ApproachingDarknessFish‭

On Earth, photosynthetic organisms require additional nutrients to survive; in addition to "feeding" off of sunlight, plants respire and absorb water from the ground in order to grow. However, th...

12 answers  ·  posted 10y ago by ApproachingDarknessFish‭  ·  last activity 8y ago by ApproachingDarknessFish‭

The year is 2089. The political shenanigans of the day have gotten more out of hand than usual and violent zealots have detonated the Earth's largest deposit of plotium devicide, an extremely versa...

2 answers  ·  posted 8y ago by ApproachingDarknessFish‭  ·  last activity 7y ago by ApproachingDarknessFish‭

For the purposes of this question only, I am making the following definitions: Cell: a microscopic, membrane-bound subunit of a living organism. Living organism: an entity composed primarily of b...

6 answers  ·  posted 8y ago by ApproachingDarknessFish‭  ·  last activity 6y ago by ApproachingDarknessFish‭

There are lots of examples in fiction of lizard people, bird people or beast people, but I'd like to expand my phylogenetic horizons in conceptualizing my world. To that end, I have conceptualized ...

2 answers  ·  posted 8y ago by ApproachingDarknessFish‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by ApproachingDarknessFish‭

I have a race of carnivorous mammals (the same from this question) for whom blood plays an extremely important role in cultural rituals. For complex cultural reasons, a member of this race (call hi...

3 answers  ·  posted 8y ago by ApproachingDarknessFish‭  ·  last activity 6y ago by ApproachingDarknessFish‭

Having read this excellent question and its answers, I've tried to come up with an evolutionary history for a sapient, avian race that populates part of a world I'm building. I'd like feedback as t...

3 answers  ·  posted 8y ago by ApproachingDarknessFish‭  ·  last activity 8y ago by ApproachingDarknessFish‭

Recently, I've been struggling to create an avian race that evolved hands to replace its wings. The consensus on that question was that it was not evolutionarily realistic for the bones of a wing t...

6 answers  ·  posted 8y ago by ApproachingDarknessFish‭  ·  last activity 6y ago by ApproachingDarknessFish‭

On Earth, we experience seasons because of our planet's axial tilt. It is a common misconception that the seasons are instead caused by our planet's distance from the sun changing as it orbits....

1 answer  ·  posted 8y ago by ApproachingDarknessFish‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by ApproachingDarknessFish‭

Part 1 On Earth, we have seasons due to our planet's tilt. In my last question, I proposed an alternative world where the seasons were instead caused by an eccentric orbit. Now I'm going for somet...

2 answers  ·  posted 8y ago by ApproachingDarknessFish‭  ·  last activity 7y ago by ApproachingDarknessFish‭

Imagine a world that works mostly like our own: it's built of atoms and quantum particles, there's gravity and conservation of energy, etc. Perhaps the physical laws aren't exactly the same as our ...

5 answers  ·  posted 8y ago by ApproachingDarknessFish‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by ApproachingDarknessFish‭

In the world I'm building, there's a race of sapient, technologically advanced lizard people, most of whom live in an enormous, climate-controlled city. Based on the answers to this question, it se...

3 answers  ·  posted 7y ago by ApproachingDarknessFish‭  ·  last activity 7y ago by ApproachingDarknessFish‭

Imagine a large butterfly- or moth-like creature, with a wingspan of about one meter (it's moth-like, not actually related to Earth insects). It lives its entire life high in the open sky, never to...

3 answers  ·  posted 7y ago by ApproachingDarknessFish‭  ·  last activity 7y ago by ApproachingDarknessFish‭

In Larry Niven's short story "Bordered in Black", there's a planet (Sirius B-IV) with much lower gravity than Earth. As a result, the planet has a gentler atmospheric pressure gradient, i.e., the a...

2 answers  ·  posted 7y ago by ApproachingDarknessFish‭  ·  last activity 7y ago by ApproachingDarknessFish‭

My (your) goal is to melt several tons of snow and ice in a small area using electromagnetic radiation beamed down from a spacecraft in orbit. The atmosphere that's in the way is vaguely Earth-like...

4 answers  ·  posted 5y ago by ApproachingDarknessFish‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by ApproachingDarknessFish‭