General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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All A.I. comes with a built-in safety mechanism that prevent their kind from ever doing harm to a human or humanity, it is the last straw should they pose any real threat to our safety. A century ...
In 2051 a Neo-Luddite movement known as "Amos"/"The Adherents of Amos" detonated some sort of weapon in LEO (low earth orbit) causing a global black out shutting down technology and to a extent mod...
Let's imagine a group of people who can turn from human to wolf at will. Wolves are quadrupeds, and humans are biped, so I guess their weight is differently shared in their body, notably when they ...
Inspired by this story, I started thinking. Let's say we have a person, from the modern day, who miraculously gets a superpower: He can rewind time, but retain his own memories. He can rewind all ...
In my world, 500 years in the future, my population fits anti-gravity engines to salvaged boats as a form of transport. These transports fly close to the Earth's surface and are powered by a highly...
It is known that when a planet orbits very close around its star, the tidal effects will soon (on an astronomical scale) force the day and the year of the planet to have the same length, making the...
The Triceratons are a imperialistic race of, well, space triceratops' from TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). From what I can gather they breathe nitrogen and judging by their build come from a h...
Kikazaru and Protogon have been fierce rivals in the designer baby industry/artificial wombs since time and memorial, but Kikazaru is looking to finally best its rival by introducing a new scheme: ...
In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war. The world has become a barren wasteland that is inhospitable to the the human race, which has been forced to take residence in hive cities...
Around 100 million years ago, the Solar System was instantaneously encased in a massless, magical sphere centered about the Sun. The boundary is about 10,000 AU (.158 ly) in radius and behaves abno...
Set in the distant future, space travel becomes prominent and cheap. I can imagine each spaceship would have a multitude array of sensors to track distance and relative position in space. Is there ...
I would like to use CRISPr Cas9 technology to extend the life expectancy of my fictional civilizations. From what I understand, CRISPr could extend life by lengthening telomeres and improve quality...
It is the mid 22nd century A.D. Twenty men and women signed on a ten year space exploration trip to the nearest star system. There are robots to do ship maintenance and a powerful A.I. to monitor t...
To put this title into context, there are actually two basic kinds of angiosperms on Earth, showing here: These differences in characteristics serve their own adaptations to survive and thrive. ...
Okay, so I'm working on a novel and I'd like to have a dense asteroid field, something akin to the old ESB Hoth field, though it doesn't need to match that exactly. The notion is there is an advan...
In my story I've devised lore where Greenland becomes a US territory, and they begin populating the region. It initially just served as the hub for numerous military bases and airbases, but eventua...
In figuring out the rough timeline for my sci-fi, I've run into an interesting dilemma. As it stands right now, There are about 90 years in between one of my civilizations discovering space travel ...
I'm envisioning a double-planet system where both orbit around a central point. One planet is approximately Earth-sized, while the other is about one-tenth the size. One of the planets (the smalle...
To make a long story short, the previous ice age resulted in not just massive glaciers and building snow from appearing, but larger landmass as well due to most of the water being frozen from the c...
A nihilistic organization founded by a preacher, Solf J. Kimblee, has reasoned that human beings have fallen short of God's true purpose. Since the betrayal by Adam and Eve, all people are born wit...
When they started dropping from the skies.. or no, they landed. They were so similar to us, yet so different. Like nothing we would've ever designed or created - but so much like everything Ey...
There exist humans on a world with 35% the gravity of Earth and air five times denser. These people have invented wingsuits with extensions that go past their arms and enable them to fly by flappin...
So, in my setting, telekinesis is divided into two sub-fields: Soft telekinesis allows for precise manipulation of objects but doesn't pack a punch. Newton's third law is negligible for this type...
I've been working on a project and I'm trying to make it as scientifically plausible as I can get it to be. Since space is large, and it's physically impossible in this universe to reach the speed ...
In this world, the vehicles are effectively re-engineered insects; enlarged bio-manufactured nervous systems used instead of engines; factory grown lightweight chassis / [wheels]. The fuel station ...
I've been toying with an idea of a epic space fantasy where a certain area of the milky way is controlled by decedents of humanity that are born, live & die in spaceships, said "ngees" as the "...
It's 2019 in an alternate steampunk/dieselpunk universe. Population growth, dwindling resources, and the evil overlords have everyone cramped into big cities, toiling away in the hope of something ...
I was watching futurama yesterday and the Le Palm D'Orbit struck me as a fun concept. How would you go about building a orbital restaurant like the Le Palm? What kinda shape would allow the space n...
What factors would influence ecosystem development in an ocean on an ice world? It is thought that several moons in our solar system (e.g. Europa) may have significant oceans under their icy crust...
So I'm working on a home-brew D&D setting and I have this idea for the my campaign to take place in a large isolated Valley completely surrounded by mountains. I also had the idea to have these...
I am thinking of a scenario in which a dwarf planet, previously declared as a planet, is reclassified as a planet. What could possibly cause this? Could any possible mineral findings cause this, g...
I'm trying to figure out how quickly a planet could rotate while also having a single air flow cell, such as Hadley cells, that would circle from hot pole to cold pole, etc. as in the case of Tidal...
I'm building a habitable world tidally locked to a red dwarf star. In order to affect a tide and other weather patterns I was going to have another planet closer to the star that has an orbital res...
For example, beans and rice cooperate to make a "complete" protein, providing all of the amino acids the body can't synthesize on its own -- in fact, most traditional dishes that combine legumes an...
I have a short story series, it is set thousands of years in the future during the next ice age. Humanity and their governments reside along the equator and in parts of the Southern Hemisphere. B...
For my world I would need a really large swamp (or similar kind of wetland). It should be about 200km in diameter, which should be quite possible given a large enough flat terrain and enough rain. ...
This short story, which I've already written, is set in the FAR, FAR FUTURE, where a robotic space probe is exploring as much of the known universe as it can, despite its AI not knowing if its crea...
While recently reading a physics textbook and thinking about magic systems, I tried to perform a thought experiment I had problems with concluding, so I thought of asking for help. Here I explain t...
I'm working on a powered exoskeleton design for my universe and I had an idea about how to power it. It works in this cycle: Water enters an electrolyzer powered by a massive betavoltaic batter...
I am trying to taxonomize different species of dragons i made up, but am struggling finding correct phylum's and orders and stuff like that, would i have to make a whole new phylum for my dragons? ...
I was thinking about this world with different ancient factions on war. The war caused both of them and most life on the planet to die, I was thinking about one of the moons getting shattered as a ...
My question refers to a capital ship. Ideally, the ship wants to stay as low as possible. Does the mass of the ship affect its possible orbits? If so, what is the lowest orbit possible for this shi...
As the title says, is it possible to have a volcano that is perpetually erupting, and how would it be achieved? To be considered a "Perpetual Eruption", the volcano must emit moderate quantities o...
Imagine a planet orbiting a star some billions of lightyears away from us, the planet is 4 times the mass of Earth and is covered with ice 100km thick on average. It is believed that liquid ocean e...
Deep in a laboratory far under the megacity of Exampleville, a scientist is experimenting on a new compound found in an alternate, magical universe. He accidentally knocks over a vial of Handwavium...
Permanent ice caps are formed when the rate at which water falling under the form of snow is higher than the rate at which the water is removed from a certain region either by evaporation or outflo...
On Earth life has six fundamental building blocks for life with them being Hydrogen, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorus, and Sulfur. (1) Those elements of help make up more complex life through a...
I have an idea for a world such that the world itself is like a large loop. The best way I can think to describe it is going step by step through the "loop". Imagine a planet-like object; a sphere...
The Aurora company has unveiled the new Interplanetary Airliner (usually simplified to space shuttle) offering both affordable and comfortable space travel to the middle and upper classes of the He...