General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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I am trying to wrap my head around the geography of a settlement in my world. The settlement is situated along the coast, along a river roughly 500m wide with temperate mixed forests surrounding i...
A big problem with Steampunk airships is how to propel them. Steam engines tend to be too heavy to be useful. And sails cannot be used, because unlike sea-going ships, airships are in contact with ...
This is my first post on Stack Exchange, so I'm not sure if this follows the right format. Let me know what I can change to make this more helpful on the site. Anyways, let's get to the backstory o...
I would like to use this scenario in writing a book. Using only countless balloons that permanently hold hydrogen made from water could a city be built in the sky? Workers from the ground can rai...
There are several ways to directly convert acoustic/mechanic signals into optic signals (e.g. opening/closing a shutter, or the acousto-optic effect). Is there any way to do the reverse, without us...
I'm currently bouncing around ideas for a sci-fi / cyberpunk world and one of the major technologies in this universe is the manufacture and usage of metallic glass. I don't want to handwave too ...
There was an apocalypse. Humans left cities in swathes, leaving their canine companions behind in the ruined cities. My question is, which types of dogs survive? Criteria -The dogs are going to be...
We all know about Rain Shadow - And if you don't now you do - and that the inner side of a mountain as compared to the ocean would be drier. Now a worldbuiding problem going around that phenomenon...
How large (in terms of height and radius) would an outdoor circular wall (like a city wall on a colossal scale) need to be before a casual observer would perceive the wall as "straight"? I found "...
Premise I recently recalled when the Chelyabinsk meteor crashed overhead in 2013. The pressure wave was immense. The infrasounds, as recorded by nuclear missile detectors, appeared to traverse the...
In my world there are mechanical semi-humanoid automata. Would it be possible to make them speak in a fashion that sounds natural (i.e. human)? How might it function? The mechanism should be capa...
Let's say there exists an alternate reality from ours that is identical in every aspect save for one. There exists a substance in space that allows for the transmission of sound. Let's call this su...
I've got a D&D-inspired setting, and one of the races present are yuan-ti. They're sentient snake people with a variety of forms, ranging from mostly human-looking to basically just a giant tal...
In this scenario, I would like to focus specifically on humanoids (read: human shaped blinking eyes, protected by eye-lashes and evolved in a waterless environment and fitting human eyesockets, fro...
Basics: There is a wormhole in a fixed position within a solar system. It is roughly 40 million miles from the orbit of the habitable planet, which kind of mimics Earth (roughly 12 month solar orbi...
Alright so I'm not really a physics person by any stretch so forgive me if I butcher some physics jargon on this post. So I'm making this hard sci-fi interstellar ship with a rotating habitat that...
I'm working on a novel, in which a character was given a cutting edge vaccination to a deadly disease. She is now valuable because she was the only one given the vaccine and the research to make mo...
In my world, all of my demihumans have evolved from the same ancestor from modern humans. This conceptually includes my version of Reptilians/Lizardfolk. For the most part I would have them share t...
To give an illustration of what I mean with downward ear, here's an illustration taken from mtrakholisova's Pinterest. I want to make a species with downward facing ears. They cannot be moved fa...
In my story there are people with super powers, but they only get to have one. So, if someone's power is to start a fire, then they can't also control it once it starts. My problem currently is wi...
I was working on a side project to design an alien fleet that is wandering in the universe, and harvesting energy from planets for their needs. While I can think of ways to make that happen (geothe...
Fantasy and folklore has many instances of giant spiders,ranging from creatures like the J'ba Fofi to Aragog from Harry Potter. My question intends to ask whether a creature like the J'ba Fofi coul...
I'd like to create a story in which a genetically modified man has Aromatase Excess syndrome. For example, if a man has a genetic mutation where he produces a lot of aromatase that turns 10% of hi...
An Earth analog had been modified by an advanced species to have saltwater seas in an interconnected grid across the planet's surface. The planet has no true oceans and only the large grid network ...
My current project features a contemporary scientist who is convinced that some sort of spacetime anomaly occurred in a tiny rural Yorkshire, U.K. community circa-1850; he believes a dilapidated ol...
I am currently writing a species for my story that can self generate UV radiation by consuming cinnabar/mercury ore, being immune to mercury poisoning, converting the mercury into a vapor that inte...
I don't trust anyone when I conduct my special line of business. I do my thing, face-to-face, verbally. I hand over a sealed envelope of cash and I'm done. I don't want to be recorded, I don't w...
Trying to develop a fictional scenario with a 'believable' theory as to how a Nuclear War and resulting Nuclear Winter could turn into a millennial scale ice age. By 'believable', I mean that it p...
With the evolving global warming and thawing of permafrost, an ancient deadly virus begins to spread from Siberia across Eurasia, affecting domestic animals first and mutating quickly onto the rest...
During a space cold war, a ship from the ideological enemy is not allowed remain in orbit while some of their investigators visit a crash site. The reason why is narrative "“ to separate the char...
The Question of the Tunnel through a Planet grinds my mind. How could you dig a Hole through the fluid mantle of a planet? Would your walls not constantly break and collapse on you after the 15-...
I have a potential sub-plot in a story that takes place in the not too distant future where most of the world's fossil fuels are exhausted or contaminated (war reasons more than environmental) and ...
I'm trying to find someone (s) with enough geology knowledge to help me figure out some of the specifics of the world I'm building. (Earth-like in age, distance from star, size, tilt) I'm doing my ...
On a world made up of many small islands, each island cannot support a very large population. Although sometimes individuals from one island make it across the ocean to another, this is usually a ...
You know stuff like Yggdrasil tree but just a normal tree that is the biggest and tallest in the world. If the roots grow to surpass the continental and oceanic plate either it only cover some par...
Ruins of buildings, abandoned cities and suburbs dot the coasts of Earth's landmasses, inhabited by wild animals and the pieces of a once vibrant civilization. The oceans are relatively empty, the ...
Could there arise naturally a plant that like mistletoe attaches itself parasitically to an oak tree that can interbreed with a regular apple tree, and produce fruit that are very similar to apples?
I'm writing a novella for a school competition. My main character is a shape shifter. I am trying to find a plausible scientific explanation for how shape shifting is possible. I tried finding an...
I am seeking information and ideas from all you clever people. What I am trying to imagine is a chemical reaction that would change Earths atmosphere rapidly into something else which would be mo...
This question is about the Cube Prison as seen in the 2012 film The Cabin in the Woods. My question is not about the film or its lore, but how the cube prison can be constructed. Specifically, ...
Update (6/20/19): I have received some great answer here and they all mostly point to the fact that while effects on the opposite side of the planet are possible, the deformation may or may not re...
I have an Earth analog that is nearly completely covered in ice and glaciers. I want to have oases of warmth scattered across the planet. These oases aren't tropical by any means, having just enoug...
So a friend is working on a worldbuilding/rpg project and I'm "beta-testing". He drew up an earth-like map and set the players start locations. Then I ask him about fauna. Will it be modern earth? ...
Before the first nuclear weapon was dropped, a scientist (whose name has escaped me) had a thought: could it ignite the atmosphere? But this was during World War II, when they didn't have the maths...
For this sci-fi story/world hat I'm building, I'm introducing my androids which, while having intelligence closer to a human, are still just machines in nature. Theoretically one can destroy the bo...
In my world, both lighter- and heavier-than-air craft exist and are rather useful devices. However, problems tend to occur when confronted with storms. Steering through a storm is not a problem in...
Premise I want to explore the possibility of a planet that is extremely misshapen. If we were to extrapolate what we have observed from our solar system and the extra-solar planets discovered so f...
I need to add a bit of descriptive detail on a species from a brief description. Essentially add a bit of finer detail to someone else's broad-strokes worldbuilding. An amphibious species' body lay...
A common, matter-efficient, science-fiction habitat is a hollow cylinder or ring in space that is spun to simulate the pull of gravity on its interior surface. While for most purposes this artifici...
In my worldbuilding project, 2 continents located on roughly the same latitude are connected by a land bridge. Both sides of the bridge are surrounded by a temperate grassland, and the lack of seas...
