General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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In a relationship between two species, could a certain relationship become harmful to both involved species? Keep in mind, I am looking for a relationship between two species, preferably of the ki...
I'm wondering what types of firearms would be impacted if explosives and combustion in general were to have a random chance of being more potent or less potent. Could new firearms and/or ammunition...
What sort of circumstances would allow for a parasitic relationship between two dominant species of an Earth-like planet? The criteria for an answer is as follows: The relationship must involve n...
Imagine that humankind finally takes wing and reaches out into the heavens to claim its vast cosmic birthright ... ... only to find that a previous wave of dinosaurs from Earth, who left ~65 milli...
So an amazing thing happens and we locate an Earth-like planet and we also achieve the technology that enables us to travel there. Upon arrival we discover that dinosaurs are roaming on the entire ...
Suppose a planet is covered with floating ice on top of water ocean and has no dry land. Would it be possible to establish permanent settlements, cities? Particularly I am interested in technolog...
So I've been trying to create a world and I've been planning on the continents being drowned out almost completely in water from a terrible tsunami, storm, earthquake or an act of one the gods or s...
I've always loved well-done ghosts. However, I've always hated the afterlife-speculation that they engender if used in a story. So I need a way to get ghosts without the fluffy spiritualistic bits...
Could one construct a statue out of materials that could be made to move in controlled or semi-controlled ways? The question is essentially can one make a robot without the internal mechanics? I'm ...
Looking at the recent questions on dragons and aviation bureaucracy has got me thinking about some animals I could include in my story. I want these animals to be jet powered. One of the answers o...
I'm going for the ultimate in world building here: Creating a whole new star. I have a race that's about a Type II civilization (as per the Kardashev scale). The important thing here is that they'...
I'm working on a simulator-type game which I want to be at least internally consistent, and which I'd like to work as close to reality as possible. That being said, it's set in space, which means t...
We know that humans are capable of incredible feats, as displayed by Olympic athletes. However, the superhuman heroes that appear in comic books and fantasy novels tend to not only be able to perfo...
In this question: Where to Anchor My Space Elevator We get a new material: Thanks to the recent discovery of handwavium filaments that can in principle be extruded to any length, we will be ...
So, just read a good number of the answers over at Is a jet dragon possible?, and it seems that a jet dragon doesn't make much sense due to supersonic flight pre-jet engine being required. Rocket ...
I am a writer. In my fictional world, I have an area that is supposedly covered with fairly thick fog during most of the night and nearly all of the morning, basically every day (it can leave a bit...
Reading questions of How much TNT needed to blow up Mount Everest and the Moon - and especially the comments below it, I have to ask it: Can we blow up the sea? Detonating atomic bomb undersea ma...
Are there any known laws of nature, which don't allow the existence of an animal with following characteristics? Can fly to the altitudes of modern airliners (around 10 000 meters or 32808 ft). O...
How much TNT do you need to blow up Mount Everest? Is this even possible and can mankind survive a huge explosion like this? Or would the whole world be covered with dust? And if you can survive ...
Intro and Context (feel free to skip if TL;DR) This question does not come in isolation. It is intrinsically linked with several previous posts (Challenge of Control and Humans as Pets) that have ...
For a species I am working on, there is a specific genetic trait that I want to introduce into the population. The exact nature of either is not important for the purposes of this question, but the...
The idea of knocking a satellite out of its orbit is common in fiction, but what does it actually mean.
We've discovered stars that are contact binaries. This means that they orbit so close together that their photosphere reaches through their Roche lobes and links the two stars together. This sta...
Thanks to the recent discovery of handwavium "¡ filaments that can in principle be extruded to any length, we will be able to build space elevators sooner than most people would expect. The inte...
Pretty self explanatory question...can the Cube Earth described at the link below support a spherical core and a magnetic field? How would a civilization that has been living on a "cube" Earth di...
First see this great answer on considerations when making a calendar. Consider a human colony on our own moon. Let's assume that the colony is influenced by the Gregorian calendar. Let's suppose t...
What conditions would have to happen to re-animate a mummified person to come back to life with consciousness fully restored? What would the conditions of the mummification be and biological/techni...
Missing magnetosphere on Mars keeps popping up. Most likely caused by Mars core being cold, mantle not bubbly enough. Mars mantle is dormant, core does not move. What would be good way to get it g...
Another question based off of this one here. Let's say on a cube styled Earth-like planet, there was a similar race to humans. If the differences in the planets were minimal (besides, you know, the...
I was wondering what would happen if you attach 2 Huge ion engines(I mean really really really huge) to planet earth. They should be attached on the north and south poles. Are 2 huge ion engines ...
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...
On earth, we use a simple but effective coordinate system which determines position unambiguously on the surface (GPS achieving accuracy within 1 meter, which speaking as an engineer, is a remarkab...
What kind of asteroid would it take to hit our sun out of its current position, even by just 50 meters? And how big does it need to be in order for it to do so? Would it continue to travel throug...
Let us consider two persons who can feel what the other senses and know what the other thinks. Now do these two persons have a common or single consciousness?If so,will it do good, if we succeed to...
Going off of my other question here, I guessed that a cube planet could work out. BUT, would it be possible for the planet to exist and function as a (relatively) normal planet with life on it with...
In both fiction and non-fiction worlds, that attempt to keep a sense of realism, planets are spherical. Is it possible for a planet to not be shaped like a sphere? If such a planet is possible...
I was wondering if planets die after a certain amount of time, perhaps because of decay? If this is the case, how do they die and how long does it take? Do they implode? Explode or perhaps just f...
Obviously the greater a planet's gravity, the stronger the material of the space elevator's cable would need to be in order to support its own weight. However, doesn't greater rotation speed reduce...
In my current setting, one of the main dominant species' is the Golem, former automatons made of assorted materials who gained sentience through some kind of life-giving explosion. As such, though ...
Given a world where a sentient species already populates, how would the population respond to another, unrelated species evolving into sentience? I think this can be effectively split into 3: It...
In many Science Fiction books and games, there are worlds or planet-like objects that are rings that orbit (or float around in space) (some examples being the Halo (from Halo) or the Ringworld (fro...
So imagine this scenario: Sapience (which I define as Human-like intelligence or better) is a relatively common occurence once a life-form is on a specific brain-arms-race path like Hominins have ...
When viewed from their planet, are moons always the same colour as ours? Or is there a variation? What other colours might be possible and what causes the differences in colour?
As part of my world's planetary history, an asteroid impact has delivered a sizable quantity of a previously unknown metal to the planet Earth. By sizable I mean a deposit large enough to sustain a...
This is the second question in my Arctic Airships series of questions. The first one is Arctic Airships, Part 1 - Generating Electricity. The setting is outlined in Part 1, but I'll rehash the pre...
How could an organization force solar energy to be bought from them? Something like: A large structure (in space presumably) fully/partly blocks sunlight reaching Earth, so anyone here wishing to ...
I am drafting a short story about a small object orbiting the Sun at the precise 'speed' as Earth's opposite the Sun, undiscovered by us due to its position. The problems I see with this include t...
This is the first question in my Arctic Airships series of questions. The second one is Arctic Airships, Part 2 - Navigation. The premise: An Earth-like planet plunged into an ice age roughly 2,0...
I have had some time to ponder my previous question, and here's what I came up with. You take your freshly baked AI (or your destructively uploaded human), and put it in a box$^1$. As far as it c...
In many sci-fi scenarii, most often when mechs are involved, it is not uncommon to see such a technology, usually called heated blade. Supposedly, it would make the blade even more efficient at cut...
