General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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In my world a giant ship attempts to land on a planet, sadly it fails. Fortunately the top half is intact but the bottom is ripped up, holes all over it, basically destroyed except for some lucky s...
So, dragons. They're omnivores and, while they would be potentially formidable hunters, mostly scavengers. This requires them to be more sparing with their energy. Still, they fly and flight needs...
This rogue planet is a cold rocky world where liquid methane replaces water, hydrogen is used in place of oxygen, and a large moon. I was thinking the large moon would have a large tidal pull that...
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...
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 was just bitten by a radioactive stopwatch, gaining the voluntary ability to experience time at twice the usual rate. While doing so, for every second of real time, two seconds occur within my bo...
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...
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...
I have a maglev train starting in Paris, going through Siberia, bridging over the Bering Strait, and running down the West Coast to San Francisco. There are other major lines splitting from this on...
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...
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...
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...
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...
I have settings with orbital colonies around the earth. First off my idea is, if it is not profitable we would not fund it en masse. Therefore I came up with the idea that in the future we discover...
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...
The continent is split apart by a dense area of mountains, covered in glaciers. Any travelers who with to go from one part of the continent to the other would either have to cross the mountains, or...
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...
How would it switch between if endothermic and ectothermic and in between and how would it be able to create different temperature in specific areas in the body?
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 ...
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...
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...
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?
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...
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...
I'm working on a military sci-fi piece that involves a lot of exo-skeleton enhanced, well, parkour -- for lack of a better term -- and was wondering how to deal with descents from great heights. ...
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...
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'...
Could a life form that uses superfluids as part of its biology exist? I've read in places that the issue for life outside of Earth and especially the theorised silicon lifeforms is that the existe...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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'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 ...
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 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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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)...
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 ...
