Posts tagged technological-development
I'm currently working on something where breechloading rifles and cartridge shot are developed very quickly over matchlocks and flintlocks. What major technological hurdles need to be overcome for...
So given an Earth in our near future, year 2100 or so, where some of our tech has improved to the point where we have robots and the usual sci-fi devices for interfacing with computers. A colony i...
I am currently working on a character backstory for somebody whose fictional character gets sent back in time an era before his species existed (essentially to bronze-age times or even earlier, it'...
Let's have your typical fantasy world, with many races. During searching what I could do to make humans a little special, someone give me idea of letting them to be only race that have ability to d...
In my story, a planet of low-tech natives in the midst of war are abruptly brought into contact with a much more advanced empire. There are many historical precedents for this kind of event, and oc...
I'm building a world where high-density, low cost batteries are discovered far, far in advance of modern times, leading to a decentralised power grid. It has become convention for homes and buildin...
I'm new to science-fiction and I'm intrigued by the consequences of "Plan B" in the popular movie Interstellar. "Plan B" means transporting a supposedly sustainable population to a habitable planet...
With a group of friends, we are trying to build an RPG in a quite specific setup which I have a hard time to find elsewhere in order to get some inspiration/information. So what I mean by that is...
I am creating a fictional universe where humanity's evolution followed a different path that it did in ours (evolution might not be the best word, but bear with me). Long ago, in said universe's e...
In 1950 physicist Enrico Fermi wondered why we have found no alien civilizations even though there are about 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the observable universe. Among other things, h...
WARNING: This post contains some spoilers for the anime/manga Dr.Stone. As I'm watching Dr.Stone, I see Senku and the gang trying to make vacuum tubes for their circuits. The vacuum tube is an anc...
Aquatic races are usually assumed to be stunted in technological development by the inability to create fire or forge metals. But what about doing chemistry at all? The development of chemistry i...
A civilization has begun its space program without any knowledge of general or special relativity. How would this affect the program? Would this establish any limits on where/how they could travel?...
My world is set in ancient times on a planet similar to Earth, but with a different civilization and different geography (and lots of canals). I need to find a way of giving the inhabitants better ...
I'm writing a story about a company similar to Google, i.e. which wants to know everything about everyone and which wants to trace everything that is traceable out there. But which, at the same tim...
In my universe, humans nuked themselves in a war so thoroughly that the Earth has been rendered uninhabitable. As a result, they have to leave Earth and find a new home. They briefly tried to settl...
1350 AD. A secret society is recruiting adepts in Rome, Florence, Paris, Wien, Prague and London; well-educated people in high ranks of nobility, catholic church, engineers, professors and knights....
Say we're in a world where it is possible to tinker with biology as easily as it is to tinker with programming nowadays. For feasibility, refer to How soon will tinkering with biology be as simple ...
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...
At 260 Fahrenheit in the Sun between Mars and Earth and -280 F in the shade could 2 large tanks rotate slowly in and out of its own shade to transfer steam backwards and forwards past a turbine?
Say we have an intelligent species whose body plan is inspired by walking insects (ants, beetles, etc.) and reptiles (particularly lizards). More specifically, let's say they have four legs (I th...
I am having some trouble reasoning out some ideas, if any of you could help. So I have in mind a planet, where there are many human cultures, but one of them is more advanced then others. So they...
Magnetic core memory was a critical innovation in the development of computers. Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic-core_memory it was the most advanced form of memory from about the mid-fif...
What technology (at minimum), devices or minimum civilization development is needed, so that an individual member of this civilization would be able to detect that some star is going supernova? My...
Imagine there is a country in which there are all important natural resources (oil, gas, metal ores, wood, etc.) in their natural form and which lies in a temperate climate region. There may be som...
In almost every sci fi alien trope there will be a directive whereby one of the general order states no spacecraft may interfere with the normal development of any alien life or society and is puni...
Imagine a species in which the ego never developed. There is no self-direction. This species is always making noise, however, and it is through this noise that the society itself experiences the ...
A world idea I'm playing with for a sci-fi idea I'm working on has an atmosphere similar to the composition of Earth's atmosphere during the Carboniferous Period: Lots of oxygen, so while a human o...
Let's say we have a society that for some reason (a MacGuffin, Unobtanium, Handwavium, whatever) have found a way to travel off the earth without having to fight gravity along the way. They can tra...
For reference, I'm going with the accepted answer given here: How would technology adoption of Lithium Air battery work?. In my world, it makes sense that governments would be very interested in ge...
The hypothetical world is for all intents and purposes earth or very close to it. So what would the effects be if the magnetic field were either stronger from the start of the planet, or if the ma...
My story takes place hundreds of years in the future after global warming has made life at the surface uninhabitable for most life forms. What's left of mankind survived because it became popular t...
I've been thinking on the concept of the human race dying off (the reason doesn't matter), but most of the other living species on the planet survive. Although we die off, the remains of books, the...
TL:DR You and 1000-2000 unprepared and untrained settlers are stranded in an uninhabited area that has never had any human development. If you had nothing but the knowledge of how things work and...
As part of a story idea, I'd like to create an alien civilization that colonized different solar systems in a manner similar to how European nations colonized other continents here on Earth. This c...
I'm current planning a story which includes a race of diminutive humanoid aliens, one of whom crash-lands on Earth. They're fully sentient, and have the same average intelligence level as humans. T...
Instead of Earth as we know it, humans evolved on a slightly smaller, habitable earthlike planet with different geography. Due to the plot reasons, I would like to keep them confined to one (large)...
The world I'm thinking of is a large moon of a gas giant. It's fairly Earth-like, perhaps a bit smaller, might be a bit magical, but sits about where we sit around a star very similar to ours, exce...
The Objective Lots of questions at this site consider how humans could be enhanced with genetic engineering. But, if you are an alien, you may have the opposite priorities. These aliens are civil...
In the event that both planets of a binary planet system were life supporting, and both ended up developing a sapient, tool using species, at what technological level would they be able to start ef...
Assuming a world where there were no steam engines available, would it be possible for large passenger or cargo trains to exist? Would it be possible to use horse-engines to power a locomotive? I...
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 ...
Humans have come and gone. Their aggressiveness and pride have caused their own end. War has torn apart all society, engineered diseases pick them off one by one. The last remaining people have fle...
I had this idea the other day just for the heck of debating about if it would be feasible to build a bridge that crosses North Atlantic Ocean from Canada to Spain. I mean from St-John's (Newfoundl...
Antimatter is relatively easy, but heinously expensive, to make using modern technology. I have two universes with the same problem; energy is free and for all practical purposes infinite, this sho...
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...
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 ...
We currently have jet engine in flighter jet, space shuttle, some race cars but nothing underwater where breaking sound barrier(air) is concerned. I'm imagining in near future many manned electric ...
In a Galaxy where there are numerous Earth Like worlds, and FTL Travel is possible but only by a small number of species, possibly only by Humans, perhaps they just happened to get there first. In ...
As far as I know stars are going supernova as a natural process. Can aliens trigger it artificially? If this is possible then: How can I do this (what minimum technology and civilization develop...
