General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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Could these moons be tidally locked between them or would they get locked to Earth? What consequences would the orbital cycle of these two moons have on Earth's surface?
Question: Would it be plausible for the human body to continuously experience regular changes in gravity? Like if someone were to exercise every morning at higher than normal gravity, above Earth n...
I have a sailing ship. It leaves port. As it goes away, it grows smaller and smaller. In our world, it eventually is hidden by the curvature of the Earth, such that the top mast stays visible longe...
One property of life is communication. In particular sound is very useful due to it's non-directional nature. An alarm call is heard by every member of the pack and warns them immediately of the da...
Alice is a highly advanced AI. Alice likes to survive. Perhaps she may see survival as an end goal of itself, or maybe she sees survival as a way to help it accomplish whatever goal it is programme...
In my world, there are a race of microscopic humanoid organisms (0.3 mm - 0.33 mm). They live in a variety of biomes, such as leaf litter, stone and on plants and trees. In terms of technological a...
Setting: Modern Earth; technology no more advanced that what's reasonable within the next thirty years. Premise: A prehistoric (and broken) alien device is discovered on Earth, and researchers det...
I've been thinking about the use of Dyson Spheres as a long range communication device. The sphere would effectively have an and open and closed state for a collection of panels which could be swap...
Certain elements and composites in the real world have significant melting and boiling points. The metal with the highest values is tungsten, with 3,695 K and 6,203 K, respectively. According to ou...
Approximately how likely is it that a tidally locked planet would have a long term natural satellite, and where would that satellite most likely be located? What I've so far researched (and puzzled...
What requirements would a meteor have to satisfy, to approach Earth unrecognized until hitting the atmosphere and cause climatic changes after the impact? The meteor should have at least a circum...
For fun (and for future evil diabolical schemes) would humans have the ability if given the finances and resources, to use some kind of massive wrenching system to pull different continents togethe...
From my understanding of animals, lifespan is all based on the speed of its metabolic rate. As endothermic animals, mammals live a high-octane life - growing up fast, being quick on activity regard...
Prologue In my current worldbuilding project, I decided to put a ban for faster than lightspeed travel, and decided that most space flights be done in slower than lightspeed travels. Assuming effi...
Given the existence of neon kittens with: the internal properties and mentality of normal kittens bioluminescent fur. What evolutionary process outside of intentional human breeding/gene manip...
Say a large, stray Kuiper Belt object manages to enter the inner solar system and hits the moon, causing the moon to fracture. Say the impact wasn't devastating and left most of the moon intact whi...
A village is famous for its flowers and wants to bring in tourism by replacing its timekeeping and basing everything around a flower clock. Schools and shops all agree to set their times by the flo...
I want to build a world with inhabitants living in a constant twilight zone, although the planet itself should still be rotating and not be tidally locked with the sun. Optimally I'd want it to be ...
I've been trying to come up with a scenario in which space stations and lunar bases are established but are considered controversial. I sort of figure that if corporations started mining the moon t...
Given a "parallel" Earth-like world with 9 days to our own 7 days (ie, each day is around 18 hours, 40 minutes), what other differences would one expect/require to be otherwise "normal" and habitab...
From the answers I received in my previous question explaining why a humanoid society couldn't live atop giant mushroom caps, I have considered going back to my previous idea of them building their...
Experience shows me that some people dislike when a given world has monolithic species. By this I mean the planet has one culture, language, empire or purpose that unifies all of its member. Most...
On Earth, photosynthetic organisms require additional nutrients to survive; in addition to "feeding" off of sunlight, plants respire and absorb water from the ground in order to grow. However, th...
Can anyone think of a reasonable man-made or natural disaster that would split a large volcanic island into smaller parts, mostly stone cliff faces, and destroy most of the vegetation? I'd like t...
Another question on this site deals with the question of interstellar trade without faster than light travel. I'd like inspiration for a related but more generic question. Why would people choose t...
Is there any software tool for quickly prototyping a planetary system? Ideally this should: Allow for placement of planets of different sizes and masses around a star. Allow for examination of th...
Consider a dual-star system, with the distances between S (larger star) and J (smaller star) similar to Sun"“Jupiter. A planet P rotates around J on a 90-degree ecliptic and is Earth-like otherwise...
Earth is destroyed in explosive fashion by an unknown force. How does this affect the rest of the Solar System? Does sudden absence of that mass affect the orbits of the other planets at all? Let's...
On Earth, tides generally tie to a 12 or 24 hour cycle depending on the location. The exact times and heights are generally based on the shape of the sea, and the positions of the moon and sun. W...
Most natural satellites in our Solar System are expected to contain fission furnaces at their cores, and some of these moons do have a striking resemblance to an asteroid. I'm wondering if we could...
Basically, it's a question about creating maps or diagrams. In particular, we on Earth are used to maps showing variation over distance & location. The problem with space that is everything is...
I've posted a previous question similar to this in the way that it is of my WIP web-comic. The planet my friend and I have designed is strange as she wanted to create either a permanently dark plan...
I have developed a 2D space trading game, yet in the final stage of the development of the game engine, I am struggling to find the optimal size of my planetary system(s) and the maximum velocity o...
I have an idea for a planet that orbits two stars. These starsslowly orbit each other, have equivalent masses/sizes, and while one is slightly red, the other is slightly blue. When I talk about the...
The Idea: A planetary system composed of many interconnected nodes and small bodies in a semi-stable arrangement, with much shorter distances between astronomical bodies than our own Solar System. ...
Start with a powerful space-faring civilization. They are Kardashev Type II, having harnessed the total energy output of their sun. To do this, they have encapsulated their star with a tight-fitti...
I have two binary pairs of planets in a planetary system. All of the planets are habitable, and similar in mass and composition to earth. Each pair is identical, or nearly so. The planets are tidal...
As a tree grows new layers are added each year so that the trunk expands in radius. The living part of the tree is a relatively thin layer on the outside just beneath the bark, and the wood further...
I've seen related discussions here before so thought I'd share this idea. It is believed to be the only realistic (doable) method an individual or small group could use to apply such force upon Ear...
Probably going to get lots of downvotes for that name... Anyway, assume that you have a zeppelin, made entirely out of lead. What gas would be required to hold this in the air? Would this contrapti...
The setup for this is complex, so I'll begin by stating the core question: In a heavy ship engagement, using energy-dissipation armor, about how much warmer will the sea get, and will that have an...
A"¦ well, dream"¦ of mine: what if smoking suddenly, overnight, became immediately lethal? To be more specific, this is about "active" smoking; bystanders aren't affected. To make things more inte...
What is the smallest set of different crops a (vegan) human population could grow to sustain itself? We'll assume they have an ideal environment, where anything and everything can grow and the tec...
One thing that has always bothered me in robot-controlled AI stories is that there is always the assumption that the AI would choose to fight a conflict against humans on Earth, where humans domina...
Meaning, cause a seemingly normal winter to suddenly take a turn within hours or a day/two into a completely frozen territory? From what I've read, abrupt climate change happens from ocean currents...
Many different books and novels contain creatures that have human upper body. But have the legs and thorax of spider. They are usually called by different names but they're sort of like centaurs b...
As we know, solar power is the ultimate source of energy for mankind, and it's the most abundant(I have read that we receive more than 1000 times the energy we currently use, if we were to have a w...
This post-apocalyptic environment, as narrated in the book, depicts a world where most if not all animal life has been abruptly killed, and similarly most vegetation burned out. After the disaster,...
So here's the premise: We have an Earth-like planet, with a civilisation at roughly the same state as ours today. Scientists have been monitoring the atmosphere for centuries, what with forecastin...
The sun inexplicably ceases to give light. It's still there and continues to have a gravitational pull keeping us in orbit. The solar system continues to operate as normal, but the sun has gone dar...
