General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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Imagine a gas giant as massive as Jupiter has a enormous planetary ring which will expand and contract throughout its orbit around a main sequence star. Then there is a moon as massive as Mars an...
So I'm working on this new novel with a fungal-like disease that is alien in nature and I have a question pertaining to spore germination. Some background - the disease is fungal-like, but not nec...
To help imagine it and my inspiration, it's basically similar to pictures from Abrahamic religions with burning trees like this one. They can't speak though, they are just trees or plants that are ...
This is a follow up question to: How realistic is the Swampus? What adaptations would current octopus have to evolve, to become land based, meaning that they spend at least 1/3 of their time on la...
In the 2002 documentary the future is wild, numerous biologists and other scientists speculated about the future evolution of various species. In the '100 million years in the future' segment, the...
I am developing a fictional planetary system in which a large gas giant planet (slightly less than the mass of Saturn), has migrated into the habitable zone during the formational years of the syst...
The Grey Alien trope almost always features a disproportionately large head, which often comes in unusual shapes to boot. There's nothing wrong with the trope, large brains are cool but what baffle...
"They fly now?" "They fly now!?" "They fly now" One of the most iconic characteristic of dragons is their ability to fly, on top of that, my intelligent (human level) dragons also use a fu...
The larger an animal, the harder it is to cool down. Ignoring the problem of bone/muscle strength vs size/weight and saying an animal could get to outlandish sizes, would a second cardiovascular sy...
First of all, in no way do I have advanced knowledge of particle physics, quantum mechanics, or any other necessary scientific concept for a full understanding of this question. Secondly, this is p...
Is it simply inevitable that on a planet organisms would split into motile and non-motile groups. I'm planning on creating slime-like amoebic chemotrophs for my light devoid-planet that are the "pl...
Our estimates of our own habitable zone--a piece of space in which liquid water is possible--have varied over the years, but the current estimate is by Ramirez and Kaltenegger in 2017. Based on an ...
Bringing a human child to term generally takes place over a period of nine months. They are marked by different stages, from 1st to third, and are marked by different events and expectations for mo...
Assume planetary-scale cables are easily constructed, and subsequently ignored. I am assuming these cables would run just under the surface of the planet from one side to the other for minimal mai...
I was thinking of creating an alien planet that orbits a star slightly past the habitable zone, but is kept warm by an extremely dense atmosphere, made primarily of a black gas, but still contains ...
We already know how to heat things up, but what about cooling them? How do we make Earth's climate like that of Mars? Or go further: can we, by any hypothetical ways, make Earth somewhat like Pluto?
So, I have been a bit disappointed with the answers on how to store degenerate matter from my previous thread, and now I'm even wondering whether one can produce it at all, without invoking unreali...
In a not so different fantasy world, whose physics and thus are similar to our own how would including penguins affect the look and function of a typical arctic ecosystem. For the purposes of this...
I've been working on a sci-fi series set about 1000 years in our future. The discovery of an alien threat leads the ruling government to conceive of a doomsday machine, which they hope will be so p...
Background A McKendree cylinder is a rotating cylindrical space habitat comparable to the more well known O'Neill model. It was proposed by NASA engineer Thomas McKendree in 2000 as an update of O...
The purpose of this question is to know whether or not organic tissue can be used to power and android. Compared to a nuclear cell or an ordinary battery this doesn't seem efficient, it needs food,...
How quickly could a bacterial colony / virus / pool-'o-prions / [whatever] digest, disintegrate, or otherwise liquefy an ordinary terrestrial biological system? Think something along the lines of ...
Inspired by this interesting question-- let's say that the universe was just really, really out to get a particular star, such as our sun. Is there a perfect cocktail where a mass significantly sma...
I like demons as they're portrayed in popular culture. I wanted to make a "anatomically correct" succubus question, but StackExchange tells me that this one already exists (even if it is not refere...
As far as it is known, Relativistic Kill Vehicles are a common weapon in science fiction and are rendered as powerful as nukes just due to their kinetic energy alone, a finite mass being propelled ...
In Hungarian, there is a new-ish folk-song sung by school-children who dislike school whenever it snows to the tune of Twinkle, twinkle, little star: Hull a pelyhes dinamit, Robbantsuk fel...
Assumptions: Jupiter's moon Europa has a salty subsurface ocean in contact with a rocky mantle. The ocean is populated by hydrothermal vents produced by tidal heating. Global heat flow is similar...
The purpose of this question is to get an alien race with a diffused set of organs, which makes any part of their body interchangeable. Why would a species need this? Well for one it might be becau...
A world has grassy plains infested with larger-than-normal (perhaps even giant) blood-sucking ticks. Ignoring their main diet for the time being: They should be dangerous enough to threaten humans ...
If you had a device, similar to a Stargate, but that allowed seamless two way transfer, and that could be moved (You could essentially strap a rocket on it, and fuel it from Earth), you could just ...
I'm making alternate more realistic designs of Kirby characters. I'm working on a version of Escargoon the "snail" here. Due to his movement in the Kirby anime resembling more of a shuffle I've...
I was looking for special missiles that do more than just explode or release radiation, thus I looked at some of the harder Warhammer 40k weapons, until I came across the Hellfire Missile. To desc...
I normally ask sci-fi questions, but oh well... It's fairly well established by this point that gills, while fine for fish, wouldn't work for mammals, as we need more oxygen than can reasonably be...
The Old Ones build continent-sized bunker complexes to protect themselves from the enemy, which followed through the cosmic ocean. The Hunter succeeded easily despite their efforts and their corpse...
Suppose an extra-solar object the size and mass of the Earth, travelling at a speed of $26\ \mathrm{km/s}$, the same of ʻOumuamua (the first known interstellar object crossing our solar system), h...
Let's say a few centuries in the future, we have captured an asteroid into orbit and built a space station out of its material. The station is a ring that encircles the equator in Low Earth Orbit, ...
I'm imagining a hypothetical scenario based on the Big Rip theory of the end of the universe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rip), where eventually the expansion of the universe causes everythin...
So as I was creating a variety of creatures I wondered if speed is exclusive to smaller creatures or if a large organism could move deceptively fast to take prey or predator by surprise. This is as...
Would it be possible to create a probe which could survive the crushing pressures and temperatures to reach the solid core of Jupiter and return data to Earth? What would make this impossible? This...
So, the dragons of my setting were inspired by several things, which include D&D dragons, a mockumentary and Asian water monitors. Now, dragons look something similar to this: They glide for...
In my world, a hyper-intelligent AI has struck out on their own to form a perfect, mechanized empire, populated by loyal robot citizens, devoted to the overlord as a child would be devoted to their...
Set in the not so distant future, we find a habitable planet very much like our own. The only downside is that it's around 500 years of travel with our current technological capabilities. We have...
"Aliens used uranium and plutonium to generate energy for thousands of years. However, by the time they got into space exploration, they've used up every last bit of it. That's why they'll have to ...
The neuro strain is a virus that affects the nervous system in drastic ways. Firstly, when the host is infected, their body will grow bigger than it would have originally been but not much bigger ...
In the isle, a game about dinosaurs and a extensive lore, there are strains (viruses)that cause or inflict different effects on the affected dinosaur. The hypo strain is capable of making the body...
In the event of our sun suddenly becoming a black hole or wormhole of sorts. It transports the earth to another solar system similar to ours. Would it be possible for our planet to start circling...
In the movie, Kong: Skull Island, there is a species called the Spore Mantis. When stationary, the Spore Mantis looks like a giant, dead log. When active, it looks like a giant insect - a giant,...
So I was recently inspired by the answers that I saw on this stack exchange to the following question: Feasibility of H.G. Wells' Continuously-Exploding Atomic Bombs And it occurred to me that you...
With a group of friends, we are trying to build an RPG in a quite specific setup which I have a hard time to find elsewhere in order to get some inspiration/information. So what I mean by that is...
I've been working on a procedural map generator for a strategy game (if I ever get to gameplay). My general development philosophy is "believable but not necessarily realistic", in other words I do...
