General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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Roughly how long could an 'Oumuamua type object get if created naturally or if created artificially using fused rock? What would be the limiting factor governing the length of such objects? Oumaum...
This is a submission for the Anatomically Correct Series Giant seahorses are often portrayed in fiction as being ridden by merfolk or other underwater people. I'm wondering if such a creature ...
I'd like to have faster-than-light travel (and communications) be an late-game option for a video game I am working on. The extent of the playable universe is approximately 4 million light years in...
The setting I've cooked up for a D&D campaign I'm running features a fair amount of buildings that have been totally abandoned by civilization for hundreds or even a thousand years. Obviously w...
Ok, assuming a planet that's tidally locked to its sun, but is otherwise roughly similar to earth in gravity and atmosphere. Classic tidally locked planet: one side is covered in ice, the other is...
A group of English-speaking settlers travel to the Earth-like exoplanet of Rataan, which is 5 light years away. They board the generation ship Genesis that will reach Rataan in 200 years (0.25% of ...
So, my understanding of how Alcubierre drives would theoretically work is not particularly complete. I know it involves compressing and expanding space, but I don't really have an intuitive grasp ...
There is a video from "What If" that tells about (precisely) "What if Earth was a moon of Jupiter":What if the Earth Was a Moon of Jupiter And, in a short story I am writing in an alternate realit...
In an alien world, due to changes in the ecosystem animals that were once mostly arboreal started having to spend more time in open plains, adapting to fill a new niche of grasslands/bush eaters an...
I'm thinking about an AI similar to The Machine from Person of Interest but in a generally more advanced setting, and with a likely more broad goal of serving as a shepherd for humanity as opposed ...
Say the word "Australia", and one of the first things to come to your mind would be the marsupials. Of the 334 species of pouched mammals whose earliest ancestors witnessed the fall of the dinos...
There are some things I don't understand. So far I have my map pretty developed but I think I made some mistakes and there are places I am not sure about. I know I made some mistakes with ocean cur...
Humanity discovered a new energy source, virtually infinite, that can produce gigawatts of electric power using devices of few kilograms. Land and sea transport obviously will switch to electric m...
Tengu are a race of upright, humanoid creatures with the ability to fly and other avian characteristics to a varying degree. Konoha-tengu (foliage tengu) are six-limbed humanoid avians. The bird s...
I got motivated to write a novel after reading about ocean slugs that managed to evolve into fish. In my fictional world I'm writing how a few fish shaped slugs made their way on land and managed t...
My world is basically the surviving chunks of an exploded planet (there's a little more to it than that but that's the important part for the question, ignore any issues of gravity etc.) and while ...
Many countries, authorities and companies have the concept of a maximum weight limit for manual handling, both to protect their workers and to protect themselves from lawsuits. Interstellar Shippi...
I am creating a science fiction worldbuilding project, in which humanity has colonised distant exoplanets. One such planet is a Venus-like planet in the sense that it has a perpetual cloud cover, a...
On one hand, heavier gravity would make flying more difficult, owing to greater weight restrictions on the flying creatures' bodies. On the other hand, the greater density of the atmosphere on ...
I want to create a harmless snake that can spit like a spitting cobra as a defense while kills its prey by constriction. Its venom is considered harmless, but when goes to the eyes it causes tempo...
I'm thinking about an alien race that evolved from large terrestrial crustaceans and has developed a somewhat large brain. Like crabs on earth, these creatures have pinchers wich they use for self ...
I want to write a SF story where humans discover that a species of ET has caramel instead of blood and I need some biological information in order to develop it in a realistic way. For my story, i...
Antimatter gets used a lot in SciFi due to it's mind-bending energy density. If you can store it in a form that requires no power and is at least mildly idiot-proof then you've just solved half of ...
Double or binary planets are a really cool science fiction idea. A second Earth hanging ominously in the sky. Co-orbital or trojan planets are also interesting in that you have them on more or less...
Is there a feasible setup where the Sun has expanded enough to make the Earth uninhabitable, but some of the other rocky bodies in our solar system (past Earth) become more reasonable colonisation ...
The characters in my world use oxygen spheres like the top answer to this post (a leather balloon filled with air) to safely traverse land filled with smoke. How would you know when you are runnin...
We've found a habitable planet orbiting a red dwarf star some light years away and conditions are Earth-like enough that a colonization project was initiated. Before any humans landed on the planet...
I am working on a world where an event, like a celebration, occurs during every lunar eclipse. I would like to have lunar eclipses occurring more frequently--maybe even once a month--in order for...
From what I understand, Mount Everest grows about 2.4 inches per year. I am trying to create an area of land that grows very often, often around 1 inch per day. As I'm not very good with plate tect...
If we assume a terraformed Ganymede has a global ocean roughly 800km deep, that food is bountiful, and that it has been populated by a variety of life from Earth, how large could these creatures gr...
In my story, set in an earth-like world, a marine species that had evolved a melon organ, much like that found in our dolphins, made its way back into the "land" (a large system of underground cave...
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...
The setting is a science fiction story set roughly 500 years in the future. Looking at Wikipedia, I see a number of baryons that have so far never been observed. I'm interested in exploring this s...
My idea involves an alien spaceship inside a roughly Earth to Mars sized/massed planet, but the whole planet is displaced when the drive is activated. If you wanted to travel back to our solar syst...
How long can objects made of hard material last at room temperature in otherwise ideal conditions? If left outdoors on Earth, over the course of millions of years, any material will be eroded by w...
So, turning people into stone. You only have to add reversibility to the mix, and it becomes the BEST paramedical tool available. But, what does petrification need to accomplish to become just tha...
I am currently working on a character backstory for somebody whose fictional character gets sent back in time an era before his species existed (essentially to bronze-age times or even earlier, it'...
To try and explain the situation the best I can imagine one of those sci-fi/fantasy situations where whenever someone is asleep they can experience new things. Whether they somehow end up in some d...
There are three "worlds" in this setting: Heaven, Hell and Midgard, Midgard being Earth and the entire Milkyway galaxy. When a demon or an angel enters Midgard, they can't just walk there, as they...
The Greek gods were sufficiently advanced aliens with access to powerful technology. In the begining of our worlds formation, Zeus created mankind from his own flesh. These mortals were made in the...
An area of my planet is very saturated with lava. Being quite similar to the Siberian Lava Traps, it is essentially a lava sea. This lava "sea" area isn't necessarily all lava however, as there are...
In many fantasy works, the world typically has giant caverns that house entire civilizations and ecosystems that are (mostly) disconnected from the world above. However, this concept, at least in ...
"Serina" is a popular speculative evolution project in which, apart from a long list of fish, invertebrates and plants, the only terrestrial chordate to colonize this terraformed moon is the canary...
For context, I was reading about various research groups installing implants and cameras onto insects to use them as reconnaissance drones in high risk areas. I'm wondering how feasible it would ...
I'm developing a world based on a terraformed Mars, which was cut off from interstellar society and regressed to a pre-industrial level of technology. Mars has an ocean, but most of the settled peo...
I'm working on a story where there is a crime scene where the protagonist (who has a superhuman sense of smell) notices a scent that smells like human corpses due to their abilities. I'm wondering ...
This story takes place about 300 years in the future and humanity has since come into contact with hundreds of alien races, you get the picture. Basically, I have this character who is half human a...
So, when you use a dragon for military purposes, it's probably for the best to keep them close and keep them happy. Which means building them a place they can call home. Now, housing a dragon is q...
I did a lot of research and asking questions about dragons' breathing ability: if there was a dragon that spits pyrophoric liquids like a spitting cobra A tiny fire-breather can any animals (exam...
I'm new to this and my scientific knowledge is massively lacking in this area (so please take it easy on me!) I'm writing a historical science-fiction novel. Parts of it set in the past (1977) and ...
