General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
Filters (None)
So as the title describes, I need an apocalyptic event which is survivable by cryogenically preserved humans in hermetically sealed bunkers underground (or somewhere else). This event should wipe o...
So, yesterday I found an invisibility cloak in my attic. It's got an instruction manual with it, and there it was mentioned that it is truly an invisibility cloak: it bends the light (actually, all...
So let's say you changed a human's DNA to give him: a thick exoskeleton that is a lot like that of a mantis shrimp (to make him bullet-proof) very small holes all over his body to use to breathe ...
In the year 2588, ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) along with collaboration of NASA had discovered a new planet named Accio several light years farther than Pluto. Scientists have computed...
In this recently asked question on a large, sun blocking object it is pointed out in the comments that there would be ~10e7 N of thrust from the sun due to solar wind. My question is does there ex...
Is it possible to use thermal byproduct of daylight operation to power night time operation of volatile computer storage? In my setting, a moon-like moon with almost no atmosphere has one of its s...
First, I guess the conditions of the world are in order. It's approximately 85% the mass of earth and there is going to be a full ecosystem with all the usual types of bugs, insects, trees, and pre...
A few of my previous questions have mentioned that the colonists to this world will be scrambling to get whatever foods they can grow, because the planet's fauna is largely nonexistent (There's sea...
Mars has an inactive mantle and core and thus little magnetosphere to speak of. Assume that a lunar mass object is placed in Mars orbit at 300,000 kilometers out (one light-second). Given the tidal...
I was trying to think of a way to land a spaceship. The best I could think of was a ridiculously long airstrip for landing, and lots of catapults for takeoff, but then there was the problem of havi...
Those statues will be pretty darn heavy... but what about a flesh-and-blood naga? The torso of a human connected to a snake's body? I've seen some pretty extreme estimates on their weight... DnD ...
I am writing a short story in which a character is ejected out of an air lock in a space ship. He quickly re-enters (disregard how he does this) and the chamber re-pressurizes, but he is exposed to...
Say in the later 1700s/early 1800s handwavium is discovered. It's a metal that when heated causes more way more upward lift than hot air or hydrogen/helium produces in similar volumes. Air travel (...
Think Moa, very big bird, kept as livestock in a western-ish world. Could they be safely lassoed? Their necks are quite long and, I imagine, delicate, at least when compared to cattle or horses. If...
BACKGROUND In the antiquity of my world, a college of pyromancers attempted to create stronger magnifying lenses so that they could apply their ability to control heat to ever more finely detailed...
I want to have a strict and complicated caste system in my future space society (on a planet or a large space station). What would be the reasons and how would the system develop? Possible reasons...
Established rules for the universe: FTL travel exists with special drives, special artificial generated wormhole like tunnels where space ships can break the laws of physics. Engines runs hot, bu...
I am looking to have a creature which is basically a small human sized bat, something like man-bat from the batman series. It would ideally fly or at least glide and would regularly hang upside dow...
I'm working on a quest (Space game, but don't ask, it won't be good in anything but story and even that may be a stretch. XD), and I'm looking to use our solar system, Jupiter and Saturn specifical...
In my world, dragons are big, and require lots of energy just to support their massive bodies and huge brains - and of course, to fly, using enormous oversized wings. Rather than causing mass extin...
A nomadic tribe exists deep in the vastness of space, calling a rogue celestial object home. Their Skywatchers have seen another lonely object that will cross paths with theirs, so they begin prepa...
Assuming that a vampire expends as much energy as a human of similar size how much blood would they need to consume a day? My naive estimate is 2500 calories a day, there are (apparently) about 9...
Let's say we have a binary star system, with a high mass star and a low mass, red dwarf star. High mass stars emit their light mainly in the ultraviolet while low mass stars emit mainly in the infr...
Global famines have dropped the population to 1 billion people and global civilization has collapsed. In an effort to save future civilization some time, you want to provide some information to ki...
In this question, I asked about a matter-filled 4-spatial-dimensional universe, with a gross structure defined by my own answer to that question. Then, in this question, I asked about what the per...
Suppose we have a world that saw a sudden collapse of civilization, not so violent that humans are suddenly struggling to survive but severe enough to cause humans to revert to a mix of city-state,...
Out in the desert wastes of my planet, there are living multiple tribes of psychotic raiders who have acquired a number of harmful mutations due to naturally high radiation in the areas that they l...
A sandcrawler is is a tracked vehicle about 40 meters long, 20 meters tall, and 15 meters wide. It has a thick outer hull for protection from the elements. It has eight sets of tracks, four abreast...
Many creatures - humans among them - have binocular vision, where two eyes side by side allow good depth perception. There are quite a few other advantages over one eye, including a larger field of...
The interior of this particular Dyson Sphere is so large that it encapsulates a star at its center. Otherwise it is filled with breathable air which creatures can breath and fly in. I imagine that ...
I am wondering about this map, from the game Albion (not Albion Online): The island on the right (Umajo) is an arid one, mostly covered by sandy deserts, except for an area of savannahs at the ver...
An interstellar spaceship carrying a thousand personnel was attacked by a group of space pirates while crossing the nebula. The nearest habitable planet is several light-hours away. Help will onl...
...no, I mean, supposedly, I believe there is more about it than mere kans on our part. Installations like this one are found all along the spoorwegs, and yes, around some you should tread light...
Heads up"”this is a pretty gross question. The dragons in this world are not reptilian, but rather resemble huge borzois. I've not sure how large I want them to be yet, but they are capable of min...
The movie Back to Future revealed that Mr. Fusion (MF) produced by Fusion Industries (FI) was in widespread use in 2015. What the movie did not reveal was the FI was privately funded by Bill Gates....
In my setting, fossil fuels do not exist. I'm handwaving an alternative behavior of radioactive material, and alternative magnetism-like forces. These are explained below. My question now is: Can ...
In a hypothetical world where multiple humanoid races develop independently of each other (such as a world that contains Elves, Dwarves, and Humans for instance) what are the conditions for half-br...
I've been trying to figure out a model (or find a relevant paper) for calculating the approximate day/night and periapsis/apoapsis temperature variation for an earth-like planet that has a high ecc...
So I have a planet that is slightly larger than Earth, orbits an orange star slightly closer than earth orbits the sun, has extreme weather patterns and volatile tectonics. It has bad storms, tempe...
In a nutshell, I've an 8-fingered bat-like humanoid (let's call them AX) and a 10-fingered 'standard humanoid' species (let's call them BX) sharing a planet. AX was the first to develop things su...
Say I want to make wolves intelligent like people, to create a Canis Sapiens of sorts. What sorts of tests should I conduct to develop human-like intelligence? If it helps, the sort of traits I'...
What could be the effects of erosion on a rocky Earth-sized planet on a universal time scale (in the order of $10^{40}$ years)? Let's assume that: The source of sunlight is endless and almost con...
I've got this planet that orbits it's star slightly closer than earth orbits the sun. For story reasons I need it to have small yet severe radiation storms and I was thinking that either a weak or ...
So I'm guessing you guys know about the speculation that life exists on Titan. To me, this is very interesting but many point out that it would probably only be microbes and unicellular life becaus...
My first post here, and it's more about destroying worlds than making them. Consider this scenario: An earthlike planet where a powerful magic spell has been cast, protecting all positrons from a...
A wormhole usually helps us to create a shortcut to a distant object through a higher dimensional space. Can the time factor in that higher dimensional space differ from our three-dimensional spac...
I am trying to figure out how to make a moon (75% of Earth size) of a gas giant habitable. To give an idea of the technological level, here are technologies the colonists have access to: fully a...
Let's say for some odd reason, a planet (while in orbit of something) travels at all times inside of a nebula. What all would happen to the planet? Could it sustain life (if sunlight was substitute...
For your consideration, a star system inside a dark nebula with a potentially habitable planet. Being a dark nebula, we Earthers can't see light shining behind the nebula. Further and therefore: ...
I've recently discovered something great: the Schwinger effect. It says that if you concentrate enough power thanks to laser into a single point in space, it will spawn a pair of proton and antipro...
