General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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While building my sifi world I dug into ftl-travel and encountered these mean bullies, causality and relativity. They told me I can't have faster than light travel, because effect can't precede cau...
I want to know the how many people can live on Earth's oxygen. Is there a point when humans would use up all the oxygen? What would be the limiting factors? Given we have charts to show the rate of...
I have followed this forum for quite some time. Now is the time to ask my first question :) I'm currently working on a story in which a future, civilian luxury submarine is used to research some li...
What would the appearance and structure of trees be like if they used chitin, instead of lignin, for cell walls? This is assuming that all other properties are basically unchanged. These trees wo...
Imagine an Earth-like planet with oceans that are comprised roughly 50/50 of heavy water and normal water. My understanding is that while heavy water ice sinks in normal water, it would float on he...
This question is about a fictional scenario where an evil suicidal scientist has built a high-energy weapon somewhere on earth. His intention is to shoot a beam of some form of energy (or high-ener...
I want to achieve the following. Jet + secret base underwater + blow up water with bomb to gain entry to tunnel at bottom of the sea, see image: Say that the depth is 1000m, then Based on calcul...
In a post-post-apocalyptic world with adequately schizophrenic tech, a tinkerer decides to build a submarine engine around a lump of radium, or some other reliable source of heat. But instead of us...
Set at the present day Earth, the daylight on average is ten times as bright as today, approximately 111,000 lux at noon for example and subject to geographic and the air quality etc. I am looking ...
Is it possible to use a power plant-like machine to create small amounts of electrical (or other) energy directly inside the human body, making it such that the human has energy for activity withou...
As clarification we're talking about those common fantasy healing potions that recover health over time and their scientific plausibility. Here are some results from my research on the subject: Mo...
I was doing some research online about slower-than-light interstellar spacecraft, and it got me thinking about a couple things. Although it may seem empty, the space between stars isn't a perfect v...
Suppose Ship A is being targeted by Ship B, which intends to use a laser weapon in an attempt to destroy Ship A. Ship A has special technology that allows it to alter gravity (mainly used for gen...
In Invertebrates, Muscular Hydrostat, which is a form of biological hydraulic, is used for locomotion. On Earth, (as far as I'm aware) no system exists where hydraulics perform in conjunction with ...
What would a modern landscape look like with the absence of lignin decomposing fungi, bacteria, and etc. What I mean is...would a forested area just become filled with fallen trees instead of a m...
I'm planing to create "super powers" born out of genetic engineering, but I don't want magic miracle stuff like an x-man, I'm looking for a realistic approach, so overall can you modify the materia...
James Cameron's Avatar featured floating mountains which stayed aloft due to the Meissner effect; they contained large quantities of the room-temperature superconductor unobtainium, which, due to t...
My question is this: can excess mass be bled off into hyperspace (the large and compact extra dimensions, not the Star Wars-esque swirling vortex), yet the matter remains in our universe? Is mass ...
Premise: Neurologists found that GHz wireless RF had modest but quite negative effects on people's brains. Subtle collective effects in neuronal firing patterns across the brain due to interactions...
I have been trying to figure out a way of explaining how an advanced society some time in the past built an artificial planet with a black hole at its core and the effects that would have on the pe...
Assume the entirety of Earth (all the land) is covered in a city. What would the climate be like in different parts of it? I.e., what would it be like on the coast, or inland? I imagine it would b...
My question is based on the following excerpt from an article I read recently: Since the early neurological work of Karl Lashley and Wilder Penfield in the 1950s and 1960s, it has become clear ...
I know a similar question was asked whether gas masks could be used to survive in space but it didn't quite focus on the parts I'm interested in. I'm building a world in which space travel is regu...
In my semi-realistic science fantasy RPG, I want there to be a newly discovered chemical element that is perfect at generating plasma for use in various futuristic weapons and to increase the lifes...
Okay so, this is kind of a disgusting question... sorry about that in advance, guys. Say you are super strong, super fast, and super durable. There is a not so strong, fast, or durable normal human...
An alien race was rubbed the wrong way by humans being humans and decided that humankind has to go. However, unlike many other science fiction stories, they do not intend to give the humans even a ...
The apocalypse has come! Everything is dead, and I do mean everything. People. Animals. Plants. Don't ask how, I'm not entirely sure. Let's assume this town is in an out-of-the way area as far as ...
A while back Demigan had a running series of posts about various aspects biological enhancement for the purpose of designing super-soldiers with an element of (pseudo) science behind them. You ca...
To be very-very simple: The very main setting of my world is a very special and very small galaxy, the galactic core of which is a quasar - with the "iconic" light beam in the middle, serving a sp...
Fear has been a helpful trait that has kept our race alive since back in the day. It continues to be necessary for survival as a species. However, it can be just as harmful. When faced with death o...
This is the third in a series of 5 (at this point) questions. It's not relevant to this question, but for anyone who's curious this was the first, this the second. Conditions for this question are...
Something in orbit around an inhabited planet blasts it with a hefty dose of gamma rays/x-rays/something else, killing everyone within a relatively short time frame (hours or days) but leaving no o...
Anime, Disney, and many, many other works feature human characters with ridiculously oversized eyes. This is usually just a stylistic choice, and had little to no effect on anything in-story or in-...
Given a system similar to the Earth/Moon/Sun system, how would one go about making solar eclipses rarer than they are here on earth, but keep new moons similar to how they currently are (or at leas...
I have three types of dragons; dragons that primarily fly, dragons that primarily run, and dragons that primarily swim, with all three types being able to do the other two things for a limited amou...
I am considering the possibility of having massive cephalopods evolving on my world and having them fill the niche of whales. I've heard about how whales have evolved to increase in size for the p...
Please assume the following: A spaceship in the far future. Output: The ships systems have a high base demand of energy and sometimes you need extreme amounts of Energy in a very short period of ...
Suppose for whatever reason the sun's power has weakened. The Earth gets colder. All the water has frozen, and the temperature is getting to around the boiling point of oxygen. Can an "oxygen cyc...
So, I was wondering if it would be possible for a race of reptilians to live in a climate similar to that of Germany or Scandinavia without having to hibernate for the winter months. They would be ...
Would it be possible for huge, hundreds-of-metres-long spikes of rock, ideally slanting at an angle, to arise under natural processes? For clarity, I mean like this: Copyright Joe Jesus Ther...
So I have a scene where someone gets poisoned. I want the poison to have a couple qualities: It works fast, with in the span of a meal be to exact It can be put in food or drink, either covered u...
I've designed an alien race of bipedal humanoids with digitigrade legs. This race's advanced scientific progress means that they use traditionally human-associated technology, or similar (such as ...
I am asking specifically because I was recently doing a Doctor Who marathon and saw the apalapucia episode and thought "I wonder if that's possible?" So here I am. Is it possible to have a planet w...
Flapping flight bumps into a size limit after a while because of wingbeat frequency. My knowledge on birds is rather limited, so here's how I interpreted that: A longer wing is a longer lever ...
Is it possible for humanity to completely annihilate itself? By that I mean there cannot be one survivor left and the annihilation must be caused by humanity itself with current technology (no craz...
You are the leader of a far-future civilization - human or otherwise - that has endured for trillions of years doing whatever far-future civilizations do. You've surrounded stars with Matrioshka br...
Alien AI DoomFleet has a mission: Destroy threats to their creator. They do this by detecting the signature of FTL drives, going to the system, and blowing everything up, up to and including the ho...
I'm building a world that happens to be flat. Well, it has hills and mountains, but no curvature. However, I still want to limit the eyesight to a few kilometers even if there are no hills around....
I was reading one of the recent questions involving a fast-moving superhero, and it reminded me of something I've been wondering about for a while, so I decide to create a spinoff scenario question...
Cats in New York City are an invasive species that are a plague to the animal kingdom. It is well documented that these bloodthirsty psychopaths are responsible for the murder of billions of innoce...
