General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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I am wondering how will it affect earth or none at all. Seeing that Jupiter by far is a gas giant and has really strong gravitational pull while Mars is mostly dormant, weak gravity and a terrestr...
Say in the future, humanity has developed technology to the point that it allows them to traverse through other universe, each universe having something either drastically different or not so diffe...
Short version A far future catastrophe burns/melts away large chunks of the Earth and Moon. For reasons related to my story's fantasy elements, the remains of the Moon have about one fifth their or...
One of the powerful abilities of Superman is his ability to make several layers of opaque solid objects translucent to him and only him alone. What plausible future technology would allow us to see...
In most future sci-fi settings, it is apparent that laser weapons (or as Star Wars likes to call it, blasters) and energy weapons in general would have replaced most standard ballistics for main in...
In the future, humanity has discovered countless worlds, some filled with life and others not. Likewise, they discover another world that is habitable, they study its various ecosystems, it's var...
I'm making a story where the main character travels the world. The world is made up of anthropomorphic animals. The animals would still have the urges of animals, But they become more sapient. Dog...
what would happen if 50,000 humans were sent to a planet that has 3 times gravity, in a arid like environment.Through unknown means. The planet has a similar atmosphere to our own and the air is ...
When I was younger I came up with a creature that seemed to contradict itself. It was made of some frozen material, but it had a large back fin in order to get warmth from the sun. I'm revisiting t...
This question is supposed to explain the phenomenon in fiction that I affectionately call the "clean death", where a dead monster disintegrates after being slain. Normally this would be explained b...
There's a a decent sized kingdom that is situated between the ocean and a gigantic dried out seabed. The Priest-King and his lackeys want to flood the useless desert because who wouldn't want more ...
In the distant future, humanity has encountered, made peace and wars with countless advanced civilizations, but one civilization that still baffles them, is the race of intelligent centipedes. The...
The Orion's Arm Universe Project includes a description of what they call "To'ul'hian Worlds", planets that are (in the simplest of terms) a cross between Earth and Venus. I'm working on designing...
Previous question: Proofing dragons against their acidic breath weapon 1/2: Smart Neutralizing Agent So, I decided to find an alternative breath weapon for my dragons, that maximizes destructive p...
Would it be possible to have a humanoid, a human looking species with a roughly equivalent brain to humans, without iron in circulation in its blood or body? I have found that reptiles could be a...
I'm positing a non-planetary world but within Euclidean space. This world has things that resemble mountains (but probably not plate tectonics). Elevation varies considerably, but on average it is ...
I want to create a tidally locked world with a habitable (broadly Earth like atmosphere and biome that humans could breathe and live in) band stretching around the terminator pole to pole. There wo...
In Scifi there is often the issue that all the fancy technology like Mechas and Lasguns need a lot of energy. Chemical sources are limited by volumetric and regular power density. Batteries and cap...
I want to use the an active large ignious province (LIP) as a "biome" on a continent in my world. This video about the Siberian Traps inspired me. A LIP modeled after the Siberian Traps gives you a...
On a distant, habitable world, humanity has observed a biological marvel. A creature that is primarily carnivorous, roaming its planet jungles and deserts, has been observed to be capable of manip...
In a distant future, humanity has colonized and catalogued countless worlds in their home galaxy. However one day humanity has discovered a few habitable words in the Andromeda galaxy. After a wh...
Say one day humanity has found a planet that supports life. It's filled with luscious forest and barren deserts, and various ecosystems that resemble Earthly ones. After a single year of researchi...
On a terrestrial planet with a high amount of ammonia vapor in the atmosphere, would any organism have a strong enough incentive to develop some form of autotrophic chemosynthesis that derives ener...
A type of dragon in my world, simply named the Thick-horn, has a well-known mechanism to use to defend itself despite its clumsiness. They are freakishly large, tend to be slow, and find it hard to...
I'm working to design the atmosphere of a fictional planet inspired by Venus (let's call it Cael). Cael's atmosphere at an altitude of 50 km is essentially identical to Earth's atmosphere at sea l...
By that I mean, if you are travelling about on a continent on a planet with a circumference similar to the Sun, how much further would you be able to see, and would it be noticeable, without more c...
Given current capabilities, is it possible for a missile launched from the surface of the Earth to impact the surface of the Moon? I would imagine the same "rocket" used send stuff to the ISS coul...
I am trying to find a solution for a specific subset of the Stealth in Space Problem: dealing with waste heat without tipping off properly positioned observers. This question is scoped specifically...
I actually rediscovered an old story I wrote five years ago and there was this supposedly synthetic material that can float, be programmed to be directed where to be delivered and can carry luggage...
In a future where Mars has been abandoned for several thousand years, and Earth has reverted to a somewhat-habitable state, why would aliens choose to live on Mars, rather than more habitable Earth...
I'm looking to build a horror type sci-fi game based on the Alien franchise. My question comes in trying to differentiate my alien from the Xenomorphs. I want hurting it with a melee weapon to be i...
So, dragons here use aqua regia (an acid that dissolves even gold) as their breath weapon. This acid is made up of the dragon's stomach acid and some nitric acid, stored in a separate organ. On to...
Conventional monsters won't cut it. They whine and cry too much when fighting, they give up and go down too easily, mostly because of malnutrition since Jimmy, The Dark Lord, forgot he can't grow p...
So we have a Super Earth of ten Earth masses, just on the threshold, and it has three Mars sized moons (so a mass ratio of 100/3, more than Saturn Vs 3 Earths). They go 40,000km, 100,000km, 250,000...
Coming from an earlier asked question, I was wondering how long it would take (potentially a range) for two human populations that are separated from each other to speciate enough that they would n...
Assume technology more advanced than current levels, let us theorise for this question that we are capable of reaching and if needed extracting material from any planet or moon / body in our solar ...
In my book which is set in the near future (some hundreds years from today) the mankind has mastered interplanetary travel. Although the travel to let's say Pluto is possible, it still takes severa...
Ancient Man feasted on megafauna. From mammoths to every variety of deer and flightless bird humans have made the most of large wildlife, to the point of tragic excess. So what happens when the ani...
For my story there exists a fictitious element with special properties. In its pure form is most closely resembles metal (for its physical properties) This material is quite abundant in salt and o...
Let's suppose that a homo species divides in two separate species (like H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis) and they cannot breed. Could their descendants evolve to be capable of reproducing togeth...
The Game Drive system, perhaps best exemplified by the "Buffalo Jump" of the North American Plains Indians is a hunting strategy in which large animals are chased into a preselected kill zone, su...
There are several mammals that are actually venomous. Several species of shrews, Solenodon and the Platypus are all venomous. While the platypus is the largest of these, it uses it in self defense...
For my project there is an environment with a very rapid fire regime due to the usual stuff like a dry seasonal climate and dragons. While most animals escape the flames by running, burrowing, or f...
Bioaccumulation and Biomagnification are common concerns in marine environments, with natural examples like Ciguatera being a well known example caused by an algae that grows on coral that is th...
For a book that I'm working on I am plotting out various points in time to make sure my plot is following accordingly. I apologize in advance for the lengthy post. It is a fungus-like infection tha...
Okay, here's a classic situation: The countryside is plagued by a dragon, who demands tribute from the local city on the basis of them being in his territory. Now, the dragon here doesn't actuall...
Within my setting, insects, due to a rather long (millions of years) and convoluted (gods suffering from empty nest syndrome) series of events, have evolved their exoskeletons into an endoskeleton ...
I am trying to make three neighbouring countries with varying climates. One country needs to basically be Arizona (Especially like the Monument Valley area with the red sand and those iconic butte...
Humans have colonized the subsurface oceans of Europa - building large cities embedded in the icy crust, hanging beneath it, and resting on the rocky seafloor. These colonists mine metals for const...
In my setting, there's a gas giant orbiting in the habitable zone of a red dwarf (for specificity, its radius is about half Jupiter's, and it's 0.35 AU from 61 Cygni B. Ignore the effect of the oth...
