General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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My friends and I are building a world with a 50 mile high volcano on it. The mountain is the result of some bored god deciding to play a joke on everyone. Or, some other god got angry and decided ...
Time travel works...just invented, by you. The tests prove it! After many conversations and significant planning, your epidemiologist significant other has approved your plans for time travel, for...
A global epidemic of H1Z2 virus has rendered 95% of the population into zombies. The zombies have lost most of their frontal and temporal lobes so the following capabilities are either severely de...
The Demonstration You're a rich, successful CEO/capitalist working in the electronics business. Your R&D division is exceptional and routinely fabs state of the art processors at bleeding edg...
After an age of highly developed technology, including many different satellites in various Earth orbits, humanity loses the technology needed to control those satellites. After many centuries, how...
So I thought about how my dragon-like species would get it's wings between the arms and legs and I figured that this would be the evolutionary path for such a creature: Hexapodal ancestor -> Q...
What coloration pattern/ technique could a large mammalian predator employ to evade detection from other mammalian predators at 100 -> 20 meter distances (or close enough so that it could sprint...
There's apparently a type of transmissible cancer that came from new world dogs thousands of years ago, the Canine transmissible venereal tumor. As I understand, this self replicating surviving ca...
Is it possible, given a strong enough magnet, to rip out iron based molecules out of the blood stream/body of a person/animal? Would such an event be the thing that kills someone or are there other...
In the foreseeable future, a scientific community has discovered an alternate universe in which the solar system centers around a binary system of G-type suns, unlike the one G-type that ours orbit...
How does a Neandertal compare with an anatomically modern human? This diagram below is a simplification of the real answer: The average Neandertal male stood 64 inches tall, weighed 143 pounds an...
Is it possible for a large enough Ion Drive with enough power to be dangerous to other objects "down wind" of the vehicle, even at long distances (100+km)? As I understand it, ion drives accelerat...
Earth's rotation is slowing down, and in this article Randall Munroe gives some ideas to accelerate the rotation - or at least to keep it from slowing down as quickly. He concludes that the only "s...
The shell variant of a Dyson sphere consists of an artificially-made shell of material about 1 AU in radius encircling a star. The sphere captures most of the star's energy and stores it for future...
I have an idea for a land based mobile organism that moves and uses photosynthesis for its primary means of energy generation. Can a motile organism conceivably get enough energy from photosyntheti...
Neutrinos have extremely low masses, and it's quite easy for them to reach high energies and speeds. As such, it almost always makes sense to treat a neutrino as being relativistic. I've been doing...
It is said that in dense rainforests, only 1% of sunlight (sometimes less) reaches the forest floor, which greatly restricts the types of plant and animal life that can survive there. My (limited) ...
I am trying to create "black magic" with a visual black effect with lore backing (it is for PC game). How can I create this effect, either optically or neurologically? I am not talking about hue ...
So, I was writing an outline for the battle between a dragon and a bunch of humans. However, a key component of the humans' battle plan was to place a hidden stash of ballistae near the entrance wh...
Oh yes, it's Artifact Time! with Best Dad and Ozen the Immovable! If you watched Hairy Plotter and the Gas Chamber of Secrets, you probably remember the scene where the Horcrux of Adolf Hitler is ...
Leviathans are closely related to hydrophis spiralis. Some characteristics of these leviathans include: continuing to grow until they die and are able to grow almost as large as a blue whale are ...
It's my understanding that if an Alcubierre drive were to be constructed, it would be able to function as a time machine because there would be certain paths through you could take to get to a dest...
I have this creatures which were hiding underground for millennia. They are, from the beginning of their history, exclusively nocturnal. They emerged back on surface after moon disappeared (irrel...
In my world slimes are intelligent creatures of various sizes which can take the shape of anything they like and change color to camouflage. A slime can camouflage as floor , as a box, a snake or...
In the story I'm creating, a major weapon type of humanity will be Antimatter based weaponry. This is a fairly new technology, as antimatter production facilities have just reached the size and cap...
I have a really good question. Could it be possible for complex life to have existed in the Precambrian? I'm aware that only the fossilized remains of bacteria have been discovered from that time p...
Solitary humanoids aren't uncommon in works of fantasy/cryptozoology with Bigfoot coming to mind. What I want to know is What evolutionary pressures would lead to solitary humanoids? Some character...
I'm writing creative text and I'm curious to know, just as possibility, can a galaxy by any chance be formed out of a black hole?
As the title: I want to know what kind of organs or modifications need for plants like tree to gain energy from lightning or electricity (and still fine or safe or alive of course). Since I have a...
So, I've decided that in my fantasy fiction, I want to have Megabara riders. Massive Capybaras, being ridden into a battle. I've done some basic research and I came across this extinct species tha...
My creature looks like a Psittacosaurus, with spikes all around its body, it hisses and uses its tail whip as a first. As last resort it will squirt an aimed stream of blood from its eyes toward it...
In the story I'm writing, Earth gets destroyed and the few million humans that survive go to live on another Earth-like planet. Since the destruction of the planet, the humans do visit their star...
I am building a setting that is essentially steampunk,being exact it would be pneumatic punk. What electronics and electronic equivalent exists, are primitive and extremely expensive. Thus the majo...
The planet is identical to Earth except for one twist. It is not axially rotated but has an elliptical orbit, causing longer, planetwide winters. I would just like to ask what the width of the hab...
I am currently writing the world, setting and characters for a project of mine called the ORION Project - a story set in a dystopian America in the near future of 2050, where the government has tak...
Could a creature use lightning (or any other source of electricity) as a sole energy source, and not need to eat? Would any additional organs be needed to store or use the electricity? I have a ra...
In an alternate Earth, early or midway in the Eocene Epoch, there debuted a family of angiosperm trees whose roots need to be completely submerged. As a result, the limit is that they can't germin...
I've been trying to make a penguin-like humanoid race for a pretty long time now. I want to make them as realistic as possible. And I know such creatures could not exist in the real world, but I w...
Assume my kaiju is around 200 feet tall, weighs around 4,000 US tonnes and resembles a large lobster with two giant claws for its front legs and long spindly limbs with tiny pincers on the ends for...
I want to know is there a recreational drug that specifically affect reptiles, either natural or man made chemicals. Humans and if possible other animals species should not be affected by it even i...
A federation of alien spacefaring nations is doing basically the opposite of prime directive: they are jamming the Solar System, preventing us from leaving it. They are doing so by placing some de...
I have a number of alien species from different planets with gravity between 0.5g and 1.75g and I wanted to have groups of each of the species to exist together in a space habitat. As pointed out t...
I have done some research and so much contradict one another or I simply fail to understand. Do seasons occur on a tidally locked planet that isn't tilted on its axis?
you know a jaw or mouth where the jaw full of teeth fully rotate like a drill or gear to shred their food or prey, usually show often in worm type of monster (my question is not necessary to be wor...
Velvet mites are some of the largest mites in the world, with species in the genus Dinothrombium reaching 12 mm in length (absolutely massive for a mite). What is the largest possible size a velvet...
i am not talking about xenomorph or moray eel type of jaws or multiple mouth or lower jaw inside the mouth. but this type of mouth/jaws or i called it double chin jaws where the chin also work as ...
Many animals have the ability to see polarized light (or rather, are sensitive to the direction of polarization), most notably birds and bees but also a wide range of other animals including cephal...
First things first, a little backstory: Sometime between the Paleocene and Eocene epochs, there was a mysterious, sudden, dramatic rise in global temperature. This moment in time was known as the...
So, after trying to make a few different world maps and not really feeling satisfied with them, I decided to attempt making a world a bit more from scratch, by adding in plate tectonics. Now, I did...
Could a planet with the size and characteristics of the Earth orbit a gas giant and would the earth-like moon be able to maintain its orbit if the gas giant went rogue and was launched from its hos...
