Posts tagged alternate-worlds
I've got this idea of a rogue planet that is moving that fast through the intergalactic void that the cosmic microwave radiation, thanks to the Doppler effect, actually provides enough heat that it...
This is yet another "literal worldbuilding" question, as in, building worlds. Inspired, in part, by this question. What if this world is a very long (effectively infinite) hollow cylindrical cavit...
In world building it is often interesting to consider extreme landscapes "“ how tall can a mountain be on Earth for example. But what is the tallest mountain possible in any gravitational environme...
"Serina" is a popular speculative evolution project in which, apart from a long list of fish, invertebrates and plants, the only terrestrial chordate to colonize this terraformed moon is the canary...
I apologize if I continuously ask different questions about different concepts for stories. It's just that I can never make up my mind on what to write, and sometimes, my ideas change. But anyway...
I want to create a tidally locked world with a habitable (broadly Earth like atmosphere and biome that humans could breathe and live in) band stretching around the terminator pole to pole. There wo...
I'm working on a first contact story set in the near future where an advanced alien species arrives at Earth and reveals itself to humanity, but is utterly baffled by the diversity of life that it ...
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse The multiverse (or meta-universe) is a hypothetical set of various possible universes including the universe which we live in. Together, these u...
I'm thinking about designing an alien race. The race is carbon-based and evolved on a world with an average surface temperature between 40 and 60 degrees Celsius. Now, on Earth, almost all lifeform...
The main source of free energy that allowed life on Earth to develop was our sun. It bombards the planet's surface with photons of high energy, which provide activation energy for reactions necessa...
Setup: Earth developed in an alternate universe with small oceans and little water. A little before animals first left the oceans and began to walk on land, when all of Earth's land was barren sand...
I don't want my world to be infinite, that would be a pain to draw maps for. And I need it to be flat (for a slightly unrelated reason). How would I explain why no one has looked over or seen the e...
The question about a diet of dust brought up a few creatures that survive on dust, however they were all insect-sized or smaller. This got me thinking about the Blue Whale, which survives on a diet...
If an Earth-like planet had an older, red sun "” or maybe just a reddish sky due to some property of the atmosphere "” how would that affect the growth and/or adaptation of plant and animal life on...
I'm writing a story that takes place in a world where people live on continent-sized chunks of earth (basically the size of tectonic plates) suspended in the air, left over from some cataclysmic ev...
Scenario + question: So for the purposes of this question lets so that there is a canyon much like the grand canyon but about 50 miles deeper, so the bottom is always in shadow and it has no observ...
Let's say there exists an alternate reality from ours that is identical in every aspect save for one. There exists a substance in space that allows for the transmission of sound. Let's call this su...
Slimes are seen as merely base-level enemies which don't really challenge the heroic main character, the Chosen One. My question is how to make slimes incredibly powerful without using magic. The...
I am a new person to this but I have been looking at similar questions about silicon life. I'm currently trying to create silicon-based lifeforms on a planet with a surface temperature of about, -...
In an earth-like world, what can I provide as examples of areas where high energy is generated naturally? I'm looking for sources of energy other than heat, for e.g, volcanoes and geothermic vents.
@Gryphon has made me aware of this The Least Interesting Substance It is very close but I need a planet that can form naturally. Would any of the substances mentioned in answers to that question b...
I have some research I want to do about a planet for a novel I'm writing. It is a fiction/science fiction novel, but I do wish to actually have some parts of the world correct in the scenes I depic...
Most works of fiction have quite imaginative views of time travel. Mighty machines that teleport in time instead of space. Gaping portals in space that take you to another time. Mystical beings wit...
In this article, scientists are investigating river channels on Earth, Mars, and Titan to see how rivers modify their landscapes. The following quote caught my eye: Rivers are, in a way, topogr...
There is a popular belief that the muscles of our body are controlled only by electrical impulses. This is not entirely a lie, but ... From what little I have researched, the nerves send a command ...
As we all know the Earth is flat. Once upon a time a group of explorers set off with the idea of proving that the world was round and that there was a route to the spice islands the other way, but ...
I want to write a novel situated in a "reversed planet": there are two stars orbiting each other, and there is a little spot exactly in the middle of the two that is suitable for life. A normal pla...
In my previous two questions regarding temperature regulation and Rotations I set up the idea of creating a multi-layered shell world consisting of planetary crusts stuffed inside one another creat...
In a galaxy far far away, during a fit of inspiration for a super massive marvel of technology, the Imperator dedicates an astounding 10% of energy and materials from his civilization's dyson spher...
The human hand can be flexed at the wrist, extended and even abducted or adducted while the forearm can also be twisted in supination or pronation giving the illusion of the wrist twisting. All o...
Being at Anime Expo last weekend got me thinking about all the "trapped in another world" anime I watched as a kid: Inu Yasha, Fushigi Yuugi, Escaflowne, etc. The general plot of these is that a hi...
Ok, I get it, me dumb, you smart. Only smart questions allowed. In any case I'm going to leave the question unaltered in case some others might get something out of the answers. Thanks to everyon...
So on a planet with a chlorine based atmosphere and only a small amount of oxygen, here is my proposed mechanism for chlorine based photosynthesis. Carbon tetrachloride, since it is a liquid at 7...
In my world, I have three dimensions, each of which have their own special properties. From each of these three dimensions come a master race of said dimension: From the first, the master race is...
In my con-world I went lengths to introduce a plausible lighter-than-air element and did rather large amounts of thinking about landmasses in order to promote the development of airship technology ...
Imagine a planet, 3/4 water and 1/4 landmass. No axis tilt so the climate is moderate throughout the year. IE peak temperatures at 100°F at equator. It orbits a sun about the size of ours and h...
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 my fantasy universe, there is a disc-shaped world that has a flat surface that has roughly the same atmosphere as Earth (see this); the atmosphere moves along with the world. There is no gravity...
I'm building a story about a world where it has been discovered how to travel to any possible universe according to the many-worlds interpretation, and there's a company which is in charge of sendi...
(Not entirely sure if this is the right place to ask this but hopefully I'm right!) I'm writing a novel and the planet this novel takes place on has two, twin moons of approximately the same size....
Im busy wrtiting a Space Opera and was going to utilise the "hypothesis", or whatever you call it of an ancient civ mining gold here and utilising it to disperse into its atmosphere, in turn either...
This question is inspired by salmon swimming up waterfalls. I am aware that it is an entirely different thing, but I felt that it was worth mentioning in understanding the question. "What would ne...
There is a lot of information on drying up a Mediterranean sized depression. However, there is not a lot of information on drowning such a large area or what sort of habitats could exist before the...
In exploring the xenobiology and design for an entity (Entity X) in my fictional universe, I wanted to raise the viability of an organism that is so massive, it is visible from the planet's upper a...
Aruani is a planet that possesses a fifth of the gravity of the Earth. Humanity migrated to this planet 6,000 years ago and terraformed it to make its atmosphere suitable for human life. Would it a...
In the year 2588, ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) along with collaboration of NASA had discovered a new planet named Accio several light years farther than Pluto. Scientists have computed...
On Earth we don't really notice many effects of the Earth spinning, apart from the day-night cycle. It took a long time for people of Earth to realise that it even was spinning, but there are measu...
There are seven planets, and each one has a different coloured sky. One has red, one has orange, all the way up to indigo and violet. Of course, they don't have a sky this colour all the time, but ...
I was trying to make an interesting moon of a gas giant similar to Jupiter with a liquid ocean of water. The moon orbits in the equivalent orbital space of Io and is about twice the size of Mars. T...
The Premise The Earth rotates on its own axis, which is tilted by about 23 degrees. The setting for my fantasy novel is an earth like planet without the axial tilt, all other factors remaining co...
