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[Question] [ I have a fantasy world with roughly medieval technology (swords, crossbows, and chain mail for instance), and I have an egalitarian country with an army that's somewhere from 10 to 40% women (it probably varies over time). It is a fantasy world, so some people do have magic, which is equal among genders...
[Question] [ What I am proposing is a bridge making it possible to travel between two planets, I have some ideas but I would like to know if and how it would work. Maybe somehow stopping their orbit and locking them in place with a ring like structure or a flexible moving bridge. I don't care if it requires a strong ...
[Question] [ **Background:** The 20-km (or however large it needs to be to cause the below effects) asteroid appeared out of a dimensional rift close enough and going fast enough that it will reach Earth in just six or so months. It's projected to land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, right in the ocean crust near...
[Question] [ One of the most overlooked elements of modern fantasy is that cold iron serves as either an effective shield or an effective weapon against supernatural creatures, like fairies or spirits. With that in mind, let us say that elvish smiths have found use of an alloy **without** involving iron at all. The o...
[Question] [ 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 as similar to Earth as possible in size, gravity, ocean coverage, atmosphere, etc. How do I explain this? ...
[Question] [ A common sight in science fiction is a police robot force. But as most people know, robots (even [small basic ones](http://www.smashingrobotics.com/thirteen-advanced-humanoid-robots-for-sale-today/)) are expensive, which raises the question: why would they bother? Let's assume that the American governmen...
[Question] [ After thousands of years the mightiest of magic uses have finally cracked the code to revive the dead... Kind of. The resurrection spell, while restoring the body to a basic capacity, leaves them a mindless shambling husk, constantly rotting and never truly fixed, with the poor soul mindlessly attacking ...
[Question] [ By "biological brain in a box" AKA [Brain in a vat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat) I mean a robot which holds a physiologically normal human brain, and produces identical input / output as would be produced by a healthy human body (sensorial input, blood with nutrients, and output moves ro...
[Question] [ On a planet with Earth-like attributes in every way, including physics and geography, what repercussions would there be for a relatively deep 'dent' in one quadrant of the spherical body? This is only *slightly* related to [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/2606/what-effect...
[Question] [ In my fantasy world vampires exist, and most of the intelligent races can be turned into one. I try to make everything in this word kind of explainable by science, at least possible in our Earth. I've encountered a problem: how would vampires avoid catching diseases when ingesting blood? Vampirism is a v...
[Question] [ The Great Plague is known as one of the worst pandemics in human history as it killed between 75 and 200 million people from 1347 to 1351 (according to wikipedia). I would like to know if AIDS had erupted during the same period of time, would it have been more or less as deadly? [Answer] AIDS is a sex...
[Question] [ Basically I'm thinking of a strategy game, something like starcraft, and you have a unit that emits a field that causes the area around it to appear in grayscale. Is there any kind of potential physics explanation for how you could change the color of light reflected by an object without physically chang...
[Question] [ I've seen many sci-fi scenes that feature a ship underway on a deep space journey. As the ship passes the vantage point we can see engines burning during sub-FTL speeds (The Expanse most recently). **Why would engines need to burn once target velocity is reached?** Is there resistance in the vacuum of s...
[Question] [ So here's some rules: No magic, this is set in the real world, but there's a giant flying animal that breathes fire. Its body radiates a large amount of heat (like being in a steam room if you're next to it), and its scales are metallic. It's about 100 feet in length, and eats about 20 cattle every month...
[Question] [ I want a story with upload-based resurrective immortality, but this also makes me feel like I need to address the implications of a society that's primarily dominated by digitized human minds. Namely, how they would utterly outcompete even the most radically enhanced baselines. Is there enough room in ...
[Question] [ I have this world in my cosmic garden where open flames are not possible in the primary atmosphere (either not enough oxygen or some other factor that limits free burning of fuel). Given that advanced technology (as we know it) is only possible through the application of heat, would is be possible for th...
[Question] [ It's a normal victorian era day until people start to realize that the night is taking too long to pass and the sun is not coming out, in fact the sun is never coming out again. The sun still exists as a star out there in its usual place and the world still rotates as per usual but the hemisphere that is...
[Question] [ Consider that humans now have technology to travel around the galaxy at will. Hyperspace, warp speed you name it. There is a distance in which they can watch a supernova as a form of entertainment AND not be harmed in the process? As we do with the sunrise (in terms of experience). It can be from a plane...
[Question] [ This global-spanning empire is divided among five royal families, each headed by a prince. The emperor himself leads the empire, with the five princes serving under him. While they owe fealty to the king who has absolute authority over the empire, these families operate semi-independently and control the...
[Question] [ I'm inspired by [this comment](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/78323/if-music-was-crucial-at-wars#comment226432_78333). Let's say *"Supernatural beings are dependent on people believing they are real."* Before they are born into existence, how can people believe they are real? ## How ca...
[Question] [ I'm working on a magic system for my story. One of the ideas I'm toying with is magic users gaining extra senses, depending on the kind of magic they can use. One example is Reachsense (WIP name), ability to physically feel your surroundings within a certain distance. Something between sense of touch, cl...
[Question] [ I'm playing around with an idea in my head for a speculative species and I'd appreciate any help with a problem I've encountered trying to make them plausible. Let's say I have a species of animal, X. They have two distinct forms they go through in the course of life. X are born as small, bipedal babies ...
[Question] [ As a junior wizard, you need to carry around a lot a paraphernalia - scrolls, tomes, potions, stones, and many other things. Fortunately the Wizarding 102 class included the creation of pocket dimensions. And so begins your quest to make a usable bag of holding. There's just one problem: the only pocket ...
[Question] [ I have a race of Half Human, Half Dragons I've aptly called Draconians. The Draconians have a thick lizard like tail which extends down from their tailbone and then slowly curves upwards until it is horizontal to the ground. This causes issues when they need to sit on a chair, because A) The chair needs ...
[Question] [ [![toric water planet](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wADtq.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wADtq.png) It is impossible to have a continuous mostly liquid water ring around a star? Probably such a configuration would be unstable under normal planetary forming condition. I am looking for a good physical reason...
[Question] [ I'd like some fact-checking for a somewhat lively discussion going on [over here](/a/185337/43697). Feel free to wander over for details, though they aren't necessarily relevant. (Also, I hope this can serve as a useful reference for other questions.) ### Scenario: Someone (aliens, rogue government agent...
[Question] [ Background: In a society where human beings have lived among the stars for tens of thousands of years, they would have accumulated a lot of junk, so they just decided to throw a lot of it onto uninhabitable rocks near colony planets for easy disposal. Kind of like the galactic version of a landfill. My c...
[Question] [ So, in an alternate universe, Soviet Union never falls, and in 2068 a nuclear war happened. About 32,000 nukes were detonated in American, Soviet, EU, and Chinese cities. WW3 lasted about 5 hours or so, and hit every major American city. Anyway to the point, in post apocalyptic fiction, the wasteland is ...
[Question] [ Let's say that I own a planet and I have the chance to set up rules before any human can move in. I want to make a law that would welcome anyone to the planet as long as they only speak the decided language. It would mean doing anything needed to make sure nobody spoke any other language, even in a priva...
[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/56713/edit). Closed 7 years ago. [Improve this question]...
[Question] [ ## Heating up with some context I have a kingdom where large patches of forest and dense vegetation lands are lying, ranging from mountainous (al)pine forests to deciduous trees from oceanic or mildly continental climates, with a tendancy to grow a little more of [fast growing trees and bushes than usual...
[Question] [ Suppose humans are living in conjunction with several intelligent and communicative species of animals, dogs and cats for example. These animals might be legally considered people; being held accountable for their crimes, paying taxes, etc. Suppose then, that a new animal, whose intelligence and potentia...
[Question] [ For my future world, I've decided that coastal cities need fresh water and there isn't enough of it to go around. I don't know how jellyfish work. Is it feasible or completely impossible for scientists to bio-engineer giant jellyfish to convert salt water into fresh water? Do they store water in their b...
[Question] [ Consider a society where the population includes a number of sentient androids, practically indistinguishable from humans in appearance. In practice, they are treated exactly like humans under most circumstances, with the exception that they are not legally considered as persons. One might not know wheth...
[Question] [ So I'm working on a planet for a Sci-fi RPG setting. The basic idea is 'an earth-sized planet, far from the sun, too cold to live on, but with very earth-like gravity, so people live in underground cities'. The planet probably has Mars-like levels of geologic activity, and was colonized for mining. I'm a...
[Question] [ In my book series, there is a planet called Aztlan. The Aztlanians are essentially based on a mix of Aztec, Maya, and Inca cultures, with hints of Olmec, Nazca, and Mapuche thrown in. For example, the entire planet is governed by Tlatoani (Emperor) Montezuma XV, but the administration is much more simila...
[Question] [ The next war will be fought with lasers beside computers, I'm wondering could a bullet proof vest coated with a highly reflective surface protects user from laser blast. The laser in question is similar to those used in Sci-fi movies such as Star Trek, etc, meaning the output is mainly electromagnetic ra...
[Question] [ Let's say in the near future(so no fusion drives or anything exotic like that, VASIMR engines are the "best" engines placed on ships, not on expendable weapons), two space ships, armed with missiles, are orbiting so that they are opposite sides of the planet. If they are both suddenly ordered to fire mis...
[Question] [ Humans have been domesticating carnivores for over 10 000 years. And there are certainly [carnivores](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/13/hercules-liger-worlds-largest-cat-photos_n_3920158.html) big [enough](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-faced_bear) to ride. The former is the biggest feline ev...
[Question] [ One day, you run into a young man (~20 years old) who has spent his life in a laboratory being weaponized by the state until he finally escaped. He is a non-person, there is no public record of his existence. Now he just wants to live a normal life. Attending college is an especially attractive idea, but...
[Question] [ [Steampunk](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk)!! **In a world without the fine electronics that we have today, would space travel be possible?** ....I'm not averse to small amounts of magic in my steampunk worlds, but I'd like to keep it to a minimum, if I can. So possible answers are allowed to str...
[Question] [ [![landscape](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gLc0g.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gLc0g.jpg) I am creating an RPG and came across an image that I wanted to base my landscape on. It is shown above. Is it possible for terrain like that to form on Earth (ignore the wildlife)? If it is, how could it form? By thi...
[Question] [ In a series I remember that a group of people were trying to make a colonization ship and they had a big problem: the air. Ships (like every object) aren't perfect and they have micro fissures in the armor or in the edges of two plates of hull and by that fissures the air slowly escape. By a normal shi...
[Question] [ Suppose elves were the first humanoid species to appear on a planet and the species evolved naturally over time. They developed magic, sapience, agriculture, and the general concept of a stable society and culture. At some point prior to these elves establishing any semblance of religion or constructing ...
[Question] [ If I want to curse my enemy I say the curse to him. As a result, he will become sick and have a lot of bad luck. However, if he puts his fingers in his ears or uses some kind of earplug, I have to shout to make him hear it. Personal experience tells me that even the best of earplugs are not perfect soun...
[Question] [ In this world, a planet with very dense vegetation (earth-tropical-forest-like) and silica containing soil was attacked by spaceships which fired very high energy laser beams across the planet's entire surface, effectively vitrifying it. * this planet's outer crust was only soil not solid rock or water, ...
[Question] [ The Novikov self-consistency principle states that all changes that occur due to time travel into the past were always part of history, and so the course of events is not changed. While this is useful in explaining away lots of the logical paradoxes that might occur during time travel, it allows for the ...
[Question] [ In the modern-day military use of dogs in combat is fairly limited; the United States Armed Forces has about 2,500 "working dogs" serving, compared to the 1.2 million active humans (1:480). The goal is to increase the number of "working dogs" drastically (>= 1:50) by changing factors relating to the anim...
[Question] [ For my current world, I have a continent whose countries were brought together into a single, massive empire. After the death of the last emperor, the central imperial authority crumbled and the constituent regions continued their association through the formation of a federation. Each region, prior to t...
[Question] [ Imagine that you lived in this world: * The planet has a diameter of 5000 km. * The rotation time is the same as the orbital period. * And here it comes: the orbital period is 1027 years. * The planet's orbit is similar to Pluto's, only much more elliptical. * For just over 30 days, the planet is in the ...
[Question] [ If a species were to evolve on a rogue planet, how would they track the passage of time? Without day/night cycles or revolutions around a star, they couldn't use the typical methods that civilizations on a planet orbiting a star would. [Answer] 1. Stars...either a constellation that 'rises and sets' ...
[Question] [ A very common trope in fiction is the concept of some powerful, forbidden spell/martial art/etc., which is said to have a cost paid in the user's lifespan. Now, oftentimes this literally physically ages the user, but not all the time. When Tien uses this sort of life-force-draining ability in the anime D...
[Question] [ Blackouts happen all the time locally, but what would the implications of a world-wide, indefinite blackout be? Here is a spark from the fire of what could happen: * (obviously) lights go out * no air conditioning, heating * refrigeration, microwaves, toasters, ovens... stop working * factories shut down...
[Question] [ [The North American Aerospace Defense Command track Santa Claus' position each year as he delivers presents.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NORAD_Tracks_Santa) Santa has mostly been cool with this (it's made him a little nervous in the past), but he's afraid that Norad may be in league with [the NSA](htt...
[Question] [ **Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- You are asking questions about a story set in a world instead of about building a world. For more information, see [Why is my question "Too Story Based" and how do I get it opened?](https://w...
[Question] [ For a roleplaying world, it is highly favorable to have some common language spoken by all the possible playable races or nations, so that the players could play different characters without having to solve language issues. However, it's also favorable to have different cultures for each race and/or nati...
[Question] [ A spaceship is headed for Earth. We detected it with a few months' warning. Messages have been sent to and received from the ship by radio, but we haven't deciphered anything they've said, and don't believe they've deciphered anything we've said. We know, from the radio messages, that their language is h...
[Question] [ There are some [oil consuming bacteria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbial_biodegradation#Oil_biodegradation) which can break down hydrocarbons in the ocean. Since these tend to store a lot of energy, I was wondering whether it's possible for larger organisms to take advantage of hydrocarbons (speci...
[Question] [ In the South Galaxy, the overwhelming majority of life lives on planets, breathes air, and is carbon-based. All sentient life is carbon-based. However, in the vast reaches of space, there are some animals that float through the empty void, do not breathe (at least not air) and are silicon-based. These in...
[Question] [ I had a dream last night where I was coordinating a space program for an Earth-like planet, with a Moon much like our own. The Moon in the dream had an annoying quirk... The space program kept sending hundreds of probes to try and orbit the Moon. Each probe managed to complete no more than a handful orbi...
[Question] [ There are reports of blind people being able to develop an echolocation ability, by listening to the echo of sounds emitted by them. Since this ability is pretty handy for spies and soldiers, the army of a middle-age kingdom has trained some non-blind specialists to use this ability while moving in dark ...
[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/67996/edit). Closed 6 years ago. [Improve this question]...
[Question] [ The question I have is about the details of cause and effect occurring out of standard temporal order. Distilling it down to a single scenario: Consider two people, Alice and Bob, in a closed room. Bob has a device that can send him back in time 2 minutes. After 5 minutes in the room (at *T=5*), Bob use...
[Question] [ An adventurer (named Moses, for humor's sake) finds a clear pool of water deep in a cave. Upon taking a swim, he finds at the bottom of the pool is a mystical stone that eternally puts out water, seemingly from nowhere. Hailing from the desert, he realizes what an amazing find this is! Moses tries to thi...
[Question] [ I like to add fantastical things and make them mundane. In this case, instead of building and maintaining a pedestrian bridge in a fantasy world they would create a waterwalking path. In this case, two monoliths on either side of the water give all people between them the ability for waterwalking for a f...
[Question] [ **Note** I am aware of these previous questions [How quickly could a "shapeshifter" lose mass, realistically?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/176395/how-quickly-could-a-shapeshifter-lose-mass-realistically) [Is there a credible way a shapeshifter could gain/lose body mass when changing...
[Question] [ I'm worldbuilding a story, where a famous string theorist hires a student of mathematics to try construct a new theory. For better drama, my premise of the story is that the student never learned more than high school physics. What kind of mathematical disciplines would be most useful for someone who has...
[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. > >...
[Question] [ In a hypothetical fantasy setting, every region has its own pantheon. The deities are real and often interact with other pantheons, particularly between deities that share the same portfolio: e.g. Apollo and Amaterasu party on Ra's solar barge. (The world also has less powerful supernatural beings such a...
[Question] [ [Another question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/13364/if-magic-is-real-can-it-be-true-that-rational-scientific-thought-should-exclude) has asked whether magic would be immune to science's scrutiny. I'd like to invert the question and ask... **Would science even exist in a world with ...
[Question] [ **This question is supposed to explain the phenomenon in fiction that I affectionately call the "clean death", where a dead monster disintegrates after being slain.** Normally this would be explained by the monster being magical in nature but I am looking for a way to implement this in the actual biology...
[Question] [ For one of the novels I am writing, I want to create a race based off of the Chinese Zodiac. However, I don't know exactly where to start with creating said race, so I was curious to see if there was any tried and true way to go about creating a new race. Clarifications: * What I mean by "create a new r...
[Question] [ If all of the crew and passengers of an interstellar craft were in suspended animation except prior to Earth departure and just before destination arrival, would they need artificial gravity (through some from of spin) for the length of the journey? Also please let me know if there's a better place to as...
[Question] [ If an Earth-like planet has ice, does the ice have to be on both poles? For example, could a planet have ice on its south pole but not on the north pole, year-round? [Answer] All other factors being even? It *might* be possible if one pole was entirely oceanic and the other was either landlocked (like...
[Question] [ For a story I am drafting I would like to have droplets of fluid that form another shape than the regular domed droplets we usually see. Is there any other shape such as e.g. a doughnut-shape that droplets could naturally form given the right circumstances? Answers are rated by the coolnessTM of the achi...
[Question] [ (Almost like [this post](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/12348/how-do-you-prove-youre-from-the-future%20this%20post) but not quite the same - I've seen multiple how to prove you're from the far future but not one how to prove you're from the far past so figured it could be fun to think ...
[Question] [ In a world where travel is limited to the speed of light, reaching a different star, while not necessarily impossible, would be very time consuming. For an empire stretching across several solar systems, which has a centralized source of political power, this would pose a huge problem. So here is my ques...
[Question] [ I'm writing a novel, and my protagonists are going to find a small spaceship that was placed in Europe during the arrival of the first humans in Europe. The Neanderthals would have still been there. My idea was that the cave was situated close to some mountains and during the ensuing ice age and glaciati...
[Question] [ **This question already has answers here**: [Weapons for Mer-people](/questions/17580/weapons-for-mer-people) (17 answers) Closed 7 years ago. I have a mer civilization that does have magic, with a technological advancement to about flintlock musket level, so nothing overly complicated. I need the...
[Question] [ Suppose a planet developed a peculiar form of life that was naturally invisible, but only within a 15-ft. (4.57 m) radius, by bending or refracting the majority of light around its body due to its scales, fur, or skin, but other members of its species, or similarly developed, can see through this invisib...
[Question] [ Given a vaguely European Medieval society free of magic, how long does it take for historic record to devolve into fiction? Rephrased, how long would it take an Arthurian legend to form, where the scholars of the setting don't know how much of it (or if any of it) is based on actual historic events and p...
[Question] [ [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XuJMP.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XuJMP.jpg) The tree small giant creatures resembling people usually with beards are present in many fantasy stories, but that's it... it is fantasy. From a scientific viewpoint how would such creature even ex...
[Question] [ So, I would like to know if it is reasonable that two walled cities exist in extreme proximity of each other. A little background: The story is set in an imaginary world, comparable to the Late Middle Ages, but with magic (duh). Most of the world is covered with forest, except for some mountains and one ...
[Question] [ While there are areas on our world that hold vast amounts of [black sand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_sand) like [Reynisfjara](https://www.blacktomato.com/inspirations/guide-to-black-sand-beaches-in-iceland/#:%7E:text=black%20sand%20beaches.-,Why%20is%20the%20sand%20black%3F,when%20hitting%20the%...
[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. For ...
[Question] [ Huge numbers of genetically modified flying insects (purpose not disclosed here but it relates to affecting the whole of humanity) are to be dropped into the Earth's atmosphere from space so that they spread far and wide. The insects are not in any kind of container whilst falling. Once dropped, they hav...
[Question] [ After writing [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/39059/can-every-animal-eat-most-other-animals) about the ecology of a terraformed planet, I realized that I hadn't quite tied up all the loose ends of the terraforming process itself. I intended for a group of aliens scientis...
[Question] [ Guilty pleasure: I just returned from one tinfoil-hat type of internet pages which suggests that we are being visited by Aliens who live on Venus. The fact, that we have only pictures from the ground from the [seventies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera_9) make it bit spooky (and argument for the sit...
[Question] [ I would like for a scenario where some people are on a life filled planet orbiting a yellow dwarf sun. They look up at the starry sky during the night, but unbeknownst to them these aren't actually stars, just some sort of strange phenomena that gives the illusion of twinkling stars at night, and that sp...
[Question] [ In my fantasy setting in development,tin is significantly more common than in our world, leading to bronze armour and weapons being much cheaper. Due to metallurgy not being as advanced, iron is still not commonly used in armour, being too difficult to work with much as it was in our own history for quit...
[Question] [ So, in the age of sail, there where hundreds of dangers lurking in ships, mostly in the form of sickness such as scurvy, and I'm looking for a way to have sailors in a similar technology level as healthy as they'd be in mainland. More specifically I'm looking for a solution for these four problems: 1....
[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/115844/edit). Closed 5 years ago. [Improve this question](/po...
[Question] [ King Darien "Stubby" Shortstock, the incredibly petite king of 1600s Imperial Rathakos, has commissioned me to build him a massive flagship to lead his mighty fleet. He wants it big. Bigger than any other vessel ever built, and then some. And then more. **Is there a maximum size to a wooden sailing vesse...
[Question] [ One of the issues with creating a model of space warfare that is both realistic and interesting is the ease with which one can destroy things using high-velocity kinetic kill vehicles (KKVs). For a civilization with frequent space travel, crashing a large asteroid into a planet is a trivial task. Any spa...
[Question] [ This is part of my Alien Message series: * [Recognizable natural numbers for alien message?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/70227/recognizable-natural-numbers-for-alien-message) * [Alien message: “Invitation”](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/70640/alien-message-invita...
[Question] [ What would happen to a human settlement on Earth, on some deserted island, that had no contact with the outside world for a thousand years? Something like a human version of the Galapagos islands, where the animals living there, isolated for thousands of years, evolved slightly differently than their cou...
[Question] [ In a world I am building; Humanity has left the earth and now only the plants, animals and cities remain. Many animals continue life undisturbed, while other went extinct. But with the disappearance of humans, the sixth great extinction has begun to wind down and the Earth's animals are experiencing a ti...
[Question] [ I am interested in creating a reality-based version of a creature from Greek mythology called a [Siren](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siren_(mythology)). > > Sirens were believed to combine women and birds in various ways. In early Greek art, Sirens were represented as birds with large women's heads, bir...
[Question] [ Is it plausible that an advanced civilization commits suicide due to philosophical despair? (if not committing suicide directly, then doing something like collectively party to death) If yes, what kind of a civilization is it? If this is at all possible, I think the civilization in question must have at ...
[Question] [ Think about a scenario in which, on a given planet, a complex life form has already evolved. In your opinion, what are the odds, for this complex form, to evolve towards intelligence? * With the terms "complex life form", I'm referring to something comparable to an Earth's complex mammal. * With "intel...