General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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I want to build a seastead in international waters that starts small. It has to be in the Atlantic, preferably in the northern hemisphere close to either the american or european continent. Due t...
After looking at concept art of various humanoid creatures portrayed in science fiction I noticed many artists tend to make the abdominal muscles of their creatures/aliens look similar to those mus...
In my world slimes are intelligent creatures of various sizes which can take the shape of anything they like and change color to camouflage. A slime can camouflage as floor , as a box, a snake or...
Assume my kaiju is around 200 feet tall, weighs around 4,000 US tonnes and resembles a large lobster with two giant claws for its front legs and long spindly limbs with tiny pincers on the ends for...
I want to know what kind of toilet design for mermaid is, considering they live surrounded by water and they poop through the anus (or whatever the organs name is) that located in the front rather ...
So, I'm creating a fantasy setting, and because why not, I decided to have giants. Not giant giants, just roughly 2 times the height of a human. Now, because physics is dumb, a giant species would ...
When writing a futuristic story I always try to minimise the impact of computerization. Its rather uncomfortable writig a story when technology is advanced enough that humans arent in a position to...
Fireflies are amazing little insects. They have the ability to produce a pulse of light without the help of a symbiotic relationship with bioluminescent bacteria. This works via a chemical reactio...
I'm designing a creature which possesses a decently unusual trait: despite having a developed head, it's mouthparts are attached to a tentacle that retracts into the creature's belly when not in us...
Is a colony on earth's moon must be deeply underground to ensure more natural gravity (by getting closer to its core) as well as more natural heat? By natural heat I mean "without the need of arti...
I have a maglev train starting in Paris, going through Siberia, bridging over the Bering Strait, and running down the West Coast to San Francisco. There are other major lines splitting from this on...
Ok so my creature will look like this They're not big, about 2 feet tall. They're technically amphibians but have the scaly hide of a reptile. They live near the sea. Their life cycle is simila...
I have an idea for a land based mobile organism that moves and uses photosynthesis for its primary means of energy generation. Can a motile organism conceivably get enough energy from photosyntheti...
If you were inside of a gas that was producing its own light (for example, air at 900°C), what would it look like? Would it look foggy, or would objects that aren't the same colour as the glow sti...
Skippable Introduction I asked a similar question 2 years ago and never got a real answer. I was told the question was too broad or "it can be whatever you want" "magic can do anything" so I thoug...
Mass of star: 0.75 M☉ Radius of star: 0.69 R☉ Surface temperature of star: 4,620° K Luminosity of star: 0.2 L☉ Satellites: 2 Place in solar system: 2nd Mean radius: 8,725.1 km Mass: 2...
If we could replace DNA, RNA and the ribosomes in our cells by their mirror image versions, then everything would work in the same way, except that the chirality of all molecules would have been in...
Say humans found a way to exponentially increase the capability of plants to grow. Is it possible for it to cause an environment that can cause oxygen toxicity in humans?
Assuming that as a species, we do ourselves in, not through war but through environmental neglect and overpopulation, what species will benefit most from the effect we have had on the planet during...
I don't fully understand the mechanisms behind an ice cap that contains all the water in the oceans. Just to be specific, I have a planet that resembles Mars, i.e. desert at the equator, ice at pol...
So, my understanding of how Alcubierre drives would theoretically work is not particularly complete. I know it involves compressing and expanding space, but I don't really have an intuitive grasp ...
Say I have a race of obligate carnivores (for simplicity, we'll say they're felinoid). They have carnivore dentition, and must eat meat as a major component of their diet, but they can also eat fru...
Let's say I have a bunch of pre-pubescent children (circa 8-12 years old). Let's also say I subjected them to some drug/process/whatever that caused them to stop growing. In particular: Whatever...
I have this creatures which were hiding underground for millennia. They are, from the beginning of their history, exclusively nocturnal. They emerged back on surface after moon disappeared (irrel...
In my world a moon is reached and colonised but only in space stations for a long time. They gain the ability to reach the surface and then story happens. It needs to be something that can be bypas...
I've got this idea of a rogue planet that is moving that fast through the intergalactic void that the cosmic microwave radiation, thanks to the Doppler effect, actually provides enough heat that it...
For context, I was reading about various research groups installing implants and cameras onto insects to use them as reconnaissance drones in high risk areas. I'm wondering how feasible it would ...
I have a species of megafaunal carnivore that are extremely mobile with territories spanning hundreds of square miles and lifespans of 120-150 years. They lay clutches of 2-3 eggs every 20-30 years...
Imagine a spacecraft in a highly eccentric orbit. Say the craft burns at periapsis towards the planet such that its orbital eccentricity does not change and the craft's periapsis moves with the shi...
I'm writing a short story where a group of explorers found a mysterious cave in a remote jungle , Inside the cave they find strange paintings of spirals resembling portals , after exiting the myste...
just suddenly struck by curiosity, i vaguely remember that big quadrupedal or hexapodal (if you count the wings) animals cant fly well basically. I dont remember why, but i think it was related to ...
So, Georgie, the paladin who's still unsure about going down the path of lawful stupid, decided not to kill the dragon. Now, this means they can finally use The Orb of Dragonkind for something afte...
We divide the year into months of ~30 days because that's roughly the period of the moon, adapted to fit a solar year. However, would a civilization living on a world with no moon but a year of ~3...
I need a planetary system for my novel where an Earth-like warm habitable planet has an orbital period of about 650 to 730 days. I know that is similar to Mars and that Mars would be too cold. What...
It's become a popular speculative evolution trope for the likeliest candidate of the mythological "wyvern" to be a Cenozoic family--if not superfamily--of scansoriopterygid dinosaur. Now the first...
Introduction I want my story, set in the modern day, to have a unique architectural feel. Part of my strategy - no skyscrapers. Wikipedia: The term skyscraper was first applied to buildings o...
Ray-finned fishes have a variety of interesting and complex jaw structures. Here is the skeleton of an anglerfish Here is the skull of another actinopterygian I am designing a large (roughly...
lets say this island is an exact copy of the climate and ecosystem of tropical India. how might Neanderthals evolve in order to survive this environment?
Is my planet realistic? It doesn't need to be able to support life as it's just another planet in my solar system, but is a planet with such a high density and gravity really possible? I calculated...
Some 55.8 million years ago, Earth underwent a really dramatic heat wave known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM. What happened, exactly? We don't know how it happened, but we do k...
My non-magic fantasy world has a species of hominid that lives in a huge and wide sierra of mountains. If they had split off from the (now dominant) human species a couple million years ago, (say a...
I recently finished watching one of the Star Wars films, the one that features the sarlaac pit. When I saw it, I began to immediately think how such a thing would evolve. The sarlaac pit is essen...
How long can objects made of hard material last at room temperature in otherwise ideal conditions? If left outdoors on Earth, over the course of millions of years, any material will be eroded by w...
I'm trying to speculate on manipulating things on the level of quarks for a story. What could I do with that type of technology?
Would it be possible for aliens that originated and evolved in a planetary system beyond the ring singularity of a rotating black hole to send individuals out into a normal universe to colonise it?...
This, ladies and gentlemen, is Melalo, described in the Book of Creatures website as "the oldest and most feared of Ana's children." His name literally means "filthy", "dirty" or even "obscene"....
I'm writing creative text and I'm curious to know, just as possibility, can a galaxy by any chance be formed out of a black hole?
The universe is dying because it has exhausted nearly all of its resources. Humans became the last species in the universe because of their resilience and sheer willpower. And yet, humanity still...
My species lives on a world that is filled with very few storms, lush environments, and naturally forming metallic monoliths. The species are like humans, but one thing that sets them apart from hu...
My temple was built near a kaolin surface mine, which is itself topping an old deep mine (where they used to mine radioactive metals, rare earths and possibly other miscellaneous, if need be). This...
