General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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If the force of gravity at the Earth's surface suddenly became 2 times stronger, how would the environment and humans cope? I'm guessing a lot of flying creatures would suffer, but what would happe...
Imagine someone wanted to divert a specific asteroid to impact the earth. The Current Impact Risks page at nasa.gov shows a list of known impact risks based on observations. Most of these asteroi...
Suppose there is a planet where intelligent life (with intelligence approximately same as that of a being of the human species, say) exists. However, due to certain conditions (such as, for example...
I would like to know what would happen if a new virus arose which could not be cured and which managed to escape the infected areas (and any quarantine zones). In order to scope this question I'm n...
If humans didn't exist, what species would populate the earth? Would an animal gain human-like intelligence if humans weren't here? What animal would gain dominance?
The idea of hollowing out asteroids, spinning them on their longest axis, and filling them with air, water, and soil is common in science fiction (Rendezvous with Rama, or 2312 for good examples). ...
If the gravity on earth was different, how would our bodies change? For this question, assume that gravity was five time stronger (5G) from the beginning of the Earth. Would a human-like body stil...
Quantum physics today tells us that we may not predict outcomes with certainty. We perceive events as random. So is this old philosophical fantasy of an all knowing computer possible? Meaning that...
Let's assume, without revoking any of today's science, that the world is a simulation. What would a bug look like? I'm assuming that "the eiffel tower suddenly being bent at 45°" is rather unlik...
Given a map showing terrain and settlement locations (cities, towns, villages) I'd like to design a road network that appears natural, rather than just being the most efficient. I'm interested in t...
Assuming planet Earth, with considerable amounts of pets per household (96 million cats in the US alone), what would be the social and ecological consequences of all domestic cats acquiring flight ...
For the sake of this question, let's say that there would be a space mission that would send one man on a 40 year journey that will require him to be in a completely self sufficient habitat for the...
Magic conveniently "explains away" many things associated with shapeshifting, but in the course of some of my fiction writing, I endeavor to include some slightly more plausible explanations when p...
Apart from the obvious difference that liquid ammonia needs a much colder temperature than liquid water (but ammonia-based life forms wouldn't feel that as particularly cold), what would be the mos...
According to this answer to what the moon is made of, the moon's crust is, among other things, 43% oxygen. Assuming we were to go back to the moon within the next couple of years with the goal of ...
Imagine we have a machine that can consume celestial bodies, breaking them down into component elements and storing them in big bins somewhere. If we fed that machine a moon, what would wind up in ...
I hope my question isn't too vague or broad. It's a follow-up to this one. So, we have a human (genetically modified in order to support life on another place, from previous question) on an alien ...
Racism has been a defining trait in how human civilizations have interacted and developed in regard to each other. It, however, is founded on differences which separate us visibly but not function...
Could life be sustained only by a gas? Humans need food, water and air but can a ET or Alien could just live off gas.
If a human is kidnapped by an alien vessel and taken to another planet - and, for the sake of argument, let's assume that the alien life-form lives in a completely different environment from Earth'...
There have been a few questions about an intelligent avian species lately and they have gotten me thinking. It seems to me that it would be hard for an avian species to evolve to be more intellige...
I recently asked this question about what would happen if a fusion bomb went off in the core of a planet, and the answer was relatively uninteresting. As was aptly said in my previous answer, the e...
Can life exist on planets as barren as Mercury? How would it survive? It seems like it couldn't. Mercury is very hot, would any life break down becuase of the heat? What other challenges face life ...
How would evolution have changed without the "reflex arc", if all reflexes had to go through the brain instead of the spinal cord? Would intelligent species be able to evolve?
Imagine there is a country in which there are all important natural resources (oil, gas, metal ores, wood, etc.) in their natural form and which lies in a temperate climate region. There may be som...
Imagine a world with a very wacky magnetic field, the magnetic poles are not aligned at the top of the axial tilt and the sun is active enough to cause huge northern lights each night. I know elec...
What significant technologies would be lost in a world without "Advanced" Mathematics? Specifically, what technologies required to get to the next level of scientific progress in an area would be l...
What would happen if a powerful explosive went off in the core of a planet? On Earth, you have several layers of the planet, the crust, the magma, the outer core, and the inner core. Right now, hu...
Here, I asked if it's possible to terraform a hot planet. But now, if we have a volcanic active planet, can we use the same techniques to cool it down? Normally, the planet cool off slowly after...
Take any well-known aggressive/dominant/predatory animal - wolves, big cats, bears, dragons, etc. Now say this animal were to have two heads, each equal in all capacities. What would realistically ...
Lets indulge in a bit of Mad Science, here. Assuming the world described here: Making the Enterprise Fly (60% of earth's gravity, 50% denser atmosphere) what is the wingspan needed to allow an ave...
As the title says, what would the universe be like if the gravitational force was 0.1% stronger but the other forces (strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetic force) stayed the same? Would t...
In the book 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke, Jupiter is turned into a star. Presumably this is done by making it more dense, so if Jupiter were to reach that density and become a star, what w...
Often in films and television shows when a person's brain is 'injected' with more information than it can handle, they suffer from immense pain. What would actually happen if you did supply a huma...
Could a terrestrial planet have a stable set of layers of atmospheres, and could different lifeforms evolve within those different layers? This question is inspired by the diversity found on Earth...
One science fiction short story I read (I don't remember the title or author, sorry!) featured some small creatures (unnamed) that were formed from metal, with the argument that "just like life dev...
Most science fiction stories has humans building large domes on the surface of planets like Mars or the Moon. But wouldn't it make more logistical sense to dig down and build down into the planet?...
What kind of a scenario would have to occur in order for human beings to seek survival on the sea floor? It could be man made or natural, ice age or heat apocalypse, sudden disaster or gradual coll...
I want to know about the plausibility and required parameters of the following scenario: Take an Earth-like planet, about the same size, composition and gravity. It has no plate tectonics to speak...
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...
Is it scientifically plausible for reincarnation to exist? When I think of reincarnation I am thinking of the following: Memories, personality, biases, opinions and feelings carry over from one ...
I was answering this question about how a living planet-organism could be possible, and realized I didn't know how such a planet-organism could produce a magnetic field. I postulated that it could ...
Within the Star Wars Extended Universe, there is a science base on a small object within a near impenetrable sphere of Black Holes. Is this possible? The place referenced is called the Maw Install...
Suppose such an organism had evolved from using sound like most life we know to use different intensities, wave lengths, and hues of light to communicate. This is assuming that these creatures are...
What immediate effects would a small, short-term black hole have if it appeared in a residential backyard? How small or short-lived would it have to be to be survivable, if it is survivable at all?...
Could a planet have an orbit in the shape of a figure 8 around twin (possibly binary) stars? Mostly curious about the physical possibility of such an orbital arrangement; is it stable over a long ...
One thing that a few science fiction films seem to get wrong: it is extremely unlikely for two civilizations to evolve completely independently and yet be within a few hundred years of each other t...
I'd like to set a story in our solar system with Earth and the inner planets becoming uninhabitable and a new planet being required. If human beings decided to build a world by making slight deviat...
On earth most of our sealife is fishlike (excluding a few other species such as squid/octopus). As far as I'm aware there are no legged creatures which live solely in the sea. In my world I'd like...
Ragnarök is the Norse rendition of the apocalypse. A major event during this apocalypse is Fernir devouring the sun. If we assume that the sun and all of its influence disappear entirely for 3 day...
