General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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Say there's a torture technique that hangs people by metal chains (gruesome, I know; stay with me) and the room slowly heats at a steady rate. (Like boiling a frog in an increasingly hot pot of wat...
Suppose we had an Earth-like planet based on Saturn's moon Iapetus. Iapetus has an equatorial ridge, 13 km high, which runs around it. Scaling that up to an Earth-sized planet, it would have a ridg...
I've been thinking, could there possibly be an organism that is based on the element of helium? If yes, what would it look like? (Images are welcome)
I have a super-earth world. The surface of the world is shallower due to extra gravity, so shorter mountain ranges and less ocean depths. The world orbits a binary star system at a distance of the ...
The NASA Vehicle Assembly Building and the proposed Nazi Volkshalle are cited to be "big enough for weather systems to form inside them". The building has at least 10,000 tons of air conditioni...
The average temperature on this world surface is −55 degrees Celsius. 80% of the surface of this world is covered by liquid ammonia oceans. This planet has a surface gravity of 0.75"‰g. The atmo...
I'm currently in the midst of a trilogy of novels. The planet is a swamp world with $.87$ g's of gravity, no axial tilt, $15.12$ psi atmospheric pressure, and whose mass is $.92$ of Earth. Atmosph...
I'm building a near-future world on top of someone else's older world with not-entirely-well-thought-out "elemental" magic. I'm willing to use "because magic!" arbitrarily to answer questions of ho...
So, on the Jungle world of Qualis, the Qualian species evolved from small, tiny lizards to intelligent humanoid who dominated their planet. They built cities, from small towns to large metropolises...
Setting: Modern day Earth, no special technology advancements. Situation: On day, in a relatively populated American city (the specific city is unimportant...the purpose of this point is that it's...
One of my characters in my novel has the ability to manipulate air. Having the ability to snap his fingers and increase the sound so that it would damage the opponent through a shockwave. Could any...
This is the kinkajou: It looks vaguely similar to a monkey - it has grasping digits on its forelimbs, it has a prehensile tail like some New World monkeys, and it primarily eats fruit - but it is ...
My world - basically Earth all along, unless told otherwise - is populated by humans and few fantasy-based "races" (actually, species - any interbreed offspring, if possible, is infertile): elves, ...
I am planning to make one of my characters in my novel have to have an ability to create positron beams as an offensive ability. I wonder what the effects on regular matter like a wall or a body of...
First of all I would like to precise what my species of wyverns actually are. I do not plan to make them huge and gigantic like in many fantasy worlds. Instead they are rather small and can be the ...
This question is inspired by the last paragraph of my answer here: Negating the negative effects of childbearing (A follow up question to this can be found here: Methods to ensure gene flow in spe...
Before we get into the question, I'd just like to say that this isn't specifically for Spider-man, but more of a general "character who moves around a lot and finds themselves upside-down quite oft...
Imagine a race of humanoids who only eat meat, and are unable to digest vegetables. Is it possible for these humanoid to be able too create/gather enough food(meat) to the point that job specializ...
This question is inspired by Could a species develop the tech necessary to land on their own moon without comprehending light? Consider following scenario: a civilization of alien tricksters abduc...
I'm writing the last issue of my comic and I'm in trouble. My villain is a member of a cosmic cult that wants to absorb everything in the universe to create a conceptual/energy pangea out of space ...
I've been thinking about doing something involving bubbles of stopped (already answered here), slowed down or sped up time. What would that look like for different speeds? Is there any way of ca...
Recent news reported the discovery of three "earth-like" planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system. This is interesting because the star is a small, cool red dwarf about the size of Jupiter. The three pla...
The Scenario: A group of scientists on a research space station are conducting tests on a Bose-Einstein condensate. They can't figure out why it is that every time they get their condensate to for...
Presume a decade of darkness, after a several months of steadily shortening daylight. Assume that the temperature and weather patterns remain (inexplicably) fairly unchanged. Ten years later, whe...
Just last week while developing a new CCTV camera system I accidentally produced a free energy generator. I know, what are the odds? So now I'd like to make some money. Unfortunately, this device ...
Imagine a human observation and research facility being built on a planet in a distant solar system. How could an alien colony exist beneath the planet's surface, staying completely invisible to h...
Scenario: An exact copy of our world is sliced in half by a particle beam. The beam has a diameter of 40 meters and moves at a speed of 0.999c. The beam slices the earth from top to bottom in 600...
Info I'm designing a prehistoric-dragonfly that has little holes or perforations in its wings. When the wind flows through them, they make music (the viability of flying with these wings will be c...
Background There is a world with flora and fauna based on the life forms that evolved on Gondwana (see here for previous questions). Humans colonized this continent from a distant one some thousan...
My story takes place on an Earth-like, inhabited world that is far larger than Earth, has roughly 110% of Earth's gravity, and has unusually high (and generally unexplained) EM emissions permeating...
Suppose you were puttering around the solar system and came across the remains of a luxury passenger vessel, the intergalactic equivalent of the Titanic, adrift about one AU from the sun. The hull ...
While it does not occur in nature, I have wondered if a sufficient amount of energy deposited in a sufficiently small space in a sufficiently small amount of time could ignite a thermonuclear deton...
The Tsingy National Park is popular for its unique karstic plateaus. These karstic plateaus are thousands of large sharp pillars or needles that stretch towards the sky, creating a wide variety of ...
I'm writing something in which the main character has become a vampire, or vampire-like entity, due to the influence of a Lovecraftian horror. What are some things they, as a conscious person, may...
Imagine if the Moon had its own moon. A moon (likely an asteroid) that lies within the Moon's Hill Sphere. I have read elsewhere about the fate of such a moon. Over time due to the Moon being tidal...
For backgrounds sake, let's say that there are large, and I mean large beings living underneath the icy surface of Europa. Now consider this excerpt from NASA's page on Europa: One of the most...
I want the Netherlands to be flooded entirely, and I want the event to be of such a scale that it goes faster than hydroengineering can keep up with. This will mean that I need a sea level rise of ...
I'm making a game which takes place in an asteroid field that is very dense - I'm talking close enough that one is able to jump between asteroids (provided you have some sort of additional thrust b...
Inspired by a brief comment converstaion found here. I would like to investigate the design and development of an alien species whose technological development did not include an understanding of ...
Cross-linked polymers are vitally important materials used all the time in modern life. For example, the resins used in composite materials are usually some type of cross-linked polymer. What typ...
Previous questions here: Creating a scientifically semi-valid super-soldier, part 1: Skeleton Creating a scientifically semi-valid super-soldier, part 2: nervous system Creating a scientifically...
I'm trying to flesh out the history of a fictional galactic society, specifically the initial settlements and inhabited worlds. Something that I thought would be important to settlers would be an a...
This is in regards to the Tyranny of Rocket Fuel. Summed up: Heavier ships need more fuel which makes them heavier, etc. You end up with diminishing returns. This is compounded by higher gravity - ...
Premise The Dunning-Kruger effect is a sociological / psychological phenomenon whereby low-skilled individuals mistakenly think they are good at something. In other words, individuals lack the met...
The Setting: I have an idea for a universe that, in an inversion to our own, is filled for the most part with matter in solid, liquid, gaseous or plasma form, while vacuum and degenerate matter is...
A futuristic entrepreneur wants to start a cruise line company and needs to build a cruise ship that will not only float on a gas giant, but be habitable throughout a 7 day trip (for the uber-rich ...
In my world, zombies are quite common, and are considered a part of the wild life. Most of the usual flora and fauna are similar to those in IRL. I have three key questions, but I'll put the other...
I'm not a smart guy, can't find an answer to a question: Everything I see involves a large construct spinning at a slow speed to create gravity. Instead of something large could you not use a, le...
Inspired by comments to JBH's answer to The worlds between, the consequences of instantaneous FTL. The Premise A technology for instantaneous travel exists, making it possible to travel to any po...
In pillbugs, sex is determined by two chromosomes: Z and W. Individuals who inherit two Zs develop as males, while ZW individuals become female. But in some populations, these rules are over...
