General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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Suppose that there is a species of dogs that are much more intelligent than humans and can speak. The humans know that the animal is smarter too. The only reason these animals can't rule over human...
I was experimenting with various star system designs with a gravity simulator, and one of the patterns I ended up with is best described as a planet with a very elongated elliptic orbit that itself...
I'm not talking about stuff like radiation and mutations. I'm talking about mechanics (for now). Necessary effects: With superstrength, you can... lift objects weighing many tons without your f...
I'm currently working on a world where there are people that live in data bases (basically a computer with no internet connection). They link to a human for life and and can record everything the ...
I am writing a science fiction movie script and a planet idea came to me a few weeks ago: A planet with equatorial icecaps and polar jungles. As interesting and intriguing as this is to think about...
After asking this question, What's the worst natural disaster that could hit New York City in our lifetime, it looks like the most popular answer was a Tsunami. A tsunami, however, from the sources...
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...
Let's say for some odd reason, a planet (while in orbit of something) travels at all times inside of a nebula. What all would happen to the planet? Could it sustain life (if sunlight was substitute...
I heard that some scientists placed chickens under 2.5g for 6 months, and they survived. A normal human would black out at 5g. A trained astronaut could take up to 8g before blacking out. 20g woul...
One possible approach how to estimate extend of space colonization is to define costs of it and then estimate the investments the governments and organizations would be willing to pay. In an excell...
Okay, this is unrelated to my current world building in any way whatsoever, but... I have always been a huge fan of the humongous mecha genre (bonus points to anyone who actually recognized my ava...
This is my entry for the fortnightly topic challenge In Day of the Triffids, many people go blind and the basic summary is this: virulent plague makes most of humanity blind giant, semi-intellig...
I have an Earth-sized planet in a Milky Way-like galaxy with all the land located at the equator, in a 2000-km line around the planet. There are small islands near the landmass, but no land anywher...
At the end of a recent movie, the hero wakes up in a space station which is probably only a few kilometers wide and generates gravity by rotating. In this station, kids are playing baseball. It str...
What could make polar areas of an earth-like planet habitable (non desert) and what side effect would it cause (i.e. how such planet would differ to contemporary earth)?
As a child, I was always fascinated by the propensity of water going down a drain to form a vortex. I created a world with a global ocean where there was a narrow body of land running north-south...
I am attempting to create fictional, stable P-Type binary system, featuring a gas giant in a stable orbit, with a habitable Earth-like moon. "Is a Jupiter-sized planet plausible in a habitable zone...
If you've read Chronicles of Ancient Darkness, you might get the reference. In that story, the protagonists, after fulfilling their duty, decide to journey over a large mountain chain to explore t...
Would it be possible to modify a human to be able to survive in space without protective gear? Genetic engineering and cybernetic enhancement are both allowed, although when not in space the perso...
What would a human colony on the moon look like? I already asked a prelusive question here about the safest place to start a moon colony but I needed further informations. After some answers, I re...
Let us suppose that we have people who for all intents and purposes are human, except for one (not so) tiny modification: they are able to exert enough muscular force and react fast enough that the...
In the world I have been working on my planet has a gelatinous mass of cells coexisting but not a technical single creature. It bridges the gap between single celled and complex and it grows in siz...
What kind of a scenario would have to occur in order for human beings to seek survival on the sea floor? It could be man made or natural, ice age or heat apocalypse, sudden disaster or gradual coll...
First, is it possible for a planet hit be a meteor to shatter into two pieces?. Then, can the two pieces remain in orbit? Especially, can they develop a sort of co-orbit around each other?
The length of a day on different planets in the solar system varies a lot. For instance, Mars' day is about the same length as Earth, while a day on Venus is equivalent to 243 Earth days (source). ...
If the Earth's interior was not hot and liquid, how deep could we dig before the tunnels collapsed by the pressure or the air became too pressurized to be breathable? In other words: how deep can u...
Scenario: Last line of defense. I want to prevent anyone from reaching a highly guarded building. Such building is in the middle of top secret, heavily guarded military area (think of Area 51). I ...
Would it be possible to raise a piece of land (say the size of Texas or France) from the bottom of an ocean (say, the middle of the South Pacific)? More specifically, would it be possible (given th...
Well, Luminescence really but I liked the alliteration. Would there be any reason or mechanic why plants may develop that glow in the dark? Ideally they would do so in response to stimulus such as...
In my scenario, a tremendous war wipes most of the humanity. While pockets survive here and there, the biggest part lives in one city, totaling around 3000 to 5000 survivors. It is also important t...
The Background: I am going to be asking a series of questions that will be relevant to forming some sort of a picture of human space commerce. Let's say that Earth-based human civilizations have ...
For the purposes of this question, lets assume that we are in Edwin Abbott Abbott's Flatland, but the world is a disk, with living shapes Above, and 'dead' shapes Below (the underside of the disk)...
Centuries ago, humanity have been incorporated into an alien hive mind, spread by a bacterial-like infection. The "bacteria" infects the blood and brain and allows the infected to join their minds ...
Is it possible that any life on earth could evolve to live off a liquid which is not water? Something like oil or some other natural liquid?
The worlds biggest problem is population growth. All that goes in bad way crime, corruption, assassination, robbery, murders everything is at increasing rate in world. And basic reason for all this...
Chlorophyll-a (the primary one), chlorophyll-b, and(?) beta-carotene (plus other accessory pigments / carotenoids) dictate which portions of the EM spectrum are used as energy by plants. Pla...
Okay, so our society has starting harnessing significant amounts of energy from its sun, and has started mass producing micro-black holes (although there have been experiments with gathering energy...
It seems like nothing can move faster than light and this is quite bothersome for interstellar travel. It takes decades in the best case to get anywhere interesting in our little Milkyway (Many tho...
A deadly super flu gets out and kills 90% of the population. During the exponential spread of the virus, it infects people working in a military base that deals in bio weapons. Is there a way to ca...
How would you form an extended stretch of coastline that is effectively useless for overwater trade -- i.e. there are no sheltered areas to serve as ports, or trade routes that can reach all the wa...
A staple of both fantasy and science fiction literature is the long-vanished Ancients, who left nothing but their buildings (or devices) behind. Somehow, these (usually) decrepit structures still ...
One property of life is communication. In particular sound is very useful due to it's non-directional nature. An alarm call is heard by every member of the pack and warns them immediately of the da...
Although a question about how large a living thing could be has been asked and answered, would a being such as Mogo from DC's Green Lantern series be possible? Mogo is the size of Earth roughly ...
Would a blind astronaut be able to sense the gravity of a nearby star/planet/moon? Would an astronaut lost somewhere inside the Sun be able to sense which way is the core and which way is the surf...
Death of stars are fun and make for a great premise, but the actual dying of stars that are conducive to intelligent life aren't so interesting. Stars that can go supernova are too short-lived to h...
On Earth the planet's magnetic poles line up fairly well with the geographic poles. This makes things like navigation very straightforward as all compasses point to (roughly) the north pole. How...
Imagine a space cataclysm, where the Earth is hit by a deadly wave sterilizing all life of the bright side, but the dark side is more or less intact (at least the atmosphere and life are still in p...
In a type III civilization probably even type II, would have developed solid energy construct resembles force shield which acts like a semi-permeable membrane to allow friend to pass but prohibit s...
Is it possible to have a planet that is both bigger than Earth and weaker in terms of gravity? I've got an idea about it being less dense, but I don't know what to do about its magnetic field. I ne...
A radiothermal generator uses the heat produced by radioactive decay of the radioisotopes contained to generate electricity. The main difference with nuclear reactors is that there is no "reaction"...
