General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
Filters (None)
I made a question regarding floating cities coming from a misunderstanding of this great answer. Luckily one comment showed me how floating cities could be possible in a slightly different scenari...
Can we go from this: to this: Suppose over millennia (or as long as it takes) humans on Earth are artificially selected by aliens to be big and healthy. Is there any theoretical reason that ...
Building on this question "Discovery of life on Mars" Mars is habitable (40% the mass of Earth, 6.06 m/s² gravity, escape velocity of 7.88 km/s, a satellite big enough to stabilize its axis an...
Following my last question asked regarding oviparous humanoids, is there a way for evolution to 'regard' females as the more dominant gender without going down that road, forming a heavily matriarc...
So, we know that big creatures will generate lots of heat if they're active. We also know that wings are very good at venting excess heat. Now for most animals, this heat isn't exactly spectacular,...
In my part of this (Earth-like) world, there is a stable community of completely isolated pre-industrial humans, numbering perhaps 1,800. They live at an altitude of (at least) 25,000 feet (7620 m...
I know of the conceptualized "Sinkers", "Floaters" and "Hunters" that Carl Sagan and Edwin Salpeter of Cornell conceived of - as possible life forms that might inhabit a gas giant. At the time they...
I've been toying with a concept for a hollow/inner Earth universe in which I would like to achieve an even distribution of light. The pickle is that the "sun" of this world operates like a beacon/s...
In my world a space civilization is colonizing a massive solid planet. The planet has an extraordinarily fast rotation. The gravity is severe at the poles, making life impossible, but life flouri...
In the movie Interstellar, Miller's planet is an ocean planet orbiting extremely close to a black hole. The ridiculous tidal effects caused by the black hole cause the planet's water to concentrate...
So, let's say a group of survivors tie an immortal being to a young tree sapling. The immortal does not need food, nor water, so can survive indefinitely. After about 100 years, could that young ...
In my universe a race of humanoid beings caused 3 planets: Earth a larger rocky planet and another earth sized rocky planet to crash and collide into each other, but still allowed the humanoi...
Important note: The orbits in the diagram are elliptical. They have low eccentricity so they appear to be off centre circles but they really are ellipses with the star at a focus. The habitable...
I am currently working a humanoid roughly deer-like species in a sci-fi roleplay setting, and one of the developments I have had with such species has me stuck trying to explain it in a way that ma...
As stated in the title: is there any realistic way to either evolve (in our evolutionary past) or acquire via genetic engineering an immune system better than what we already have? I tried to do so...
I once show a picture depicticting the idea of an ultimate solar system: Image Copyright Sean Raymond In this solar system there are 8 planetary orbits, each containing 52 equal-mass, evenly-spa...
Caulerpa taxifolia, an algae species popular with aquarium owners, is the largest single-celled organism known to us as of today. It is notable for being able to regenerate from any part of the b...
Okay, let's assume that travel between star systems is done through stable, stationary wormholes on the outer boundaries of each system. This alone is slightly magic for now, of course, but let's r...
In the near future, an alien race finds Earth, learns how it and everything on it works, and begins to tamper with it. Somehow they figure out a way to flip the pull of Earth's gravity on only huma...
So, I'm writing a sci-fi story, which has a setting which involves human colonists crash landing on a massive, icy hellhole. The weather is extreme on the surface, and because of it, wireless commu...
continuing from the question I had asked yesterday, I have had another query come to mind. For my humanoid alien species to possess horns, it would surely put forward the risk of being the shortcut...
(This question goes more in depth from a previous question.) Imagine This: The "Black Box" is a mind vault for a few humans who created it, the humans wanting to survive a nuclear war happening...
A common, matter-efficient science-fiction habitat is a hollow cylinder or ring in space that is spun to simulate the pull of gravity on its interior surface. These habitats have been imagined as s...
Background: The creature is bug-like, and similar to an armadillo in size. Its diet consists of metal, and is found underground in large colonies. It uses the metal it ingests to: Enhance it's s...
This question is pretty straightforward: What is the minimum and maximum distance for a planet to be in the habitable zone of an average sized (not biggest, not smallest) Red Dwarf star?
I was thinking about the classic beanpole design for interstellar travel. Wouldn't the Whipple shield need to be at least twice as wide as the ship is long to fully protect it from collisions with ...
Scenario: An Earth that is identical to our own (for the sake of being specific let's say the environment is the same as it was in 1 BCE) The planet is uninhabited by humans (and no there aren't...
I have dragons in mind for my world, but I'm trying to find logic in how would a medium-sized anything fly off and still be a danger to humans. So far, I have a lizard-like cheetah with wings, ho...
The Emperor (may he live forever) plans to visit the Solar System on a rare royal visit in ten years' time. The Bureau for Interplanetary Tidying have decided that the Asteroid Belt is an eyesore t...
Imagine a world that spun just fast enough (and had a strange enough composition to hold itself together as a spinning sphere) to create an outward, centrifugal force which was as strong as its gra...
My world has a city of glass found along the outskirts of a desert. I decided on this because sand can become glass and so it was a huge resource that could be used for building. However, the conc...
I've read a lot of questions about the specifics of meteor impacts on this site, but strangely this one seems to still elude me: Assume a meteor of sufficient mass and speed to wipe out human life...
In a story I am writing there is a being with Superman level strength, flight, the ability to produce lasers, and survive in space. He has decided to solve the mineral crisis by finding and grabbin...
In my world the resident humanoids evolve from beaver sized aquatic axolotls.The only land on the planet can be considered mountainous terrain. Imagine a volcanic crater where only the rim surfaces...
I have a fantasy kingdom set up where the landscape is mostly mountainous with rock and pine forests, like the picture below. As such, it is quite difficult to have agriculture. One plant which can...
In this article, scientists are investigating river channels on Earth, Mars, and Titan to see how rivers modify their landscapes. The following quote caught my eye: Rivers are, in a way, topogr...
There is a popular belief that the muscles of our body are controlled only by electrical impulses. This is not entirely a lie, but ... From what little I have researched, the nerves send a command ...
A black hole is supposed to suck in everything by nature. Micro black holes are theorized to "fizz out", so for example if one was on Earth it would not grow until Earth was consumed. It would seem...
So, I have devoted an unhealthy amount of my time to the dragon question, and a final solution will have to wait... for several thousand years at least. My original plan was to make them at around...
I have my eyes on this new Porsche but all I have is an unlimited supply of ice and a molecular distillery. How can I convert this ice into gold? The molecular distillery can disassemble and reass...
By a stable orbit I mean not getting ejected by the other planets or ejecting them, Let's create a scenario where Neptune occupies an orbit in the asteroid belt at 2.76 AU, Ceres average distance f...
This question here brought up interesting points on what kind of distribution we could expect for the increase in computational power of mechanical computers in a world relying solely on such non-e...
I have been looking up a few different theories lately. And one of those is the idea that intelligent life cannot exist for any long period of time without eradicating itself or being destroyed by ...
I have a terrestrial planet that is similar to Mars in many ways, a desert-like surface, thin atmosphere, and inhospitable to large flora and fauna as we know it. This planet has ceased tectonic ...
A creature I am imagining is a small mammal about the size of a domestic cat which - through symbiotic bacteria which live in its fur - is covered its whole body over in blue-white bioluminescence,...
We, the house of Habsburg, are a royal family that descend from the gods. Our founder, Cersei Habsburg, conquered Europe and brought peace and stability to the dregs of the continent. After taking ...
Is the following map fairly realistic? It is of a small continent, connected to a larger one, at a Europe like position on the globe. This is the continent in topographical map form, it also inc...
I have a large underground fantasy world which is only accessible through the Mariana Trench. I'd like to do a day/night cycle and have have a bright, sunny atmosphere part of the time, but I'm not...
Colobopsis ants explode when they are losing a fight, a behavior which is probably meant to discourage predators from hunting that species. It may also turn tides when in ant wars for territory. W...
In various TV series and movies villains or organisations have been shown to control animals through technological or cybernetic means, such as the future predators in Primeval. These creatures hav...
