General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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Imagine a space battle between two warships without inertial dampeners. Obviously the ships would be limited to perhaps 4 gravities of prolonged acceleration, and could only perform short bursts o...
I've seen many iterations of this question, though they've focused on the effects entailed. Let's pretend the earth has been ripped in half, as if some colossal force grabbed the northern and sout...
I am writing a book where there is a binary system with a red and blue star. There is planet with the same properties as earth orbiting in a habitable zone around the 2 stars. The question How c...
In lots of science fiction works that visit other planets we are often introduced to intelligent plant based lifeforms, be they humanoid looking or potted plant looking. I'm curious as to what par...
On the picture there is a building that slightly inspired me and convinced me that building like this indeed could be built in RL. However I have the following question. Could a building like th...
This is connected to a previous question, found here: Realism of a setting with several sapient anthropomorphic animal species Presume that due to outside interference with evolution, a planet has...
In the book I am writing, I am going for a a partially terraformed Venus setting. I like the concept of floating cities, but I want to be able to make it a little easier to live up there. If coloni...
An interstellar civilization has superluminal travel which allows for travel between two points, effectively without traversing the space in between so they don't crash into anything between them a...
Imagine: A Kardashev Type I civilization mainly resides on a planet analogous to Earth, with one moon, analogous to Earth's moon. Eventually, the society grows so complex that machines filling spac...
Assuming one had access to all modern technology but couldn't go into space, would it be possible for the protagonist to permanently stay in sunlight? While it would be trivial near the poles durin...
This, unsurprisingly, is also related to mermaids. Spearguns using rubber bands and the like are popular underwater weapons, so slingshots would be useful to mermaids. The problem is, these requir...
So Turbines in Space don't work, how about sticking beefed up versions of regular wind turbines near the top of a space elevator? My thought is that the elevator at the top experiences some serious...
All organisms on Earth produce waste. Whether an organism's respiration has a byproduct, or it just doesn't process all food it consumes, it will always put some amount of matter into the environme...
A mad scientist finally creates a strong AI, but this AI is a complete Narcissist (due to a strange glitch in its programming). It believes that it is a god and wants humanity to worship it. But ho...
My setting is a habitable moon with freestanding water orbiting a gas giant. Originally I thought the gravity of the jovian world would tend to draw water toward the tidal bulge of the moon itsel...
Some of the answers to this question got me thinking: Customer service, emergency services, and doctor's bedside manner can be programmed and tuned for the task rather than having whatever-we-got ...
They say that nature abhors a vacuum, but could life evolve to live in one? Alternately, could life be engineered to exist on a planet with no atmosphere, even if there is no biologically feasible ...
Think about a scenario in which, on a given planet, a complex life form has already evolved. In your opinion, what are the odds, for this complex form, to evolve towards intelligence? With the...
Imagine a landship that can travel on a mostly frozen icy world. How big can it be while being capable of traveling and being self sustaining? It should be able to; travel great distances be s...
I'm working at a story about the future of life in our Solar System. Humans have gone millions of years ago, but they left behind them a group of highly intelligent but not superhuman AIs with the...
On a world I am building, the day/night cycle last 9 years, meaning that there are interesting forms of life. Plants are the most interesting of these living things, which have many interesting for...
I was wondering, how would a civilization of humans who can see only in grayscale live their life? There is none of them that can see color. Everyone sees every thing in gray. Yet, color actually d...
I have an earth like planet where stalkers live. They are: Humanoid about same height, strength & speed as humans Three pairs of eyes placed horizontally (Near UV, Visible, Near IR) Lightspee...
This is the next piece in my question-series, you guys have been absolutely awesome in your answers to the first question: How to solve the old 'gun on a spaceship' problem? In this series, I try ...
So, I'm familiar with Steam, Electric, and hand powered machines... What else can you do to power a machine (say, for example, a car or a pump)? Requirements: Assuming you build everything from ...
I'm looking for a very grounded evolutionary justification for the existence of a hermaphroditic sapient and social species, preferably roughly mammalian but not mandatory, which is not as easy as ...
Let's say I have a world that contains magical fire and ice creatures. These creatures can utilize magical beams of energy that ignite or freeze the things around them, though doing so on more than...
In the mid-21st century, humanity has an interplanetary colony system principally spanning the Moon, Mars, and Titan (as per usual). The furthest established colony is on Proxima b. Humans have FTL...
In many stories, there is the idea about "planet essence" or something that: Can be extracted from the planet. Very useful for human industry once extracted. Has large reserve, but not very lar...
Suppose there was a race of aliens who had created engines for there spaceships that could operate at any speed under light, and Hulls strong enough to withstand the crushing pressure of earths cor...
I'd like to have an advanced civilization that lives in a ring around their sun, but a ring planet just can't work. In this case, they are among densely agglomerated asteroids (with life support, ...
Its the year 2050, and extraterrestrials have popped up next to the Solar System. We know they are coming our way and we know they are most likely hostile. As Steven hawking said: Such advance...
Would it be easier to build Skyscrapers on a planet with 50% of Earth's gravity, and the same atmospheric pressure of the Earth. I noticed someone asked why the planet has lower gravity, this is be...
I am wondering if there is any benefit for a rotating wheel space station to be based on mobius strip layout such as more rooms for growing population maybe because both side of the strips are popu...
To be clear, I'm not talking about AB, O, A, or B type blood. I'm not talking about different colored blood, either; I saw a bunch of those types of questions earlier. I'm talking about anoxygeni...
In the world I'm making I want to have very large creatures that will later be used in organic architecture as housing for the human equivalent in this world. In order to make this world realistic ...
In a story of mine mankind has established a permanent base on the earthward-side of the Moon complete with a beanstalk dangling into Earth-Luna-L1 for easy transport of material off Luna. Getting...
In my universe there are more than just one FTL method: Wormholes, Warp, Hyperspace and more. The thing is I need to predict the destination of an enemy fleet. I only can think about spies and h...
I would like to have a humanoids with three pairs of eyes placed on the same horizontal plane like in Protheans not one below the other like Batarian. I was thinking of one pair being sensitive to...
In my 10 book series, the historical time line turns on the fact that the greatest nation in the major continent's history, disappeared overnight during a national celebration. This nation was enj...
In a world where travel is limited to the speed of light, reaching a different star, while not necessarily impossible, would be very time consuming. For an empire stretching across several solar sy...
You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen. But how will nature give Santa's reindeer the best justification of all? Flight is the first and most obv...
I can think of at least 2 movies that had aliens invading Earth for water. Is this a feasible motivation? I was thinking that Water is H20, i.e. dihydrogen monoxide The vast majority of the uni...
I want to create an alien life for a planet which is at about 6"“8 Earth masses. It has a thick atmosphere made of hydrogen, helium, methane and nitrogen. I want that life to evolve slowly and be q...
Silicon is often brought up in science fiction as being very similar to carbon, just below it on the periodic table. The silicon-based "organic" molecules are more tightly bound and thus would fin...
Says a F22 with full tank is trying to break through the thin layer of Martian atmosphere and almost moon like gravity(alright that's probably too exaggerated) anyway say there is a runway stretchi...
You are probably aware of that certain radioactive things glow, usually a soft green. But is there any way to add compounds or what have you to achieve a different color, say, orange? I know Chere...
Farmers use dry ice(CO2) to seed the cloud on Earth, can we do the same for Mars? The acidity doesn't matter it can be any element or compound as long as we can recognize it as precipitation, as us...
I want to create a terrestrial planet with a very long lasting hurricane similar to the great red spot, I assume the planet will have to be covered by ocean. Could there still be some small islands...
If you were to hook up a human being to a sort of syringe sized water wheel to generate power using the force of their blood flow; how much power could they generate? Consider a human in a medical...
