General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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I'm from an impatient, short lived, and cheap species known as human and while I've developed the means to travel the galaxy, I'm pissed at it. It knows what it did. So I've had enough. I'm lookin...
I'm assuming that to hold onto more atmosphere, the planet would have to have more gravity, or the atmosphere itself would have to be comprised of denser gasses. So, assuming that the planet has a...
I would like to better understand how often solar eclipses would happen on a planet that is tidally locked with its moon (and the moon is tidally locked with the planet). I understand that in this...
The "Light-Year City" Questions "” What would be the gravitational implications of a city in the far, far distant future, with an area spanning one square light year (3.456 × 10^25 mi² area)? Th...
Could a humanesque creature derive all its nutrients from drinking blood? Would a vampire get more energy, warmth or nutrients from fresh blood as opposed to frozen? What about fresh blood vs. old...
In my particular Earth, much has remained after the human-killing virus, and nature is thriving - even taking over the cities. It's beautiful. But I have separated the healthy populace in orbit u...
See, I'm a low-g cargo shipper by trade. We get all sorts of containers in all kinds of shapes that we need to fasten to the deck plating, and to do that we use magnetic clamps. Now, these clamps ...
Halite, or rock salt, is a rock formed by salt deposited in past and then undergone geological processes. My question is: provided that enough (how to get that much sugar is not in scope of this q...
I am wondering how possible (and also, how it might work) something like nanobots would be. The technology level definitely would be higher than it is currently, to the point of pocket universe tec...
I'm looking for some reasons that could force a spaceship to land at the nearest planet and cut all connections with the homeland planet, so all the crew will be force to settle at the planet for a...
In a solar system much like ours, would there be the possibility of a planet of our size that would have lakes, rivers, oceans, etc. that would be composed of either a mixture of water and ammonia ...
Could a structure similar to that shown in the image below inspired by Roger Dean's "Close to the edge" actually exist in nature? If not could it be constructed artificially and if so how? Assume t...
Enter Iaeptus - A million man mission born on a fleet of ten thousand ship to the outer solar system. Their commander : Minevera, a brain-in-a-vat super computer. With a weight of 5 tons, a neuron ...
This is inspired by The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells. In the book - in the far future - humans have split into two races, the Eloi, who live aboveground, and the Morlocks, who live underground. The...
Basically I am trying to build a mass surveillance and MRI mental condition analysis network to manage law enforcement at small and medium scale inside threats to national and civilian security. I...
I was wondering... If only we could make a GMO plant that could produce electricty thanks to bioelectricty. How could that be done, how could it produce a lot of energy, Also, how could we har...
Let us take an earthlike planet. Approximately same radius, atmosphere and climate. Now let us create an approximately circular, paleovolcanic mountain approximately 30 kilometers in height and 15...
This question is partly a nod to the current fortnightly challenge. In many fantasy settings and resources, there are creatures capable of, or described as, breathing lightning. How might a creatu...
On January 1, 2018 angry aliens decide to show humanity just who's boss. So they vaporize an area of land 1 mile deep and 10 wide, centered around the Panama Canal. Some preliminary facts that we...
There was a culture I read about that understood human biology to be very different from what we know today. This was a matrilineal culture which believed that men did not pass on their genes, but ...
So my story takes place on a moon orbiting a gas giant about the size of Jupiter and I was wondering if it was at all possible for a planetary ring to exist beyond the planets Roche limit. I get th...
We have a pretty good idea of what attributes a planet would need to sustain life and one can imagine how life might develop on a planet, even in difficult environments. I find it extremely diffic...
I am writing a Sci-fi/detective story and I'm wondering if Quantum Entanglement is a feasible means of FTL travel. (I know very little on the subject so if no is the answer please suggest a possibl...
Assuming we have a world at the same stage in global warming as the Earth, with all other properties similar (population, carbon emissions, general climate, orbit, etc.) How long will it be until t...
In my project, which portrays a modern take on the classic Asimovian "human empire among the stars", I have a society connected by stable wormholes which are as instantaneous as the portals in the ...
In my story, technologically advanced aliens create a "white hole" at the center of the sun that constantly spits out matter (hydrogen) from a parallel universe, increasing the star's mass quickly....
I have an idea for a Sci-Fi story that involves a planet with a third moon made entirely of antimatter, before I delve further into this concept, I would appreciate input on how to make this sci...
This is my first post, I apologize in advance if my English is not accurate, it is not my first language. My question is: in a world where very advanced civilizations have achieved intergalactic t...
Taking something like the anime Log Horizon as an example, where NPCs (non-player characters) are essentially humans, but in a game (let's wave our hands and say that the tech is available for maki...
I am looking at realistic options that could damage the Earth so severely that it would be impossible for mankind to survive there and that would also not allow us to just colonize other planets or...
In a world where torch ships sometimes will accelerate over 10Gs for hours, maybe sometimes days on end. Is there any way to keep the crew alive and preferably fully functional in during such hars...
take me out to the black, tell 'em I ain't comin' back DaaaahWhoosh - 2min ago Merfolk live in the deep, plenty deep exactly, around 800m below sea-level. At these depths we talk about litt...
So, the end-point I want to work towards is a creature that lives on a high-gravity planet that has some sort of adaptation that neutralises the effects of that high gravity, ideally in a way that ...
I'm designing a world in which starships have renewable energy, refueled by parking around black holes or stars and recharging batteries with solar panels, but what fuel for an engine could be extr...
Consider a space opera sort of universe in which there exist communities of water-dwelling humanoids. These ocean people are derived from rootstock humans, descendants of genetically engineered hum...
Could a world similar to that envisioned in the Mars of Edgar Rice Burroughs / H G exist? And if so would canals be a practical way to make the planet habitable over the long term? For current pu...
Since we just had an eclipse, I began to think: what would it look like if a planet had rings and two moons? Now, there are two solar eclipses going on at the same time! What would the sky look l...
This one source is stating a desert planet the size of Earth could maintain habitability at 0.38 AU from a sun-like star, but I highly doubt this is possible. What are some factors that could make ...
While trying to figure out a way that individuals could own spacecraft in my sci-fi setting without having access to things that could double as weapons of mass destruction, I settled on the widesp...
What other ways are there to save a human for a very long time. I know only about cryostasis. Let's say we have a spaceship traveling several hundred light years to a distant galaxy.
I have a sapient (alien) species that behaves more or less similarly to humans, and that includes their romantic interactions. However, although they court/date each other much like we do, there is...
There's a myth that hurricanes can be stopped by nuclear bombs. (Which it turns out, isn't true). I got to thinking about what might stop a hurricane from forming and it occurred to me, perhaps,...
In my world ... Actually, in every hard sci-fi world with casual interplanetary travel, the G-force involved in acceleration would becomes so high that no unmodified human being could realistically...
I'm interested in the viability of the following scheme for (relatively) fast space commerce within the Solar System: have a fleet of space stations essentially built around a long linear acceler...
A little while back, I went to see Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (honestly unsure of what reaction this is going to get), and there was a particular scene that showed a desert planet'...
I would like a world with a big LOT of subterranean space to explore, colonize, and trap ancient evil beings. Now, while the questions about food and ventilation are well adressed on Worldbuilding...
There seems to be a connection between orbital revolution (one year) and distance from the star the body orbits. For example, Earth orbits the sun at a distance of 93 million miles and completes o...
Average Joe was an amateur astronomer. While he was out in the wilds one day with his telescope he was kidnapped by aliens, carried off and kept as a slave on a world somewhere in the Milky Way. Ha...
In my world I am working on, the species is similar to humans in almost every way except for the following thing things: They a much more slender They have very light hair colors such as blond ...
I have the below snippet describing a planet in a (hard) sci-fi setting. This harsh planet has some human settlers, who can survive the climate in light weight environmental suits. The planet i...
