General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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One common problem with powered armors is their limited endurance. This could be remedied with electric roller skates as an efficient and faster way of locomotion, capable of maintaining its speed ...
I am making a world where people live without access to many raw materials, including metals and wood. Among other things they harvest their own dead for a paper analogue. Another thing that is ha...
In relation to this question, how could I create a force field dome over that city? Specifications of the city: 10 x 40 km on the surface 1 km in height has a city wall of 100 m all around the ...
First question so go easy! I've been looking around for the carrying capacity of Elephants, hoping to extrapolate that to a Woolly or Columbian Mammoth. I know logging Indian elephants can lift hal...
Assuming a situation similar to this, where the moon causes slower but massive tides that slowly encircle the globe. Would the poles be constantly underwater or not underwater (like A or B below)?:...
In my book series (more on that here), the galaxy is inhabited by anthropomorphic animals, humans, and mythical creatures. The anthropomorphic animals are similar to Narnia's talking animals, excep...
When the skies release a column of fire, the land around becomes a barren place... Can such phenomenon be explained with some rare, but "closely possible" circumstances? I don't think about ...
A civilization uses the sci-fi staple of space gates to get around between systems. These gates, for our purposes, are big, round and very much not transparent; think the star gates but huge or the...
The animal in question starts off with reptile like intelligence, classic gecko and is a singularity, the only individual of his species to be immortal. It can die and be killed but for the sake...
I've been trying to come to an answer for what conditions need to be in place to allow for the formation of a permanent or at least a long lasting weather pattern, in this case a large storm. I wou...
Is there such a thing as gasoline vapors, or some kind of gas that can be given off by gasoline? I'm trying to come up with a planet where the atmosphere is combustible and constantly catching on f...
Imagine that, through some cosmic phenomena not yet understood, the Sun 'burps' and ejects a vast amount of its mass into the cosmic void. A huge coronal discharge, perhaps. A pressure bubble insid...
Suppose you had a tower-like mega-structure, rooted all the way into near-infinite geo-thermal energy of the Earth's crust, connected to the ocean such that water is not a limiting factor to the su...
In my story there is something akin to an Island Three O'Neill cylinder buried vertically into the side of the asteroid Vesta. It is 5 miles across and 20 miles long. The station is buried but is...
Assuming that there is an Earth-like planet that has 8 times the volume, 2.83 times the radius, and has the same surface gravity as Earth, and has oceans; what are potential problems concerning the...
My question is pretty simple, if the steam locomotive were invented during the middle to late medieval period, what would it look like? We are just going to ignore how it was invented. My guess i...
So, I'm currently toying around with the idea of a hypercarnivorous sapient race on a planet in my universe, and I'd like to make them scary, but without abiding only by the "rule of cool". (Also n...
We all know that equation for surface gravity is $$ g = \frac{4\pi}{3} G \rho r $$ So if we want Earth-like surface gravity of $ g = 9.81 $, then the equation for radius is $$ r = \frac{3 g}{4\p...
So in my book series, there is this planet called Axaca. However, it is very different from most of the galaxy in that its flora is almost completely fungal. Here are some things to know: Trees a...
In the world I'm building, there is a single continent. However, in the deeper parts of the ocean, there are hydrothermal vents. They're pretty necessary to my story, but I can't figure out why the...
I'm imagining a system with a star and something like 6-8 planets. The planets' orbits are (relatively) close to each other, and all share an orbital period that is exactly the same. I.e. the len...
For my story I have an alien species who are detrivore. They are also an intelligent species on par with humans. But many people have pointed out to me that intelligent detrivores don't work, becau...
Sister question to: What's the smallest reasonable natural planet or moon with Earth-like surface gravity? - I want us to have both upper and lower bounds for 1g planets available for authors. We ...
I'm writing a science fiction story set on a moon orbiting a gas giant. I want to understand how the world's day night cycle would appear from its surface and how the world might be affected by thi...
So I have this intelligent alien race of detritivores and I was wondering if it would be more practical for them to be a farming society or a hunter-gatherer society. I don't know if this is very ...
Okay, so our society has starting harnessing significant amounts of energy from its sun, and has started mass producing micro-black holes (although there have been experiments with gathering energy...
Let's say that in the future, artificial humanoid computers [Androids] are built to serve as a workforce. Why might a company designed these androids to rewrite their own programming? In such that ...
A planet is in the brink of destruction with constant wars and chaos. To somehow save their world a group of scientists launched a nuclear warhead all over their planet to release a gas that would...
I am designing an alternate world where the meteorite that caused the massive dinosaurs extinction never hit Earth. I am stuck in one point: If the massive deaths of the dinosaurs worldwide never h...
(Question in highlighted text) So, the chances are that you've heard of brine pools, which form when methane erupting from the seabed expose ancient salt deposits - the concentrated salt mixes wit...
I am trying to think of a natural event that causes very big impact to human lives - massive movements of people, shift of power, etc. This event happens in a medieval period on an earth-like plane...
My main character is based on the basic concept of a vampire. That she needs blood to survive. She was genetically engineered to digest "˜blood' instead of eating. She still needs to drink water. ...
This question is similar to "How would the human eye need to change in order to see in low light without any changes to physical appearance?", including the apsect of change to the human eye, only ...
On the planet Qualis, about 2 million years ago, their was a species of lizards, called "Quals". They were about as smart at the common Earth rat, not very smart. They dwelled in the semi-arid regi...
In my story, reasonably far in the future, an intrepid group of explorers are on the first manned mission to the Andromeda galaxy, travelling close to the speed of light. They slumbered in suspende...
I have the radius, volume, mass and density figured out. It does not have a moon. I do wonder how that will affect the rotation. The Earth's rotation was considerably faster before the creation of ...
A small perfect sphere is suddenly gone. Everything inside is teleported somewhere -- through space or even maybe through time, we're not sure. It's a small sphere, just enough to fit a human sitti...
How close should a planet be to the Great Carina Nebula for it's inhabitants to look up and see this in the night sky? I'm aware much of the sharpness of the view would be lost due to the atmosph...
I was asking a deviantART.com artist why they often draw their anthros and furries with wide hips regardless of gender, and they told me this (copypasting): "I'll see if I can't whip something up ...
I'm aware this question has been been answered in some detail and form, but I'd like to know this. How spectacular would a nebula look like from the surface of, let's say, a Super-earth like plane...
I'm attempting to create a world that has very brutal, hard swinging weather and environments, leaving much of the planet desert-like. The world I've designed is a moon of a gas giant. The Parent ...
In my world, 3-inch humans live on an Earth-like planet. My question, provided by a comment on a previous question, is: What would an anatomically correct 3-inch human look like? How strong would ...
I have developed a fictional planet with the following atmospheric composition; 60.4% Nitrogen 27.6% Oxygen 9.8% Xenon 1.5% Water Vapor 0.64% Argon 0.06% Carbon Dioxide Is this breathable to hu...
In my world, which has an Earth-like gravity and environment, an adult, fit humanoid male is 3 inches tall. When I do a simple ratio calculation, I come up with him weighing 7.9 pounds. Basically, ...
I've been designing a race of humanoids with a thick chitinous arthropodal carapace resilient to small-calibre gunfire and physical trauma that would cripple a normal human being. This carapace is ...
I am pondering a world, where life very early on took a slightly different turn. First some background sketch, to explain what I mean: Current theories state that life first evolved as protocells:...
Earthquakes release a lot of energy, and some places on Earth have quakes happening very often. I have seen sources quoting the Earth having quakes from 20 to 1,400 times a day, depending on the Ri...
I recently asked this question about what would happen if a fusion bomb went off in the core of a planet, and the answer was relatively uninteresting. As was aptly said in my previous answer, the e...
The Premise Planet K is a lot like Earth in terms of size, atmosphere and land to water ratio, though the continent shapes and sizes may vary. There is one other major difference: the planet's oce...
This is a skeleton of a titanosaur, not quite the longest of the dinosaurs, but most certainly the heaviest! As far as we have found, we'd found no species exceeding 75 tons. This post focuses ...
