General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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Question is ultimately asking why would we do this? A few parameters first... Technological: Our current knowledge of physics is correct and there is no such thing as faster than light travel, ...
And could it look anything like the universe we know? Don't get hung up on the terminology. In general, you seem to see through it easily, so I don't want any more answers mentioning that. I'll sa...
What would cause an area to get continuous rainfall (a la Blade Runner), and what implications would that have for other parts of the world? Ideally I'd like to hear about both natural conditions ...
We lived through loads of questions regarding aquatic races, so buckle up, I am going to gather some ideas around insectoids. The homeworld and race This race lives on a planet which has lower g...
Given a planet about the size of Earth, and a moon the Size of the Moon, how could one destroy the moon without flinging the fragments onto the surface of the planet or into outer space? How can o...
Take, if you will, a sci-fi setting in which power is cheap and handheld energy weapons (blasters, lasers, plasma rifles, that sorta thing) are common. In this setting is an isolated community bas...
I am looking at different ways to destroy a planet. I am assuming the planet is of a similar size and composition to the Earth just to keep things simple. I am starting at boiling the atmosphere t...
Considering that the oceans are rising (and that humans don't seem too keen on doing anything about it) and that population is growing exponentially, is it plausible to imagine that in a not too di...
What is the best method for creating a visual that mimics aerial photography for a fake island. The desired quality is USGS standards for actual aerials, preferably 2 foot aerials. The end product ...
This post-apocalyptic environment, as narrated in the book, depicts a world where most if not all animal life has been abruptly killed, and similarly most vegetation burned out. After the disaster,...
Could life originate on planets outside the circumstellar habitable zone (CHZ) where there is very little exposure to sun (like Uranus). If so what kind of energy source would they depend on. Coul...
How would the human body be affected if the oxygen levels on Earth suddenly decreased by 15 percent? This is instant. Not over time. How would we adapt? Would some people die and some not?
I've asked before about my polytheists with competing moon gods. I now have a better understanding of how tides -- a very visible manifestation of lunar influence -- work with multiple moons (than...
I have found that, every time I try to make another humanoid species, they end up as basically just humans with extra abilities. For example, I tried making a race of dark-elves once, and they ende...
How would the human body be affected if oxygen levels increased by a lot? Our air is 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen. If it increased to 30% oxygen, what would the effects be and how long would it ta...
(First of all, perhaps this is a duplicate of this question, but I'll give it a go since I'd like to focus on something different. Or the answer is there but I couldn't quite catch it. Oh boy... *f...
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...
Y'all should know by now that I want to build a Death Star ;-) Let's assume that we did that already -- and against the odds, we've built two of them, and they're currently in orbit around a plane...
Could two planets be tidally locked to each other at such a small distance from one another that they share their atmosphere, and material is floating around between the two?
TL;DR: I want a society which behaves as a hive. Is it plausible and how to achieve this? The setup: Different planet in our universe. In other words: Normal, physical rules apply, there is no mag...
Say we're in a world where it is possible to tinker with biology as easily as it is to tinker with programming nowadays. For feasibility, refer to How soon will tinkering with biology be as simple ...
Biotechnology is a big keyword in the industry right now, like computing was a bunch of years ago. Nowadays, anyone can pop up a terminal and start tinkering with their computer, program software, ...
I've got an image in my head of a world where it's just normal that the star is black with a golden halo around it - in other words, where the planet is in a state of perpetual solar eclipse. Are ...
This was spawned from this question about Blueshifting (BS) when traveling near the speed of light. I had found this while learning about the other question. @99.99995 percent c And interes...
Imagine we build a space station much larger than the ISS with more or less today's technology. (For example in a scenario in which price of transport to orbit per kg is significantly reduced by te...
Imagine a world covered in a shallow sea (usually only 4 metres or less) that has little land, where there is land its in the form of fairly small islands (less than 1sq KM) This will be populated...
Many sci-fi words use anti-gravity or artificial gravity to manipulate the weight of their ships making flight much easier. Wikipedia even has an article on it which discusses several attempts to m...
Let us say that the humans, with our era of technology plus 5 to 10 years, are contacted by an intergalactic alien union. They want us to join them, and we gladly do. As it is common when several c...
Some published settings -- such as the Greyhawk 'verse commonly seen in conjunction with Dungeons & Dragons -- treat the prime planet's host solar system as geocentric. How could this be reconc...
When doing some research for some of the resent questions proposed, I ran across an article that pointed out a danger of traveling at extreme speeds in normal space as a high percentage of c I was ...
I want a mermaid protagonist. If I am to make this story realistic, how should the Merfolk's body structures be made to make them adaptable for both water (swimming) and land (walking, running)? Is...
Imagine a world (or rather a solar system) where in its history there has been a war with emergent AI's There are very strict laws governing the speed and complexity of computer systems However b...
Say you were to drop a (bunch of) human(s) at some past era of our Earth. I'm assuming they might encounter a few problems such as the composition of the air not being breathable, the water being t...
Some science-fiction books I've read (including more than a few by Ray Bradbury) have men from Earth living on Mars, walking around outside of enclosures. I know that this is currently not realisti...
What I've found out is that Ammonia has (in the relevant temperature/pressure regime) cubic crystal structure. But what would that mean for ammonia snowflakes? Would they have fourfold symmetry? Bu...
If the Earth all of sudden was instantaneously transmuted into pure light, what would happen? How much energy would be released? How much damage would it do to surrounding space? Would it destroy...
I'm working on modeling how a civilization can progress from some known state making conscious choices about the fields in which to apply its resources. Is there some good / theoretically sound / w...
In a future where all cars and public services are self-driving the way, I am assuming traffic congestion would be seriously limited, if not removed completely, because the road network would also ...
I am currently designing a megastructure which is supposed to provide living- and workplaces for about 100.000 people. It is supposed to be designed in a way that it provides everything the inhabit...
A space colony that resembles the design of a Stanford torus generates artificial gravity by centripetal force. Discussions about benefits of such fake gravity can be easily found: no more constan...
If a planet existed in an orbit where the asteroid belt is, would the orbits of all the planets be stable, and what would the climates be like on these planets? Assuming there could be a planet in...
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...
When designing a world it is convenient to decide how places will be named: Elements like the continents and the oceans. However, it is likely that the different cultures of the world will not ag...
Suppose there's a planet that has similar characteristics of Earth and can provide life, suddenly shatters in many pieces and scattered over the system. A small but very dense object is attached in...
On Earth, the planet itself is negatively charged and the clouds are positively charged, causing lightning to travel from the clouds to the surface. While there are significantly smaller wisps of l...
On Earth, photosynthetic organisms require additional nutrients to survive; in addition to "feeding" off of sunlight, plants respire and absorb water from the ground in order to grow. However, th...
Can large amount space debris be used to block sunlight from falling in a particular land area (about the size of Hawaiian islands)? If so, how much space debris will be required? What will be the ...
I realize that creating worlds with multiple moons and/or suns is risky, but I'm toying with an idea to see where it goes. So, a planet has 3 moons. One is large like ours, the second is about half...
I feel like this is the most noobish question ever. Anyway, imagine an asteroid hits Earth and the atmosphere is now full of particles, successfully blocking the Sun from Earth. There are people st...
Think of HAL9000 playing a chess game with Frank Pool: Thank you for a very enjoyable game. Would that have been literally enjoyable? In a world where A.I. exists, as depicted in this kind o...
