Posts tagged reality-check
If there was a life-supporting planet that was cubical rather than spherical, would it be feasible for there to be a unique but similar civilisation on each 'Plane'? I know that cube planets are i...
With the proper composition and mass, is it possible for a planetary body to collide with Earth and embed itself onto the mantle? To clarify, while immense destruction would undoubtedly occur to t...
How plausible are naturally-evolved, biological, fixed-wing flying creatures? Could such a creature plausibly evolve in Earth-like conditions? If so, what method would it be most likely to use fo...
Firstly, I'm not looking for an organism that gives birth to two separate species (like a human that gave birth to a human baby and a puppy) as I'm fairly sure that is impossible (though feel free ...
When building a city, one must consider why one is building a city. It's all very well imagining a city perched on top of an inaccessible mountain peak, but a believable world requires that we cons...
My world has two races of mammalian mermen, one of which are somewhat monstrous and I'll call them "Abyssals" in this thread. I really want the Abyssals to 'breathe' underwater, as well as being ab...
I'm building an alien world for an artistic project. The world circles an m-dwarf star, and so the flora have evolved to photosynthesize longer wavelengths of light than on Earth, primarily in the ...
In my fantasy world, there are several species - both sapient and non-sapient. They all originally evolved from a group of insects that, after millions of years of isolation and no competition, hav...
I was wondering if there is a way to have a person with added organs and systems to be able to shoot jets of compressed air out of their body without them needing a giant gas bag or massive lungs? ...
I recently heard that before anyone had begun to build practical aircraft of any kind, it was thought by some that once flight was achieved you would be able to simply fly to another planet. The d...
In my world there are ''angels'' which have 4ft long wings and can't fly. As of late, these 'angels' have been hunt down and they must hide. How can a winged human hide their wings?
One of the Stack Exchange's most popular topics is remaking mythological and fantastical creatures with realistic, believable anatomy. Usually, the answers go that for an angel's anatomy to be bel...
There are two different varieties of angels"”the naked, long-distance flier and the feathered, short-distance glider (The Four-Winged Angel). But both varieties have the following anatomical featu...
As part II of anatomically correct myths here we have the Angel. Angels appear in many cultures and are most commonly seen as simply winged humans. Is there a realistic way that angels could evolve...
NOTE: I previously asked the same question regarding wheels, because I thought that the answers would still help me and that wheels were more applicable to a wider audience than propellers. However...
"The planet moves." Inspired by this link in a comment from Gryphon here, I also see the concept in this question. We've colonized the moons of Jupiter adjusted their orbits to our satisfaction (...
I was considering this answer I wrote: https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/21374/75 It got me to wondering... if we had a flying sailing ship with a twisted-rubber energy storage device that...
I'm providing an interesting twist on the Anatomically Correct series by focusing on a single body part instead of an entire organism. The following image depicts the average range of the cones ...
This is a reality check: I want a planet with huge forests and a relatively (to Earth) high level of CO2, but I also want there to be very large areas of grassland, (savannahs) where we naturally e...
I'm looking for a rock from which my island is constructed. It needs to be: Either created from the sea or via intense pressure/heat Capable of trapping layers of gas beneath it White(ish) I wa...
I'm working on a scenario operating on Clarke's Third Law, with nanotechnology percieved as magic to humanity, and I want to create a non-spiritual afterlife for humanity. My intention was to simpl...
Would it even be feasible under science fiction logic? It would allow nuclear weapons to be mass produced if the nuclear pasta could actually be collected and contained safely.
These humans must never see the ocean and should still be able to survive. They can only get out of the land if they improve the technology level. Is it even possible? The lakes or seas should prob...
Essentially, my question is, can one larger black hole be split into a system of smaller black holes? I'm assuming energy requirements will be prohibitive, and that it may not be possible without ...
Consider the following GIF: The brooms from this Fantasia scene are always busy. They dance around energetically in a military-like march, never stopping to rest. When their wizard overlord is o...
The Hippocampus is a mythological creature and has typically been depicted as having the upper body of a horse with the lower body of a fish. Considerations Gills or lungs? Would this creatu...
Raining animals is a rare meteorological phenomenon in which flightless animals fall from the sky. Such occurrences have been reported in many countries throughout history. One hypothesis is tha...
I'm trying to create a new race of humanoids that are in appearance almost identical to humans with one exception: They have an extension of their spine protruding from their back, much like a tail...
So I have the following scenario for a story, and I want to know if it runs into any ridiculous no-nos from a scientific point of view: There is an earth-like world orbiting a red dwarf (similar t...
Internal mass drivers are a potentially useful space drive, due to the ready availability of reaction mass (you can use anything from spare parts to literal dirt as a propellant, assuming you have ...
In my somewhat hard sci-fi setting I'm thinking of using a high powered microwave weapon as the secondary armament of my ship to supplement the missiles it would carry. I was thinking it would be...
I have a planet orbiting a red dwarf and, as expected, it is tidally locked to its star. I know that these planets will have a very significant temperature difference between the diurnal and noctur...
It's a major step forward for humanity when they can finally live on a new planet. Maybe they went there out of desperation to survive, or maybe they simply want to explore. Either way, they sudden...
I was wondering if a vacuum created within a particular material in the shape of sphere could be used to harvest anti-matter from virtual particles? Within the vacuum, theoretically, virtual parti...
In my story, there is a type of bee that releases a pheromone during mating season that is visible at night in brightly lit areas. This is similar to how you can see rain more easily at night if yo...
A myrmecoleon is a creature with the upper torso of a lion and the rest of the body is like an ant. While it's not probable for a true insect-mammal hybrid to happen naturally, are there any evolu...
I need a huge natural plateau to form but with a slope. There can be some variation, a few hills or even mountains here and there, but the ground needs to be mostly gently sloping north to south. ...
Slimes are a common monster we often see in games such as Minecraft, Terraria and Slime Rancher, but it is never explained how such an animal can exist. How could the body of such an animal even ex...
This question is meant as a reality check on this answer to The land grows evil and corrupted ... but why? Radioactive moon in a nearly geosynchronous orbit. It slowly kills or alters all li...
I have a planet covered with a large shallow ocean, which extends over most of its surface. I want to turn this planet into a great desert, specifically a salty desert (the salts of this desert are...
On Earth, it's virtually impossible to enumerate all the different cultures and ethnicities that exist, but if you hypothetically categorized every people as occurring with a language, that's rough...
After receiving answers to this question, I now know that viruses cannot be written in machine code in such a way that they can universally infect all kinds of systems. Every machine has a unique s...
Far, far away from the Earth, there is a nebula. An enormous cloud made of 78% nitrogen, 20% oxygen and 2% other non-lethal materials. These gases swirl around a star, and the pressure around it is...
This is a question for an alien species. Is there anyway to scientifically justify having two separate beings/creatures that depend on each other for life? In other words, two separate bodies tha...
In the mythological stories of the Baku, they eat the nightmares of those who call upon it, but if not satisfied they will eat the hopes and dreams of their summoners. Since the visual portion of ...
I know the innate contradiction present here: one cannot "prove" the supernatural exists, for a variety of reasons. But for the sake of argument I want you to consider this: A person is convinced...
Wikipedia states: "Electromagnetic or magnetic induction is the production of an electromotive force (i.e., voltage) across an electrical conductor in a changing magnetic field." This one ...
These creatures have the ability to see all possible outcomes within their vicinity within the next 30 minutes or so. This is not the same as foreknowledge that they have no choice over. Even if ...
I am wondering about Tatooine, and was reading about binary systems here, which provided a lot of good basic food for thought. My specific question is not addressed at that link, and so I pose it h...
Stars are born through the fusion of light atoms and the star's nucleus. So let's say that as a star is being born, the nucleus split and creates two stars. Could this even happen? If so, would the...
