General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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Everyone loves a Dyson Sphere or a Ring World, so much more room to enjoy than a traditional round planetoid, it's all about space efficiency for the advanced civilizations. There are however a nu...
What planetary parameters such as plate tectonics and volcanism etc would best encourage the most uneven planetary surface on an earth like planet? I want a world to be covered in very uneven terr...
"Glassing" a planet is a common ultimate tactic in Science Fiction, basically it consists in using high power energy weapons to destroy all life on the planet and reducing the soil and rock of the ...
I live in Cape Town, South Africa where it is a very real possibility that not a single drop of water will be left in our dams come March 2018. THIS is a news article that suggests that at a gover...
In my world, there are underground ruins from an ancient civilization. There are giant insect creatures living in these underground cave-like ruins, ranging from the size of a large dog to the size...
Not long ago I asked about pH indicators and their use in making fantastical skin colors (pH Indicators and Fantastical Skin Colors) In that question, I listed bromothymol blue as a type of indica...
I was trying to make an interesting moon of a gas giant similar to Jupiter with a liquid ocean of water. The moon orbits in the equivalent orbital space of Io and is about twice the size of Mars. T...
I am revising my first draft and trying to add more evocative details. Here, I asked whether stars in a binary system are likely to fall on the ecliptic. As my hero hikes through the day and su...
What, if any, survival advantages could a testudine gain from evolving a bipedal stance, either permanently or temporarily? Essentially, is there a factor that would have to be introduced for this ...
Saturnian moons Iapetus, Atlas, and Pan all have equatorial ridges. There's a few explanations as to why, but the theory behind why Iapetus has one is what intrigues me. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org...
Premise: Assume that one man has a genetic mutation such that his gametes (sperm) never have an X-chromosome. Unlike most men (who have a roughly 50/50 chance to sire a male or a female child) t...
I was thinking about how we differ from crocodiles and sharks in terms of teeth. Now of course we don't have carnivore teeth but we also don't grow new teeth unless you are talking about a young ch...
Ever since reading through the creative answers in this question (How can I explain alien skin being different colors?) I've been thinking about the logistics behind fantastical skin colors. Howe...
I've seen many questions here about humans being capable of photosynthesis. And I know, humans don't have enough surface area to power themselves full time. However, that's assuming that the energy...
Would it be possible to create a constant EM field that disrupts electronics within it in a similar manner to the way an EMP from a nuclear blast does? Or would it be possible to have a planet wh...
The classical rigid airship uses a heavy envelope which accounts for the large buoyancy balloon. This comes on account of aerodynamics. My first concept was a thin and long "cigar" where the cockpi...
I have been designing a species of elves with blue skin as one of their most striking features. I'm drawing inspiration from primates that also have blue skin. Think the scrotum of a vervet monkey,...
Most species of animal, especially mammals, have a special skin cell the produces melanin, which is responsible for the color of their skin, but orcs are generally depicted as green creatures and, ...
The moon seems gigantic and is extremely bright. The planet BlinketyBlink has a mass of 1.6 Earth masses and a single large moon which orbits it at about 240 000 miles/386 242 km. The moon Toten...
With the increase in living standards, the number of children by women is decreasing in highly developed countries. Question: Is it conceivable (with the aggravating factors proposed below) to s...
How intelligent would an animal(land bound animal) have to be to not fear fire? It's unable to make it or control it, but when a person is sitting by one, and while other animals act more traditio...
Imagine there is a micro-city built on the ocean floor in the pacific ocean covered with a durable dome with a 1 mile radius to keep water out. At this moment let us assume that the dome holds up b...
Apparently these lizards have loads of Biliverdin in their blood making their blood green! Besides a defense against parasites I figure this is also an effective defense against predators. I woul...
In a far-distant future Pascal enters the bridge of his intelligent space ship. He's a lazy bloke who can't be bothered to sit or stand, so he flicks his fingers and in a moment of Clarkian...
In my Sci-Fi universe, I want humans to, initially, have two traits to their spaceship building: Really good drive systems, at least compared to other races. Complete and utter lack of any sci-fi...
I've heard that bodies of water boasting high salinities tend to turn red due to seasonal algae blooms. I have a river in a fantasy setting I'm working on that's blood red year-round, and I want to...
On my world a jellyfish type of animal exists, it's an aquatic animal of course and extremely dangerous as it consumes anything organic it touches. It's thin and wide, like a fleshy transparent bl...
A large igneous province is a very large area that has been covered in igneous stone due to some catastrophically large volcanic even or something similar. In my story, a large, futuristic, city h...
Its a very wip idea: I have a star that's not very hot, and the planet is very close to it. Can the planet be so close to the star to be livable on the surface, but flying at cruise height(10 km) w...
I'd like to use the theoretical graviton particle to give some characters telekinetic abilities. My research so far is this: "¢ Gravitons are a theoretical particle in string theory that causes th...
Well, the strongest barrier that might prevent life from appearing might be described by that analogy : it's like hoping to cook an apple pie by mixing the ingredients with random quantities and a...
I am currently creating a world from scratch, and while I have a map, I still need to figure out distribution of natural resources. For resources like fossil fuels, while many do appear in deserts...
Could a continent roughly the size of Europe, Africa and North-America combined be formed almost entirely due to volcanic action? Something with a similar formation to this. From a chain of vol...
I want to use mechanical counterpressure spacesuits (something along the lines of BioSuit) for my story. They seem to have many advantages over traditional pressure spacesuits. The existing protot...
I created this climate map based on the Koppen Climate Classification map. In this scenario Australia is moved 10 degrees of latitude further south and the Lake Eyre basin is filled (shown in map...
Spiders produce silk, a protein fibre able to construct webs and dens. But is there an existing animal (preferably a vertebrate) that would be able to evolve a similar ability of producing a silk-l...
I was thinking of making flying islands part of a planet ring, but the problem was that they wouldn't be able to host life unless they were inside the atmosphere of the planet, but at that point it...
This is a sequel to my previous question How big could a moon be before its orbit became too unstable or tidally locked to its planet OK, let's imagine that the thing everyone thought was a moon w...
So, I was looking at the temperature variations in Earth's atmosphere and noticed that it gets extremely cold in some of the upper portions. So I was wondering, could a low gravity world hold onto ...
The basic idea is that a building (house, business, etc...) would be on a type of foundation that would allow it to be lifted into the air (not by a lot, I'm thinking inches at most) to store energ...
In my story, I have a slower-than-light starship (traveling at 0.6 $c$) going to Alpha Centauri A. There are several planets around the star. The target planet is a terrestrial, habitable world orb...
In a story I am writing, some animals (including sentient ones) can touch fire without being harmed. Not any kind of fire, though. They can caress the fire of a candle with a finger, and they can ...
Imagine alien prospector wanting to build "space highway" through our solar system. There could be another route, but the one leading to our system is "the best" Such prospector also wants to use ...
You are native to a planet that falls between two suns, thus ensuring eternal sunshine. How would we be able to tell the time? Do you formulate some kind of system based on which sun is in the sky...
I was considering the creation a long-lived plant which generates harmful (to other species) radiation. If it could be immune to its own radiation, the primary benefit would be that the plants offs...
How big could a moon be before its orbit became too unstable or tidally locked to a planet about 1.6 times larger than Earth. Planet BlinketyBlink is on a similar orbit (to that of earth's) aroun...
Consider an earth-like world without any flying species. What could be the possible (I'm looking for a physics or chemistry/biology answer) cause of this? Set aside trivial solutions as "rando...
Supposing there is a system of several (four to twelve) celestial bodies which are orbiting a star. In this system of bodies, each body is similar enough in size that no single body has a dominant ...
I'm working out the back story of a flying castle run by a king who has a squadron of 200 air cavalry. All the knights ride hippogriffs: head and wings of large eagles, bodies of horses. Horses ea...
How could you feasibly extract hydrogen from a star to power a plasma fusion reactor, with as little handwavium as possible? This takes place in a sci-fi setting, but isn't necessarily hard science...
