General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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Saturn has rings of debris which orbit it, and it is possible to get a satellite into an orbit that will at least last a few years, so my question is as follows; How many satellites (or just the pu...
Silicon is the main material used in both computers and solar panels. Sand is silicon. Deserts have a lot of sand and sun. This may be an oversimplified way of looking at things, but could we cr...
I was answering this question about how a living planet-organism could be possible, and realized I didn't know how such a planet-organism could produce a magnetic field. I postulated that it could ...
My VR machine isn't the plug-it-to-your-brain type, but instead it's more like a "reality sphere" around your body that have some kind of gravity machine to keep you in the center of the sphere and...
Long ago, I made a post with a scenario on how planet Earth would be affected if our moon were the size of Mars. But I've decided that it be more reasonable if our moon were closer in size to Tita...
Say a snake-person was between fifteen and eighteen feet long on average (this includes the "human" part of the body). That's around the length of an anaconda, but I imagine it would have to be thi...
I was looking through a bunch of different ways we can shape a map of the Earth and it got me thinking. We map out planet as a stretched rectangle with NSEW as Up Down Right Left, with the Equator ...
I recently came across a few examples of a "quantum slime" entity, namely from Starfinder and Slime Rancher, that has the ability to make copies of itself via quantum superposition, and then cause ...
Thermal energy is everywhere on earth. If it could be transferred into electrical energy it could serve as a great energy source. This idea is violating the laws of thermodynamics. But it's not ...
I like to have a concept of an engine that spaceships can use to lift off (and land) from/on a planet (regardless of it having an atmosphere or not) with the following constraints: It should be s...
On Earth, while birds and reptiles can be quite brightly colored, it's rare for mammals to have any bright colors, and the rare times they do, it's either just slightly different (like with orangut...
So, once there was a war between the titans and the gods. In the end, the gods' leader, Anon, found a way to permanently remove the titans from the world, but the victory extracted a terrible price...
Why might a species advanced enough to develop genetic engineering start a process by which their own genes, over hundreds of years, would get edited back to resemble their more primitive ancestors...
In the story I'm working on, a rift in space time opened up between our world and a layer of oxygen in a gas giant at some point in the past. Eons earlier, a species of fish symbiotically linked wi...
I am working on a super-earth, about 1.5 more massive than Earth. On this planet, there's a large variety of megafauna and flora across the world. The biggest trees over there can grow to be 36 met...
They say all is fair in love and war. When we plan to invade our enemy's planet, we don't want fair. We want to strike them while they're down. We infiltrated sleeper agents in key points of their ...
as the title, is there a way to levitate entire body of water in earth and make it stay in the sky (not cloud and still in liquid form) ? either natural or man made. the water either flowing or c...
Dear top secret science network, Humanity was visited by visitors from another universe altogether (one which doesn't obey our laws of physics) - the D'jini. A diplomatic convoy of them apperead o...
Our world is surrounded by a metaphysical barrier that separates us from other dimensions and the things which inhabit them. This barrier is made up of 7 layers, with the last one being the closest...
I am curious that if there were a gas giant sitting close to a red dwarf with an Earth-like satellite orbiting it: How could we determine the way the planet appears in the sky and the way it i...
I've got a lunar colony that was set up to be self-sustaining before a collapse of life on Earth. The colony has survived on its own for several thousand years through a period of technological reg...
In my story, I need a spaceplane, that is, a shuttle which can fly in an atmosphere as well as in space. It needs to be able to land from space, and then take off and go to space without refuelling...
Goal: Just imaging a Star Wars X-Wing fight, and you've got the idea. However, I want to know whether something like that is possible without tons of metaphysical hand-waiving and 'just because'. ...
I'm trying to not delve too into the sciences so as to keep things fairly suitable for a space opera setting, but I'm trying to figure a few things to a reasonable degree of detail. My question he...
Essentially I'm looking for a plausible way that a planet could have odd, extreme seasons. Basically I'm wondering how (or if) a planet could work that has a week long day during the summer and a w...
In this new fantasy setting I'm building, then after getting the tectonic plates and their movements covered, I've found that the land would be very mountainous, plus numerous valleys, and the isla...
How plausible is a six-limbed flying animal roughly the size of hatzegopteryx to be aerial? In this case, an aerial animal will be defined as a creature that solely inhabits the sky. I will call t...
Part of the Anatomically Correct series of questions. Due to the nature of Superman having so many different powers, I wanted to focus specifically on one aspect of his character: the ability to...
Imagine a species one foot tall that has a relatively large brain for its size. The species has human like intelligence and in principle the ability to build anything that we could. It lives on a w...
The other side of this question can be found here: How to use heavier soldiers Imagine if tomorrow we find a way to create soldiers that are almost exactly the same in every single way as our curr...
Many mythological creatures have a popularity secondary only to the dragon (the one true global force.) Among them is the griffin, a half-bird-half-cat cut-and-paste. Now, in an alternate Earth, ...
I am interested in events that would so radically change Earth (for the worse) that it would be near uninhabitable for humans. The event may or may not be deadly to humans, but the world it leaves...
Working on a story right now where parasite-controlled humans essentially become the apex predators in the world, and harvest uninfected humans to further spread the organism. These kinds of mind-...
The other side of this question can be found here: How to use lighter soldiers Imagine that tomorrow we invent a way to create soldiers that are almost the exact same in every single way as our cu...
Energy released in an exothermic reaction depends on bond energies of reactants and products. Since molecular bonds are electric in nature, at the first glance, increasing Coulomb's force should in...
what are some ways to store largish amounts of information mechanically? What would a mechanical computer use for memory storage if it was entirely mechanical? edit: guys why is this downvoted? I ...
So, the setup. For the purpose of this question, there's no difference between a wormhole, stargate or teleporter. They all do the same thing - move an object instantly over space. Because I've ...
When one thinks of a shelled cephalopod, odds are high that the first thing to come to mind are the ammonites. They were one of evolution's success stories, thriving from 400 to 66 million years a...
Let's say we have a species of plant, that, for whatever reason, only wants to be pollenated by female pollinators. Maybe this gives some advantage to the plant and/or pollinator. Why would a plan...
I'm thinking about a device (in a story I'm writing) that could control ocean currents, and I'm wondering how it could be weaponized. For example, if an ocean current was suddenly stopped, what mig...
So it seems that the Nuclear Handgun, Powergun and Absorbic Bomb have all been busted, but this one might be more interesting, Larry Niven's Wunderland Treatymaker. Description of how the weapon (...
We have a question that covers what would happen if the world didn't have any wind. What I want to know is how we would get there in the first place. Given that we aren't using any magic, what woul...
The aliens in question aren't of a hive mind in the strictest sense (instead of many drones answering to a leadership caste each organism acts as one cell, all of them are essentially 'the same ran...
This is completely ignoring the fact that lifeforms that aren't based on carbon are entirely hypothetical. Could these lifeforms breathe oxygen like us, or would they need to use some sort of techn...
Here on earth, it takes about 90,000 years for major ice sheets to build up, and another 10,000 for them to collapse, resulting in 100,000 year cycles of major glaciation, from what I understand. ...
The setting I have in mind is an Earth-similar planet which has most of its landmass covered in forests. A civil conflict on this planet ingnites forests fires, which then spread. I was wondering i...
as the title, what materials or ingredients in modern gunpowder that if change to be expensive or rare to get, can ruin the evolution of advance gun or can turn modern gun obsolete or undesirable ?...
I'm working on a version of wormhole-based FTL travel, and one of the side effects of passing through the wormhole is going to be instantaneous heating of every molecule of the thing passing throug...
I know that this would, perhaps, be biologically impossible, but suppose it's possible, how would such person see? I know that cats have a vertical adjustable pupil and goats have a horizontal one...
It's 2016, but for some reason, the Cold War never ended. You've been inspired by your (for some inexplicable reason) favorite movie, Indiana Jones 4, to start a new business: building refrigerator...
