General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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The antagonist of my story trades steel with a non-human, and non-humanoid, race, in return for a magical substance. They place great value in steel as they cannot manufacture it themselves. That i...
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...
In a setting where an empire establishes an island colony far to the north, what is the coldest climate such a colony could sustainably survive were that empire to collapse and stop sending supply ...
In the large pillar forests of planet x, a group of vertebrates, in order to hunt down the fast climbing creatures that inhabit their habitat, rather than developing speed as well, went on another ...
In my book series, I'm worldbuilding a planet whose culture is based on Celtic mythology and history, and in order to be consistent with real life I feel like the whole planet's environment needs t...
I got an interesting answer to one of my questions and I would like to know some additional info. A myoneme (or spasmoneme) is a contractile structure found in some eukaryotic single-celled o...
We played with technology too powerful for humans to wield and opened a gateway to a parallel universe, on a dark world with a dying sun. The dominant lifeforms on this world are semi-sentient flyi...
So let me explain the frame/world first, I actually think all of it is relevant as some details would probably have quite the impact on the outcome. I was hesitant to post the question as it's quit...
Are there any areas of space where an antimatter object, the size of a small house could survive without coming into contact with any or extremely minimal amounts of matter? I had assumed in all a...
I'm writing a story about a modern age HEMA medievalist who time travels to the Viking age. Is it possible to make a crossbow with similar performance to modern age crossbows without using modern ...
The human brain is a jackass. Your senses are capable of processing large amounts of information to the senses. However, the brain blocks most of this out of the consciousness in order to allow thi...
Earth sized planet in the goldilocks zone. Similar mineral composition and surface water. Photosynthetic life evolves and thrives on land and sea. Atmosphere and climate comparable to the beginnin...
My augmented society of humans have managed to engineer their power-hungry cyborg components to run on a hydrogen fusion reactor. Whilst they have so far managed to fuel it by drinking lots of wate...
After 150 million years, the most successful empire in the history of Planet Earth finally collapsed 66 million years ago. A five-mile-wide space bomb--there's still disagreement as to whether 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...
I, Rey Skywalker, am officially the greatest Jedi in existence. I successfully took down the remnants of the empire single-handedly, defeated my arch-enemy Kylo Ren, and killed Sheev Palpatine, t...
In a world that takes place during the Victorian era (1837-1901), how effective would period-accurate firearms be against something similar to a dinosaur? As a brief aside, I will accept weaponry f...
Back home, five million years ago, the warm, wet climate of the Miocene sloped downwards into the cooler, drier Pliocene before descending even further into the more so Pleistocene. The slope was ...
Background: We discover an artifact in the present day somewhere remote. This artifact is in the form of a small (approximately phone sized) sphere, and when researched, it is discovered to have th...
In my story Giants, humans, and a bunch of other fantasy races live along side each other and i'm curious as to what might be an effective mode of transportation for 10 foot tall Giants with Ancien...
Marsupials in the majority of the world are overshadowed by their placental cousins, with the notable exception being Australia. There they have convergently evolved many similarities to their plac...
In a world I want to make, sailors would travel at sea for many years, perhaps up to ten, on sail boats. Obviously, they'd normally be stricken by scurvy and such, but I was thinking of some kind o...
is it possible for certain creatures that can use infrasound or even vibrations as a defense mechanism, like: - causing them to get a severe headache or even weaken them - temporarily stunning its ...
On Venus the surface is around 467 degrees Celsius. At the top of the atmosphere it is much cooler, and at around 60 km above the surface the temperature is around 40 to 50 degrees Celsius. This is...
What would cause/allow a planet with very high gravity to have tall, sharp mountains? Mountain height is generally capped off by gravity, erosion, and the mountains composition. On a higher gravit...
When elves decide to conceive, a male must add his genetic material at different intervals over several years to the female. Genetic material could come from a single male or various ones with no c...
I am wondering if it is possible for whales to fly. I'm considering two different cases. How could we alter earth conditions (thickness, gravity) so that whales could actively fly (without changi...
The present day atmosphere is roughly 21% oxygen. Historically high-levels might have been as much as 35%, over 66% higher. This made the carboniferous a period of giant bugs and constant devastati...
Genetic chimerism is a condition in which a single organism is composed of cells with more than one distinct genotype. In animals, this means an individual derived from two or more zygotes, which c...
After surveying customers about their new product, 2019-nCoV™, E.V.I.L. Inc. realized that many of them would pay for an upgrade which allows for the virus to be carried by the wind itself in order...
In my story Orcs, 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? so basic characteristics of m...
My fungus starts out as an extremely small spore, this small spore will bury and implant itself near the spinal cord and cerebellum, and will then secrete an enzyme that hijacks and later puts it i...
Imagine an Earth sized planet consists of only ferrous metals, the creatures living on the planet move around like a maglev train basically they interact with the world and among each other electro...
In a world I'm designing, a group of Homo Habilis or even Australopithecus Afarensis migrated into a northern Scotland environment becoming Trolls. These are not D&D trolls, but something else....
So, Both birdfolk and gryphons have a head structure, similar to that of birds of prey, i.e: forward facing eyes. Sure, the color of the plumage and the beak-type can vary, but one problem is still...
Though this applies to lizardfolk and most creatures with a snout as well, I'm having trouble giving more facial expressions to dragons. Sure, they can wink, bare their fangs and laugh out loud and...
I understand that one does not simply scale up the smallest of creatures to the size of megafauna without violating basic physiological constraints like the square/cube law, among others; so what w...
I came to SE WB while I was researching about space radiators for my sci-fi. I don't remember where exactly I found an answer to my question (Maybe? Idr) but I stunned with this site. You all looks...
So, lizardfolk are humanoid (and, so, upright) creatures with reptilian features and are also part-time endotherms. They're well-adapted to living in water and on trees to a degree. One adaptation ...
There has been materials science research on materials that can harden and soften at need. In nature, we have the example of the sea cucumber, which can go from a squishy compressible state to a r...
At speeds near the speed of light, interstellar particles and gas may affect the movement of the ship, and microscopic particles may even badly damage the ship. Would not it make sense to make the ...
While the intended end state is that this planet can support space-faring lifeforms, the solution under question needs a sanity check. I cannot commit to many numbers with how speculative this all ...
Imagine Earth was hit hard by some force so devastating that Earth now has an axial tilt of 90.0 degrees, a far cry from the usual 23.5 degree. The same force somehow eliminates the Moon. In my sto...
One of the planets I'm thinking of for my book series has all of its landmass in the northernmost half of the northern hemisphere (it is thus mostly a water world) and is completely geologically de...
Imagine similar earth conditions of oceans and currents, and a renaissance type kind of ships of various sizes (ranging from sloops to ships-of-the-line), could a fleet consisting in 1500 (aprox.) ...
One problem, I think writers often overlook, is the problem of flying creatures communicating with each other. I call this the "I can't hear you over the sound of the f@cking headwind!" For my wor...
I'm trying to come up with idea's that have some plausibility of sending information FTL. So we can entangle particles together. When you measure them you influence them. If you measure one up the...
A long time ago, the 60 foot long Megalodon roamed the oceans. Fast forward to 2.6 million years ago and they went extinct. In the story I'm writing Megalodon hasn't gone extinct surviving at least...
Now octopuses are quite smart already capable of camouflage and puzzle solving. given this I was wondering whether Octopuses could Convergently evolve sapience (human level intelligence) and wha...
