General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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Suppose humanity manages to terraform Mars: we give it a magnetic field, an atmosphere, then Mars gains oceans, lakes and rivers and we plant forests there. So now Mars looks like another Earth a...
I have a species that is humanoid but has two sets of arms and I was wondering what reasons there could be for why they evolved that way?
I'm designing a habitable earth-like planet that has oceans, forests and life. Now this planet is a bit larger in diameter than earth but its mass and therefore its gravity is a bit lower. This low...
In the future, we created a Dyson Swarm. Each node (which I'd like to call a Gigalga) is an asteroid-sized, biotechnological, space-adapted, sentient plant that speaks the same evolved language as...
No planet in the center, just a large O shape made up of large chunks of rock that in and of itself itself orbits a sun, as if it were a planet (as distinct from a ringworld). I know most of the ti...
Suppose an evil genius (in 2015) wants to kill as much of humanity as possible. But he's on a budget; despite his years of stealing priceless historical artifacts, and despite having been selected ...
So, this is for a "space drama" that is set in the not too distant future. The world is running out of resources, but has developed an rudimentary interplanetary travel capability. Several planet...
While only counting seasons and years, but not weeks or months, how far can human civilization progress? Can they reach the middle ages? Or is the invention of the calendar such a cornerstone of ...
So, I was reading about the Colossus Penguin and was wondering how adding them to my world might affect the arctic ecosystem in my world? Obviously, they would need to eat a lot of fish, squid, and...
Or would that eye be the most well-defended from external debris and whatnot in the entire world? Cats seem to get by just fine without eyelids and a membrane but no eyelashes...likewise humans wit...
I have a handful of immortals that have spent the last 6000 years stuck on planet Earth. They really, want to get out of here. They missed their chance back in Egypt before The Fall of the Pharaohs...
I've prefigured a specific setting as being middling in technological progress when compared with its neighbors. This setting does not have access to hydrocarbons, has severe cultural and politica...
In the Halo series there's a habitable planet called Harvest with a diameter of 4,012 kilometres, and gravity 99% of Earth's, though the planet only has 9% of Earth's mass. If such a planet is poss...
I was reading this question earlier today. It asks about the characteristics of global winds in a modern-day earth with Eocene-like temperatures. I'm here to ask about other kinds of weather in the...
I'm developing a world where certain people have affinity to modify/control certain aspects of the material plane. In the early stages I'd included the good old "element control" premise, but as I ...
I just won the national lottery! I am a billionaire, and can do whatever I want with my money! Tv interviewer asks me what would I do with this money. Then, come the Idea. I remember this guy whe...
Often times a mongoose will prefer easier prey than a cobra. However, getting down to brass tacks, should the two fight, it's fairly axiomatic that the mongoose takes the win the majority of the ti...
I am designing a solar system, with the first planet located very close to the parent star. This planet has become tidally locked to the star. Is it possible for to have a molten lava ocean on the ...
I'm developing a tree that has a peculiar fruit. Instead of having water in said fruit, there is nothing but sugar. The tree pumps sugar into a hollow orb which slowly "bakes," caramelizing into an...
Okay so I just got off an episode of Gotham where this electrician villain dude uses shock therapy to reprogram people to do his bidding. Then I remembered that the brain operates on a sort ...
In an alien atmosphere, where methane is the main gas instead of oxygen and ammonia is the main solvent instead of water. Similar to how photosynthesis on earth plants work, by taking in carbon dio...
Allright, what i'm asking is how life would be like on Earth (which pretends Earth could develop life in the "short" life of a blue giant) if we had two blue giants in the sky instead of the Sun?
In the book 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke, Jupiter is turned into a star. Presumably this is done by making it more dense, so if Jupiter were to reach that density and become a star, what w...
In my world I have a region of desert, bordered on the east by the steep cliffs of a tableland or plateau. The plateau slopes gradually down to the east coast of the continent, a distance comparab...
Let's say I have a binary star system. The planet is orbiting the smallest star similar to the Sun at 1 AU, the same Earth-Sun distance. The other star is located at around 50-100 AU from the Sun...
Fraternizing with the neighbor species led to a bit of a mix-up, and an unfortunate reaction that ended with a face (and mouth) full of this alien substance. Consistency is like a thick mucous mi...
So, I've wound up in jail again (not my fault - I didn't start that fire, honest!) and I need to get out of here before the mayor has a chance to check his safe. Unfortunately, I left my lockpicks ...
Ok so first of all, let's imagine a civilisation on a planet. The planet has a relatively low escape velocity, say 6 km/s and maybe an atmosphere 30% - 50% the thickness of earth's atmosphere. Now...
I'm working on a map of a single continent or large island, and I want it to have some distinct biomes. What are some simple rules to determine which biomes could possibly be near/adjacent to one a...
Following up on my last question about the ecology of my skyworld here, I decided to go more in-depth and fundamental. This is going to mostly be about the behavior of the ocean and changes to the ...
My question is rather simple; assuming optimal atmospheric and planetary conditions, what body plan would be able to support the largest plausible land animal? To split the above question into a m...
This blog post about binary-star systems points out that, rather having the stars be close together, they could be far apart and a planet might orbit just one of them. It gives the example of the ...
I'm aware that 'tatooine' worlds don't make good habits for planets, normally. From what I've read, either a planet has to orbit one star really closely, or orbit both stars from a really long dist...
Edit: some answerers seem to be slightly misunderstanding the nature of the premise. Remember that the concept here is this; In the Precambrian of Earth, bacteria evolve to extract the abundant chl...
I'm making this whole other alien world and I made it an ammonia world, so there is a lot of nitrogen in the atmosphere. Would nitrogen be a good gas to breathe in an ammonia world and would Cobalt...
I'm working on a earth-like planet with a much lower sea level (like 3000m so the mid-ocean ridge would form many islands) but is that even possible? Will the emerged ridge make some weird stuff an...
Consider a group of humans at a bronze-age to early iron-age technological level colonizing a new earthlike planet. There is just one difference - there exists on the planet something which change...
Consider the facts that a blackhole: Eats everything that passes through its event horizon. In layman's terms, it is defined as the shell of "points of no return", i.e., the boundary at which...
In my fictional setting, the planet that people live on, called "Nearth" has one smallish very dark moon close in, and a large moon farther off with a very high albedo. Nearth is exactly the same...
The talaria is the name of the winged sandals or shoes famously worn by Hermes in Greek Mythology. If someone were to make a high tech gadget which the attached beating wings to a pair of boots, ho...
There exist numerous theories on why the Moon lacks a layer of air if any, however the main culprits are gravity and the lack of Geo-dynamo simply put the Moon does not have the necessary mass nor ...
An alien species has been conquering planet after planet around the Milky Way for some time. They detected intelligent life on Earth a while back and now they decided it's time to add us to their c...
Premise: I have a character that is trying to replicate himself into offsprings that will accomplish his task. He is a major character with immense levels of power/energy. My character has to crea...
Hi everyone I would like to ask if this material is suitable to be used as body armor like kevlar, as I am planning to use them as armor for my novel. What are the drawbacks to this? Could the arm...
This question was originally posted in the Sandbox. It's set in the same world as this question, but is not related to it. I have a speedster character whose top speed is Mach 2. She holds back ...
So assuming their existed an Oracle, what effects would it have on society. Assume that everyone has access to it similar to using a library where the books can't leave. Properties of the Oracle ...
What would the effect on Earth be if Mars, in the space of one second, disappeared from the Solar System? Just simply was gone, leaving no residue, and leaving the space where it had been like it h...
In almost all science-fiction stories that include alien races, said aliens are similar to humans in many ways: bipedal (and often humanoid), communicate with sounds coming out of a mouth, orient i...
I have a slug that I need to kidnap. Not an ordinary garden slug; this slug is special. This slug's slime is violently reactive with the atmosphere on my planet, and explodes into flame on contact ...
In the media myth of King Kong, there exists a gorilla; 50 feet tall. The largest great apes ever to exist were Gigantopithecus Blacki which, stood up to 9.8 ft, and weighed up to 1,190 lb. While t...
