General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
Filters (None)
Take the Earth-Moon system as we know it. Now, something causes a large rock to be lobbed in the direction of our moon. Exactly how that happens is deliberately left unspecified; it could be everyt...
On Earth, the presence of tides due to the Sun and Moon influence certain currents and other movements of water. This in turn leads to different forms of erosion, which can transform a landscape. ...
I'm considering a story set about fifty years (2065) in the future. It takes a rather optimistic view; space exploration has led to colonies on the Moon and Mars, as well as several space stations ...
I'm working on a story set in a generation ship traveling through the stars. Its propulsion is a solar sail, which will accelerate it over many decades to a substantial fraction of the speed of lig...
I've asked before about my polytheists with competing moon gods. I now have a better understanding of how tides -- a very visible manifestation of lunar influence -- work with multiple moons (than...
This is one of a series of questions centered around how an isolated group of people would survive. Each question focuses on a single aspect of survival. Details about the peoples' situation are be...
There is a nocturnal mammal, about the size of a common red fox, which has evolved (by way of some unspecified-at-this-point selective pressure) the ability to see well in situations involving larg...
One thing that necessarily happens on a generation ship is that people die of old age. Now that poses a tension: On one hand, you need to handle the dead with dignity. On the other hand, you probab...
Imagine for a moment that a plant (let's say a maple tree, though any plant will do), has unlimited energy. There's no conversion of sunlight or anything - the energy is just there, being soaked di...
The scenario is that an asteroid has been found and converted into a travelling interstellar space colony. Using some undefined future sci-fi tech, the occupants of the colony have increased gravit...
I'm going for the ultimate in world building here: Creating a whole new star. I have a race that's about a Type II civilization (as per the Kardashev scale). The important thing here is that they'...
Purely hypothetical question here. Would it be feasibly possible to have a planet entirely covered in a dense network of interlocking trees? The idea is that the trees themselves act as the 'cr...
In the never ending quest to get elves to live in trees, I am taking things one step further and attempting to get the entire city in a tree. Magic is not in the equation. The tree would start out ...
I am creating a fictional fantasy (Medieval-ish era) world. The area covered by my map is fairly large, and contains an ocean, mountains, plains, lakes, forests, swamps, etc. It's pretty much all t...
I have a binary system in which my world orbits one of the stars, not the pair, in the habitable zone. The stars are relatively close together (because I want the secondary one to shed significant...
The Hollow Earth theory is/was a pseudoscientific idea that our world is actually on the inside of a large sphere. The "sky" points inward towards the center, where the "Sun" (a light source) is, w...
Here's the set up: in my fantasy world, there is a species of tree similar to Banyan trees. There are several giant versions of these, and smaller ones are quite common. One of the biggest of the...
I'm currently working on two connected continents for the world I'm building. They've created a convergent boundary where they meet, which has given rise to an east-west mountain range, in addition...
Most of the planets that we know of have a sidereal day (rotational period) that is shorter or on the same order of magnitude as their sidereal year (orbital period), the latter being the case in t...
This is the follow-up question to How could an underwater civilization develop electricity?, as mentioned there. In that question, I never addressed how my civilization could have discovered/used ...
Setting: Western world nation, Earth as we know it, May 2016, Gregorian calendar. Eccentric billionaire, large multinational corporation or similar; lots of money, and ability to enlist the help of...
In a world I am working on, I have a wilderness-living, social, group-living species that for various reasons lacks access and ability to anything resembling modern medicine, including vaccinations...
A moon is, fundamentally, a rock that's caught in the gravitational field of a bigger rock (a planet) and drawn into an orbit. Some of Saturn's moons, for example, are speculated to be debris from...
After writing this question about the ecology of a terraformed planet, I realized that I hadn't quite tied up all the loose ends of the terraforming process itself. I intended for a group of aliens...
An idea for a story I'm working on involves a far away world that was once inhospitable. Scientists - likely alien ones - terraformed it so it could support life (coincidentally, Earth-like life). ...
This is inspired by a comment by JDÅ‚ugosz. Planets change their angular velocity when they orbit stars because they follow Keplerian orbits with (typically) non-zero eccentricity. The bottom line...
What I've found out is that Ammonia has (in the relevant temperature/pressure regime) cubic crystal structure. But what would that mean for ammonia snowflakes? Would they have fourfold symmetry? Bu...
I'd like to create a temple haunted by beings who are ostensibly ancestral spirits - basically, ghosts. How could ghosts be explained without an afterlife? gives me some intriguing ideas, but I'd l...
A generation ship was sent out a long time ago, to colonize a far away planet. However the ship failed to reach its goal due to navigational issues (which also means they didn't have any clue where...
A group of behaviorally modern humans was cut off from the rest of the earth-like planet. At the time of the separation, humankind had reached a technology level including cattle ranches, brass, wr...
Elementals are based on the 4 classical elements: earth, fire, air, and water, as those were all that the ancients knew of. However, with science we have learned that none of those are actually ...
The situation I'm considering is as follows: A space ship (a transport ship operated by two people) crashes onto a planet on which a swing-by was planned. The crew could escape using an escape cap...
Here's the set up. In my slightly-futuristic mildly-sci-fi novel, I have a need for an aerial transport vehicle (I have been informed what I need is closer to a VTOl than a hovercraft). These craft...
Would it be possible for a planet with surface conditions suitable for humans landing on it to have a very strong magnetic field, with field strengths on the planet's surface similar to the surface...
I have a colony of humans living underground in man-made catacombs on another planet. They are, essentially, digging/blasting as they go; they did not create a complete underground city first and ...
It is 1970. Planet Earth is uninhabitable - the Cold War got very hot. The Earth's entire population is floating through space in giant transport ships. They've found another habitable(ish) world....
Electricity pervades our daily lives, and makes possible a lot of technological achievements. Harnessing it helps the development of any civilization. The thing is, water - especially sea water - i...
On an Earth-like planet, I'm imagining a bipedal sapient species whose juveniles have a largely hollow head so large that they can retract the whole body into the head when frightened, the way a tu...
Here's the setup: You have a space station orbiting Earth. On this space station is an anti-gravity device powerful enough to lift a small ship on Earth up through the atmosphere and into the space...
Picture, in a near future, that we build cities vertically rather than horizontally. Need a new city block? Add another few floors. Disregard for the moment any physical construction problems this ...
Assume someone detonates a Hiroshima-sized nuclear bomb in space. Since in space there's no air, the bomb will behave differently than on Earth. In particular, there will not be an air pressure wav...
Some answers to this question about mining asteroids suggest that it is easier and cheaper, in the long run, to bring the asteroid to you: move it into orbit around the planet where you are already...
Pretty much what it says in the question title. Suppose a non-human, social species of Earth animal found itself on an evolutionary path that favored increased intelligence of a kind not completel...
OK, so scientists have found a great new substance: That substance makes you think ten times as fast! The advantages are obvious. However, as every medicine, this pill will have side effects. Ther...
Imagine your scientists have found a way to increase the space of your empire, literally: They are able to create an artificial inflaton field which locally creates a "space bubble" connected with ...
The setup: A thick mountain chain is permanently covered in smoke. The smoke comes from several active volcanoes within the mountains, and is kept from dispersing by magic (the magic plays virtuall...
Consider the present day Earth. Now, through some event (magic, a giant maid with a vacuum cleaner, a disgruntled alien did it, ...), our planet is stripped of its atmosphere. Assume that this happ...
I would like to have a world on which humans can live unaided -- they can breathe, the climate is workable, they can eat the local vegetation, etc -- but on which a complete day is substantially sh...
Upon asking this question, I have learned why we can have nuclear powered ships, but not aircraft. The reason is because the shielding needed for the nuclear reactor is simply too heavy for the pow...
Imagine aliens dropped a small black hole (say, 1% of the moon's mass, so you wouldn't notice the difference in gravitation) into the sun (from the far side of the sun, so nobody on earth can see i...
