General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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A civilization has a "magic" computer with memory and processing capacities far beyond what our physics says is possible. They decide to run a massive simulation of Conway's Game of Life with a ran...
Imagine a world that works mostly like our own: it's built of atoms and quantum particles, there's gravity and conservation of energy, etc. Perhaps the physical laws aren't exactly the same as our ...
According to multiple reputable sources, the idea of "photographic memory" in humans is a myth. While some people may be unusually adept at certain things involving memory - like remembering the la...
Detailed Synopsis: I started writing a story wherein advanced technology slowly stop working (starting from most advanced, and progressing until only handmade items function), while the global clim...
So, I created a planet that has a civilization that is beyond advanced. The planet's radius is 10x the radius of Earth, and is has the same density as Earth. What issues would I have with the grav...
We have these "magical" items everywhere in fiction; from the classic rabbit coming out of a hat illusion, to the TARDIS from Doctor Who, to Newest Magical Beast Newt Scamander Briefcase. These ite...
The ODESSA network, a highly secretive organisation of former SS members, decides to hold the former Allied nations to ransom; with a giant parabolic mirror in space that can focus sunlight into an...
Simulation of artificial panspermia, in inter-galactic travel, as a model for the study of reproductive isolation. Case 1: If we send a mass of proto cells(kept alive by some mechanism like cr...
I'm looking for biological explanations for some traits I want to give to an alien creature. Description of the Creature It looks like a five foot tall praying mantis, or perhaps a centaur. It ha...
A plethora of previous questions have queried the existence of botanic (plant) intelligence and they all have created good solutions, but their still remains a even bigger problem to even the dumbe...
Is there any hypothetical way that a crazy advanced civilization could convert matter to digital form (or energy) and back? How far away might such technology be from our current tech level, if th...
Assuming humans live in dimension 3+1; 3 spatial dimensions, length width and height, and one dimension of time, Is it possible to move matter from our dimension 3+1 to another, such as 4+1 (addin...
I'll keep this one brief. I have an alien from a planet which has extremely cold nights and extremely hot days (the day and night cycle may be short or long, I haven't decided). When the alien get...
I have planet with twice the radius of Earth, with its core being the same absolute size as Earth's in order to provide magnetosphere, and the rest of the planet made of silicates like Earth's mant...
Being inspired by the lovely concept art of Star Trek's Nibiru, I have long thought that the Nibirans would use the tiered pools for aquacultural purposes, and would like to implement tiered aquacu...
Let's say that a race of aquatic merfolk have managed to achieve sapience, they are basic hunter gatherers, living in relatively shallow waters of up to 100 meters deep. As I have begun designing t...
A large railgun mounted on the spine of a mega-scale starship (20-32km) or an antimatter-powered missile launched outside the ship? For clarification's sake, when I say "safer" I'm referring to "sa...
In my story, Earth follows an alternate history where this civilization has reached the same level of development as us, today. Assuming that this civilization can lift a second moon half the size ...
I have a native tribe in pre-Columbus America that has successfully domesticated small, omnivorous bears. They are similar in size to Sun Bears [120"“150 cm (47"“59 in) / 27"“80 kg (60"“176 lb)]. I...
Background story: Current Earth, in the close future. Astronomers have found first signs of extraterrestrial life: huge sheet-like objects (with surfaces easily as large as the surface of the Eart...
It seems like Dyson Spheres are always brought up in the context of harvesting power. However, another use for a Dyson Sphere may be to cloak your solar system/inner planets. If the star's output d...
Would it be a good idea to use a railgun to propel a person into combat in a low/zero grav environment, Ã la human cannonballs in a circus? If a person was strapped into some sort of temporary fra...
Assuming I had a magic device able to discharge its stored energy in a directional force, and absorb the energy from the resulting return force (for every action, there is an equal and opposite rea...
Suppose there was a world on which evolution and natural selection took an odd turn and never produced an organism that could be considered a plant by our modern definition, but which still produce...
Lets say that somehow a cube world came into being, on an axial tilt around its sun, four of the sides are in-habituated by intelligent life, one of these sides (relatively) quickly realized that t...
Lichen are a symbiotic organism that involves algae or cyanobacteria living inside a fungus. The algae produce energy through photosynthesis, while the fungus protect the algae from the environment...
I need a planet that is a combination of chlorine world and vitriolic world. The planet is extremely hot and under high pressure, covered in oceans of pure sulfuric acid and a chlorine/fluorine atm...
For my science fiction universe, I need to mine a lot of deuterium and helium-3. I have 10,000 intake fans each capable of 3,000 gigaliters an hour pushing atmosphere through 5 billion diffusers. ...
I have a world idea (and definitely not the only one with such an idea in which the main location is a moon of a gas giant, that has life like on Earth. What are the effects of the presence of the...
I've created a new question and worded differently to help me get the answer I want. Click here to view A planet is in orbit around a larger planet, and I want to push it out of orbit. The plane...
I'm not even sure if gas comets can exist naturally -- feel free to comment on that in the answers. But assume that somehow a large block of frozen hydrogen/helium/oxygen/nitrogen is tumbling throu...
I'm creating a world opposite of Les Visiteurs, where modern age structural engineer accidentally time travels to 13th century. When guards of the local lord arrest him on suspicion of being a spy,...
I'm designing a city built to take advantage of valuable mineral deposits in a large polar desert. The city is built around a Yellowstone-esque region of hot springs and geysers, where underground ...
Welcome to Smooth World. Most of this planet (at least two thirds, but preferably more) has only tiny differences in elevation, 30-40cm at most. No hills, no mountains, no valleys. Even plains fou...
Given that a ship is a torus embedded in the plane of a vast solar panel arrangement in a sun facing orbit around Mercury, is there any means by which to protect the ship's systems from coronal mas...
Humans as Ambush Predators Homo sapiens and many of our ancestors practiced a form of hunting known as persistence hunting where we just walk after an animal till it keels over dead from exhaustio...
Given that the surface gravity on the Moon is a fraction of Earth and there is virtually zero atmospheric pressure but I still want to wet our beloved moon with whatever liquid that is known to sci...
Need ideas for the fox's tails. In case you're wondering, this is for a speculative evolution book I'm doing which is suppose to build a structure for...
And I'm not talking about the wimpy 32"‰MJ kind we have in the real world, I'm talking about the superweapon kind. Anyone familiar with Knights of Sidonia and their flagship's Heavy Mass Cannons wi...
Humans require a 20 degrees environment. that's 250 degrees warmer than Pluto. So, if humans lived there, their structures would melt the surface and sink. −200 cracks all common metals. most sp...
There are three different species of pine collectively called "bristlecones", all of whom can grow in weather too harsh and soil too poor for any other tree to take root. They are renowned for the...
A person is born with no senses, so he can't hear, speak or sense. The only way in which the world can communicate with him is through brain signalling. So they can send different signals to his b...
Lore: "Not much is known about the past of Unus Solum. What is known is scattered and fractured. Unus Solum was a planet that was subject to colonization efforts. The Ark ships that came were pre...
I want to have a world when humans got serious about global warming and succeeded in making Lithium Air battery work. Since the lithium air has same potential energy density as gas, and electric en...
I'm really excited that this topic actually exists here. For the past weeks I've been thinking about creating my own fantasy world - because there are not quite enough yet. My primary aim is to mak...
The story So Bob, the multi-billionaire, is a wealthy person today but in a not so far away future he will lose quite a chunk of his wealth and become just an ordinary millionaire. Future Bob is ...
Is there any practical g-limit for unmanned spacecraft, or could you theoretically push a missile to significant fractions of c in hours or minutes while pulling hundreds or thousands of Gs? I need...
I have an earth like planet where stalkers live. They are: Humanoid about same height, strength & speed as humans Three pairs of eyes placed horizontally (Near UV, Visible, Near IR) Lightspee...
I've looked around here a bit, but I haven't managed to find a post that really answers my question (though if there is one, please let me know). I'm trying to write a story where the two main cha...
I'm writing my first sci-fi novella and I'm looking for a bit of guidance from some scientifically literate people. My main premise is that an alien space ship similar to the death star enters Eart...
