General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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I can understand that all animals would instinctively stay away from a fire, however for a fire breathing dragon to be warded off by torches seem puzzling to me. What could help explain such ironic...
Let's imagine a near future where mankind starts to expand into the solar system. For various reasons, some humans start to be born and raised in space, in zero gravity and micro-gravity. What cha...
I'm trying to create a nation that is greedy, opportunistic & obsessed with profits and trade. They are cunning, treacherous schemers that will swindle you despite all the pleasantries and assu...
So, yesterday I found an invisibility cloak in my attic. It's got an instruction manual with it, and there it was mentioned that it is truly an invisibility cloak: it bends the light (actually, all...
Plenty of aliens from various galaxies have managed to land on Earth without getting tracked on Radars or satellites. For now, as I want my story to stay undisclosed, please assume that aliens have...
Let's talk about the visible light "rainbow" In almost all depictions of the electromagnetic spectrum, visible light is shown as a rainbow, and adjacent parts of the spectrum are monotone in color...
I'm trying to design a realistically looking capitol (with a few milion people) for one human nation on an exoplanet. The technology level is barely better than contemporary. The city is placed ...
I have the below snippet describing a planet in a (hard) sci-fi setting. This harsh planet has some human settlers, who can survive the climate in light weight environmental suits. The planet i...
A non-inertial frame, such as a planet that does not have constant velocity in its orbit, would change the laws of physics in many ways. For example, if you stood on the surface of the planet as i...
How can I make a colonizable planet/moon that receives intense UV/x-ray radiation on parts of its surface while receiving much less on the rest of it? The most obvious way of doing this is to have...
"It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million." "Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward-looking on p...
In this scenario, all the humans on earth have disappeared, except for Fred. Sure, Fred is sad that everyone that exists is dead but him, including his friends and family, but he doesn't let that g...
Some of you have commented here: "How Do I Supplement Oxygen Intake?." I mentioned confidentiality, but that is no longer going to be a concern. We just want to do this right. The original concept...
A terrorist wants to shoot a bomb down onto an unsuspecting high-value target, for instance Washington DC. So, the terrorists somehow get a private space company to deploy what seems to be a norm...
I'd like a gravity room on my space vessel for long space stays to avoid osteoporosis. They would spend a few hours each day in this room, reading or doing paper work, to maintain bone-mass. I'm ...
Some more-than-usually clever boffins have knocked up a system that allows them to form portals into a region where the laws of physics are rather...different. An object that is fired through one ...
This is, for the record, the same universe as in Is space piracy orbitally practical? and How can I prevent Kessler Syndrome among space stations?. In my world, circa 2100, space stations orbiting...
Let's say a terrorist organization decides to attack the cap on the Deepwater Horizon oil well. They use high powered explosives to blow such a large hole in the sea bed that there is no viable way...
Short version - some physicists have created a pathway that appears to permit near-instantaneous travel between two distant points. Objects propelled through one side on the correct vector will eme...
Let's say that there is a wind going 45 mph and the flight direction of the humanoid creature is in the same direction as the wind. As the flight is in the same direction as the wind, air resistanc...
I won't claim to be a biologist, but I'm fairly certain that it's really hard for disease to survive in space because most bacteria and viruses need a host in order to survive for long periods of t...
Here are some lists of North American and South American megafauna that went extinct during the Quaternary. In Eurasia, many species of large mammal were domesticated, most particularly the 'big 4...
Stars are never green. When a star's spectra "peaks" in the green range, it also releases a significant number of waves of the adjacent colors - so "green" stars appear yellow or white. I want ...
I like to have a concept of an engine that spaceships can use to lift off (and land) from/on a planet (regardless of it having an atmosphere or not) with the following constraints: It should be s...
There is a multiverse with different settings in each of its universes - steampunk in universe A, fantasy in universe B, biopunk in universe C, etc. And in steampunk world there is a group of chara...
Say in a post nuclear holocaust world, elephants managed to survive and adapt. It can consume and digest iron and steel and grow two rows of metallic tusks. When threatened the elephant will lift u...
I plan to write a story about a large number of space probes that are equipped with artificial intelligence and told to explore star systems and travel between them. These probes are not equipped w...
Tolkien wrote on The Silmarillion about Tol Eressea, an island that the vala Ulmo (a god-like figure) used to ferry the elves back and forth across the sea into the Western lands. José Saramago al...
The common evolutionary belief is that life originated in water, and that it developed to survive on land later on. Eventually, mammals evolved on land. Cetaceans, which include dolphins, whales, ...
Context: Brains in Vats and Virtual Reality on Steroids In the (reasonably near) future, humans have developed the field of medicine significantly, and we now have the technology to isolate the b...
DISCLAIMER: Any resemblance to other starships (living or dead) is purely coincidental. The starship 'Exciting Undertaking' is a brand new ship about to set off on a five and a bit year mission to...
Moreover, could a culture of microorganisms form a collective hive-intelligence similar to ants or bees? I'm trying to design a scientifically plausible hive-mind, and I'm trying to decide whether ...
This question is inspired by discussion in the comments of the question What kind of supernatural powers don't break the masquerade? TL;DR Suppose you want to create a world where beings with supe...
I'm designing a sentient, aquatic creature, and trying to decide how many eyes it should have. This creatures biological strategy is one of redundancy - it has multiple mouths, multiple tentacles,...
If I've recently started a colony on a somewhat habitable, but uninhabited planet, what's the best way to determine the location of any ore or other subterranean resource deposits? The planet is E...
In the MARS series of National Geographic, an organisation is steadily colonizing Mars by sending a handful of people every few months. However, these aren't ordinary people, of course; they are to...
I'm working on a world where the human race lives on a planet that is much closer to its star than Earth is. The temperatures range from 150C to 300C in the day and below 0C at night. My question...
After traveling a long long time, your spaceship is finally entering into the gravitational sphere of influence of a Sun-like star. Your captain would now like to move from the Oort-like cloud dist...
I have two large continents on an earth like world. I would like for the dominate predator on the more desert continent to be a large cat. I have found the leopards and jaguars of Egypt, but am unc...
Nature does some pretty interesting things with gender: This is a female trilobite beetle. Scientists have observed females extensively, yet for decades, scientists could not identify the male ...
Toxic Spiders and Experiments Gone Wrong: Let's Talk About Comic Book Mutations Numerous superheroes get their powers after something mutates their cells. Perhaps it's a gamma ray, and result...
So, as I've mentioned in previous questions, I am writing a series in which the four young main characters encounter natural, traversable wormholes that connect the present time to another one. I'v...
What would happen if two spaceships with Alcubierre warp bubbles were colliding? Would the space bubble collapse? Would they reject or push each other? Would they survive it without problems?
[This is an extension of this Worldbuilding.SE question.] So, general relativity states that: For example, objects in a gravity-less environment, but in a container accelerating at 9.8m/s^2 (such ...
In many countries, we number the years based off of proximity to an event in the Christian religion - we are over 2016 years past that date. However, in this scenario, religion has become less main...
I've created a species that, instead of eating multiple times a day like us, eats one tremendous meal and survives off of the fat stores for long periods of time. My question is about feasibility....
This question on Physics.SE asks whether other colors are possible for the sky. I would like my planet to be inhabitable by normal humans. It has 768 days and they are living in a temperate/Medite...
Could two planets in the same solar system sustain life? I have one world that is about the size of our own planet. The other planet is farther away from the first planet think of it like Mars but ...
Each year without fail the notorious serial house breaking old man always deliver the present to all the children in the world, yes you heard me now that's billions and counting, and a piece of coa...
Here is what we know of the planet Mars so far: DIAMETER: 4212 miles MASS: 6.39 × 10^23 kg DISTANCE FROM THE SUN: 141.6 million miles It isn't to say that we haven't found water on Mars, ju...
