General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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I made an organism called the Skarlix for a art/xenobiology project called Sagan 4. The Skarlix is a eukaryotic, somewhat amoeba-like organism that "eats" various metal compounds and "breathes" (o...
From what I understand, Mount Everest grows about 2.4 inches per year. I am trying to create an area of land that grows very often, often around 1 inch per day. As I'm not very good with plate tect...
I have been toying the idea of fusing our white blood cells which search and destroy malicious foreign bodies with artificial intelligence to fight various disease causing pathogens, my worry is th...
Assuming the axial tilt of the Earth was increased to roughly 30°, and the orbital eccentricity roughly doubled(0.03 as opposed to 0.016) so that the average temperature stayed the same, but the s...
I'm creating a fictional universe in which several races exist that are very different from each other due to long term separation. One race is specialized for the tundra, and is subjected to sever...
Amino acids, the building blocks of proteins and, therefore, one of the key components of life as we know it. There are many amino acids in nature, but they all stem from the same basic structur...
The eclipse needs to be visible from at least one region on the planet every revelation and last about one hour.
This character has a set of dragonfly-like wings. These are not normal for her species, and would normally be something of a birth defect requiring amputation. But through liberal application of Cl...
So, I've heard that while Alcubierre drives might present a semi-plausible way of getting around the light speed limit (if you can get ahold of negative energy), they do so at the expense of creati...
For starters, I'll describe what I'm going for with this species (I'll call them White Hairs because, you guessed it, they have white hair) They are humanoid with pale gray skin, tall and pointed, ...
I'm interested in coming up with a plausible agent of destruction, virus or fungus or engineered weapon or what have you, that could conceivably wipe out a majority of the human race. What physical...
In recent years, we have found evidence in the Negev Desert of the Middle East of a striped hyena, a solitary carnivoran, tagging along with a pack of wolves. This sort of alliance is found nowher...
How long can objects made of hard material last at room temperature in otherwise ideal conditions? If left outdoors on Earth, over the course of millions of years, any material will be eroded by w...
Imagine a huge salt flat like Bonneville or Salar de Uyuni. Due to other logistical concerns, commerce between the economic powers on either side of the flat is forced travel across it. This has re...
In my story an area was formerly beneath an ocean or lake. Some form of life leeched the soil of a specific mineral or substance. Technology level is that of ~1700 Spain. Now that the water has ...
With the emergence of cyanobacteria on earth 3.5 billion years ago, the shift from a reducing to an oxidizing atmosphere began. "The atmospheric O$_\textrm{2}$ levels (in PAL; i.e., normalized to ...
Planets that are larger and have higher gravity tend to have thicker atmospheres, since it is easier to hold onto gases. Higher air pressure leads to a higher air density, and therefore, a greater...
Assumptions: Jupiter's moon Europa has a salty subsurface ocean in contact with a rocky mantle. The ocean is populated by hydrothermal vents produced by tidal heating. Global heat flow is similar...
I am writing a story, in which I would like to have three locations within about a half hour to an hour driving distance (assuming population, road systems and automobiles on par with the contempor...
This is a another sequel to my Plutonian questions, but I've decided to take a break from them and focus on another part of the world. Basically, my version of Pluto has five continents, each a si...
My low-fantasy setting features the deadly plant known as the wormberry. It produces small berries of a bright-but-overall-undecided color, all of which contain a small, edible seed. They have two...
Imagine a generation ship heading for a distant star. Humanity had means to observe that star up to a point, that it is 99.9% sure the star has a colonizable Earth-like planet (with water and atmos...
Would anyone be able to check some math/ let me know if I'm thinking of this the correct way? I had an idea of the moon appearing basically stationary in the sky, but in fact it orbits just faster ...
I was reading this question, and it made me wonder if something like this is possible or not. So, the question is, Is it possible to have an alien species in whom, the newborns are bigger than adu...
The Ressurectinator is a handy machine than can bring back people from death. Unlike the virgin Lord of Light, the chad Ressurectinator does that without human sacrifice and/or permanent scars. Yo...
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 ...
I'm designing a tidally locked world around a red dwarf star. The habitable ring is an Earth analogue. The atmosphere and gravity are similar to Earth's, and we're going to pretend the wind is negl...
Please note: I am asking about planet orbiting a star, not a moon orbiting a planet. So I've been trying to get this planet down for a long while now but there are still so many pieces of the puzz...
I am developing a fictional planetary system in which a large gas giant planet (slightly less than the mass of Saturn), has migrated into the habitable zone during the formational years of the syst...
Let's assume some things: The ground under the object is flat land. The object always remains in the same position. The object is clearly visible from the ground. It is a high priority for the pe...
I am considering a mid to large sized creature, the loping quhambo. Maybe eight to ten palms at the whithers and maybe five stone in weight. It is a proboscidean mammal of some sort, though quite ...
A long time ago homo floresiensis split off into two main groups Goblins and Halflings. Now Goblins are an odd little bunch (here's a rough mock up of what a goblin might look like) and I was wonde...
Neutrinos have extremely low masses, and it's quite easy for them to reach high energies and speeds. As such, it almost always makes sense to treat a neutrino as being relativistic. I've been doing...
I will be using solar antimatter production via Schwinger pair production like the VARIES project but I need to store it for bulk use. The containment will be a satellite orbiting the sun close eno...
"Imagine that. A planet teeming with life, entwined with one another with mere thought and nothing more. A silent harmony, a quiet world." Context Through some still unknown science, and on this ...
An area of my planet is very saturated with lava. Being quite similar to the Siberian Lava Traps, it is essentially a lava sea. This lava "sea" area isn't necessarily all lava however, as there are...
Let's say a few centuries in the future, we have captured an asteroid into orbit and built a space station out of its material. The station is a ring that encircles the equator in Low Earth Orbit, ...
If the right requirements are met, could bacteria survive on the Sun? The bacteria would spend most of their time in hibernation and reproducing, and when the time comes, they spread out on plasma...
Imagine a Mark Wattney-like scenario, only on Titan and involving a decent-sized base being isolated instead of a single person. There is not, and never has been, the possibility of growing potatoe...
My species lives on a world that is filled with very few storms, lush environments, and naturally forming metallic monoliths. The species are like humans, but one thing that sets them apart from hu...
This question on space stack begins to tackle how a bird could fly inside an O'Neill cylinder, https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/27665/can-birds-fly-inside-an-oneill-cylinder. Here is the ...
So there's this man that was born 1,000 years ago, but today he's still living and he's (biologically) 28 years old. He just stopped aging at that age. He is not immortal. He has been hurt in wars...
In the world that I am making there are hollows all over the planet, which are massive underground subterranean areas of the planet. Think The Hollow of the Gears Of War series. So far the going th...
In various science fiction works, we see our plucky heroes beaming down to, or flying down to planets other than their own. They meet with the inhabitants there, be they human or otherwise and then...
I want to create a Mad-Max-esque post apocalyptic setting. Unfortunately after a bit of looking into this, there is one massive issue with the idea of lots of maniacs tearing across the barren lan...
In my story Orcs, humans, and a bunch of other fantasy races live along side each other and i'm curious as to what sort of environment (on earth) would best suit them? so basic characteristics of m...
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 ...
I know things like flashlight fish exist; things with luminescence and all that. But how strong could the light be? I have this cave dwelling species with three eyes except the middle one isn't ex...
When I say multicellular I mean it's made of more that one viruses. Basically it's a bunch of viruses that act like viruses but use the viruses made by infected cells to build a "multicellular" lif...
An alien creature has secretly landed on earth, seeking to propagate itself among the local species. It studies the individual sexes of a race called humans and determined that the males would be m...
