General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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In the mythological stories of the Baku, they eat the nightmares of those who call upon it, but if not satisfied they will eat the hopes and dreams of their summoners. Since the visual portion of ...
So I have a humanoidish race of creatures that don't have clavicles and gives them more mobility of their arms/ hyper mobility. While ik about the Cleidocranial dysostosis, the birth defect or muta...
I have the tables explaining time dilation for a single ship at different relativistic speeds, but am unsure how to modify that to work out for two ships at different velocities, and the two differ...
Warning lots of text ahead. The fluff: The story uses a Catastrophe Inhibitor (CatIn) to stop nukes, orbital bombardment and other such weapons from being the go-to method of defeating everything...
We are in the future in northern North America (U.S or Canada). The land has "risen" (or more accurately, filled in) with several hundred feet of earth and sand and silt so that a modern city will ...
For this question, the word 'metals' does not refer to elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. It instead refers to metals as defined by the periodic table of elements. After researching the ab...
So I had this idea of a world with an ocean sized pool of super hard glass that formed millions of years ago on this planet. I started to think of the implications of something like that: In some...
inspired by this question Wearing vs Growing Clothes and this link medical news today Chemical peels A chemical peel involves applying a chemical solution to wrinkly areas, causing the ...
If a human /human shaped creature were to have a horn, horns or crest on their head, what shape, positioning and number of horns would be the best for the most damage? The human will be very muscu...
Deserts are known to be hot and dry places. In my desert, I need a high humidity in the air. It doesn't have to be near the ground, but at least the atmosphere below 1 km should have a layer of hig...
Having read previous questions on radio wave communication on biological creatures would it make sense for race of alien creatures to have developed dish like bone structures for radio wave communi...
A radical shift in the Earth's orbit has made the Earth much colder, with all the oceans freezing over, and the atmosphere liquifying and falling as rain. Humans live deep underground in areas of h...
Pretty simple (in theory that is) question for one of my worlds. I heard carbon fluorides are intense greenhouse gases but otherwise harmless and didn't lead to large issues (atleast none that I co...
Animals on planets are so 20th century - let's herd us some space animals! In this story I have the need to move a herd of pesky space animals. They like Suns for their juicy solar energy and hydr...
What are the most important factors in determining how fast technology progresses? And roughly how fast might that be under optimal circumstances? Innovations have to be dreamed up, but there mus...
These creatures have the ability to see all possible outcomes within their vicinity within the next 30 minutes or so. This is not the same as foreknowledge that they have no choice over. Even if ...
Inspired by One Piece by Eichiro Oda. from https://onepiece.fandom.com/wiki/Nikyu_Nikyu_no_Mi Fiction has many examples of humanoid animals - things like lycans or werewolves, cat/dog/rabbit fo...
I've thought of a super-earth with 30% higher gravity, a denser atmosphere, which facilitate the willing suspension of belief for my giant fireflies that terrorize the local humanoids. Due to the h...
The wizards of Magitechia have discovered that the deflagration or detonation of certain chemical compounds have beneficial supernatural effects, that are useful for powering magical apparatuses. A...
Creating a map of Koppen climate zones for a very Earth-like world is quite easy, with the right instructions. However, what if the climate is several degrees cooler? Do I simply shift all the clim...
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...
I am wondering about Tatooine, and was reading about binary systems here, which provided a lot of good basic food for thought. My specific question is not addressed at that link, and so I pose it h...
Stars are born through the fusion of light atoms and the star's nucleus. So let's say that as a star is being born, the nucleus split and creates two stars. Could this even happen? If so, would the...
Imagine a spacefaring creature, one that colonises star systems, and then shoots some of its kind on to another system (the mechanism for doing this doesn't matter). The question is, how could thi...
I was thinking of an alien humanoid charcter for my super powered beings story that would be completely black and faceless with similarities to venom and its strings of symbiotic goo but this chara...
If Earth instantaneously reverted back to when the only organisms were small microscopic creatures in the sea, would evolution happen the same exact way creating the same animals and species? Was c...
Say 200-300 years in the future, humankind has colonized much of the solar system, using a combination of laser thermal drives and solid-core nuclear rockets (fusion never really panned out). Sudd...
Is there a realistic way that a Charybdis-like creature could evolve? Starting with roughly earth-like biology, what is the closest plausible creature to the mythical Charybdis that could exist? ...
My planet is frequently set with thick fog. What is the best way to have its residents see accurately? One species called Hell Fires fall from the sky, landing on top of prey and killing it. How...
This question about eating on a alien world got me thinking.... Would it be easier for humans to colonise a world with existing life, or one which was biologically dead? For the living world, let...
The illustrations of O'Neill cylinders I have come across with so far allow unrestricted view through the whole tube. Some are more playful with topography but still, there is a visible end. Are t...
So for a thought experiment I came up with the idea of a species that uses wheels for locomotion, sort of inspired by a species shown in His Dark Materials. Under what circumstances would such a sp...
Assume a location which is heavily polluted with dust of several types of elemental metals (copper, silver, nickel, cobalt etc) or their respective oxides and salts (whatever is stable in humidity ...
Set in the near future, the interior of the spaceship is coated with thin layers of Teflon approximately 10mm average thickness on top of titanium alloy which in case you are wondering it is weakly...
Say you have some way of seeing somewhere between a microsecond to 0.1 seconds into the future, or at least the most likely future. Is it possible,through something like a flip-book effect or some ...
If people were attempting to build a space station beyond the Hill Sphere, (outside of the area where Earth's gravity dominates), and wanted to mine the raw materials for the station from dwarf pla...
Rules: No magic Eat, drink, and breathe air (mammal/reptile(amphibian ok)) Intelligent life form (no jellyfish or single-celled organisms) No artificial hearts (unless really ingenious, no swappi...
The probe in my mind is unmanned, with a super-reflective surface to deflect most of the energy from the Sun on all wave length, only absorb enough to power its operation. Please also elaborate i...
In my world, electricity has not yet been discovered, and many advancements in society progress on a purely chemical or mechanical basis. Lasers are incredibly useful and multifaceted tools, and I...
So as most of you probably know, cows don't produce milk all year round for no reason, they need to be pregnant and then you gotta do something with the calves"¦ Now in my story that has an ecosys...
I initially assumed my world was going to be pure fantasy, but the more I think about it, the more I consider having the story take place somewhere on Earth, either as alternate history or the far ...
May be the wrong site, but researching for a writing project... What effect would there be on a group of humans living in a lightless and cramped environment (assume underground) for nearly 800 yea...
I imagine a biological creature, let's call it 'Marco' for now. Marco can vomit living slimes that survive by attaching to the ground and by doing photosynthesis, at first soft can be shaped and...
Although a question about how large a living thing could be has been asked and answered, would a being such as Mogo from DC's Green Lantern series be possible? Mogo is the size of Earth roughly ...
Assume Earth biochemistry, a thicker atmosphere (1.7 atm) with 22% oxygen and 0.6g. (not sure if conditions really matter, though) How would a lion-sized, quadruped, land-based, intelligent preda...
I want to have a species based on humans, where everyone is born as female, but switches gender to male later in their life. Assuming that transformation takes 4 years (*) hermaphrodite is born as ...
In this world, elves developed along similar lines of homo sapiens, with some major differences that allow for a small metamorphic ability. Their epidermis, the outermost layer of skin, can be shap...
For this question, I was inspired by the following image of the "Jupiter Abyss": What I want to know is, can a Jupiter-like gas giant have thousands of giant black storms, kind of like what I've...
The planet is huge roughly four times the size of earth, with lots of hydrogen in its atmosphere (group A water in Hydrogen out, B water out.) it is also very humid. what do I do to have giant Stor...
In my pre-electricity world, fast communication is achieved by means of lighthouses, each being able to direct strong and precise beams of light towards distantly visible lighthouses. However a pr...
