General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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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...
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...
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 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...
