General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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I am an alien from outer space who is visiting a planet called Earth. The species living here, humans, have a very primitive and strange culture. They seem to spontaneously burst into dance and son...
There might be a way to build traversable wormholes without needing negative mass. Take a gander: https://phys.org/news/2019-04-wormholes.html Now, these wormholes have a big limitation, they can...
I want to make an alien species evolve without fear, or atleast not fear as we know it. Intelligent life, as I understand it, requires fear to encourage an organism to keep itself alive. What emo...
So I'm designing a world where the air has its own ecosystem, separate from the one on the land, because sky whales are cool. However, I'm having trouble figuring out what the plants and other prod...
I have a post-apocalyptic scenario, set in the ruins of an American metropolis with flooded streets. Boats are used most of the time, but aircrafts have advantages, for battle or if you have to get...
This is for a book. An ancient, badly damaged, base has been found in the asteroid belt. The base has been open to the vacuum of space, although a large proportion of the base is within the body ...
So, there's this guy, Null, named after his ability that allows him to send any action, a person makes, into /dev/null. Basically, he can "No, you didn't" any attack. That's okay, but then comes h...
I want a way to enclose an area (building-sized and on Earth, let's say) in a field that warps spacetime so that time appears to pass 100x slower within it. You don't need to explain how the field ...
Bringing a human child to term generally takes place over a period of nine months. They are marked by different stages, from 1st to third, and are marked by different events and expectations for mo...
What adaptations are needed for human-derived sea-dwellers? My people are not the classic half-fish, nor are they whale-tail-people - they wear ankle-length swimming skirts that bind their legs in...
Mankind has been always interested in making contact with another (extraterrestrial) civilization. We have launched the Pioneer 10 and 11 probes with plaques explaining where the Earth is located. ...
This is a question regarding my little critters that hijack of their victim. By doing so they get direct access to a steady flow of nutrients through the bloodstream and get shelter with optimal te...
in the Cthulhu mythos, yog sothoth is depicted as a mass of splitting and fusing orbs, it is the past, present, and future and seemingly knows everything. but for the sake of trying to make it real...
I had an idea for a swarm of tiny drones, the smallest being as small as fairy flies at 0.15mm long, that could form into shapes and structures, even mimic the shapes of living creatures. They wou...
I want to write a science fantasy novel about humans evolving into five new species. The five races are: the Groses and Grosettes (they are my Ogres) (their name comes from the french word gros/gro...
A common weapon in science fiction is the Molecular Disrupting Beam, which disintegrates anything caught by the beam into basic atoms and molecules with no wound or gash, more as if a portion of th...
I'm positing a non-planetary world but within Euclidean space. This world has things that resemble mountains (but probably not plate tectonics). Elevation varies considerably, but on average it is ...
Previous question: Proofing dragons against their acidic breath weapon 1/2: Smart Neutralizing Agent So, I decided to find an alternative breath weapon for my dragons, that maximizes destructive p...
In my setting, there's a gas giant orbiting in the habitable zone of a red dwarf (for specificity, its radius is about half Jupiter's, and it's 0.35 AU from 61 Cygni B. Ignore the effect of the oth...
So I'm almost done with my draft of a story I'm writing. And I just got a random question popped into my head. Is it possible for Zues (the kaiju size dino) to survive? I already got a little bit o...
I'm making a story where the main character travels the world. The world is made up of anthropomorphic animals. The animals would still have the urges of animals, But they become more sapient. Dog...
Disclaimer: This question uses some liberal wording to get key ideas across. It's not meant to be academically rigorous, so please try to focus on the ideas and not the exact definitions of the ter...
In the event of our sun suddenly becoming a black hole or wormhole of sorts. It transports the earth to another solar system similar to ours. Would it be possible for our planet to start circling...
In most future sci-fi settings, it is apparent that laser weapons (or as Star Wars likes to call it, blasters) and energy weapons in general would have replaced most standard ballistics for main in...
Is it simply inevitable that on a planet organisms would split into motile and non-motile groups. I'm planning on creating slime-like amoebic chemotrophs for my light devoid-planet that are the "pl...
Reading this question about 1 mm tall people made me wonder: would a 1 mm tall person even be able to breathe? To someone of this size, the oxygen molecules around them would be much larger in prop...
I am wondering how will it affect earth or none at all. Seeing that Jupiter by far is a gas giant and has really strong gravitational pull while Mars is mostly dormant, weak gravity and a terrestr...
Say in the future, humanity has developed technology to the point that it allows them to traverse through other universe, each universe having something either drastically different or not so diffe...
So In Fiction, I think it's more common to see Humanoids with avian-like wings rather than insect wings. I was wondering if it's possible for a humanoid to evolve insect like wings and even if the...
In the future, humanity has discovered countless worlds, some filled with life and others not. Likewise, they discover another world that is habitable, they study its various ecosystems, it's var...
The Orion's Arm Universe Project includes a description of what they call "To'ul'hian Worlds", planets that are (in the simplest of terms) a cross between Earth and Venus. I'm working on designing...
what would happen if 50,000 humans were sent to a planet that has 3 times gravity, in a arid like environment.Through unknown means. The planet has a similar atmosphere to our own and the air is ...
This question is supposed to explain the phenomenon in fiction that I affectionately call the "clean death", where a dead monster disintegrates after being slain. Normally this would be explained b...
In my idea for a story, my main character has Telekinesis. My problem is, this is a definite hard science fiction world, and he is abnormal in the fact that he is the only known one who can perform...
I have seen people saying that humans can't fly even with wings because our arm muscles aren't strong enough. Given that one of the uses of powered exoskeletons is to increase strength, would th...
When I was younger I came up with a creature that seemed to contradict itself. It was made of some frozen material, but it had a large back fin in order to get warmth from the sun. I'm revisiting t...
On a distant, habitable world, humanity has observed a biological marvel. A creature that is primarily carnivorous, roaming its planet jungles and deserts, has been observed to be capable of manip...
Missing magnetosphere on Mars keeps popping up. Most likely caused by Mars core being cold, mantle not bubbly enough. Mars mantle is dormant, core does not move. What would be good way to get it g...
In the distant future, humanity has encountered, made peace and wars with countless advanced civilizations, but one civilization that still baffles them, is the race of intelligent centipedes. The...
For my story there exists a fictitious element with special properties. In its pure form is most closely resembles metal (for its physical properties) This material is quite abundant in salt and o...
By that I mean, if you are travelling about on a continent on a planet with a circumference similar to the Sun, how much further would you be able to see, and would it be noticeable, without more c...
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...
Would it be possible to have a humanoid, a human looking species with a roughly equivalent brain to humans, without iron in circulation in its blood or body? I have found that reptiles could be a...
In Scifi there is often the issue that all the fancy technology like Mechas and Lasguns need a lot of energy. Chemical sources are limited by volumetric and regular power density. Batteries and cap...
I want to create a tidally locked world with a habitable (broadly Earth like atmosphere and biome that humans could breathe and live in) band stretching around the terminator pole to pole. There wo...
Suppose you became immortal* or came by the ability to live for thousands of years due to some inexplicable/irrelevant event (you still appear to be human by all standards except aging). What would...
I'm working to design the atmosphere of a fictional planet inspired by Venus (let's call it Cael). Cael's atmosphere at an altitude of 50 km is essentially identical to Earth's atmosphere at sea l...
I want to use the an active large ignious province (LIP) as a "biome" on a continent in my world. This video about the Siberian Traps inspired me. A LIP modeled after the Siberian Traps gives you a...
Say one day humanity has found a planet that supports life. It's filled with luscious forest and barren deserts, and various ecosystems that resemble Earthly ones. After a single year of researchi...
I'm looking to build a horror type sci-fi game based on the Alien franchise. My question comes in trying to differentiate my alien from the Xenomorphs. I want hurting it with a melee weapon to be i...
