General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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If your ship just got trapped inside the event horizon of an super massive black hole, could the ship "accelerate" back out with an alcubierre drive?
I'm trying to build a super Earth that's capable of sustaining human life for space exploration in a way that's close to reality. So far I'm lacking some understanding of planetary science and huma...
Carbon monoxide (CO) is a colorless, odorless, and tasteless flammable gas that is slightly less dense than air. So begins Wikipedia's article on carbon monoxide (CO). To the best of my inte...
I've begun the laborious (but fun!) process of putting another world together. Known constraints include: Habitable, (super-)Earth-sized, tidally-locked moon to a gas giant; the giant, where vis...
I'm trying to create a planet with a hot desert north and south pole but a cold equator. Is this possible? and if so how? And if it's heavily related to space how would night and day work on this p...
In my story people are traveling from somewhere beyond the opposite side of the galaxy to Earth. The distance traveled is approximately 66 million light-years. I would like the travelers to exper...
I wanna build a habitable desertworld which is a gas giant moon. The desired and already semi-fixed parameters are: mass between 0.4 and 0.25 Earth-masses only 10 to 30 percent global ocean cover...
A space ship travels (almost) at the speed of light. When it nearly reaches its destination it starts decreasing the speed. What would be the most appropriate deceleration for human body in such co...
Is it possible, due to asteroid mining activities, for a space-fairing civilization to produce a dust ring around a very large asteroid (Ceres)? In my world, there is a lot of ore processing being...
I've been thinking about dwarfs and their depiction in classical fantasy for while now and concluded that I find it unrealistic and lazy. Some research showed me that the current fantasy dwarfs hav...
Let's say we have an Earth-sized planet and the same general solar activity and climatology. However, the continents are much smaller, and it's effectively impossible to accomplish travel between t...
Suppose you have a 2+1 dimensional universe where the physics of that universe (we'll assume that the physics causes something similar to chemistry and that there is no gravity, but there is specia...
I know that someone has asked how chemistry would be in four dimensions but I was wondering what would chemistry be like in two dimensions? From what I understand, in two dimensions, particles, ins...
I am thinking about a game where people will shoot out in space, with different features. However, an integral part of the game is no spraying/spamming bullets. I don't want to have it in a fantasy...
Part of my story will be set on a planet where a culture similar to that of the Old West has arisen - cowboys, frontier towns, homesteaders, etc. In order to make this development more plausible, I...
I'm working on a world with a mild but near constant winter. This weather pattern moves down the latitude and causes deep snows and some ice at worst in the mountains to heavy monsoons in tropic re...
The ISS uses port and starboard to differentiate between the two sides of the station. (The Harmony node photographed after it was attached to its temporary location on the International Space St...
If a great division occurs, sealing two warring cultures apart for many generations, my only explanation so far is a tectonic shift. I imagine water flooding between a long split. But as I understa...
Some fish mouthbrood. Some amphibians mouthbrood. Crocodilians carry their babies in their mouths to water. Is there a reason why there are no instances (that I know of) of terrestrial animals that...
Let's assume that for whatever strange -- probably magical -- reason, the Moon was suddenly and instantaneously replaced by a planet identical to Earth in terms of mass and size. Its orbital path i...
So, I've got an idea for galactic travel involving some fancy particle physics and the Higgs-field, but I've just discovered I don't know how teleporting really works. Or any of that kind of stuff,...
Suppose that there is a substance that is produced in nature by an organism. This substance is rather desirable. The reason this substance is desirable can be anything: Whether it is because it is ...
I'm writing a science fiction novel where a linear accelerator buried underground has to explode. Above the linear accelerator is an enormous server room which ideally would be heavily damaged. Ato...
Alastair Reynolds is a contemporary sci-fi writer whose works often demonstrate a strong grip on science as it presently stands. Recently, I picked up his book On The Steel Breeze for a quick re-re...
How can I protect a ringworld (which creates 1g artificial gravity and has an earth-like atmosphere) from the things that earth's magnetic field protects us? (using real-world physics)
Melange, also known as "the spice", is a fictional drug in Frank Herbert's famous Dune series, which has many benefits (and some drawbacks). In this series of questions, I'll try to see how many of...
I'm writing a short story that focuses on an area with high thermophile activity, like a hot spring. There are known thermophile viruses, but thermophiles aren't able to transmit these to humans be...
I am currently in the process of making a world, and am trying to ground it in scientific fact as much as possible. The world is a hard magic setting, and while fantastical creatures exist, they ar...
I was thinking of an alternate history, in a part of a civilization, living along the Eastern Mediterranean, during the Bronze Age moves to the sea floor to found an underwater civilization. They ...
So, i'm just searching around in spaceengine and got the idea of worldbuilding based on one of the planets that exists in the simulation (not quite worldbuilding in a complete sense, but speculatin...
I'm no scientist and my poor brain box is on its last legs; I was wondering if any of you smart beans out there would be able to help me figure this out? Here are the specs of my system; Kereiol i...
Hello! I've put together my first planetary system, but as I'm not a scientist (and bad at maths) I'm reaching the limits of my brainbox and would really appreciate some fact checking! I have quest...
Two rivers converging into one is obviously extremely common, most often when one is clearly dominant over the other (whereby the lesser one is the 'tributary' of the greater) but also sometimes wh...
If humans found a habitable world and access to it, what would the effects be of a longer day to those who were subsequently born and raised there? Is there any evidence that a longer day cycle (o...
Bonus: How much would the increase in lunar mass increase average tides? & which factors would cause the Earth to become uninhabitable?
Assumptions - atmospheric pressure is 3 atm, but partial pressure of oxygen is comparable to earth, the rest is mostly nitrogen. Planet is tidally locked and insignificantly heavier. (for simplicit...
Hello! I'm no scientist so I've reached the limit of my knowledge. I was wondering if any of you smart beans out there would be able to help me figure this out? Here are the specs of my system; Ke...
I'm creating a world for a webcomic and I'm running into some difficulties "“ namely, my own limitations. I'm not a scientist, and I don't even know how to start asking the questions I want answere...
I have a planned species of aliens that have many commonalities with longhorn crazy ants (cooperation with colonies of the same species, can live in a large variety of environments, and have the ab...
Imagine a species that is very much like humans in shape, size and physiology. But they are able to stare at the sun for long periods without suffering any harm, and without needing any artificial ...
By "short period of time", I'm referring to the timeframe of weeks to months (not days or hours). For example: at the start of one day the land is flat, but after a few weeks or months there is a m...
I'm modeling this on the Voyager 2 flight path. I want to have this flight at this particular time, and not wait for a more advantageous launch window. Based on this orbital configuration (1st i...
I'm working on a setting with merfolk that I'd prefer to be fully mammalian. However, they have underwater cities and I find that hard to believe for a species that needs to surface every few hour...
There are a number of places in which cumulonimbus clouds - and therefore, thunderstorms - are likely to form, such as: Cold fronts, where masses of cold air move into hot, moist air masses Aroun...
In this solar system, there are three K-type main sequence stars, or "orange dwarves", named Odin, Vili and Ve. At the center of this solar system, Odin is 80% the mass of our sun. The middle sta...
Imagine a planet with two moons that have an orbital pattern similar to that of Janus and Epimetheus of Saturn... Is there a way for one of these moons to keep a stable pair of Trojan sub moons? ...
For the purposes of my story, I have created the following setting. An Earth-like planet orbits a binary star system made up of a Sun-like star and a neutron star. For the majority of time (hundre...
I'm trying to find a justification to the sea level on Earth decreasing by a large amount (in the range of 1000 / 2000 m). The change would begin during the Modern Era or in the future, and last l...
I'm still working on world map of this pear-shaped planet for my alien race, so I think land-to-water ratio would be something 40/60% or 30/70% (I don't know which one makes creatures much bigger),...
Say we have an intelligent species whose body plan is inspired by walking insects (ants, beetles, etc.) and reptiles (particularly lizards). More specifically, let's say they have four legs (I th...
