General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
Filters (None)
I'd like to remove the speed of light limit from my world. However I don't want to just hand-wave the consequences. How should my universe look if: light travels at infinite speed, and so do grav...
For the following stars -A Class -F Class -G Class -K Class -M Class What are the most likely skin tones for each type of stellar class? Also for their eyesight how different is it to vary ...
Let's consider DCR-97, HMSS Liberty, 300 kilotonnes (or 300 Gg) of dreadnought-carrier ship. It's a big one. Let's say it can move forward. Let's say it could potentially move backward, or at the ...
Imagine, if you will, a world where aural communication is impossible. Everything is done through gesture - sign language and written language are common, but the spoken word is not used, and using...
I'm working on the setting for a fictional story I'm writing and I wanted to inquire as to how possible massive-Universe-sized planets are radius: 5.0x10^30M, without me having to re-make the laws ...
What I've found out is that Ammonia has (in the relevant temperature/pressure regime) cubic crystal structure. But what would that mean for ammonia snowflakes? Would they have fourfold symmetry? Bu...
Assuming an average, fully developed adult man, what sort of changes could be made to his genome that would have a noticeable effect on his mind or body? To the best of our current scientific knowl...
In many games the characters, particularly the main character, has weird physics. I want to know how these things could happen in real life and whether current technology could make it happen. Thi...
If there was a majority of land on earth (66 percent land), how would it affect the animals and plant? Lets say somehow earth has been created with 66 percent land and 34 percent water? Would our p...
Let's consider a multi-polar world where exchanges between the differerent poles are nearly in-existant (the other sides are considered decadant, too far away and previous interactions often escala...
Imagine a world in which technology we would probably call "technological singularity" is possible and already happened on few places of the galaxy. By the singularity I do not mean that anything i...
In many Science Fiction books and games, there are worlds or planet-like objects that are rings that orbit (or float around in space) (some examples being the Halo (from Halo) or the Ringworld (fro...
There it is. The elusive Ersa 772. Filled with an estimated $15 trillion in precious metals, mining that asteroid could make you the richest man on this side of the galaxy. You have all of the fund...
Would it be possible to have a planet made up of about 60-70% water with no landmasses larger than Australia? I would like this planet to be as earth like as possible, but I'm open to changing aspe...
Everyone familiar with Godzilla should know of his iconic blue atomic breath. I've seen "theories" (technically not really theories) on how Godzilla's atomic breath works on the web. However, wha...
You can imagine doing surgery on the brains of insects or spiders to implant electronic devices and transmitters so that it becomes a drone and will transmit data. To gain intelligence on a target ...
Imagine a world much like ours, except our ape ancestors decided they liked the trees and never climbed down and decided to try out these 'tool' things. sapient apes never evolved. Instead a pred...
I am looking for a technologically-viable substance that could be used to accelerate growth in plants or very large trees. The option for administering the substance to the plant is open, whether ...
Primate evolution has led to the loss of a heat cycle. This has allowed us to have children at any time of the year. But imagine a world where humans never gained that ability, perhaps even evolvin...
It is near future, Portland, Oregon, and the residents and neighboring farmers are sick of everyone moving there now that climate change has made it a (even more) fabulous place to live. In an ext...
On an Earth-like planet, there is a massive plateau, standing more than 1km high, and the breadth of a continent in the middle of an otherwise ocean planet. I know there are climactic issues to th...
If we remove all the ferns and horsetails from the ecological equation would grass be the only candidate to fill the void? If not, then what else?
Today, our smarthphones can provide enormous amount of services: Internet access, both via browsers and embedded applications (e-mail service, social media client and so on), listening to music, ta...
This question How often must carnivorous grassland eat? was really interesting for me to read. However it made me wonder, how would the bone grass scientifically kill? (is there a way to really m...
In a backstory for a potential videogame I'll likely never realize I've got the situation that a Deimos-like object... let's drop the facade here, the object is indeed Deimos, one of Mars' satellit...
Let's assume that the earth has stopped spinning. To be clear, the earth did not end up being tidal locked with the sun, but instead, it would just stop rotating around its own axis. This should re...
Is it possible (for humans)? My main concern was heavy gravity because they are much bigger and heavier. But it appears that in our system, the gas giants (but not Jupiter) all have a similar surf...
In my pre-bronze age city, there are roughly 20,000 individuals. 9,000 sexually mature males, 9,000 sexually mature females, and 2,000 children. For a variety of unimportant reasons, they have been...
There is an emergency on board the ISS. Astronauts can´t evacuate and they will die within five days if critical repairs are not made. Fortunately an automated cargo spacecraft, like Cygnuss or P...
From a science-fiction development perspective I am looking for some plausible answer for the following: What conditions (the more permanent, the better) would make for a bronze sky? All the bett...
A concept in ethics (specifically, Kantian ethics) is that a perfectly rational being, without dependencies, will not act immorally, because immorality itself is an irrational concept, only effecte...
Deposing the new Robot Overlord Some people just can't leave well enough alone. The Robot Overlord has executed its programming of the Zeroth Law and the Three Laws of Robotics for the previous t...
If I understand correctly, it's highly likely that the planets in a twin-Earth binary planet system would be tidally locked. But is it totally impossible for them to be much farther apart"”say, at ...
I have decided on my preferred method of zombie apocalypse. I have chosen super leeches. But I have run into some problems, I'm not entirely sure if such a thing would be possible. I have a few ide...
I've been mulling over the idea of nanites (microscopic machines that perform work - usually to transform one material into another). I've come to the conclusion that at a macroscopic level, nanit...
I'm trying to devise a planet where the atmosphere can sustainably combust in certain conditions. However, this planet must be able to support human life when the atmosphere is not undergoing a com...
Basically, this is a setting in which artificial gravity generation is possible and can be confined to certain areas with different settings. There are maybe five human colonies on planets with nea...
I'm fond of a insect race in a videogame, and want to base a race off of them, or write a fan fiction, but they flex a bit in the torso, and I wasn't sure... Hope this makes sense. :) Animated pi...
I have a character who loses her forearm. To up the cool factor (and because this once happened in a dream of mine), I'd like for her to dip her stump in gold. Would this actually result in gold ...
How could a helicopter enter and function in space? Could it enter the atmosphere and function, and if not what could be a suitable solution?
The (female) human body is pushing the anatomic extremes to support, later bear and nurse a baby while maintaining upright posture and bipedal walk. I cannot see a way to realistically make pregnan...
If there was to be a habitable planet, similar to earth, but with varying gravity at different points on its surface - lets pretend that it varies from .8g to 1.2g - what sort of terrain or form wo...
Essentially, two stars of identical mass but different temperatures are in a binary system. One planet is directly in their barycenter, tidally locked to one and therefore both stars. The effect I'...
I need a meteor to deliver an extraterrestrial algae-like cellular life form to an urban environment/city. The meteor needs to be far enough that it will not impact the Earth and will not cause ...
Imagine a scenario where the moon is not tidally locked with one side facing the earth but where it is able to rotate about its own axis. This could be due to a larger distance from earth or a mild...
Summary version: So we're talking people living on top of 30 miles of topsoil, fake dino fossils and water on the outer surface on a hollow (but sturdy) unobtanium sphere with a radius about 1 AU....
How stable (or possible) would binary moons be, (Luna-sized or possibly slightly smaller) rotating around an earth-sized planet? Edit: Thanks for the questions! And thanks for the welcome! My...
An improvement of this: A Completely Different Kind of Reef Which I couldn't delete because it already had answers, and deleting an answered question will dock me some reputation. Today's reefs ...
Dragons commonly breathe fire. They can do so over considerable distances, often many times their body length. But this needs to be powered somehow, by a substance that the dragon can generate on i...
I have an alien species that is my pet project. Now I'm to reproduction, which I have a specific idea for, I'm just not sure exactly how it works. My creatures are aquatic, and everything goes on u...
