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For 10,000 years since Beringia, the bridge connecting Asia to North America, had vanished, the Asian and Native American races show great distinction. But if Beringia has persisted to this day, c...
What would be the effects of an Earth-like planet with a longer year and longer lunar orbit? I have a planet with 432 days in a year and a lunar cycle of 36 days, with 12 months at 36 days each. Th...
I am trying to estimate how much calories is available in form of plants to mammal herbivores per square meter per year in optimal conditions. By optimal conditions I mean that the climate is tempe...
I am building a fantasy world roughly the same size, elemental makeup, and atmospheric composition as Earth. In this world, there is an island (about the size of Australia) known by outsiders as th...
Back home, one ice age during the two and a half million years of the Pleistocene lasted a total of 100,000 years, ninety thousand of intense cold followed by ten thousand of milder interglacial we...
I am sure most of you have seen Star Wars. In Episode IV: The Empire Strikes Back our heroes travel to Bespin, a gas planet with a habitable zone to refuel at the floating cloud city. Well of cou...
Earth has three convection cells per hemisphere. These are the Polar cell, Ferrel cell and Hadley cell. These create the trade winds, westerlies and polar easterlies which control many aspects of c...
I recently learned of a fascinating art project being developed by Sam van Aken involving the grafting of flower buds onto a stock tree. You can find out more about the project itself by visiting t...
My story setting's group of AIs and brain-uploaded humans wants to colonize space. They have an advantage over us, meat humans, because they don't need conventional life support (air, water, sewage...
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...
I stumbled across Vincent's answer regarding forests and deserts. He claims an elevation difference of 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) could put a forest and a desert in close proximity. That got me thin...
In this alternate universe, we still have the gas giants of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. However, each planet has its mass increased $3.5$ times. How would this change affect the gravity o...
Suppose an alternate reality where each human Society (country, clan, tribe, kingdom, or whatever) only give birth to one male per generation. That entire generation depend solely on that one male ...
What environmental pressures could drive evolution of a creature that has the ability to float? How it floats isn't important.
Let's say scientists created a pill, that would satisfy our daily nutritional needs. It would have all vitamins needed, all calories, minerals - everything that a human body needs in order to funct...
Assume that a person is shielded by magic. The only thing this magic does is to keep air away from that person (ignore for now any consequences to said unfortunate individual). Aside from this, the...
In my world I have a couple species of sentient animals, mainly cats, who among other things are capable of communication with human beings. While I am perfectly happy to resort to explanations i...
Is there a way for the moon to be seen at every point during the daytime? In my world it is day all the time so they have a rough concept of months, years and days. To solve this they could have mo...
In a world in which dragons (as animals, minus magical associations) existed, what natural defense mechanisms might other animals or plants evolve in response? How would a creature as devastating ...
If there's one thing that solid celestial bodies have, it's dust. Dust plus water is mud. Mud plus heat is brick (and recoverable water vapor). The heat can come from a reflective solar array. Easy...
I'm curious to the affect a planet would have if it orbited around, or was orbited by another planet of equal, slightly larger mass. Say if Earth had, not the moon, but a planetary object the same ...
We've created a series of mechanisms to terraform the temperature and atmosphere to be Earthlike. My geologists are screaming at me, because a lot of features are being rapidly eroded by the new h...
Suppose superintelligent AI is possible. Is there any reason its code couldn't be executed by stone-age people rather than a computer? E.g., imagine an order of monks reading and executing commands...
During the Ming dynasty, China was frequently attacked by centaurs from north. In order to ward off the invaders, the emperor of China wanted to build a long stretch of barrier along the mountain r...
I just asked myself what is the role of the mountains on Earth? Well there's a well known role for the climate and weather. But is there a kind of physical or geological role? What would happen i...
