General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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In the year 2020 A.D. , the inhabitants of earth are visited by a not-so-friendly race of techno-pathic AI aliens ,numbering about 500,000, and originating from a type 2 ¾ civilization from a gala...
Could a planet with a core of majority tungsten and cobalt with traces of gold,copper,iron and uranium be able to support life?
If we were to encounter alien species of, lets say approximately the same size as us, would there be any reason to expect them to communicate in the same frequency ranges as us? Human beings have ...
A group of 35 superhumans from the future get trapped on the alternative Earth still in the Dark Ages. Banding together they take control of a small country and establish themselves up as kings and...
Which solvent to use for metal nerves? Based on this answer on to how to evolve biological radios, the answer states that if creatures in an ecosystem utilize metal for electrical transmission ins...
I have built a star that is loosely based on a real-world star. It has the following properties: Spectral class G Mass: 1.03 M$_\odot$ Radius: 1.02 r$_\odot$ Luminosity: 1.05 L$_\odot$ Surface te...
I'm interested in developing a world that has somewhat extreme seasonal changes (hot, but liveable summers and cold, but livable winter) with a very cold non-habitable polar regions. Would axial ti...
In most representations of mermaid cities, they either live in implausible magical palaces, or in some more or less elaborate cave systems. Assuming the only difference with our world is the prese...
So the desired result is a compound that can be left in relatively isolated area, isolated such that weather has no direct affect on the area, and that will ignite/explode when touched, even after ...
Say we're on a ship traveling between the Milky Way and Andromeda. We decide to stop and take a look out our space-windows. What do we see? I'm presuming that the Milky Way and Andromeda would bo...
It is late in the day, and humanity has made the fateful step: digital transcendence for some. The last few weeks before the Singularity were singularly chaotic, with widespread violence by opponen...
A gram of vaporized polonium can kill more than a million people and thus is the most potent poison known to Man. Having read this article, my crazy dictator immediately assembled the most experien...
Previously, I asked several questions about living in a massive banyan tree whose branches were about 600 feet up. Though I can't find the comments, I was informed that there would be very high win...
Let's say we came across a new species of moderately intelligent birds. Like Alex the parrot, these birds are able to learn a few words and simple concepts. But once we teach these birds the word...
This idea comes up quite frequently in science fiction, but there has not been a question about it yet on Worldbuilding.SE. Is it possible that intelligent life was brought to Earth by an alien ci...
Here's an intriguing thought - I think so anyway. Let's suppose for a minute that there's an Earth-like planet with sentient life orbiting a star near the edge of the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal G...
Very soon I suspect we will see the rise of machine in the next couple of decades if people continue abusing Moore laws, suppose robot laws are hardwired into their core how can we make them believ...
I'm asking this question about an already-built world, in accordance with Are questions based on movies okay?. One of the most famous props on the television show Doctor Who is the sonic screwdriv...
I am working on a world (see this question) which I currently plan to have FTL via Alcubierre warp drive. I want to avoid the possibility of FTL sneak attacks so I plan on having something that pr...
Imagine we could open a wormhole or a jump point to a new star system. How soon would it be possible to have an accurate map of the major bodies in that system? In sci-fi, this sort of information...
Building on this question about the magnetosphere for a planet with a substantial mercury core, what is the proto-planetary environment required to form a planet with a mercury core? Specifically,...
In a story I'm writing, the setting is a tidally locked planet with a moon a fifth its size in a binary system of a mature red dwarf and much smaller second sun. I haven't decided the planet's exac...
So, I'm creating a jungle world that orbits a K class star (aka orange dwarf star), and is the second planet in the system. Now, I have the planet having two moons: one that is similar to our moon...
In many sci-fi scenarii, most often when mechs are involved, it is not uncommon to see such a technology, usually called heated blade. Supposedly, it would make the blade even more efficient at cut...
This is the second part of a question here that I've broken up because they are two very distinct problems. Assuming a perfectly stable ringworld: Assume a more traditional flat ringworld that is ...
Chlorophyll as we know it on earth is estimated to be between 3% and 6% efficient in converting light energy to useable biomass. This support slow growth and no movement of plants like that observ...
Lets suppose that Antarctica at some point lost most of its ice (due to global warming or some other plausible reason) and now most of its bedrock surface is exposed. Compared to other continents,...
Here is the situation. A planet fairly similar to Earth is orbiting binary stars, one O or B type and one F type. Sometimes the stars are close together in the sky, sometimes far apart, sometimes o...
Imagine you were a stone age agriculturalist on an isolated tropical island 1000 years ago with no appreciably high mountains. You want to describe something (the air) in terms of how cold it was,...
Imagine a world much like Earth, except it is nearly tidally locked to its star, making a complete revolution every few thousand years. The planet is far enough away that there is a band of livable...
Many SF stories feature faster-than-light travel as essentially a trope: Roddenberry has stated☡ that the Enterprise travels at the speed of plot. As an allegory of the south seas, or some throw...
For story reasons I need a situation with a planet around red dwarf, which already has had the equivalent of a Great Oxygenation Event. Simultaneously I also like the planet to be mostly without ac...
In a world I am building, there is a planet named Sentia. Sentia orbits around a G1 star called Prometheus and has two moons, Valkyrie and Cerberus, whose masses add up to around the mass of our mo...
I'm thinking about using this as a sort of meta explanation for how Orcs (and possibly other things as well) are different than humans (in muscularity), but I'm not entirely sure what the result of...
So given an inconceivably Earth-like planet with two moons in slightly differing orbits, how would the changed tidal system affect the wildlife? Specifically, What general type of marine wildlif...
If I want an Earth-like planet, what kind of star can I use to achieve that ? According to the Harvard stellar classification, our Sun is a G-class star. The best would be to have: Temperature ...
Let's say Earth started rotation in the opposite direction without any catastrophic events, would a day on Earth be shorter or longer or just the same considering that speed of rotation and revolut...
My world is covered in a black stonelike material which is similar in structure to coral, being that it's highly-porous but not formed in the same way. The (non)water on my world, which is (curren...
Right, you are standing on Earth 100 million years in the future and observing the sky. What would you see during night and how would a day look like when you look up. Weather is not relevant (no c...
I've been working on my story planet and have come up with an unlikely but possible scenario to help explain some of my stories origins as well as myths and folklore. Over the last day or so, I've ...
Let's say through some magic or other, the Earth's spin came to a halt (to the point that the same side now always faces the Sun) How would this process feel? Obviously it would depend on how long...
Let's say that in a fictional world (the world of Heroes of Might and Magic IV in my case) the square-cubic problem of insect respiration is somehow solved, so I have giant mantes roaming the area,...
My galaxy exploring ship is powered by a fusion reactor (back up with some solar panels but they spend a long time between stars). We know that stars are powered by fusion too, so they have all the...
(edited to fix obvious confusion, as detected by AlexP) The idea is that the plane of the moon orbit is aproximately at a 90 degree angle to the plane of the planet orbit. Would that be stable, o...
Viral zombies, that is zombies that are alive, are much more terrifying than their undead equivalents. While they lack the required headshot of their undead brethren, they are faster and often smar...
I understand that asteroids are very very far apart, but everything I am reading about asteroid mining omits any information about what happens to the waste rock or "tailings" that would presumably...
Could a 'planetoid' created by reassembling pieces of a shattered planet, use the cooled metallic remains of a neutron star as its hub?
Suppose they have non-flexible beaks, but they still posses vocal cords and a tongue capable of producing the same sounds as humans. Variation of these bird-people are as follows: What types of ...
As per my previous question on giants, if the average human is 5"²10"³, and he is scaled up to 50 feet whilst remaining proportionately correct, would this have any effect on what he sounds like? ...
In Can I significantly shorten the days on a planet that can support human life? I asked about changes needed to a planet to support human life with a much-shorter day (12 hours or so instead of 24...
