General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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So, a neat thing, depending on how you look at it, about greenhouse gases is that while it's causing a raise in temperature near the surface it actually makes the upper parts of the atmosphere decr...
Say they had pale skin, what would they look like? Would the lips be black? Would the vascular system show through the skin more? I'm not very interested in how or why their blood is black, just ho...
The Humerns are quite an odd species when it comes to mating. They have nine distinct sexes (not genders, they're biologically distinct) all of which exhibit varying levels of dimorphism and all of...
This question considers the respiratory apparatus of an aquatic (or amphibious) species descended from engineered humans. The history of the species provides a relevant constraint. While the scien...
Okay so there's a project I've been thinking about for a long time wherein humans colonise a world where the climate appears warm and benign only to discover that the local climate oscillates from ...
A character in my story, taking place in a Renaissance era time period, has metal bones as well as metal teeth. How would he be able to make his teeth appear of the normal white color? This is ...
I need to know if it'd be possible for a underground ring-like structure of immense proportions and alien design to go unnoticed by modern day sonar, radar, and geological surveying. For an idea ...
On saturn's north pole there is a hexagonal cloud which does not move. My question is: is it possible to theoretically make a hexagonal cloud on an earth-like planet? And furthermore, is it possibl...
I need someone to fact-check me and tell me if there's anything immediately bogus or physically impossible with the scenario I'm about to propose. Billions of years ago, under the ice of Europa, t...
I'm designing an environment suit for humans to wear while interacting with a benevolent alien species while in alien space. Here's my question: How much solid oxygen (by mass and volume) it woul...
On a world similar to Earth in many aspects, a species exists that is partly carbon-based and partly X-based. X can (mostly) be found in the thick exoskeleton that this creature possesses. I'm look...
I've seen a lot of questions on here about the possibility of more than two sexes but I've found nothing on the possibility of only a single sex. The closest thing I've found is isogamy, is there a...
My graphic novel involves a large flying city on a Venus-like planet. Yes, I have done my research, and for various reasons it will be an aerostat-hibrid megastructure: a metaphor for the elaborate...
I created a fantasy map a while back, but only recently have I realised it may have a major problem. There is next to no land at the equator although some land between 0-30 degrees. The vast majori...
Imagine a planet where there are extremely cold temperatures and water can be found only in frozen state. To cope with harsh conditions the creature evolved so it can melt ice with its body surfac...
Roughly how long would arthropods have to evolve before they could reach sizes analogous to current day megafauna (like today's mammals)? Assume an alternate earth where tetrapods never colonize...
I'm really in doubt if a fusion thruster could be used inside a planet (populated places). As i saw in the TV show "The Expanse", their fusion engines are really, really hot, hotter than the surfac...
First of all, I'd like to make a disclaimer, and that is that I'm in a brainstorming phase as of now so this question will be generally vague. This also means that any ideas you're willing to propo...
If an FTL experiment created a black hole or keugleblitz within 100 au or less of our sun, what would it's post creation statistics have to be to consume the majority of our solar system within 10 ...
There are a lot of acids in the world, many of them present in biological creatures. Humans, for instance, have hydrochloric acid in their stomachs. What I'm wondering here is just how nasty it cou...
I'm working on this new story in which many people have developed "special qualities" or gifts - call it extreme DNA mutations, if you will. There's this character who has several rows of teeth (ma...
When I was in the process of designing a human with a head that has 8 times the amount of brain matter than a normal one. I came into a problem. What kind of neck muscles are capable of lifting a ...
I have a question that concerns a story I am writing and I hope it is a valid one to ask. But in my story, several groups of colonists, each arriving on different ships at relatively the same time...
Imagine a society. Every member of the society is indoctrinated in different ways by their parents, the education system, media and friends. One can think of this society as a collection of i...
When I was a kid, I conceptualized a post-apocalyptic story entirely starring Barbie dolls. One idea I had about how they would live and get around involved transmission towers, or power towers. Im...
In Stephen Baxter's science fiction Novel Ultima humans discover mysterious "kernels" which allow high speed space propulsion units to be built. The problem is that these kernels are only to be fo...
I'm working on a story that has several worlds but I focus only two of them now. World A is our present, world B is a fantasy-ish one which is very similar to ours but evolution has been different ...
I'm working on explaining away the existence of a planet whose entire ecosystem is based upon bioluminescent creatures, and I've been wondering if there could be a reason for their blood (or other ...
My story involves a groups of colonists from a near post-apocalyptic Earth settling on a nearby, newly discovered habitable world, each colony separated and unknown to the others initially. Through...
One of Alice's interstellar jaunts will take her to a Gold Planet. It's a planet that was recently covered in a meter deep layer of gold dust (for realism, it is mixed with silver, platinum, teensy...
Flash news: Dr. Handwave have discovered a way to store energy, without loss, and for unlimited time. The battery has the following characteristics: Electric: Can be charged by any electric sou...
Similar to other suggested dynamic structures using kinetic energy to provide structural support, I am considering options for resisting external pressure in a vessel (e.g. a diving bell) by incorp...
Story starts out about 100 years from now. While in orbit around Earth preparing for an interstellar mission, our spacecraft encounters some hand-wavey spacetime anomaly such that we're still in o...
I want a character who has a highly developed ability of empathy. She knows what others are feeling, and often thinking. This story does not have any supernatural or non-hard SF elements, so it n...
Assume that a person is shielded by magic. The only thing this magic does is to keep air away from that person (ignore for now any consequences to said unfortunate individual). Aside from this, the...
I saw this video a while ago, and recently it's gotten me thinking. Towards the end of Artifexian's video on gas giants and habitable moons, he mentions the idea of having 2 habitable moons in a ho...
Scenario The straits of Gibraltar never quite opened and the entire Mediterranean basin is dry land apart from a few large salt water lakes at the lowest points ~5% by area. The Europe "“ Africa la...
The article Why Can't All Animals Be Domesticated? on Live Science sets out a list of criteria that a species needs to meet in order to be successfully domesticated by humans. In short, that list s...
I am currently searching for a new execution method to be used in my fictional psychotic dictatorship. After introducing methods such as decompression, boiling, surgical torture (being dissected al...
Exactly what the title says. I don't know to exact pH level of the water but it's at a level that it would kill a human should they drink it. What/how would a creature evolve to deal with drinking...
Assume Earth of today was altered overnight. Some percentage of the more common elements of Earth's bulk (silicon, iron, and so on) are replaced with something much heavier. This changes the ov...
This planet I am proposing is approximately half the size and mass of earth and has two moons. The moons are respectively 1/8th and 1/10th of the size of the planet.The moons orbit the planet at di...
I want my world to contain a fruit that electrically shocks you to the point where it's painful, whenever you bite into it. Now, there are many organisms in nature that produce sensations similar t...
If a tidal locked terrestrial sized moon with 0 eccentricity, 0 incline, and was orbiting .01 AU away from a gas giant with 12 Jupiter masses (which would have approximately the same radius as Jupi...
Is there any feasible way for a satellite to have a long lasting higher spin orbit resonance than 1:1 (tidal locking) BESIDES having an eccentric orbit, having its own satellite, or being severely ...
One of my characters has hands very different to the ones we're used to. His fingers can close towards both sides of the hand, meaning that the back of his hand is also a palm and he has a second ...
Can a Dyson Sphere and a star inside of the Dyson Sphere, both have a "stable" orbit around the barycentre of a system where they are not the most massive objects? And/Or Can they both orbit togeth...
Imagine a world like ours. Gravity, atmosphere, sky... just nothing solid down there. At least not anywhere close. Would it be possible? I know this is similar to this question. So to specify what...
I have an Earth-sized planet in a Milky Way-like galaxy with all the land located at the equator, in a 2000-km line around the planet. There are small islands near the landmass, but no land anywher...
I am running a sci-fi RPG. One of my players (the Engineer) has expressed interest in having a gold hammer. This seems pretty ridiculous to me as gold is soft and softness doesn't seem like a qua...
