General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
Filters (None)
Let's say our world is set in a hyperbolic space with a curvature K of −1 per 9 square meters. How would crystals be different than those in our world (assuming that the atoms are the same as the ...
I'm trying to create a system where a gas giant has two moons in binary orbit with each other. I'm trying to get that James Cameron look with the gas giant on the horizon, but also have a equally s...
I am developing a species that gives birth to live young after a very brief pregnancy. The infants are somewhat underdeveloped due to this fact. The harsh environment of the mountains means that th...
Dragons are biologically immortal creatures that have evolved the most versatile sexual reproduction in existence, they can morph through a cocoon into any other species from the animal kingdom tha...
EDITED to address the above suggestion. See below. Most animals breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon-dioxide. Most plants take in carbon-dioxide and release oxygen. Waste products from ani...
it's pretty straight forward, how could a scientist such as a doctor, identify that nano-robots are the cause of some disease without knowing what it is looking for ? It would somehow need to be b...
I have recently been interested in Antarctic bases. They seem really interesting to me. I don't know all that much about them. One that came to my mind is SANAE IV. Some bases can support more th...
What would be necessary in order for bubbles to rain down from the sky, whether they are actually soap or something else? Would it even be possible? Aside from a bunch of little kids (which would ...
Assume a universe depressingly like ours, in which special relativity holds. No hyperspace, no warp drive, no wormholes, and even the limited get-out clauses offered by real world physics either do...
Imagine that we one day invent an ansible, capable of near-instantaneous FTL communication, but we can not transport physical matter any faster than light. Imagine also that we have gotten to the ...
I'm writing a speculative fiction story that includes superhumans, and I'm trying to get some of the specifics nailed down. Several of my superhumans have the typical powers of flight, usually able...
Surface gravity: 1G Info regarding of altitude, pressure, and atmospheric density: altitude pressure density (meters) (atm) (kg/m^3) 0 17 10 1000 15...
Premise Inhabiting my earth-like world will be humanoid beings that have a skin tone that is as dark as Vantablack. Let's assume these human-like beings share the same ancestry as humans and we ca...
An evil scientist has engineered a plague that would kill anyone with an xy chromosome pair. This plague has systemicatically spread throughout the planet, killing all males within the population. ...
Plastic is a huge problem in our lives. One of the ideas is to engineer plastic eating bacteria or fungi. Experiments already begun, and accidents already happen: a team of international scient...
I'm not sure if it's even feasible, but I have a server farm in my book, of a size that puts it on par with Google's. I want to wipe out all the data stored on the hard drives, without destroying ...
I am new at this site, but I've been creating a fantasy story for a while. Now, I'm stuck. I would really like cat people (neko) in my story, but there is a problem! you can't just stick cat ears o...
For a highly intelligent avian dinosaur whose grasping and manipulating appendages have all but vanished, there are options : for the species to evolve beaks that are better fine manipulators, or c...
My fantasy world is slightly larger than earth so that discovery of the continents becomes harder (about 20% surface should do it). But at the same time I want to preserve most aspects to make it l...
What role do satellites, communication towers, GPS, etc, play in the operation, and specifically the landing, of a space shuttle? If those and any other human-made things suddenly disappeared, cou...
In my story, I'm trying to create a natural disaster of sorts that severely limits the amount of metal used in society. Are there any processes that would be biologically compatible that irreversi...
Earth has stopped rotating. Maybe Superman started flying around the Earth backwards to turn back time, but hit a wall of kryptonite just when the Earth stopped rotating. Or Stupendous Man hit the ...
Could werewolves exist in a realistic world? All that is required for an accepted answer is the ability to change shape over night. Bonus points will be awarded if you can explain a bite spreading...
Suppose we begin to colonize the moon. Assuming the building materials and biological material are all imported (not taken on-site), would it be possible for the moon to become massive enough to fa...
The problem is the following: let's say we have a miniaturized satellite*, X; we know its position, velocity, acceleration, the forces applied at any given moment; we also know its mass, its d...
Assuming the atmosphere on a Niven ringworld is retained by gravity, what shape would it be? Full details of Ringworld http://larryniven.wikia.com/wiki/Ringworld As I understand it, Niven pro...
In the world I'm building, there's a non-human race that I want to have no concept of gender. Their language doesn't contain gendered words like "man" or "woman," and sexual attraction is not based...
I'm creating a humanoid species, roughly based on humans. The difference is that not every opposite sex couple of fertile age could produce offspring. The premise of my story is based of some men...
I have a bit of a problem. My largest dragons have a flight range of over 1000 miles, but I have another continent that is only reachable by ship significantly closer (just over 750 miles). I can't...
What kind of destruction would it cause? I'm assuming it'd be rather significant, could it shatter a tectonic plate? The crust? How would the oceans fare? Would the planet be able to catch the proj...
As we all know the Earth is flat. Once upon a time a group of explorers set off with the idea of proving that the world was round and that there was a route to the spice islands the other way, but ...
Follow up question to: How long time would it take for a space hulk to lose orbit? Let's assume that the spaceship crashes into the planet, I used the Impact Calculator to get some result of the c...
I'm working on a flintlock fantasy series and I want to figure out how to get three comets with different orbital periods to occasionally all show up at the same time. All three are "great comets"...
I was reading up on Mars thin atmosphere and was wondering how could Earth becomes like the red planet except it only has only 100 pascal (air pressure) at imaginary sea level? Mars is 600 pascal o...
My setting takes place on a planet that has a very high level of radiation because of reasons unknown to the population. This factor or group of factors are not man-made, but due to some change in ...
Is it possible for there to be a "solar system" of sorts with a black hole and a few suns orbiting around it? Could that system be stable and (if so) would it be possible for some civilization(s) ...
I'd like two medieval societies to be separated from one another by a huge vertical wall. The wall is so high that no-one has succeeded in shooting an arrow (or anything else) over it. It disappea...
This creature was void-born in the farthest depths of time in this Universe. Drawing its energy from electromagnetic radiation, and sealed against the vacuum of space, this drifting creature establ...
Most current planets, and any inhabitants living on them, are ultimately the product of long-dead supernovas that exploded and sent matter across the universe, where it eventually got caught with o...
A species of humanoid creatures with a strange skull structure and huge horns has somehow immense strength in their hands. The rest of their body seems to be strong in proportion to their weight an...
Larry Niven defines a macro-life civilisation as one that lives in interstellar spacecraft, independent of planetary resources and culture, full time and by implication keeps moving. This could mea...
The civilization in question here has colonized the solar system. They have established settlements on most solid planets. Of course, a space-faring people generates plenty of trash, but they have ...
Let us pretend there is some "sacred city" created by gods, where gold is so common that it is the standard form of currency and everyone has lots of it. But once you try to leave the city with thi...
I am creating a fantasy world on a planet entirely separate from our own. Since it is a different world, it makes sense that the food there would be different as well. Some of our fruit is simila...
Basically, it's a continent that wants to be really hard to find (you can find it if you try really, really hard). For example, if you got in a ship and wanted to sail to it you wouldn't be able to...
The Emperor of the World wants there always to be a full moon. His Scientific Advisor (the SA) comes up with a plan. He plans to cost out the venture, hand it over to the Keeper of the Treasury wh...
Like the title states, how would it be possible for the same species to live on multiple planets (before space travel is invented)? Basically, a civilization invents space travel, meets aliens, and...
CONTEXT and INTRODUCTION Humans establish colonies on Mars with slightly more advanced technology than we have today. The Martian colonists lose all contact with Earth. Over centuries, the Martian...
In a world big enough for human civilizations as knowledgeable about medicine as ours to develop without contacting each other, how could they initiate that contact without exposing each other to p...
I have an idea for a story where humans on a low g planet with a dense atmosphere wear artificial wings to fly. I know that muscles they would use to produce a flight stroke would be in the upper b...
