General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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How could astrophysical jets, emitting matter from black holes be used as energy sources by a space-faring nation? How could they be able to collect and use this form of energy?
Next to angels, various types of bird people are among some of the most common depictions of flying humanoids. Revali from BOTW comes to mind. Could birds (or any other flying animal for that ...
male Wyverns collect shiny objects in their dens to attract mates it quite common for Wyverns to get into territorial fight. Now Wyverns are capable of breathing fire but they are also covered in f...
It is believed that Wendigos are supernatural beings with an insatiable hunger for human flesh, or humans who are selfish and commit cannibalism and while the latter is more accurate, Wendigo fever...
Background I am trying to find a design for a cylindrical habitat that would allow the enclosed cylinder to radiate heat out to space as does the Earth without using mirrors and windows. Problem ...
I want to write a science-based story which includes grey aliens. To clarify, grey aliens are seen to be either shorter or taller than the average humans, and sport a bulbous like head. their hea...
here what Xing Tian look like and the description in the wikipedia. Xingtian appears in chapter 7 of the Shanhaijing (Classic of Mountains and Seas), which states that he fought and lost agai...
I'm making alternate more realistic designs of Kirby characters. I'm working on a version of Escargoon the "snail" here. Due to his movement in the Kirby anime resembling more of a shuffle I've...
I have heard people (quite possibly on this site) say that by the time a civilization is able to make Dyson sphere it will be useless to build one for power and energy needs. So, would a civilizati...
I know the orbital period of my planet and the rotational period of my planet. Now how do I calculate the solar day? It would only be a small difference to be sure, but do remember that if we didn'...
I want to make an atmosphere rich in carbon monoxide, but as it doesn't stick around for very long, it will need to be replenished. I'm looking for concentrations comparable to those of carbon diox...
Over 100,000 years ago giant megafauna roamed the earth such as mammoths, gigantopithecus, and giant sloths. fast forward to today and most megafauna are extinct (with the notable exception being i...
So, dragons are hexapodal creatures, slightly larger than most draft horses (around 190-200 cm at the withers). Compared to the Quetzalcoatlus, dragons have twice the muscles mass in the pectoral r...
If we moved Enceladus (not Europa) into Earth's orbit (ignoring the plausibility of it), and gave it a breathable atmosphere, what effects would it have on the Earth? How would it affect us?
A strange concept which I came up with after realizing that vampires, werewolves and zombies are basically created by an infection from a virus. This has lead me to brainstorm how I could make a mo...
My father (who is a biologist) thinks that a sapient species must be a true omnivore because if it were an obligate herbivore (like a koala or a sloth), it would not have enough nutrients to develo...
In many fantasy stories humans are capable of inter-breeding with different fantasy races. There is a precedent for this happening with neanderthal and Denisovan DNA being found in people of Eurasi...
In a story I am working on there are 5 AI on a space station of varying levels of social, image recognition and general intelligence. At least one is good enough to pass a Turing test and do image ...
A cleaner, narrower-focused improvement of How This Alternate Solar System Influences the Milankovitch Cycle, so not a duplicate. For further clarification, eccentricity is the shape of a planet's...
One of the powerful abilities of Superman is his ability to make several layers of opaque solid objects translucent to him and only him alone. What plausible future technology would allow us to see...
I'm working on a fusion rocket concept for a hard science fiction setting. I'm envisioning laser catalyzed Proton-Boron reactors (low waste heat, aneutronic, 100% of their output being He4 Alpha pa...
An entrepreneur has a dream. He wants to create the most amazing and magical amusement park in the solar system. He goes to investors with the blue prints of the park, and they think it's a good id...
Recently, I've grown curious about this lizard men folklore, which revolves around lizard like beings that have the frame work of humanoids. Now this got me thinking of a more human like reptile sp...
So imagine people were the size of house cats, and the world's land masses were scaled down accordingly (in volume). In comparison to the original size of the landmass, how big would England be? An...
Is there a way arachnids legs could have finger like appendages at their ends in a way that makes sense for their structure and wouldn't look like a cheesy design? This creature wouldn't be insect...
This is something that confuses me with amorphous characters, monsters, robots etc... How do they compute when their particles don't have a fixed form? They are in a sense modular robots only taken...
I was wondering what anatomy would allow a humanoid creature, where the height of the body is around 4 feet tall, to be able to fly like a hummingbird. I have read that scaling up a hummingbird ev...
I'm working on an earht-like map and I'm having a hard time understanding where to put the high and low pressure zones. Here's some background info first. Axial tilt: 25 degrees Tropics latitude:...
A long time ago homo floresiensis split off into two main groups Goblins and Halflings. Now Goblins are an odd little bunch (here's a rough mock up of what a goblin might look like) and I was wonde...
We have earth at the beginning of the 15th century, and suddenly the biggest continent disappears. There is nothing left of it, no animals, people, lands, anything. I don't think the details of th...
In any modern story nowadays, shapeshifters always have an original form; Andalites from Animorphs or Mystique from X-men to name a few. It raises the question of why something that can change form...
I have read in a book review of "Fallen Angels" that a high-tech torture machine, which "administers drugs and medical attention while busy cracking teeth, flaying skin and breaking bones" and "ren...
When I say all-metal airships, I'm referring to something like the above from Jakub Rozalski's artwork - the design is more akin to a naval destroyer or battleship and less like a zeppelin. We'v...
I wanted to include a spider-like race in my book (not a typical drider, but more like a hairy hominid covered in tarantula-like hair and thinner and longer limbs and fingers). However, I wanted th...
So, one of the less know abilities of dragons here is anivoice. Anivoice allows dragons to communicate with birds, mammals, reptiles, dinosaurs and pterosaurs. Of course, the information, relayed...
It is (around here, anyway) quite well known that science does not allow the existence of kaiju, mainly because of the cube-square law. bones rip themselves out To my understanding, this boils do...
The Dyson Swarm is common in sci fi as an energy source, and sometimes also as a powerful weapon. As it is commonly understood, it harnesses the energy of the sun, which stores a vast amount of ene...
Could people with Iron Age technology possibly dig large holes in volcanic rock on the edges of a lave tube system. Would this be an effective way to run a trade business or to live in an undergro...
Our universe is incredibly young, relative to its total life span. How young? Well, it contains stars. Giant balls of readily fusing hydrogen and helium that give off a pleasant glow, suitable for ...
Would it be possible for life to develop on a planet with a highly elliptical orbit? (Similar to a comet, but possibly less extreme.) If so, what conditions would be necessary and what would the li...
Imagine a particular species of eel that resembles the shape of a torus or donut. It is capable of generating an alternating electric current in the water as a form of communication between other d...
In prehistoric times, there used to be a dwarf elephant species in many Mediterranean islands. They were about 1.5-2 meters high, but probably became extinct before the arrival of the first human b...
I'd like to randomly generate between 1 and 20 million stars for a spiral galaxy resembling our Milky Way. This is of course far fewer than our galaxy (estimated between 150 to 300 billion), but I'...
Shub Niggarath, the black goat of the woods and mother of the dark young, is a powerful entity that lives in a universe parallel to our own. In this universe, immortal entities exist as abstract co...
Is possible to have a geothermal plant (not necessary a very powerful one) to work for several millennia without the place where it is built over running out of heat? I found a page (don't remembe...
I'm writing a thriller story about a group of explorers who traveled to a distant planet in the hopes of finding intelligent life, when the explorers arrived they discovered a planet that was full...
My first quest on this platform was, could the Kraken monster from "Evolve" (the game) feasibly exist, which I planned to follow up with the rest of the playable monsters. Appearance The height o...
I'm designing a creature that is supposed to be able to eat "basically anything", within the realm of plausibility for what is essentially an organic creature. Its digestive system can be as compli...
I'd love some science advice and facts for this question: If they use wind power to bring up water from the ocean in the day time and spray it on prevailing winds going into land (i.e. 10-15 km fr...
