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Let's not delve into specific genuses, families, orders etc. Broaden your definition of "classifications" to words like "mammal" or "fish", "crustacean" or "avian". Science fiction depictions of...
Several science fiction books picture bigger Terran planets with higher gravity. I'm curious to know what would be the maximum gravity mammals similar to the one on earth could survive. Only bones ...
I've been thinking about flag designs for colonies on Mars, and something occurred to me. The "official" Flag of Mars has a critical flaw The average wind speed on Mars is 10 m/s (20 mph); the fa...
If I were to hide an artifact, where would could I hide it so that it is the hardest for a human to get there (or even be there). For example, hiding something inside a volcano sounds like a prett...
Preface With all technology discovered prior to this question, on today's planet, there are still some things we have not observed - which may be used to justify introducing new life forms, right h...
Is there any solid, scientific counterargument against the hypothetical explanation that attributes dark matter as matter in hidden planes of existence? I am trying to construct a world in which t...
I've been reading this question about agriculture for merfolk and more specifically the accepted answer. They mention the problem of food preservation only minutely. Now I'd like to pour that thoug...
Every single depiction out there seems to think that animal teeth and/or mouth are no problem for a perfect speech-therapist approved pronunciation. For instance the Cat People. They never have an...
I'm throwing around a rough concept in my head and wonder which effect it would have on the present world. How would the world as we know it change if this technology were invented (and nothing els...
I am considering whether a pre-Industrial civilisation could carry on for millennia on an Earth-like planet without entering the Industrial Age. Of course, regularly destroying everything with pla...
How would you justify hidden aliens on Mars, which no one on Earth has discovered yet? I was thinking over it, and having them be primitive or highly advanced seems a necessity. The latter gives a...
Out there in the vastness of space there is a colossal machine by unknown makers. An entire artificial planet that, underneath the initial crust, has massive systems of clockwork with the topmost p...
This world is all water, and I want the trees to be the only thing that represents land. The trees are horizontally positioned, and start from a large self sufficient floating seed pod, much like a...
In the overly sterile environment my characters live in, the AIs supplement probiotics with food servings for the humans. Let's say one type of gut flora went extinct. The AIs are trying to fix t...
In the future, AI systems sanitize humans as they walk through doorways. Home surfaces self-sanitize. Food is mostly 3D printed from cleaned particles, including Vitamin K and possibly some probiot...
Given that AIs will be produced with military and commercial "prime directives", all over the world, by organisations that will ignore or subvert something like a UN resolution ... what is a practi...
After the WorldBuilding community helped Average Joe start his own microstate, Joe has become scientifically inclined, and uses his money to conduct somewhat dangerous research projects from...
Would it be at all viable for a person to have certain plant characteristics such as: Chloroplasts in their hair and skin, with the skin maybe lookmuch darker because of extra light absorbance (m...
Back home and in this alternate scenario, the Ozarks are all that remains of a Proterozoic mountain range hundreds of millions of years ago. Back home, the Ozarks look like this, highlit in lime: ...
Edited to give a reason why synthetic diamonds wouldn't work instead. In the distant future, all the diamonds are gone. While synthetic diamonds are an excellent sollution for technology - as @...
I am imagining a temperate forested area with freshwater lakes, rivers, small mountains, and rolling grassy hills. This environment is situated within a very large explosion crater. Outside this cr...
On an Earthlike planet with one large moon (just like Earth's), I have a large landlocked sea with one narrow exit (like the Black Sea, but much larger, something like six or eight Mediterraneans, ...
On the generation ship in one of my stories and possibly more, there exists a positive relationship between the egg laying humanoid aliens who have an egg pouch on their chest and the humans they a...
"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." "” H.P. Lovecraft One example of this is the universal fear of the da...
I want to have an Earth like planet, but with most of the continents having very little flatland. Thus continents would be covered mostly by hills and mountains. I want the rest of the planet to be...
