General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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We're a lovely, ethical, near-future population of Earthlings, and prepared to begin terraforming Mars (yes, I went there: set it aside). We have just stumbled on remnants of an alien civilizati...
I would like to have a world on which humans can live unaided -- they can breathe, the climate is workable, they can eat the local vegetation, etc -- but on which a complete day is substantially sh...
I've been interested in binary systems lately, and I was recently wondering what Earth would be like if it was in a binary orbit with another Earth-like planet. Both planets exhibit the following ...
Hanorane (han-or-a-ney) is a moon with a dynamic surface covered in charged sand particles that drift in massive rivers suspended by electrostatic levitation. The only solid ground is the worn an...
Question inspired by movies Minority Report and Her The year is 2050, USA: The future is "realistically optimistic": We, the humans, have steady progress in computers and AI: We use wearable AI, w...
I am trying to build a planetary system with a maximum number of earth/near earth like planets/moons. What would the maximum number of possible earth like planets be? I am assuming that some woul...
In a setting <200 years in the future could airborne military vehicles(fighter-jets), mass-transportation vehicles (planes, buses etc.), and personal vehicles (cars, motorcycles) use something ...
Is it possible that any life on earth could evolve to live off a liquid which is not water? Something like oil or some other natural liquid?
Siberia was formed as a result of a massive hotspot volcano (Siberian Traps) ~250 million years ago (mya) and so was India ~64 mya (Deccan Traps). So, I was working on a random planet generator fo...
I've always been curious whenever I heard the mother wererabbit sings a popular folksong to the young, there is a particular line in the lyric that seems to puzzle me. It goes likes this: "up up a...
Let us assume that we have a moon with a reasonable iron core enough that it can retain atmosphere, (as per this question), now let us further assume that the people who settle on the moon are shor...
It's the year 2050, and you're the planner for a manned mission to Pluto - New New Horizons. The mission will take 5 years round trip, and there are 40 members of the crew. What's the most effici...
In the classic idea of a Tokamak Fusion Reactor, plasma races around an electromagnetic track. Is it plausible to "spin" off some of this rapidly moving plasma and direct it to nozzles for use in...
A top secret organization is planning to introduce a New World Order and replaces every human being (homo sapiens sapiens) with the evolved form of sub species of homo sapiens. Meaning we are sub s...
I've been inspired to ask this question based off of my answer, and the resulting discussion, to this question: Why would a species of intelligent parthenogenetics invent males? However, this is a...
Concerning long term effects of zero gravity on humans living in space compared with those living on super earths with 1.5x to 2x G, how could the gravity differences cause reproductive failure amo...
This is another question pertaining to my super-intelligent humanoids: Assuming that their race successfully developed extremely advanced, easily available prosthetics, while they were morally of ...
What would happen to a planet if it was really massive, like something around the size of the sun (likely made of asteroid materials)? What kind of environment might it have? What would happen to ...
Upon asking this question, I have learned why we can have nuclear powered ships, but not aircraft. The reason is because the shielding needed for the nuclear reactor is simply too heavy for the pow...
This is in my world of balloons and zeppelins, war and peace, day and night. Sleeping may be the least important thing but it is still important. On this world, the day and night cycle is 8.89 of t...
Bioships - biological spaceships - appear in a lot of SF, so I thought I'd have a go. However, in most books they are depicted as more powerful than conventional tech in all and any regard. This ...
Are there any valuable deposits (gold ore, iron ore, silver, copper, gemstones) which are likely to be found in or around excavation sites for building materials like limestone, sandstone, slate or...
By some combination of changes in both the environment, and human biology, humans evolved on Earth in a way that basically makes them 100% unable to alter their minds using traditional methods: A...
In my world, Earth populated the Moon. Even if people are concealed in stations they got to go out from time to time (to explore or repair things that robot can't). My question is: Is it possible...
If we had Full-Body Immersion MMORPGs, how would morale-boosting and morale-lowering skills work for players? By that, I mean, how would the game forcibly make players more or less confident, even ...
As a child, I was always fascinated by the propensity of water going down a drain to form a vortex. I created a world with a global ocean where there was a narrow body of land running north-south...
Bob escaped from his exploding spaceship in the world's most ghetto escape pod - an airtight metal box, with only some respiratory gear ($\text{O}_2$ tank, $\text{CO}_2$ filter) as company. Now he'...
Being on the autism spectrum is often described as a feeling of being on "The Wrong Planet" So I'm wondering what the right planet might be like... For those that are unfamiliar: Social conventi...
(Disclaimer: I tried this question earlier in the scifi site as well as real science sites, and was told should be on topic here) I'm writing a speculative story about aliens coming to earth - and...
Would it be possible to modify a human to be able to survive in space without protective gear? Genetic engineering and cybernetic enhancement are both allowed, although when not in space the perso...
My protagonist, let's call her Alice, must acquire a priceless artifact, located deep inside an ancient temple. If this were a ruin, the exercise would be academic, but the Temple was protected b...
I'm currently working on a world where there are people that live in data bases (basically a computer with no internet connection). They link to a human for life and and can record everything the ...
I have made my billions here in the present day, and I'd like to have a permanent underwater settlement. It is about as useless as the Mars One mission (yes, I went there), but some people may c...
Diamonds are carbon. Plants take in CO2 and use the carbon. Chemically, could the right kind of plant have diamonds for berries, or is there some other limiting factor?
It would be useful for a story I'm working on to color the world or various dominant parts of it red. I'm trying to look into the following alternatives, but am open to further suggestions. Essenti...
I'm picturing a world with a permanent, dark, overcast sky, but I'm wondering how dark it can be before photosynthesis is no longer an option. It looks like there are a good number of plants that ...
A class F star (1.4 times the mass of the sun — it has to go supernova) is expanding into the red giant phrase. Its Earth-like planet, with life on it, has slowly been pushed out of orbit as it exp...
Based on this question I asked a while ago, I would like to know how to safely introduce new heavier elements to the world by asteroids without wiping the entire life and even keeps handy quantity ...
Suppose a planet is covered with floating ice on top of water ocean and has no dry land. Would it be possible to establish permanent settlements, cities? Particularly I am interested in technolog...
Over the course of Homo-sapiens, we have become larger, because of diet & selection. Even in the last couple centuries. Today, we vary across geography and cultures, too, of course. Now it i...
So let's say that an alien civilization that we have made enemies with decides to use an advanced non-lethal biological weapon on the Earth as a warning. The aliens, while not infamous for any tec...
What effect would a crystalline material that is inert under ordinary environmental conditions have on someone if it was injected into their bloodstream? Examples materials include finely pulverize...
This is a multi-tiered question. I have seen these larger questions before, but if I need to separate them out into their own questions let me know. In my story I have a machine that can manipulat...
Water droplet forms from a pool of water and gradually rise or accelerate upward to the sky, my question is how can I explain such an phenomenon in a convincing way? kindly use magic sparingly and ...
What would a human colony on the moon look like? I already asked a prelusive question here about the safest place to start a moon colony but I needed further informations. After some answers, I re...
I have been reading on Wikipedia about cloning and am considering it a possibility for reproduction in my world. I am finding it slightly difficult to find all of the cons and pros associated with ...
I was watching Star Trek, and I thought that the shape of the Enterprise is quite weird. So what do you think a big spaceship like the Enterprise would look like? We assume in this case that the p...
We have been stimulating our brains either for research or to treat illness in people: using a minute electrical current a computer can target a specific region of the brain or a specific neuron to...
I need an advice about creating an independent city (a city state) in the middle of a desert (the stony kind of wasteland). I will scratch what I have in my mind so far and I would be glad to hear ...
Let's say there's an OCEAN planet smaller than Earth but larger than the Moon. The Sun lights on the ocean planet reflecting the water textures onto Earth. Would it be possible to see watery refle...
