General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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One way of creating artificial gravity is acceleration- gravity by inertial mass. So in theory, if we would find a way to travel interstellar space by accelerating, reaching near light speed, woul...
I've plans for somewhat 'realistic' (and that's already quite a stretch of the word) superhuman characters whose muscles have the strength, density, and tensile strength that can stop most low-powe...
I'm building a world with humans being genetically engineered species, created by certain advanced Alien civilization ("gods", Creators etc ...) like in the Sumerian hypothesis, but with a twist: t...
I was certain somebody would have asked this before, but after scrolling through the Similar questions list I couldn't find any duplicates. For this question, let's say that an asteroid or comet s...
One of my main problems when it comes to drawing maps is how landmasses get distorted at different points. One of the continents in my story stretches almost to the north pole, but it looked very d...
We had a long discussion in my office about this - if we were in a smallish 500m diameter O'Neil cylinder would hot air balloons work?
I'm looking to know about minerals that space miners can extract from other planet surfaces or directly from asteroids. Something that Earth as a planet may need in the future.
If a space station were to be built in the outer solar system, is there an asteroid beyond Jupiter with a ratio of rare earth elements high enough to make it worthwhile to mine for the rare earth e...
I see that asteroid mining had already been extensively discussed in the context of today's technology (Ex. Is Asteroid Harvesting economic?) and the answer is a definitive "No" - it's not economic...
WARNING PROBABLY CONTAINS DISGUSTING STUFF So base of my previous question about will there complication to the body, especially the guts, if basically a single Senzu bean make a person never need...
I'm writing a sci-fi story with some fantasy elements, and I'm trying to keep even the most outrageous moments grounded in the laws of our universe. This is one of those moments. The Situation ...
I'm thinking about underground humanoid cvilisation without knowledge about outside world and how could they have eyes? Known fact is that a lot of animal living in dark don't need eyes. (cave or...
For some reason, all the nations in the world have banded together. Their goal? Go to the Moon. Their budget? As much as the planet and humans can throw at it. How fast could we build a reliable a...
The Ozoa are a peculiar race. They are native to a large gas giant similar to Saturn and physically look similar to what we would call "jellyfish". Within their "head" the Ozoa contain a lifting ga...
Fact 1: The cause of a sunset is from the angle of the sunlight, because the amount of scattering increases as the light passes through more and more of the atmosphere. Fact 2: Higher frequency ...
First let me say that I know almost nothing but the basics about nuclear fission. I know more about nano robotics but I've got no degree in the matter, just a rather in depth curiosity and a lot of...
God had decided that humanity as a species is an overall disappointment. After wiping out all life with a flood, he decided to start from scratch. Humanity's new environment would be constantly cha...
How different would a human-like creature be in order to need only half the calorie consumption that we need? Constraints: The species must be capable of surviving in an Earth-like planet. The d...
We are developing a game setting and, while discussing certain aspects of the it, have stumbled upon our inability to adequately account for some phenomena due to our lack of knowledge. The thing i...
One popular theory to explain how Earth got its water is that it was delivered by asteroid/comet/etc. The form this theory usually takes is that many small impacts occured over a long time, each d...
It is inspired by this furry trout. I mean fish (not necessary to be a trout), not aquatic mammals, and real fur, not from fungi or mold (or looks like fur because of the dead cell, like Mirapinna...
I'm trying to think of ways that a humanoid civilization, post-agrarian with solid mechanical knowledge but no electronics, can communicate in near real-time over large distances. Some of my init...
I've quite a few alien species that utilize a non-food-based metabolism (one of them being nuclear power). Does a species that has a metabolism not based-on plants or meat (such as using nuclear ...
I have seen Isaac Arthurs video of O'Neill cylinders and read through many descriptions, but it still is not clear to me how exaclty the two counter-rotating cylinders are placed in regard to anoth...
I'm making a Region of a planet with very high humidity, mostly covered in fog at ground level. I am open to having seasonal changes and would like there to be a few sunny days lets say 1 out of 15...
On Earth, civilization grew up around river valleys. Rivers are useful as a water source, a food source, and a waste disposal system, but their most important function to a civilization is enabling...
There's an important aspect of my headworld involving volcanoes which I planned many years ago. Recently I revisited this concept to refine it further, only to run into a few questions that I've b...
Suppose a two-storey timber cottage has been left unoccupied for 15 to 20 years. The entire structure is wooden, including all beams and supports, with a rammed earth foundation. It's situated with...
The idea of a planet where ammonia replaces water as the dominant liquid in the environment is quite popular in science fiction. I tried to develop a scenario where these kind of oceans are plausib...
Laws that must not be broken and/or worked around: Conservation of energy Conservation of mass Square cube law Thermodynamics No FTL Essentially, I'm trying to make a character with similar abilit...
Hydrogen and oxygen gases can be combined to form water and a lot of heat. As with many exothermic reactions, the heat from this process can provide activation energy to the reaction of more H2 wit...
In a world where the development of internal combustion engines had been seriously delayed (for whatever reason), would it have been possible to power heavier than air aircraft by steam propulsion?...
This is a follow up question to one that I made earlier. Basically, after God wiped out all life after the flood, earth has changed into a lush but dangerous environment. Every living thing, from ...
Thanks for taking a moment to help me understand the feasibility of this scenario. Essentially, what I am looking at is an Earth-like world that would be between 1.3x and 1.6x the mass of our own ...
So, I have been watching a lot of flat-earth debunking videos on YouTube, which has tickled my world-building bone. So, I'm imagining a world with a sphere of sunlight-level luminosity hanging rela...
How many moons would be required to induce almost continual tidal pull to create a near constant tidal riptides?
Aye so, so I been thinking about the square cube law and such and I was wondering if say, for a humanoid or a human or some creature, to be larger than average but keep similar proportions to the o...
Say there is a plant-based toxin that causes what is essentially a state of deep sedation but has no other real effects. In this world there is one animal that is immune to this toxin (the plant is...
Finally, I have done it. I have bought a large and beautiful four bladed windmill. A smock mill to be precise, really high and all functional. There is the whole ancient machinery in it, completely...
this video surprisingly has some similar properties i try to make and better at explaining the science properties (without me knowing the science stuff before) warning!! don't watch the video when...
There's iridium-based blood called Chloro-carbonyl-bis(triphenylphosphine)-iridium that's effective at transporting hydrogen alongside oxygen. What I want to know is that, are there other metal-ba...
How could a vertebrate animal evolve for extended flight before evolving land adaptations? Is that even possible at all? By extended flight, I mean breathing air and spending most of their time in...
My planet (I'll call it $P$ for practical reasons) is 2 AU from the Sun, a distance in which it receives 25 % of the sunlight that Earth receives. This can be estimated with the Inverse Square Law:...
My world has giant geysers. The height of these geysers oscillates over a cycle of 3 or so days. Things you need to know: 1. There is an unknown force in the core of the planet, which exerts pres...
Far in the future technology has evolved to the point that humanity is able to try and terraform something in our solar system. The moon is out, since it's too close to earth and therefore to risk...
The organisms in the oxygen based ecosystem we have today is perfectly adapted to each other. The ocean is filled with water, and on land it falls from the sky. Plants, algae and cyanobacteria spli...
The fixedness of body plans varies widely across different types of Earthling organisms. At one extreme, you have things like tardigrades, for which every individual of any given species has exactl...
Why and how could an organism evolve to make its bones or exoskeleton out of a UTH (Ultra High Temperature) ceramic like TiB2, WC, B4C, or TaHfC? Is it even possible?
This is strictly Earth based. Would it be possible for a society to develop their own civilization underwater (nothing fantastical like Aquaman or whatever, but more of a grimy, hardscrabble existe...
(maybe this should be part of the "anatomically correct" series. If so, feel free to edit accordingly, as I don't know how to add it to that list) Could a roughly human sized, human weight, biped...
