General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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So, I've heard that while Alcubierre drives might present a semi-plausible way of getting around the light speed limit (if you can get ahold of negative energy), they do so at the expense of creati...
In the near future Science Fiction novel I am writing, the personality and memory of a person are transferred to an artificial brain after a fatal accident, creating an artificial intelligence with...
We occasionally get questions and answers that discuss how close to each other planets can be and still meet some criteria. For example, this answer to the question ''Habitable'' planet close to a ...
I was reading on another question (this one) and was thinking "What if those bullets could return?" What I am looking for is: Practicality Cost effective Combat effective Manufacturability
In an effort to work out a believable form of faster-than-light communications for my setting, I've ruled out a few things: wormholes (which are in use, but are too random in where they lead, to be...
I have seen many science fiction movies that depict traveling in space through wormholes. The appearance though, and the time it takes to cross a wormhole, tends to vary: On one hand, we have the...
Ok so I've been going around on the internet trying to figure out whether or not when 2 earth like planets of similar densities and makeup collide is it possible for them to bounce off of each othe...
I'm building a world for a role-playing game campaign using the Stars Without Number system. Some background information first: Stars Without Number Original Setting: In the original story prov...
In a previous question on this site I asked about the side effects of a having ludicrously strong, permanent, static magnetic field on the surface of a planet, capable of pulling in non-magnetized ...
There exists a Universe in which all of outer-space is filled with some form of human-breathable air. Theoretically, you could fly a Zeppelin up there and explore other worlds, with a sufficiently ...
What would be differently perceived from a person with broader visual spectrum than normal? So I've seen this question, especially the accepted answer, and it certainly is not what I'm looking for...
Setting: "One Big Lie" Sci-fi RPG The lies in this setting are an extension of relativity with a couple of extra dimensions allowing for FTL/Backwards Time Travel, and Thaumons. Thaumons (Magic B...
I was doing some research on how to design a scientifically possible alien, when I came across an interesting section on metabolism. I found it very interesting and read about the weak force, as op...
Assume Mars has developed an indigenous civilization of its own, perhaps as seen in Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars. Much like Earth, Mars' years and days would be significant for any in...
In a class discussion last week, someone pointed out that a typical core collapse supernova releases $\sim10^{46}\text{ J}$ of energy in the form of (anti-)neutrinos while only radiating $\sim10^{4...
I am looking for some guidance in creating a chemical element. I want to know if it is scientifically plausible for a single fictional element to do all the things I need it to, even if at a stretc...
How could a Faster than light drive be limited to only travelling between different solar systems, and not within a solar system? I don't really want to allow travel between planets in the same sol...
Inspired by the answers to What can I add to an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere to make it unpalatable or poisonous to humans, yet stable and breathable to local creatures?, I am building a planet that ...
I have a roughly Earth-like planet in a solar system some distance from ours. The atmosphere of this planet is largely similar to that of Earth, but particularly, has a somewhat higher oxygen conte...
While this is a hypothetical question, I am actually looking for a 'real-world' answer. This is my first time here, so please let me know if I should ask it somewhere else. So, let's say I am an o...
I'm designing an FTL system for a new universe, and I'm trying to figure how 'plausible-sounding' this thought is. The idea is that space is tangled and twisted in twelve dimensions, so that dista...
In the wake of this, my answer to this question about where to put a Dyson Sphere an apparent issue came up. And it needs some good resolution: What are we going to do with all that heat the syste...
The current world population is around 7 billion living people and 107 billion dead people. Since the population is increasing steadily and faster than ever, I was wondering if we could ever reach ...
For the purposes of this question, "teleportation" refers to Star Trek style teleportation: a body is diassembled in one location, and reassembled with an exact (perfect) replica of the entire cons...
Could a high powered telescope in space (such as the Hubble Telescope) be capable of peering through a large worm hole with enough clarity to detect that a planet is somewhere on the other side? I...
You are probably aware of that certain radioactive things glow, usually a soft green. But is there any way to add compounds or what have you to achieve a different color, say, orange? I know Chere...
I request some help with the design of one particular denizen of my fantasy world, tentatively named Boar Troll. It needs to be an ungulate or closely related creature with emerging sentience, and...
A staple of science fiction is substances like 'durasteel' or 'tritanium', which, through generally unexplained means, have vastly superior material qualities when compared to conventional material...
Far away, across the vastness of space, lies an alien civilization, who are pretty similar to us. They've got ice cream, peer to peer networking, and photography. More importantly, they do lots of ...
Robots (intelligent machines using some form of artificial intelligence), are central to the plot in a snippet I'm working on. These robots do not have to interact with humans on a regular basis: m...
I'm going to use the US model for the simple reason that I'm most familiar with it. Constraints and assumptions In the US, legislative representation is by region (state) and population levels. ...
I'd like to be able to see from my Earth-like planet, a very bright nebula that can even be seen during the daytime. I question, however, whether that is possible, because in order for it to be co...
How can a character explain baryon asymmetry (there is more matter than antimatter) by the universe being a simulation with a slightly imbalanced random number generator being employed at the point...
Water is different from air, and sound waves propagate through water in a different way than they do in air (caused in part by interactions with the bottom of the body of water). For a society livi...
Suppose it was possible to travel to inside the event horizon of a black hole safely. Also suppose said black hole is large enough that the curvature of the horizon of the surface of the central ma...
The setup: Near future (maximum 50 years in future) where "only" thing changed is, that company SpaceX together with NASA and ESA found out, how to get cargo and people to space very cheap USA dec...
We have already discussed how difficult it would be to blow up a planet like Earth, basically deciding that you can't do that with any reasonable amounts of energy. But what if I don't need to blow...
For a species I am working on, there is a specific genetic trait that I want to introduce into the population. The exact nature of either is not important for the purposes of this question, but the...
How would the human body be affected if the oxygen levels on Earth suddenly decreased by 15 percent? This is instant. Not over time. How would we adapt? Would some people die and some not?
This question is a bit of an outgrowth of Can you simply scale up animals?, but it does approach it from a different angle. "All else equal" (which it of course never is, but we're good at pretend...
What kind of a scenario would have to occur in order for human beings to seek survival on the sea floor? It could be man made or natural, ice age or heat apocalypse, sudden disaster or gradual coll...
If a planet always faces the same side to the sun, so that it has a permanent night side and a permanent day side, it will have a twilight zone in between the two sides. This will be a band around ...
We know that planets can have multiple moons, sometimes quite a few (like Jupiter). Assuming that a planet with several moons were habitable in the first place and has significant oceans (greater ...
Is it plausible to assume that the total amount of water (edit: water molecules) on planet earth was, in different periods of earth's history, significantly lower or significantly higher, or rather...
This question is a little nebulous unfortunately and perhaps a bit disturbing. The evil-empire in my WIP captures Mages and breaks them down into loyal and obedient servants. The Mages aren't as d...
In the foreseeable future, a scientific community has discovered an alternate universe in which the solar system centers around a binary system of G-type suns, unlike the one G-type that ours orbit...
Orbital rings are a proposed megastructure intended to dramatically reduce the cost to enter or exit a planetary gravity well. The ring is a solid structure, belting around the planet like a hula h...
Utility fog is a swarm robotics concept in which a mesh of robots barely larger than a grain of pollen (5 micrometer ( $10^{-6} $ m ) bodies and 50 micrometer arms) are dodecahedrons (12 sided pol...
During the summer of 2022 Europe has had several heat waves. As described in 2022 European heat waves: Climatologists linked the extreme heat to the impact of climate change, and experts predict...
If humanity will cause natural dissolution of all ice in planet earth's poles and the sea level would indeed rise tremendously all over the world --- would it be justified to try to "reverse" the s...
