General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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If we were to pull the following races out of a D&D players handbook and remove them from the setting/history of Faerun and look at them from a biological/non-magic perspective (no other planes...
Traditionally we recognize 5 Senses in humans, but in building an alien race for my world I wanted to go beyond that. This is the first in a series of questions. This one is: How can a race express...
Using the process of 'pair production' and using the nature of a blackhole to separate and destroy one of the particles from that pair, would surrounding blackholes with heavy metals (which increas...
Imagine a meta-human, one engineered to be immortal. A combination of cybernetic enhancements, genetic engineering, and other scientific modifications have made it so this human will not die from a...
As far as we know stars have a limited fusion cycle. Once they fuse elements up to the element iron, there is no subsequent energy that can be released through fusion, given the inherent atomic str...
Yesterday i was playing a bit of Aurora 4x, and among other resources, there's one called Sorium, which is then refined to produce fuel for starships. Sorium is found on gas giants, or super jovian...
What would be the most limiting factor for a handheld plasma weapon or a wormhole or an alcubierre drive if they could exist? the answer is simple: Energy This is what limits most energy weapons,...
How would gripping of different objects, such as rocks and sticks, work for an organism that has radially symmetrical hands, resembling starfish in shape. They have four to five digits, depending...
Ragnarök is the Norse rendition of the apocalypse. A major event during this apocalypse is Fernir devouring the sun. If we assume that the sun and all of its influence disappear entirely for 3 day...
I would like to have a planet in which somehow it becomes necessary to harvest aurora for energy (and maybe matter if that's feasible). The civilization of this planet is moderately advanced -- e...
Is there a plausible makeup for a lifeform which is highly resistant to even very advanced firearms (or any ranged weaponry for that matter), but can be injured more readily (albeit still a major f...
I am designing an alien species of organism (not necessarily intelligent, in fact, probably not). My current settings are these: The female is very large (bigger than cattle, smaller than elephant...
Chlorophyll-a (the primary one), chlorophyll-b, and(?) beta-carotene (plus other accessory pigments / carotenoids) dictate which portions of the EM spectrum are used as energy by plants. Pla...
A class of organism, lithotrophs, use minerals (inorganic substrates) for energy conservation/reducing equivalents in biosynthesis. However such organisms on Earth are limited to single-celled pro...
Based on my recent series of questions: here and here. The giant known as Jupiter has moved to the inner Solar System and Earth and Mars have become it's moons (despite all the odds). The moon of ...
I was considering the possibility mermaids might make use of sailing ships similar to the USS Monitor, but with sails and supposedly wood. Now, the mermaids wouldn't mind the ship being filled wit...
This question is not a duplicate of this question. They're similar, but this one has one very large difference: only a large area has permanent cloud cover, not the whole planet. If low clouds or...
In order for different humanoid races (humans, elves, orcs, dwarves..) to evolve, they need to be separated for a long time, in different environments. However, if all races are supposed to be sent...
If I understand it correctly, moving in the absence of forces like gravity and without friction doesn't require energy, only accelerating and decelerating does. So you could move a spaceship a very...
While this is a hypothetical question, I am actually looking for a 'real-world' answer. This is my first time here, so please let me know if I should ask it somewhere else. So, let's say I am an o...
An experienced space time traveler teleports from place to place and planet to planet with a vehicle or using psychic powers. Now suppose that this traveler teleports to a habitable planet. Suppos...
I recently asked a question about how a world could have permanent cloud cover. The answer was to turn the world into venus. However, my purpose for cloud cover was to have the people living abov...
Yes, the title is strange, but hear it out. The inhabitants of my earth-like planet live high up in the atmosphere - living on giant trees. However, I don't want them to be able to see the surface ...
Would it be possible that other planets, or even other random celestial bodies, contain different types of pathogens? According to Wikipedia, the known types of pathogens are: virus, bacterium, pri...
Heating youself in cold conditions is quite easy. You can produce internal heat and keep it in(warm-blooded) or get it from sun, find hot springs... or even eat something warmer than you. However, ...
I am trying to create a planet for a fantasy role-playing game where the equator is an impassible region of ice. Ideally, I want to find a science-based solution to this and not have to resort to ...
Planet Swamp. As the name suggest, it is a planet fully covered with swamps. A new kind of carnivorous plant has been discovered on this planet: when its leaves are touched by an animal or moved b...
We know the depressing fate of John Doe who woke up one day in the Middle Ages, to quickly die or spend his life in a monastery. His more lucky friend Mark had a vision before being transported a...
My world is science-based with an earth-like biology. The dragons fly when they're young and then grow too heavy and can only glide if at all. They breathe fire by expelling gas and igniting it. Th...
When I was younger I learned about time dilation and since my story was (and is) set post-planet I thought many hours about how to handle it. I came to the conclusion that I could just drop it and ...
So, here's the setup. Spaceship emergency lands on a habitable planet in the middle of a desert. Being a desert with decent wind movement, the ship quickly ends up being buried under the sand. A f...
The inhabitants of my Earth-like planet live high up in the atmosphere at ~1500 meters. When they look down, I don't want them to be able to see the ground. I figure the best way to accomplish this...
In the novel I'm writing, there is an island that sinks below sea level and rises up again at a later date. How is it possible to do this, while both keeping the surface of the island dry when it r...
On Earth, land vertebrates generally have four limbs. Other creatures such as insects can have more limbs, but those creatures tend to be small. I'm thinking of creating an alien ecosystem with rel...
Our planet is dying. Cliche, I know, but unfortunately true and we do not have superpowers or the technology to build generation ships to escape. We have maybe a hundred years left, and we have d...
Would a species which developed on a world with no atmosphere (i.e. the moon) survive on a planet with an atmosphere, such as Earth?
Imagine a world with time travel, got it? Good. Now imagine that time has multiple dimensions. Time has its OWN dimension of time, along which it can evolve. This is called hypertime, or "w" (As i...
Certain anatomical features distinguish the alligators, crocodiles, gharials and caimen from the other reptiles. A four-chambered heart, something also found in birds and mammals A unidirectional...
I am sure that this is a scenario we have all encountered. We have all of the expensive sensors that money can buy to protect our vintage collection of bottle caps and Golden Girls memorabilia from...
If the Earth was destroyed by a cataclysmic event such as a large mass colliding with it, such that it fractured into multiple pieces, would any trace of human civilisation remain intact ? I.e., i...
As a whole, the reptiles have a problem. The majority of them have legs sprawled away from the body, so when they move, they would suffer a kind of problem called "Carrier's constraint", and what ...
Disclaimer: This question is the first of a new series of questions of mine about introducing hexapedae to the fauna of my conworld. There are/will be other questions addressing i.a.: ecosystems, e...
One thing that just about all interstellar civilizations need if they want to be anything more than long-distance friends is a way to get from their starships down to the surface of planets and bac...
One of my more brilliant characters is taking a terraforming class and at one point, early in the story, she has to leave the action to take an exam. The question presented in that scene is listed...
In an Electric Universe, where space is plasma soup and electromagnetism is the "magic" that can defeat the laws of physics, all stars are connected by invisible Birkland currents. Picture the rop...
I'm not talking only about the kind of waves one sees at a sea shore, but also smaller waves like ripples and chops, and bigger waves like tsunamis. Assume a similar tidal force to that of Luna.
Specifically, how many 5 to 10 kilometer asteroids could you fit around the Earth-Moon Lagrangian points? Does the number change depending on which Lagrange point it is?
Location: an interstellar gas cloud Situation: an alien family stops for about half an Earth hour in the middle of the cloud to have a snack along their trip (by stops I mean they get null relati...
Part 1 On Earth, we have seasons due to our planet's tilt. In my last question, I proposed an alternative world where the seasons were instead caused by an eccentric orbit. Now I'm going for somet...
If you were to decide to live on a spaceship for the rest of your life, how would you farm? You have access to the necessary farming materials; Dirt, plants; etcetera. Ship is large enough to...
