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Suppose the universe contained a species of planet sized turtles1 that can travers at least interstellar space. How can I explain (without invoking magic) that these turtles are not spherical? If ...
Simply put is there an upper bound for the largest possible living creature in a scientifically rational world without incorporating anti-gravity, magic, the force, or other physical concepts we ar...
Some species that reproduce sexually, don't actually have sex as such. Instead the female might lay soft scaled eggs, which the male then fertilizes extrenally. I want to know what a society of an...
If a planet had such a large imbalance of protons and electrons that it possessed a net negative or positive charge what would happen to it and its solar system? First, could it be stable, or woul...
I found this on Wikipedia. I'm aiming for the fastest climate change possible without that much advanced notice, e.g. perhaps a regional sized asteroid scientists miss or are too distracted to cat...
All life we know of to date (presumably) formed on a rocky planet (more precisely: earth). Fiction has been written about life in more exotic locations. Though as far as I know, these lifeforms wer...
I am recalling the Space:1999 nuclear waste containment explosion; this has been criticized because such an explosion would have actually destroyed the moon. I am curious for events that could happ...
Maelstroms are ginormous whirlpools. They can exist continuously in an area. They're cool. The question is, how large can they get? As large as an island? Could a maelstrom have a diameter of 60 o...
This question comes up from Is there a man-made or natural event that can cause an abrupt climate change within hours/a day? "“ trying to get KaguraRap a functional answer to an abrupt temperature ...
A quite common idea to provide "gravitation" in space stations is to make them rotate, so the centrifugal force gives an effective gravitation. A possible design is a ring-shaped space station. No...
Could underwater creatures with the intelligence of human cave men or possibly the intelligence of apes create technology (that is, more complex technology comparable to what we have now rather tha...
In this setting, humanity has advanced to the technological capability of extra stellar travel via faster-than-light drives. However, due to distances between inhabited areas being extremely large,...
Why aren't animals photosynthetic on earth? And what would make it plausible for them to evolve to be?
Is it possible (for humans)? My main concern was heavy gravity because they are much bigger and heavier. But it appears that in our system, the gas giants (but not Jupiter) all have a similar surf...
One of the solution to make a cold planet habitable for us is to increase the greenhouse effect. It works with planets like Mars that are inside the habitable zone but would it be enough for a plan...
I'm starting a story taking place around 2080 AD/CE, and I'm wondering if the key element - global pollution - is plausible. In my storyline, the XXIst century brings no huge technological advance...
Mars and Earth's moon already feature in a lot of fiction about space colonization. After these two planets, and assuming that other solar systems are too far away, what is the best place within th...
Picture, if you will, four planets sharing the exact same orbit and orbital speed, and separated by exactly same distance from each other. Each planet is the same size and roughly the same gravitat...
DISCLAIMER: This question was closed on Astronomy Stack Exchange as off topic, so I'll try my luck here. I'm trying to understand the climatic effects of the far future scenario of an Earth-like p...
It's a commonly known fact that whale song travels huge distances. In fact apparently before the oceans were so noisy they could communicate over 10,000km! However, whales are very big! They can c...
There are quite a few known drawbacks to incest. However, incest can be helpful when trying to help a desired trait spread. Incest does happen in nature to some degree but it's not exactly activel...
Suppose a very large planet orbited a star or other spacial body in an oval shaped path, similar to Earth's but closer to induce a varying gravity during orbit. The planet has a large gravity wel...
Imagine a species that evolved on a planet where there was no metal (or not much) of any kind. They, of course, discovered fire and were able to start building buildings and basic machinery from ...
Imagine the Earth is sucked into a wormhole powerful enough to pull it out of it's current orbit. the ones who created the wormhole wanted to move earth to protect it however didn't want their acti...
Imagine the Earth is struck by a laser/magic beam capable of piercing it and leaving a lasting hole. What effects would observed? Would there be a difference between the hole(s) being made in the o...
