General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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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...
What would happen if a powerful explosive went off in the core of a planet? On Earth, you have several layers of the planet, the crust, the magma, the outer core, and the inner core. Right now, hu...
Is there any feasible way to create a long-term sustainable habitat on the sun? My target region for habitation is the temperature minimum at the bottom of the solar atmosphere. Metals would have ...
Suppose there's a planet that has similar characteristics of Earth and can provide life, suddenly shatters in many pieces and scattered over the system. A small but very dense object is attached in...
You see this in quite a bunch of movies / books (think avatar). What could be a reasoned physical explanation of such phenomenon? Would this explanation impact other things on a planet? Like most...
Assuming that all Equidae went extinct at around the same time as the American Equidae on OTL (Original TimeLine) Earth, 8000 BCE, and in the same way, via Ice Age... What would have changed for ea...
Are there scientists currently, who could describe their specialization as "xenobiologist" or are they merely a thing of science-fiction? Assuming an alien is discovered today, and willing to coope...
According to this Reddit conversation, the detritus around a planet tends to form into a single plane located around the equator given enough time. How long does this process take? Suppose a planet...
In a civilisation similar to humans (although not necessarily humanoid) living on a planet the size of Earth, could the whole civilisation (no limits on size, although I was thinking a few thousand...
Imagine the speed of light is 100 times that in our universe. Light from the moon takes about 1/100th of a second, the sunlight reaches our eyes in about 4 seconds, from nearby Alpha Centauri in ab...
Edit: In the scenario that the temperature of a given area increases constantly over 30 million years (slowly enough for species to adapt) starting at 20°C and ending at 90°C, what are the possib...
So we harness energy from the sun using beams, right? Well what if we were to harness energy coming off the moon the same way? For those long winter months when the sun is rare we could use this to...
I want to be able to apply tools or methodologies to help ensure consistency in my world. For example: Burning world Imagine a planet with a land mass around the equator on which a great fire rag...
If two (or more) planets are within travel distance from each other and they often trade with each other, how likely is it that these planets cultures influence(d) each other? For example: On plan...
One way, I think, is if the gravity is exactly correct. However, while I think the water might be in a unstable equilibrium, I have been unable to work out the mathematics. Let's assume that such a...
Ligers tend to grow to near 1200 lbs (550 kg). As if that weren't bad enough, that mad tree-hugger xenobiologist, Deirdre Skye, grafted just enough human-derived genetic material to make them a hec...
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...
Imagine that humankind finally takes wing and reaches out into the heavens to claim its vast cosmic birthright ... ... only to find that a previous wave of dinosaurs from Earth, who left ~65 milli...
Can we harvest the fission energy inside of Earth and produce a energy beam powerful enough to destroy Near Earth Object such as an asteroid? Is this technology probable in the next couple of centu...
In this question, the most "realistic" idea is to have the human have an oxygen tank strapped to his back and connected to his nose at all times (preferably through a mask of some sort). However, t...
Let us consider two persons who can feel what the other senses and know what the other thinks. Now do these two persons have a common or single consciousness?If so,will it do good, if we succeed to...
I know that with a vacuum, you'll be able to gain a whole lot more lift than with any gas. I'm just wondering how you'd do it. What would be needed to make a vacuum balloon as opposed to a hot-air ...
Consider a dual-star system, with the distances between S (larger star) and J (smaller star) similar to Sun"“Jupiter. A planet P rotates around J on a 90-degree ecliptic and is Earth-like otherwise...
Suppose we have a civilisation which is made up of many creatures sharing a single hive mind. Each creature can see, hear and remember what each other member of the species (or possibly hive) has s...
I know the idea seems a bit far fetched but it's something I believe is common is science fiction and fantasy stories. I remember the talking trees of Zelda: Ocarina of time and of course, Tolkien'...
A quite common idea to provide "gravitation" in space stations is to make them rotate, so the centrifugal force gives an effective gravitation. A possible design is a ring-shaped space station. No...
*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...
Near the beginning of my story, my main character loses an arm, and is going to get a prosthetic replacement. I've done some research on prosthetic limbs, and as one might expect, you're not good ...
The situation I'm considering is as follows: A space ship (a transport ship operated by two people) crashes onto a planet on which a swing-by was planned. The crew could escape using an escape cap...
In a new self-sufficient human colony, what are the minimum requirements of the local environment (i.e. what resources would it need) for long-term survival? Let's suppose that the colony land on...
Imagine a child of mixed race, one parent is human and one is an alien who has some ability humans do not have, for the sake of argument telepathy. I'm assuming there is some advanced medical assis...
I heard that some scientists placed chickens under 2.5g for 6 months, and they survived. A normal human would black out at 5g. A trained astronaut could take up to 8g before blacking out. 20g woul...
Would it be possible to raise a piece of land (say the size of Texas or France) from the bottom of an ocean (say, the middle of the South Pacific)? More specifically, would it be possible (given th...
The Premise The Earth rotates on its own axis, which is tilted by about 23 degrees. The setting for my fantasy novel is an earth like planet without the axial tilt, all other factors remaining co...
First off, let's get definitions out of the way: A "race" here is defined as stable, heritable, phenotypic, clearly visual distinction between large demographic groups living in different geograph...
In relation to this question, how could I create a force field dome over that city? Specifications of the city: 10 x 40 km on the surface 1 km in height has a city wall of 100 m all around the ...
Ignoring, for the sake of this question, how exactly the gravitational fields required for this to work are generated: The question Our stalwart adventurers have a spaceship, perhaps a gateship, ...
Humans (even programmers :-) ) are used to having some access to natural light, but in a colony in space, on the dark side of a tidally-locked planet, or underground (for example) this won't happen...
This question was stimulated by the question How would an aquatic race develop computers?. The answers obviously were based on the aquatic civilization being earth based, but what about a totally ...
In many stories we hear about people whose genetic structure is modified after they're born (Spider-man, The Fantastic 4 and practically any other superhero you care to mention). However current sc...
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...
I was reading this question and realized that I didn't actually know enough to give the answer that I wanted. Obviously in the near term, all our raw materials come from the Earth. The only oth...
A frog has already been levitated without any magnetic object attached to it. I'm wondering if it's possible to reverse this for transportation purposes, by having a vehicle levitate itself using m...
This question is inspired by book The Day of the triffids and this question Russia and USA have never been really "friends", lets admit it. So we will not be surprised, that one of them (pick your...
In this question, I asked about a universe with (amongst other things) 4 large spatial dimensions. In 3 dimensions, we have the familiar periodic table with its familiar arrangement of atoms in th...
I'm wondering what types of firearms would be impacted if explosives and combustion in general were to have a random chance of being more potent or less potent. Could new firearms and/or ammunition...
Virtually all animals on earth ranging from insects through to swimmers, fliers, mammals and reptiles, have a symmetrical body plan. In other words legs and wings come in pairs, as do most sensory ...
In many Science Fiction books and games, there are worlds or planet-like objects that are rings that orbit (or float around in space) (some examples being the Halo (from Halo) or the Ringworld (fro...
Assume we have an Earth-like environment. If a tribe with only early medieval technology were to settle in a mountain environment: What resources would be needed to deal with the elevation, co...
What would happen if an extremely advanced race removed the metal (everything beyond H and He) from a star. Would the star still function? Would it change in appearance or properties at all?
