Posts tagged reality-check
This has been considered other places on the net, but I thought it would be good for the hard-science challenge, since it is often an example of the subtle difference between soft and hard science....
I am creating a carbon planet with seas of methanol on its surface, but I am not sure that this is possible. It is predicted that carbon planets are depleted of water, since the available oxygen w...
Tieflings are routinely captured and imprisoned. Those that are compliant enough are sent out and used to hunt other tieflings, but not before having their horns dipped in molten tin as a way of id...
I want to find out what's going on in another star system, but I don't want to go there. How feasible is it to just build a big telescope and take a look? Scenario: Earth does not respond to commu...
For certain categories of items, namely weapons, armor and machinery (that's pretty general, I know), how well would stone fare vs metal? Assume that any complications with shaping the stone are go...
BACKGOUND I'm working on a region for my world, and I have a very distinct idea of what I want the physical landscape to look like. Below is a description of what I'd like for the land, and an app...
My idea is a carbon planet 50 % larger than Earth and with 5 times its mass (approximately), but I set these values "‹"‹after investigating those of several discovered exoplanets and none of them i...
For story writing purposes I would like a realistic setup where there is a planet with close to earth conditions in terms of gravity, relative position to the sun etc. However I aim to have a much ...
This was an idea generated by my sister that I thought was very interesting. I intended to make it work by strapping rollerblades on a person's legs and utilize a compressed gas/steam-powered pumpi...
Background, with potential spoilers: In the Netflix show Stranger Things... ...there is an otherworldly creature known as the Mindflayer, which can telepathically control creatures in our worl...
I have a world I want to put together but I ran into a problem. Description This world is a cube infinite in all directions, exactly half of it is full of earth and half is space (where we see n...
It is the year 4056 (or probably later). The rocket with the last residents of Earth just took off, because global warming and pollution couldn't be stopped nor reverted and Earth became uninhabita...
Could a creature plausibly exist with its diet consisting of consuming ice, possibly for hydration? I'm unaware if it needs a secondary diet for nutrition, but how would its metabolism feasibly w...
I am creating a planet with an orange dwarf as its host star and which is at a certain distance from it in such a way that it receives 1 % of the light received by the Earth from the Sun. Obviously...
The universe so far: If charged lepton fields are eliminated from the universe, charged pions become stable (having no decay path that preserves charge), replacing electrons to form bound "atomic"...
Could a Dwarven society as described by Tolkien mythology actually work? Dwarves for the purposes of this question are short, stout, bearded men and women who live primarily underground. They have ...
First of all, this website is a dream come true. I'm a total sucker for this stuff. Secondly, I love astronomy and worldbuilding, and lately, I've been thinking of a hypothetical situation, and wa...
Basically, I'm trying to see if a land-based creature roughly between 50-100 ft. long could exist on Earth at the moment and still be scientifically plausible. I know that whales and other creatur...
I take no credit for the image below. All artwork and information belongs to Blue-Hearts on DeviantArt: (click on image for a higher resolution) I'm personally very impressed at her level of d...
Concept: For some twisted reason, a xenocidal space-race living somewhere in our vicinity decides that nothing deserves to exist. So they make a species. Any feasible size, any kingdom. It eat...
Taken from this fascinating answer: The Sun is immensely loud. The surface generates thousands to tens of thousands of watts of sound power for every square meter. That's something like 10x...
My main protagonist is going to fast-forward himself in time by 1000 years. He will simply reappear in the same place (marked by a small beacon), the process being instant for him (no hibernation e...
This is a small civilization (more than just a town or two) almost under the shadow of the regional hegemon. The dominant civilization knows they are there, but don't go too deep into that swamp be...
For practical purposes I think about something in line of Cessna 172. As it was the most produced aircraft, then it must have hit some sweet spot or be near it. atmosphere with barely noticeably ...
In a brand baby spanking new world I am building, appropriately named Escargard, punningly named by the AndyD273, mollusks have become the dominant form of life. Resulting in aliens similar to thos...
So I have been thinking about making a building on the moon that would create a 1g environment for the people inside without making the structure too inconvenient to attempt to get into. This is my...
I am still puzzled by the original The Planet of the Apes movie from the 70's. How come that sentient species invented weapons, but was unable to develop powered flight, or spacecraft. Thus, the qu...
I was doing some research on how to design a scientifically possible alien, when I came across an interesting section on metabolism. I found it very interesting and read about the weak force, as op...
I'm making a world which is set on a planet with two smaller "bubbles" of atmosphere at the poles, and a more stereotypical atmosphere that surrounds them. Each of the three atmospheres has a diffe...
I'm working on a far-future SF story taking place on a terraformed Mars and would like a fact check. Current estimates (see here and here) are that the CO2 on Mars could be released in gas form to...
I have a civilization that lives on a planet located inside a nebula (and orbiting a normal, sun-like star). Would this nebula somehow interfere with/ obscure the sight of a rogue neutron star/ b...
Background In case you haven't heard: there are places in the Amazonian Jungle called Devil's Gardens. The gardens are large swaths of land composed of almost entirely one single tree the Duroia h...
This is a progression from my first question, here (if this is too similar to my original question, please let me know of a better way to address this, as I am not getting the answers I need on tha...
The artificial womb has become a reality, freeing many women from the 9 month burden of carrying a child. Unfortunately, it was not the liberating game changer that feminists hoped it would be. The...
I'm trying to find a plausible way to reduce global warming in a world past the tipping point. I recently read this article : https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171127173225.htm. It su...
This is a world building question in a preventative context because those people or countries would be left fully functional while others gone and the safe areas is where the world building would b...
I'm looking for notes on my climate map for a continent I've mapped out. Does this set up seem plausible. Map (Imgur) [3 Previous question with general planetary conditions edit Don't have t...
Goblins in my setting are around four feet tall, with batlike ears, a keen sense of smell, and lithe, dexterous bodies. They are omnivores, eating slightly more meat than the average human, and the...
I want to write a piece of fiction about a female tree caretaker who researches a small group of beeches in a wood. When she arrives, she sees that the trees are dried out. Is it realistic to say ...
As a way to travel fast, my Earth-like planet is going to have a special train, circling it (the axis of the 'tracks' is aligned with the planet's axis of rotation). The thing about this train - i...
In my story, an advanced alien civilization that can travel to other universes has created an infinite energy source, named "an amvelian core". This core resembles a small sphere in appearance (abo...
Could a humanesque creature derive all its nutrients from drinking blood? One of the linked question's answers talks about the vampire becoming a filtration system from humans, could the vampire f...
Alastair Reynolds is a contemporary sci-fi writer whose works often demonstrate a strong grip on science as it presently stands. Recently, I picked up his book On The Steel Breeze for a quick re-re...
Melange, also known as "the spice", is a fictional drug in Frank Herbert's famous Dune series, which has many benefits (and some drawbacks). In this series of questions, I'll try to see how many of...
I am currently in the process of making a world, and am trying to ground it in scientific fact as much as possible. The world is a hard magic setting, and while fantastical creatures exist, they ar...
I was thinking of an alternate history, in a part of a civilization, living along the Eastern Mediterranean, during the Bronze Age moves to the sea floor to found an underwater civilization. They ...
Hello! I've put together my first planetary system, but as I'm not a scientist (and bad at maths) I'm reaching the limits of my brainbox and would really appreciate some fact checking! I have quest...
Two rivers converging into one is obviously extremely common, most often when one is clearly dominant over the other (whereby the lesser one is the 'tributary' of the greater) but also sometimes wh...
I'm creating a world for a webcomic and I'm running into some difficulties "“ namely, my own limitations. I'm not a scientist, and I don't even know how to start asking the questions I want answere...
I'm modeling this on the Voyager 2 flight path. I want to have this flight at this particular time, and not wait for a more advantageous launch window. Based on this orbital configuration (1st i...
