General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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This, unsurprisingly, is also related to mermaids. Spearguns using rubber bands and the like are popular underwater weapons, so slingshots would be useful to mermaids. The problem is, these requir...
I am trying to fact check a consistent set of properties and applications for the titular unobtainium from the Mass Effect games in order to avoid introducing contradictions. Certain sources I rea...
I was considering the possibility mermaids might make use of sailing ships similar to the USS Monitor, but with sails and supposedly wood. Now, the mermaids wouldn't mind the ship being filled wit...
There was a good question and answer here: Does mermaid evolution come with buoyancy control? But I would like to expand the question. I got off talking with a friend, it got me thinking about mer...
Assuming one had access to all modern technology but couldn't go into space, would it be possible for the protagonist to permanently stay in sunlight? While it would be trivial near the poles durin...
Imagine a landship that can travel on a mostly frozen icy world. How big can it be while being capable of traveling and being self sustaining? It should be able to; travel great distances be s...
An interstellar civilization has superluminal travel which allows for travel between two points, effectively without traversing the space in between so they don't crash into anything between them a...
Imagine: A Kardashev Type I civilization mainly resides on a planet analogous to Earth, with one moon, analogous to Earth's moon. Eventually, the society grows so complex that machines filling spac...
I'm working at a story about the future of life in our Solar System. Humans have gone millions of years ago, but they left behind them a group of highly intelligent but not superhuman AIs with the...
Space is vast and lawless. Private travel is commonplace, and pirates have become a significant problem. People mainly fly orbit-to-orbit craft that have chemical rockets and no one is running arou...
My setting is a habitable moon with freestanding water orbiting a gas giant. Originally I thought the gravity of the jovian world would tend to draw water toward the tidal bulge of the moon itsel...
So, I'm familiar with Steam, Electric, and hand powered machines... What else can you do to power a machine (say, for example, a car or a pump)? Requirements: Assuming you build everything from ...
In the book I am writing, I am going for a a partially terraformed Venus setting. I like the concept of floating cities, but I want to be able to make it a little easier to live up there. If coloni...
On a world I am building, the day/night cycle last 9 years, meaning that there are interesting forms of life. Plants are the most interesting of these living things, which have many interesting for...
The conclusion of my question Is it possible to have a planet unsuitable for agriculture? was that the most plausible reason for preventing agriculture from developing (beside nomadic herding) was ...
Think about a scenario in which, on a given planet, a complex life form has already evolved. In your opinion, what are the odds, for this complex form, to evolve towards intelligence? With the...
I am making a game folowing the development of civilizations on an alien planet, however as i am almost done with the geography of this planet, i have come to realize that my continents which are s...
On the picture there is a building that slightly inspired me and convinced me that building like this indeed could be built in RL. However I have the following question. Could a building like th...
We know that Earth creatures can generate high-voltage electricity (your nearest electric eel can attest to that). We also know that ordinary air at Earth atmospheric pressure can be used as a las...
If I were to attempt the colonization of a planet with preexisting life, how would I manage to pinpoint a candidate planet from the comforts of Earth's orbit? I am interested in the stars somewhere...
I am writing a book where there is a binary system with a red and blue star. There is planet with the same properties as earth orbiting in a habitable zone around the 2 stars. The question How c...
Let's say that hundreds of years from now our posthuman descendants finally do good on NASA's promises and build an Alcubierre drive or a true reactionless drive (either one works for this example)...
Gargantuan carnivorous worms with layers and layers of flesh rending teeth are a pretty common sight in some science-fiction stories. They tunnel through earth and sand as fast as a car, sensing th...
I'm working on a planet containing an atmosphere composed mainly of sulfur dioxide, with, notably, only trace amounts (if any) of oxygen. Is such a planet one that could realistically pop up in ou...
I think of a world of islands floating in the sky. The planet basically is (was) our Earth. For some reason all that is left is a small ball covered nearly completely with water. Pieces of the shat...
So I'm creating a world in which humans have a close sister species very similar to the Japanese Nekomimi seen in anime and manga. Eventually, the humans turn on Nekomimis, perceiving themselves as...
So assuming their existed an Oracle, what effects would it have on society. Assume that everyone has access to it similar to using a library where the books can't leave. Properties of the Oracle ...
One of the inspirations for this was Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis, where I liked their depiction of slithering, combat-worthy mermaids. I've been trying to develop mermaids who make pilgrimages t...
So let's say you live in a terrifying post-apocalyptic world. For whatever reason, this world is now infested with cockroaches the size of chickens (similar to radroaches from the Fallout games, bu...
This question began due to a certain fictional monster. Where it was stated to be able to secrete explosive goo activated by its saliva, which would coat its boulder-like arms and explode when smas...
So Turbines in Space don't work, how about sticking beefed up versions of regular wind turbines near the top of a space elevator? My thought is that the elevator at the top experiences some serious...
Kind of a "universal donor" or "universal recipient"? Aliens that can take on the qualities of several kinds of species and recombine them to make a kind of "super" being?
Solar Sails are a great, low-impact way of driving your spacecraft. Whilst wind turbines are a low impact way of collecting power from the wind, however, they only work when the wind is blowing. M...
All organisms on Earth produce waste. Whether an organism's respiration has a byproduct, or it just doesn't process all food it consumes, it will always put some amount of matter into the environme...
In lots of science fiction works that visit other planets we are often introduced to intelligent plant based lifeforms, be they humanoid looking or potted plant looking. I'm curious as to what par...
Here on Earth, time standardisation was enabled by the invention of accurate time pieces which allowed us to create a global constant (GMT/Zulu time) and regional offsets. If we travel outside our...
I want to develop a water-dwelling, intelligent species that could ultimately reach space.1 My question here is about the biology of such creatures. I want my creatures to live in the water, not ...
Let's imagine that on some planet some clever critters create an AI. Now lets say that while this AI does respect some of the ground rules that were put in place for it, it nevertheless finds nume...
What resources would be most valuable to enhancing space travel, establishing new colonies, be cause for invasion, etc?
I am looking for help on the following: Will that have any affect on the length of days and nights? Would having two moons create a higher body of water on the planet due to increased tides? (i....
In populating a fenland region similar to the Somerset Levels in England, I'm finding a need for an aquatic ambush predator to haunt the region and snack on the occasional disrespectful traveler wh...
In the answers to this question I learned that some cephalopods communicate via color: Some cephalopods are capable of rapid changes in skin color and pattern through nervous control of chromat...
What artificial disaster could disrupt the orbit of our planet? Not necessarily making it leave the Solar System, but maybe changing its trajectory around the sun. And by artificial, I mean that th...
Starting with a creature and its environment, how does one create its psychology? Evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology attempt to explain attributes that we observe in our fellow human...
I'm working on a sci-fi game about conquering little asteroids (about 1 km diameter). You can go into one of them and make it Earth-like so other humans, animals or plants can live there. To do th...
So I'm working on a world that orbits a blue star that's not much bigger (or even smaller) than the sun. I was thinking that an A-type star would be a good choice for it, but it's still is closer t...
There are 20 percent oxygen in our atmosphere, what if the oxygen is higher above 20 percent but instead was 35 percent oxygen. If so would an advanced civilization exist in this environment? Would...
I'm writing a spaceship that just performed an Oberth maneuver around the sun, 10 million km out, and is accelerating toward a gravity sling with Jupiter. It had a high--not certain how high yet--i...
A classical trope of fantasy is lizardfolk, or a similar species by another name (see for instance the Argonians of Elder Scrolls fame). In general, though, we're dealing with: Bipedal, often pl...
Based on an answer of mine from a few months ago, I've been inspired to adapt the concept to my own Life Ball. Fair warning- this question and some of its links are not for the squeamish. May con...
