General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
Filters (None)
How Long could an "Eternal" Fire last? At some point there is a fire very spiritually important to a certain people - so important that they build a city around it, and begin developing an empire ...
I want to make a creature capable of filter O2 from normal air in order to make several things... (filter air toxins, increase partial pressure of O2, etc). Could be possible make an organic memb...
In a different question, someone mentioned "technology dichotomy", where they said "you can't invent time travel without first inventing the wheel". Then I read the question In a society of flying ...
Post apocalypse. What resources will be most abundant or useful if mined from Twentieth Century landfills. Easy things like steel and aluminium are obvious, but what else is likely to be worth digg...
Let's assume we have an otherwise Earth-like planet orbiting a star just like our own. Our planet has an axial tilt of 0 degrees, meaning its axis is perpendicular to its orbital plane. Could this...
I believe there are precious few questions relating to the concept in general, but I was wondering if the concept of an organism absorbing large amounts of CO2 from blood seemed reasonably plausibl...
A lone mountain on a plain is powerful visual setup and one I would like to use in my world. My concern at this point is that I don't want this location to be volcanically active, now or in the pa...
I want to know whether or not my starship's cordinate system is efficient or not. Soon after my race flew into the stars, we realised we needed to be able to tell where we were. We need coordinate ...
In my world, wood elves use magic charms and illusions to ensnare their prey. They have a very opportunistic diet as they eat anything that walks into their forest. After consumption they sleep for...
I've wondered about this for years. Reading one of the books in the Inheritance Cycle, I came across a stipulation. It stated that if observed enough, a grain of sand could render to the viewer the...
In my setting, every humanoid creature in our worlds mythology is part of a different species that branched off from humans millions of years ago. I'm trying to devise a way to prevent crossbreedin...
In my setting I want to destroy the world in a way where people have: Plenty of notice of the impending demise No chance of stopping it They can't engineer a way to survive on earth The rest of t...
In the MARS series of National Geographic, an organisation is steadily colonizing Mars by sending a handful of people every few months. However, these aren't ordinary people, of course; they are to...
In my world, all terrestrial bodies in the solar-system of over 900 km size have a significant human presence. Earth-moon Travel is as common as an interstate road trip, and Interplanetary travel i...
Would it be possible for a spaceship of some sort to descend from space and through the atmosphere of an Earth-like planet, not land, then turn around and head back into space? In other words, coul...
I would like to know on how powerful a solar flare must be to affect blind the eyes of living things, if it's indeed possible. Will it blind only half of the planet, or will it emit for a day or tw...
This question is based on the articles saying that the Mongoloid body plan was all due to an individual mutation from 35,000 years ago. In science fiction, humanoid aliens that aren't of the human...
Post-apocalypse how well would photo-voltaic solar cells hold up? They are solid state so I expect they would do okay for a while, but would they remain functional for 100+ years. I know that du...
Is there a necessary relation between orbital period and the time of precession? In the case of Earth, the orbital period is one year, while a complete precession cycle takes thousands of years. Is...
I'm looking to use water as a radiation shielding device, but do not want to waste space on my ship with waste and other water byproducts. Rather than just storing waste, I plan to use it as part o...
I was lucky enough to witness the total solar eclipse crossing the US this past August, but while it was impressive, it was also fairly short - lasting just under two minutes at my location. I'd l...
Obligatory Premise In the year 2201, Diego OfeAde has been in control of Mars for 50 years. He has moved mankind into Valles Marineris and his aggressive population expansion program has seen t...
I'm working on some physics questions for dragon riding, mostly regarding changes in temperatures at different altitudes and how that might endanger dragons and their riders. Recently I started won...
To add to my previous question. Can a black hole be a wormhole or can a wormhole exist within a black hole? The result I want to get is this: You enter a black hole in one part of space and exit ...
In the dystopic/post-apocalyptic world I'm building, civilization has been split into two different societies. One is the rich who live in very large, protected cities that have giant walls surroun...
Assume Humanity was really wrecked by some malignant force, and a group managed to escape and find a habitable planet and 'settle' it. They weren't able to bring along much in the way of advanced t...
I'm looking to have a few worlds that were relatively easy to terraform as a first wave of colonies. The first colonies in this setting were meant to be on worlds that were relatively easy to terr...
Has a device been invented that can lower a person's voice by various decibels (as in the loudness of their voices)? This would be to enable silent communication as in whispering at a much lower ra...
Suppose that our random heroic brave interstellar expedition is returning to Earth from Alpha Centauri at 60% of the speed of light, but there was an accident in the nuclear reactor, forcing the ca...
I recently came up with an interesting idea for a power: glitch power! I originally thought the idea was great until my brother brought up a valid point: what is there to glitch? Normally glitches...
3-D printers, replicators, nanofabricators etc. are all technologies that, when pushed to their logical limit, seem to make the transport of finished goods obsolete when all you need to do to obtai...
In the future the technology to reverse one's age exists. We can make people younger but not older. One day there is an accident, and someone is reverted to a ten year old, instead of reverting t...
In ion drive, we use ionized gas. With particle accelerators, we use high-energy particles. Given that colliders expend huge amounts of energy to propell a handful of particles, I speculate the par...
I have heard of gravitational slingshots being used to theoretically accelerate a spacecraft using a planet's gravity and momentum in orbit. But how about decelerating a ship? If it is at all possi...
I'm looking for flaws in my reasoning. My world is set in the near future, and AI technology is progressing rapidly. There are strict rules and regulations about AI development and the threat it p...
Background story: In near future (max 10 years from now) mega-rich person suffers yet unknown disease. He obviously employs every doctor possible and spends loads from his fortune on researching, w...
QUESTION So recently I was doing research on Magnetic Coil based weaponry in the Halo universe, and while reading about how the "Super Mac" worked, I noticed that the theoretical speeds at which t...
It's Earth, the modern day"¦and in the out there, there is a fight going on. Two vast space-empires duel for survival, locked in hateful combat. Clashes of fleets and individual spaceships are the ...
Would this type of orbit be possible to achieve without external forces being applied? Is it possible at all? I have little to no background in the sciences so please explain like I'm stupid. Thank...
I'm working on a post-apocalyptic desert scenario in the near future where people live in small, loosely connected communities that trade with each other on a small scale and might have agreements ...
I'm currently writing a sci-fi trilogy on an alien world with a CO2 and methane atmosphere. The natives have pottery but since fires cannot work on the planet, how would they harden the clay withou...
In this medieval world, I want to set up a clan system that builds up every kingdom. Every kingdoms will have at least 3-4 big clans/families, each is unique to the theme of the magic they use. For...
In my world there is a trading city in the middle of a vast stretch of wild, untamed forest. It was built to serve as an in-between for merchants as there is a peaceful kingdom both north and south...
On a certain planet, the sole continent of land is a large circumspecting ring about the equatorial regions, with a width averaging 500 miles. Rotational north and south are entirely pelagic. Var...
I've been reading a few books lately, principally the Warhammer 40,000 descriptions of Earth and the Night's Dawn Trilogy, and it's got me wondering just how far down we could bury a planet under a...
Suppose we have an alternate earth where there in addition to the real species on earth are large hexapod creatures similar to mammals and reptiles. Where on the evolutionary tree is it most likel...
250 years in the future, humanity has colonized Mars and the Moon, and built thousands of orbiting outposts and hundreds of O'Neill cylinders in the zone between Venus and Jupiter. The key enabler ...
In one of my fictitious planets, there are large cells that reside in the ocean and are 3 feet (almost 1 metre) in diameter. The cells themselves are aggregates of many amoeboid cells, have only on...
Conquest and discovery has been an important part of developing the global political structure of today's Earth. After we expand and settle other planets, whether within the same solar system or n...
YA fantasy novel set 350 years in the future under a corporate dictatorship which reanimates dead people to use as disposable slave soldiers. So the setup is a medical/research station orbiting a ...
