General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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As far as I could gather the digestion relies on enzymes which in turn set requirements for pH. Is it possible for an alien creature to have a different set of enzymes that require basic environme...
Background: In the early 2020s a magical life-extending "elixir" is created but is in short supply. However, a very reckless individual steals most of the US's supply and drinks a sufficient amount...
I'm writing a soft scifi novel that has its fair share "fi" but every now and then I feel it important to acknowledge some "sci." In this scenario, a spaceship is in orbit and about to land on E...
Space is two things: empty and (mostly) dark. This makes it really, really hard to hide in it, because to do anything in it, chances are, you'll be shining a big bright light through it. Even if ...
If a chunk of land mass the size and position of Sweden took off and floated away in a straight line, exiting the atmosphere and orbiting earth, at what distance would it be visible from, let's say...
In Star Trek TNG, you hear about some sort of defense back on earth that is supposed to screen out all the bad weather. In the episode "True Q," it is mentioned several times as being capable of pr...
I'm interested in creating some construct of a society in the Twilight and Midnight zones of the ocean. By what means could they mine, farm, and trade in what is suppose to be a more futuristic so...
So I want to have an alien creature on a planet with a halogen atmosphere. It will have to be at a temperature where the hydrogen halide is liquid or solid. This hydrogen halide I would have as th...
If a spaceplane like the Rockwell X-30 existed and was flying to a location in geostationary orbit, would it be substantially more efficient to take off from a runaway at the equator, or would it n...
What would happen to an earth-like planet where an event caused a large (think, the size of the Caribbean tectonic plate) section of the crust to get peeled away, exposing the upper mantle for a pe...
So there are loads of things that are taken into account with weather from geology to water currents to axial tilt etc. But i am wondering what the effects would be on weather on planets with varyi...
I am toying with an idea which requires a human to be stuck in a dark box for the rest of their life. They receive regular exercise of the arms and legs, air, food and water and their bodily funct...
I'm designing an alien species, whose blood is highly acidic and can easily cause someone's hand to melt down. It's pretty similar to the Xenomorphs from Ridley Scott's Alien, except for the color ...
In a near-future sci-fi world, I described a disease with the following characteristics: Affects human female children (not necessarily exclusively). Is a neurodegenerative or similar disorder,...
Earth's deepest point, the Challenger Deep, is almost seven miles below sea level. By contrast, Europa is smaller than even Earth's moon, yet its oceans are anywhere between 40-100 miles deep! So t...
Insects and other land-based Arthropoda are stuck at the size they are due to how inefficient their respiratory system is. They were able to reach the size they did in the Carboniferous period beca...
Assume there's a spaceship in earth orbit that its crew of 24 want to get to Mars, the crew are all humans and possess all of modern day knowledge and equipment, is it possible for said ship to mak...
Planetary conditions: ~0.5x Earth gravity (guess: 0.9x Earth density, 0.777x Earth radius, so about 0.42 Earth masses... but that's probably not important). Atmosphere broadly similar to Earth but ...
Say I have a planet with 10-20 moons of varying sizes orbiting it. If one of these moons were to explode/shatter into tiny pieces (I know this is probably impossible, but if we pretended it were po...
Humans are the equivalent of bacteria to planet-eating monsters. And since, as we all know, eating humans is dangerous business, these monsters have decided to cook our great planet Earth before ea...
So, let's say we have a character like this: Living in a place like this: In many post-apocalyptic media, leather jackets and blue jeans are the main form of attire for characters, even ones ...
So, I have thought about the evolution of my aliens and how they could evolve things like lactation but still retain their reptilian characteristics. Here is my best thought about it so far: Evol...
I'm creating a near future world where one faction is using high energy density batteries that enable their vehicles to outperform gasoline based technology. Like cold and silent aircraft and helic...
Say another Earth orbited the Earth, instead of the Moon. What effects would that have? Would gravity change in relation to the planets slightly during their orbits? I am world building and am tryi...
When it comes to an angry government the ending can be: Acute Radiation Sickness (FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko) imprisonment (whistleblower Chelsea Manning) 'car accidents' (journalist Se...
Mod Note: Some people may be squeamish about this subject, please keep all responses clinical rather than vulgar. So, in my world, I try to play the "immortality" trope with twists that make it su...
I'm creating humanoid specie with two subspecies Hairy races - roughly based on humans, chiss, mirialans, with standard males & females sexes Tentacle races- roughly based on asari, twilek, t...
Many believe that sex before a competition can have a negative impact on performance in combat, speed and strength sports in males. Athletes from strength and speed sports showed decreased perf...
This is a classic of fantasy/sci-fi stories. A creature with two heads, two brains, two distinct personalities, sharing a single body. An entire race of Siamese twins. But the question is, what env...
On a planet where it is Earth-like, the orbit around the sun is a bit longer than 1 Earth year, and the orbit is on 2/3 eccentricity, but where only the "2" part is inside the Goldilocks zone. In ...
My question stems from What would a space fighter look like? After reading through @dsollen's question can a human fighter pilot fully grasp 3 dimensional frictionless movement in space? I started...
I assume a planet like earth. Obviously the Amazon river is fed into the Andes mountains as well as other rivers that give water to the system. Could the same amount of water come from a specific c...
Let's say I have a terrestrial planet superficially like earth, except that it rotates much slower (about 10-15 days per rotation) and its atmosphere is ideally several times thicker. If I want thi...
I've created a fairly fleshed out, detailed FTL concept. Basically, you have a circular starship, with a ring of tungsten encircling that, held in place by an antigravity ring beneath it. The rim o...
My character has a prosthetic, or technically you could say a bionic or cybernetic, left eye. For one reason or another, the replacement eye couldn't be connected directly to the optic nerve. Inste...
What would the consequences be of a high number of solar systems being within close proximity to one another? I'm mainly interested in the consequences for life on multiple planets. When I say 'clo...
Is there any reason an elevator, moving from the central hub to the outer ring, would not function on a rotating wheel space station with artificial gravity? Any parameter of the radius or rotatio...
On a planet, a species uses magnets (i.e. float in the air) instead of wheels for transportation. Roads are easy enough, just slap some magnets in it, at it works. But I was wondering about the f...
In a video game series called Portal, we are given a gun, which shoots two portals: an orange one and a blue one. These portals have the following properties: Anything that goes into the orange ...
In the world I'm building, a nuclear war and subsequent repressive chaos have led all satellites to be destroyed by the powers that be, around 10 years from now. A few years later, a small spacecra...
I want to know about the plausibility and required parameters of the following scenario: Take an Earth-like planet, about the same size, composition and gravity. It has no plate tectonics to speak...
Chaos plagues the land. In the West, the King in Orange blusters and bloviates endlessly in barely comprehensible gibberish. Perhaps he is attempting to call forth the Elder Gods? In the East, the ...
What might clothing designed to be worn, long-term, in microgravity look like? For the purpose of this question there are two categories. Practical, or everyday wear, and impractical or simply fanc...
In my military scifi novel the military is, obviously, very concerned with security aboard its spaceships. They don't want other people to be able to receive any information about what happens on t...
Could a species of aquatic mammals develop bio-luminescence? What kind of bio-luminescence would it be? What circumstances could lead to it?
What would the effect on humans be of a 32 hour day rather than 24 hours? It would be a pretty much even split of 16 hour days, 16 hour nights. The people would have previously been on a spaceship ...
This is about "giants" inhabiting a fictional earth-like planet somewhere in the Universe (like those in the movie Prometheus, for example). Assuming that all the conditions (temperature, gravity,...
Flame lickers work by sucking hot air into a cylinder and then relying on the cooling of the air by the cylinder wall to create a partial vacuum to pull the piston back. see video In an alternat...
Being new, this is my first question. I've read some other posts that gave me valuable insight, but I still have some questions. First, some specifics: Star: red dwarf. 80 x jupiter mass. 3 bill...
There exists a polymerization spell that allows distinct animals to combine with each other, creating an entirely new creature. The beasts in question are held in transumutation circles linked by l...
