General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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In this alternate scenario, five million years ago, a mass extinction hit Earth. Not a massive volcanic eruption or a devastating bolide impact, but a sudden cold snap, a transition from Miocene h...
Why aren't animals photosynthetic on earth? And what would make it plausible for them to evolve to be?
The gas giant has a mass of about 2.13 Jupiter masses in the habitable zone of a Sun like star 0.981 Sol masses, all the moons will need at least >0.12 percent of Earth's mass and a Mars like de...
Small vs. Large! If you had nearly the same creature, and the only difference was size, what advantages and disadvantages would large size vs. small size have--beyond the usual--reaching leaves mor...
On Earth, life took on a quadruped body plan which has lead to many different sub body plans; 4 legged, 2 legs-2 wings, 2 legs-2 arms, etc. This has made me wonder what possible sub body plans can ...
Let's say that a secret laboratory creates a simulated miniature universe- in which modifications to people, places, and their 'state'(say age, gender, powers, DNA composition, among other things t...
There are various arguments on the web stating that the domestication of zebras is impossible, because zebras are bad tempered and skittish, and/or animals elsewhere are even-tempered and friendly....
Here's the set up: in my fantasy world, there is a species of tree similar to Banyan trees. There are several giant versions of these, and smaller ones are quite common. One of the biggest of the...
Is it possible, the world being as it is for a city to be isolated completely from the world? Assume technological advancements to be the same as they are today. Would such a scenario be feasible...
Let's say I have been chosen to evaluate whether or not alien worlds contain sapient life before we terraform them. Just assume that we learned to work together and live as a species in peace, trea...
Set 200 years into the future, humanity's footprints can be seen as far as Planet Nine in the Solar system. The most common propulsion engine is still ion drive and regrettably no one solves FTL. S...
Suppose such an organism had evolved from using sound like most life we know to use different intensities, wave lengths, and hues of light to communicate. This is assuming that these creatures are...
After reading The Ellimist Chronicles by K.A. Applegate, I wondered what conditions would have led to the environment found on the planet "Ket" featured in the story. Ket has the following properti...
I've always found animal intelligence to be fascinating, particularly that of the cephalopods, some of which show some pretty remarkable talents for tool usage, mimicry, and pattern recognition. A...
Imagine an alien race. They are the creators of Unspecified Advanced Alien Technology™. One day they lose one of their ships. The crew had to evacuate, and the ship kind of crashed on a random plan...
Specifically, could new planets form around a previously destroyed star? (Think of it like a phoenix.) If so, could the potential sentient life detect that their star previously exploded?
Watching movies and superhero cartoons, I'm struck with this question: what material do they use for their masks? A lot of times, for the bigger over-the-head ones, artists seem to favor plastic, s...
Suppose a species possessed different sets of DNA for different parts of its anatomy. I'm not suggesting one set for every function in the body; that would result in hundreds of thousands of unique...
The story situation is that a generation ship is headed to another solar system where there are several planets in the star's habitable zone and once the ship arrives, it will approach these planet...
My binary planets are roughly the size of earth and they are tidally locked with one another. Both planets support life. If the day/night cycle is roughly 100 hours (50 hours of day, 50 hours of ni...
As a follow-up to this question: Could an asteroid aerocapture around Earth? The answers seem to indicate that it would be possible for such a thing to happen (an asteroid aerocapturing using the ...
I'm currently working on two connected continents for the world I'm building. They've created a convergent boundary where they meet, which has given rise to an east-west mountain range, in addition...
I read What would make scientists realize they were on a flat world?, and I decided to make a similar one. Scenario: While poking around in an alien ruin, scientists discover a gateway which of...
Let's say that a "terraformable planet" is a planet who : is in the goldilock zone of its star(s) has around the same gravity as Earth has a solid surface covered with minerals not too toxic for...
What would be the characteristics required to make one region as hot as possible? How hot can it get; Can it be hotter than Dallol? Setting: an earth-like planet with all the same characteristic...
I am making a world with a gigantic structure the surface size of a smaller continent. This structure is suspended about a hundred meters above ground, and before the construction the area below wa...
One Czech sci-fi author presented idea on his feed on how people might deal with contacts in not so far future: Imagine you can have your own "personal assistant AI" loaded to your smart phone. I...
So a scientist in the somewhat distant future is living on the final pages of the chapter that we call 'humanity.' For various reasons it's impossible to sustain human life (outside the scope of th...
These moons orbit a Jovian planet with 0.52 Jovian mass and at 1.02 AU from a star with 0.98 Sol mass. 3.85 Days, 0.351 Earth, 0.68 G 15.4 Days, 0.242 Earth, 0.59 G 30.8 Days, 0.118 Earth, 0.44 ...
Say there is a humanoid creature. This humanoid creature is very tall, with elongated arms and legs. The creature has legs that end in, rather than feet, complete points (similar to a spike). Woul...
Due to an unforeseen malfunction your intergalactic spaceship suddenly drops out of hyperspace and comes to a near full stop. The ship is damaged, and will need to be evacuated soon...very soon. Y...
There's a species called Foos. Foos are fairly similar to humans. In a primitive society, in fact, they would appear identical to humans in actual physical appearance, mannerisms, and base behavior...
Birds, as we currently know them, build nests and lay eggs on the ground. People and things with sharp teeth live on the ground. There are also things with claws and beaks up in the air, but fewer....
A secret organization operating out of an undisclosed location for an undisclosed parent organizations have invented a "convince-me" ray gun (CMRG) that works by an unknown mechanism. After an ide...
If all the world's know nuclear cache were to be placed in a single location and detonated, how would it effect the opposite side of the world?
Building on Josh King's answer to this question concerning the feasibility of a disease which dies with its host, can a disease be contagious by airborne means while not being contagious by fluid e...
The primary purpose of the human nose is to detect scents. This is an obvious statement, as is that the primary function of the mouth is to eat. The secondary purpose of both of these features is t...
How believable is a touch or fluid vectored bacteria which is so dependent on its host that the remains of a terminated victim become non-contageous within minutes of the host's death? I'm postula...
We all like hexapods, from the Centaur to the Griffin. A large problem with the realism of the hexapodal body plan is that there are not many reasons for a creature to have them and is still worth ...
How could a planet which humans could land and survive on with no space suits or other help have a green atmosphere? The only requirement is that humans landing here would have to be able to breath...
Let's say a person has/suffering from a split personality. And let's call this personality as A. My question is, Is it possible for this personality A, belonging to that person, to have its own d...
Let's say I have a species similar to human, as sort of New Humanity. The only thing that separates them from humanity is their subspecies: the Sublorans. They have multiple animalistic features th...
The idea of a collective consciousness (or anthill) species is pretty simple; instead of cells tissues and organs you have ant-like creatures, all making up a larger creature. This is different fro...
A creature on my world can draw in energy from the sun and convert it into chemical energy with 100% efficiency. For the purposes of this question assume the animal has similar structure to a (phot...
Pando is a system of clones, each clone is connected and genetically identical to the others and they all share the same roots. Pando is the heaviest and oldest living organism, with a size of 4...
I have a captured planet/moon orbiting HD 37124 c, known as HD 37124 c m XVIII, and I was wondering: since the moon has 1.7 Earth masses, 1.1 Earth radii, a density of 7.038 g/cm^3 and a gravitatio...
Asking for what pseudoscience might explain a storytelling need: Given parallel dimensions (worlds), we discover that through a portal device, a person equipped with a special spacesuit-like outfi...
So tomorrow for some unknown reason Earth starts spinning significantly faster. How fast could it spin before life on earth dies. What would be the extinction factor? Super storms, the planet di...
The basis of almost every food chain in existence relies on plants in one form or another, but let's the sun couldn't provide the earth with enough energy for plants to exist. What can possibly rep...
Would it be possible for an asteroid in solar orbit to go near enough to the Earth that the Earth's atmosphere slows it down into an orbit that is, aside from its low perigee, stable without using ...
