General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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Bryan Konietzko (you know, one of the guys being Avatar The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra), is working on a new project called Threadworlds, which takes place in a solar system that has 5 ...
I am creating a history for my galactic civilization, and was thinking that the first colonization ship might be launched around the year 2200. World War Three Just a few years from now, a third ...
My fantasy world consists of a flat plane, with the sun affixed to a point directly over the main continent. This sun powers down to create night conditions, and then powers up again in the morning...
Let's say an isolated colony is established in an ideal environment with the goal of growing the inhabited human population as quickly as possible. Health care is provided for them by managers, or ...
While the reasons for it's existence do not matter as it is part of an artificially created planet, I am curious if a lapis lazuli island would be able to survive erosion and support Earth-like lif...
Terrorists gain complete control of the world's nuclear weapons and they want to destroy the moon. Could they do this with ICBMs? If not, is there enough power in the arsenal to destroy the moon if...
In a Rocheworld scenario where two planets are tidally locked and share an atmosphere, but where both the planets are so small that their gravity is very little (as low as one of the dwarf planets ...
Assume I have someone who doesn't age, and has a lot of time to learn any skill or experiment with things, but who was born and raised (prior to becoming ageless) in a medieval farming village. He...
I'm working on a story set in a planet of permanent dusk/dawn, and with a dark side that never sees the light of sun. I know that a planet tidally locked to its star would (roughly) look like this,...
The planet in question is this one. Approximately three quarters the size and half the gravity of Earth, an atmosphere 25% as dense as the Terran one which mainly consists of Nitrogen with small pe...
Question If a ship went through an asteroid belt where the asteroids are mostly ice, could the ice in any way transfer onto the ship and give it coatings of ice in various places, or would there b...
I was told to post this question separately, so here it is. I need help with the geography and climate of my map. Blue circles are ports Gray circles are cities That one brown circle is a town ...
If all humans (but no other species) just suddenly disappeared, leaving all of their structures standing, how long would it take for an intelligent species as dominant as the humans to evolve? Woul...
Would it be possible for a fully modern civilization (i.e. quite like our own, perhaps slightly more advanced, with near-future tech) to arise on an Earth-like planet devoid of uranium, plutonium, ...
I'm trying to design a world in the Alcyone A system of the Pleiades. Alcyone A consists of three stars. The main star is 3.4-3.8 solar masses. There is a very low mass star < 15 million miles ...
What factors could skew the sex ratio of an intelligent species, especially a humanoid/human sub-race? For example, say one race has markedly more females born than males, and another race has the ...
Solar Sails are a great, low-impact way of driving your spacecraft. Whilst wind turbines are a low impact way of collecting power from the wind, however, they only work when the wind is blowing. M...
I am envisioning a world around a red dwarf star. The planet has violent and accelerated (due to higher geological activity) plate tectonics and has a magnetic field about 75% the strength of the E...
What existing material (e.g. 410 steel, no unobtanium) and what thickness should the ribcage of a creature (of humanoid size and shape, let's say it's a genetically-engineered human) have, to survi...
QUESTION I'd like a nation in the world I'm working on to be able to transport natural gas and hydrogen, for fuel and possibly ballooning. Natural gas pipelines and cylinders were first invented i...
Inspired by this question from yesterday. Solar flares can give off a large amount of radiation, but on Earth this is typically absorbed before it reaches anywhere but the poles, and even then on...
I have done research on blood and in particular the component adding color and transferring oxygen. Hemocyanin is directly dissolved into the blood. This works for an octopus, but not a reptilian ...
The setting would be an almost permanently snowy climate. Average temperature 10 to -5 degrees celsius, with little difference between seasons. Edit: This is a human civilization. I suppose the cl...
The first portal is placed at bottom-most point of the Mariana trench (the deepest part of any ocean, located in the western Pacific Ocean) and the second is placed in the Sahara desert in Africa a...
Edit: Before I give up on this I wonder how could an advanced civilization create conditions on a small planetoid (Ceres sized?) to keep an Earth level breathable atmosphere? It seems like its impo...
My question is the following: How could I design and/or justify a habitable planet that is 80,000 km in circumference? The planet should: Be habitable Have a gravity similar to earth's Have act...
Considering a world with Jackalopes. These half-rabbit half-antelope creatures stand a little over 2 feet long when fully grown and have horns like a deer growing 1 to 2 feet in length. Like deer...
(See diagram) Presupposing that a Rocheworld can even exist... I imagine that sunlight would work more or less the same in the atmosphere of any part of an Earth like planet that was tidally lock...
The year is 2089. The political shenanigans of the day have gotten more out of hand than usual and violent zealots have detonated the Earth's largest deposit of plotium devicide, an extremely versa...
I was wondering if it was possible to potentially grow a plant on a building taller than mount Everest. I mean on as in bottom to top with grass or some other plant. Would the grass run out of oxyg...
Is there a way to induce a solar flare / coronal mass ejection (CME)? For instance, could a very tight glob of charged particles reconfigure the the Sun's corona leading to this type of event? Is ...
Suns are stars. They are orbited by planets, and sometimes other stars. Planets are orbited by moons. Reasonably advanced civilizations may launch artificial satellites into orbits around their pla...
I am working on a fictional story, but I want to have a few accurate scientifically accurate (or as close as possible) situations. Question one is: if a person falling at full terminal velocity, o...
OK, let's say that you have an interstellar human population. You've got people who live on different planets in various systems, but you also have people living in space stations in different syst...
I'm trying to come up with a history for a planet that's more-or-less Earth-like that was colonized by a small group of humans ~1000 years ago. Human civilization on this planet has an understandi...
(Please see diagrams) This is a question regarding an area of a Rocheworld scenario that I haven't found anything on. It is suggested that the OUT side of a planet that is tidally locked with an...
What sort of biological challenges and modifications would it take to create a snake with a head on both ends? Assume that said snake is created by a deity and thus some complicated evolution path...
I'm currently writing a short story about astronauts exploring a seemingly barren planet, which is covered in steep mountains with large flat areas in between. They soon find themselves hunted by ...
Imagine a world whose sun is swinging like a pendulum above a flat surface. This is a sketch of the diagram. A complete cycle lasts twenty-four (24) hours (from an end to the other and back aga...
Assuming a civilization has the capacity to build space vessels designed to travel from one solar system to another, what is the technological difference between traveling at 50% light speed and tr...
Assuming humanity found a planet they could travel to and was suitable for colonization, how would scientists re-engineer the human colonists for life on this new world? Planet details: It's sli...
So, I created a planet that has a civilization that is beyond advanced. The planet's radius is 10x the radius of Earth, and is has the same density as Earth. What issues would I have with the grav...
I am designing a creature for a tall tale I'm composing and I have apparently hit a wall when it comes to envisioning an environment that would promote the creation of an intelligent race of arachn...
The Humern empire uses Photonic Railways to transport its unimaginably vast cargo containers from one solar system to the next. These ships can reach truly staggering velocities (>0.8c even for ...
We're all aware of modern-day fertility treatments, like artificial insemination and hormones, but are there less advanced ways to trigger ovulation and/or otherwise boost fertility? What methods m...
So I have a planet with tectonic plates that are separated by massive canyons that reach all the way down to the mantle. Obviously this means that the planet is very unstable and violent, experienc...
This question has some close votes but has been edited/clarified, and has attracted more comments and discussion over the possible answers, and the geometry has overshadowed the actual question bei...
In my story, I have two huge generation ships racing each other to another star system. Assume they are on an exactly parallel path, neck-and-neck, about one astronomical unit apart. They are trave...
There exists a Universe in which all of outer-space is filled with some form of human-breathable air. Theoretically, you could fly a Zeppelin up there and explore other worlds, with a sufficiently ...
There have been a number of questions focusing on mythical creatures where the logical approach to answering has been to scale up an existing animal. For example dragon's wings can be extrapolated ...
