General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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For a moon orbiting a gas giant which is in turn orbiting a star, I want to know how long the eclipse would last for an observer standing on the moon when the planet passes between the moon and the...
I want to put a story in place where a country lived underwater, and I am wondering of its viability. Here is the world description: It is a square of 100 km*100 km on the ocean with the weather ...
I was thinking of a life form with a similar surface temperature to Earth, as well as a similar temperature variation to that of Earth. Could such a life form evolve an organ for generating temper...
Mounts are one of the coolest things about fantasy in my opinion. Riding around on raptors, dragons, elephants and even weirder things is one of the main draws to a lot of fantasy things. However,...
What would happen if the entire inner surface of a Dyson sphere (not necessarily a solid shell, maybe a very dense swarm) would be coated into a highly reflective material? Let's say it can reflec...
Knowing foam is formed by trapping pockets of gas in a liquid or solid, what could a foam able to support life on an earth-like planet be made of? This foam ought to be stable enough and large eno...
Whilst not strictly relevant to this question, the questions and answers may interest the curious: this is the 4th in a series of question here - 1, 2, 3. My population (in excess of 500,000) und...
I am trying to create an organism that can survive in space for short periods, but I realized that I can't have its eyes be similar to those of most animals and humans because they would boil in sp...
How fast can nanites work Tangential to the above question. This is for a novel about a somewhat near future. The conceit is that very advanced nanites, plus computers that are able to read our mi...
For a story I'm working on I'm designing a sattelite to take down infantry from orbit, but without the power to take down tanks or infrastructure. The goal would be to kill off a military base, or ...
World Rules: Travelers are able to move at the speed of light without disruption of their lives. Time passes "normally" for them. They think, breathe, love, cry, and steer the ship as if they w...
Writing a werewolf story, and decided for a bit of flair, so I wanted two moons in orbit. Did a bit of digging, and I found out that to do that, I'd need to either have them in separate orbit (no t...
In the movie Kingsmen, there is a poison which behaves differently from most other poisons. It has to be ingested in order to kill, but that is not enough. It is harmless until a radio signal is b...
This is based on the idea of a society where vampires are known and subsist off of 'willingly' given human blood. An average adult human needs approximately 2000 calories a day to maintain their we...
How could a mammal produce milk which resembles blood? The blood milk should keep as many properties of milk as possible, curding for example, while resembling blood as much as possible. The mamm...
What conditions would have to happen to re-animate a mummified person to come back to life with consciousness fully restored? What would the conditions of the mummification be and biological/techni...
I had an idea for a planet which has very hot days, roughly 40 degrees C on average, and very cold nights, average -5 degrees. These figures are subject to change. Of course, there are places which...
This is something I have been wondering: if an assassin wanted to kill their target with a bullet from a sniper rifle, can they dip it in liquid mercury so even if the bullet itself doesn't kill th...
I am trying to write a sci-fi setting in a not so distant future in which analog signal (brainwaves, in this case) processing is one of the main points of the plot and pretty much required to expla...
If humans were to live in an earth-like planet with an atmosphere with a significantly higher concentration of $\mathsf {CO}_2$ (Higher than what can be tolerated by normal human for a long period ...
In my future setting on Earth (or an Earth-like planet; haven't decided), the fields of robotics and AI have taken off and we have intelligent, ambulatory robots. (They were initially thought of a...
I have a very large developed (relatively rational) fantasy game world which mostly has medieval technology with some Renaissance technology, and some low-powered magic. In it, when I was much you...
Dragons are awesome, but they're still vulnerable thanks to their low-numbers and a certain type of people... So, to prevent those from killing even a single dragon I came up with the wedding ring...
If you have miles of steel pipes 10m thick, could you pump water from the sea to the centre of Antarctica, then pump it into the air like a geyser so that it falls around the pipe. As the fallen se...
I was inspired by Dead Space which had cloned organ banks for transplants due to mining accidents. I honestly found this idea intriguing so what I'm wondering would it be practical or do better alt...
In an effort to work out a believable form of faster-than-light communications for my setting, I've ruled out a few things: wormholes (which are in use, but are too random in where they lead, to be...
For visual reference: Apes are visual species who rely more on their eyesight than any of the other senses. As a result, they see the world in three shades of color, whereas other mammals see i...
This is Yeola~Camay. A double planet orbiting Sharro, an ordinaryish star somewhere in the universe of Far Far Away. As you can plainly see, Yeola is the planet on the left & Camay is the p...
There are a lot of answers on Worldbuilding about how to destroy planets - just as an example - and they seem to be the method of choice for many people intent on destroying the world. My objection...
During an ice age, would it be possible for a great lake to be frozen while a relatively nearby river was still running? To help illustrate my point: Would it be possible for Lake Michigan (or par...
In my conworld I've got heavily armoured airships majestically floating through the skies with help of a science-defying lighter-than-anything material. While I don't mind introducing a pinch of p...
For a space-based story I am writing, I was hypothesising about how to have organisms that can thrive the vacuum of space. Ignoring plausibility of such a creature evolving, I realised a few probl...
Wikipedia lists a potential for a hypercane which can have an eye of up to 190 miles in diameter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercane Say there's an earthlike planet that for whatever reason ha...
What light spectrum would hit the surface of a planet orbiting a red dwarf star? The planet is a humid greenhouse with a cloudy atmosphere and a strong ozone layer. Over 80% of the surface is wate...
Say there is a civilian ship going less than the speed of light, travelling from one star to the next. In the event that pirates board the ship (or some other dangerous situation, like a hull breac...
Rats are commonly associated with illness and disease due to the role they played in The Black Death. However, some works of fiction portray rats as carnivorous swarms, devouring people indiscrimin...
After several centuries in exodus, humanity returns to earth to recolonize the planet. Naturally, their first question is the same as mine: Where are the best place(s) on earth to settle? Paramet...
Imagine when a jet fighter swoops in to drop a 400 pounds giant chainsaw to you just so that you can use it to grind down one problematic enemy into a pulp then discard it a foot away from you. Wha...
After Cain killed his brother Abel, he was cursed by God to wander the earth forever. On his travels, he met a sympathetic woman named Lilith. They discovered that they had a mutual beef with their...
Prehensile hands have the advantage of not having to constantly touch anything they don't have to - with the exception of things like doorknobs. Feet don't have that luxury, and so in a sense will...
Throughout history, humanity has made a few scientific blunders where a scientific principle held as fact for hundreds of even thousands of years is found to be completely or mostly false. Our s...
In a sci-fi universe where man has the capability to leave our solar system would metals or alloys above and beyond our own be possible? Or at least within the bounds of reasonable possibility? As ...
The People of The Shining Isles have long been exploited. They are cruelly used in mines, excavating tonne after tonne of rock and dirt in pursuit of what the Warriors from Away call "˜diamonds'. T...
Heat is energy. Temperature is an indication of the level of heat in a substance. But the normal way to measure temperature is to observe how the substance interacts with its surroundings - most co...
In my late-Victorian world there are independently moving automata that may act as pets or servants to those that can afford them. They require a fair amount of energy to run at full capacity, eno...
If I needed a large area for zero-G training, is there any place to put it on a rotating wheel space station if the hub was needed for docking of spacecraft? I wanted a place on the station that...
Based on Docking on the outer edge of a rotating wheel space station would it be impractical to launch ships off of the outer edge of a rotating wheel space station? Whether launching the ships al...
Context The world is made of floating islands suspended in the atmosphere. For all intents and purposes, the world doesn't have a solid surface. Due to a magical influence, islands rise from the ...
If a person had control over each and every single cell in his body, I.e: Cell growth Cell multiplication Shape and form of cells How cells bond/bind with each other Cell Function Would they be...
Assuming such a space station needed to have its central hub not used for docking spacecraft, would it be plausible for a spacecraft to dock on the outer edge of a rotating wheel if the ship approa...
