General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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The question may seem stupid but for someone with both a fear of heights and a collapse anxiety can choose renting/buying an apartment in a very horizontally wide building and a very vertically wid...
In all my reading about laser treatments I always found laser treatments which can be applied either for hair removal or for scar flattening (or other unique uses) but I never came across a laser t...
Is a colony on earth's moon must be deeply underground to ensure more natural gravity (by getting closer to its core) as well as more natural heat? By natural heat I mean "without the need of arti...
My friends and I are building a world with a 50 mile high volcano on it. The mountain is the result of some bored god deciding to play a joke on everyone. Or, some other god got angry and decided ...
A global epidemic of H1Z2 virus has rendered 95% of the population into zombies. The zombies have lost most of their frontal and temporal lobes so the following capabilities are either severely de...
The Demonstration You're a rich, successful CEO/capitalist working in the electronics business. Your R&D division is exceptional and routinely fabs state of the art processors at bleeding edg...
Oh yes, it's Artifact Time! with Best Dad and Ozen the Immovable! If you watched Hairy Plotter and the Gas Chamber of Secrets, you probably remember the scene where the Horcrux of Adolf Hitler is ...
I have this creatures which were hiding underground for millennia. They are, from the beginning of their history, exclusively nocturnal. They emerged back on surface after moon disappeared (irrel...
In my world slimes are intelligent creatures of various sizes which can take the shape of anything they like and change color to camouflage. A slime can camouflage as floor , as a box, a snake or...
In the story I'm creating, a major weapon type of humanity will be Antimatter based weaponry. This is a fairly new technology, as antimatter production facilities have just reached the size and cap...
I have a really good question. Could it be possible for complex life to have existed in the Precambrian? I'm aware that only the fossilized remains of bacteria have been discovered from that time p...
Solitary humanoids aren't uncommon in works of fantasy/cryptozoology with Bigfoot coming to mind. What I want to know is What evolutionary pressures would lead to solitary humanoids? Some character...
As the title: I want to know what kind of organs or modifications need for plants like tree to gain energy from lightning or electricity (and still fine or safe or alive of course). Since I have a...
So, I've decided that in my fantasy fiction, I want to have Megabara riders. Massive Capybaras, being ridden into a battle. I've done some basic research and I came across this extinct species tha...
My creature looks like a Psittacosaurus, with spikes all around its body, it hisses and uses its tail whip as a first. As last resort it will squirt an aimed stream of blood from its eyes toward it...
In the story I'm writing, Earth gets destroyed and the few million humans that survive go to live on another Earth-like planet. Since the destruction of the planet, the humans do visit their star...
I am building a setting that is essentially steampunk,being exact it would be pneumatic punk. What electronics and electronic equivalent exists, are primitive and extremely expensive. Thus the majo...
I am currently writing the world, setting and characters for a project of mine called the ORION Project - a story set in a dystopian America in the near future of 2050, where the government has tak...
Could a creature use lightning (or any other source of electricity) as a sole energy source, and not need to eat? Would any additional organs be needed to store or use the electricity? I have a ra...
In an alternate Earth, early or midway in the Eocene Epoch, there debuted a family of angiosperm trees whose roots need to be completely submerged. As a result, the limit is that they can't germin...
I've been trying to make a penguin-like humanoid race for a pretty long time now. I want to make them as realistic as possible. And I know such creatures could not exist in the real world, but I w...
Assume my kaiju is around 200 feet tall, weighs around 4,000 US tonnes and resembles a large lobster with two giant claws for its front legs and long spindly limbs with tiny pincers on the ends for...
I want to know is there a recreational drug that specifically affect reptiles, either natural or man made chemicals. Humans and if possible other animals species should not be affected by it even i...
A federation of alien spacefaring nations is doing basically the opposite of prime directive: they are jamming the Solar System, preventing us from leaving it. They are doing so by placing some de...
I have a number of alien species from different planets with gravity between 0.5g and 1.75g and I wanted to have groups of each of the species to exist together in a space habitat. As pointed out t...
you know a jaw or mouth where the jaw full of teeth fully rotate like a drill or gear to shred their food or prey, usually show often in worm type of monster (my question is not necessary to be wor...
Velvet mites are some of the largest mites in the world, with species in the genus Dinothrombium reaching 12 mm in length (absolutely massive for a mite). What is the largest possible size a velvet...
Many animals have the ability to see polarized light (or rather, are sensitive to the direction of polarization), most notably birds and bees but also a wide range of other animals including cephal...
First things first, a little backstory: Sometime between the Paleocene and Eocene epochs, there was a mysterious, sudden, dramatic rise in global temperature. This moment in time was known as the...
Could a planet with the size and characteristics of the Earth orbit a gas giant and would the earth-like moon be able to maintain its orbit if the gas giant went rogue and was launched from its hos...
In my alternative universe, Atlantis was a real city that existed, although it wasn't called Atlantis or founded by humans. Atlantis or rather, Dosham was a city on an isolated landmass in the nort...
I know things like flashlight fish exist; things with luminescence and all that. But how strong could the light be? I have this cave dwelling species with three eyes except the middle one isn't ex...
(or some other Lesser Canyon) I'm playing with story ideas for a videogame that takes place in the post-post-apocalyptic US. Everything is overrun with monsters and ocean horrors and whatnot, you'...
This was an idea for a flashback as I pick up my story around 100 trillions years from now at the point where star formation is ceasing and the red dwarf and stellar remnant era begins. Now living ...
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...
Mass of star: 0.75 M☉ Radius of star: 0.69 R☉ Surface temperature of star: 4,620° K Luminosity of star: 0.2 L☉ Satellites: 2 Place in solar system: 2nd Mean radius: 8,725.1 km Mass: 2...
With the emergence of cyanobacteria on earth 3.5 billion years ago, the shift from a reducing to an oxidizing atmosphere began. "The atmospheric O$_\textrm{2}$ levels (in PAL; i.e., normalized to ...
In a humanoid mammal, say 15-20 feet tall, how would the brain, heart, reproductive organs, facial feature and other attributes scale up? In very large mammals, the brain seems to be comparatively ...
Ray-finned fishes have a variety of interesting and complex jaw structures. Here is the skeleton of an anglerfish Here is the skull of another actinopterygian I am designing a large (roughly...
The setting is fifty-five million years in the future on Earth, with multiple humanoid species that have different ancestors, but share similar characteristics. Their ancestors would be animals tha...
In the late 23rd century certain groups of mankind stared down the barrel of what may be possible in the future: cross galactic relativistic kill missile storms, gamma-ray Dyson Beams, Kugelblitz b...
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...
This is a small arrow shaped creature that can fly without wings. Can it use electromagnetism to fly? Or maybe something to do with ions? Or however ufos are theorized to work? I'm not quite sure...
So, I am dealing with a certain trouble that I'll need a help with. In my fantasy story, there is artificially formed species (magically created, but non-magic anatomy rules apply) of "humanized" ...
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...
Im writing a story about a boy in the year 2033 that is immune to a zombie like virus (world war z like zombies) and when he is bitten instead of turning into a brain dead zombie/infected his body ...
This is a follow up question to Sky of Earth and Seas of Sky I have a medieval fantasy setting where people live in a vast expanse of giant caves contained in a sort of giant Stanford torus. This...
The largest eye in the world belongs to the giant squid, which has eyes up to 27 cm in diameter (some reports from the 1800s say 40 cm). Extinct ichthyosaurs also had very large eyes, 20-30 cm in d...
I'm writing a short story where a group of explorers found a mysterious cave in a remote jungle , Inside the cave they find strange paintings of spirals resembling portals , after exiting the myste...
Most arthropods have at least six legs. Some mites have four and some insects have none, but for the most part, they have six or more. What would the anatomy of a large quadrupedal arthropod be li...
