General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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For a story I am writing, I need a planet covered in a shallow ocean. What I mean is that I want the majority of the planet's surface (=> 60%) to be in the photic zone of the ocean. This planet...
Say you are a plant-based life-form (imagine a walking tree). You have roots and leaves. You have two main vulnerabilities: You need sunlight on your leaves for photosynthesis to get energy. Y...
In a world I am building, the day lasts longer than the year, 9 times longer in fact. The native people of this world have been forced to migrate around the world, both avoiding the scorching deser...
Spaceships are a peculiar thing. We've got them in all forms, sizes & colours. They have vast computers needed to do all the real-time calculations required for astrogation. Assuming our compu...
These people inhabit an underwater city. In the city there are pools that connect the dry habitat with the outside ocean, this of course mean that the habitat is unpressurized and therefore the in...
I swear I saw this question elsewhere. Let me know if this is a dupe. Photons are great. They're little bundles of energy that Reflect off of nearly everything, allowing us to see faraway obj...
Santa's reindeer are pretty awesome. They can stand on arbitrary planes (giving the illusion of flight, the reindeer are actually running on n-dimensional hills) and can dilate time in a bubble aro...
In my story, I have a fairly advanced human race who is at the point they want to start terraforming planets. Of course, all of the materials necessary have to come from somewhere, and the proposed...
If I have a typical Dyson sphere, around my star, it will block the light needed to live on an orbiting planet. Is there any other megastructure that can function like a Dyson Sphere, but does al...
Obviously, it's not a good idea. The premise: An advanced species has a plot to remove everything in our airspace and place it 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth. Their purpose is a misguide...
So aliens have arrived in the solar system. They have faster-than-light travel technology and the ability to handwave away the supposed causality violations that such an invention causes They're ...
It's hard to create a new animal from scratch. If you genetically modify an existing species until it becomes a drastically different species, then implant the fertilized embryo in a female of th...
Was there a geological era in which the rain on earth was harmless and with the same temperature of the water in a hot shower?
I'm building a map of a fantasy town and its surrounding area. I'm using Campaign Cartographer (CC3) for this and I'm striving for appropriate scale. I know that, nowadays, the average outside wa...
As part of a series on plant animals, plantimals if you will, I am now asking about ears. All surface life has them or some sort of equivalent to them and with good reason. Other than sight, hearin...
My knowledge of Stirling engines is that they work via a heat difference and are extremely heavy when used on a larger scale. This makes the use of them on vehicles a strange choice when there are ...
On the Life Ball of my fantasy stories, a particular species of delphinidae- I call them black dolphins- have evolved and advanced at least as much as humans and other intelligent races. A prior q...
Need ideas for the evolution of the kumiho, the Korean nine tailed fox that is native in the Korean peninsula. First of all, this species is sex...
Let's say you have a cyborg who's replaced their whole body, everything but the brain, with machinery. Next, you put them on a spaceship pulling dozens or even hundreds of gs. How are they going to...
How do force field work in many sci fi fictional universes? I remembered the last time I checked the strength of the electromagnetic field a.k.a force field is proportional to the power output from...
Let's say that, in a universe modelled after Patema Inverted, there are two "flavors" of matter: one which is attracted by gravity (so when dropped on Earth it would fall down), and one which is in...
After reading Is it possible to build a bridge between planets?, I wonder: what situation would provide technology support that enables them to make the trip, but limits them to walking speed? Th...
Anatomy wise, how could growing legs or having your legs melded together to form a large fin happen in a matter of hours? How could the change work in reverse? I want this to be able to work with...
[WARNING] Approximate physics incoming A few months ago I was looking for a way to get to Gliese 581 within 100 years. So I've been reading a lot from Wikipedia and other sites about different pro...
In our world's 2016, the German town of Munich is part of the country of Germany. Now in an alternate Earth I would like Munich to be part of the Great French Empire (in the alternate year of 2016...
Alternate question title: From Fungi to a Fun Guy So, I asked a previous question about which non-animal would be the likeliest to evolve sentience. The answer turned out to be fungus, since mycel...
So aliens find Earth to be suitable for colonization and disregard humanity's claim. Not because they are racist, but because they are so different biologically and psychologically that humans simp...
Okay, not literally Krypton style, but let's say some local astronomical event is going to render every rocky surface in our solar system totally uninhabitable. Details aren't terribly important, ...
I am interested in creating a reality based version of a creature from Greek mythology called a Siren. Sirens were believed to combine women and birds in various ways. In early Greek art, Sire...
Should removing all head-hair with laser and planting new lab-grown head-hair on the head be dangerous, especially if done repetitively (i.e. two times or more)? Should it risk someone in cancer p...
Many physicians apply numbing agent creams/ointments such as Lidocaine+Prilocaine or Benzocaine+Lidocaine+Tetracaine (BLT) preparations topically some 30 minutes before laser hair removal treatment...
From my prior research I understand that there are several ways to remove or destroy proximal (subcutaneous) fat cells: Liposuction (primarily removal) Cryolipolysis (primarily destruction by f...
I've looked into the usual structure of typical animal rhinarium (hairless nose skin with nodules), and it looks possible? — Rhinarium skin structure and epidermal innervation in selected mammal...
In this world, people have the legal right to fight anyone to the death, for any reason, as long as the fights are done before an official whose sole job is to regulate these duels. The officials i...
We all know Pikachu, fuzzy, small rodent, with the ability to discharge electrical energy as an attack. But could Pikachu ever evolve in our world, and how would it do so? What's required: Rod...
Chaos plagues the land. In the West, the King in Orange blusters and bloviates endlessly in barely comprehensible gibberish. Perhaps he is attempting to call forth the Elder Gods? In the East, the ...
Note - I'm primarily interested in the beast from the original Dr Dolittle books by Hugh Lofting rather than the movie version. The Pushmi-pullyu The pushmi-pullyu (pronounced "push-me"”pull-y...
A submission for the Anatomically Correct Series. The plant genus Mandragora as we know today are nightshades that contain highly biologically active alkaloids that make them poisonous, with the...
Zerg Overlords are flying alien creatures that aid their broods by managing lesser members of the swarm, transporting units within their carapaces, and alerting a hive about any danger they perceiv...
Demons have been a staple of multiple religions for thousands of years, just like angels. While some of the points brought up in the Anatomically Correct Angels post (and other posts on flying huma...
Considering there are at least several thousand depictions of trolls in the media, we'll be talking about the traditional trolls from Scandinavian folklore. They're usually described as being ...
This is a submission for the Anatomically Correct Series Kappa are creatures from Japan said to lurk in rivers and lakes. They are described as small humanoids resembling a cross between a monkey,...
Continuing in the theme of bringing creatures from video games into the Anatomically Correct series is the Chocobo of Final Fantasy lore. Put simply, a Chocobo is a large bird. It is unclear whe...
The Nachtkrapp is a german version of the bogeyman or in a more general term a kind of bugbear. Nacht is the german word for night and Krapp is used in southern germany and austria as a word for ra...
Background, with potential spoilers: In the Netflix show Stranger Things... ...there is an otherworldly creature known as the Mindflayer, which can telepathically control creatures in our worl...
Hal Clement's novel Needle was revolutionary in featuring a non-parasitic alien lifeform capable of inhabiting a human body. Specifically, the Hunter in its independent form is a gelatinous mass c...
The Dreel are a parasitic alien hive-mind from The Return of Nathan Brazil, book four in the Well of Souls series by Jack Chalker. Specifically, they are described as viruses which induce intellig...
Inspired by today's XKCD comic How could a creature, momentarily called XKCDius lethalissimus, evolve to have the following features: Be radioactive (intended as more radioactive than the envi...
In ancient Mesopotamian mythology, Humbaba was an evil giant slain by the hero Gilgamesh in the famous Epic of Gilgamesh. In the epic, there was only one Humbaba, but for the purposes of this quest...
Wild boars are well known for their large, bulky body, their aggressivity and their tusks. They are animals from which a predator would gladly stay away if some easier prey is available. And, las...
