General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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So if you haven't watched the film, basically there's this one character who suffers from a (fictional) condition referred to as "molecular disequilibrium." As described by the character, it's a co...
Back home, Amphicyonidae (bear-dogs) predated Ursidae by only four million years. While the latter still lives in the form of eight species, the former had been extinct for two-and-a-half million ...
For space-based warfare, would an orbiting satellite which was equipped with a railgun cannon be effective against a ground-based fort, or even an aeroplane, or another type of air transport? This...
A habitat/space harbor ring encircles an ice giant crossing both poles (polar orbit) and rotating to create artificial gravity. Can the ring also precess in synchronization with the planet's year,...
A runner has superpowered legs, allowing him to run extremely fast (as in, each of his legs can "push" the ground very fast.) However, he has two different options for how he should run. Should he ...
The main source of free energy that allowed life on Earth to develop was our sun. It bombards the planet's surface with photons of high energy, which provide activation energy for reactions necessa...
I'm getting into mapmaking, which I enjoy, but some of the specifics of realism still elude me. I know generally how plate tectonics work, but I was hoping to get some help on a specific example. I...
I know that red dwarf stars are dimmer than ours. But I also know that red dwarf stars emit a lot of infrared light, so creatures on a world orbiting it would have eyes that see infrared light. I...
I'm working on creating a planet that is tidally locked to a red dwarf, which is in turn orbiting a main sequence star which is much further away. My idea is that the tidally locked side of the pla...
I was thinking of a situation, in which there is a mass extinction that wipes out all large land animals, and after this mass extinction some of the descendants of modern geckos evolve to fill the ...
As we know, the Earth had one super continent at one point in the history of our planet, which eventually broke apart to become what we have today. Assuming we're talking about a planet near iden...
Duplicate Earth and Moon, where should I put it? This question partly arises from the criticisms of stories that claim a hidden planet obscured by the sun, how it would have been detected and if s...
So, I was recently watching Stargate: Atlantis, and I saw a very interesting concept. In one episode, the villainous Replicators use the stargate network to fire what is essentially a high-powered ...
I'm writing a story where aliens are using humanity like a botnet to do hyper complex calculations - each infested human has a program running in their subconscious brain that does a small part of ...
I was looking at the diagram for a wormhole: A 2D plane is bent and then its ends are pinched together, creating a kind of 3D tunnel representation of what a 2D wormhole would be: This has made m...
Around a rocky planet or small gas giant, could there be a system of rings that follow an elliptical orbit? I have used a gravity simulator (this one) to test it, but the way it handles its particl...
Imagine a spaceship capable of achieving faster than light travel uses several transporters to allow crew members to move around its interior at the constant speed of light. What happens to the cre...
This is a follow up question to my previous question: Rock/Mineral Ore Eating Organism So these things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithoredo They eat limestone. So I thought, what is limestone...
On this planet, there is a nomadic tribe of humans who are the descendants of unwilling colonists from thousands of years prior. They are a nomadic tribe because of the incredibly extreme seasons, ...
What is the cheapest material per ton that one could purchase on our Earth in the 21st century? This could also include the cheapest material per ton to harvest so dirt may seem like the obvious an...
I'm basically searching for an ATP that can be used to supply cells and also have its energy extracted efficiently into a basic form of explosive material (the stronger the better) without a lot of...
So, I'm building this world where most of the lifeforms, for one reason or another, are reptiles. Now, I know there have been reptile dominant periods in Earth's history, so it isn't impossible for...
Real-life octopi can travel outside of water for awhile, but not permanently. My race is amphibious, living underwater primarily, but also coming up onto the surface if their environment becomes to...
i want to make an armor made of liquid, for example like dew accumulate and attached to the person or just dip into water and the water attached/carried on (just example), but it also condense the ...
In my DND world, I've established that there is a substance that has these properties: It is made from a chalky "dust" that can be mined The dust gets mixed with unspecified chemicals to create a...
I am thinking of copying the design of an electric eel to create the horn, however as air is not a good conductor of electricity it cannot discharge any electrical shock unless there is a physical ...
Is it possible in 21st century Earth for someone to create a small super insulated box to store heat like an "anti-freezer" such as putting lava inside the box and the box not being hot to the touc...
I have designed a group of medieval towns located on a valley, all of them connected by a navigable river wich ends on a big waterfall. There are some elevators at the side of the waterfall that co...
In my conworld, the inhabitants have futuristic technology and use armour that is made of primarily wood but will absorb bullet impacts and even armour-piercing rounds. It is cited as being very fi...
I've been wondering about this for a while. Here is the research I've done so far that lead me to ask this question: A planetary ring system is most often formed by the breakup of objects within ...
I have a world (around 3000-3500ad) where human race is spread across various planetary systems - so interstellar travel it's possible. The interstellar travel is possible via a Bussard Ramjet whi...
This question inspired by an answer to my previous question My goal is to identify an external device that can be attached to a person to puppet the person's body. A TENS units can cause a muscl...
I was thinking for ideas for new species for the planet I'm currently worldbuilding, and it occur to me if there could be a species (humanoid) where everyone looked exactly the same, and if this co...
Im creating a world where for whatever reason all power on Earth is gone. Meaning there is no more man-made light. Which also means no more light pollution. Would the night sky revert to its former...
I had an idea for a character that was stuck in a ghost-like state for a length of time after an accident. During this time, they would have very limited ability to interact with the rest of the w...
A race of mine terraforms planets to cater to their need for a higher atmospheric oxygen content of about 45% (They are insect like, who would've imagined), so I was wondering how it would affect a...
SPOILERS FOR ATTACK ON TITAN, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK... Hardening, or Titan hardening is an ability posessed by certain types of titans in the anime Attack on Titan. Since the setting has rifles ...
Using our own Earth and Moon as a template is it possible for a second large body (One quarter to a third of the Moon's Size) drifting close by to be captured in a stable and permanent orbit? ...
Are there bacteria or other types of lifeforms that feed on rocks and other ground minerals? And if there aren't, is it technically possible? It can eat other things but the majority of its diet sh...
How would an alien organism survive on a diet of rocks and mineral ores, and what kind of materials would be the most sufficient? Also, what kind of teeth and evolutionary traits would they possess...
After asking my question about seeing black holes in your path between the stars, I also wondered abut other more mundane objects. Black holes affect large areas of space so even if you didn't get...
In a very large and decadent galactic empire (think of Asimov's foundation empire), a new technology leap allows planet's government bodies to communicate instantaneously across the galaxy. It can ...
How long will a 400 km wide 30 km deep pit (trench or crater) with a relatively shallow (for stability) gradient of slope of 20 degrees from the edge to the surface of the planets crust be expected...
First these are ground effect vehicles, not true aircraft. While Star Trek, Star Wars, Blade Runner, The Jetsons, and every scifi I can think of has "magically hovering" private transportation, I a...
In the Crescian society, on alternate Earth, the nobles have a refined sport of settling disputes with mutual assassination. The unspoken rules are that they must be carried out directly by the no...
For starters, I'll describe what I'm going for with this species (I'll call them White Hairs because, you guessed it, they have white hair) They are humanoid with pale gray skin, tall and pointed, ...
In my world, a group of "lamplighters" seek to turn off unused stars to conserve the energy for later use. This serves a few purposes, but mainly: It delays the heat-death of the Universe to some...
I've got this ferret shaped land creature from a dream that can make its body expand so it looks sorta like a fat sausage with limbs. It sucks in air with its big mouth to expand. It lives on a wor...
By "bryophitic", I mean "non-vascular land plants", being the liverworts and the mosses. (Hornworts are comparative latecomers, so we won't be talking about them.) Without vascular tissues, these...
I have a world that isn't an exact analogue to medieval technology, closer to the late 1700s in terms of culture and agriculture/metallurgy, only without gunpowder. I have them ahead of real histor...
