General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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I recently asked about racing in space (The new Space Race - Racing!) and as expected while there were a few options they were mostly pretty limited. However 2012rcampion did suggest that sports i...
We know that planets can have multiple moons, sometimes quite a few (like Jupiter). Assuming that a planet with several moons were habitable in the first place and has significant oceans (greater ...
Is there a plausible makeup for a lifeform which is highly resistant to even very advanced firearms (or any ranged weaponry for that matter), but can be injured more readily (albeit still a major f...
My people are traveling in a generation ship. For some reason they can't make the ship radiation-proof. Their solution: genetically modify their descendants to be radiation proof. How could one mod...
If I have a world where all races are one-foot-tall versions of their typical fantasy counterparts, what would be the most obvious ways this would affect the building style of these cultures? Would...
Carnivorous plants live in nutrient-poor, highly lit habitats, such as bogs or rocks. For example Earth's biggest carnivorous plant, Nepenthes rajah, lives on mountain-tops with high concentration ...
I'm making a fairly hard Sci-Fi story, and I was wondering what the most scientifically plausible 'energy shield' (for ships and stations) would be. My world tries to remain true to basic physics, ...
I am not a writer. I have never written any story and I have no idea of what it takes to get this idea into any meaningful narrative. It's more of a thought experiment for me and I formally give th...
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...
Building from this and this, given an aquatic civilization somehow manages to forge tools and build computers, could it build space-faring devices? Also another development that would come earlier...
Apparently it is theoretically possible for a planet to achieve a stable orbit around the singularity at the centre of a black hole within the event horizon. This means that life could hypothetical...
Could underwater creatures with the intelligence of human cave men or possibly the intelligence of apes create technology (that is, more complex technology comparable to what we have now rather tha...
How would the human body be affected if oxygen levels increased by a lot? Our air is 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen. If it increased to 30% oxygen, what would the effects be and how long would it ta...
If you've read Chronicles of Ancient Darkness, you might get the reference. In that story, the protagonists, after fulfilling their duty, decide to journey over a large mountain chain to explore t...
If a human is kidnapped by an alien vessel and taken to another planet - and, for the sake of argument, let's assume that the alien life-form lives in a completely different environment from Earth'...
I'm doing some background work for a scifi/horror piece, and it includes "orcs", who are just humans that have undergone a series of mutations - the main one being that they no longer produce myost...
Imagine a world (or rather a solar system) where in its history there has been a war with emergent AI's There are very strict laws governing the speed and complexity of computer systems However b...
Question is ultimately asking why would we do this? A few parameters first... Technological: Our current knowledge of physics is correct and there is no such thing as faster than light travel, ...
My world has a huge crater (4400 miles in diameter) on a world that's roughly earth equivalent (so a circumference of 25000 miles). The native population doesn't need to know how it was formed but...
I'm not talking about stuff like radiation and mutations. I'm talking about mechanics (for now). Necessary effects: With superstrength, you can... lift objects weighing many tons without your f...
So there is a Minecraft mod that includes various oreberry bushes. One for gold, one for silver, etc. Now I know that various plants can extract specific minerals in higher quantities that what w...
Questions about how to feed a large population keep popping up on this website quite frequently. One obvious option is farming. But how many people can you feed per square-kilometer of farmland? I...
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...
In a world with humanized (or at least tool using) reptiles, how long would a tattoo be able to last on the scales? Would the tools need to be much different than what we use today? Would it be p...
What is the best method for creating a visual that mimics aerial photography for a fake island. The desired quality is USGS standards for actual aerials, preferably 2 foot aerials. The end product ...
Important note: The orbits in the diagram are elliptical. They have low eccentricity so they appear to be off centre circles but they really are ellipses with the star at a focus. The habitable...
In creating a calendar for a fictional world I'm considering the phases of the moon. I understand our moon has an orbital period of approx. 28 days. Is there room for variation if the planet and th...
(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...
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...
Terraforming is the process of transforming a celestial body to become habitable by Earth-like life. Even when I try to imagine an advanced civilization, the cost, time and complexity to terrafor...
In a fantasy world (a D&D setting, basically), how would an open underwater town populated by an assortment of mer-people deal with waste disposal? A few details: the town in question is a part...
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...
I was wondering if there is a realistic way that one can "travel" to the future, using today's technology. Two scenarios I have thought of: An individual is put under cryogenic freezing and then ...
Imagine someone wanted to divert a specific asteroid to impact the earth. The Current Impact Risks page at nasa.gov shows a list of known impact risks based on observations. Most of these asteroi...
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...
I am currently creating a world from scratch, and while I have a map, I still need to figure out distribution of natural resources. For resources like fossil fuels, while many do appear in deserts...
Assuming interstellar travel, and self-sufficient colonies in other star systems, what are some methods of destroying the Earth while leaving minimal impact on the colonies? Context I would like ...
Suppose a very large planet orbited a star or other spacial body in an oval shaped path, similar to Earth's but closer to induce a varying gravity during orbit. The planet has a large gravity wel...
This question is about big trees that can contain an entire city. So generally speaking: What limits a plant's size, anything from a tree to a flowering plant? What environment needs to exist f...
If a planet had such a large imbalance of protons and electrons that it possessed a net negative or positive charge what would happen to it and its solar system? First, could it be stable, or woul...
With the technologies that we have got, is it possible to completely migrate 1/3rd of the world's population to another planet which has characteristics similar to those of earth ? Possibly it will...
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...
Suppose we have a planetary system in orbit around a Class O hypergiant star of 225 solar masses (larger than all but R136a1, the largest star we currently know of), 32,000 times as bright as our s...
I want to have an upper atmosphere composed of a gas which is lighter than "air" so that my human occupants of a planet can harvest it and use it to fill blimps and hot air balloons. I'm planning ...
We are used to a world where humans are basically an apex predator; we don't really need to worry much about becoming some other animal's next meal. If that wasn't the case, and humans had to be w...
Apologies; it just didn't seem like an appropriate question for Earth Science or Biology. Let me know if I'm incorrect. Maybe Physics? If all the ice, permafrost, ice caps, etc. melted due to glo...
Imagine a world with a very wacky magnetic field, the magnetic poles are not aligned at the top of the axial tilt and the sun is active enough to cause huge northern lights each night. I know elec...
We have already discussed how difficult it would be to blow up a planet like Earth, basically deciding that you can't do that with any reasonable amounts of energy. But what if I don't need to blow...
Let's say that tens of thousands of years pass and earth effectively becomes a giant city. What species of organisms survive our conquest? How do these species evolve to adapt? How long would huma...
Some published settings -- such as the Greyhawk 'verse commonly seen in conjunction with Dungeons & Dragons -- treat the prime planet's host solar system as geocentric. How could this be reconc...
