General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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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...
Rock snails are giant slug like creatures living in the forest and underwater, they are not mobile in adulthood and their shell resembles a giant rock. They grow up to being 8 meters tall and the...
It's the 22nd century and we have discovered a derelict alien craft somewhere in the Oort cloud. The craft contains a star chart showing its origin on an alien planet some 30 light years away. Let'...
I am creating a superhuman that can raise her overall body temperature to 3,000 °F (1648.889 °C) but I need to know the exact requirements of how that could happen. Let's say this superhuman co...
I was wondering if there's some sort of online anatomy creator or maker? I'm wanting to make a model of a modified human body... is there some sort of anatomy creator that allows you to add organs ...
I'm creating a fictional universe in which several races exist that are very different from each other due to long term separation. One race is specialized for archipelagos and more specifically, d...
This is a small arrow shaped creature that can fly without wings. Can it use electromagnetism to fly? Or maybe something to do with ions? Or however ufos are theorized to work? I'm not quite sure...
Imagine a supercolony of bees (I'm using bees as a metaphor; they're not really bees) which are the constituents of a massive globe-spanning hive mind. The government wishes to exploit this superco...
In a humanoid mammal, say 15-20 feet tall, how would the brain, heart, reproductive organs, facial feature and other attributes scale up? In very large mammals, the brain seems to be comparatively ...
Many physicians apply numbing agent creams/ointments such as Lidocaine+Prilocaine or Benzocaine+Lidocaine+Tetracaine (BLT) preparations topically some 30 minutes before laser hair removal treatment...
As far as we know Earth and every other planet in the solar system rotate around their axes. Whether it be Uranus which rotates on its side or Mercury which rotates perfectly straight, all planets ...
I've recently been playing a alien game with various alien species. After playing for a bit, I wondered whether or not a 6-inch tall intelligent race could exist. I can already see some major disa...
Let's say that in an alternate universe, humans developed on a relatively small supercontinent, so their languages and cultures were somewhat similar. After a while, all of the nations merged into ...
In a world where pollution and population have drastically reduced the effectiveness of sunlight to grow food, would light-panels be capable of completely replacing the sun? The problem I'm trying...
In my world, I am looking for a crater formed by a meteor impact that deposited a large number of resources there. The final crater should be 200 miles in diameter. I would like to do this with min...
I want to build a seastead in international waters that starts small. It has to be in the Atlantic, preferably in the northern hemisphere close to either the american or european continent. Due t...
OK, this how it goes for my wyvern (they're called scaled howlers) in my story: my wyvern are not very large, almost the size of a Haast eagle They mate for life, forming strong monogamous pair b...
Say the word "Australia", and one of the first things to come to your mind would be the marsupials. Of the 334 species of pouched mammals whose earliest ancestors witnessed the fall of the dinos...
In world building it is often interesting to consider extreme landscapes "“ how tall can a mountain be on Earth for example. But what is the tallest mountain possible in any gravitational environme...
Vertebrates on land are limited in size by various factors. However, in the water, they can get much larger. How large could an aquatic humanoid creature (like cthulhu) realistically get, and what ...
as the title, my question is how big a pelican like creature with its pouch mouth need to be in order to carry grown up human and still fly. since as far as i know hollow bone is to fragile for hu...
Tengu are a race of upright, humanoid creatures with the ability to fly and other avian characteristics to a varying degree. Konoha-tengu (foliage tengu) are six-limbed humanoid avians. The bird s...
so according to this website: https://haraldas.wordpress.com/2014/10/21/dragon-fire-ever-wonder-if-its-possible/ it said that it could be possible for any animals to synthesise tert-butyllithium...
Premise/question Correct me if I'm wrong, or if humans have terraformed the planet by the time you're reading this, but Mars is mostly desert-like. It has large ice caps which contain most of its ...
I wonder if it is possible to install artificial equipment that would exhaust oxygen into air in otherwise CO2 atmosphere so that locally people could breath in open air without any kind of tent or...
My world is a satellite of a gas giant. It has an atmosphere and is mostly covered by water (the percentage of water to its surface is somewhere in the high 80s-low 90s). Its rotation period is 28 ...
In my story characters can go into perfectly simulated virtual worlds where their memories have been replicated down to the individual neurons and their protien structures. In these worlds time pas...
We played with technology too powerful for humans to wield and opened a gateway to a parallel universe, on a dark world with a dying sun. The dominant lifeforms on this world are semi-sentient flyi...
The Greek gods were sufficiently advanced aliens with access to powerful technology. In the begining of our worlds formation, Zeus created mankind from his own flesh. These mortals were made in the...
I'm working on a concept for a habitable world with venus-like atmospheric pressures, where humans have settled onto huge tabletop mountains where the atmosphere isn't as crushing. This is a terraf...
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...
The TBD are a fantasy humanity offshoot that is fully adapted to life a few kilometers beneath the surface, settling in cracked earth near vents and hot spots. Air quality ranges from stale to tox...
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...
I, Rey Skywalker, am officially the greatest Jedi in existence. I successfully took down the remnants of the empire single-handedly, defeated my arch-enemy Kylo Ren, and killed Sheev Palpatine, t...
We divide the year into months of ~30 days because that's roughly the period of the moon, adapted to fit a solar year. However, would a civilization living on a world with no moon but a year of ~3...
My civilization is planning to being starlifting, mining a star by heating up portions of its surface and using a powerful magnetic field to channel the matter away from the star and into storage u...
Premise/question Hydraulic mining is the process of spraying high-pressure jets of water into the ground to dislodge sediment and rocks. The muddy water from this is directed into sluices where va...
In many fantasy works, the world typically has giant caverns that house entire civilizations and ecosystems that are (mostly) disconnected from the world above. However, this concept, at least in ...
While watching Biblaridion's Alien Biosphere series, an interesting point came up: in Biblaridion's fictional world, atmospheric hydrogen sulfide is used as an energy source for chemosynthetic bact...
Building on the universe established in this question, what happens to identity verification when someone's physical appearance and genetic code are modifiable at any time? Review of universe rule...
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...
Humanity discovered a new energy source, virtually infinite, that can produce gigawatts of electric power using devices of few kilograms. Land and sea transport obviously will switch to electric m...
If we assume a terraformed Ganymede has a global ocean roughly 800km deep, that food is bountiful, and that it has been populated by a variety of life from Earth, how large could these creatures gr...
Would it be feasible to have an interstellar vessel be constructed in flight after smaller sections are boosted up to speed? The idea here is about using laser sails which would be easier to use wi...
I'm basically designing a quadrupedal digitigrade alien, which has evolved from a predominantly arboreal animal into a predator with more cursorial adaptations, capable of running fast, but still b...
Assuming that as a species, we do ourselves in, not through war but through environmental neglect and overpopulation, what species will benefit most from the effect we have had on the planet during...
I want to have air transport as the dominant means of public transportation in my fictional city. But how would such a system operate to handle many commuters with maximum efficiency? Specifically ...
Basically a world that cannot be mapped.
As we know, bi-directional faster than light (FTL) travel can cause paradoxical situations. One possible way to resolve this would be a multiverse theory: Whenever a paradox could arise, the univer...
What possible evolutionary adaptations could you foresee in the sensory organs of wildlife in an environment beset by a nigh-permanent sandstorm? e.g. in the case of vision, ways to protect the ey...
