General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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I'm designing an alien world on which its creatures evolved from four-eyed early life forms. However, there is a fair amount of other beings that have six or even eight eyes. How could such creatur...
In my world, I have three dimensions, each of which have their own special properties. From each of these three dimensions come a master race of said dimension: From the first, the master race is...
A planet was terraformed in humanity's distant past by technologically superior beings. The planet is very similar to Earth. I understand blue stars are highly radioactive and thus don't have real ...
So, this came about when I was attempting to construct create a unified Kaiju universe, and wondering about a hypothetical evolutionary path of Godzilla. However, I figured that it could also open ...
Obize is an Eden-like moon orbiting the barren terrestrial planet Akaria. This planetary system is special in the fact that the two worlds are complete contrasts to each other. The moon has plentif...
How tall could a bamboo-like (i.e hollow with nodes) tree be ? It should be at very least 1.5m of diameter and walls no more than 20cm thick. The internodes should be 2 to 5 meter long. I think it ...
Could animal produce less than 700MHz radio waves to communicate ? I don't want those waves interfere with mobile phones and other intercontinental radio communication my space colonists would use....
I have been recently thinking and writing about a hard sci-fi universe with the exception of FTL. Within the system of Alchiba (or Alpha Corvi) lies a planet under the name of Mannhardt and is an E...
Brown dwarfs are celestial bodies in the gray area between planet and star. They're huge, gaseous, hot compared to planets, and come in all different kinds. (1) Is it possible for life to develop...
I'm taking the example of a rotating wheel space station, in which artificial gravity is created through rotation due to the inertia inside. The idea in the 3D environment is that the wheel (2D) i...
While I am aware that there have been a lot of posts about how shape-shifting could be possible, but I am asking if this type shape-shifting would work. Okay so fair warning, physics isn't my stro...
So, the idea in a story is that in far far future there's a trend that rich people, they are able to buy themselves planets. Tiny little planets with sizes 4-6 km (3-4 miles) in diameter. The compa...
I was just wondering if it would be possible for a planet to have life that only uses noble gases in their biology. Like for example breathing in certain noble gases like Argon or Krypton for ener...
Without tidal locking, would it be possible to have a planet with a region roughly the shape and size of the USA and Canada in which it is always "day"? (By day I mean at least as bright as a clear...
I am making a universe and I thought that it would be unrealistic for all life forms in my entire universe to be based upon carbon. I am aware of silicon as a possible replacement, but I'm looking...
So, utility fogs have been around for quite a while in my world, mainly to patch up whatever holes I had in my magic system: If the Fireball really is just an M67 nade, then what propels it 122 m...
Suppose a person, standing at sea level, could use telekinesis to exert a force around a sphere with a 10 cm diameter so that it becomes one-way permeable to air. As time goes on, the sphere become...
I'm in the opening stages of writing (yet another) star system generator, using Python. My goal is to be able to generate a plausible star and, if appropriate, planetary system around it - allowing...
My current ongoing science fiction project has FTL travel that is instantaneous for the ships and their crews, but still, usually, takes years of real-time in the rest of the universe. This is goin...
I am working on creating a sapient reptilian species from a mineral-rich Planet that has very little flora. I was wanting this species to use a super acid (specifically fluoroantimonic acid) excret...
Idea prompted by Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe: String theory postulates microscopic dimensions in space. Could you conceal an object by rotating it into one of the microscopic dimensions a...
I would like to better understand intragalactic ship design (aka, "spaceships"). It's travelling at a barely tolerable 0.05c (86 years to Alpha Centauri). It happens to impact with a baseball (14...
So I'm writing a book series called The Weasel Sagas (link here if you want to know more about that). Anyway, there's this character named Santa Muerte (her birth name is Beth but that's a story fo...
If there were a planet similar to earth where the lines of latitude and longitude were half as far apart (about 35 miles instead of about 70), but the planet's density were increased to compensate ...
I just want big cat eyes (i.e., lions, tigers, etc.) in a humanoid that can be just as expressive as a human's yet not having our very conspicuous eye-whites. Doable, yes or no?
Would it be possible to have a disease that only affected people in a certain age group, more specifically, teenagers? And what would the virus be targeting?
Okay, so I'm an engineer who's been tasked with transforming Mars. I don't need to make it perfect for people to be able to walk around free with no life support. But I do need to make life, espe...
Obviously, you can't just send a bunch of out-of-work Kentucky coal miners up there to give it a go. You need some sort of specialized equipment. What I want to know is: what equipment will it be? ...
How plausible, or implausible, would it be for a lineage of birds' feathers to evolve into sharp, hardened plate-like scale armor (and/or blades), comparable to that of pangolins? And if it is plau...
In my world there are two planets within the same solar system, which are connected approximately every seven cycles through a portal that opens for a few days. The planets are very similar. The ...
I'm trying to write a 'gundam like' series, though with space fighters instead of humanoid robots. I want a semi-hard science world, I'm okay with making up technology without fully explaining how...
I've been doing a little research (including reading Howard Curtis' Orbital Mechanics for Engineering Students) because I want to build a solar system with a planet that has a true three-dimensiona...
So, there is a monstrous creature called the Tayan. It was created many thousand years ago by a hyper advanced race that created it as a sort of biological torture mechanism. It's so huge it can ...
A few days ago, I saw this very nice reconstruction of a Machairodus giganteus by Peter Hutzler: More recently, I've been thinking about it, and I'm wondering A) if it would evolve without getti...
Well, today I have a fairly simple question. Is it possible for a human to have some sort of birth defect, mutation, disease or something that causes the human body to be unable to produce body hea...
What sort of xenobiochemistry would support information-carrying macromolecules like DNA if only trace amounts of phosphorus were present on an alien planet? Since the phosphoribosyl backbone of DN...
In the story I'm building, a 3rd atomic bomb (same spec as Fat Man) was created for use on Japan - and dropped. However, for whatever reason, the 3rd bomb never detonated - impacted the ground and...
This question is almost exactly like Could plants develop intelligence, but now I wonder (how) could plant life develop sentience, to the point where it becomes as intelligent as humans? Is a brain...
(Please note that this question is the sandbox version and the replacement of the original question) I have been wondering about how humans require facial muscles in order to be able to produce sp...
I'm thinking of making a world where the sky is purple, or at least perceived as purple by the native species taking centre stage in my story. What gases could cause this colour? Could the colour...
In a previous question I asked how Mutually Assured Destruction could be made not assured. Most of the highly rated answers focused on political methods, but one answer raised the possibility that ...
Thanks for all the comments and I've re-edited the question: All nature settings(radius of planet, etc) are similar to the real world earth except the continent layout. I used Mogensen Planet Ge...
Here on Earth, Carbon is the base of all life from plants to fungi to animals. The most common alternative that exists is Silicon, but surely out of the over 100 elements other than Carbon and Sili...
First question: Would this simplex ternary system be stable? If that question turns out to be yes, how would an organism based on carbon tetrachloride use the energy types below to provide enough ...
In a story I'm working on, there are some creatures that eat hair, wool, fur, and anything similar. They're not mites or insects, but are (very roughly) the size of humans. Is there any realistic...
Night/Day Cycle I'm trying to make a fantasy world with a longer night cycle than day. With the advice of Renan, 12 hours of proper night, 4 hours of near/partial dark and 8 hours of good light....
Imagine that all men in the world became infertile right now. (This would apply also to all new born boys for as long as no cure was found.) How much time would humanity have to find a cure (or li...
Consider a universe in which leptons & quarks (every fundamental particle that possesses electric charge) all have twins with magnetic monopole charge instead, resulting in two parallel kinds o...
I'm trying to make a trinary star system but I'm not sure how it would work. The primary star is an M0Ve star (red dwarf flare star). The orbits of the other two stars are slightly more complicated...
Inspired by today's XKCD comic How could a creature, momentarily called XKCDius lethalissimus, evolve to have the following features: Be radioactive (intended as more radioactive than the envi...
