General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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I have a fictional technology in my world that involves being able to create "tubes of compressed space" -- essentially, you have two stations and a (straight or curved) line of space between them ...
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...
We all know about how the aliens in War of the Worlds were killed by the common cold, but how susceptible would aliens really be to human diseases? In my story, I have an alien species living amo...
Is there a way to make a planet invisible naturaly? I dont want the entire thing to be clear, but have a natural "field" or something that prevents the planet from being seen (or makes it much hard...
Most science fiction stories has humans building large domes on the surface of planets like Mars or the Moon. But wouldn't it make more logistical sense to dig down and build down into the planet?...
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 ...
Recurringly in Sci-Fi spaceships manage to make it to lightspeed and above. Is there a scientifically plausible explanation of such capacity? How does it impact the spaceship's design and its passe...
The Hydra is a mythical creature with the ability the regrow severed limbs, including the head(s). According to the dungeon and dragon 3.5 version of the hydra : each time one limb is separated fro...
So, just read a good number of the answers over at Is a jet dragon possible?, and it seems that a jet dragon doesn't make much sense due to supersonic flight pre-jet engine being required. Rocket ...
This question is related to the following question on whether complex life is possible without oxygen but is not a duplicate. I was doing some searching and found this and this link, the first on w...
Suppose the universe contained a species of planet sized turtles1 that can travers at least interstellar space. How can I explain (without invoking magic) that these turtles are not spherical? If ...
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...
I am creating a fantasy world where a given race is mystically tied to the planet. Predominately this race will be earth-dwellers, quite happy and content to burrow underground, but I'd like some o...
In my reading of sci-fi I came across a fascinating concept: an alien race called the Chromatics that had a partially photonic nervous system. They were described as having very fast reflexes. Now ...
If humans were to vanish completely from the Earth rapture-style, other primates would possibly slowly evolve and eventually take our place (in a few million years?), since they have both the basic...
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...
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...
What physical attributes of atmosphere and flora could cause clouds to form on a regular basis below the canopy of a forest between one-fourth and one-half the height of the forest, without impacti...
What could drive a human civilization to use base-12 system? As far as I know there have been such civilizations and they probably used their phalanges to count (instead of their fingers). I have f...
TL;DR then scroll down, genius This question is set in a planet with a human population, about the size of Earth with earth-like formations, that has appropriate lifeforms to the conditions follow...
Guns, Germs and Steel is a very thought-provoking book. One of it's theorems is that certain cultures - largely due to geographical reasons - were incapable of getting past certain technological a...
Let's say you were living on a planet near (but not too near) a black hole. I'm thinking of the planet Miller in the movie Interstellar. Obviously there are some strong tidal forces. But at this d...
I am interested of a fictional future world where people can walk into a bar, order a drink with the flavors they want, and as that drink flows through their system, their DNA is modified. An exam...
I've been thinking about a cyberpunk universe where nanobots are a universal force capable of achieving many things, examples include: Biological and medical modifications of the human body Const...
I recently wrote a silly little flash fiction piece in which some party-goers go hide in a bunker under an apartment building in NYC because of a "megablizzard." In said silly flash fiction, I buri...
Would it be possible for the atmosphere of a planet to reach beyond its planetary ring so that earth-like biology could develop on some of the asteroids there? This question is mainly about whethe...
I define "Venusian world" to be high pressure, thick atmosphere, and high temperatures. Assume the atmosphere is similar to Venus, but whatever gets the same effect and supports life is fine. I'm ...
So an amazing thing happens and we locate an Earth-like planet and we also achieve the technology that enables us to travel there. Upon arrival we discover that dinosaurs are roaming on the entire ...
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...
In a relationship between two species, could a certain relationship become harmful to both involved species? Keep in mind, I am looking for a relationship between two species, preferably of the ki...
So I've been trying to create a world and I've been planning on the continents being drowned out almost completely in water from a terrible tsunami, storm, earthquake or an act of one the gods or s...
Could one construct a statue out of materials that could be made to move in controlled or semi-controlled ways? The question is essentially can one make a robot without the internal mechanics? I'm ...
Looking at the recent questions on dragons and aviation bureaucracy has got me thinking about some animals I could include in my story. I want these animals to be jet powered. One of the answers 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 ...
I have had some time to ponder my previous question, and here's what I came up with. You take your freshly baked AI (or your destructively uploaded human), and put it in a box$^1$. As far as it c...
The idea of knocking a satellite out of its orbit is common in fiction, but what does it actually mean.
This is the second question in my Arctic Airships series of questions. The first one is Arctic Airships, Part 1 - Generating Electricity. The setting is outlined in Part 1, but I'll rehash the pre...
On earth, we use a simple but effective coordinate system which determines position unambiguously on the surface (GPS achieving accuracy within 1 meter, which speaking as an engineer, is a remarkab...
What ethical/legal implications would there be if we invented a technology to make it possible to communicate intelligibly with some (or all) animals? The constraints on this technology would mak...
First see this great answer on considerations when making a calendar. Consider a human colony on our own moon. Let's assume that the colony is influenced by the Gregorian calendar. Let's suppose t...
I was wondering what would happen if you attach 2 Huge ion engines(I mean really really really huge) to planet earth. They should be attached on the north and south poles. Are 2 huge ion engines ...
So imagine this scenario: Sapience (which I define as Human-like intelligence or better) is a relatively common occurence once a life-form is on a specific brain-arms-race path like Hominins have ...
it's me again :) With the help of the fine people of this place I have been able to find solution for a number of problems and come up with compelling technologies. One question keep bugging me, ...
When viewed from their planet, are moons always the same colour as ours? Or is there a variation? What other colours might be possible and what causes the differences in colour?
There is this setup that I've seen a few times of a ring-shaped world where people live on the inner side. My question is: what is the minimum advancement of technology for such a thing to happen? ...
If a planet existed in an orbit where the asteroid belt is, would the orbits of all the planets be stable, and what would the climates be like on these planets? Assuming there could be a planet in...
I'm interested in knowing if in terms of cost/efficiency/quality would be better to grow crops(food) in Earth and then sending it to space habitats on orbit, or would it be better to grow them in t...
If some advanced race were to make a solid opaque shell around our Sun, say around Mercury's orbit, something like a Dyson Sphere, how long would it take for Earth to freeze over and end most life?
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?
A Dyson Laser would be a spherical swarm megastructure arrangement of robots focusing mirrors directing sunlight towards a particular planet in a system heating it with enough energy to melt it. T...
