Search
I am doing some work within the setting of the Exalted tabletop role-playing game. In broad brush strokes, the defining feature of the world is the five elemental poles: Water (west), Wood (east), ...
or, Anatomically Correct Weebles A group of behaviorally modern humans was cut off from the rest of the earth-like planet millennia ago. (Myths hold that the separation occurred four to five ka BP...
There is this setup that I've seen a few times of a ring-shaped world where people live on the inner side. My question is: what is the minimum advancement of technology for such a thing to happen? ...
For a long, long, long time I have had a concept of a world that exists on the inside of a hallowed-out sphere. The basic construction of the world is like this: It is a large world, at the cent...
If you want to have a smaller star but you also want to keep your planet in the habitable zone, you need to put the planet closer to the star. This means shorter years. It is also possible to have ...
I am a survivor of the United Nations Space Corp's 2nd Exploration Fleet. On our travel to the distant Epsilon Canares system, our scouts encountered a strange lifeform. We call them 'shapeshifter...
I was thinking about a different possibilities for habitable planets. And I was wondering what actually causes a planet to be tidally locked? I am assuming it more than chance that the bodies rot...
No, not that one. This one. I want to see the USS Enterprise fly, but I'm curious how it would be accomplished in any realistic fashion. Now, the world I'm building that needs a flying Enterpri...
Meaning, cause a seemingly normal winter to suddenly take a turn within hours or a day/two into a completely frozen territory? From what I've read, abrupt climate change happens from ocean currents...
I'll narrow down your list by talking about all the stars you shouldn't use. You'll find it gives you a pretty narrow range. Let's start with the exciting ones: neutron stars. These are, technical...
Apart from the problems of formation and the problems of mechanical stability already mentioned by others, there's also the problem that gravitation cannot preserve that situation. If the sphere w...
The 10% conversion efficiency mentioned in other answers is a decent rule of thumb — there's a lot of variation in the real world, but if you assume that the total prey biomass equals somewhere aro...
I've been mulling over an idea for my preferred RPG setting, and I wanted to check if anyone knows the following: Is it possible for a river to flow underground for miles, and then suddenly be put...
If I want an Earth-like planet, what kind of star can I use to achieve that ? According to the Harvard stellar classification, our Sun is a G-class star. The best would be to have: Temperature ...
I was wondering what would happen if there was a planet with a "shell" of stone entirely surrounding it (not connected, just held in place by gravity), with a few holes all the way through the oute...
Disclaimer: the overall idea of the world as presented is basically lifted from Strugatsky Brothers "Inhabited Island". The details of the question are for a derivative work in that universe. Imag...
The right constraint Shipping lanes are not a result of a constraint of choice, but a constraint of resource. I could start a shipping company that takes a scenic route from A to B, but it will go...
In many stories we hear about people whose genetic structure is modified after they're born (Spider-man, The Fantastic 4 and practically any other superhero you care to mention). However current sc...
I'm trying to design a food chain. For the sake of argument lets say it's based on flying creatures over a particular mountain range. Sun Plants/Fungus etc Tiny Insects Small Birds Hawks Large Ape...
Actually, some of the challenges you describe might not be too hard to overcome. Maybe you've thought of the same things I have. Metals I'll tackle smelting first. The key issue you described is ...
Would a civilization that is trying to permanently colonize a landless world with no atmosphere (think Europa's sea) be able to do so? Permanence matters - it means you can't simply build domes th...
First off, let's get definitions out of the way: A "race" here is defined as stable, heritable, phenotypic, clearly visual distinction between large demographic groups living in different geograph...
Let's take a world that is based heavily on Elon Musk's specific ideas of Mars colonization, to whit: Launch technology from Earth evolves to be to <$100/lb cost to launch ratio, due to reusab...
Note: This question assumes an earth-like biology. Could a microbe (probably virus) be created that transformed humans into plants? What I mean by this is that the microbe would take human cells, ...
Here you can use an actual physical field to act as a force field - in certain scenarios. Let's say you want to stop a single particle. What can you do? You can trap it. Not deflect it, in the sens...
