General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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In my latest draft, a worm-like species buries itself deep below the crust of their world and consumes/gathers tiny amounts of heavy metals. Can you think of any plausible reason why a wormlike cr...
Apparently it is theoretically possible for a planet to achieve a stable orbit around the singularity at the centre of a black hole within the event horizon. This means that life could hypothetical...
I just spotted this article about a metal foam that stops armor-piercing bullets as well as radiation. It's a press article, not a scholarly paper, so it may be complete bunk. And rifle bullets a...
So there is a Minecraft mod that includes various oreberry bushes. One for gold, one for silver, etc. Now I know that various plants can extract specific minerals in higher quantities that what w...
I'm building up a spreadsheet on worldbuilding (Stars, Planets, Moons etc.) and i'm struggling to find an equation, or a group of equations to help me figure out the light received by a planet orbi...
On Earth you can find your position through GPS, with clever use of satellites, timestamps and maths. Now imagine you're on a spaceship, there no satellite and nothing is going to give you the time...
In a series I remember that a group of people were trying to make a colonization ship and they had a big problem: the air. Ships (like every object) aren't perfect and they have micro fissures in t...
I can imagine our own civilisation becoming autotrophic eventually, if biological life gives way to a population of machines that need only sunlight. However, the history of that situation still in...
Is there a plausible reason that the world might not be able to get any sort of metal from Earth, short of what we already have? I was thinking it could begin in our sort of "modern" day and age, b...
What would be the effects of high or low gravity on human body development? How would the human body develop under a different gravity? Many science fiction stories explore the idea that people fro...
Consider the sharingan, a power in the anime Naruto that strengthens with the hatred you have (yes, the Uchihas are like ninja Sith Lords XD). The sharingan is 'awakened' after the person experienc...
I was thinking of ways to make the human body stronger, so I was wondering why not lift weights with a higher level of gravity, hence my question. I'd like to know if there's some clothes, jewelry...
I'm looking for a realistic apocalyptic event, which can't be prevented, but can be accidentally predicted long before it actually happens. By the prediction I mean a scientific prediction, of cour...
I am writing a DnD module where fishmen are invading island nations. The islands would naturally have adapted to this in some way as the raids have been happening for years. What method would these...
Fo my question, I'd like the moon to orbit around a saturn-like planet without rings. This moon would be located at a million kilometers away the host planet. the moon's size would be about 12 000...
Could anyone could survive a nuclear war and all that follows? I have read many things saying they would, and read other science-based answers, but they all talked about a nuclear war that was re...
In this world, there are two trans-human species that are emerging at the same time. They vehemently despise each other and conflict is fast approaching. I would like to make the struggle between t...
First I'm going to expand on what I mean by this generator: the photo-electric effect means that metal spaceships will slowly become positively charged as they fly across space, but for the purpose...
My creature is a 'chimera', so it is a combination of a few different animals. As a defense (or an offense) mechanism, it can coat itself in a flammable oil and self ignite. I would prefer to refer...
I have a creature that, thanks to its multiple, unique DNA chains, is impervious to cancer. So now I will move on to the next aspect: energy production. This creature has two types of energy produ...
Brown and white dwarf stars are thought to have habitable zones but are very close orbits. Plus these planets will experience strong tidal forces and be tidally locked. But if you have a large Ea...
I'm building a mining colony world with large mine-able deposits of rare earth elements (REEs). One source of REEs on Earth is alkaline carbonitite magma. On Earth, I believe, it is thought to be d...
I've already asked a similar question but i'd like more details. This moon would be orbiting around a saturn like planet without rings. The host planet would be located in the habitable zone, allo...
Global warming is awful, we all agree. The problem is that there exists materials that warm up easily naturally or artificially. But, why isn't there cold materials? Cooling something requires ene...
So for a story I'm working on I thought of a forest-dwelling predator (see the image for a design) which has a skin very sensitive to light (not in a painful way, just that it notices differences i...
Gonna be hard to put it to words, especially because of the rather broad scope of my question, but I think it can be a proper submission here. Here on Earth, regardless of the period and location,...
If one forest fire couldn't be contained and it spread across the world how long do you think it would take for 90% of the world to catch on fire, burn, and then burn out? Also, while the world wa...
Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) features a giant (and I mean stupidly big) cave under a large and busy metropolis. Nobody is aware of its existence, which means that at least since the city's founding (...
I've been building a world, partly for test reasons (making sure my spreadsheet works, and so i know what i need to add to it) and partly for fun, but for calender reasons i need to know the orbita...
In my universe a 4th SPACIAL dimension exists around our 3 dimensions. I'm playing with ideas for a society that has access to a 4th spacial dimension and am currently thinking of what they would b...
Epic fantasies typically depict northern areas as cold and southern areas as relatively warm. Is this just to play into reader expectations since that's the way it is on Earth, or is there a scient...
I'm trying to construct a habitable world which has a sun orbiting around it. I know a star can't orbit around a planet, because a star is much more massive than a single planet, which has been kno...
For story purpose I am trying to design a mass transit system for a perfect city. Right ... maybe not so perfect, if you look carefully into the details, but actually the mass transit system is sup...
I have this race of space-dwarves and I need to make them homeless due to technological hubris of some kind: for plot reasons. I think that if they were to attempt to build some kind of Dyson sphe...
Which natural conditions are needed to force the evolution to immortality? I've read on a page (I don't remember the page) that if the environment is safe, the animal would evolve to have a shorter...
Imagine there are two regions, one of which has a significantly higher level of radiation. Think of Pripyat (higher level of radiation) and its surroundings (lower levels). How can a person withou...
Note: I'm talking about a fourth spatial dimension. As far as I can tell, a 2 dimensional creature has one possible digestive system structure; have a cavity inside its body connected to the outsi...
I'm trying to build as close to a 1:1 Earth as possible, but finding information on a non-jovian moon-based planet is extremely hard to find. I tend to ramble trying to explain things in a non-list...
Okay, so imagine a situation where most of earth's atmosphere is lost, the pressure at sea level is somewhere around 0.3 atm. If it matters, let's say that this is the result of the gradual escape ...
What would be the best way to send energy that is generated outside the Earth's atmosphere, possibly in the asteroid belt (nevermind the means), so that it can be used on the surface of the planet?...
If we were gonna develop a colony on mars would it be possible to explore geothermal energy and would it be viable? (Assuming we could transport the required equipment) Edit: Recently I found thi...
As the moon is tidal locked, she is always showing the same side turned toward Earth. How could I give her a little rotation, allowing us to see the other side, without destroying the earth's curre...
The vast majority of the sun's energy is wasted -- the light and warmth are sent out in a spherical shape, and the planets only pick up those little bits of energy that happen to be going in the ri...
According to a recent paper from the university of Edinburgh, the ground of Mars contains a lot of perchlorate, which combined with the high level of ultraviolet radiation, makes a very bacteria ho...
My character have a split brain (severed connection between left and rigt hemispheres). What is unique about his case is that not both hemispheres have the same identity any more. From what I und...
A small manufacturing town serves as a comparison. The worldbuilding significance is for an underground facility with, in addition to a medical center, small-scale chemical production, a machinist ...
I have asked previously how I could create an earth-like world with as many deserts as possible in it. I have received some useful answers and have tried to draw a realistic map of what I intend fo...
I'm not even sure if gas comets can exist naturally -- feel free to comment on that in the answers. But assume that somehow a large block of frozen hydrogen/helium/oxygen/nitrogen is tumbling throu...
So there's a planet that is used as a farming world (food) for its system. This planet has a single, Mediterranean sea-sized ocean on it and lacks any other major surface oceans (he hasn't excluded...
Can an organism have traits that resemble both an animal and a plant? Such as bone, chlorophyll, muscles, and cell walls. Not necessarily a hybrid, but something that can be classified in between t...
