General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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Assume we have a planet similar to earth in size and materials. But we put it in orbit of a mass much greater then our sun so that the year becomes much shorter like 10 days (or put it much closer ...
So my main character was genetically engineered to be biologically immortal. By this I mean her DNA is a lot better than ours. The telomeres do not degrade over time same as genetic information. C...
I am trying to figure out the geological effects that would happen if earths upper mantle was drained of heat. I am sure there are many ways that this could happen but the method that I am asking ...
We've seen questions about multiple planets in a single orbit before, using Lagrangian points, through orbiting each other as they go around, etc. I'm looking at the creation of a hypothetical syst...
For this question, assume that the planet is Earth-like in almost every way, and is in a system like ours...the distance from the sun, orbital period, rotation, axial tilt, etc is all pretty much t...
Dateline: 2067 Setting: A research base at the bottom of the Marianas Trench Depth: 10,000 meters. Mission Duration: Thirty days A research base lies at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, housi...
We assume (since it is not proven yet) that Earth and Humanity are very rare cases in the universe. And in a lot of literature when there is a need to make a choice between Earth and Humanity, (Pse...
Some speculation on a neurological supercharger for a sapient alien species: The supercharger is a natural biochemical compound of some sort produced and stored in a specialized brain-adjacent o...
Some published settings -- such as the Greyhawk 'verse commonly seen in conjunction with Dungeons & Dragons -- treat the prime planet's host solar system as geocentric. How could this be reconc...
I will be writing a short story about humans landing on an earth-like forest planet with a gravitational force of about 3 meters per second squared (In contrast, Earth has a gravitational accelerat...
What characteristics might define a group of multicellular chemosynthetic organisms (similar to that of bacteria living in earth's hot springs and deep sea vents, but relatively more complex, as mu...
The main reason I ask this is because my world's moons both have long periods of darkness based on their phases (see here) so plant life needs to have a way to persist through such a lack of light....
I'm writing a roleplaying game scenario set on a space station, and was wondering how the lifts (elevators) would work? Specifically, the people who built the station are very health and safety con...
As stated in the topic: I would like to have Project Olympus-style space stations served by Apollo-like spacecraft in a world where neither nuclear power (and weapons) nor transistors were develope...
In the anime Vandread, the antagonists (earthlings) had a goal that I find interesting. So I am going to use them as the premise and hopefully expand it well enough to work for a world I am working...
So, in the world I'm creating, humans have meddled with animals in order to create unicorns, dragons, jackalopes ect. However, some of these animals were more powerful and intelligent than intended...
The world consists of actual humans who were moved to another planet by aliens, during biblical times, hence having an influence on their religion. The planet is terraformed with earth-like conditi...
A planet in one of my solar systems has 100% of its surface covered in deep water, many hundreds of kilometers deep. Some criteria relating to the planet. It's fairly close to its host, a sunlike...
Let me explain further the idea. Nowadays (as thousands of years earlier) many people bound themselves in their mind to a particular nation, country, town, neighborhood etc. And very often these p...
For reference: I am thinking of a story where travel between worlds exists, but people have to "start over" on each world. So they can't just take their current computers to a new world. The monit...
This question is inspired by Green's Volcanoes in Orbit! The premise is that there is a 50-mile-high shield volcano (again, let's ignore the height implausibility) with a slope of about 2-3 degrees...
In my story, I plan on having one of my main characters lifted off the ground by a dragon-like creature and carried a couple miles away. Of course the plan involves them surviving the encounter whe...
I'm currently working on a semi-aquatic humanoid race of aliens, the Soliil. The majority of the race has proportions, anatomy and heights close to that of humans, however, I am working on a much y...
You all know the story of a women waking up to find herself heavily pregnant with some demon child or somesuch, or the pregnancy spanning a couple of days/weeks rather than the standard 9 months. C...
With our current technology we're able to travel through our Solar System (and beyond) during at least a human lifetime. Is it physically possible that a star system has more intelligent lifeforms...
I am trying to think of animals that would make the strongest enemy for humans if they were bred in a laboratory. My goal is to have an animal that begins by being used in a benign, controlled way...
Okay, so we are figuring out, that at least for how we are running things now, our Earth can fit about 10 billion people. We can probably raise if your economy distributed resources more efficientl...
The inspiration came from the music in the title sequence of the film Alien. The idea is a planet that humans have colonized where it's almost always drizzling slightly. It's always dark but there...
Note, when I say hydrogen-based atmosphere I mean replacing the 20% oxygen with hydrogen1. Let's just say basic plant life2 has developed on our fictional planet (which has the approximately all t...
I'm looking to found a new country on a real-to-life Earth, and I need somewhere to put it. The country is going to be anywhere from 100 to 1000 square miles (250 to 2500 square km) in size. Assume...
Maybe it was a trick of the light or a strange cloud, or just not enough sleep. A couple nights ago I could have sworn that thin crescent moon flickered. Which led to an interesting question - wh...
So, I'm looking to get one of my characters poisoned. However, if they notice that something's up, the jig's likely up as they'll seek treatment for what happened, so this needs to happen "under th...
There was a question recently about gatekeepers controlling the flow of goods between universes. The gatekeepers became a religious order. The premise got me thinking, and I have come to a conundru...
As the title states, is it even possible to remove hazardous air chemicals in Earth? I think I could list the pollutants which I think we could remove, these are the following : Nitrogen oxide...
In my story, a team of scientists are sent to an alien world similar to Earth to conduct general research on its environment, ecosystem (that is: its animal- and plant-life), and weather. It is the...
For my future world, I've decided that coastal cities need fresh water and there isn't enough of it to go around. I don't know how jellyfish work. Is it feasible or completely impossible for sci...
Imagine you had a flat earth scenario, in which the world is essentially a giant disc floating in space (I know that in reality any such world would be pulled into a sphere by gravity, but for the ...
The enormous shield volcano that this question was based on was held up by magic or God. It presented some very interesting conditions for alternate worlds so I thought I would develop that train o...
Or, technically, a civilization near the core of a planet. In this question I will describe some aspect of my design, and you may comment on the realism of these aspects and add improvements, or p...
Modern cities are built from concrete with steel rebar because it is abundantly available and provides enough tensile strength. Concrete requires cement. Cement is made from limestone. Limestone is...
I'd like to have a community of humans live indefinitely in space habitats (think space stations supporting mining operations in the asteroid belt). The technology would be "day after tomorrow"-le...
Inspired by this question on putting massive capacitor-banks on spaceships I have been wondering about alternative ways to store excess energy from ever-running reactors. In this question I would ...
Okay, it's a staple amongst certain fantasy settings where you have different races of creatures and beings co-habiting, which leads to certain off-shoots of different races (the half-elf and half-...
The Anatomically Correct Series can be found here. The Chimera is another freaky specimen from Greek mythology. It is described as having the body and head of a lion, the head of a goat sprouti...
I was making a planet for a game and I was wondering how the world would be affected if it never had salt water, but instead a huge fresh water supply. Then I thought about what it might do to the ...
Building on this question about space exploration on the slopes of a 50 mile high volcano, I'm curious what would happen when the volcano erupts. The volcano is: 50 miles high, just on the edge ...
Recently, a question was posted about how a creature like the mythical Charybdis could evolve. Today I want to talk about Charybdis' mythical counterpart: Scylla. Most depictions of Scylla look so...
I'm wanting to have two regions separated by a large mountain but do not want either side to become a desert. What would the conditions have to be on the desert side for this to be prevented? This ...
This is the first question in a series that I have (that follows the human organ systems). This question deals specifically with the use of the muscular and skeletal systems in a robot. Since they ...
Imagine a waste heat driven pressure swing adsorption device is used to treat automobile exhaust gas. Further it aggressively scrubs nitrate, sulphate and CO2 emissions. Note: tanks and filters wou...
