General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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I know that humans can naturally have more than 1 hair color, whether that is in a transition from 1 color to another or they are born with it. Like for example there are babies with both red and b...
I have a plasma rifle, but it's not just any plasma, rifle. This weapon uses accelerates a toroid plasmato incredibly high speeds I can shot the cup down from anyone's head. (and probably smash th...
Human (spoken) languages have a great variety in terms of grammar and what the basic elements are, but they have essential features in common in terms of being a time sequence of phonetic primitive...
When it comes to processing hearing and visual signals, our brain has different capabilities. While it seems to be able to execute a spectral analysis for sounds, so that when we hear the superpos...
Reading through the internet and countless questions here, I learned that most Earth's flying animals have beaks because they are lightweight and function well as a substitute to hands. Now, woul...
So in my world of Horizon, there is a sentient species known as the Jar'keth that lives in the inner ocean of Enceladus. They resemble a mix between eels and catfish, and are slightly smarter than ...
I'm looking to create a highly advanced insect communication network that could be broadcast on an interplanetary basis. Now, my insects communicate through chemical signals and smells which they...
There is an interstellar civilization somewhere between K2 and K3 and they have managed to build a dozen Nicoll-Dyson beams. These are megastructures which collect the entire power of a star, and p...
So say that there is this ridiculously dense object that fits on Earth. It has a bigger gravitational force than the Earth, and for some reason, doesn't break it. It also has a smaller force than t...
I am writing a story where the main setting is a hollowed out asteroid with an interior biosphere and an exterior city. In this case, using centripetal force to simulate gravity would not work, be...
The time is The Future. Humanity is spreading throughout the stars, aided by the invention of Schwarzschild gates. The gates allow for FTL travel by tearing open wormholes in space. There are thre...
You don't need to be traveling faster than the speed of light to encounter some pretty major problems. At just 30% the speed of light (90 Mm/s) a spaceship of mass 4 x 10^5 kg (about the mass of t...
In the movie Noah, which puts a new spin on the old legend of Noah's Ark, In the movie Cain's descendants mine a ore called Zohar. For those of you that have yet to see the movie, first go watch it...
I see this in so many maps. Normally, the water flows downhill because of gravity but here it is the opposite, rivers will go above the hills. When you mention this incoherence, the authors refuse ...
In the Hickhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Mostly Harmless, on the planet NowWhat there are the Boghogs, and their way of communicating is to bite each other very hard on the thigh, so my question is,...
Has a loose base in this earlier question of mine, although today we will be working with modern (roughly) tech levels and bacteria. It was pointed out in the accepted answer that bacteria might be...
One lab accidentally developed a species of bacteria which doesn't naturally die, but multiplies at usual rate. (And the scientists didn't notice in time, so the bacteria escaped). EDIT after Alex...
I recently came across this paper detailing a plan to use 12 superconducting rings around earth to strengthen our magnetic field. I'm planning on using this same idea for my own worldbuilding. An ...
So, a little bit of pseudo backstory first. Imagine mother nature would be some godly being, that actually exists. Somewhere. In spiritual form. Now imagine humankind would be a big thorn in her ...
If for a 'magic' Reason a second planetary mass of roughly equal proportions to earth appeared in the same orbit as earth. Is there any way that both masses could continue to orbit and remain in th...
How could humans survive underground for centuries? People have built multiple underground facilities around the world to prepare for a catastrophe. Just to be careful they overcalculated their res...
I am making a world to be the setting of my future fantasy works, which is to say I really have no story planned but I want to have a world for it when I do and I want said world to be likely give ...
Assuming all the energy in our solar system (solar energy, heat, etc) was converted into matter, and then using all the matter in the solar system, how big of a city sphere could be built? What I ...
Congratulations, you've finally earned your space pilot's license! The only problem is, you can't afford a large enough ship to house more than one person (considering food, breathable air, refuse ...
I have designed the "blueprint" of an spaceport. I know that in Earth solar energy is 1.200W/m^2 approx., but my spaceport is in the space (no atmosphere). Information - My blueprint has 60 s...
In my world magic is conferred genetically. Their are five "types" of magic, which never mix. You either have one type, or you have another (or none at all, the sixth option), you never have a mix ...
Is it possible for under water Atlanteans to make explosives? These Atlanteans have no magic but do have gills. They look like normal people other than the gills and webbed hands and feet. They...
In the great apes, there are two worlds--ground and treetop. Representing the ground is the largest primate on Earth, the genus Gorilla. Representing the treetops is genus Pongo, the orangutan. ...
Okay, I just asked a question, in which mother nature transformed all animals (or brain containing living beings, if that fits better for you) into a being twice as big in order for them to kill of...
I understand that the wind is caused by a differential in atmospheric pressure, but say that a city built in an extremely flat landscape is constantly threatened/harassed by the wind and wind-relat...
In film "The Day After Tomorrow", a giant snowstorm seizes the Earth for days and freezes nearly everything. What I want to know is, that is this possible in current Earth climate and geology? It d...
The DoomFleet returns! And this time, it's with a more "Conventional" weapon - That is, projectiles with an antimatter core. Ultra-simple explanation is they have a "small" amount of antimatter in...
I'm curious what the gravity would be like on an infinite area flat world. The plane of the world would have some finite depth but be infinite in all cardinal directions. This is, in effect, a Mine...
How do I calculate the spectrum of light experienced on the surface of an alien planet? I need it to decide what color the local photosynthetic life will predominantly be.
I saw this old closed question on Physics.SE and thought it would be perfect for here. The original author is long gone, so I thought I'll just have to post it myself. We can consider factors of p...
Would it be possible for a single motorcycle to harm a world so much that it would cause significant change? Conditions: Unlimited Amount Of Time The Planet Is Not Earth (No other cars, factory...
The concept is simple: I want to create a horse species, that are like the Superman of horses and can easily pull of acts, we've seen them done in movies. One of the many steps in this is to cr...
You're an alien that really likes pyrotechnics. Nothing that goes boom on your home planet (in a safe and responsible manner) satisfies you any more. Why not blow up a planet and see what that's ...
Assuming the ocean is deep enough and not overcrowded is there any upper limits to the size a "sea monster" can grow? On land creatures are limited by gravity, they have to be able to generate the...
I am working on a scenario where a climate protection organization tries to breed sapient Cephalopoda as a help in their fight against climate change. The breeding goals of the evolving species are...
The Scenario: My late Victorian Era mad scientist wants to domesticate the dinosaurs and mammalian megafauna of his "Lost World" island getaway, for use as companions, guardians, draft animals, and...
I am working on a world where, instead of 24 hours, a day lasts 9 years. On this world the land far exceeds the oceans, to the point where the bodies of water are simply massive lakes (a la the Cas...
Tech level: more or less comparable to contemporary. Location: forsaken, habitable planet with population of approximately 10-20 milion. Wealth level: first world equivalent Covering capital, ma...
I'm creating a species of humanoid creatures that live their entire life in couples. From birth to death, they are bound emotionally, they work together as if they were only one individual but the...
I've recently come across a disease that I am unhealthily intrigued by: Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva. Basically, instead of soft tissue healing normally, it calcifies and grows bone to rep...
My understanding of special relativity is that a clock that flies one lap around the earth then returns to its starting position measures less time than a clock that "stayed put" relative to the ea...
I was thinking about a story where the sun light intensity decreases by 1/100 from its full intensity every day. So in 100 days, the sun just stop diffusing light. I was wondering if the green pl...
Question: Could a planet contain all of its (vast) oceans underground? I imagined a planet with no surface oceans - and no water cycle above ground - but where life was still possible. My initia...
I have an idea about a planet that is cold and dark, but very loud. Constant rolling storms, crashing glaciers and icesheets, earthquakes, volcanoes and so on. Instead of photosynthetic plants, as...
I'm looking to build a "twilight" world, where days are like twilight even when the sky is clear and nights are...very dark. Cloud cover might be able to turn day to an early night. I do envision a...
