General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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Imagine a race of humanoid alien living somewhere in the universe evolves weird sensory organ which can only picks up frequency of light ranging from 800MHz up to 2.5GHz which is in the microwave s...
My world is a satellite of a gas giant. It has an atmosphere and is mostly covered by water (the percentage of water to its surface is somewhere in the high 80s-low 90s). Its rotation period is 28 ...
I want to write a story taking place on the natural satellite of a gas giant, with said satellite being massive enough to prevent, or at least strongly deter, space travel, such that the resources ...
is it possible for certain creatures that can use infrasound or even vibrations as a defense mechanism, like: - causing them to get a severe headache or even weaken them - temporarily stunning its ...
I'm building a world with cities of extremely different technological capabilities. One has a monopoly on gunpowder and one has complete understanding of the magic system in the world. The only t...
I am trying to make three neighbouring countries with varying climates. One country needs to basically be Arizona (Especially like the Monument Valley area with the red sand and those iconic butte...
This, ladies and gentlemen, is Melalo, described in the Book of Creatures website as "the oldest and most feared of Ana's children." His name literally means "filthy", "dirty" or even "obscene"....
Say there's an in-universe weapon so odd looking that it is rumored to have been stained by the blood of a "holy" mortal, so much so that no amount of water can wash it away. Is there a chance hu...
Given a world where a human-like brain is synthetizable, I wonder: A human-like artificial brain would most likely crave sensorial overwhelm. Pleasure to humans is something deeply associated with...
So, there's this guy, Null, named after his ability that allows him to send any action, a person makes, into /dev/null. Basically, he can "No, you didn't" any attack. That's okay, but then comes h...
I've been thinking about this the whole day. At first I thought it was an easy fix, given my dragon's bones have a tensile strength of 3-6.5 GPa and an elastic modulus of 50-140 GPa, depending on t...
An intelligent creature who's natural life span is around 50 years in which they need to feed to not die of starvation after which they naturally die. But killing other beings of their own species...
How effective or possible would flying machines that are not powered by a machine be on a flat plain? I have a setting where much of the world is a relatively flat grassland, and the people have n...
A strange concept which I came up with after realizing that vampires, werewolves and zombies are basically created by an infection from a virus. This has lead me to brainstorm how I could make a mo...
This is a submission for the Anatomically Correct Series The orang pendek is a cryptid that reportedly inhabits remote, mountainous forests on the island of Sumatra (likely evolving from orangutan...
How would it switch between if endothermic and ectothermic and in between and how would it be able to create different temperature in specific areas in the body?
Assumptions: Jupiter's moon Europa has a salty subsurface ocean in contact with a rocky mantle. The ocean is populated by hydrothermal vents produced by tidal heating. Global heat flow is similar...
In the story I'm writing, a group of African penguins evolved to be fully upright (instead of having their knees bent like modern penguins). Now some basic characteristics of these "erect pengu...
Ok so my creature will look like this They're not big, about 2 feet tall. They're technically amphibians but have the scaly hide of a reptile. They live near the sea. Their life cycle is simila...
I don't fully understand the mechanisms behind an ice cap that contains all the water in the oceans. Just to be specific, I have a planet that resembles Mars, i.e. desert at the equator, ice at pol...
Apart of the Anatomically Correct Series Vanara The Vanara is a group of people who lives in the forest in the Hindu epic "Ramayana." In there, it describes them as human-like, with reference to...
Lets say an alien trickster wants to trick a group of human astronauts into thinking they've been transported to another world far away. But in reality, he wants them to stay on good old Earth, thr...
I am writing a novel where a habitable moon orbits a purple gas giant. In looking here and elsewhere I'm finding it incredibly hard to get a sense of the elements-breakdown of elements that would b...
It's something that's been used several times as a plot device on Star Trek, notably in the TOS episode "The Tholian Web", and the TNG episodes "The Next Phase" and "The Pegasus". I'm certain it's ...
Is there a feasible setup where the Sun has expanded enough to make the Earth uninhabitable, but some of the other rocky bodies in our solar system (past Earth) become more reasonable colonisation ...
I apologize if I continuously ask different questions about different concepts for stories. It's just that I can never make up my mind on what to write, and sometimes, my ideas change. But anyway...
A little snippet from my story idea, for some context- "The Earth Government Collapses, caused by the cutoff of resources from the Colonies. Large-Scale war soon erupts, with Nuclear Weapons being...
The crafts would have to contain large farms in order to sustain the immense amount of people, and they'd obviously have to be large and spacious to have good living conditions. I did some research...
I'm designing a creature that is supposed to be able to eat "basically anything", within the realm of plausibility for what is essentially an organic creature. Its digestive system can be as compli...
There are three "worlds" in this setting: Heaven, Hell and Midgard, Midgard being Earth and the entire Milkyway galaxy. When a demon or an angel enters Midgard, they can't just walk there, as they...
It's common to see "ice beams" that are able to freeze enemies or objects. Freezing a large object solid takes time, so most freeze rays aren't practical or logical, especially after factoring in d...
Ecosystems like the african savanna have lots of megafauna which to some extent compete with each other for the same prey/vegetation, but still coexist just fine. So how do I construct similarly d...
In the game Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, characters wear exoskeletons with an ability called "land assist", which allows them to slow down their fall using a jet of compressed air (or some speci...
Premise/question Correct me if I'm wrong, or if humans have terraformed the planet by the time you're reading this, but Mars is mostly desert-like. It has large ice caps which contain most of its ...
I'm thinking about a design like this generation ship, which obviously has spin gravity. Would the fact that the ship is rotating affect the use of a magnetic sail? The magnetic sail as a sort of...
So I'm pretty new to chemistry and all this, but my world involves superpowers, which of course involves immense energy to have the characters use these powers. However, I want to stay consistent w...
Could people with Iron Age technology possibly dig large holes in volcanic rock on the edges of a lave tube system. Would this be an effective way to run a trade business or to live in an undergro...
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...
Would the principles at work in the theoretical Alcubierre warp drive apply to a slower-than-light starship? I'm building a setting in which FTL communication and travel is impossible, (due to vio...
In the distant future, humanity has encountered, made peace and wars with countless advanced civilizations, but one civilization that still baffles them, is the race of intelligent centipedes. The...
If it were possible to build a giant geodesic dome tens of miles in diameter, what effect would it have on nearby weather? If built in an arid climate like the Sahara or Australia, would it be li...
I want to write a story about a thought experiment that I have on the other day : What kind of catastrophe will happen if an asteroid, let just say about 70 meters in diameter, penetrated Earth's a...
In some birds especially owls, we can observe a structure called facial disk, which is mainly composed of feathers and helps to direct sound to their ears. While being more common in owls, adding u...
Leviathans are closely related to hydrophis spiralis. Some characteristics of these leviathans include: continuing to grow until they die and are able to grow almost as large as a blue whale are ...
So, in the S.S Portland (The main setting of my story) there is a variety of rooms. A lounge, a lab, etc. so, i was thinking that at some point, the lounge would be changed out for a 0-g pool. A ba...
I'd like to create a land-based mammal that uses its electricity NOT for navigation or hunting, but only as a defense (enough to stun creatures approximately its own size or marginally larger, with...
Time is not a constant, Albert Einstein proved that much. Time dilation is a difference in the elapsed time measured by two clocks, either due to them having a velocity relative to each other, or b...
Leaving aside the matter of how well would humans fare on the surface of Mercury (we only have to factor in the weight of their life support: air, water, food and spacesuits), and assuming material...
Nurgle comes from the Warhammer 40K universe, he is described as being the lord of plague or the god of diseases, decay, and destruction. I will, however, take away his god like attributes, and tr...
I read a theory once which stated that the natural pain, sickness and general discomfort that humans can experience during sex, pregnancy, and childbirth help control the human population by discou...
