General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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Is it possible to manipulate all artificial satellites(including ISS) and space junks currently in orbit to fall into Earth's atmosphere in one go? (Tech level is late 22nd century science) Note: ...
When you mention livestock you think of creatures such as cows, pigs, sheep, chickens and so on. We've been domesticating animals for like 17,000 years or so and have used them for a variety of mea...
Normally, summers are supposed to be hotter than winters because the axis of the Earth is tilted toward the Sun during the hot season. This mean that the north receive more energy from the Sun, day...
Our omniscient God has decided to intervene for (arguably, if you ask some religious people) the first time at least in a very long time. For matters unknown to us, He has frozen all time on Earth...
Several light-years away, an alien species has just discovered Mars. They deem it a candidate for colonization, so they launch a Voyager-like probe to get a closer look. They have no idea that ther...
EDIT: Question timeframe changed from early XXI to mid-XXI century. Lets say 2040 decade-ish. You are the engineer in charge for the construction of the latest 's stealth suit. It should be the...
This was spawned from this question about Blueshifting (BS) when traveling near the speed of light. I had found this while learning about the other question. @99.99995 percent c And interes...
Similar to the Death Star(s) depicted in Star Wars universe, my question is how do such a massive body move from its orbit around its parent planet across the stellar system or galaxy into the enem...
How can I explain a female adult dragon standing at 30 to 32 meters living on the peaks of a snowy mountain, will dive and swim hundreds of miles into the ocean to hunt for sperm whales and colossa...
I am writing a SF story, in this story, a life-form(You can just call them alien) from another universe comes to earth. They used "imaginary velocity" to make their time elapse faster than all bein...
Is there an energy substance, element, material, natural or artificial resource with attributes such that: When its moved it loses energy. When its intact, untouched and unmoved it contains energy.
Jellyfish is consists mostly water and they live in the ocean, I like to create a world of airborne jellyfish how can I explain the levitating mechanism and evolutionary advantage scientifically?
By psychological effects of alcohol, I mean the effects from 0.060"“0.099 Blood Alcohol Content % by volume (according to this Wikipedia article), but not the physical effects, like alcohol poisoni...
The Gobi Desert is what ecologists call an "interior desert" because it's too far away for water to reach. Now imagine that the Caspian Drainage Basin to the west has experienced a 75-meter rise i...
One of the biggest 'immortality sucks' issues has always been the question of what to do with the new people being born. Without death, a world's limited resources can't keep up with a never endin...
Let's say I have an OCD and I want everything to be perfect. I want all the planets and The sun of our solar system to be equal in size. Apart from that, I want the distance between the orbits to b...
I am wondering, what mechanism would be needed to generate gravity on a space ship in interstellar space, like we see it on Star Trek or Star Wars? What is the most realistic hypothetical way what ...
The inspiration for my question comes from The Great C by Philip K Dick. To summarize, the Great C is a computer that has taken over a large portion of the planet. It uses proxy agents to keep co...
I hope this isn't a stupid question ("just add air"). I would like my intrepid explorers to have drilled through the ice of Europa and into the water without creating a geyser (they plugged the ho...
I was thinking of potential planet explorations, by extremely advanced alien species, through automated drones (or "flying laboratories") scanning and analyzing the planets. (By "extremely advanced...
Is it possible to dissipate a blizzard with a chemical component? Or maybe with a special machine? There are no limits here except that the technology is gunpowder-renaissance-Napoleonic technolog...
Imagine a world so brilliant and yet unthinkable - a habitable Earth-like planet infested with intelligent life attempting to erect a flexible Dyson sphere enveloping two yellow hypergiants. I know...
The question is about what changes would have to be made to an Earth-like planet, in order to increase the density of air and hence make lifting gases more effective. If that is scientifically poss...
I am currently trying to create a very low fantasy setting, with the most scientific plausibility I can, in which, with technology and "human" development being akin to those of Earth's medieval pe...
In my alternate Earths, the plant class Ginkgoopsida has retained its prehistoric diversity, unlike back home, in which only Ginkgo biloba remains. In order for that diversity to be possible in th...
Imagine aliens dropped a small black hole (say, 1% of the moon's mass, so you wouldn't notice the difference in gravitation) into the sun (from the far side of the sun, so nobody on earth can see i...
I'm designing a video game in which players command a small crew of aliens (10-20 of them) who are building an outpost on a planet. They are a bit larger than humans (around 2 meters tall) with abo...
I have some ideas, but I'd like my fictional Roman (100BC) General Mikey (ha) to build a submarine(s). This should be able to navigate in lakes and calm shores of the Mediterranean, succeed in bri...
The highest point in the Ethiopian Highlands is 14,928 feet above sea level. It is here that the Nile River begins its journey to the Mediterranean. If the highlands were instead 21,737 feet abov...
I'm interested in exploring an advanced society where electronic technology and infrastructure were not developed. What plausible natural phenomenon or context would prevent, or at least strongly d...
Suppose a team of explorers touched down on an Earth-like planet which do not generate its own magnetic field and there are always a thick layer of cloud covering the sky at all time. My question i...
Imagine the entire ocean becomes extremely corrosive due to ocean acidification over a couple of decades, all nations have agreed to erect a permanent barrier along all shorelines to seperate land ...
On earth our continents move...real...real slow. This is of course a good thing for sentient life. I am trying to imagine/develop a world where...things move a bit faster...ok a lot faster, but i...
Imagine a sci-fi world where many organic civilizations would have raised and have an empire between many planets and systems. Even if there is some political tensions, they all live in peace toget...
Imagine a big planet, gravity quite strong, 1.5 times earth. Irregular surface, rocky etc... (though flora and fauna will come into it later). It has a very thick atmosphere, drained off by a twin ...
Suppose one fine day a mischievous god decided to eradicate all air molecules on Earth in an instant, my question is what will hapen to the ocean? Please kindly disregard (omit) your concern for li...
Looking at all the movies that involve robots made from materials available from planet earth (think Pacific Rim, Iron Man etc. but not Transformers), what is the theoretical limit of the capabilit...
In a story I mentioned that an AI overlord in 2036 has one of "her" bases in Ethiopia, and now I want to develop that offhand idea into its own story. My AI is equivalent to a very smart human with...
Lake Eyre in Australia has an area of roughly 4,000 square miles, but the basin itself is over 450,000 square miles. If the entire basin were freshwater, how would that affect the Outback's climate?
At 29,029 feet above sea level, Mount Everest has been credited as the tallest mountain on Earth. The only problem is that Mauna Kea, Hawaii's highest point, is 33,500 feet tall from its peak at 4...
For the purposes of this question, lets assume that we are in Edwin Abbott Abbott's Flatland, but the world is a disk, with living shapes Above, and 'dead' shapes Below (the underside of the disk)...
As far as I understand, when you fuse deuterium (H-2) and tritium (h-3), you get a helium atom and a spare neutron. Basically alpha-rays? Now alpha rays are easily blocked by matter. You can block ...
In one of my Alternate Earths, I have made the following changes to Africa: 1) Re-angle the mainland (meaning Madagascar stays right where it is) to the point that the Mediterranean is connected ...
70,000 years ago, Homo sapiens sapiens suffered a genetic bottleneck that reduced the population of likely 100,000 to 3,000. Over seven billion people of several distinctive races are descended fr...
Currently, the distance between Australia and Antarctica is a rough estimate of 4500 miles. But if that number were cut by half, what would Australia's climate and ecology be?
It is said that the Moon plays a significant role on stabilizing the obliquity of Earth (or call it the axial tilt). Without it, the tilt of the planet is subject to great variations causing unpred...
In this world I'm building, a bunch of previously inactive genes in humans have started expressing, and changed newborns' metabolic system dramatically. As a result, a portion of population cannot...
Today's Mediterranean Sea is just a shadow of its former self, the Tethys. In an alternate scenario, I have rearranged the African mainland to an angle that turns Gibraltar from a strait into an i...
I was wondering if planets die after a certain amount of time, perhaps because of decay? If this is the case, how do they die and how long does it take? Do they implode? Explode or perhaps just f...
Consider a planet similar from Earth: very suitable for life, with vegetal and animal life forms thriving onside. I wonder if one of these life forms could raise as a civilization as humans did, i...
