General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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Any ideas how an advanced alien race could speed up time in a specific region of space? I'm working on a storyline in which an alien race uses a time bubble to accelerate time so the construction ...
One of the cities in my world is built on the ground floor beneath and around giant tree. Giant tree cities seem to pop up fairly frequently in science fiction and fantasy, but how would they actua...
I hope this isn't too broad. I would like an Earth-like planet for November's NaNoWriMo that is just enormous, but plausible. Then I started to get into material composition, proximity to the sta...
So I've been thinking about colonists on a huge planet. If a jupiter-sized planet had a breathable atmosphere, we would still be unable to live on it due to excessive gravity, which would crush us...
We all know how the story starts: He woke up in strange room, not remembering who he was or how did he got to the room. But that was not his problem. Problem was the first writing he saw: "HELL...
In my world, a 16 year old boy has gained ghost-like properties, invisible to the naked eye and able to flit through objects as if they were not there. Like a man trapped in a room with an endless ...
Domestication of otherwise wild animals go way back. Cats have been our best weapons against rodents for 10,000 years. We had been breeding sheep and goats for their milk and mutton for almost as...
The idea I have is an Athmosphere with heavy gasses so the creatures that inhabit this planet have an easier time flying. The temperature is colder than Earth -119° as minimum , 12° average and ...
Some Background Details In 1908, the Siberian region of Tunguska made headline news when an explosion knocked down 80 million trees in an area of only 770 square miles. The mystery was that there ...
I'll have a limited space like $1 km^3$ that have (through handwaving) more then three dimensions. But anyone entering it would perceive it as a three dimensional space. A little bit like this vide...
Assuming human-style vocal cords, what phonemes would a snouted animal be able to produce? I'm looking at developing a conlang (or several) for a setting, and it has several humanoid species with p...
Another question about my exotic matter planet. I mentioned floating landmasses via anti-gravity and exotic matter mining, but I recently read this: https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/fact-a...
In the story I'm thinking to write there's a group of 50 000 humans with superpowers. These powers cause them to have great weaknesses so they decide to hide. Which countries or regions of large ...
At what levels of carbon dioxide do humans have breathing problems (e.g. hyperventilation) or adverse medical effects? And what level would people need to wear breathing apparatus to survive? This ...
I'm planning on sending a colony ship on an extended, multi-generational voyage to a distant star. My colony ship is an oblate spheroid, 2km long on its long axis and 1km across on its shortest axi...
Humanoid and Planet I understand that you might think "2 circulatory systems require more oxygen so obviously it is not useful." but I know my Kepler Bb humanoids inside and out from anatomy and p...
This question is similar to this one, which wanted to know what the world would be like 10,000 years after humans disappeared. Almost all traces of human activity would be gone from the earth - onl...
First question of many here in my pursuit of grinding out my science fiction story. The problem at hand though involves how a multi-generational ship would survive 500 years hurtling through space,...
If there is a planet whose atmosphere consists of : 30% methane 70% oxygen Then, can we land on it? If yes, then how, and why would it not explode? Also, can such a planet exist for a long time?
Related to this question on the topic of merfolk. What would be the consequence of higher oxygen level in water? As far as I know it is at 14 to 15 mL per liter with a water temperature at 0°C. (...
There is a planet that is orbiting around not a single star, but the core of a galaxy. It is independent of the other solar systems in the galaxy, but is affected by the center of mass of the core....
So, I've got a planet with this atmosphere. The composition is: 60% NO 20% NO2 10% N2O 5% N2 5% O2 traces of CO, CO2. The surface pressure is 0.7 atm, temperatures range from -30 to +30 degree...
My binary terrestrial planets are roughly the size of earth and they are tidally locked with one another. They are 12,000 miles (19,312 km) apart. That distance is based off of this article, http:/...
My idea was to use 2 stages for an interstellar spacecraft (particularly the Orion Drive) and use it in a way similar to Project: Daedalus. Phase 1 would involve accelerating to cruising speed foll...
If a spy is getting a fix on a satellite and transmitting a tightbeam transmission to it (encrypted of course), there will be signal leakage. Can the spy be detected by the good guys, by them notic...
The pangolin is a fascinating creature. Belonging to the only group of mammals with scales, they are arboreal and are not hindered by them in any way. However, these animals have a very complex evo...
So I am proposing a ring-world of approximately 1600 km diameter. The ring spins for earth like gravity. The ring itself would be several kilometers thick with Earth like variations in elevation ...
I have a humanoid individual who for various reasons finds themselves in low orbit with no ship or shuttle or tech to take them down The society they come from is about renaissance era level (b...
So here's my rough idea for how you could basically send one large ship with a crew of a few thousand (at least ten thousand, maybe forty) to establish a colony on an Earth-like world: First step ...
I'm creating a fictional planet that orbits a gas giant (a lot like Jupiter). I'm working out all the issues listed here and here. But what I'm really having trouble with is the size of the tide. ...
In a fantasy world (a D&D setting, basically), how would an open underwater town populated by an assortment of mer-people deal with waste disposal? A few details: the town in question is a part...
On an air-gapped supercomputer in my basement, there's a self-improving prediction machine "” a so called Oracle "” that knows everything that is on the Internet but cannot send any data outside. (...
Having somewhat successfully raised bamboo plants myself, I know that they're hardy plants. However, our moon is a pretty different story. If we were to bring bamboo to the moon and maintain a smal...
In the Mass Effect series there's a terrestrial planet called Dekuuna with 10 times the mass of Earth, a surface gravity of 4G and a native intelligent race. I was just wondering if it was possible...
It's a commonly known fact that whale song travels huge distances. In fact apparently before the oceans were so noisy they could communicate over 10,000km! However, whales are very big! They can c...
Since the Sun is the only star we know to have life in its planetary system, I came to wonder about if it was replaced by, say, VY Canis Majoris How far would we have to be so that we would still b...
Most of the planets that we know of have a sidereal day (rotational period) that is shorter or on the same order of magnitude as their sidereal year (orbital period), the latter being the case in t...
I live in northeastern Nebraska, and I had seen more than enough of tornadoes in my lifetime. So in an alternate Earth, it is my hope to make some changes that would save my home from being anothe...
I'm writing a story where Kradjin carnivorous flightless birds have been used as mounts by a nomadic steppe living people for millennia and I'm curious how this might have altered their morphology....
I need some help with a couple of the planet building theories I'm playing around with. I've looked up most of this stuff and can follow the physics if given the time (and instructional tutuorial h...
A hypothetical mammal has developed an unusual reproductive cycle. The females normally ovulate upon experiencing orgasm, whereas the males only display sperm production and heightened sex drive du...
Basically I want to know what would happen to a planet if half of it was destroyed using explosives, does the answer depend on the size/gravity of the planet and what would be the result on the env...
Ignoring, for the sake of this question, how exactly the gravitational fields required for this to work are generated: The question Our stalwart adventurers have a spaceship, perhaps a gateship, ...
This is the follow-up question to How could an underwater civilization develop electricity?, as mentioned there. In that question, I never addressed how my civilization could have discovered/used ...
The definition of a dragon depends on who you're asking. We are so used to the fire-breathing, bat-winged, avaricious antagonists of Europe and the long, lank wise men of Asia that we don't often ...
Would scientists on the other side of blast survive in a bunker? I got an alien using telekinesis abilities to move Moon with the speed of " 1 hour till collide from the moment Moon left the orbit"...
This is a partner question to How do centaurs get enough calories to live? Centaurs are a common mythological figure, with the body of a man where a horses head would be. They usually exist in fan...
This is a partner question to How do centaurs get enough oxygen to run Centaurs are a common mythological figure, with the body of a man where a horses head would be. They usual exist in a fantasy...
In a few science-fiction books I've read, the world that the story takes place on doesn't have a sun, but does have a "sun belt," where (instead of a regular sun) the world is lit by a stretch of s...
Apparently life on Earth has no meaning, the closest thing to a reason to exist is creating as much biodiversity as possible, through reproduction forced as the only achievement every creature can ...
