General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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Set in the immediate future, social network evolves with the advancement of 10G network and a major breakthrough in medicine. Giant tech companies raced to develop state of the art VR technology wh...
I ran across an article briefly describing a woman suffering from Urbach-Wiethe disease (UWd). UWd leaves calcification within the amygdala and in this case subject lost all sense of fear (this cas...
All of a sudden, overnight, abruptly, weather forecast guys go on strikes... everywhere is raining nitric acid non stop so that on average the amount reported is 100mm and the pH level is 3 occasio...
Problem statement There exists a thriving Bronze Age civilization in a gigantic rainforest, bigger than the Amazon and Congo put together. This civilization is built in on the flood plains of a mi...
Recently I have been playing a lot of stellaris, " a strategy game that allows you to control a alien species and advance your way through the galaxy". In the game there is something called "Living...
Premise: Space lab is working on making synthetic cells out of different materials. Experiments are classified as too dangerous to be disposed of with conventional means, and are set on an collis...
I'm considering a story where an exploration is devised to explore a binary system containing a black hole; the choice is Cygnus X-1, with its companion supergiant star HDE 226868. It would likely ...
In our world, a solar eclipse is visible from the planet a few times a year, in certain locations. However, a total solar eclipse that can be seen across the planet generally happens every three or...
Since gamma radiation consists of photons, just like visible light does, albeit on a different frequency, isn't there a plausible way that in, say, 200 years into the future, we could harness the p...
Okay, so, how does magic work? Magic, at the end of the day, is a swarm of tiny machines (hardly visible to the naked eye, but still within the 10-100 micrometer range) that carry out a task. Indi...
I'm looking for a bullet that makes the target explode. A bullet filled with explosives and explodes on impact does not suffice. It has to make the target explode somehow. Currently, my only idea ...
The Scarlet King is an eldritch god formed as the manifestation of the tension between the modern world and the pre-modern world and the rage it creates. Originally it existing as the concept of th...
just looking for a quick accuracy check of my continent's biome/climate map. This continent is on a planet much like Earth and it is about the size of Eurasia. It is situated in the southern hemisp...
I'm my sci-fi setting's history, various hominid species are in competition with each other for dominance of earth and its resources. Among these races are "Halflings" ... okay, not haflings per se...
A recent question here on SE:WB reminded me of a short story I wrote a long time ago, and has inspired me to revisit the idea. The premise: A race of massive alien creatures travel from planet to...
My world is spread across thousands of planets in thousands of star systems, with a sort of United Nations (of Planets) acting as intermediary to ensure peace and prosperity between the planets. E...
My question is more science-based than hard sci-fi. Basically, I'm envisioning a scenario in which technology is advanced enough that life has spread through the solar system, and this mostly via s...
For a certain reason, I needed two habitable similar earth-like planets very close to each other. After various information gathering, I gave up on double planet and gas giant moons, because tidal ...
Is there an example of substances interacting with each other in the following way? A is a lethal substance, killing within minutes to hours when orally ingested; anti-A is an antidote for A (or ...
The moon is made up of a substance called warpstone. This rock is solidified Mana compressed into physical form. Pieces of the moon will sometimes fall to earth, which contain magical properties an...
I have a world where prehistoric humans were kidnapped and transported to another world. This other world is Earth-like, with mammals (also transported from Earth then later diversifying into othe...
Humans have invented a technology that allows for teleportation of matter across any distance. These devices can, in theory, be scaled up to any size, so long as the necessary construction material...
Suppose we used SCP-261, the vending machine that produces anything, and ask for a cup of neutron star. The machine instantaneously produces this. Suppose also that the vending machine is located ...
Ok, to be honest, I don't believe about dragons having a special bladder or organ that stores up gas (especially methane) and having flint-like teeth or whatnot, or even having six limbs. Here's m...
On a planet the same as Earth, with no other sapient creatures, how could a Pteropus evolve sapience?
Let's say that a civilization has access to FTL. Let's say it is instantaneous so travel time between solar systems isn't a factor. How long would it take for them to spread out from their home sol...
I'm working with this alien race that looks and functions essentially like a mammal - skin, muscles, hair, internal bones, large size, etc. - but evolved from an insect or other bug. They're a larg...
What would be the optimal geography for a thriving capital, located in a caldera ? I'm building a fantasy world with multiple intelligent species and civilisations. There is magic in this world, b...
Have a creature from a dream. It's a carbon based humanoid creature partly made of the mineral olivine. Could there be any reason it might contain this mineral? Perhaps a show of health - the more ...
This question is based off videos of octopi running using their tentacles curled under and their body raised from the ground. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23qzi88k3aM I saw this question Anato...
In the anime, called Attack on Titan, the primary antagonists are these huge, humanoid creatures, called titans. Titans have sizes between 15 and 4 meters. Larger titans aren't unknown, but they s...
Tools Tools are the most used thing known to man kind, they help us build, eat, sleep, learn, and much much more. However I've grown to be curious if insects could use tools, so far to my knowledg...
I like to hear the sound of birds when I travel amongst my orbital and planetary habitats scattered around the outer system. Most of these settlements are very densely populated - what you might ...
I am trying to find out if I have thought of the correct anatomy requirements for designing non humanoid alien species. I am designing as many different biological species as I can with the aim of ...
What size and/or mass of impactor would need to impact the moon to destroy its tidal lock so that it's orbit is noticeable within its phases? What side effects would this impactor cause, and how wo...
So, I'm making my first stab at worldbuilding, and I got this idea for a largely water world with only a single continental landmass, a little smaller than Africa in terms of land area, roughly c...
I'll need to give some background to this question. I'm interested in the idea of a densely inhabited star system, and having large exomoons is one way that they can all orbit roughly at the same p...
How fast could run a humanoid being, how much damage could resist, how much weight could lift, how strong could hit, under the indicated evolutionary conditions? is there a limit? I have always tho...
Let's say there's a humanoid species that are essencialy humans but tiny, around 13cm tall. As their vocal chords are smaller they would have high pitched voices, but could that effect be minimized...
Art by Sylvain sarrailh What kind of event would we need to have 1km deep fissures spanning out across the planet. I can work with a hypothetical scenario where the planet might have had some sor...
Let's say that there are some humanoid mammals that can talk like humans, and their voices are about the same (so not really high or low pitched). Some of them have different tongues too, really th...
In this world, women generally live naturally longer lives than men. The typical female lifespan would be 125- 150 years, and a male would be 30-35 years. Our society attributes this to an ancient ...
I'm designing a species of tiny humanoids. They are about 13cm tall. Normally that would make them have very high pitched voices but I want them to be able to also speak in a lower pitch. Siamang...
Here is a big one for you engineering fans to chew on. First off, a little context: The giant robot in question is called Mazinger Z, considered to be fiction's first pilotable mecha, launching t...
"At this very moment we face a threat insurmountable to Man. We are faced with two options. Stay on Earth and die, or leave Earth to space." - UN Preservation Council, CE 2047 Earth, year CE 2047 ...
In my universe, humans were seeded on Earth by an advanced race. They were also seeded on other planets, notably Jupiter, Neptune, Venus, and some others in other star systems. They were given a la...
In the world my friend and I are making, the dark lord makes one of the planets uninhabitable by causing a moon, about the size of our own, to fall on it. About 7000 years later, it is unnaturally ...
In a previous question I asked if a world similar to that envisioned in the Mars of Edgar Rice Burroughs / H G Wells could exist? And if so would canals be a practical way to make the planet habita...
If you were air dropped onto another planet, where multi-cellular non-plant life did not evolve, could you survive on what was only around you? The planet in question is a clone of earth, in almost...
I have an interstellar ship going from earth to a nearby star system using current technology and chemical fuel. The ship has been created and is being managed by a self sufficient android. The an...
