General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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My setting takes place in a densely forested continent, with huge trees and rushing rivers. The problem is that this forest stretches on for thousands of miles, only occasionally punctuated by some...
Is it possible that a complex humanoid creature to somehow still use Mitosis as a method for reproduction, and if so, what would it look like?
Could a creature reasonably have both armor (in the sense of armadillos or pangolins) and be able to change color over the short term (less than a day)? I'm afraid I don't know enough about biolog...
Is it safe to assume that any two binary planets of 0.5 to 1.5 Earth masses having mass ratios of 1:1 up to 2:1 would always have become tidally locked to one another long before any life could nat...
In the latest Artifexian video, he talked about terrestrial moons, bringing up great ways they could and would exist. But the video ended with an interesting concept, Horseshoe Habitable Moons. F...
Is it possible for a earth-like planet to orbit a neutron star & have intelligent life-forms, even if said neutron star 'moves' through different galaxies? as seen in this video - https://www....
One of the settings I've been working on is a retro-futuristic world with a technology level and aesthetic of the early cold war era, something quite similar to the setting of the Alien franchise i...
While I do know that there is no possible explanation for how we might wake someone up from such a long sleep, I was wondering what food would be edible after one million or so years where the huma...
Assuming that the sky isn't that color because of excess pollution, would the makeup of the atmosphere need to change? And if it were breathable, would the necessary position and color of the sun ...
In my world there are rings, these rings are around 9.5 meters tall and a little around 5000 kilometres wide. Their closest point is a little over 12,000 kilometres away from the surface and under ...
Is there a way to either counteract the effect of gravity on a planetary scale or create a planet with a low enough density so as to replicate the effect of weightlessness? My world takes place o...
Setting: Western world nation, Earth as we know it, May 2016, Gregorian calendar. Eccentric billionaire, large multinational corporation or similar; lots of money, and ability to enlist the help of...
Imagine an Earth-like society that has developed into the digital age. They have computers, the Internet and most of the conveniences of the modern age, but they still use a significant animal work...
In my story where thousands of humans are transported to the planet with dinosaurs that is 400 light years away, there are bound to be lots of warnings on the generation ship. Friendly aliens are t...
Same base as in my question about feeding an underground base (in Abbeville, SC). As you go underground, the air heats up. What would be a reasonable depth so that (a) it could be easily cooled,(b...
This question is a sort of continuation of my previous question: Why would robots use verbal communication?. The answer here by @Mathias Foster about the robots organizing a revolution sparked some...
Im sure some are familiar with Bioshock's "Rapture City," a (somewhat) successful underwater city that was able to maintain stability and house an entire population. But, using current technology a...
A common feature in fantasy are half-human creatures such as centaurs, satyrs and merpeople. As much as the worldbuilding community wants these to be real, the evolution and anatomy don't match. ...
Might make more sense to ask this in a skin-diving discussion, but... would something like motorcycle leathers hold up to water well enough to function as a wet suit, trapping a layer of warm water...
A large group of people has been banished from Earth and punished to scrape out a perilous existence on a strange planet. The planet has breathable atmosphere, and consists of an immense ocean teem...
Tera C is a planet where the most intelligent beings are robots. Though some of them look extremely similar to each other, they all have a unique personality. Some are very serious and down-to-busi...
I have a world in mind that is essentially a planet-wide underground ocean. The planet doesn't have a strong magnetic field, so radiation on the surface is too high to allow life, but what I'm thin...
What would happen to a human settlement on Earth, on some deserted island, that had no contact with the outside world for a thousand years? Something like a human version of the Galapagos islands, ...
In my world, the Straits of Gibraltar have been closed during a post-apocalyptic glacial period and the Mediterranean is isolated from the oceans. The result is similar to the Messinian salinity cr...
In an alternate Earth (or even in a pos-exctintion future), suppose intelligent but primitive humanoids 1/10 the size of humans inhabit the planet. They don't coexist with current humans or have ac...
Imagine if you could have a robot made of plasma, that would be able to move in space, manipulate objects, etc. Is such a robot possible?
In Mercury's orbit around the Sun (Solar orbit, not Mercurial orbit), what are the conditions like? What shielding or heat management would be required for a manned spacecraft? Could a spacesuited ...
The mountains of the American West have some major differences. For starters, only the Rockies stand firm"”no Coast Range, no Grand Canyon and most certainly no Sierra Nevada. The Rockies on Great ...
Let's assume that the dictator of a large and rich country is approximately 70 years old, and that signs of old age are showing, meaning that his death is not very far. Let's assume that the people...
Imagine a SupraWorld being built around a gas giant like Jupiter. To have a 1g gravity on the surface the resulting SupraWorld would have to be less than twice the radius of the giant (my calculati...
During the summer months, Tibet warms up like a hot brick, drawing in moisture from the Indian Ocean, and that explains why India is the wettest nation on Earth. In this alternate scenario, Tibe...
Isogamy: "sexual reproduction by the fusion of similar gametes." Not to be confused with Isogyny, "marriage between people of similar status or age." All such species on Earth lack tissue-level or...
So, according to Other blood colors it is entirely possible for other blood colours to evolve based on what base they use, but why? What would be the benefits of these different bases? What purpose...
From what I've read, a planet without axial tilt wouldn't have seasons, at least the way we experience it today. But from my understanding, monsoons are periodic inversions of the direction of the...
Introduction: Welcome to a world where hominids developed to have two different sized hands (similar to the male fiddler crab). We have developed societies, art, and naturally war. But, how exactl...
I was thinking of an organism that lives its entire life in outer space. It would be shaped like a rocket and have skin to pressurize its insides so that its internal organs are pressurized even w...
I am wondering if alien race detecting our signal could actually understand such broadcast. But for my story, I need the aliens being unable to understand what we are broadcasting. How can I achie...
In the future (based on present/emerging tech) someone builds what is effectively a mountain bunker to survive a nuclear winter. But bunkers don't have natural light. So, the plan is to build a b...
____________Useless Backstory_________________________________________________ In my world, A hurricane has washed a group of 8,000 pachyderms off of Afro-Eurasia and onto a large island cl...
I have a parallel universe very similar to Earth but with a society with the technological level of Europe during the Middle Ages. I want this parallel Earth to be one big continent, one giant land...
Not sure if this is too broad, but I am currently in the process of making a few flying alien species and, of course, didn't want to use the old insect or bat-like wings. Of the types of wings (or...
This is the Alps back home, cornering the Italian Peninsula and dominating the nations of Switzerland and Austria. The tallest, Mont Blanc, stands 15,780 feet above sea level. In this alternate...
I'm making a small game about travelling deep space on limited resources. One thing I'm interested in having is the idea that the craft is scavenging what it can from planets as it travels through ...
There are plenty of threats out there that could terminate all life on our little planet in varying amounts of time (Solar flares, meteors and supernovas to name a few). Are there any disasters th...
In my world, a population of about a billion people lives in an underground cave that has growing grass, a forest of trees, an immensely deep lake to allow for rain to flow through the water cycle,...
In my alternate history, during the Islamic golden age (in this case, 9th century Arabia - present day Oman), my characters are building a series of glass towers. They are like lighthouses travers...
This is a follow-up to question about a transmuting 3D-printer Assume you need to store all stable elements in a spaceship. On board, a chemical assembler is used to compose everything, if you hav...
I am already aware of the concept of the fusion torch. But I would like to consider other solutions for separation of raw materials that can be automated but are less "extreme" and closer to curr...
I'm writing a setting for some fantasy novels, and came up with an idea about weather and climate. The world I'm imagining has an elliptical orbit around a binary system, giving it basically 2 st...
So, if you haven't looked at my previous question: Would a sentient species be able to thrive when mating means the death of the male partner? Please do, as the information in it directly pertains...
