General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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I'm starting a whole new planet for a story and would like it to have an orange sky during the day. At a basic level (I am not a smart man) what chemical composition would be most conducive to Ora...
I am writing a book and have a species of invasive plants which secretes acid to turn plant and animal matter into a kind of fertilizer. Is this acid capable of causing a fire? Or are the countless...
(I've tried to research this online but I'm a linguist, not a physicist, and most places that discuss this quickly get too technical for me. Simple answers will get tons of gratitude!) I imagine t...
In a short story that I read (don't have the link, but the short story itself is not relevant to this question), it is set about a millennia from now, where humans have long since made contact with...
Kaylee is a mechanic on a Generational ship. The ship has several means for propulsion and has a plotted course that goes from star to star, molecular cloud to molecular cloud. It has a Bussard Ram...
I ask this as a basis for a World (in this case Moons) Building I'm doing. I came up with a couple of different problems and some possible solutions to those problems: All of these questions pre...
We live on this lovely, assumed naturally shaped almost sphere (accepted as an oblate spheriod) that makes everything really nice and easy when it comes to things like constant gravity and horizon ...
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"...
Let me set the scene: A team of scientists in their lab one day is told that some miners have discovered some strange new substance. Its properties are extremely peculiar, unlike anything ever befo...
Something that we generally see on earth is economies of scale. Large companies can be more efficient as they are producing massive amounts of the same thing. This can easily be seen if you look at...
Currently, the crust varies from 4km (oceanic) to 10km (continental) to 30km (mountains). How would the earth be different if it was all 1/4 the thickness? So it was 1km, 2km and 7km? Would we ha...
I'm trying to create demons that aren't just raging murderers, as much as they're enslaved to their disposition they're not completely conquered by it, with a sense of humanity and reason crawling ...
Scenario I'm trying to design a colony spaceship. My main character, a soldier, awakes prematurely from suspended animation (SA) to find that the colony ship she is on, headed for Tau Ceti e, is ...
My story revolves around a star going supernova. The 'Earth' in this story is about 100 light-years or more away (a safe distance, but not too far away). I need this supernova to somehow accelerate...
Similar, but a bit more broad, to Would a zombie apocalypse be possible if a zombie existed? A secret lab (owned by a private company) near Chicago creates a virus strain called 'ZB01' (to be so...
This is steampunk, so assume a non-relativistic, non-quantum world (but more on that shortly). I want a material that insulates against acceleration but not gravity. Full explanation: This is t...
In the future a major problem arose: a habit spread among the astronauts to make political statements upon landing on a new celestial body, often the statements were unpleasant to their government....
In Dungeons and Dragons lore, there exists a construct called the cosmos used to define a variety of planes of existence. One of these is the Material Plane, on which our normal reality is found. ...
Consider a planet where a day, that is to say the amount of time a specific (roughly equatorial) point is in sunlight is much longer than on earth. A humanoid race has evolved on this planet. You c...
I'm trying to find explanations for a strain of beans (or any other food-producing plant) that have become large, maybe as large as most trees, and about as wide in girth, that overgrows countries ...
I am developing a world on this continent: To know the world, I have to know how the weather works. Inside the white line is the continent. The blue arrows denote the flow of water. Up is north,...
Time travel on movies and tv always say they were able to tell the year by looking at the stars. But how? For example Voyager goes back in 1996 and Ensign Kim says astrometrics puts them in the ye...
Scenario Set in modern day Antarctica, a group of very talented scientists are working on a highly confidential scientific experiment which would one day allow us to manipulate time literally. The...
I am specifically interested in a form of reproductive cycle something like that of aphids on earth, where several generations of female-only parthenogenesis go by, followed by a generation being b...
As you might know, our Universe is expanding. In fact, the expansion is accelerating (due to dark energy). As expansion progresses, patches of the universe will not be visible anymore (they cross t...
You go to sleep one day, and wake up on a different planet. Let's say the atmosphere of this planet has about the same composition as on Earth. Actually, this planet has pretty much all of the same...
Would it be possible to "inject" or tattoo chloroplasts into a human or vertebrate and have them produce energy for said organism? I feel like just injecting plant cells wouldnt work for the body...
I was looking a bit at the evolution of Stars and one thing I sometimes see floated is this idea that in the far flung future, when the sun has ballooned into a red giant and the earth burned to a ...
If a human were cursed with the need to transform into a specific animal (i.e. a canine), would his DNA change after the transformation? I would appreciate help in answering this question. This i...
In my very lengthy story in the near future, there are some great 'Modern Marvels'. The next one I'm going to introduce might not be feasible, but if it is, I'd like to attach some numbers to it. ...
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 ...
I am super-rich person with a net worth of 32 billion US dollars. Part of my business is being contractor for NASA and SpaceX (so I have knowledge about space technology). I already own my island ...
In most star systems, planets orbit around a star. Is it possible for a planet to be so massive/heavy/dense that a star(and other planets) orbit it instead? Bonus points if the planet is also reaso...
I'm planning to incarcerate a supervillain who has the ability to attract and control metal. As a minimum, I'd quite like to light his cell but obviously putting even small amounts of metal into hi...
I was trying to create a world that has extensive massive rain-forests unlike anything on earth where the trees interlock with thick branches to allow them to rise much higher into the air (several...
For a civilization like this, firstly, I would like to know what dangers there are, e.g: radiation, cave-ins, temperature. I also want to know about the sustainability of this colony, power I'd ima...
So Earth has just suffered a horrible catastrophe and most of civilization is back in a Middle Ages level of development. A few people live on other planets relatively unscathed, with highly advanc...
As I understand it, the principle of relativity was accepted from Galileo until Maxwell, whereupon the equations which predict constant speed of light imply a preferred reference frame in a Euclidi...
I'm working on a graphic novel that deals with this particular topic but I'm unsure if something like this can happen. Some Nebulae have a luminosity 1000s of times brighter than our sun while dark...
For a (Super super super soft)Sci-fi RP I've been planning, I've been trying to design an alien race to act as a suitable antagonist. The basis of this antagonistic race is that they are far, far m...
Plants in our world evolved various kinds of defenses, like poison, urticating hairs, thorns etc. What i dont see is plants that defend themselves by means of explosions. The explosion by itself ...
I've been hearing and reading about that solar flare in 2012 that could have sent us back to the 18th century, by causing huge geomagnetic storms which would have prevented (every?) electricity-bas...
I've been toying with an idea for ages that I think could be pretty fun but I want to make sure it's not wildly unrealistic before going too far with it. The idea is that the Equator is fiercely h...
Following up on this question, Would Living Underground during Impact Winter be Ideal, I realized I have more questions. I was asking about an impact winter that was caused by an asteroid and lead...
In Star Gate, the Ori are notorious for keeping the tech level of their planetary subjects at or under medieval tech levels. It has been said (still looking for the exact source) that if everyone l...
I found this on Wikipedia. I'm aiming for the fastest climate change possible without that much advanced notice, e.g. perhaps a regional sized asteroid scientists miss or are too distracted to cat...
I am building a race of humans (or humanoid constructs) that have the ability to alter their DNA (or store a second set and use it selectively) as to gain superhuman (or meta-human) abilities. Is ...
A staple of fantasy involving time travel is the hero (or heroine) zipping off into the future and then meeting a future lover with whom they go on to have wacky time-based adventures before presum...
On Earth humanity has taken the dominant role (excluding dolphins and mice of course). We know of conflicts in pre-history where our ancestors have overtaken other species and slowly wiped them out...
Inspired by this comment: What if every animal as large as, or larger than, a ice-age vintage horse, except for those that are acclimated to cold climates, went extinct during the last Ice Age? I...
