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[Question] [ I'm not quite sure if this question fits in with worldbuilding but I have honestly no idea where else I would ask it. I've recently stumbled upon a ['ship designer' tool](http://spaceengine.org/shipeditor/) that allows you to build and design rather neat looking starships by selecting various parts and p...
[Question] [ We are the only sentient civilization currently known to man, and sight is an integral part of both our everyday lives as well as most major technological advances throughout human history. Without the ability to see long distances, we may have never yearned to reach the horizon in ancient history, so th...
[Question] [ **Closed**. This question needs to be more [focused](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- **Want to improve this question?** Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by [editing this post](/posts/63674/edit). Closed 3 years ago. [Improve this question](/pos...
[Question] [ I need someone to fact-check me and tell me if there's anything immediately bogus or physically impossible with the scenario I'm about to propose. Billions of years ago, under the ice of Europa, the first single-celled organism developed. Over time, members of this single species began to differentiate a...
[Question] [ An assortment of alien adolescents accompanying adult aliens on an alcubierre-drive ship just happen to have been passing near the Sol system. Having noticed that there is lots of EM radiation coming from the third planet, their ship was stopped so that its scientists could gather data. Firing up their q...
[Question] [ I'd like to travel really really fast, and I've got some scientists proposing a novel new way of doing so. They've developed the technology to generate extremely powerful controlled gravitational waves. Based on my knowledge of these things, I understand that they propagate at the speed of light as a rip...
[Question] [ The movie Back to Future revealed that Mr. Fusion (MF) produced by Fusion Industries (FI) was in widespread use in 2015. What the movie did not reveal was the FI was privately funded by Bill Gates. FI used 10,000,000,000 dollars and the entire first year of production at a cost of 2500 dollars for each u...
[Question] [ I am writing a SF story, in this story, a life-form(You can just call them alien) from another universe comes to earth. They used "imaginary velocity" to make their time elapse faster than all beings on the earth. When the alien is using "imaginary velocity", they eat humans. From SR, the formula for tim...
[Question] [ As I'm sure you're all aware, human beings at some point in their lives -- generally post-puberty or so -- stop growing. As a result, there's some easily-predictable measures, such as the average height of a human, and some pretty consistent standards in our society, such as the height of a typical door ...
[Question] [ My society has a typical line of succession (like the UK monarchy before a female child was given equal status). The eldest son has priority, followed by other sons, and then followed by his daughters. Unfortunately, the king has died young. He's spent too much time visiting other ladies and has left two...
[Question] [ **Closed**. This question needs to be more [focused](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- **Want to improve this question?** Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by [editing this post](/posts/171287/edit). Closed 3 years ago. [Improve this question](/po...
[Question] [ In building an sentient alien that is unique among the sea of humanoids, I aspire to explore quadrupeds. For a quick visual reference, this is what I have: [![The quadrupedal race that uses two "tail tentacles" as graspers](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iYA5C.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iYA5C.png) *propo...
[Question] [ In the world I am designing, instead of mammals, birds are the dominant species. In this world, replacing the niche of deer gazelle and cattle are a group of animals known as Quadrabirds. These are similar to flightless birds but with the their wings turning into a type of walking limb, hence their names...
[Question] [ From the movie Tremors, behold the graboid: [![It followed me home mommy, can I keep it?](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lMEBP.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lMEBP.jpg) These are vicious, SUV to bus sized sandworms that have acquired a taste for human flesh. They are known to "swim" through the earth really ...
[Question] [ Our planet has a surface full of silicates and a core made of iron. It's due to this that Earth is the way it mostly is - most rocks and many minerals contain some form of silica. But what about a planet with an iron surface and a core of, let's say, mercury (to have an element denser than iron)? This is...
[Question] [ Well, Luminescence really but I liked the alliteration. Would there be any reason or mechanic why plants may develop that glow in the dark? Ideally they would do so in response to stimulus such as touch, but continual or periodic glowing would also be acceptable. Is there a plausible mechanism through wh...
[Question] [ Sort of like a meta-question, but here it goes: I'm trying to write a story, which there'll be a land where the worldbuilders gather and live together, and use their worldbuilding power together. It's a fantasy world, so presumably whatever they've come to mind and designed would come to life. And exactl...
[Question] [ Other than photosynthesis being an issue, if the Earth's surface became inhospitable and humans were forced to live underground, what biological changes would they be expected to go through to adapt to the new environment? For example, let's say the makeup of the atmosphere changes and the environment ab...
[Question] [ Your average Invading Alien Species shows up and plans to invade Earth. They are Default Dumb Movie Aliens and don't have nanotech, AI, space habitats, diplomatic abilities, self-replicating factories, slaughter bots, or anything else one expects a Real Interstellar Empire might bring to the table. Their...
[Question] [ It has been suggested that lava tubes at Hadriacus Mons could provide a location for a human habitat that would screen out harmful radiation. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadriacus_Mons> My idea for a colony is that it was initially built inside the lava tube (which I gather is huge - 190m wide, 160m t...
[Question] [ Well, after asking [Would mermaids be affected by tongue-eating lice evolving alongside them?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/212920/would-mermaids-be-affected-by-tongue-eating-lice-evolving-alongside-them), I realized they would be a worthy addition to a more monstrous subspecies of m...
[Question] [ Most of us are well aware that chocolate is already a bit addictive to human beings... maybe it's the caffeine or the sugar? But what if there were a species to which chocolate was as addictive as heroin? Not only is it the best smelling/tasting and enticing thing they've ever encountered, but the first ...
[Question] [ Imagine we took earth and slowed it down so that a day lasted 100 years, could humans (or any life) survive? Let's assume that there are no ill effects of slowing it down, no massive tidal waves, no continents melting as they slide across the surface, and the atmosphere stays in its relative location. In...
[Question] [ The development of microgravity cuisine is an interesting topic, especially when it comes to transferring simple processes like the successful thermochemical processing of muscle tissues (e.g. barbecuing of meat). A man, who is a butcher and owns a small restaurant, and his friend, an astronaut qualified...
[Question] [ I have a series of astronauts landing on an asteroid. I'd like to know the threshold of mass for them to not fly off into space. Specifications: * Assumption is all astronauts are under 180cm, 80kg. * Assumption is an astronaut may jump lightly and not fly off into space. * Request is **a comfortable rad...
[Question] [ Im sure some are familiar with Bioshock's "Rapture City," a (somewhat) successful underwater city that was able to maintain stability and house an entire population. But, using current technology and engineering, could we (and how) construct a city off the west coast of the United States that: 1. Is loca...
[Question] [ Everybody, even those who are complete beginners in the field of Astronomy, know Io, the cryovolcanic moon of Jupiter that looks like a burned pizza with skin cancer. Volcanoes constantly spit out sulphur in various forms and compounds, which gives Io its characteric coloring that consists mainly of yell...
[Question] [ I once heard someone claim that if we had four digits on each hand our mathematics would be well in advance of what it is. Presumably this is because 4 is a power of 2 and those clever computers calculate in powers of two. Personally, I think that they do so for electrical reasons, but am not enough of a...
[Question] [ I'm not sure if this question belongs here or over on Physics Stack Exchange. The Earth and Moon are unique in the Solar System in that the Moon is a significant size compared to the Earth, at 1/4 the diameter and 1/80 the mass. In the Solar System planets are distributed in an exponential fashion with e...
[Question] [ **Background** Water is a very mysterious figure. He doesn't say much, he doesn't do much, but he is also at the forefront of an elite group of like-minded magic users. Water knows *trust magic*. With his magic, Water could, for instance, raise a person's trust in himself when faced with nervous or cr...
[Question] [ Today's dinosaurs--the birds--have a uniquely avian piece of anatomy called the syrinx, located at the base of the trachea. Because it is located at a point where the trachea branches to the lungs, the syrinx makes birdsong a possibility. The syrinx is an anatomy unique to birds--the non-avian dinosaurs,...
[Question] [ We are on the verge of the age of self-driving cars. This is a fact, with Google, Uber and other companies rushing to develop safe, self-driving road vehicles. What is less clear to me is the social impact of it. To keep the question short and sweet, think of the vast world of American Suburbia, where p...
[Question] [ Assuming only plausible advancements in science, a Martian colony is established before the end of the century. (Sooner if possible). What materials would be needed in regular shipments from Earth? How often would those shipments have to come? (Based on plausibly-sized transport space craft) **What sort...
[Question] [ How much TNT do you need to blow up Mount Everest? Is this even possible and can mankind survive a huge explosion like this? Or would the whole world be covered with dust? And if you can survive this huge explosion then from how many kilometers away would you still able to hear the explosion? [Answer]...
[Question] [ In the book 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke, Jupiter is turned into a star. Presumably this is done by making it more dense, so if Jupiter were to reach that density and become a star, what would be the impacts on the Solar System? [Answer] The impact would vary greatly depending on where you ar...
[Question] [ 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 rotation and period are the same. I started thinking what it would be like to be on a planet that circles a huge...
[Question] [ Airships went out of fashion for a variety of reasons including: * Materials science level made constructing gas bags difficult. Cow-intestine were used to make the bags * Filling the airships with gas was expensive and eventually airplane fuel became cheaper * Lack of accurate weather forecasting and pr...
[Question] [ This is the second question in a series about my ongoing worldbuilding project, which seeks to explain the evolution and biology of various fantasy creatures. The first one was: [Is petrifying vision plausible?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/113648/is-petrifying-vision-plausible-in-an...
[Question] [ Let us imagine a human-sized mantis (1.7m tall, 70kg / 5'8", 154 lbs.), but with the forelegs modified to have a shape closer to human arms. So each arm would have two main segments, and end up in a multi-segmented, multi-fingered, grasping-capable hand. In order to make this creature feasible without vi...
[Question] [ I'm aware that 'tatooine' worlds don't make good habits for planets, normally. From what I've read, either a planet has to orbit one star really closely, or orbit both stars from a really long distance away. I envisioned a kind of double solar system, where there are two stars that are close enough to or...
[Question] [ **This question asks for hard science.** All answers to this question should be backed up by equations, empirical evidence, scientific papers, other citations, etc. Answers that do not satisfy this requirement might be removed. See [the tag description](/tags/hard-science/info) for more information. [In ...
[Question] [ [This answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/40806/6799) states that "guided evolution" would help babies develop under constant 3-4g's. This answer has inspired me to ask , **what sort of genetic tinkering would help humans adapt to life on a planet with 3-4 G's?** Basic background informatio...
[Question] [ The flight-mechanisms and exoskeletons of insects are only practical at their current scale -- the wings interact with the air as more of a 'fluid' medium at their scale, than gas as birds experience it (I may be wrong on this). Second, their exoskeletons are less cumbersome (and indeed helpful) at the m...
[Question] [ 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 course "mild peril" ensues and one of the heroes ends up almost falling off the bottom of the city into the endl...
[Question] [ Humanity is in a late medieval stage, prior to the discovery of steam and combustion but quite knowledgable about metalwork . A country decides to build a large-ish city and 7 long chains leading to mountains, in the hope they may lift the city, a testament to their riches and people – and inevitable hub...
[Question] [ Okay, following my [previous core question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/14473/sci-fantasy-terraforming-the-earth-and-magic-nanomachines/), after the apocalypse, one of my sets of survivors in this setting, the Usnay, managed to live in a fleet of ships for over a thousand years. Th...
[Question] [ In my reading of sci-fi I came across a fascinating concept: an alien race called the Chromatics that had a partially photonic nervous system. They were described as having very fast reflexes. Now I am planning on introducing a plant-like race of aliens. (They are actually planimals) Because I find the i...
[Question] [ Y'all should know by now that [I want to build a Death Star](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/3458/2072) ;-) Let's assume that we did that already -- and against the odds, we've built *two* of them, and they're currently in orbit around a planet; let's say planet Earth. What would happen to our ...
[Question] [ Let's say I have a binary star system. The planet is orbiting the smallest star similar to the Sun at 1 AU, the same Earth-Sun distance. The other star is located at around 50-100 AU from the Sun star. This second star is 2-3 times more massive. It will run out of combustible before the smaller star. It...
[Question] [ The year is 1933 in Europe. The Germans have developed the Flak 18, one of the first true antiaircraft artillery. Previous attempts during WW1 were clumsy and generally unsuitable for the task of shooting down flying things. The new Flak 18 is purpose built to put the hurting on airplanes. During a trai...
[Question] [ Shortly after the [Washington Naval Treaty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Naval_Treaty), the British designed and built two [Nelson-Class Battleships](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson-class_battleship), and a decade later these designs inspired the French [Richelieu-Class Battleships](http...
[Question] [ A message arrives from several light years away. It is a complete prepared document, not a two-way communication. The document can contain line-drawings and diagrams, both 2D and 3D, plus movies (a time dimension) and overlays. Now it’s straightforward to teach the syntax and encoding through careful exa...
[Question] [ So I went and saw Rogue One recently. Wonderful movie... **If you want absolutely no spoilers STOP READING NOW.** The Death Star shoots up a couple planets in the movie. (Not much of a spoiler but still.) They don't poof like Alderaan in episode 4. (They aren't completely destroyed.) In Rogue One the las...
[Question] [ Many mythologies across the world independently devised monsters with similar appearances and/or modus operandi. Many modern encyclopedias of mythological monsters often include cross references between similar monsters from different mythologies (e.g. compare lilith and lamia, hippogriff and simurgh, et...
[Question] [ I've got a near future setting where humanity has colonised the solar system. The setting is relatively hard science fiction, with realistic spacecraft and space flight. However, it is also a setting featuring mecha of both the mini and humongous variety, and I'd like to include other things only seen in...
[Question] [ Some autistic genius mathematician just published a solution to the long-standing problem of P-hard problems being equivalent to NP-hard. The solution just hit Reddit, Slashdot, math.stackexchange.com and several hang-outs of the world's best mathematicians. You don't need a quantum computer. You just ne...
[Question] [ I realize that many factors affect this answer so assume the following: 1. Star type: [G2 star](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-type_main-sequence_star) (like our Sun) 2. Composition: O2, N2, CO2, H2O atmosphere 3. Magnetic field: Two different magnetic field strengths (none or minimal & Earth strength) 4...
[Question] [ In another question, [Are flying plants possible?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/11208/147), a point was raised that because of the square-cube law, a large, hollow, spherical plant could fly by having the air inside be a little bit hotter than the air outside. I'm wondering how a plant could...
[Question] [ Setting: Large city full of tall buildings, plus zombies The survivors have taken to the higher floors of the buildings. The streets are very dangerous, so going down there is only for emergencies. 1. What would be the supplies needed to survive indefinitely? I guess I'm assuming that they would farm on ...
[Question] [ Dragonfolk have skin that looks like rock, but sometimes, some of them turn colorful with very bright horns for the same reason salmon turn from grey to red, while others are always bright and colored. In the image there are 4 examples, but the dragonfolk can span any color range, and their pigmentation ...
[Question] [ **Could you have advanced mechanical engineering without, say, advanced electrical engineering accompanying it?** Thick clockwork, clickety clackety stuff, does it need steam/electricity by default? **How would you explain armatures, automatons, wood or metal prosthetics that somehow trump even modern me...
[Question] [ It's tempting to think that anything with the outer shape of a human would simply collapse in a heap if its skeleton were not there. That is surely true if the internal structure was the same as ours but with the bones simply non-existent. However the human tongue, the elephant's trunk and the octopus's ...
[Question] [ Imagine that, through some cosmic phenomena not yet understood, the Sun 'burps' and ejects a vast amount of its mass into the cosmic void. A huge coronal discharge, perhaps. A pressure bubble inside that bursts. A mega internal explosion. The loss of mass is sudden and dramatic, but in a trajectory that ...
[Question] [ I'm trying to figure out how fast my tiny critters from a previous question, [Mistraille](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/47891/why-is-this-creature-afraid-of-water-but-not-of-body-or-plant-fluids), can travel. Why? It's not that I'm detail orientated and want to know the exact decimal ...
[Question] [ Not sure if this is too broad, but I am currently in the process of making a few flying alien species and, of course, didn't want to use the old insect or bat-like wings. Of the types of wings (or flying surfaces) I can think of present on earth, there are the limb-bound wings using finger bones for supp...
[Question] [ A general question here, relevant to many world-building scenarios. Language drifts, to the point that I likely could never understand old English, but I'm not sure how much. I want to know how long it would take for a language to deviate form it's origin that two people, speaking extensible the same lan...
[Question] [ Plants can have very different pollinators: The wind, insects, and even birds. However, is there a conceivable scenario where a plant could naturally have evolved to depend on humans as pollinators, where the humans (at least in the early stages of development) wouldn't know that they are pollinating the...
[Question] [ *Based off of this deleted question: [Why and how would a completely urbanized city-planet exist?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/808/why-and-how-would-a-completely-urbanized-city-planet-exist)* *Related:* * *[How would a completely urbanized city-planet support its population?](https:...
[Question] [ I'm writing a murder mystery set on an interstellar starship. Context: The victim was found dead in a zero-gee chamber inside the ship. The ship is in interstellar space and traveling at around half the speed of light (the chamber is a therapeutic room artificially kept at zero gee). My question: What ...
[Question] [ I'm brainstorming for a rocky planet with similar mass to that of Earth's, orbiting a red dwarf star. It is tidally locked with no natural satellites, yet I'm bent on having liquid water on both sun-facing and "nighttime" sides of the planet. 1. For that to be possible, I explored the possibility of a de...
[Question] [ Let's take this image as our fireball in question: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KpTDX.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KpTDX.jpg) And let's further assume that it travels about 30 meters before burning out (twice the range of a WWII flamethrower) and travels at the speed of 2...
[Question] [ **Closed**. This question is [opinion-based](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- **Want to improve this question?** Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by [editing this post](/posts/34208/edit). Closed 6 years ago. [Improve this question]...
[Question] [ I want to create an inland forest on the western side of a large continent that features cenotes instead of rivers. Is this possible, and if so, how can I make it work? Any requirements for altitude or soil structure are acceptable, so long as the area can support a fairly dense forest biome. [Answer]...
[Question] [ Recently I had an idea for a world setting. A large part of this world focuses around a habitable satellite the size of Earth orbiting a Super-Jupiter. The fact that it's a moon is pretty integral to everything, so if it does't work out I'll probably scrap the idea as a whole. My question is, could a sat...
[Question] [ I have a region on a 'Eurasia' style continent that is surrounded by large mountains. The reason that I came up with was a very dense and volcanically active microplate that was being compressed on three sides. As such, *three* large mountain ranges, and a abutment into the nearby inland sea. I want this...
[Question] [ Would a race/species that lives twice as long as humans experience linguistic evolution at half the rate of humans? If not, would it be slowed down at all? Would any cultural characteristics have a noticeable effect (e.g. extreme cultural conservatism slowing it down)? If this wouldn't have a noticeable ...
[Question] [ Imagine an Earth-like planet orbiting a Sun-like star [in the inner halo of the Milky Way](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_halo). As a halo star, it will likely be somewhat [metal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallicity)-poor, having formed early in the life of the galaxy, but other than that, ...
[Question] [ How would fire honey be useful and manageable to a beehive/bee colony? # Info In this scenario, bees harvest nectar from a particular flower. The nectar is not only spicy from [capsaicin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsaicin), but literally fiery. Tiny embers are magically suspended in the liquid, spa...
[Question] [ Perhaps one of the most popular flavors of worldbuilding is *steampunk*, which is basically today's technology under Victorian attitude, architecture and materials. The clear inspiration for steampunk's overall style is the Industrial Revolution's heavy emphasis on metals and factories and coal and those...
[Question] [ This was inspired by the question [How would tattoos fare on reptilian scales](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/4807/how-would-tattoos-fare-on-reptilian-scales) Let's assume for this question that humans never lost their hairy, hairy bodies and are covered in fur. How would tattooing wor...
[Question] [ How would society function if people had the ability to easily erase existing memories or imprint false memories? Let's say that this is fairly easy to do, but requires that the person is able to touch the victim. It is common for criminals to do it for scams or for concealing other crimes, and spies try...
[Question] [ One of the cities in my world is built on the ground floor beneath and around giant tree. Giant tree cities seem to pop up fairly frequently in science fiction and fantasy, but how would they actually work and how would the city be designed? An obvious question seems that of sunlight. How much would be b...
[Question] [ 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 planet with a reduced rotational speed caused by tidal locking with the moon (day-night period of 28 days, one...
[Question] [ My World has Dragoons, these are Dragon Riders and the riders are expert marksmen. They use magic arrows like explosive/fire/wind/homing arrows for offensive (basically magic archers) along with dragon's own offensive weapons like dragon breath. Dragons are somewhat intelligent creatures like Dolphins or...
[Question] [ **This question asks for hard science.** All answers to this question should be backed up by equations, empirical evidence, scientific papers, other citations, etc. Answers that do not satisfy this requirement might be removed. See [the tag description](/tags/hard-science/info) for more information. Supp...
[Question] [ **This question asks for hard science.** All answers to this question should be backed up by equations, empirical evidence, scientific papers, other citations, etc. Answers that do not satisfy this requirement might be removed. See [the tag description](/tags/hard-science/info) for more information. Coul...
[Question] [ I recently read Brandon Sanderson's articles on magic systems and they gave me a lot to think about, especially in the form of costs and weaknesses. I think I came up with a fairly interesting system for those two things. (Questions are forthcoming, I promise.) Essentially, magic at its core is influenci...
[Question] [ In my current worldbuilding project, I intend to create a region dominated by a civil war between a number of feuding Houses (upwards of 50 originally) that also share familial ties. Since these relations are expected (and intended) to become highly convoluted, I want to use some method of tracking the r...
[Question] [ If the North and South Poles' ice melted instantly, what would be the effect on humans and other animals? Would the sea creatures thrive? Would a lot of land get covered by water? [Answer] Well, the first effect is the temperature on the earth would drop significantly. It takes a lot of energy to melt...
[Question] [ I am looking for a site that will do the following for free: * Allow me to upload a map of a world (either URL or file, I don't mind). * Allow me to tag/label that map, to mark the locations of thing (either plain text, or URL links). * Host the image. Bonus: * Let me change/update the image without wipi...
[Question] [ **This question asks for hard science.** All answers to this question should be backed up by equations, empirical evidence, scientific papers, other citations, etc. Answers that do not satisfy this requirement might be removed. See [the tag description](/tags/hard-science/info) for more information. From...
[Question] [ At 4:56 in this video essay, Edgar states that at an axial tilt of 60 degrees, the tropic and arctic climate bands will be switched, so that equatorial regions would be cold and polar regions hot. <https://youtu.be/J4K3H9aNLpE?t=4m56s> Is this plausible? It seems to me that it should be more complicated ...
[Question] [ **Could a planet's biosphere be as insanely violent a la *[War Against the Chtorr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_Against_the_Chtorr)* or *[Fragment](http://www.warrenfahy.com/page_book_fragment.html)*?** Pretty much every organism, even the plants, is omnivorous and voracious. The two biggest obs...
[Question] [ **This question asks for hard science.** All answers to this question should be backed up by equations, empirical evidence, scientific papers, other citations, etc. Answers that do not satisfy this requirement might be removed. See [the tag description](/tags/hard-science/info) for more information. My b...
[Question] [ Say an early human civilization is arising on an earth-like planet (Earth, in fact) with one notable difference to the sky: a small ring of debris orbiting the planet. Assume the ring is clearly visible to the naked eye, formed from a recent (on a cosmological scale) but pre-historic asteroid strike, and...
[Question] [ Could a community of blind people sustain themselves? What challenges would they face, and how would they overcome them? I'm thinking of a small community of around 100 people in a rural environment, but I would be happy to hear of an extension of the idea to a whole planet. I would be especially happy t...
[Question] [ Some time ago, I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation about magnetism, electricity, and [graphene](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene). I was (and still am) curious about developing a "deflector shield" based in known and viable science. I don't remember the exact numbers I used, but my calculations...
[Question] [ # Info I'm designing a breed of cow that produces acid instead of milk. Part of the reason this is useful for my story is that the cows produce as much acid as a dairy cow would milk (through selective breeding/genetic modification.) Now, the dairy industry in 2013 produced [769 million tonnes](http://ww...
[Question] [ I have a race of humanoid species, who, like elves, have better senses than humans. They live in mountains and hills. They look like humans but have longer faces, smaller eyes and are most famous for their long noses (like noses between 5-15cm). Then I wondered, if their long noses would have an effect o...
[Question] [ I'm working on a fantasy setting that's literally a giant tree on a planetary scale. Magic is in effect, so concerns of how a tree that large could survive are irrelevant, but I need to figure out what water sources usable by it's inhabitants could feasibly exist on a tree of that size. I know bogs could...