General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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If we didn't have the capability to use faster than light travel then how could we stay unified and are any realistic examples in science fiction?
I was thinking of a creature that uses ultrasound to echolocate and infrasound to communicate with its species. The current idea is a dog-like creature that hunts in packs, due to a large avian pr...
So, dragons are rather large (2 meters at the withers and have a nose-to-base-of-tail length of 5 meters) creatures. Pic related by: KatePfeilschiefter They look something like pic related, albe...
I'm talking about place similar to the Jordan desert, where the biggest prey is similar to wild donkeys and antelopes like oryx and gazelles. My creature is 1.92 meters tall and 4 meters long, loo...
Lets say you have a planet called...Galileo. Galileo has a large amount of biodiversity, with bacteria, plants, fungi, and animals. The animals are what I'd like to focus on today. Unlike Earth wit...
Imagine a dragon as tall as average adult horse with a wing span of 12m long measuring from tip to tip. I wonder what evolutionary traits or techniques could allow the dragon to lift itself off the...
In my story Elves, Humans, and a bunch of other fantasy races live along side each other and i'm curious as to what evolutionary pressures would to a group of divergent hominids to evolve into Elve...
In my narrative universe, there will be ships that use a 1g acceleration for artificial gravity. However, when they are not accelerating (whether on a longer journey at a constant velocity or simpl...
The technical challenges for Breakthrough Starshot list the huge amount of power required for accelerating a solar sail to interstellar travel speeds and the precise targeting of laser beams of tha...
Could a measurable amount of isopropyl alcohol occur naturally in an otherwise reasonably earth-like atmosphere? And if so, what is the highest possible concentration that a human could survive lo...
This was an idea I had for an alien life form but i thought it made so little sense for a science-based story that I didn't further it. The idea is a tree-like life form that instead of bearing fr...
This is a another sequel to my Plutonian questions, but I've decided to take a break from them and focus on another part of the world. Basically, my version of Pluto has five continents, each a si...
In a short story I created, humanity encounters a sentient and consciousness messenger that is alien in nature and origin. Upon further examination, it turns out that there is organic tissue grown ...
When Lilith was kicked out of the garden of Eden, she was forced to fend for herself in a harsh, unforgiving world. Lost and alone, she came upon a bloke named Satan. Their love produced two childr...
Basically, in a sci-fi roleplaying group I am apart of, I have began to work on a long-standing human colony world. The tech-level is pretty much bog-standard sci-fi, and such, colonisation is poss...
Imagine a generation ship heading for a distant star. Humanity had means to observe that star up to a point, that it is 99.9% sure the star has a colonizable Earth-like planet (with water and atmos...
Imagine a big Moon base situated under a dome. Big means under the dome there is a small city with buildings, streets and ca. 30,000 inhabitants. The best analogue in the movies would be the Ceres ...
Gargoyles are bipedal, slow-moving animals that lurk on rooftops and eat pigeons. The rumors of gargoyles being magical construct are false; in truth they're just animals that have adapted to urban...
It's the late 2020's, and humanity has expressed an unprecedented and powerful renewal in the interest of space exploration. Sometime between then and the turn of the next century, a practical form...
In the game Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, characters wear exoskeletons with an ability called "land assist", which allows them to slow down their fall using a jet of compressed air (or some speci...
If the earth's oceans were electrocuted (from the ocean floor), not worrying about how the energy is gotten to electrocute it, what would happen too everything in the ocean,( fish, algae, etc.) wha...
I am creating a world for Sci Fi story in which I am trying to have two non-tidally locked earth sized planets in a binary orbit around Alpha Centauri A. The only way I can think of this happening ...
This is a submission for the Anatomically Correct Series some characteristics of the Manticore include: having a lion like body having wings are tetrapods having a scorpion like tail being carn...
I was inspired by Phylliroe molluscs which are sea slugs that have evolved into translucent fish (see image bellow). In my story most aquatic life on earth had evolved from these translucent slug...
So I have a concept for a habitable alien planet that has 7 suns. This planet is supposed to have a surface similar to Earth, it doesn't have to be habitable to humans but should be capable of ho...
In this futuristic setting an AI being has built an interstellar spaceship solely for itself, no humans or other life forms will be needed to maintain it or be passengers. Because of the AI being,...
Picture this, a highly volcanic island sitting in the middle of a temperate or sub-arctic sea, the heat generated by the magma beneath the island and the volcano heats the air enough to generate a ...
An idea I'm toying with for a sci-fi story is a species where the individual organisms are colonies of smaller eusocial organisms. The idea initially came from "hey if a bunch of single-celled orga...
So... I'm fiddling with Yet Another Bipedal Digitigrade Species. There is tons of material on the legs, but seemingly not so much on the hands. Short Version So... I'm wondering; is it possible t...
I think that robots in the future will have to have a system similar to adipose tissue that would have similar functions of those of people and animals. I believe that if an android is supposed to ...
Lets say an alien trickster wants to trick a group of human astronauts into thinking they've been transported to another world far away. But in reality, he wants them to stay on good old Earth, thr...
Recently I got the idea that my humanoid race should have hydrophobic skin, because it sounds cool, and perhaps would help to maintain hygiene. However, on the second thought, I am not so sure. Wo...
I recently read that not only would a creatures digital DNA need to be stored but its mitochondria and microbiomes DNA needs to be stored. A previous questions answers mentions epigenetic structur...
In my story Halflings and Goblins have a somewhat accurate knowledge of their history, despite being spread over multiple continents. Now for the longest time humans weren't that good at keeping ac...
If humans have evolved from apes, what if another species have already evolved from humans but left the planet millions of years ago? If this is true, in the future, if humans are advanced enough ...
Okay so i have this world that is inhabited by an alien race that outwardly is basically undistinguishable from an ordinary earth-human. Due to the specifics of this planet they live on they can br...
In the near future a man-made virus was released which caused a world wide epidemic in humans and animals , the virus completly shutsdown all cognitive functions in the brain leaving the host in a ...
So there is an Antarctic like continent in my setting; and just like Antarctica it is the largest and most inhospitable desert in the planet due to how absolutely cold it is. But what if there wa...
Here a laser raptor Pew Pew'ing in its natural habitat and timeline. (From the Kung Fury movie) So I want to know how a biological organism can develop to spew laser beams through their eyes. W...
There is a planet called Galileo with life on it. The life is getting extremely complex, in fact, with some of the life on Galileo beginning to form tribes and clans and learning language. Humans w...
I've heard there was no upper limit for the size and weight of a ground effect vehicle. In my world, the people there wanted to design a quick response aircraft carrier that could reach anywhere...
Body: Boron-based lifeforms that use ammonia as a solvent and respires methane & hydrogen, with an atmosphere of mostly methane, hydrogen, nitrogen and in smaller percentages, acetylene & ...
Wendigo fever is a Prion (credit goes to SE is too politically correct for the idea) which is spread by the consumption of tainted meat. the main problem I have is to my knowledge Prions are solely...
I wanted to create an extremely large space city which will be made up of many different large space habitats of ringed and cylindrical varieties. Although each habitat will contain its own city o...
So there's this man that was born 1,000 years ago, but today he's still living and he's (biologically) 28 years old. He just stopped aging at that age. He is not immortal. He has been hurt in wars...
I'm creating a fictional world which includes tree dwelling octopuses that thrives in swamps and tropical rainforests. I'm wondering what evolutionary pressures could lead to the rise of such crea...
We have, perhaps, all experienced those 'heat' packs wherein a local disturbance causes a crystal structure to rapidly dissipate through the medium, releasing heat in the process. Nothing really 'm...
The muroids are a superfamily of rodents consisting today of mice, rats, voles, hamsters, lemmings and gerbils. There are at least 1750 different species of them, proof apparent of their environme...
The story takes place in Alpha Centauri, with this binary orbiting just over 1 AU from Rigil Kentaurus. The star system will tightly packed, but following the 10 Mutual Hill Radii separation setup....
This question on space stack begins to tackle how a bird could fly inside an O'Neill cylinder, https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/27665/can-birds-fly-inside-an-oneill-cylinder. Here is the ...
