General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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I've been thinking about this the whole day. At first I thought it was an easy fix, given my dragon's bones have a tensile strength of 3-6.5 GPa and an elastic modulus of 50-140 GPa, depending on t...
Giant dogs aren't uncommon in works of fantasy. Sif from Dark Souls comes to mind. What I want to know is: what's the largest a canine could realistically get, what differences would they need c...
In my story an area was formerly beneath an ocean or lake. Some form of life leeched the soil of a specific mineral or substance. Technology level is that of ~1700 Spain. Now that the water has ...
My advanced human civilisation often has high-acceleration ships travelling at near lightspeed. I know that time dilation would have a significant effect on the time experienced by the crews, but I...
In many fantasy worlds, dragons are depicted with six limbs: four "legs" (two front limbs and two hind limbs) and two wings. In the real world, we don't really see vertebrates with more than four l...
Genetic chimerism is a condition in which a single organism is composed of cells with more than one distinct genotype. Elves inhabit this world, but do not possess magic in this reality. Instead, t...
Would it be feasible to have an interstellar vessel be constructed in flight after smaller sections are boosted up to speed? The idea here is about using laser sails which would be easier to use wi...
Around 5 million years ago, a group of primates diverged from early Baboon ancestors migrated into Sicily becoming Triclopes (here's a rough mock up of what a Triclops skull might look like): som...
I have a species of megafaunal carnivore that are extremely mobile with territories spanning hundreds of square miles and lifespans of 120-150 years. They lay clutches of 2-3 eggs every 20-30 years...
I recently started to wonder what a tree would be like on an alien world, and one thing that popped in mind for these trees was their color. The hosts star and environment would have a effect on sa...
This is the world's tallest tree--the coast redwood. It can grow as high up as 115.5 meters. Any taller, and the transportation of water in its vascular tissues would not climb all the way. Bu...
In Star Trek, going faster then light will take you back in time (Possibly in real life too!). But I've noticed one inconsistency. Ships, even when going faster then light, have a finite speed. By ...
As we know, bi-directional faster than light (FTL) travel can cause paradoxical situations. One possible way to resolve this would be a multiverse theory: Whenever a paradox could arise, the univer...
Most of the humans on my alternate universe's Earth have gone extinct due to a global war, leaving a handful of survivors and the buildings to serve as a reminder of how great they once were. This ...
First question on stack exchange I've been lurking and learning for years and finally decided to pose a question for a novel I'm working on. Given the appropriate advances in material sciences an...
I'm trying to speculate on manipulating things on the level of quarks for a story. What could I do with that type of technology?
It's something that's been used several times as a plot device on Star Trek, notably in the TOS episode "The Tholian Web", and the TNG episodes "The Next Phase" and "The Pegasus". I'm certain it's ...
For my middle-grade science-fiction novel, I need to come up with an invention or chemical that could rapidly create icebergs to refreeze the Arctic and slow climate change. Kurt Vonnegut's Ice-9 i...
I was wondering what the best ways for turning minerals mined in the asteroid belt into useable materials would be, so far I came up with three methods, utilizing nuclear, electromagnets, and final...
In some birds especially owls, we can observe a structure called facial disk, which is mainly composed of feathers and helps to direct sound to their ears. While being more common in owls, adding u...
as the title, my question is how big a pelican like creature with its pouch mouth need to be in order to carry grown up human and still fly. since as far as i know hollow bone is to fragile for hu...
My planet has a day length of ~52 earth hours. This means storms like hurricaines and thunderstorms will be weaker. How do I combat this and generate really strong storms and winds on a slow rota...
I'm thinking about a design like this generation ship, which obviously has spin gravity. Would the fact that the ship is rotating affect the use of a magnetic sail? The magnetic sail as a sort of...
This is a post-apocalyptic setting I'm working on. The world has been overrun by invisible monsters from another parallel universe. They can be heard and smelled, and they can form claw prints on t...
The Diclonii are an evolutionary offshoot of modern homo sapiens from the Elfen Lied series. Most Diclonii can get distinguished from humans thanks to small bone and cartilage horns resembling cat ...
So, it is relatively common to have various creatures grow crystals. This generally happens outside of the body (at least partially), but internal crystals aren't unknown either (see for example, e...
So, If you're familiar with the anime GATE (not to be confused with Stein's Gate) or A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, you probably know what's going on and why I have a boiling hatred t...
I want to create a glutton creature that can open its mouth wider than the prey item like snakes do, but also can bite through that big hard object and even chew it; this creature doesn't swallow p...
Is there a way for a species to essentially become a living incubator of sorts? Not the other way around, as in Plausible ways for the alien species to be able to impregnate every and any species?,...
Background I am investigating the practical utility and limitations of a procedural-generation-based naming scheme for stars and other notable or significant interstellar structures (e.g. nebulae,...
I found a previous question on using chitin from giant insects to make weapons and armor, but the answer left out something I had considered for the medieval fantasy setting I'm developing. The ans...
If you took a giant drill (~one hundred meter circumference) and bored down two kilometers into the moon, what would it look like (assuming the lighting was good)? Is there a gradient, or is it a u...
What exactly are the relevant numbers for such a calculation, and can it account for the color of the sky? By sky color, I mean the day to day hue that humans (or something else with very similar ...
In Greek and Roman mythology, the Astomi, also known as the Gangines, are an ancient legendary race of people who had no need to eat or drink anything at all. They survived by smelling apples and f...
So, vampires here are created from humans with the help of a stone mask. Now, they're supposed to be weak for two things: Having their brains destroyed Prolonged exposure to sunlight The first ...
Brief setting notes: it's a "basically earth" type situation, a spinning ball of rock in space with the same size and gravity and atmosphere and magnetic fields and everything else. The main diff...
I want to have air transport as the dominant means of public transportation in my fictional city. But how would such a system operate to handle many commuters with maximum efficiency? Specifically ...
Amino acids, the building blocks of proteins and, therefore, one of the key components of life as we know it. There are many amino acids in nature, but they all stem from the same basic structur...
So, I want my dragon to be able to do stuff like open doors and whatnot. Using the wings is kind of awkward and takes up considerable space, and because of the coronavirus, the mouth is also a no-n...
Set in a distant future, every interstellar spaceship runs on antimatter propulsion which can achieve fractional speed of light travel. There is a doctrine stating that all spaceships with mass exc...
In this world, humans have a strange way of reproducing. When partners decide to conceive, A female must be inseminated at specified intervals by a male in order to pass on her genes. However, male...
The TBD are a fantasy humanity offshoot that is fully adapted to life a few kilometers beneath the surface, settling in cracked earth near vents and hot spots. Air quality ranges from stale to tox...
I've seen several people independently come up with the idea of three or more sexes where one sex is responsible for brooding the young (pregnancy, pouch, feeding, something along those lines) but ...
Imagine the ability to shoot long streams of hot fire like a USM2 flamethrower from the palms of your hands. or shooting them out of your feet so you can push yourself off of the floor. An answer w...
Overlord Larmark is a scientist from the 21st century who is interested in world domination, and needs powerful generals to lead his armies. He looks to the ancient world, as only that time period ...
It's become a popular speculative evolution trope for the likeliest candidate of the mythological "wyvern" to be a Cenozoic family--if not superfamily--of scansoriopterygid dinosaur. Now the first...
I was considering Kessler syndrome, however this is not a long-enough duration and I'm unaware of a way to prolong it for the course of several millennia. I don't want Earth to be destroyed, just...
You know, dragons like myself are no strangers to falling. It's a natural part of flight and I used to do it a lot when I was a tiny and very adorable wyrmling. The problem is it hurt, and sure it...
On plain Pilar forest biome of planet X, you have mostly 3 types of vertebrates: those who burrow under the ground those who run through the widely separated trees those who live above ground le...
I originally wanted to create giant land biological life-forms but the square cube law is limiting me to sauropod body sized creatures so another element of my story is artificially enhanced biolog...
