General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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So, as one of the many, many consequences of modern day humanity being given access to a runic magic system by an unknown party, nearly the entire human race discovers one morning that they've been...
I have a group of ecoterrorists who want to limit the amount of CO2 the world puts out in a drastic way: by poisoning oil fields so that the oil becomes unuseable, or at least forever uneconomical ...
I am starting a theorycrafting thread in a video game forum. It deals with the creation of a Hegemony created by the descendants of a colony ship that was cut off from returning to Earth (wormhole ...
If an advanced race builds a Dyson Swarm comprised of millions of habitats and billions of solar collectors orbiting a star, and then are completely and inexplicably all killed with minimal damage ...
The Wikipedia page on sewer gas states that Sewer gas can be used as a power source, thus reducing the consumption of fossil fuels. However, no references or further details are provided. So, s...
Context I have been thinking about the Pip Boy device from the Fallout series of videogames. It is a portable, wearable computer that can gather a lot of data about the user. It looks like this: ...
Imagine a world that does not rotate in its axis, the planet is not tidally locked so no half is hotter or colder than other. For example the planet does not rotate because it is in a binary sistem...
Recently I've been imagining living on a terraformed Venus in a distant future. I've a pretty good idea of how this can be done, having gone through many articles on how to terraform venus, so my q...
In an alternate universe, we have a spot in the Orion Arm where we have nine Earth-like planets orbiting three red giants. Judging from the size and luminosity of each star, it's been conferred ...
What would it take for humans to survive on mars, without shelters, akin to the Martian, in terms of genetic engineering? Is it even remotely viable, or would some mechanical assistance (oxygen tan...
In a certain star system, Star B orbits Star A. Planet C lies in between the two stars and also orbits Star A. Planet C and Star B share an orbital period, and are at roughly the same places in tha...
Say we're in a world where it is possible to tinker with biology as easily as it is to tinker with programming nowadays. For feasibility, refer to How soon will tinkering with biology be as simple ...
Planet: earth like, half the radius of earth, gravity is .7g. Assuming this is possible and humans live on this planet, would it be possible to have 90% of the planets surface area be under water?...
How could an organic, plant-like, intelligent organism move around space? Assuming that the body is inside a small meteoroid and that outside of the meteoroid is covered in tessellating leaves to...
A thought experiment that I would like to work into a story. Need to basically know the tipping point of such an event happening. Assumption: The being is starting from a small size and is still a...
I'm building the world of my story for my comics and I've come to a bit of a standstill with a particular idea. Assuming there were no other planets in our universe, just a single planet Earth. ...
If I genetically modified a human to have a foxtail of roughly 1 metre length through the use of handwaved genetical engineering - would this have an effect on his diet? Of course an additional ap...
If a planet were to have a gravitational acceleration of .7g, how different would it be from walking on earth, assuming this is not someone born outside of earth. Would it be a slight bounce in you...
Would a "working deer" living in cities with hard paved or cobbled stone ground need "deershoes"? The deer are mainly used for light work: no heavy lifting or pulling. Would unchanged deer feet an...
If germs from the past was brought to the present/future on a person (or by some other means of transportation) and we have immunity to its descendants, like the modern germs for example, would we ...
There lives in a desert a large nomad culture, composed of many tribes who wander about herding camels, goats and sheep, trading and offering services to cities and towns, and occasionally raiding ...
It is a known fact that magnesium is a very important part of photosynthesis and chlorophyll. I have looked everywhere to try to find out this question but I have never really gotten a solid answer...
In my world, there is a forest of giant trees on both poles. The trees create a canopy that is perpetually covered in ice. This frozen canopy extends so high that it supports a "land" of frozen clo...
Say you've got a space-faring civilization that needs a LOT of power. Sure, fusion is a thing, but there's really not that much helium-3 to be found in our solar system, and it's hard to get. So ...
Form follows function, or that's how the saying goes. Which isn't true for some things. That is to say, a large reason why humans use a base 10 numbering system is because we have 10 fingers, not t...
inspire by xenomorph acid blood from alien movies. so the water either rivers, lakes, and oceans in my world or some of the regions is highly acidic because some of the dirt or stone minerals cont...
So I've been working on a low magic world where magic is actually just another form of energy that can be actualized, similar to alchemy in Full Metal Alchemist. Although development has taken a di...
I was hypothesizing an organism that could create it's own fire with the use of a flamethrower-like organ. I was thinking that this animal has a oxygen-free organ that hold diethylzinc and when the...
The year of this planet is 1,000 earth-days-long around its star, and its night lasts half a year. Can it support life such as Earth? With humans and lush forests and liquid water and good tempe...
I know A LOT of this gonna be a stretch and that I'm probably misunderstanding or exaggerating current real-life trends in science, but that's kind of why I'm asking the question. We know it's poss...
The popular image of a mermaid is a half-fish, half-human creature breathing fine above and below the surface. The only real-life analogy to this are the amphibians - frogs, toads and salamanders. ...
Technological approaches to refrigeration tend to involve either high compression ratios of fairly exotic (from a biochemical point of view, anyway) volatile substances, or high-power, low-efficien...
In my novel, my main character has come from earth to a fantasy world. She has been reborn on an island of giants (10-meter tall humanoids) where everything is scaled up to match what they would lo...
Consider a large flat disc, at least two thousand miles in diameter. It is thin and has comparatively little weight or mass, but it is also opaque and does not let any light through. This flat di...
For my question, I was wondering the idea of a creature that needed to be visually seen by Humans or else, if no sight on it by a human being has been made then it can only last for 24 Hours. I w...
I've been trying to answer this question for a premise involving a cyborg being out of touch with modern civilization for a prolonged period of time, and the roadblock I keep hitting is that counte...
I want to describe a world where one doesn't know how long the day will be. It can be anywhere between 18 and 30 Earth-hours. Would such days be possible in our reality?
So I have been doing a lot of reading on space elevators/tethers for a SciFi book I am writing and unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of info on building one on Mars rather than Ear...
Strange title I know, but you'll understand why quickly. I wanted to use a black hole to create absurd amounts of power for hopefully obvious reasons (kind of useful). The problem with natural lar...
Despite the wide variety of movement strategies employed by Earthling animals, up to an including curling their bodies into circles and rolling, there is one mode of locomotion that is glaringly mi...
Is it possible for life to evolve"” and survive"” on a planet that is regularly hit by [relatively small"” usually no more than a few feet across when they make an impact] meteorites? If so, what e...
Would it be possible to use a living organism as unobtainium for interstellar travel? Would it make any sense? The story I had in mind would use them as the main bad guys seeking vengeance on thos...
The basis for this question is the selected answer for Plausibility of Mushroom Buildings. Prototaxites and braket fungus are the likely candidates but I want to know if this type of fungis can flo...
In this world, time travel is possible, but the only thing that can be sent back in time are thoughts. From the perspective of your past self, you suddenly one moment realize that you have "memorie...
I am currently working in a "fantasy" world without any kind of magic and I thought of a race with different skeleton color (blackish in particular but I want to know in general). I am not well ver...
So let's consider a species of blind, sea dwelling, squid-like aliens. They are sentient, intelligent and highly social. As their societies develop and their available knowledge increases they req...
The year: Sometime a long time from now The place: Mars Little Bobby Colonist is going to play out in sand dunes beyond the edge of the domed city where he lives. Terraforming efforts over the la...
If a planet had such a large imbalance of protons and electrons that it possessed a net negative or positive charge what would happen to it and its solar system? First, could it be stable, or woul...
I understand that some non human animals build structures that they innately know how to build, such as how birds innately know how to build nests, and spiders innately know how to make webs, and b...
