General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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I'm in the early stages of designing a city, and would like some advice about to structure its roads realistically for transport. The city is circular, with large roads entering the city at north...
For a story I am drafting I would like to have droplets of fluid that form another shape than the regular domed droplets we usually see. Is there any other shape such as e.g. a doughnut-shape that ...
Internal mass drivers are a potentially useful space drive, due to the ready availability of reaction mass (you can use anything from spare parts to literal dirt as a propellant, assuming you have ...
In my somewhat hard sci-fi setting I'm thinking of using a high powered microwave weapon as the secondary armament of my ship to supplement the missiles it would carry. I was thinking it would be...
I'm worldbuilding a story, where a famous string theorist hires a student of mathematics to try construct a new theory. For better drama, my premise of the story is that the student never learned m...
I'm currently working on an alien humanoid race that lives on a planet with twice the gravity of earth. Despite this however, the humanoids are about the same size as an average human if not slight...
This is a self-contained follow-up to a different previous question. Based on the answers I got there I've taken a different approach to my original idea, and now want to try using antigravity on ...
It's a major step forward for humanity when they can finally live on a new planet. Maybe they went there out of desperation to survive, or maybe they simply want to explore. Either way, they sudden...
I'm imagining a super-powerful spacefaring race which has the capability to build or modify a star system or even galaxy by moving stars around, but I wonder if it's really feasible. Is it theoret...
As landlubbers, we often let ourselves think that if salty seawater is undrinkable for us, it could be even worse for plants. However, certain types of angiosperms have found ways to not only thri...
In my universe, humans nuked themselves in a war so thoroughly that the Earth has been rendered uninhabitable. As a result, they have to leave Earth and find a new home. They briefly tried to settl...
just as the title, my question is can it possible for a creature that can reproduce with any/all creature despite it was different species/family? (not the alien xenomorph or parasite one/way but r...
Follow-up to this question: Would linear increase of a muscle's dimension increase the power as well? Let's suppose there is a genetically engineered creature that has the abilty to synthesize gr...
I was wondering if a vacuum created within a particular material in the shape of sphere could be used to harvest anti-matter from virtual particles? Within the vacuum, theoretically, virtual parti...
Lets say you have a space ship. This ship will do a lot of maneuvers causing a lot of G forces to go in different directions through the ship. During straight acceleration it pushes the people insi...
Thanks to all who helped me with my first question about how a geocentric system would work! I'm not sure how the moon works in a geocentric model. (This would be a roughly Earth-similar world, t...
In my story, there is a type of bee that releases a pheromone during mating season that is visible at night in brightly lit areas. This is similar to how you can see rain more easily at night if yo...
example image from One piece by Eichiro Oda inspired by this Texas doctors sew man's hand to abdomen to save fingers (i know it actually merge with the abdoment, but the image make it look like ...
A myrmecoleon is a creature with the upper torso of a lion and the rest of the body is like an ant. While it's not probable for a true insect-mammal hybrid to happen naturally, are there any evolu...
I need a huge natural plateau to form but with a slope. There can be some variation, a few hills or even mountains here and there, but the ground needs to be mostly gently sloping north to south. ...
Parallel-Universe Portals A solid material has been discovered that, when shaped into a ring and activated (by lowering its temperature below some critical point, let's say), it forms a parallel u...
In my fictional universe there are two galactic civilizations that have never interacted until recently and thus have developed different cultures, science, etc. From a technological standpoint, o...
In the Land of Metal, there exists a tribe that has upheld the gospel of Manowar with such zeal that it modified their bodies. Metalheads descend from humans, and may look human at a glance. A mor...
Slimes are a common monster we often see in games such as Minecraft, Terraria and Slime Rancher, but it is never explained how such an animal can exist. How could the body of such an animal even ex...
Is it possible for an Earth-like planet to exist where the light reflected by the moon is, not as powerful, but close in intensity to daylight? And if so, what would be necessary for it? A moon mu...
On Earth the planet's magnetic poles line up fairly well with the geographic poles. This makes things like navigation very straightforward as all compasses point to (roughly) the north pole. How...
This question is meant as a reality check on this answer to The land grows evil and corrupted ... but why? Radioactive moon in a nearly geosynchronous orbit. It slowly kills or alters all li...
Imagine we have a sufficiently tall space fountain positioned at either of the Earth's poles, such that the upper station is permanently within view of the sun. A large array of solar panels could ...
Assume we have an Earth-like environment. If a tribe with only early medieval technology were to settle in a mountain environment: What resources would be needed to deal with the elevation, co...
I have a character that can produce electricity. Would he be able to stick to things and move around on walls and ceilings using his electricity power in some way? It would need to be able to suppo...
I have a planet covered with a large shallow ocean, which extends over most of its surface. I want to turn this planet into a great desert, specifically a salty desert (the salts of this desert are...
Generally, when someone uses telekinesis to fly, it's either by riding an object that can be levitated, or by applying the power to their body. Would there be any advantages to alternative techniqu...
On Earth, it's virtually impossible to enumerate all the different cultures and ethnicities that exist, but if you hypothetically categorized every people as occurring with a language, that's rough...
I understand that in order to compress and expand spacetime, an Alcubierre drive would require some sort of "exotic matter" with a negative energy density. Is that sort of exotic matter purely hyp...
I am in the early stages of planning a story called The Four Flamingos of the Apocalypse. The premise is that the Four Horsemen have manifested on the surface of the earth and are tasked with bring...
66 million years ago, the dinosaur empire was in its death throes when its final nail in the coffin came hurtling down from the sky. A clump of rock the size of Mount Everest smashed into the Gulf ...
The goal is to get from Earth to the Outer Solar System, preferably the Kuiper Belt, as quickly as practical, with a crew of about 12, and a not-set-in-stone dry mass around 30 tons. The character...
This is my entry for the fortnightly topic challenge In Day of the Triffids, many people go blind and the basic summary is this: virulent plague makes most of humanity blind giant, semi-intellig...
After receiving answers to this question, I now know that viruses cannot be written in machine code in such a way that they can universally infect all kinds of systems. Every machine has a unique s...
In my world, one of the main methods of transportations is via hot-air balloon. These balloons are propelled by aluminum(or other lightweight metal, it doesn't really matter) steam engines, and the...
So i have been playing around with the idea of a world that due to its orbit (it is both quite a bit away from it's parent star and due to its orbit permanently between two much bigger planets) has...
To preface, my creatures have 4 horns, and they behave very similar to rams (at least ancestrally) in that they headbutt to resolve conflict/create dominance hierarchies. Two smaller horns are abov...
it's my first question here, I'll try to be clear. I'm creating a story where there is a steampunk style civilization that has to face advanced civilizations in planetary and spatial battles. I'm...
Far, far away from the Earth, there is a nebula. An enormous cloud made of 78% nitrogen, 20% oxygen and 2% other non-lethal materials. These gases swirl around a star, and the pressure around it is...
If the immune system of a healthy human just shut down completely and instantly (magic, nanotechnology, whatever), and after a certain time period it went back to normal, how much time without the ...
I previously asked how best to use wormholes for spaceflight, focusing mainly on propulsion in space. I'm now wondering if there's a good way to get off Earth with this ship. The ship needs to be ...
Gas giants can generate heat via the Kelvin-Helmholtz mechanism. It's oft-repeated that Jupiter actually generates more heat internally via this method than it receives from the Sun. Scale this mec...
This is a question for an alien species. Is there anyway to scientifically justify having two separate beings/creatures that depend on each other for life? In other words, two separate bodies tha...
I understand, vaguely, how human voices vary with the overall size/shape of the individual(s vocal chords), and I can use that to make reasonable assumptions about what the voice of non-human fanta...
The square-cube law applies to bodies with the same shape, and require them to be increased/decreased in all three dimensions. If you were to take a cube, with every edge being a long, and expand i...
