General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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I was wondering if we could create science research submarines that are as large as military nuclear submarines. This is because I have not seen any large research submarines they all seem to be sm...
Assuming that there's not an issue with diseases spreading around, and that there's little to no issue with food allergies, what would the effects be of taking someone from a tropical climate to on...
I am working on a story which is based on space time hacking and moderation. While researching I found that a wormhole is simply a Folded time-space-as shown in demonstration below (Image credits: ...
The International Space Station(ISS) is by far the most expensive man-made object money can buy and yet we cast it into space, set in near future government threatens to pull out funding for ISS an...
This question is inspired by NASA's recent TRAPPIST-1 announcement. Imagine two planets orbiting a star with orbits very close together. At the nearest point in their respective orbits they are onl...
So basically there is this ionocraft thingy and it would be used frequently by one of my stories, mainly by a lightweight character (6.3 kg). Now the question: If I were to use nanotechnology to c...
I have a creature that can transform itself from matter into energy. Some scientist try to trap it by tricking it into a cage. But what kind of cage will hold an energy being? This take place in ...
I'm looking for something that would prevent humans being able to establish the use of satellites on an alien planet, but also would not prevent humans from living on the planet, or life developing...
For a story idea, I'm wondering about the effects that the discovery of another intelligent species without FTL travel would have. If we discovered another species much like ours, 50-100 light yea...
I am building a world where a rogue moon (or rogue planet or other larger celestial body) partially crashes into the main planet; the the residual shards would then form a smaller moon which become...
If an entire planet was made up of nothing but small archipelagos, what would come of it? Would living things be able to exist? Would said living things ever form cities or even nations? How would ...
So I'm looking to add rings to a planet, but I'd like it to appear to be an atom (like a 3-D model with the electron trails) using the dust and debris from collisions long past. My idea is to wea...
I have left a link to the NASA video in case you are not to sure what I am referring to or to get a better picture of what I am talking about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnKFaAS30X8 With th...
The planet I'm working with has two different moons, both around the same size (3/4ths that of the main planet). Is it possible for the planet to support the orbit of these moons, especially with t...
Can you get modern levels of health care, with no electric technology and no steam technology? Both electricity and steam are possible. Physics is the same as real life. Like... No Cavities No ...
Suppose you were an astronaut on a space ship in the near future. Or an on an asteroid mission where little to no gravity is available. In such a situation it would be difficult to justify taking a...
I'm building an alien world for a game mod, and want to avoid any blatant mistakes from a world-building perspective. The world has three moons visible in the night sky - two on one side near each ...
I have a planet with two moons. I want them on opposite sides during the equinoxes and together during the solstices. The seasons are a little lopsided, with spring and autumn having 90 days and th...
I'll be honest here; I don't know much about the physics of planets and planetary systems, etc. However, I've been looking into ellipsoidal moons, and most of what I've found is about Nix, one of P...
I've got a cave civilisation who have never seen the Sun, and don't have much of a concept of time. I was inspired by a Reddit post from someone with a similar situation, and like me, the OP was wo...
So in (a lot of) sci-fi we have magic gravity that gives up and down and layer-cake decks, and nice and easy set design for the TV studios. I'm actually pretty much okay with this, but what rubs me...
If there were some way (sub question: IS there some way?) to get neutron star material out of the gravity well of a neutron star, -say maybe a high-speed collision of two such stars- how would that...
The film Upside Down showed a fiction movie where 2 planets of gravities exists within a fairly short distance. One may also assume that all parts of one planet is parallel to the other, which mean...
If Mars is thought to have once been like Earth several billion years ago, with an atmosphere, magnetic field, oceans, etc., then what would the planets true surface gravitational acceleration "m/s...
Several science fiction books picture bigger Terran planets with higher gravity. I'm curious to know what would be the maximum gravity mammals similar to the one on earth could survive. Only bones ...
If two planetary bodies were tidally locked to each other (e.g. pluto and charon) then could there ever be a situation where the smaller of the two bodies had the 'heavier' gravity? Could you ever ...
Horny and Hungry "You're like a father to me." "Yeah, I wish you were dead, too." "Thanks, Dad!" I have a world in my stories in which the inhabitants evolved from a race that practices s...
I wonder whether it is impossible. How can I be launched into space without using a rocket? If the planet has some super volcanoes, can a volcanic eruption be used to launch a vehicle into space? H...
Pathogen virus work in a simple way: they inoculate their genes (DNA or RNA) in the host cells and let them replicate huge amounts of the attacker while hampering the host vital functions. As react...
Earth and Titan prove that ocean be made of water and liquid methane, respectively. Theoretical planets with oceans of liquid ammonia and sulfuric acid are believed to exist. But what about alcohol?
There is a village is going to be punished by a GOD so the snowy mountain around it will be melt in few days (All the snow will be melt in 1-2 day max). The mountain is about 3,000 meters high, cov...
In the story I'm writing, a gas dwarf (named Eden) is discovered in a triple star system. Its atmosphere is mainly oxygen and water based, and its gravity is slightly higher than Earth's. Unlike o...
What I'm doing is trying to find a way to create an atmospheric cold trap that will maintain a temperature of approximately −200 degrees Celsius (−328 Fahrenheit). According to Wikipedia In as...
I have a story that requires travel through a wormhole. I know the basic requirement to go through a spherical wormhole would be that the object must be smaller than the wormhole diameter. Assume t...
I am looking for a number of slow accumulative poisons say over a 6 month period that is detectable in autopsy and would slowly but surely kill the patient. The poison would be hopefully something ...
Background: Interest in the red planet is re-surging. For example, Elon Musk has said he will lay out a detailed plan for Mars colonization this September. Question: Assuming the next step in spa...
In the Mass Effect Series, the Quarians have a population of 17 million individuals and they get all their food from 3 massive "liveships." I'll round this down to 5 million individuals supported b...
The first man on the moon was there on July 20th, 1969. After December of 1972, there has not been a person on the moon since. But, what if the missions to the moon had kept on going? By what time ...
From what I've seen, a floating habitat about 50 km above the surface of Venus is feasible--the atmosphere is dense enough that breathable air is a lifting gas, and that would be about the height f...
The organism is human-like in that it is intelligent, sentient, and has a humanoid figure. On its planet, the species has access to a massive source of organic energy unlike anything on Earth. Esse...
This is inspired by GRRM's A Song of Ice and Fire, where for millennia House Targaryen wed brother to sister at all possible opportunities, and Aunt to nephew, Uncle to niece, and cousin to cousin ...
It doesn't have to be a rock, in fact it would probably be depleted uranium or even some crazy material like neutronium.
I have a colony of humans on Mars, living in enclosed cities to maintain breathable air. (If they need to leave, they suit up.) Assuming modern-day technology, how do I figure out how many people...
I've worked a couple of Habitat for Humanity mass builds where entire houses go from a poured foundation to complete in the course of a few days, and whole neighborhoods are built in a week. There'...
Humans are derived from arboreal shrew-like animals that survived the cataclysm which wiped out the larger dinosaurs. As far as I am aware this series of events is entirely the result of chance. Wo...
Earth is setting up mining colonies on Tau Ceti e. But how can they justify the enormous cost of sending people there? ...Because during the initial exploratory missions, it was discovered that in ...
In the mobile game "The Path To Luma", the main hero travels to very tiny planets. Let's not think about where is the sun and how we leap through such small planets. What I want to ask is, if there...
Let's imagine America some years in the future where technology has advanced to the point where we can easily create a nation wide underground aqueduct system. Pavement is porous and allows a certa...
The world will going to be the homeworld of an hairless feline humanoid race, but I want to see the plausibility of this scenario?
Imagine we have a shade launched in space that can be turned opaque and transparent. We can use it to communicate in binary, and mathematically sound extraterrestrials can pick up the pattern. Of c...
