General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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I am creating a fictional fantasy (Medieval-ish era) world. The area covered by my map is fairly large, and contains an ocean, mountains, plains, lakes, forests, swamps, etc. It's pretty much all t...
Imagine a world in which earth has started to colonize other worlds slowly, though the expense to send ships to other worlds is extremely high, and without FTL drive it takes some times to create a...
The premise for the the world I'm building is that the Superpowers of Earth lost an interplanetary war with the Colonies of Mars. As a result, most of Earth's governments have either collapsed or h...
In this world FTL travel is accomplished by entering an alternate dimension, let's call Aqua. Aqua is a very simple, albeit strange dimension. A great expanse of water as far as civilization has ma...
I'm creating a world three-quarters the gravity of Earth, and the composition of the atmosphere are as followed: 74% Neon (or Argon) 18% Nitrogen 5% Oxygen 1.6% Carbon Dioxide 0.9% Water Vapor...
So I'm working on a story based on a binary system involving two Earth sized, Earth like worlds with very eccentric orbits. In the story, one of the major coastal cities is protected by a massive r...
Could neon or argon glow naturally in any way? What would be needed in the atmosphere? P.S. Please don't change my question?
Lets suppose we have a material that is not equal affected by gravity as everything else,I don't care how, anything from dark matter to fairy dust works, but the point is that the weight formula fo...
There seem to be honest scientific exploration in the field of the alcubierre warp drive if you believe some articles on the net. So to be a little bit scientific accurate in a story using it, I wo...
Could a planet with an atmosphere composed mostly of neon, with oxygen and carbon dioxide making most of the rest, support life as we know it (specifically on a low gravity planet)? If so, what imp...
Could there ever be an incentive for a fish or other aquatic being to use simple tools, like early humans did? Would it be possible for any structure of a current water-dwelling being (for exampl...
Slime molds are a fairly well-known grouping of organisms, performing a valuable function as real-life detritivores and bacterivores, as well as inspiring fantasy tropes such as oozes. Many slime ...
I've asked another question about trinary planet systems which turned out to not be possible. Is there a way for three worlds to co exist within sight of each other? Sight being defined as making ...
The type of economy where your mining operation takes years just to start yielding marketable product, let alone generate revenue, because the speed of light makes the economic feasibility of inter...
I'm designing a creature that has found a new way to evolve directly during its life time. This method is different from having to bear incredible environmental stress or being a victim to violent ...
I'm currently working on a story treatment for a monster story. The story is sort of a love letter to many different genres and classic tropes employed and made famous by, John Carpenter, Ridley Sc...
A not widely accepted psycho-social phenomenon but one our descendents might sometime face, the Three Generation Rule states: that the degree of social discipline needed for a space habitat to ...
I wonder if it would be scientifically possible, and what would be the explanation for an Earth-like planet with average surface temperature of 14°C, but a very hot ocean, like 80-90° C, covering...
I designed a humanoid race with bio-electric organs along the arms which release electricity through the hand to the victims (it has to be done in direct contact). The electricity released has to ...
I am imagining a water covered planet. There could be a few pieces of land scattered here and there, but >99% of the planet's surface is water. There are various ecosystems and biospheres where ...
[This question was posted on Sandbox] Abstracts In a world where there are different kinds of intelligence, I am in need to assign classes to each mind encountered. The measurement doesn't have t...
Randall Munroe humorously proclaims that he'd want to live in an example map in a geography book; That means that the geography varies wildly in a small area. Assuming the following: This is ...
I have three planets. Let's call them Un, Deux and Trois. Is it feasible for all three to be orbiting one another, close enough to be seen clearly by eye? All three are large enough to be earth eq...
I'm imagining six moons orbiting a single large planet along the same, circular path. Each moon is at the L5 Lagrange point of the one "ahead" of it, and at the L4 point of the one "behind". I re...
The fantasy creature I am imagining (planning a short story or two around) satisfies the following analogy: Human is to Chimpanzee as "This Thing" is to Badger. That is, the creature has a cl...
Imagine if nature had evolved its own version of the modern blimp, or the old fashioned zeppelin. Picture a creature built like a huge hydrogen balloon, a thin tissue of living flesh and tenuous sk...
So we harness energy from the sun using beams, right? Well what if we were to harness energy coming off the moon the same way? For those long winter months when the sun is rare we could use this to...
I wanted to know the usefulness and practicality of carrying sunlight through fiber optic (I know there are commercial products which help getting sunlight from roof to dark corners of homes and t...
Assume there is a giant steel (or any metal with good thermal conductivity coefficient) rod hanging from moon with its other end in atmosphere (say 5KM above sea level). 1.) Being the other end ...
Pluto is inclined in a way that makes it slightly off the orbital plane of all the other planets and sun. Could you have a planet that was inclined at 90 degrees, or at least close to that? What wo...
Back home, there are three factors to consider: Mont Forel, Greenland's tallest peak, can be found in coordinates 66.9333° North and 36.8167° West The Arctic Ocean's average depth is 3406 feet,...
Real parasitic plants target only plant hosts and in certain species fungal hosts. How plausible are parasitic plants (or algae, lichen, or other photosynthetic organisms) that targets animal hosts...
I was imaging a system which has a black hole, a star and Earth like planet. The star and planet orbits around the black hole, but the planet has same orbital period as the star, which is a "quasi ...
It's a common trope that during the Cold War (and afterwards) America, the UK, the USSR, and sometimes nations beyond these developed super spies, capable of acts of espionage, sabotage, and direct...
So humanity has decided to reach for the stars, they can't get anywhere near light speed but that hasn't stopped them. The plan is to create a self sustaining ship and attach it to a large sungraz...
On Earth, the vast majority of the biosphere is ultimately dependent on a large number of autotrophic organisms that produce usable energy in the form of glucose by using photosynthesis. However, o...
I'm writing a story where some children (age 5 to 16) are abducted by aliens and now live on an alien planet. The atmosphere is similar enough to Earth's that the children don't need any special su...
In the real world we live in, people mostly domesticated herbivores like cattle. Some of the reasons for this are: They are efficient in terms of cost and profit. A cow simply takes in grass whic...
In the not so distant future a man builds a remote doom fortress to design, create, and raise GM/GMO children. His plan is to nurture geniuses who can enact his dastardly plan to wipe out humanity...
After reading a couple dozen entries about rogue planets and their implications (for those unaware, a rogue planet is a planetary mass that has been separated from the star by gravitational instabi...
This question asks about traditional artificial wombs viability (Is an artificial womb feasible?). I was wondering if we could take an alternative route by using a biological womb instead. Is it ...
You see this little planet? Is a planet roughly the size of earth, just slightly smaller circumference by 50 kilometers and a smaller gravity of 0.8g with little variations around the world, just l...
Assuming we're talking about a world similar to ours with the difference of the existence of mermaids, that are fishes with an upper half visibly similar to a human's, live in the sea, can survive ...
I was reading about the Riemannian Universe http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/ORTHOGONAL/00/PM.html I noticed that Greg Egan doesn't seem to talk about how Gravity would work in the Riemann...
I designed my Kepler Bb planet to have 4 major moons. They each have a differing trajectory and are in resonant orbits for stabilization. I also designed the planet to have earth gravity but be big...
My world is largely based around the production and consumption of 'drugs', chemicals which have physiological affects. Given the variety of drugs in the world, I am looking for alternate ways of c...
Chappie, Johnny 5 and (the more famous) Overwatch all feature robots that are truly and completely artificially intelligent. Each of these series has people react to them in a different way; In Cha...
I was thinking of a set of life forms that originates from neutron superfluid inside a neutron star. So these life forms are not made of atoms but are made entirely of neutrons. How might this li...
Coronal Mass Ejection and solar flare produced on the surface of the Sun often can cause disruption to our electronic equipments especially the communication service if it was directed towards Eart...
I've seen the terms posthuman and transhuman used in fairly generic ways. But given a setting with several types of beings, what consistent naming convention could be used? I suppose the vulgar ter...
