General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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I may not have been paying as much attention as perhaps I could but I have the impression that, in fiction and reality, most civilian space habitats, whether ships or stations use a relatively thic...
Disclaimer: This question is the second of a new series of questions of mine about introducing hexapeds to the fauna of my conworld. There are/will be other questions addressing i.a.: characteristi...
I'm creating a short story about two planets, roughly the same mass, orbiting around each other somewhat like the Earth and the Moon. Would it be possible for both to also be rotating at the same t...
In science fiction secret space stations typically seem to exist inside of a nebula or an asteroid. However it occurs to me that in warfare space stations hidden in nebulae would likely be discover...
I have this planet in my story that is similar to Earth in many ways. It is inhabited by humans, the flora and fauna are similar, the atmosphere is similar... except not quite. On Earth, the atmos...
So it turns out that all of the people claiming global cooling were right. Our earth is heading towards freezing temperatures, and we need to raise our earth's temperature by 1°C as fast as possi...
I'm working on a sci-fi Western scenario on a habitable desert planet along the lines of Tatooine from Star Wars and Arrakis from Dune. For it to be habitable there has to be water below the surfa...
Like this: If we were to build stations in deep space meant exclusively for human habitation, would chunky floating cities like this be a feasible design or would we be more likely to create som...
I've become interested in sci-fi / science-fantasy / weird Westerns. Building upon what I asked here I would like to be more specific and ask if there's scientifically sound ways to explain why a ...
Imagine a species (the cause is largely irrelevant - could be alien meddling for all I know) that is Homo sapiens in all except one detail: they have additional organ which is kind of like gills - ...
Are there any known laws of nature, which don't allow the existence of an animal with following characteristics? Can fly to the altitudes of modern airliners (around 10 000 meters or 32808 ft). O...
I was thinking of different ways a wormhole could appear relatively close to our planet but even reading much about wormholes I can't think of any possible conditions. I need some theoretical or e...
A colony ship is sent to Enceladus. It has a nuclear reactor to provide power to life support, electric engines etc... Upon arrival, the colonists also need a reactor to melt holes into the ice and...
There have been several questions about the construction, operation and destruction of a Dyson sphere. I'm interested in something a bit less exciting: how far out can you still see it from? Assum...
Premise The motivation as to why one would want to give a tidal locked moon a spin is out of the scope of this question. I only want to focus on the feasibility. Suffice to say there could be a fe...
I am writing a sci-fi novel in which humanity has colonized a majority of the solar system, and a few minor colonies on nearby stars. Although calculating mass and gravity on individual planets and...
This question is really about best possible travel times between celestial bodies. In my current sci-fi setting, the Human race is spaceborne, but incapable of FTL travel. Their thrusters are exc...
In my World, a perfect storm of catastrophic size strikes earth and black-death levels of mortality ensue, cutting short the Great Space Race. The only problem is that there are over 10,000 people ...
I was reading this question and realized that I didn't actually know enough to give the answer that I wanted. Obviously in the near term, all our raw materials come from the Earth. The only oth...
The recent total eclipse, got me thinking about how it would look in my world. I have a earth-sized planet with a ring system, a couple of small moons and 1 or 2 bigger moons. How would a planet...
Moon's surface is about thirty million square kilometers large. That's a lot of plastic, but no bigger effort than many other terraforming projects we have discussed. Description: A global bubbl...
The Angelic Host is going to war. It's a long journey, requiring flight over the highest mountain ranges and long trudges through the fiercest blizzards. As with all large scale military marches t...
I find time dilation confusing so I'm not sure if it is a relevant factor. Lets say you have a spaceship. There's no such thing as faster than light travel, but you do have inertial dampener techn...
So I have a story about humans far off in the future on a different planet that have evolved to be more in tune with electromagnetism and magnetism. Their technology mostly works because of magneti...
In my world the characters find themselves in a new land. They do not understand the locals nor do the locals understand them. How could these characters learn to understand the locals withing a mo...
Imagine that a group of Inuits from Greenland settled in Antarctica; let's say on the Antarctic peninsula, if there is no better place in Antarctica. Could they survive there with their traditiona...
My space colonists (160 people) are mostly scientists with at least two advanced degrees and some research experience. They all speak English because it is a language of science today. However, the...
A common trope in cyber punkish sci-fi is the ability to upload a human mind to some storage device or AI. This of course grants practical immortality but it is also the main hurdle for tropes like...
Voidcrawler (Mycocelium Nocturnis) is a voracious invasive species, most similar to a fungus but much hardier and with some singularly unique properties: Firstly it absorbs not only light, but als...
I have a homebrew setting with a moon that has some specific features orbiting an Earth sized planet, and I'm trying to find out how these features would affect how the moon looks from the surface ...
The backstory of one of my characters involves being lowered onto steadily rising, open flames back first. The story is set in a dystopic/post apocalyptic time where modern technology became unavai...
I know that birds like crows and parrots can use basic tools, and some questions on the site have stated that re-evolving hands isn't worth the trouble/is outright impossible. However crows don't ...
For a gas giant to have a habitable Earth-like moon, in a P-type circumbinary orbit with the stellar classes of the 2 stars being A7 type III and F2 type IV separated by a distance of 2AU to 3AU, w...
I have a city on a "sky island". I want to have farms around my city on all the rest of the island. There is nothing around the island no matter the distance or direction. But the gravity works (m...
I am building a habitable Earth like planet, but instead of it being in a solar system it is inside a Nebula. The actual composition of the Nebula is uncertain at this point. I am thinking the pl...
Meet Joe. Joe is generally an average person with one special trait: He loves astronomy and star gazing. However, Joe has a great paying job as a web developer. He earns 120 000 USD yearly and has...
I got inspired by a recently posted question dealing with an artificial magnetosphere to protect Martian atmosphere during and after terraforming. Earth's magnetic field does funnel solar particle...
I'm currently enamored with the idea of having a species of living, sapient stars (called "astrae") as the firstborn children of the gods in my space fantasy setting. Magic exists in this setting, ...
By request, these are the two previous questions in this "series": Low Voltage Lightning and Alien Nitrogen How To Make Lightning I recently asked a question about lightning storms on planets. O...
Because vanadium dioxide experiences a sudden phase change at 67° C, instead of trying to make small changes to gradually contract or expand muscles, could an alien instead have many smaller muscle...
Could a world with no animals whatsoever (not even insects, no humans, etc) still have plant life? These plants do not have to include all the plants in our world, or even any of the same plants. I...
A group of ships I've made are supposed to be modular in design with each modular hull segment being self sustainable both in terms of power needs and crew upkeep (oxygen, food, water, etc.) I've ...
This is a world with underwater merfolks and other humanoids. They have opposable thumbs, so they can use tools humans can use. Lets assume there's different subspecies and races of these merfolks,...
Humans developed martial arts to give themselves an advantage in combat against untrained, but possibly stronger or better-armed opponents. Presumably, martial arts are one way of making up for the...
In my space western setting, I went nuts with the time scale, so now I have a faction living entirely in space stations (with planets used for transit and agriculture, but that's irrelevant for now...
My story takes place on a moon in orbit around a Gas giant. The moon has 0 tilt relative to the sun but the gas giant it orbits does have an eccentric orbit around its parent star. (it has an orbit...
I'd like earthquakes to cause deep gullies along some mountainsides of my planet. Here on earth, vertical fault scarps can form from earthquakes, but the examples I see online tend to be less gully...
I have an idea for a crazy super-organism which could wipe out the human race. Essentially, it is an organism (plant or fungus or bacterium depending on what would be more effective or what would b...
While Prionosuchus and other large temnospondyls are definitely imposing and capable of causing mortal harm, they still adhere to a distinctly salamander-like profile. Anurans (relating to frogs...
