General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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Given a Medieval or Middle Ages level of technology - leather bellows, etc how close could craftsmen come to achieving a near total vacuum in an enclosed space. In context, I'm trying to create a ...
I was reading this question and realized that I didn't actually know enough to give the answer that I wanted. Obviously in the near term, all our raw materials come from the Earth. The only oth...
This is for a video game project. In a future where living in the Earth's surface has become undesirable. People are building colonies in Earth's orbit. If materials from Earth are used to build ...
A group of behaviorally modern humans was cut off from the rest of the earth-like planet. At the time of the separation, humankind had reached a technology level including cattle ranches, brass, wr...
A modern day Earth nation is at war with another. That other nation is extremely advanced but they are also pacifists. Instead of killing peoples their gun rounds and shells have the effect of worm...
Real x-ray vision, the ability to (at least) detect X-rays as a 'visible' light (or any other detection system) seems it would be very problematic. X-Rays are a high energy form of electromagnetic ...
I've been thinking about a cyberpunk universe where nanobots are a universal force capable of achieving many things, examples include: Biological and medical modifications of the human body Const...
Giant Spiders are a traditional element of fantasy worlds. They prey upon most human's primal fears, and are easy to make as evil as possible. (Note: Not to scale) But are they actually plausib...
Let's see if I can explain my thoughts accurately with an example. Imagine that a mad scientist decides to kidnap a few men and women and decides, just for fun, to switch their sexual organs, but ...
I had in mind a sci-fi setting where humans have begun terraforming nearby planets without the benefit of faster-than-light travel. For example, Wikipedia lists a handful of terrestrial planets wit...
Would it be possible for a creature to have a nervous system working at 250 volts? What kind of physiology would it need to sustain that? Could you use that creature as a power source, to power a ...
Consider a dual-star system, with the distances between S (larger star) and J (smaller star) similar to Sun"“Jupiter. A planet P rotates around J on a 90-degree ecliptic and is Earth-like otherwise...
This question was stimulated by the question How would an aquatic race develop computers?. The answers obviously were based on the aquatic civilization being earth based, but what about a totally ...
Building from this and this, given an aquatic civilization somehow manages to forge tools and build computers, could it build space-faring devices? Also another development that would come earlier...
What would be the effects of high or low gravity on human body development? How would the human body develop under a different gravity? Many science fiction stories explore the idea that people fro...
If a spacecraft is in low earth orbit ~400 Kilometres above earth. How big does it need to be visible from earth with the human eye without telescopes, with enough of its details to clearly distin...
Following on from this question and assuming the race in question had developed the ability to create tools how would they approach the need for mass calculation. Our early computers were used to ...
It seems that people who live at very high altitudes have demonstrably "thicker" blood, highly concentrated with red blood cells to overcome the low concentration of oxygen in the air. Moving betwe...
One of the first steps in technological is the ability of a civilisation to forge tools* humans achieved this by using fire and creating forges. There are obviously underwater heat sources but I d...
What sort of xenobiochemistry would support information-carrying macromolecules like DNA if only trace amounts of phosphorus were present on an alien planet? Since the phosphoribosyl backbone of DN...
My premise involves a habitable planet with a dual core: it has two masses similar in composition to Earth's core, which revolve around each other over the course of hundreds of thousands of years...
Are there realistic circumstances that a planet would be accelerated (either artificially or naturally) to the speed at which relic radiation becomes so blue-shifted that the planet is illuminated ...
Suppose that a planet whose size was somewhere between the sizes of Mercury and Jupiter impacted the Sun. Would such an event change local stellar activity sufficiently enough and for long enough ...
It seems like nothing can move faster than light and this is quite bothersome for interstellar travel. It takes decades in the best case to get anywhere interesting in our little Milkyway (Many tho...
I had this idea the other day just for the heck of debating about if it would be feasible to build a bridge that crosses North Atlantic Ocean from Canada to Spain. I mean from St-John's (Newfoundl...
The situation I'm considering is as follows: A space ship (a transport ship operated by two people) crashes onto a planet on which a swing-by was planned. The crew could escape using an escape cap...
My question is mainly related to the impact on food production if the climate changes made agriculture more difficult in the state of California but also in the other American and Mexican states fr...
I did a little looking and it appears stars outside of 10 parsec/33 ly will have very little effect on the Earth. What it did say was that inside that range the gamma rays would affect our ozone l...
I am working on constructing a world which is basically (from the northern pole to the southern pole): smallish frozen over ocean huge land mass encompassing the northern hemisphere tremendous oc...
Mars' gravity is 38% of that of Earth's. Supposing a human born and raised on a Mars colony traveled to earth later in their life, would they be able to survive the increased gravity? For example...
Assuming interstellar travel, and self-sufficient colonies in other star systems, what are some methods of destroying the Earth while leaving minimal impact on the colonies? Context I would like ...
This is somewhat of a follow-up question to my ammonia-based world question. I've found out that the melting point of ammonia is at 25°C at a pressure of about 1 MPa (about 10 times the atmospheri...
Summary: I am looking for a portal transportation mechanism that is consistent with the laws of thermodynamics. Portals (or wormholes or gateways, something that connects two different locatio...
I found an interesting Wikipedia article, quoted in an answer here. I'm looking into writing a story where someone has built a Death Star. The purpose of this craft is important to the story (and ...
Setting: Earth, in the future, near 2060 or 2100 Technology: a bit more advanced than ours Armies and police forces are already using systems for crowd control. Some devices can generate disco...
I am referring to the situation described at the start of the movie 28 Weeks Later, where Britain had been wiped out by a zombie virus, but the rest of the world was (seemingly) fine. What would b...
Suppose a world suddenly is being attacked by frequent tidal waves caused by some event in space. What type of event could have caused this? Any side effects caused by the event, such as the relea...
Initial situation: I have cold planet with an average temperature below the freezing point. There is a magnetic field. The planet is almost as big as Earth and can have an atmosphere. The planet...
Start: Normal planet, very similar to Earth. The main difference is that the continents are placed differently. Magic could play a role in the formation of mountains but I prefer a scientific ex...
This is going to take some imagination and assumptions (and knowledge about physics). Imagine gravitational mass and inertial mass would be different. In classical mechanics it seems a coincidence...
If all humans (but no other species) just suddenly disappeared, leaving all of their structures standing, how long would it take for an intelligent species as dominant as the humans to evolve? Woul...
This idea comes up quite frequently in science fiction, but there has not been a question about it yet on Worldbuilding.SE. Is it possible that intelligent life was brought to Earth by an alien ci...
Really can't believe I have to edit this in, but this question has no bearing on our current use and generation of nuclear energy on Earth. There are dangers to nuclear energy generation, or we...
If an Earth-like planet had an older, red sun "” or maybe just a reddish sky due to some property of the atmosphere "” how would that affect the growth and/or adaptation of plant and animal life on...
I have a "simple" question that is the basis for an idea I'm developing: Is it possible to terraform the moon and, if so, what type of technology would be needed? I understand that this isn't th...
We have a lot of weird questions come up in chat and fun comments about how we destroy worlds over a lunch break. Here is one that though I might share. You are a power that can affect cosmic bodie...
This question is a bit of an outgrowth of Can you simply scale up animals?, but it does approach it from a different angle. "All else equal" (which it of course never is, but we're good at pretend...
Are there bacteria or other types of lifeforms that feed on rocks and other ground minerals? And if there aren't, is it technically possible? It can eat other things but the majority of its diet sh...
The question about a diet of dust brought up a few creatures that survive on dust, however they were all insect-sized or smaller. This got me thinking about the Blue Whale, which survives on a diet...
Could life survive on a diet of dust or some other substance that is both abundant and that we don't place any value on?
