General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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All the humans disappear, except maybe less than ten (unskilled) people. How long would those few be able to access and use the internet?
Imagine an alien species arrived on Earth, to find that the nitrogen in the air was toxic to them. Imagine they wanted to terraform our planet, and decided to fix this problem by nitrifying a lot o...
I'm curious if it's possible for human life to survive in both of the following cases: 1. A fantasy world with only sunlight (no night). 2. A fantasy world with only night (no day). Note: let's ...
This is another question for a setting I mentioned in previous questions (currency, ammo). The setting is: It's happening in post-apocalyptic SE Europe (Balkans specifically), about 60-80 years fr...
On earth, all sorts of machines require heavy oils and lubricants in order to function correctly, be it bearing grease, engine oil, transmission fluid or hydraulic oil, the majority of which are pr...
Ok I have a moon, or cored out moon, that is a generation ship. I really do: I built it by mining out one of the rock/ice moons around my solar systems gas giants (not earth's solar system). Its...
In my story there has been an event which made the air toxic. Just a few breaths guarantees death. What event could create such an atmosphere in an unfixable way? The time is just before WW1. I...
So basically what I want to know what dietary changes to human would need to happen to support this human dragonfly -Chitin claws on all fingers and toes; and three chitin spikes on each limb 9-...
The Leopard dragon is one of the fastest and smartest dragons out there. With four eyes, external ears, four legs, two wings, a long tail, and sleek black scales, this dragon is quiet and nearly in...
How realistic is the trope that wounds received in a virtual reality (VR) transfer to our own? Examples: In the Matrix (movie) and Neuromancer (novel), cuts, scrapes, and bruises seemingly jump f...
I've read a number of questions about how a dragon would or could breathe fire, and what substances would allow them to do so, and alcohol or ethanol has always been mentioned and shot down as alco...
The Volt Dragon is an incredibly dangerous beast that reeks havoc on any attempted air travel. This dragon generates many small but powerful magnetic fields whose strength can be varied voluntarily...
I had in mind a sci-fi setting where humans have begun terraforming nearby planets without the benefit of faster-than-light travel. For example, Wikipedia lists a handful of terrestrial planets wit...
This is a bit hard for me to put into to words, but it is an idea I have been working on for a few days, with input from a few other people. I have actually brought up part of this in a previous qu...
What would happen to an airplane in space? Or to be more specific, would anything interesting happen to the plane itself, and would the passengers and crew be able to survive for longer than a few ...
Far south-west of the main continent exists an island in a shape of crescent moon with dense jungles and slender mountain peaks and a single city named Kalt stands in a place where the islands' ce...
Related to my other question. What would be best conditions for a natural super colony of pearl oysters and the best conditions for them to produce pearls naturally. Shallow or deep waters? Slow...
Crude Oil, is a term used to describe petroleum products harvested from geological formations beneath the Earth's surface. As a fuel they maybe called hydrocarbons, hydrocarbons can be found/creat...
So, I've got a planet that's basically a junkyard. It's just one big junkyard. People from various space-faring societies dump all the crap there that they don't want to deal with. Derelict spacesh...
I am trying to create a planet with low gravity that keeps an atmosphere and has an ocean that covers the whole planet. Basically I am developing beings (separately from this question) who can live...
The Leech Dragon, so named for its round, leech-like mouth, is by far one of the creepiest and most vicious dragons. Part of the reason for its infamy is its ability to exhale toxic and very flamma...
The classic example of a cylindrical space habitat, Clarke's Rama, has a 10 km-wide ring of water at the middle. Most depictions of this O'Neill-style of habitat do something similar, placing a lar...
Prototaxites. Giant, finger-shaped mushrooms. Painting by Mary Parrish, National Museum of Natural History. These monsters existed before trees did, and while there are a few theories on whethe...
I'm in the middle of creating a RPG one-shot for some friends, and I'm thinking of doing an Aliens meets Space Hulk style "Big-Gribbly Aliens VS Humans" game. Is there an upper limit to the size ...
Taking genetic manipulation of humans to change them to live in other environments, besides maybe gills what other physical changes would need to be done for a human to spend 95+% time living in th...
To clarify, I realised that I kind of ran into a problem trying to check the orbital stability of two fictional planets in orbit around the real life 61 Cygni binary star star system. To explain...
There is this very weird species of bird that just can't get enough of delicious human flesh. But the bird has a problem - humans are big, smart, and social, so this little birdie has a unique skil...
There are many interesting places, many interesting worlds. This world is not one of them. It has an argon atmosphere, and the planet itself is made of a very unreactive, insoluble, extremely diffi...
In my world I want to create a really deep underwater science facility to conduct weird and unethical experiments in. But I think to myself: How deep could I take such a building? Does it become ...
Assuming that you had: some sort of amazing power plant on the moon that can create an unlimited amount of power a similarly amazing solar panel on earth that can receive an unlimited amount of p...
Lately, I have been working on the way a group of humanoids vocalizes. In the anatomy of vocalization, I have recently asked about and explored some variation in vocal cords. The hyoid bone typi...
The story will take place near a galaxy filled with space faring civilizations. In this galaxy, a small group of scientists realize that their side is on the losing side of a war that will probabl...
I am writing a science fiction story with mass produced clones. Since I have a number of clone I need to tell them apart. The ID system must be: Permanent over the lifetime of the clone (call it ...
Other than photosynthesis being an issue, if the Earth's surface became inhospitable and humans were forced to live underground, what biological changes would they be expected to go through to adap...
The smallest type of dragon in my world is a bipedal dragon about the same size as a moderately sized bird, maybe about a falcon. In addition to its breath attack and high intelligence, this little...
So my society can genetically engineer using Retro-viral vectors specially designed to work on only the subject they are injected into. I wanted my police force to be locked in a struggle with orga...
I want this world to have two things, typically on the complete opposite end of geological timescales: Land fauna is incredibly "Young" - Pretty much nothing larger than a "large" insect (Some li...
If a humanoid had a second pair of vocal cords or similarly functioning structures under the primary vocal cords, what would be the effect on the voice? Would this allow the humanoid to sing with t...
Lots of animals, e.g. dogs, can hear sounds beyond the frequencies that humans can hear. Would it be realistic to have a basically humanoid species which had two sets of vocal cords - one similar ...
We know that Venus has a poisonous carbon dioxide and hydrochloric acid atmosphere at a temperate of over 800 °F, but what about an ice planet? Mars is mostly freezing with a trace atmosphere, we ...
Planet: Xibalba (Mayan Hell) Tidally locked planet around a red dwarf that is very active with solar flares being a daily danger. The habitable zone around the planet is made up almost entirely ...
Assuming we want our sun to last as long as possible with a similar luminosity and assuming we value life over lifelessness can and should we manipulate the sun, gas giants and ice giants to that e...
I've read several of the questions about language shifting and diffusion here, and it has unfortunately left me more unsure of things than I was before. Situation: Colonists on an arid planet s...
So I robbed fort kn... I mean had a misunderstanding with some pretty powerful people by no fault of my own. I can teleport to places I can see or have seen (like in the movie jumper, btw I love g...
I'm wondering if a pine forest with near-constant rain and thunder could be possible. I was thinking that possibly something like this could be created by high mountains next to this place, lightni...
Mains power electrical systems on Earth supply a fixed standardized voltage to a number of devices, which are all wired in parallel with each other. However, on the planet I'm writng about, they d...
So I have some worlds with different physics, and need some way to explain it. As with other sci-fi, it would seem best to find something plausible but may be extremely unlikely or have negligible ...
I have been told that the high proportion of O2 and CH4 in my atmosphere are unsustainable unless constantly refreshed by an active process. I would like to sustain the following atmospheric compo...
I'm working on a humanoid vertebrate species that I'd like to be capable of true, flapping flight, but still have arms and legs completely separate from the wings. I also wish to avoid a "six-limb...
