General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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My main character is a human with grey irises, and I want to know how I could realistically explain her irises glowing - as if the irises themselves are lightbulbs - red or purple during moments of...
Related to On a Speedster's perception of time and ability to function in civilian life So I have a character that is always fast, a Speedster really, 1 second is 24 hours to her. As pointed out b...
For my group of alien tetrapods, I would like to have them evolve a sort of built in protection against the elements and other organisms. While researching, I came across information on graphene, a...
Humans have grown fat, complacent and cock-sure of the certainty of future progress, arrogantly expecting to build minds in their own image. They even dream of building themselves a city, with a to...
I was thinking of a lifeforms that would have a brain more similar to that of a quantum computer than an ordinary brain. I was thinking the brain would use something similar to qubits that could be...
What I'm thinking for this question is that some kind of filter is put around the sun by aliens that prevents some kinds of solar energy from passing through but allows other types. Like if it sto...
Yay my second alien sex question, I hope I am not arrested. Context Okay now to nitty gritty, So I got an intelligent species of Ostrich/flamingo looking creatures(this refers only to the shape, ...
Imagine that you want to colonize Venus. But a day on Venus lasts 4 months, and that's terrible. The big brains at the Science Palace have decided to make Venus spin faster, so that the length of d...
I have a creature in which its main feature are its alligator-like jaws. It's carnivorous, incredibly aggressive, and is a reptile. Let's call them boom-agators. Now reading through many different...
As a parody of the super soldier questions and as an efficient way of organizing these questions I will now start this series of questions about Pseudo-Arthropod Primates. Previous questions from ...
All right, I'm whipping up a speedster character. Figured if she's going to run real quick she'll have to think very quickly so that she doesn't end up as a smear against a wall. So, I did some cal...
If I were to have a generally earth like world, with water and land masses very similar, what could you add to make storms happen more often, and more specifically, lighting storms. I know lightnin...
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...
Editorial Note This is a canonocal question meant to cover all possible specific questions that fit the schema, as well as the fully general "Can quantum entanglement be used for FTL communication...
My race of arboreal humanoids has limb proportions very similar to those of a human apart from their slightly lengthened arms. They are already quite strong, and I'm hoping to add to their flexibi...
Solid Core Nuclear Thermal rocketry has existed for a while and I was thinking about using it as the primary propulsion in my setting. Now most Solid Core rockets still have fairly long transit tim...
So, in the far off year of 2569, there are two main empires contending for control in the Alpha Quadrant. They are the United Terran Federation and the Qualian Star Empire. The former empire is m...
EDIT: Since many people think this question is unclear, let me rephrase it: Can a species with only specialists survive unassisted for a long period of time? Specific applications: A Robot group...
I understand that a Sol is a Martian day, a little longer than a day on Earth (... 30 minutes I think?) and there are 24 months using the Darian calendar. So if people lived on Mars, what is a casu...
User Interface Customization for Spaceship Controls; "In theory, practice and theory are the same. In practice, they're totally different." We often find that what we plan for isn't what actuall...
So I am building a tidally locked world, but I want the shadow zone to vary a bit. One way to achieve this is through axial tilt. A planet with orbital period = day period, so tidally locked and 0...
Consider an area of a fantasy world which experiences the following changes: Amount on rainfall, and thunderstorms, increases dramatically. Average temperature increases by 10-20 degrees Celsius ...
Could an ancient civilisation create plastics on Saturn's moon - Titan? Much like how we forged metals and glass here on Earth... To prevent it from being impossible from the start fire can be pr...
Let's say that, since the dawn of time, any time an organism has died, it has dissipated upon death. With no decaying matter to fertilize or produce future plants/animals, would life have adapted? ...
This question relates to an attack on a biological space vessel. My vessel is a space station made from wood, with an oxygen-rich atmosphere inside it. It is under attack and the attackers have de...
This is a (crude) map of my world of Lorne in the current age. At the point of development I'm in, I'm trying to get the climates/biomes of some of the lands I've envisioned to work out as best a...
When flying a big spacecraft, one needs to keep several things in mind when designing the "user interface" used to control the spacecraft's flight path, or ultimately, the output of the thrusters/e...
In the story of my video game, I want a group of colonists to land at dawn on an alien planet and have to terraform or build protective structures before sundown (several earth days). I want the d...
For the purposes of this question only, I am making the following definitions: Cell: a microscopic, membrane-bound subunit of a living organism. Living organism: an entity composed primarily of b...
The Background On a single fairly sizeable continent live two intelligent species. Regular humans, and a species of intelligent wolf-people. The latter aren't actually descended from wolves, but ...
There is a community of androids living in the ruins of Fresno after the apocalypse. They trade with the local humans for fusion batteries which they need for power. It is essential that they are a...
Background As a parody of the super soldier questions and as an efficient way of organizing these questions I will now start this series of questions about Pseudo-Arthropod Primates. Questions fr...
Other questions from this thread: Question 1 Question 3 Oh my that title is a mouthful, but as a parody of the super solider questions and as an efficient way of organizing these questions I wil...
How can a humanoid creature achieve the lowest possible terminal velocity with its own body? What kind of anatomy would decrease its terminal velocity?
From 56 to 34 million years ago, Earth was so warm that we have found evidence of jungle plants inside the Arctic Circle. Nowadays, jungles are confined in or near the equator, and those latitudes...
The title of this question is fairly self-explanatory. I am developing a fantasy world, and I want to know what factors determine what kinds of trees I can have, where I can put them, and why. I ...
Let us assume a sufficiently earth-like moon, like Europa. It orbits a gas giant. The whole setup is within the star's goldilocks zone, so the moon is theoretically habitable. 'Day' is one rotatio...
Zerg Overlords are flying alien creatures that aid their broods by managing lesser members of the swarm, transporting units within their carapaces, and alerting a hive about any danger they perceiv...
In my fictional planet, forests grow not on soil, but on vast spongy mats of fungi. Traditional Earth-like feet would struggle to get grip on the squishy ground, so most megafauna taxa have feet li...
The Situation A colony of 100 teleporters (between the ages of 20-40) have been hidden away living like monks for 1000's of years to prevent their detection. With the death of their old leader, a...
The Rygyphae are a species that lives in the geothermal pockets, areas heated by volcanic activity. The rest of the planet is nothing but frozen ice and rock, but these pockets are lush jungles ful...
Context I got this man who can control millions of insects at a time to fight. He accomplishes this thanks to the microbots(smaller than bacteria) in his nervous system that react to his mind and ...
There have been countless online articles that go into painstaking detail about the implausibility of Godzilla existing in real life. But, let's just assume that a creature like Godzilla naturally ...
Exploring the idea of "living" matter, (possibly non-carbon based if necessary), decomposing by bacteria (or similar) into sugar. In our world, sugars are held quite valuable by living systems, so...
Out in Fresno, in the Marxist community of Androidia, also known as CyboTek facility 9, lives a community comprised of only robots and artificial intelligences. They are at peace with most surround...
I have, what I hope to be, a fairly simple question. I am designing a planet where there are no carnivores. Assumptions The creatures would all be very complacent and would feed and live in v...
This is not a very hard-science-fiction tale, but more about human relations and adaptability, but I still want it to sound plausible. A space faring civilisation that descend from humans uses bio...
I'm working on a story about another dimension of this same Earth but without the same human development and history. The land and natural conditions would be the same except for the ones directly ...
The second terrestrial planet orbiting the Sun is shrouded in greenhouse gases, the entire surface of Venus is always scorching hot due to the high concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide which...
Suppose that our understanding of biology and bio electronic interface technology reaches a point that it is possible to make a spinal cord implant that: forwards spinal cord signals exactly as t...
