General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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I don't like the direction where mankind is going. We spend more resources to build tools which allow us to watch cat videos than on curing cancer. One day I decided to say enough, and leave this ...
I'm making a hard-ish sci-fi universe where humans colonized nearby star systems and found not one but two civilizations in Alpha Centauri, each at home on a planet orbiting one of the two main sta...
Let's not debate whether is there any friction while traveling inside vacuum space and assume all ships can brave a perfect storm brewing inside the giant molecular cloud. OK let's get down to busi...
In one of the most empty regions of space between the galactic superclusters there is a giant space bubble, with a radius of about 1,000,000 light years. Most of this bubble is one molecule thick ...
The jackalope is a mythical animal of North American folklore described as a jackrabbit with an antelopes horns. It's a popular mythological creature in hill folk culture and it made me ask a quest...
My question is in the context of a fictional super-Neptune that lies in the habitable zone of its host star system. Giant planets only form beyond the Frost Line of their protoplanetary disk, and...
How Long? In the 1960s, unknown to most, the United States set up a secret base on the moon manned by an "extra" aboard each Apollo lander. NASA architects decided that the base must be built into...
From what I know about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, one of its consequences is that when you learn a great deal about the position of a particle, you greatly increase the uncertainty of th...
I want to write a novel situated in a "reversed planet": there are two stars orbiting each other, and there is a little spot exactly in the middle of the two that is suitable for life. A normal pla...
I am currently reading an eternal golden braid, i've gotten as far as several lengthy chapters about the brain. He talks about neurons and symbols, what 'meaning' is and there is a lot of hypothe...
[Edit: I'm not looking for 100% realism. I'm looking for an explanation as realistic as possible, possible with just few exceptions to physics.] [Edit 2: In my imagination these worlds are differe...
Premise The premise is an adept modern chemist is transported back in time and is to serve as the court alchemist to a wealthy prince in the late 16th century. Assumptions: "Transmuting" gold i...
Warning This question is one of a series about specific use of teleportation. It will concern only about pressure and atmosphere. Here are previous question: Teleportation and speed Context T...
If I were to build a world like Game of Thrones, how would the dragons not burn their own nostrils from the heat of flames?
In my epic fantasy world set in the 1450's there are underground tunnels that literally go across from under the ocean for 700 miles or so. So here are my questions: How long would it take to dig...
Your large spaceship is damaged beyond repair. You manage to get it close enough to a planet so that you can release emergency shuttle craft. You have very little control over the ship and won't be...
I've been thinking on the concept of the human race dying off (the reason doesn't matter), but most of the other living species on the planet survive. Although we die off, the remains of books, the...
How could we and would we terra-form the moon? I mean, theoretically speaking it should be possible and not too much of a challenge. But i don't know a lot of things, so i'm just not sure. I came ...
As we all know, the brain consumes a lot of energy, so much that we, who has a bigger body and brain only have the same amount of strength as a chimpanzee. So, could a species evolve to develop in...
Is a moon made entirely of water possible? Could a planet made completely of water exist? I was inspired by the above questions to ask the following: Assume that our current Moon is replaced ins...
The setting On an Earth-like planet but with completely different flora and fauna there is the Great Plain. It is similar in size to the Serengeti National Park on Earth. The Plain is surrounded b...
READ EDITS I am writing a passage about the main character of my book travelling up a space elevator to the spaceport that rests in geostationary orbit above Mars. This means that the elevator wou...
Panotti so called from the Greek words πᾶν and οὖς for "all ears", were a mythical race of people, described as possessing large ears that covered their entire bodies. In the Natural Hi...
How would the human body be affected if the oxygen levels on Earth suddenly decreased by 15 percent? This is instant. Not over time. How would we adapt? Would some people die and some not?
There are some organisms that can generate electricity (eels, for example). And some others can detect magnetic fields and use it for navigation (birds, for example): https://www.nytimes.com/2012/0...
If there was a city using antigrav to maintain a position over Kolkata, and it had approximately the area of New York City (roughly 300 square miles, or 780 square kilometers), what altitude would ...
So the world has been destroyed. Pick your poison. We have probably 300 different scenarios lying around here somewhere. What's Left: The world is a desolate wasteland, dry and crispy and barr...
A great way to introduce advanced technology to a story is to have it be of extraterrestrial origin. E.g. have a spaceship crash on earth, or, like I was planning to, put a derelict spaceport on th...
Another question based off of this one here. Let's say on a cube styled Earth-like planet, there was a similar race to humans. If the differences in the planets were minimal (besides, you know, the...
I'm trying to write a story where the main characters discover the wreckage of a spaceship in the fields that border their town to the west. To the east, there's the end of a large mountain range. ...
In my epic fantasy I have four races of creatures which were all hunted down due to their valuable blood which grants the drinker magical abilities (premonitions). After time they all became extinc...
Atmospheric composition: | 2% Trace gases | 58% Nitrogen | 26% Oxygen | 11% Argon | 3% Carbon dioxide | Average surface temperature: 36 degrees Celsius Surface gravity: 1.36x Earth ...
I am making a reincarnation novel with all of the protagonist's memories intact from the previous life. So what is the time when the protagonist can actually communicate through speaking?
Most of what follows is scientifically dubious. I'm looking to clarify one aspect and one aspect alone. A small planet is being terraformed by an alien race who have been doing this for millennia....
Essentially, I'm designing a solar system for form of alien life. For the sake of ease, the star is roughly similar to the Sun, and the habitable planet follows an orbit anywhere between Earth and ...
TL:DR You and 1000-2000 unprepared and untrained settlers are stranded in an uninhabited area that has never had any human development. If you had nothing but the knowledge of how things work and...
I'm building a map for a tabletop RPG (Pathfinder specifically), the aim of which is that my players will be trekking around and visiting interesting places. As part of that, I'd love to portray a ...
An answer to the following question mentions a free online calculator for long-distance space travel. Software to ease my interstellar travel calculations I'm looking for a 3d simulator that accu...
I would like to include a world in a story that is located on the upper plane (or bottom, doesn't matter, but call it upper for the sake of reference) of the galaxy. If you think of the galaxy as ...
In my stellar empire, the sapient life of the home world are arachnids. Due to an oxygen-heavy world with certain evolutionary characteristics, spider-like beings developed intelligence and formed ...
Premise I'm creating a pre-history world to attempt to demonstrate an alternative sequence of events. I would like natural forces to somehow make natural selection view intelligence/technology as ...
I recently asked about racing in space (The new Space Race - Racing!) and as expected while there were a few options they were mostly pretty limited. However 2012rcampion did suggest that sports i...
It is the near-future. Breakthrough, mass produced carbon nanotubes have been invented and are relatively cheap. These nanotubes have the properties that we would expect, and are manufactured in 'r...
Evil Wizard got his hands on a Handwavium Wand, and wished the Earth's magnetic field no more. Now the surface is vulnerable to solar wind, solar radiation and cosmic radiation. How long will it ...
When the old mining town was founded, nobody did think of this ever growing into much more than a coal-mining town. The deposits of iron-ore, aside from the already developed peat bog to the nor...
Working on a future history setting; the question arises, since the world cannot run on fossil fuels forever, one way or another, something must end up replacing them; what will that something be? ...
In Warlords, my own sci-fi project, I wanted to tap into exosuits, but didn't want them to be one off rich boy toys or just make little to no practical sense. So I'm wondering what industry, if any...
Comics are full of superheros with super strength. These heroes punch through walls, lift and throw tanks, and wrestle with buildings. But that's superhero physics. The fact is that without leve...
Tidea is a moon with an atmosphere orbiting a giant planet. Due to that, tidal forces on Tidea are enormous. I'm working on trying to understand how would the climate be on Tidea. Relevant things...
We are in a world very similar to ours. But, one day, 1% of the children that are turning 10 are gaining super strength (this is an ongoing process : from that date, all the children under 10 may p...
