General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
Filters (None)
In my story characters can go into perfectly simulated virtual worlds where their memories have been replicated down to the individual neurons and their protien structures. In these worlds time pas...
In my world I want a massive region (7 million mi²) to be as flat as the Great Plains. There are no trees or hills; basically it's just a grass sea. I am trying to figure out what kind of weath...
My question is, how do we make humans more able to resist falls(not just free falls, also normal ones and from a "medium" height, 2-10 meters) and be able to move afterwards, at least for the jumps...
Space explorers have landed on an Earth like planet and, to their surprise, the place is luscious and covered in life, to the point of resembling some earthly tropical atoll. What they don't know ...
I had posted a question a couple of days ago asking if it would be possible for an artificial satellite/cosmic body at the L1 orbit to block out the Sun, but the logistics of that is a little too e...
For the fluff of my story one of the space-ships is equipped with what I hope is one of the biggest F-you weapons in ship-to-ship combat: a miniature black hole launcher. The launcher fires a whop...
What is one factor or ability a creature needs to sustain infinite work? By work I mean physical activity, and to make it more specific running I want a creature that can output work, or run until...
A Gelatinous Cube is a massive, slime-based jelly that haunts underground dungeons, and is composed of an acidic substance which breaks down material. These creatures are unintelligent and crawl ai...
Many planets out there will be water worlds. Those generally come in two flavors: either the oceans are so deep that the water turns into high-pressure ices like ice-six, -seven, -ten and -eleven o...
I recently finished watching one of the Star Wars films, the one that features the sarlaac pit. When I saw it, I began to immediately think how such a thing would evolve. The sarlaac pit is essen...
Many alien worlds will most likely be water worlds. I was wondering what the deepest possible global ocean dept is where land is still possible. I think that volcanic islands will still have a chan...
In my world, I am looking for a crater formed by a meteor impact that deposited a large number of resources there. The final crater should be 200 miles in diameter. I would like to do this with min...
Postpartum depression among humans is a thing that is "normal" insofar as it happens a lot, but it is not "normal" in the sense of "a thing that we don't worry about"; it doesn't happen to absolute...
Say I have a race of obligate carnivores (for simplicity, we'll say they're felinoid). They have carnivore dentition, and must eat meat as a major component of their diet, but they can also eat fru...
How long would the St. Louis arch stand if humanity vanished from the earth, tomorrow? What would be the failure mechanism? Note: I'm following the directions to ask a specific question, but if ...
Rock snails are giant slug like creatures living in the forest and underwater, they are not mobile in adulthood and their shell resembles a giant rock. They grow up to being 8 meters tall and the...
Some 55.8 million years ago, Earth underwent a really dramatic heat wave known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM. What happened, exactly? We don't know how it happened, but we do k...
It's the 22nd century and we have discovered a derelict alien craft somewhere in the Oort cloud. The craft contains a star chart showing its origin on an alien planet some 30 light years away. Let'...
I'm creating a character who was born after a long period of genetic instability, which created a lot more diversity throughout the human race. I'm planning on making my character excessively small...
My world has a medieval level civilization that has remained unchanged for millions of years. They look and act a lot like humans; they have language, culture, government, literature, and basic te...
Say humans found a way to exponentially increase the capability of plants to grow. Is it possible for it to cause an environment that can cause oxygen toxicity in humans?
Vampirism. There are benefits and drawbacks, but one of the benefits is not aging. Great if you get turned in your early twenties, but... what happens if you are turned earlier? Being turned as an...
Fireflies are amazing little insects. They have the ability to produce a pulse of light without the help of a symbiotic relationship with bioluminescent bacteria. This works via a chemical reactio...
To make things simple, assume Earth had a slower rotation than it does. How would that affect daily highs and lows in temperature? Is there a simple way to figure it out? Was thinking a week-long r...
This is not so much for a story as much as something I've been thinking about for a while. I'm really drawn to the idea of a sort of world that exists on a server somewhere. The "˜gods' that eve...
I want to build a seastead in international waters that starts small. It has to be in the Atlantic, preferably in the northern hemisphere close to either the american or european continent. Due t...
Well. This is for a hard sci-fi fiction. The main protagonist, an Action Girl, has just met her sidekick: an humanoid Iguana (it makes sense and it is explained why Iguana-people people exist (has...
I was wondering if there's some sort of online anatomy creator or maker? I'm wanting to make a model of a modified human body... is there some sort of anatomy creator that allows you to add organs ...
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...
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...
I'm creating a fictional universe in which several races exist that are very different from each other due to long term separation. One race is specialized for archipelagos and more specifically, d...
In the near future, humanity has spread out across the Solar System. A new planet is discovered, let's say 30 light years away, that shows it to be Earth-like and could harbor Earth life without to...
I'm creating a fictional universe in which several races exist that are very different from each other due to long term separation. One race is specialized for the tundra, and is subjected to sever...
I'm working on a story where the main character has to search for titanium (or rather ores containing titanium) in order to repair the hull of a ship. She's on a habitable world that's essentially ...
I was wondering, for a speculative evolution project, what could be the bare minimum amount of organisms the common housefly needs to survive? Could they just feed on grass? Or should I add a flowe...
In my post apocalyptic world, a virus has spread, essentially changing the roles, with infected animals gaining sentience and intellect close to a human and humans degrading into a more animalistic...
A group of aliens are off to save the human race from extinction caused by a Lovecraftian monstrosity. In order to accomplish this feat, they go to Earth in order to harvest as many humans as po...
I have decided I will add my whole question"¦ I'm new give me a bit of grace"¦ I am creating a superhuman and I am in need of some helpful tips and answers. To get straight to the point I need t...
I am creating a superhuman that can raise her overall body temperature to 3,000 °F (1648.889 °C) but I need to know the exact requirements of how that could happen. Let's say this superhuman co...
The fleet in my setting are forced to leave the planet due to a volatile virus, and leave in pre-prepared spacefaring vessels capable of transporting ten million people per ship. The ships have alg...
After looking at concept art of various humanoid creatures portrayed in science fiction I noticed many artists tend to make the abdominal muscles of their creatures/aliens look similar to those mus...
The advanced civilization in my story is trying to reach as many galaxies as possible in the next few billions years before the expansion of space has sent those galaxies permanently out of reach w...
We are using a Morris-Throne Wormhole Metric. Let's presume the throat of this wormhole (in internal hyperspace) is short, let's say 1km. Now, as you are travelling through the entrance wormhole,...
The local sapient species on a relatively Earthlike planet has constructed a space elevator. It is anchored along the equator. Due to unfortunate circumstances (and potentially divine intervention)...
The universe as we know it has ended. The concept of "natural" illumination ended when the last red dwarves and quasars died out. Now, only brown dwarves and blackholes dot the empty void that was ...
The eyes with vertical pupils of small cats and some reptiles are very good at seeing better in the dark and avoiding being blinded thanks to their ability to regulate the amount of light that ente...
I need ten Earth years long day-night cycle on my planet. Hemera is a world I am creating as a setting for my story. Name comes from Greek deity - personification of Day. Needs of storytelling hav...
Starliners are huge colony ships. They carry enough equipment, building materials, embryos, colonists and nutrient rich rations to permanently establish a sizeable colony on a far-flung world. Alth...
Node is the last active city of the lizard people. Node was built to be a self-sufficient city and a nexus of an interconnected bunker system. It was a vanity project from the peak of the lizard em...
Ok, so this is a culmination of a few questions into one final question: am I doing this right? I am trying to figure out the gravitational difference from one end of a continent to another. There ...
