General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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I fear the math involved is beyond my capabilities on this one. I have what I consider to be more than a Layman's understanding of the physics involved, and I believe I can follow the math well en...
In micro-gravity and zero G, people's muscles deteriorate. If you sent a set of already very physically fit soldiers to train/live on a high gravity planet, would they perform better than other sol...
The setting for my story is a very foggy and windy place. There is a plant that grows on relatively short trees that needs to attract animals to spread its seeds, which are inside its fruit. Becau...
I am wanting my 32km x ~7.5km buried space habitat to be hit with a cataclysmic disaster which changes things from everyday life to a survival lifestyle. I would like the station to be damaged to ...
I'm designing an alien tree species that produces small purple fruits at the edge of its braches. Now a few seconds after one of these fruits falls from the tree it makes a small explosion so that ...
I've read the creation of dams in Earth can change the speed of rotation of the planet because they reallocate the mass over the planet. Let's suppose humans find a valuable mineral in the Moon an...
In a world I am creating, some people have colonized Ceres-like and Moon-like worlds - that is, they live in domes or underground, in pressurized buildings. The planets have no atmosphere for all p...
A saiyan is a species that is biologically similiar to humans, except in one particular way. Every time they come back from the brink of death, their strength and speed increases. They also become ...
On a world I am building, I have a species of creatures that evolved from crustaceans. The problem is that while they have an exoskeleton, they also live on a world with the same gravity as Earth. ...
I actually have European ancestors who survived the plague and because of this, I have been told that I am more immune to diseases that broke out back then and that does make sense. So I can imagin...
Question How can Zircon be used to record data for generations of life forms? Requirements Must be able to store the data with little to no loss of it, for a least 541 million years The data in...
In a world I'm currently developing, I'm working on a merpeople equivalent (more or less physically identical to your bogstandard mermaids, for the purposes of this question), and I want them to we...
In my particular scenario, There is an habitable exoplanet in which the axial tilt turns to always face the system's star, and the planet is not in tidal lock, this allows for a certain range o...
Warning: large pic ahead, scroll down for the text *BenWootten Dragons: Dragons are kinda small, by D&D standards, anyways. They measure 195 centimeters at, what I assume to be, the withe...
The planet orbits a supermassive gas giant, almost double the size of Jupiter. But the planet orbiting it is also supposed to have rather large rings in my story. Question: Is it possible for a mo...
On my planet, the whole day lasts nine years. The day lasts 4.5 years of incredible heat, with glaciers from the night providing water. The night starts with the sunset, during which violent tornad...
Let's say there exists an Earth-like exoplanet which orbits a normal star, with a similar process regarding the evolution of life on earth, yet the star became a red giant during said evolution. A...
In response to Write once perpetual storage, is such a thing possible? Separatrix pointed me at How could an ancient race warn the future in a universally understandable way? and How might modern h...
Suppose humans of the late 21st century or beyond began constructing a solar shield as a solution to climate change. Suppose for some reason (open to suggestions) they choose to build the shield in...
The world I'm thinking of is a large moon of a gas giant. It's fairly Earth-like, perhaps a bit smaller, might be a bit magical, but sits about where we sit around a star very similar to ours, exce...
In A Canticle for Leibowitz, the Plains Nomads conserve water for their animals by men drinking animal blood and women and children drinking milk instead. However, since ingesting any decently size...
The Humern empire is vast, unbelievably powerful and (in certain matters) brutally authoritarian. One such issue is that of reproduction. In order to ensure that all subjects of the Empire remain ...
Let's say that a patient is in hospital suffering a terminal disease or at least a physical injury that's very expensive to treat. The only hope of salvation is to have artificial, or cybernetic, ...
It's been a good year for me as an Evil Overlord. Lots of princess kidnapping turned into sizable ransoms, several of my Doomsday Devices were sold for high prices at auction, and my Minions have b...
If a mermaid was a fully mammalian creature that split on the evolutionary chain about the same time as humans did, would it be likely that mermaids could sleep? Would they rest one half of their b...
Everyone suddenly disappears from earth except 35 people randomly scattered wherever they were before everyone disappeared. How long would it take on average for 2 or more people to meet? What othe...
Below the surface of Dalia, there exists a monstrous beast that eats humanoids alive. This creature is called the Tayan. The Tayan is 150 feet tall, and 35 feet wide. It nests itself underground, a...
Just a fleeting hypothetical that crossed my mind. Say that no flowering plants exist. I don't know why - say a world has been terraformed with various Earth species. Bumblebees are present, but fl...
What should conditions on an alien planet be like, if the aliens of said planet move 3 or 4 times slower on their home planet than they could if they were to come to Earth? (Gravity, atmosphere, et...
I'm looking for a map of stars within a few hundred LY of the Sun. I'd like to be able to add text tags to stars, so I can name them within my SF universe. Then I'd like to be able to rotate the im...
tl;dr : the earth has been gradually flooded, over the course of a few hundred years. Also, there are now large lumps or ice raining out of the sky (not very often), causing massive tsunamis. I ha...
For example, a quote from one of the Witcher 3: Blood and Wine's side quests says The eggs themselves are a sight to behold, luminescent. The man (hologram) is referring to giant centipede eg...
I'm writing a story set in the after the end world scenario. The very few humans who survived the apocalypse in the facilities deep underground, decided that human race is too self-destructive and ...
The concept I have is merfolk that don't breath underwater and preserve a very human appearance from the waist up. I need to keep human (or at least very human-like) hair, skin, and eyesight in...
I'm worldbuilding a species X that doesn't have males. All members are females. X reproduces sexually using males from related species Z. There it combines the shared chromosomes but passes unique...
I have a sci-fi/fantasy world with two suns. Only one sun can be present in the sky at a time. A full day-night cycle would be: Night time Sun 1 rises Sun 1 sets Sun 2 rises Sun 2 sets Night time...
There are many theories about how teleportation could work (warning: tvtropes). One of them is that the body is completely disassembled on a molecular level and reassembled at the target destinatio...
Popular science fiction is full of examples of people and objects being shrunk down to the size of insects or smaller. Let us assume that everything is shrunk. Thus an animal would still contain t...
My current WIP involves an athletics competition on a non-terraformed moon, namely the Earth's moon. And while it would be a bit difficult to play certain sports without a breathable atmosphere, th...
I'm designing an alien planet which is roughly similar to earth (continents, oceans, breathable atmosphere, plant and animal life on it), but i was wondering: Could a planet that is very similar to...
I'm creating a creature that possesses an outwardly Chelonian-like appearance. However, the creature is bipedal. Specifically, the creature possesses upright, pillar-like hind limbs, as well as a K...
The terrestrial "vertebrates" of my planet must breathe air, and therefore must have lungs of some kind. They are descended from fish-like creatures, which breathe through gills. However, I would ...
So, vaguely, I remember from earth science that when submarine volcanoes erupt they eventually form archipelagos. My question actually has several parts; Starting with the first eruption to bre...
What are the cost and restrictions or benefits of a creature being able to slowly morph from an animal to another while retaining memories? The creature morphs to giant eagle then morphs into fis...
Is it possible to genetically engineer transparent carapace to act as biological armor in marine organisms? I know that deep sea animals may have transparent skin to hide themselves in the lightle...
Simplistically, a neutron star is a celestial body with enormous mass crushed into a small volume. That crushing force is gravity and the result, one might think, is atoms packed much more closely...
Let's pretend these magnificent and beautiful creatures are able to reproduce asexually so we can forget about their mating habits or their partners. I have yet to witness any hard shell eggs laid...
Let's say a bunch of crazy scientists develop the ultimate marine predator. How feasible would it to give this whale sized creature a sonic attack that can be a hazard to humans that use small subm...
The selected answer on this question provides an extremely good, and detailed, description of what is generally accepted to be the main (only?) way a terrestrial planet can form, i.e. through accre...
I'm trying to create a people that live on this rolling tide (see previous question or on 'millers planet') but I haven't figured out where they would get wood to build their boats/homes. If the ti...
