General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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My setting has a lush rainforest planet, which houses some of the most feared animals in the galaxy. The abundance of food would make competition tougher and tougher over millions of years of adapt...
This is based on: Black Hole as a Storage Device What goes into a black hole doesn't come out (except as random electrons or positrons). However, is it possible to store something within the eve...
I was wondering if there is a way to have a person with added organs and systems to be able to shoot jets of compressed air out of their body without them needing a giant gas bag or massive lungs? ...
What materials and what shapes should be used for struts inside a vacuum airship's envelope? The vacuum airship is a theoretical dirigible design were you replace the hydrogen/ other lifting gas w...
I recently heard that before anyone had begun to build practical aircraft of any kind, it was thought by some that once flight was achieved you would be able to simply fly to another planet. The d...
In my world there are ''angels'' which have 4ft long wings and can't fly. As of late, these 'angels' have been hunt down and they must hide. How can a winged human hide their wings?
One of the Stack Exchange's most popular topics is remaking mythological and fantastical creatures with realistic, believable anatomy. Usually, the answers go that for an angel's anatomy to be bel...
There are two different varieties of angels"”the naked, long-distance flier and the feathered, short-distance glider (The Four-Winged Angel). But both varieties have the following anatomical featu...
As part II of anatomically correct myths here we have the Angel. Angels appear in many cultures and are most commonly seen as simply winged humans. Is there a realistic way that angels could evolve...
The question about a diet of dust brought up a few creatures that survive on dust, however they were all insect-sized or smaller. This got me thinking about the Blue Whale, which survives on a diet...
I'm interested that some ULF (ultra-low frequencies, especially the 17 HZ zone) can cause humans to experience sensations of fear, trembling, or even claims of seeing ghostly apparitions. What an i...
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...
If an Earth-like planet had an older, red sun "” or maybe just a reddish sky due to some property of the atmosphere "” how would that affect the growth and/or adaptation of plant and animal life on...
Start: Normal planet, very similar to Earth. The main difference is that the continents are placed differently. Magic could play a role in the formation of mountains but I prefer a scientific ex...
So, I've heard that while Alcubierre drives might present a semi-plausible way of getting around the light speed limit (if you can get ahold of negative energy), they do so at the expense of creati...
Using the modern technology, is it possible to have a suit which will allow to run at Mach 12 (~4km / s)? For simplicity let's ignore the landscape issues (i.e. "what happens if I run into a buildi...
Chainsaws in games and films are an epitome of gruesome dismemberment. In Zombie attacks they are used to cut through cloth and flesh while in games they can dismember if not cut from skull to groi...
Could humanity move a planet such as Jupiter by forcing it to vent its gas? Assuming we have the technology to do huge mining operations and use these to make some of Jupiter's moons into a huge t...
Let's assume some things: The ground under the object is flat land. The object always remains in the same position. The object is clearly visible from the ground. It is a high priority for the pe...
Related previous question. How would sleep cycles work on planets with day-night cycles greater than 48 hours or less than 6 hours? This part is primarily for wildlife that evolved there. Native ...
If humans could travel to Jupiter, what ways would we have to adapt to the high levels of gravity? Would your blood flow to your legs and kill you from lack of oxygen in the brain? Would you get f...
NOTE: I previously asked the same question regarding wheels, because I thought that the answers would still help me and that wheels were more applicable to a wider audience than propellers. However...
In Game of Thrones the Targaryen family had special heritage allowing them to ride their iconic beasts of war. I want to ground this in reality. Is there a way for heritable trait to allow you to b...
All our mammalian friends are replaced by domesticated giant insects! Man's best friend are now dog-sized hissing cockroaches, fireflies are lighting our houses and harvestmen are used for transpor...
Looking most specifically regarding the moons around Saturn, Jupiter, and Uranus. I've been unable to get a concrete answer on this through various sources. I've actually read several articles brie...
In my novel, the many moons of Jupiter and Saturn have been colonized, but I'm running into some logistical problems - namely, waste disposal. My first instinct was to dump it on-moon; while this ...
I'd just like to preface this with the fact that I'm super new and I apologise if this has been discussed in some way previously (I have looked at similar topics but they haven't quite given me the...
I am building a sci-fi universe where humans have colonized the moons of Jupiter. They are very small and thus have low gravity. In fact, some of them have gravity equal to less than 5% of Earth. ...
The Hegemony is in need of superconductors for their fleets of stratospheric craft (stratocraft for short) as well as many, many, many other applications. I recently read metallic hydrogen is a the...
"The planet moves." Inspired by this link in a comment from Gryphon here, I also see the concept in this question. We've colonized the moons of Jupiter adjusted their orbits to our satisfaction (...
Once the technology is ready to reach and set up a base in Mars (perhaps 10 years if SpaceX expectations come true) could it be possible to build a route among the asteroids to reach Jupiter's moon...
What would make a good propulsion source for small engines and manouvering thrusters for spacecraft vehicles on Europa (moon of Jupiter), both for near-surface operations (vacuum) and in caves bene...
Perhaps you've flown in a plane on an especially cloudy day when all you can see are clouds beneath and above you. It's a beautiful sight, strata'd white all around. So what if the plane were flyin...
Suppose that both Earth and Mars was booming with life in a similar way. Except that, on Earth, there was no hominid family, and no humans evolved. Instead, humans evolved on Mars. Assuming we ha...
Merfolk are one of the major species in my book. However, unlike in most depictions, they're fully mammalian and lack gills. Because of this, they need to breathe air, but I still wanted them to be...
This planet orbits a larger planet, which then orbits a binary solar system. Is there a way - based on the tilt of a planetary axis or the positioning of the planet in relation to its mother planet...
I was considering this answer I wrote: https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/21374/75 It got me to wondering... if we had a flying sailing ship with a twisted-rubber energy storage device that...
I'm providing an interesting twist on the Anatomically Correct series by focusing on a single body part instead of an entire organism. The following image depicts the average range of the cones ...
Most aliens tend to be humans with bumpy foreheads and/or pointy ears. Even when they do have differences then usually it is an entire species being portrayed as a particular brand of human. For ex...
I put a force field dome over my city. How would that affect the weather inside the city, and outside it? Specification of the city: 10 × 40 km on the surface 1 km in height dome would be 2 to ...
Maelstroms are ginormous whirlpools. They can exist continuously in an area. They're cool. The question is, how large can they get? As large as an island? Could a maelstrom have a diameter of 60 o...
I'm starting a story taking place around 2080 AD/CE, and I'm wondering if the key element - global pollution - is plausible. In my storyline, the XXIst century brings no huge technological advance...
While working on some local geography in my world, I came upon these wonderful formations called volcanic plugs and crag and tails, and decided I wished to incorporate them into the land. My insec...
This is a reality check: I want a planet with huge forests and a relatively (to Earth) high level of CO2, but I also want there to be very large areas of grassland, (savannahs) where we naturally e...
If there were people with wings, who didn't want to be naked all the time, what clothing could they wear, without it interfering with their flying? Note: I am assuming arm-wings, like birds, but y...
So, I was watching a funny movie about undead pirates when the realization hit me, I never once tried to create naval superiority for my Mary Sue. Well, guess I just do it now. Titanic 2: (n)Ice t...
Imagine a small planet, rich with iron, but with a negligible atmosphere, mostly devoid of oxygen. Once harvested, how could iron ore be smelted and refined into iron? And would the ore itself be d...
On the Earth, with our atmosphere, even small objects entering the atmosphere such as Tunguska or Chelyabinsk can do devastating damage due to the shock-wave travelling through the air. People coul...
We're in the United States, sometime in the next few years. Through a series of circumstances, a viral outbreak occurs in the country. For the sake of detail, this is how it happens: A scientific...
I recently watched Wifi Ralph. There is a scene where Disney princesses teach Vanellope a mechanism that allows her to unlock the wonderful, magical power of diegetic music. Didn't want to r...
