large enough to be extracted by normal means, like mining with a pickaxe? Everything apart ...
So here's the picture, an island about the size of Sicily is on its own tectonic plate, it borders three other tectonic plates, it's separating from all of them at the exact same time. This is a f...
Please reality check my place from which one could watch time outside move faster... A space station constantly moving at near light speed. The space station is created by a race with superior te...
Here's the situation: Mars has been colonized in the near future "“ tens or hundreds of thousands of people live on Mars. For political reasons, EarthGov is against sending weapons to Mars; and, ...
Imagine a animal with eyes that are a combination of arthropod compound eye with vertebrate eye,I visualize this like a eye with the sclera covered in a layer of compound eyes,or compound eyes with...
Say there would be plants that release a lot of N2O (nitrous oxide or laughing gas). On Earth, N2O is a trace-gas and it is pretty stable. In our atmosphere it has a half-life of > 100 years, an...
Immediately after the apocalypse, a call went out for able-bodied adults in what was considered a noble death sentence at the time: go out into the radioactive wastes and begin to neutralize the fa...
If a humanoid species of what are essentially people covered in chitin, how would they color themselves in the way we get tattoos? I considered the idea of etching or carving, but that wouldn't lea...
Say that an apocalyptic even takes place, a genetic disease wiping out most of humanity in a matter of years. So, there are no bombs, nuclear winter, or any sort of event that messes up the environ...
For my world, I would like a coastal mountain range that partway along its length is offset by a few (say, 100) kilometres, forming a pass through the mountains, like so: (N.B. I've drawn this ...
The planet I have in mind is slightly larger than Mars and is located in the system behind a planet about twice the size of Earth. The effect being almost like a solar eclipse that happens daily (...
This question about time dilation got me thinking. The speed of an electron through copper is a whole heckofa lot slower than the speed of light, but if I understand the limits of relativity corre...
I'm still fiddling with my map, and I got to thinking about continental drift. My world has two large large continents and a couple of other notable landmasses between the size of Iceland and Austr...
I'm building a map of a fantasy town and its surrounding area. I'm using Campaign Cartographer (CC3) for this and I'm striving for appropriate scale. I know that, nowadays, the average outside wa...
