General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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On a world like Venus, where the surface is unlivable , would it be possible for life to evolve in caves? And if so , is there any reason for intelligence to evolve in a subterranean organism?
I'd like to send my protagonist permanently into the near-ish future. I suspect that something as simple as the common cold could be deadly to my protagonist once we get a little further along. I...
Tantalus is a character from Greek mythology who did some bad things (trying to feed his son to the gods), and in turn was punished in Tartarus: Tantalus (Ancient Greek: Τάνταλος, Tánt...
I am trying to make a fake metric-time app to prank some friends when we take a trip to Canada soon and would like to know how I could make this work conceptually. I already know that the time is ...
The host star for this hypothetical system is 1.05 (M☉) The gas giant is 20 percent more massive than Jupiter and orbits at 1.40 AU, now I need to know if these three orbits are stable around th...
I need an event man-made or not on Earth that can generate consistent earthquake that never grow weak, sky is the limit meaning any astronomical events will be ruled out. My story can take place du...
Let's say a hole about the size of the Kola Superdeep Borehole spaced about every five miles across the continent of Australia. Assume no human interaction after initial placement Answers prefe...
Could underwater creatures with the intelligence of human cave men or possibly the intelligence of apes create technology (that is, more complex technology comparable to what we have now rather tha...
Would it be possible for a planet-wide climate be set so that the temperature even at the poles would continually stay within a narrow range between 17 and 21 degrees Celsius? (This is approximate...
Making a world where you live in the air, as the surface is not survivable (Venus-like) but there are mountains which serve as islands. I'm gonna leave out the story of the planet as it's not impor...
For some reasons, Stack Exchange became its own country and decides to use its reputation system as the official currency. What would be the advantages and the disadvantages of such a system in co...
Essential Question : what adaptations can be made to a crawling vine that would allow them to obtain as much energy as a top level consumer if the vine was on a planet 1 au from a sun sized star?
Exhibit A: The apex predator of my world, one that can both fly and swim under water. This deadly monster employs 4 limbs - they act as wings in the air, and fins in the water. It hunts for gam...
Purely hypothetical and kind of creative quesiton. My idea is an alien humanoid-like civilization (and basically everything alive on that planet) which uses methanol/ethanol or other alcohol as a s...
The host star has a mass of 0.90 M$_\odot$ I'll refer to this star as Helios. I'll refer to the planets as Helios One, Helios Two, etc. Helios One is 0.55 M$_{\oplus}$ and orbits at 0.75 AU. It's ...
Context for Question The colonisation of the planet [ INSERT NAME ] was an enormous social experiment performed by the Terran Planetary Science and Terraforming Council; this previously-barren wor...
If yes, what are some possible ways they could break through the ice and explore the surface?
Suppose technology becomes available that allows bad people to be "cured". Instead of going to prison for decades or being executed, for example, a murderer has his brain adjusted. Now cured, there...
Specifically trying to create an alien species that can survive most environmental stressors and find a way to create an environment that justifies the species developing its characteristics that a...
Stars and constellations have been for many civilizations,sources of wonder and mystery. We look at the stars so much, that we found patterns and shapes in the stars, and used them as guidance duri...
With technology it is possible to detect Gravitational waves as Gravitational waves have been detected by LIGO. Could a species evolve to have a sense organ for detecting Gravitational waves? Wha...
Are there any current or emerging technologies that would make it difficult to copy documents? I've looked for things, but I've mostly found technology for preventing making authentic-looking dupli...
Background Information Let's say that we are trying to catch the attention of other potentially intelligent species. This signal would be used to attract the attention of other intelligent species...
Background A common staple in science fiction is the idea that we can augment humans by replacing limbs with mechanical substitutions that enable superhuman feats - weightlifter like strength in a...
I am creating a hypothetical race of aliens native to a planet orbiting an F class star; the mass of the star is 1.50 (M☉). Would this star live long enough to allow the evolution of intelligent ...
Suppose there's a planet that has similar characteristics of Earth and can provide life, suddenly shatters in many pieces and scattered over the system. A small but very dense object is attached in...
Background Information As we all know, life as we know it today is caused by the process of natural selection, sometimes referred to as survival of the fittest, as proposed by Darwin. Essentially,...
So I'm trying to develop a world that's very inhospitable to my characters (humans.) And I'm looking for a some sort of fine dust that is naturally occurring but deadly if inhaled after about a day...
So your star and/or planet gets hit by the CrushSun. The huge laser looks terrifying, but then you realize that the main weapon is the microblack hole it hit you with. What does it look like when ...
I know there are different types and levels of radiation with different affects. I read about some positive affects of ionizing radiation like : Useful for imaging parts of the body and other obj...
If all, or most, fresh water was frozen due to temperature drop over the space of a few generations, what would be the effects on living organisms such as humans and animals? Take in to considerat...
An aquatic creature made of a yellow goo moves through the water by moving its body like a squid. The goo can slowly dissolve small creatures and the planet's form of seaweed/kelp. It also has an a...
Following the answer from this link and assuming this is the best choice from the lot, if we had leave Earth right now and inhabit another world in a different planetary system, how would we humans...
Imagine that, without any aliens having been ever found, we get to a point where we can build sub-atomically precise simulations of reality, spanning at least something the size (if not the likenes...
Five million years ago, the warm Miocene gradually descended into the cool Pliocene before dropping into the frigid Pleistocene. Such a change in temperature was so gradual that life went on withou...
Imagine every organism is a matter-modifying and sorting mechanism within a very large chaos. Organisms believe their purpose is to evolve by reproduction and they're able to not wipe themselves ...
I make no assumptions to the nature of this planet. There are high chances it does not have an atmosphere or a lithosphere. But in a planet that shows a high level of radioactive activity, would it...
Introduction I have a vague notion of building some sort of strategic space game. Similar to other strategic games, locations are assigned value based upon some abstract evaluation. Following in...
I'd like to create a temple haunted by beings who are ostensibly ancestral spirits - basically, ghosts. How could ghosts be explained without an afterlife? gives me some intriguing ideas, but I'd l...
Could there be life on or around Planet Nine (a real-world planet in our Solar System, which has recently been discovered through indirect methods)? Of course, it probably receives nearly no solar ...
I would like some rare humans (1 in 10 million) to have a mutation that increases their lifetime by a factor of three. In other words, these rare humans could live for ~240 years on average. But I...
Edit: In the scenario that the temperature of a given area increases constantly over 30 million years (slowly enough for species to adapt) starting at 20°C and ending at 90°C, what are the possib...
Linked: What would conditions on a methane world be like? Question: As mentioned in the linked question, Titan is the second most likely world in the Solar System to harbor life. One of the answ...
The worlds biggest problem is population growth. All that goes in bad way crime, corruption, assassination, robbery, murders everything is at increasing rate in world. And basic reason for all this...
Before the double helix DNA was discovered by Watson and his colleague, they theorized the existence of a triple-strands DNA and its properties. Is multiple-strands DNA possible perhaps by manipula...
I showed a draft of a short story I wrote to some friends and got a very derisive comment from the chemist in the group. According to him the chemistry just isn't possible. I'd like a second opi...
I have an alien race that is carbon-based, like life on Earth, but this alien life uses different essential elements in their biochemistry than those elements used on Earth. I'm trying to come up...
Inspired by this article about the recent discovery of a subsurface ocean. So now we know it has a liquid water ocean and a magnetic field. The subsurface ocean is also protected from radiation by...
It's typically regarded that life needs liquids of some kind to evolve. But liquid is just a state where molecules can move around freely in order to interact with other molecules instead of being...
If a substance at Absolute Hot and a substance at Absolute Zero collided, what would happen to the resulting mixture?? Assume this was done on Earth in a sort of collision facility. I'm working o...
