General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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In Deep, deep space, there exists a star system with a single planet. This planet, named Dewel, is a large, green gas giant with a mass of about twice Jupiter's. What could this planet's atmosphere...
Would it be possible to build a space elevator off Europa? (The space elevator would only be for the purpose of getting items out of Europa's gravity well relative to Jupiter. At that point, the...
So, centaurs are half-human, half-horse creatures that are usually portrayed in myth as wild, violent and animalistic. Now, I, Lucretius, found a good explanation why. The answer is in the growth ...
In my setting, there are basically no biological life forms left, as everyone has either been mind-uploaded or is an artificial intelligence. It is supposed to take place at a very distant point i...
The Aargh are a humanoid alien race a couple solar systems away. Their home planet is quite earth-like (oxygen atmosphere, a lot of water, traditional organic chemistry even if a few proteins are d...
In multiple sci-fi, Degenerate Matter is often used for a myriad of applications. Degenerate Matter consists of Neutronium, Quarkonium and other matter coming from dense stars. They have high stren...
On Earth, sailors would navigate the oceans at night by using the stars as guides; since there are no landmarks in the ocean like there are on land (save for the occasional island), that's pretty m...
My name is Adolf Palpatine, a kind and benevolent Buddhist monk on the path to enlightenment. I have figured out a way to game the system. By making a deal with a demon, I have gained the ability...
Given the perfect environment, denser atmosphere, oxygen rich, maybe lower gravity, how large can a flying insect get and still be able to walk upside down on a surface? This question starts to ta...
Dragons are very territorial apex predators. They build lairs on mountaintops, roost whenever they aren't hunting, and they hunt from the sky. With their size, wings and firebreath, there is no vir...
Consider a futuristic world where space travel and colonisation of the solar system's planets is an everyday reality. In space vessels, the airlocks are used quite often to execute people. It's fai...
So, gods. What are they. Gods are a race of various creatures that share a two important characteristics: They're connected to The Source. They can successfully produce offspring (though without ...
First question: if you melted Europa's ice, would there be any land? Second question (assuming the answer to the first question is no), how much water would you have to remove after that in order ...
I have an alien species similar to a caterpillar, the original idea was that the creature could eat different materials, digest them then combined with a very sticky liquid created in its body, it ...
It appears that there are gas giants in habitable zones of stars, and likely some of them should have moons that are big enough to have an Earth-like world, so that part should be plausible enough....
Could a creature carry its own ecosystem around with it? What traits would it need to make this viable? These self-sufficient creatures are native to planet which is for the most part frozen and ...
If the right requirements are met, could bacteria survive on the Sun? The bacteria would spend most of their time in hibernation and reproducing, and when the time comes, they spread out on plasma...
I was wondering if anyone could help me figure out how to place the biomes in my continent. Though I have researched which biomes can occur in a certain climate, I'm still confused when it comes to...
My story begins with a group of colonists on a ship when something happens (spoilers) and the colonists are forced to abandon ship and land on a nearby uncharted moon of a gas giant. The good news...
So I'm thinking here about the sort of setting like Eclipse Phase, in which virtually all of humanity lives in a wide range of space habitats because of an apocalypse on Earth. I am imagining a var...
Would a computer using biological components as an interface be any good? Would that protect it against hacking? Or provide more complex processing? The way I'm going with this is that computers ...
its my first time posting here and i hope i do it right (watched the tour and all that). I've designed a World Map and would want to know if it looks realistic like that in terms of positioning of...
I am struggling to picture what placement of artificial lighting I should use for my O'Neill cylinder design for the daylight hours, a strip light along the centre of the cylinder would obstruct th...
How many people can live comfortably on planet Earth, assuming that humanity reaches Kardashev scale Type I level? This implies: Energy is cheap, and available in an almost unlimited quantity, c...
I recently asked a question about' "The feasibility of the coral highlands", which come from a game called "Monster Hunter World". In the game, there is another place, called, "The Rotten Vale", wh...
In a galaxy far far away... M6760 (I made it up) is an unusually massive neutron star billions of light years away and it is surrounded by a spherical Dyson sphere painted in new improved formula v...
In the game Monster Hunter World, there is a place called the coral highlands. The coral highlands is one of the most spectacular things to look at in the game, having a resemblance to a ocean with...
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...
Most planetary rings are rich in water in the form of ice, especially now we are running low on freshwater reserves on Earth. Imagine someone discovered a huge chunk of meteorite consisting of a wh...
While my setting has magic, the material world acts the same way as ours. Only reason why I am mentioning magic in my question is because I'm explaining why I need to satisfy such an odd set of req...
What properties and side effects would an organism have if it were formed entirely from cancerous cells? Scientists collected a sample of a tumor from a patient for studies. Once cultivated the ce...
So, there is this entity in my story, Slenderman, who's ultimate technique is the Blackout. Blackout causes electronic devices and light-based communication to fail within a 5 km radius of a chose...
My story has several key locations that I would like to ground in a real place in North America. It takes place 50-60 years in the future after 97% of humanity has been wiped out. I'm having a hell...
In Stellaris fungoids are, well, intelligent funguses; some Earth-like, two looking like intelligent species infected by funguses, and the rest looking alien. Let's get into the actually basics an...
This is for a story I'm working on. These creatures are what the Native American myth of the Wendigo originated from. Their origins are a mystery, but they need to feed on human flesh at least once...
The song Diggy Diggy Hole makes some questionable assertions about dwarven anatomy. Specifically: Born underground Suckled from a teat of stone Raised in the dark The safety of o...
So, at its core, magic is using a swarm of tiny (50-100 micrometers), naturally occuring robots to deliver substances to a given location and initiate chemical reactions that lead towards the desir...
I want to make my unicorns use the horn as their male genital. Is it biologically possible to put the genital on their head? I know there are many strange genital locations for animals, for example...
An alien creature has secretly landed on earth, seeking to propagate itself among the local species. It studies the individual sexes of a race called humans and determined that the males would be m...
Set in the immediate future, social network evolves with the advancement of 10G network and a major breakthrough in medicine. Giant tech companies raced to develop state of the art VR technology wh...
Perissodactyla is an order of mammals consisting currently of the seventeen species of horses, rhinoceroses and tapirs. Usually, any clade is connected by a coupling of genetics and physical morph...
I ran across an article briefly describing a woman suffering from Urbach-Wiethe disease (UWd). UWd leaves calcification within the amygdala and in this case subject lost all sense of fear (this cas...
Imagine a tsunami of lava has flash-flooded cities. Oddly enough there weren't eruptions or earthquakes, just a sea of molten rock covering every inch of road, street pavement, what have you. Accor...
I have several stories where I've wanted a moon in some weird orbit that is not allowed by orbital mechanics. In the past, I've had to change stories to bow to physics. Today, I had a thought whil...
Think of a thunderdrum from the How To Train Your Dragon movies for its large mouth, but it has a wingless centaur shaped body. It has a large head that can open its mouth wide. How would it create...
All of a sudden, overnight, abruptly, weather forecast guys go on strikes... everywhere is raining nitric acid non stop so that on average the amount reported is 100mm and the pH level is 3 occasio...
Premise: Space lab is working on making synthetic cells out of different materials. Experiments are classified as too dangerous to be disposed of with conventional means, and are set on an collis...
In our world, a solar eclipse is visible from the planet a few times a year, in certain locations. However, a total solar eclipse that can be seen across the planet generally happens every three or...
Recently I have been playing a lot of stellaris, " a strategy game that allows you to control a alien species and advance your way through the galaxy". In the game there is something called "Living...
A recent question here on SE:WB reminded me of a short story I wrote a long time ago, and has inspired me to revisit the idea. The premise: A race of massive alien creatures travel from planet to...
