General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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Is it plausible that a virus could contaminate the entire ocean to where humans that enter it are highly likely to contract the virus? It doesn't necessarily have to be the whole ocean what with th...
I am trying to make three neighbouring countries with varying climates. One country needs to basically be Arizona (Especially like the Monument Valley area with the red sand and those iconic butte...
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...
A super-reactor was created by SRE, Inc (Super Reactor Energy), and it can provide as much clean energy as needed. There's no way to copy it or make another. It operates without problem or fuel - t...
Ok, to be honest, I don't believe about dragons having a special bladder or organ that stores up gas (especially methane) and having flint-like teeth or whatnot, or even having six limbs. Here's m...
This is a submission for the Anatomically Correct Series some characteristics of the Manticore include: having a lion like body having wings are tetrapods having a scorpion like tail being carn...
First of all, in no way do I have advanced knowledge of particle physics, quantum mechanics, or any other necessary scientific concept for a full understanding of this question. Secondly, this is p...
So I'm thinking here about the sort of setting like Eclipse Phase, in which virtually all of humanity lives in a wide range of space habitats because of an apocalypse on Earth. I am imagining a var...
I had an idea for a swarm of tiny drones, the smallest being as small as fairy flies at 0.15mm long, that could form into shapes and structures, even mimic the shapes of living creatures. They wou...
In the distant future, humanity has encountered, made peace and wars with countless advanced civilizations, but one civilization that still baffles them, is the race of intelligent centipedes. The...
I'd like to create a land-based mammal that uses its electricity NOT for navigation or hunting, but only as a defense (enough to stun creatures approximately its own size or marginally larger, with...
I'd like to randomly generate between 1 and 20 million stars for a spiral galaxy resembling our Milky Way. This is of course far fewer than our galaxy (estimated between 150 to 300 billion), but I'...
Working on a medieval setting I thought of the idea of a biome similar to Minecraft Ice Spike Plains where this ice structures naturally occur. These structures in particular are tall and sharp tow...
In my story characters can go into perfectly simulated virtual worlds where their memories have been replicated down to the individual neurons and their protien structures. In these worlds time pas...
The animal I'm particularly focusing on is a cat, for which I'm curious how long it would take for said cat to evolve into a bipedal, intelligent, humanoid being capable of complex language and all...
One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into Legosi from Beastars. He felt a dull pain a bit above his behind, as he li...
The continent is located on the Earth-like planet. The first map depicts a rough Köppen classification (which is there to give you bit of a context). Note that: Types 13 and 14 are undefined/p...
A long time ago, the 60 foot long Megalodon roamed the oceans. Fast forward to 2.6 million years ago and they went extinct. In the story I'm writing Megalodon hasn't gone extinct surviving at least...
A hypothetical scenario I'm batting around in my head is a Habitable Gas Giant system consisting of a roughly Saturn sized body orbiting a sun like star at a comfy goldilocks zone distance. Orbitin...
so according to this website: https://haraldas.wordpress.com/2014/10/21/dragon-fire-ever-wonder-if-its-possible/ it said that it could be possible for any animals to synthesise tert-butyllithium...
A long time ago during the last ice age an early hunter gather human encounter an unknown entity (likely a alien) who granted him the power of immortality with him living at least up into the middl...
In my alien world life has evolved very convergently with life on Earth. Carbon-based lifeforms managed to evolve multicellularity and evolved a lineage of organisms in line with early fish, howeve...
Would it be possible to have a planet created by a God - but still obeying the known laws of physics - to have a bouncy surface that would be strong enough to bounce any large incoming matter, like...
We often see, in Sci-fi, food being produced from, say, algae or yeast. What could be the effect of such a limited diet on the gut microbiome? Would there be any believable side-effect that would h...
I'm attempting to flesh out the history to a sci-fi novel I'm currently writing, which is set in the future. Several hundred years prior to the beginning of the story, lack of resources lead to s...
Premise: Space lab is working on making synthetic cells out of different materials. Experiments are classified as too dangerous to be disposed of with conventional means, and are set on an collis...
In a distant future, humanity has colonized and catalogued countless worlds in their home galaxy. However one day humanity has discovered a few habitable words in the Andromeda galaxy. After a wh...
I'm basically searching for an ATP that can be used to supply cells and also have its energy extracted efficiently into a basic form of explosive material (the stronger the better) without a lot of...
What will be the view of the sky and the distances between stars, living on a planet or in a habitat in a super galaxy that has merged with all its nearby galaxies in its cluster, at a time in the ...
In our world, a solar eclipse is visible from the planet a few times a year, in certain locations. However, a total solar eclipse that can be seen across the planet generally happens every three or...
I'd encourage you to take about 4 min to read the whole post. Multiple masses of parabanic acid appear at random around the world (but see Context and constraints), displacing any matter in their ...
For my middle-grade science-fiction novel, I need to come up with an invention or chemical that could rapidly create icebergs to refreeze the Arctic and slow climate change. Kurt Vonnegut's Ice-9 i...
In my post apocalyptic world, a virus has spread, essentially changing the roles, with infected animals gaining sentience and intellect close to a human and humans degrading into a more animalistic...
Is there an example of substances interacting with each other in the following way? A is a lethal substance, killing within minutes to hours when orally ingested; anti-A is an antidote for A (or ...
Imagine you have a weather-controlling device that you use to eliminate all lightning strikes. They're just too dangerous. What happens to the earth? Does lightning serve a necessary purpose to ...
As we know, bi-directional faster than light (FTL) travel can cause paradoxical situations. One possible way to resolve this would be a multiverse theory: Whenever a paradox could arise, the univer...
The human body can create a quintillion variants of antibodies. Â Resistance to infectious diseases is mainly carried out by the methods: White blood cells (white blood cells) and phagocytes. Whi...
I was wondering, for a speculative evolution project, what could be the bare minimum amount of organisms the common housefly needs to survive? Could they just feed on grass? Or should I add a flowe...
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...
When you have foresight, it's guaranteed that confusion will be your epitaph (thumbs up to the one person who gets the joke). Basically, it only grants you advantage on actions, so you still can't ...
A colony ship headed for its new home countless light-years from Earth suffers an unfortunate malfunction on the final part of its descent phase and crashes onto the planet. Thankfully, the ship cr...
Something like the above (Natural Springs by Ellie Cooper) - either where the water originates from atop the tree through regular rainfall, or is directed up and into the tree via the spring (or ...
In my fantasy setting, slimes are a species of giant (about eight cubic feet), single-celled amoeba. They have the ability to freely change their state and viscocity, being able to "melt" into a sl...
I am writing a story that has insects the size of humans, but I am having a little trouble with the biology. When you look up why there are no large insects on Earth, the most popular answer is th...
I'm currently working on an alien humanoid race that lives on a planet with twice the gravity of earth. Despite this however, the humanoids are about the same size as an average human if not slight...
I usually like to leave some wiggle room for myself when fleshing a concept out. Dragons make that sort of impossible, same's true for nanomachines but ripped senators are a question for another d...
The shell variant of a Dyson sphere consists of an artificially-made shell of material about 1 AU in radius encircling a star. The sphere captures most of the star's energy and stores it for future...
What possible evolutionary reasons would there be for insects to increase their physical size over a long period? What benefits would be gained by an insect being larger? For example, say ants in...
One trope seen in movies is mind control. This trope involves a person or thing taking over another person's body, whilst visual or auditory cues and friends try to help the original person regain ...
