General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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Let's take a classic AI revolution scenario: An organic civilization seeking more comfort in their lives created robots with self-learning algorithms to make them more efficient. But while the AIs...
Suppose a planet/space station is a hollow sphere, and in the center of this sphere is a smaller sphere. This sphere would be solid, with grass and dirt like Earth. The only thing holding this smal...
Imagine that one day in the not-too-distant future, our scientists discover that our world is dying. It doesn't matter how this is happening, maybe magic or unstable core or Gaia herself has finall...
An ancient civilization mapped wormholes when the universe was quite young and smaller. This allowed them to reach other galaxies (wormholes from our galaxy to others). They mapped it all. Humans ...
I'm currently heavily revising a story which is largely set on a habitable but not exactly hospitable moon of a gas giant orbiting on the outer edge (or just beyond) of the habitable zone around a ...
Pretty much what it says on the tin: It's the beginning of 2016. Due to a fast-spreading virus, humans have lost the ability to reproduce themselves. The virus makes current artifical fertiliza...
Every child is afraid of the darkness. For them its not simply the absence of light, its the absence of information. Even if you know that there should be a wall or a doorway right in front of y...
This answer to my question about light-as-a-weapon came up with an interesting concept: The Reflecting-Oven-Jay This is a small African predatory bird with a perfectly smooth set of wings ...
On our world we have any number of creatures that use: Noxious Chemicals Poison(Spiders and Snakes being the obvious examples) Sound Electricity as an alternative to their teeth and claws. One...
Sometimes when building a world, and in particular since Tolkien, one may wish to create original languages for the inhabitants. There are some information around the site about the creation of con...
Stories with shrinking never seen to take into account the Square-Cube law. I'm trying to consider what it would take to do a story like this that actually fully addresses the square cube law. I ...
On a world where Vanadium was the most abundant metal in the crust, with levels similar to Aluminium or Iron on Earth, would you expect to see unusual minerals and rock formations? Massive overab...
An alien race, for reasons of their own, have decided that it's important to make the third and fourth planets in our solar system about the same size and mass. Since they have a strict moratorium...
It's well known that Mars has a very weak atmosphere as a result of billions of years of solar wind bombardment. Mars lacks a sufficiently large magnetic core to generate a magnetosphere strong en...
Once geological processes have created a landscape a number of factors come into play in order to reshape it. This includes weather and climate effects such as wind, rain and ice reshaping the terr...
This question focuses on the initial creation of landmasses. What are the processes that causes land-masses to form, and continents and islands to rise up from the sea and sink back into it? How...
Let us consider two persons who can feel what the other senses and know what the other thinks. Now do these two persons have a common or single consciousness?If so,will it do good, if we succeed to...
Imagine a planet with the same climate all on the surface. There is only one living creature on this planet (let's say a plant to avoid food problem). It is perfectly adapted for the climate. And ...
Lets pretend that Mars was a bit larger, so the gravity could hold on to the water and possible atmosphere, and then play along with the accidents that happened on earth happened at a similar tact....
Okay, I will make a little premise/context to give the question a decent background. I know that the scenario could look rather "handwavy", but take it as the framework on which the answer should b...
Does the following progression/collection of technologies make sense on the way to an artificial womb? The central assumption to this question is that the female body is a delicate, complicated ma...
The trope here is a world with 3-4 X earth atmosphere with high oxygen content (30%). Nice things about this are it enables heavy beasts to fly, and the high pressure smoothes out the negative effe...
Let's suppose we have found a new human colony today, somehow populating Pluto. They have good technology, much like ours and we don't want to slave them. We want to establish a communication link ...
I trust Brandon Sanderson to have done his research - in his book "The Rithmatist" he writes about coiled spring batteries that power a passenger train. I do wonder what could be achieved with a sp...
OK, so scientists have found a great new substance: That substance makes you think ten times as fast! The advantages are obvious. However, as every medicine, this pill will have side effects. Ther...
In this question someone suggested that the classic 'elf' ear could evolve for the same use as whiskers. How (un)realistic is this idea. Lets assume that the humanoid species that evolved these ear...
Can a planet possess more than one ozone layer? Can multiple ozone layers cause more harm? If one ozone layer had a hole, would the other(s) act like a backup shield to harmful rays from a star? As...
Would a human being be able to run faster, jump high, etc. if the gravity on Earth weakened? I'm assuming a weaker gravitational pull would cause the muscle to deteriorate because the body no longe...
While world building, I came up with a planet that had the combined traits of very rough and rugged terrain and small seas. The planets surface is covered with mountains and hills are common place...
Island planets are common in science-fiction, and we've even got a few questions about them in worldbuilding. However, I cannot help but wonder how, or if, they could form. On Earth, at least, our ...
Assuming such a stellar body is even possible, could human or animal life (also assuming they have a way to avoid being pulled toward the planet's core) breathe its outer atmosphere? Would such lif...
When creating humanoid races or species or just normal individuals, I sometimes want to describe a certain body measure and thus have to estimate a reasonable value. How do you do that? Are there a...
Let's make the following assumptions: Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) is inevitable, much like Y2K was. People assumed that this ASI would have the power to prevent any other ASI from being cr...
So assume your setting has the Alcubierre drive - it requires mastery over negative energy to some extent (at least, some form of exotic matter you can excite to generate that energy). Is negative...
Our main character Felixa (female, weight about 70kg) is onboard the ISS (altitude 408 km / 254 miles), when something similar to Gravity happens, and the space station is destroyed. Her assets: ...
The government of Futurestan has finally decided to hear the voice of her people. It would seem that the protriotors access to malware, EMP-otovs, and weaponized angry glaring (and thermite. Lots o...
Context A God contest is organized. Each participants starts with a human-free alternate Earth and a certain amount of god-credits to buy humans and supplies. Some Gods used a big part of their bu...
Today's dinosaurs--the birds--have a uniquely avian piece of anatomy called the syrinx, located at the base of the trachea. Because it is located at a point where the trachea branches to the lungs...
My Earth is similar to our real Earth, and some scientists have found out a really cheap way to use geothermal energy. Huge generators are built, but one scientist eventually found out that the Ear...
Hydrogenic photosynthesis reduces methane and water to build biomass ($\text{CH}_2\text{O}$) and releases hydrogen: $$\text{CH}_4 + \text{H}_2\text{O} + \text{photons} \to \text{CH}_2\text{O} + 2\...
Meet the following specimen of Armatae Bestia. I'd describe it, but a picture is worth a thousand words, so I'll just put one here instead (Feel free to drag it into browser window to get a much bi...
Okay, there are two habitable worlds in the Solar System. One of them is Earth. Human history goes mainly the way it really went. Then, there is another planet with a sentient, equally advanced spe...
Came up with this question when I read this. Would Immortals feel pain? Pain is our bodies reaction to a stimulus, telling us that something is wrong and that we should stop doing what we are doi...
I've been imagining an RPG universe consisting of eight solar systems orbiting around a black hole in a finite universe with an edge, and I'm wondering what the night sky would look like to beings ...
What would happen if there was two more planets beyond Pluto, one with two times the size of Pluto and another with 4× the size of Mars, I'm curious to know what effects this would have on the plan...
Let's assume that Captain Bob Tiberius Kirk has been injured in a space battle. The universe does not have FTL travel, and the nearest hospital where Bob can be treated is 5 years of space voyage a...
Let's assume I have a planet and the planet itself is made out of something solid. Around the floating rock is a layer of gas, then a layer of liquid and then a layer of gas again. Thus the sea fl...
Imagine your scientists have found a way to increase the space of your empire, literally: They are able to create an artificial inflaton field which locally creates a "space bubble" connected with ...
I'm aware that deep sea fish don't actually "explode" when brought to the surface but any air sacs in their bodies would expand and cause them possibly fatal damage. However, what other physiologi...
What would be the major changes to our bodies if we were herbivores? Would our bodies be weaker because they were not getting any protein from meat? Would we be completely different? (Probably, I s...
