General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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Taking into account all of the developments in the alcubierre warp drive theory including the new calculations by Harold White. Are their any plausible/theoretical ways to generate a warp bubble wi...
As in the title. We have the modern periodic table: In a potential near (or far) future setting humanity discovers a new element which serves as the basis for a cleaner, higher energy density...
Our empire has been at the mercy of violent marauders who are not working with the Will of Dozin and instead trying to break away from our cosmic union. In our archives, we have found a xenoformin...
This is partially a followup to my question on ancestral guidance. Suppose you have a species, or a subset of a species, that has a particularly interesting mechanic, like the above mentioned ance...
Background: In the year 2204, humans have colonized most of the inner solar system. During the first explorations of the vast outer system, a team of researchers uncovers a series of alien artifact...
I have an Earth-like world (approximately 1000CE technology--horse/mule for travel) that I want to have my characters traverse over the course of the book. I want the areas to have distinct geograp...
Scenario + question: So for the purposes of this question lets so that there is a canyon much like the grand canyon but about 50 miles deeper, so the bottom is always in shadow and it has no observ...
The Apollo-era A7L Extravehicular Mobility Units were used for less than eight hours at a time, within a few days, with a maximum of three moonwalks per mission. Assume a fictional moonbase with 1...
An event has occurred several thousand kilometers from the surface of the Earth. Let's assume some sort of tear in the universe has appeared, from which extra-dimensional or exotic energy is pourin...
So, I'm designing an alien race/civilisation of carnivore. I was thinking of a very aggressive specie, who is both the alpha predator of his world and his own main cause of death. Basically, a lo...
I am creating a carbon planet with seas of methanol on its surface, but I am not sure that this is possible. It is predicted that carbon planets are depleted of water, since the available oxygen w...
Tieflings are routinely captured and imprisoned. Those that are compliant enough are sent out and used to hunt other tieflings, but not before having their horns dipped in molten tin as a way of id...
What would cause a nuclear power plant to break down after 2000 years, but not sooner? The setting is a society in a dark age. Their ancestors were considerably more advanced than earth currently...
A staple of science fiction is substances like 'durasteel' or 'tritanium', which, through generally unexplained means, have vastly superior material qualities when compared to conventional material...
In real life, humans get pregnant for only nine months. Once born, the baby has a long way to go before it can stand, walk and talk. But don't tell that to Mwindo! The African saga of the hero M...
I'm not a professional at world building or character building, still starting out, but I do want to make an attempt at having my fantasy character be somewhat realistic. He's 11 years old, 4.8 f...
In my fantasy series of ''Diggoran'' ( pronounced Dia-Ran ) Humans initially came from a continent in the northern hemisphere known as ''Atmoran'' which spans 20.561 million square miles. For over ...
If person A has had the genes dictating their sight/ the internal structure of their eyes, replaced by say, eagle eyes or cat eyes. What happens when they reproduce with person B who has regular h...
I want to find out what's going on in another star system, but I don't want to go there. How feasible is it to just build a big telescope and take a look? Scenario: Earth does not respond to commu...
Exowombs have become feasible from a technological standpoint. A number of trials conducted on animal embryos have proven successful, and talk has been made about how this can be beneficial for hum...
For spaceships working on or near Ceres, what would be the best option for locally produced fuels? Let's assume that there's plenty of water ice available, and other chemicals as long as its plaus...
For certain categories of items, namely weapons, armor and machinery (that's pretty general, I know), how well would stone fare vs metal? Assume that any complications with shaping the stone are go...
If a spaceplane were to try to simulate the look of aerial flight in the vacuum, would it be difficult or easy for the pilot to manually simulate aerial maneuvers, using just a contemporary reactio...
I understand an interstellar dust cloud as "an accumulation of gas, plasma, and dust in our and other galaxies. Put differently, an interstellar cloud is a denser-than-average region of the interst...
This is my first question here so I would like to apologize if this is sloppy or in the wrong place or the like. I have searched and found nothing that answers the exact question I think, so though...
Disclaimer: This question, unlike my other tree related question, was brought about by pure whimsical daydreaming. I also threw the term "evolve" around a lot, I should clarify that what I asking i...
In several RPG campaigns, I've seen player characters try to either make investments or borrow significant amounts of money. This made me wonder: which sorts of worlds should have interest rates th...
Could a perfect mirror/s be made to reflect one side of the Earth from the edge of the solar system and viewed with an optical or radio telescope that is in orbit? The targeting mirrors and telesc...
Gamma diversity is defined as the entire species diversity of a landscape or region. Assuming we have a region of 100 square miles of temperate deciduous forest inhabited by cretaceous fauna. How m...
I was thinking that the character would be a moderately active teenage girl that's 5"8 and 160 lbs. The speed itself is a super-power and she is otherwise a normal human. I'm defining safe as a spe...
I'm working on a hard sf novel about humans being forced to survive on a metal-poor planet. They have to take dietary metal supplements at first but eventually a bio-engineer rigs the biochemical p...
BACKGOUND I'm working on a region for my world, and I have a very distinct idea of what I want the physical landscape to look like. Below is a description of what I'd like for the land, and an app...
My idea is a carbon planet 50 % larger than Earth and with 5 times its mass (approximately), but I set these values "‹"‹after investigating those of several discovered exoplanets and none of them i...
This is a key part of my snakebite mystery story, which I am thinking of making part of a medical mystery series. I have been told that it actually is more life threatening to the snake for it to s...
I was thinking of something like growing extra eyes, heads, or limbs, but in the exposed individual not through his descendant that get the mutation. What I have found is that in individuals expose...
So I'm trying to design my alien life around the pressures they might face just like earth's wildlife, and most things I've made plausible life that is similar to ear but not giant dinosaur cats. T...
So, we've reached The Moon/Mars. Our band of intrepid Colonists/Lunatics will almost certainly start by working out of prefabricated facilities (ship, habitat etc) but they will eventually run out...
Far away, across the vastness of space, lies an alien civilization, who are pretty similar to us. They've got ice cream, peer to peer networking, and photography. More importantly, they do lots of ...
I'm in the rough outlining stages of this story, and found myself a bit stuck trying to turn this particular corner. Firstly, here are the basics of this world: In the future, it's a common prac...
For story writing purposes I would like a realistic setup where there is a planet with close to earth conditions in terms of gravity, relative position to the sun etc. However I aim to have a much ...
In the near future Science Fiction novel I am writing, the personality and memory of a person are transferred to an artificial brain after a fatal accident, creating an artificial intelligence with...
So, my setting, as of now, is a singular supercontinent, with a large mountain system running across one of its sides, basically the fantasy equivalent of the Andes. On paper this (or at least its ...
Newborn humans are born in a very undeveloped stage compared to other mammals. This is because if they stayed any longer in the mother, their head would become too big to fit through the birth cana...
This was an idea generated by my sister that I thought was very interesting. I intended to make it work by strapping rollerblades on a person's legs and utilize a compressed gas/steam-powered pumpi...
The scenario described below is for a role-playing game. The setting is Earth-like but with a healthy dose of sci-fi. Even though the setting is sci-fi I would prefer answers be largely based in re...
As part of the story I am writing, an individual has been frozen with relatively crude cryogenic technology, then preserved as well as possible. Given the constraints of biology, what would waking ...
For context, I've been working on a fantasy race for use in a science fiction novel, the gist of which is essentially a red fox that has had its genes manipulated by a supernatural force with the p...
It is impossible to have a continuous mostly liquid water ring around a star? Probably such a configuration would be unstable under normal planetary forming condition. I am looking for a good ph...
Could you build a ring around the earth, so that it would just sit in the sky? I'm not talking a geostationary orbit of rubble like the rings around Saturn, but a solid structure just high enough t...
Imagine a habitable, water covered, small earth-like orb in space. Let's call it P. From its surface, you see 2 large glowing masses, different sizes, in the sky, let's call them Bs. They are not s...
