General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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If an Earth-like planet was tidally locked to a star similar to Sirius A, at which distance from the star would the night side be able to have liquid water, possibly with an average temperature of ...
I've read several books where a major city, often New York City, floods. People live in the skyscrappers, sometimes for years afterwards. What would it be like if a city full of high skyscrapers wa...
Back home, the Pleistocene ice never reached farther south than New York or London. These ice ages had been coming and going for two and a half million years. On average, there was enough ice to ...
Back home, the bird order Passeriformes consists of roughly 100 families totaling up to roughly 5400 species--that's over half of the entire class. But if the songbird order never existed, how wou...
In my story I want to have a sub-class of humans who are very domineering and greedy. They are obviously pro-slavery, and believe in survival of the strongest. I'm wondering how this mindset would...
For my WIP's setting I'm using a variation of the Sky World concept. The cosmos looks very similar to the Astral Sea. The shape of the cosmos akin to a torus and filled with a silvery ether a thin...
The humanzee is the theoretical hybrid of human and another primate. No such humanzee has ever been documented in the modern era, though genetics suggest in our distant evolutionary past primitive...
I'm currently writing a military science fiction story set in a post cyberpunk world I've been building. The story focuses on a tank crew, but it also prominently features an enormous airship that ...
Mycolaria is my working name for an alien planet featuring a much more visible role for fungi of all kinds, large and small. There are also animals and plants on this world. This is the second in a...
Some time far in the future, biologists develop a compiler targeting DNA. We could now create any kind of lifeform we wanted. In the process, biologists also disassembled and decompiled human DNA ...
So I need a barren wasteland with some dead vegetation (mainly dead trees). There should be pretty much no living plants left but it should be apparent that it was a lush place for flora and fauna ...
I'm working on a bit of world building, and I was curious if it seemed to much more experienced worldbuders than I that including a collision with Halley's Comet in 1835 or 1910 as a major plot wo...
Modern mechanical EM transmitters, like radio towers and radar guns, rely on finely tuned mechanical structures. If these structures do not have the right shapes, the device fails to function. Or...
We've created a series of mechanisms to terraform the temperature and atmosphere to be Earthlike. My geologists are screaming at me, because a lot of features are being rapidly eroded by the new h...
There is a more strict version of Prime Directive on a subspace traveling Empire. This empire (without the morale codex of the star trek crew, maybe more like Avatar) would like to get the resource...
Let's say scientists created a pill, that would satisfy our daily nutritional needs. It would have all vitamins needed, all calories, minerals - everything that a human body needs in order to funct...
It's well established that the human body does not do well in zero gravity. Symptoms such as fluid loss, muscle atrophy, bone mass loss are well known. Less well known problems extend to such mun...
Assuming only plausible advancements in science, a Martian colony is established before the end of the century. (Sooner if possible). What materials would be needed in regular shipments from Earth?...
I would like to explore how to design an alien planet featuring plants and animals but with a much more prominent ecological role for fungi. More fungi, larger fungi, more complex and beautiful fun...
Consideration For the sake of argument, please assume the following: The planet in question is around the size of Earth The planet may contain native intelligent life, artificially engineered Th...
Let's say that I want to colonize a planet which is basically like mars but has got an atmosphere which still has extremely low pressure but consists mainly of oxygen. The temperatures are more or ...
Imagine that the oxygen disappears from earth's atmosphere for some 10 seconds completely. what would be the casualties it would cause, what would be the climatic changes and other changes it would...
Hijacking DaaaahWhoosh's backstory, let's say our sniper takes the shot anyway, but he accidentally hit one of his weather balloons he set up, and now he's out of tungsten bullets. Frustrated, he d...
Background In my story, HD 28185 star system harbors life. One of them is an earthlike planet called Aucafidus, located at L4 of HD 28185 d (Subralis). In-universe, Subralis is white-blue in color...
Background In my story, HD 28185 star system harbors life. One of them is a jovian HD 28185 d (Subralis), located around 1AU of this sun-like star. In-universe, Subralis is approximately 132,000 k...
Please note for this, assume technology is being used for their creation, not any kind of space major or anything. Edit: Removed the ability to do so within systems without having generators on b...
I would like to create a civilisation that develops near active volcanos. In ancient times, they would make good use of volcanoes like: Use lava as heat resource. Use lava as material to make bri...
There's plenty of iron oxide available on the surface of Mars--that's why it's called the Red Planet. So colonists would have no trouble getting ahold of iron for building stuff. The problem is, ...
The setup: A thick mountain chain is permanently covered in smoke. The smoke comes from several active volcanoes within the mountains, and is kept from dispersing by magic (the magic plays virtuall...
The internal structure of the Moon is different from that of the Earth. There are neither volcanos nor many moonquakes. Using early 21st century technology, could we dig a vertical mine shaft all t...
I am working on a survival suspense story, where a sizeable group of surivors is trapped in a tropical island (somewhere in the Ring of Fire) by a volcanic eruption. They find shelter from the erpu...
One of the theories behind the extinction of the dinosaurs is the eruption of one or a series of volcanoes. Supposedly the ash expelled by these eruptions blocked out the sun, killing plants and th...
What would happen a volcano the size of Australia were to erupt? How high on the extinction-list would it rank? Would it be above the asteroid that hit Earth and killed the dinosaurs? Which known...
Magneto is way over-powered, even for a mutant. With the given relation between electricity and magnetism, what could be possible? here is already study work on biomagnetism, we know the nervous s...
Back home, the phylum Cnidaria (jellyfish, coral, anemone) and the class Amphibia are two of the most ancient groups of animals on the planet. But let's say that, on an alternate Earth, many milli...
You were born in Rome, when the Roman Republic was still in power. Your father is an upper middle class merchant and you are (or will be) the sole inheritor of his wealth. One day, a m...
This question has no background information here. I just want to know if there are any evolutionary advantages for a species to have 4 ears?(The kind a mammal has).
For this question lets take a trip to Slyo Dacas: Slyo Dacas (sil-yo-dak-iss) is a world roughly the same size of Earth with a decent magnetic field and no moons. The world is a bit drier than...
In my world I have a couple species of sentient animals, mainly cats, who among other things are capable of communication with human beings. While I am perfectly happy to resort to explanations i...
Background I have a character. He is the master of a particularly specific martial art that is pretty much only movement. But it's pretty powerful, in that he can separately: a) move in a manner t...
During the early medieval age, the population of trolls is declining. These are savage creatures who aren't as cunning as humans, and not only are we part of their diet, humans are in fact their on...
Continuing my line of thought from here: Could you cool the earth's mantle and then bore into it? You cannot bore into the mantle by cooling it as you go because the pressure would crush your littl...
You're in a group of colonists, headed to your new home on Tau Ceti e. Due to some crazy accidents aboard the ship, the diverse flora that was brought aboard (for food during the journey and for ag...
Assuming a fairly earth-like planet, perhaps, higher in minerals and resources. And a race of highly industrious, highly cooperative, very enginuitive people. Their science is comparable to our own...
Set in the year 2015 A.D. Every morning when you wake up from bed and look outside the window, you notice that the sky seems getting darker every day. We were told by the authority that there's no...
NASA's Project Orion created the concept of a spacecraft that detonated nuclear bombs behind it, and rid the shockwaves as a form of propulsion, but the project was abandoned because nuclear bombs ...
Consider the present day Earth. Now, through some event (magic, a giant maid with a vacuum cleaner, a disgruntled alien did it, ...), our planet is stripped of its atmosphere. Assume that this happ...
In relation to this question, what would plants do if they were taken from their environment to another gravity level, in particular zero g. For example would the daisy manage to grow higher bec...
How do you go about boosting an already-habitable planet's habitability? I want to maximize biomass, hopefully cover the whole planet surface in luxuriant jungles and forests, brimming with insects...
Modern human mothers can now choose the sex of their children, without surgery or procedures. For every pregnancy, the sex of the fetus must be chosen. In a culture that has a strong preference for...
