General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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I'm inspired by the comments discussion on a (now deleted) question by XandarTheZenon. We're preconditioned to think in terms of a 2-sex lifeform, which is natural with diploid genetic material, an...
A Type II civilization on the Kardashev scale has decided to build a telescope. This civilization spans its home galaxy and wields vast energies capable of moving and shaping matter on the scale of...
In analogy with a skydiver, a culture has developed an extreme sport called "tornado-surfing". Essentially, a thrillseeker hunts down supercells that might create tornadoes and lets themselves be s...
What kind of realistic oxygen producing reaction used by life could exist in a carbon dioxide / ammonia atmosphere? There are also many volcanoes, either immersed or not, water oceans and you can e...
Magnetic fields behave in many of the same ways as electric fields. Could a society develop a magnetic based system of computation before they invent an electric method like modern integrated circu...
Here's the explanation These are the structural questions about my "Super Dreadnought". How wide would the ship have to be to be stable on the water? Would the Caterpillar treads hold the weight...
Assuming humanity was suddenly highly motivated to do it, how long would it take a probe launched from Earth to get into a position to record and broadcast images of the position in the opposite or...
Say you have a galaxy, possibly ours, with a central black hole. In an instant the black hole falls through a plot hole and vanishes. What happens to the rest of the galaxy? Does everything keep ...
I'm writing a Colonization story, and I'm trying to determine which propulsion system would be the best option. The destination is Kapteyn b, 12.76Ly from Earth, and our 40K colonists will be in Cr...
What would be a good way to explain dangerous winds on a rocky planet like mars? I'm looking to create a dangerous situation for atmospheric pilots trying to land, specifically for sudden changes i...
The title fairly well sums up the question. We all know elves have pointed ears. Whether they be LotR style with slight tapers, or full blown foot long impracticalities, all elves have pointed ears...
In "The Thousand and One Nights", the ghouls were vile tricksters and ravenous flesh eaters. They kidnapped victims and lured lustful men to their doom by taking the guise of beautiful women. Somet...
Could humans permanently live off a single food-like block, made of various edible materials, which contains all their daily requirements of calories, vitamins, and minerals? Preferably is there a...
Humans already exterminated more than 50 % of wild vertebrates individuals since 1970 1, 2. I was wondering if it is possible to wipe out the remaining 50 % in less than a year ? Note that, in t...
Natural gas comes can be found in the underground, but its origin are the organic rests of a long time ago. However, my gas doesn't come from dead trees or anything like that. So what's an alternat...
I need a way for a NASA spaceship to be able to dock with the hatch of an alien spacecraft. The alien ship is automated so there's no communication, and being alien, the hatches on both ships shoul...
A colony of space travelers makes their way to their new home planet. After landing and establishing their base camp, a wood worker begins to cut down trees and notices that none of the trees have ...
According to Elon Musk's plans/overall mission, humans could better survive as species if we inhabited more than one planet. So far so good, he proposes settling a million people in a first city a...
In Warlords, Phobos is comparable to Ellis Island for Mars with its surface being home to many decent sized colonies and space ports (making use of the close proximity of Phobos to Mars) that facil...
I want to create an earth-like planet with massive aurora, visible during the day, and from the equator. How would I go about doing this? Do I increase the strength of the planet's electromagnetic ...
I am aware that there are a lot of answers explaining the fundamentals of a tidally locked "Earth-like" moon around a giant gas planet. For example this one: Habitable moon of a gas giant: working ...
There is a solid glass sphere that is 1 mile in diameter. It is completely covered in dirt and rock, except for one small room that is built adjacent to the sphere. One of the four walls of this ...
The dwarves in my world are humans who starting digging caves in the Maumturks and Twelve Bens in Ireland during the Iron Age, and eventually connected the caves via tunnels rather than trudge acro...
If a subspecies of human had bones that were made of an almost unbreakable material (let's just ignore any adverse effects this might have) how much would these bones help them to survive falls? ...
For example, a street this wide to have enough blood run down the length shown in this photo? Assume that the blood isn't going down storm-drains for whatever reason and assume the stretch of road ...
I'm trying to envision a creature that is highly dexterous, and adept at using tools, but every time I try to think of a possible grasping appendage, the only two I come up with are either tentacle...
Basically I want my character to have only gotten their powers through the luck of two parents with the right genes mixing. Technically, given enough time and enough generations of breeding, couldn...
Here's one to ponder: what would an immortal eight-year-old be like after one thousand years? In most stories involving immortality, the immortals are fully formed adults. When those stories do in...
Suppose we've colonized a planet with 99% of the surface area covered by oceans. It has submerged continental crusts, averaging 200-500m underwater, with the average depth of open ocean being 1000-...
I have a humanoid species that developed a third eye in their forehead and was wondering what could be the reason they evolved this way or what advantages it would bring?
252 million years ago, the worst event in the history of life on Earth occurred. 70% of all terrestrial species and 96% of all marine species became extinct through, according to geological record...
Lengthy Explanation of Why I'm Here: TLDR; "force field" made of electromagnetic radiation. Recently, I've decided to compile a list of possible technologies available in the 22nd and 23rd centur...
embryonic diapause is a reproductive strategy that is used by a number of mammals. In embryonic diapause, the embryo does not immediately implant in the uterus after sexual reproduction h...
I bring you all to the planet Krikkit, stuck in a star system enshrouded by a large dust cloud which prevents the Krikkiters from seeing the rest of the galaxy - and, by extension, the universe. Th...
I previously asked a broad enough question about designing a fictional gas but it was advised by two users to split it into smaller questions. So here I am. The main property I want this gas to ha...
I have a world I am building that is similar to ours, and is set in the height of the Roman empire era. The main difference is that the winter is half the year and full rotation of seasons is 18 m...
This is part of the same world I am making that this question I once asked is set in: How to evolve a reptile into a wyvern, 100 million years in the future? I might call these questions related ...
I'm building a fantasy world with a humanoid species (basically, "elves") which refuses to use dead wood. Context They don't use dead wood because they don't want to. Consider that trees are sac...
I'm considering a situation where, in a certain environment, there are two specially adapted (to the environment) animals, a predator and its prey. I'd like, for the purposes of a story, for both...
In the National Geographic mini-series Extraterrestrial or Alien Worlds, they featured a hypothetical gas giant moon called the Blue Moon. The Blue Moon orbits a binary star, has a very dense atmos...
For a book under construction, I need a starship to make a 180 degree turn rather quickly. Give him sub-light speed in a star system (no relativistic effects) and on a path to the system primary. ...
On Earth, there are only two different ways to create major volcanoes. One way is subduction. It occurs when older/heavier rock sinks beneath younger/lighter rock. As the rock descends, it lique...
Say we are able to mass produce clones for our clone army and give them memories. Then we decide to give them the same template/personality/identity/etc. What psychological effects would this have...
I have a work-in-progress scenario where an interstellar generation/ark/cryogenic ship has reached its destination, but there are no habitable planets. There's no turning back, and so now the colon...
I've been grappling with a story for a while, involving a scenario where gravity starts to fail. The goal of the story is mostly how people react to the knowledge that the world will end. But, I al...
In my story there is a humanoid alien race, that looks almost exactly like humans, but as you might have guessed, are boneless. Just to be clear, I'm not interested in reasons why they would evolv...
Exactly what the title says : Could mass human cloning be feasible? I have a two criteria : Clones must come out as adult Cloning process must take a maximum of 3 months Optional : Clones must...
In Warlords Ganymede has been terraformed to a state like the artic circle with it's tropics being like Iceland (this is assuming that Ganymede would have tropics) The rich and affluent (as well a...
Exactly what the question says. What if a spaceship the size and mass of a space shuttle with a full fuel, that has an Alcubierre Drive on it crashed into the Earth at 8 km/s? ( And no, I'm not tal...
Here's the problem I'm having. I need a solution for the following situation. I have a sci-fi starship drive that needs 140TJ of energy every 6 hours. I have a Fusion Reactor that can produce 200T...
