General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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In a not so different fantasy world, whose physics and thus are similar to our own how would including penguins affect the look and function of a typical arctic ecosystem. For the purposes of this...
A group of scientists discover a heretofore unknown species of fungus. unbeknownst to them, let's say it is of extraterrestrial origin but it operates very much like certain fungi on Earth (e.g. op...
I like demons as they're portrayed in popular culture. I wanted to make a "anatomically correct" succubus question, but StackExchange tells me that this one already exists (even if it is not refere...
I am creating a superhuman that can raise her overall body temperature to 3,000 °F (1648.889 °C) but I need to know the exact requirements of how that could happen. Let's say this superhuman co...
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...
This question is based off videos of octopi running using their tentacles curled under and their body raised from the ground. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23qzi88k3aM I saw this question Anato...
A recent question here on SE:WB reminded me of a short story I wrote a long time ago, and has inspired me to revisit the idea. The premise: A race of massive alien creatures travel from planet to...
My question is, how do we make humans more able to resist falls(not just free falls, also normal ones and from a "medium" height, 2-10 meters) and be able to move afterwards, at least for the jumps...
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,...
As the tittle says what would the ecosystem look like if predator and prey were to switch places? The cause of this change is either handwavium or a very unlucky sorcerer. The transformation is mai...
The Demonstration You're a rich, successful CEO/capitalist working in the electronics business. Your R&D division is exceptional and routinely fabs state of the art processors at bleeding edg...
In my story Giants, humans, and a bunch of other fantasy races live along side each other and i'm curious as to what sort of environment (on earth) would best suit them? some basic characteristics ...
I am building a setting that is essentially steampunk,being exact it would be pneumatic punk. What electronics and electronic equivalent exists, are primitive and extremely expensive. Thus the majo...
So, centaurs are half-human, half-horse creatures that are usually portrayed in myth as wild, violent and animalistic. Now, I, Lucretius, found a good explanation why. The answer is in the growth ...
I'm making alternate more realistic designs of Kirby characters. I'm working on a version of Escargoon the "snail" here. Due to his movement in the Kirby anime resembling more of a shuffle I've...
Ok, assuming a planet that's tidally locked to its sun, but is otherwise roughly similar to earth in gravity and atmosphere. Classic tidally locked planet: one side is covered in ice, the other is...
What would be the optimal geography for a thriving capital, located in a caldera ? I'm building a fantasy world with multiple intelligent species and civilisations. There is magic in this world, b...
In the near future a man-made virus was released which caused a world wide epidemic in humans and animals , the virus completly shutsdown all cognitive functions in the brain leaving the host in a ...
The muroids are a superfamily of rodents consisting today of mice, rats, voles, hamsters, lemmings and gerbils. There are at least 1750 different species of them, proof apparent of their environme...
My temple was built near a kaolin surface mine, which is itself topping an old deep mine (where they used to mine radioactive metals, rare earths and possibly other miscellaneous, if need be). This...
Time is not a constant, Albert Einstein proved that much. Time dilation is a difference in the elapsed time measured by two clocks, either due to them having a velocity relative to each other, or b...
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 ...
In a galaxy far far away... M6760 (I made it up) is an unusually massive neutron star billions of light years away and it is surrounded by a spherical Dyson sphere painted in new improved formula v...
On Earth, sailors would navigate the oceans at night by using the stars as guides; since there are no landmarks in the ocean like there are on land (save for the occasional island), that's pretty m...
Say the word "Australia", and one of the first things to come to your mind would be the marsupials. Of the 334 species of pouched mammals whose earliest ancestors witnessed the fall of the dinos...
Mariam Nabatanzi Babirye is a woman in Uganda who has had 44 children in her life due to her bearing many children at one time. This unusual situation is because of a rare genetic abnormality that ...
Apart of the Anatomically Correct Series Vanara The Vanara is a group of people who lives in the forest in the Hindu epic "Ramayana." In there, it describes them as human-like, with reference to...
Working on my Nintendo Kirby alternate universe where things are more biologically realistic. Many life forms are roundish legless creatures that can move by bouncing. How can this work and is it...
An alien automatic "beacon" tries to warn us about some imminent danger. It does so with launching a succession of large "veils" in front of their star so we can detect them via the transit method....
I was reading this question, and it made me wonder if something like this is possible or not. So, the question is, Is it possible to have an alien species in whom, the newborns are bigger than adu...
I am writing a story that has insects the size of humans, but I am having a little trouble with the biology. When you look up why there are no large insects on Earth, the most popular answer is th...
Nurgle comes from the Warhammer 40K universe, he is described as being the lord of plague or the god of diseases, decay, and destruction. I will, however, take away his god like attributes, and tr...
I'm talking about place similar to the Jordan desert, where the biggest prey is similar to wild donkeys and antelopes like oryx and gazelles. My creature is 1.92 meters tall and 4 meters long, loo...
For my story there exists a fictitious element with special properties. In its pure form is most closely resembles metal (for its physical properties) This material is quite abundant in salt and o...
I read a theory once which stated that the natural pain, sickness and general discomfort that humans can experience during sex, pregnancy, and childbirth help control the human population by discou...
In the world that I am making there are hollows all over the planet, which are massive underground subterranean areas of the planet. Think The Hollow of the Gears Of War series. So far the going th...
I did the orbital period for a planet orbiting a mass = 1 sol with a 24-hour year, it's got a semi-major axis of 1.82 million miles - far and away beyond the Roche limit, still beyond the corona, b...
How plausible is a six-limbed flying animal roughly the size of hatzegopteryx to be aerial? In this case, an aerial animal will be defined as a creature that solely inhabits the sky. I will call t...
As the title says, Is it possible to map the firing of neurons in the human brain so as to stimulate artificial memories to the amnesiac person? This is based on this similar question; Is it possi...
Anyone who has studied ice ages would know that during the last two-and-a-half million years of Earth's history, there have been periods where there was enough ice to suck up a lot of water. As a ...
This pure-blood vampiric race is not immortal, but their lifespans are about five times that of mortals. This race has lived in a vast city beneath a small mountain range for thousands of years (th...
In the grim darkness of the 22,d century, there is only war. humanity has waged war on itself for decades, turning many areas of the planet into wastelands. With every decade that passes, new weapo...
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? ...
Starliners are huge colony ships. They carry enough equipment, building materials, embryos, colonists and nutrient rich rations to permanently establish a sizeable colony on a far-flung world. Alth...
I am making a story of a species who lives on a planet several light-years above the Galactic Bulge. With advanced technology, how much could they see from their vantage point? Could they carry out...
From 2.4 to either 2.1 or two billion years ago, Earth underwent a surge in a waste product that we know as "oxygen". Before that, life thrived in an ocean rich with iron under an atmosphere loade...
So I'm designing a world where the air has its own ecosystem, separate from the one on the land, because sky whales are cool. However, I'm having trouble figuring out what the plants and other prod...
what are some ways to store largish amounts of information mechanically? What would a mechanical computer use for memory storage if it was entirely mechanical? edit: guys why is this downvoted? I ...
I need to wipe out a city. Not a huge one (I won't let them grow beyond a certain limit), but big enough to need to do some pretty serious damage. Let's say something similar in size to Pompeii. (y...
Within my setting, insects, due to a rather long (millions of years) and convoluted (gods suffering from empty nest syndrome) series of events, have evolved their exoskeletons into an endoskeleton ...
