General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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Would it be possible for a creature to have a nervous system working at 250 volts? What kind of physiology would it need to sustain that? Could you use that creature as a power source, to power a ...
So, within my setting, I would like to also have a kingdom based in a special desert. Absolutely all of the sand in the desert would be ore sand. Ores of any and all kinds that you could traditiona...
You were born in Rome, when the Roman Republic was still in power. Your father is an upper middle class merchant and you are (or will be) the sole inheritor of his wealth. One day, a m...
Recently, a robot called Philae soft-landed quite safely onto the comet 67P/Churyumov"“Gerasimenko, then shot some photos and got some other interesting information that was sent back to Earth. Thi...
I'm currently designing a world where the inhabitants see the Aurora Borealis on an almost nightly basis almost all the way to the equator. The lights are so strong they rarely see the stars beyond...
I've got an image in my head of a world where it's just normal that the star is black with a golden halo around it - in other words, where the planet is in a state of perpetual solar eclipse. Are ...
(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...
In science fiction a common plot device is for a planet to be surrounded by electromagnetic interference that prevents an orbiting ship from scanning it with sensors or communicating with people on...
If a planet always faces the same side to the sun, so that it has a permanent night side and a permanent day side, it will have a twilight zone in between the two sides. This will be a band around ...
The size of a planet affects its gravity, its climate, and its likelihood of developing life. Earth is large enough for an advanced civilization to develop. A smaller body such as Europa, while a...
Instead of flying say tons of metal and/or water and other raw materials/molecular matter to the Moon or Mars, could we shoot it there in ionized form by accelerating these sufficiently? Maybe sub...
Related: How would a completely urbanized city-planet support its population? How a completely urbanized city-planet be maintained? Why would a completely urbanized city-planet exist? The prope...
I remember a cartoon about some spy guy. In that cartoon they did mass media by projecting from the surface of the earth to the moon in the night sky. Would that technique be possible? Could an e...
I am looking at different ways to destroy a planet. I am assuming the planet is of a similar size and composition to the Earth just to keep things simple. I am starting at boiling the atmosphere t...
Assume a universe depressingly like ours, in which special relativity holds. No hyperspace, no warp drive, no wormholes, and even the limited get-out clauses offered by real world physics either do...
What planetary conditions would have to exist to make computers and other complex electronics useless or at least difficult to maintain? Would ionised atmospheric conditions, constant solar flares...
A ship is sent through a wormhole to an unknown planet to create a sustainable colony. The colonists know that they won't have further contact with their home planet - this is a last ditch effort t...
Supposing we had many thousands of antimatter bombs (they can be detonated in many different locations), how much total antimatter would we need in order to wipe out all humans on Earth? Supposing...
Allright, what i'm asking is how life would be like on Earth (which pretends Earth could develop life in the "short" life of a blue giant) if we had two blue giants in the sky instead of the Sun?
In a future where all cars and public services are self-driving the way, I am assuming traffic congestion would be seriously limited, if not removed completely, because the road network would also ...
Intro and Context (feel free to skip if TL;DR) This question does not come in isolation. It is intrinsically linked with several previous posts (Challenge of Control and Humans as Pets) that have ...
I am working on a survival suspense story, where a sizeable group of surivors is trapped in a tropical island (somewhere in the Ring of Fire) by a volcanic eruption. They find shelter from the erpu...
OK, so scientists have found a great new substance: That substance makes you think ten times as fast! The advantages are obvious. However, as every medicine, this pill will have side effects. Ther...
Fits into the planetary transfer of energy category...for whatever reason and using whatever means, one planet is used to generate a massive amount of energy, ultimately as electricity. This power...
In the world I have been working on my planet has a gelatinous mass of cells coexisting but not a technical single creature. It bridges the gap between single celled and complex and it grows in siz...
What would be the characteristics required to make one region as hot as possible? How hot can it get; Can it be hotter than Dallol? Setting: an earth-like planet with all the same characteristic...
I'm putting together a solar system for a story I'm working on, and in this solar system the most important planet is a particularly large Ice giant and its big moon nestled in the star's habitable...
What minerals can we find in martian soil? Or what rare minerals can we find on our planet and can be placed beneath Mars? How deep, how much, and most important: how precious. I really appreciate ...
I'm trying to figure out if a certain city, with these characteristics, is possible, geographically: Assume the city's the size of Renaissance London... With Renaissance London technology Doesn't...
What if, sometime in the next say 600 years, humanity develops a device capable of manipulating the four fundamental forces in the area around it. (For example, a handheld device could work in a ra...
I'm trying to figure out a way to create a situation much like the apocalypse of Turry from Robotica, but which involves all the people on Earth being either temporarily or permanently strapped int...
Assuming we have a world at the same stage in global warming as the Earth, with all other properties similar (population, carbon emissions, general climate, orbit, etc.) How long will it be until t...
I'd like to tip my hat to this week's fortnightly challenge with this question by revisiting an old one. I asked a question about the Science behind a naturally invisible creature a while ago. At ...
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...
I want to create a world set on our Earth but with humans shrunk down as much as possible to allow a huge population. As the population increases they genetically modify their bodies to be as smal...
For the longest time growing up with Peak Oil and other such dire predictions, I assumed humanity had just about peaked, in terms of industrial-technological might and capacity to influence its env...
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...
See A city to last ten million years: Construction for background. Second question: What would be the best choice of site on the planet's surface? Assume the planet is more or less Earthlike in i...
See A city to last ten million years: Construction for background. Third question on Forevertown: What are the key issues for maintaining the physical infrastructure of a low-tech city over ten m...
Note: This question is a follow up to this question, and hence forms part of a bigger complex of questions about geology and biology in this certain scenario. Meta: The planet consists of two en...
In Sci-fi, space fighters often look like exotic versions of fighter jets: wing shape is often different but the general shape is most of the time kept. However this seems unrealistic: the shape o...
In this question: Where to Anchor My Space Elevator We get a new material: Thanks to the recent discovery of handwavium filaments that can in principle be extruded to any length, we will be ...
*By complex life, I mean something more complex than microorganisms. Something closer to what we have on Earth. Similar to this question: Is it possible for life to evolve on planets without water...
It's typically regarded that life needs liquids of some kind to evolve. But liquid is just a state where molecules can move around freely in order to interact with other molecules instead of being...
TL;DR: I want a society which behaves as a hive. Is it plausible and how to achieve this? The setup: Different planet in our universe. In other words: Normal, physical rules apply, there is no mag...
In Science Fiction we often see the protagonists exploring all sorts of strange new worlds with no apparent discomfort to the variations in gravity. What factors determine how strong the gravity w...
Picture, if you will, four planets sharing the exact same orbit and orbital speed, and separated by exactly same distance from each other. Each planet is the same size and roughly the same gravitat...
If humans didn't exist, what species would populate the earth? Would an animal gain human-like intelligence if humans weren't here? What animal would gain dominance?
Suppose there's a vault secured with a numeric code and a biometric sensor. What technologies and methods could be used to open the vault if a character isn't registered on the system? Here are a ...
Could life survive on a diet of dust or some other substance that is both abundant and that we don't place any value on?
