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[Question] [ I'm in the process of designing a creature loosely resembling a theropod dinosaur that sports a number of horns/tusks on its head and face, and I'm wondering if anyone can help me evaluate its feasibility. I'm not terribly concerned with the practicality/ functionality of the horns/ tusks themselves or t...
[Question] [ Assume that Amazon has set up a processing station on the Moon for whatever motive as a way to ship things out to space (Mars, etc.) faster and more efficiently. How much time today and perhaps in the near future would it take for shipments to be delivered from Earth to the station on the Moon? [Answ...
[Question] [ [Solar Sails](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail) are a great, low-impact way of driving your spacecraft. Whilst [wind turbines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine) are a low impact way of collecting power from the wind, however, they only work when the wind is blowing. My thought is, the s...
[Question] [ There is a alien species known as the Titanians. The Titanians are organic biologically, but of a alien biochemistry much more cryophilic and oily. They drink ethane, breathe oxygen (you can have oxygen in a environment like Titan- Oxygen doesn't condense too much at those temperatures) and eat other Ti...
[Question] [ Well, the title is the question. I searched for a similar question but only found one asking about sand deserts and swamps together, so I think this is not duplicated. I have a strange mind and almost all the time I'm living in alternate worlds and histories that I create myself in the moment. In one of ...
[Question] [ **What would a medieval society without access to metal look like? How would things like wagons, weapons, coinage, and tools be different?** "Medieval" in this sense would mean something like feudal Japan, medieval Europe, or the Muslim/Arab nations during the Crusades period. Technology is different wit...
[Question] [ Fairly common in sci-fi literature is the scenario where the Earth is destroyed by an all out nuclear war. Typically, the protagonist has survived by remaining in underground shelters for decades until finally emerging when the radiation is gone. But given the nature of the world's nuclear arsenals (most...
[Question] [ I hope this is more focused D: **Setup**; Hela is a exoplanet in the fictional Eurydice system, about 4 Ly from Earth. The exoplanet is significantly younger than Earth, and life on her is in a late carboniferous stage of development. Due to the star being larger than the sun and the exoplanets atmospher...
[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. This...
[Question] [ ### Intro I'm developing a real time game that have dynamically generated map and I'd like to add rivers going from mountains to the sea. ### Brief info about the map In my game, when a player moves to the edge of currently generated map, new chunks (small, square piece of map) of map are being loaded on...
[Question] [ Fairly straightforward question. Imagine a gas giant planet, like the size of Jupiter, in orbit around a massive star. The star goes supernova. What happens to the planet? Is the energy of the supernova enough to strip away the atmosphere, leaving just the rocky core behind? Is there a way for the plane...
[Question] [ I've seen many concept arts of aliens that have some sort of glowing bioluminescent pupil-less eyes. I'm inventing a creature that has yellow glowing eyes like that and can see in the dark. My questions are: * How do the eyes work without pupils? * Is yellow bioluminescence a thing? * Doesn't the creatur...
[Question] [ Things like Dyson spheres need a whole lot of raw material, which is rather difficult to come by, since the elements needed for good structural steel are scattered fairly thinly into the universe upon the death of the stars that produce them. The obvious solution is to somehow get at the approximately on...
[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. What...
[Question] [ The setting I'm interested in would involve a cold planet (cold enough for most bodies of water to be frozen - I'm thinking of an average global temperature of -20C or below). The simplest way would have to have the planet far away from its star. However I'd rather not deal with the low-light aspect, so ...
[Question] [ Deep in a laboratory far under the megacity of Exampleville, a scientist is experimenting on a new compound found in an alternate, magical universe. He accidentally knocks over a vial of Handwavium, which falls into a sink. Suddenly, the magic spreads through the city's water, instantly thickening it to ...
[Question] [ The Earth-like planet I'm working on is the culmination of years of labor by the galaxy's best scientists. It consists of fully artificial ecosystems, and is, for all intents and purposes, like Earth. The life-forms are carbon-based and have similar structures, metabolic processes, and habits as animals ...
[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. I ha...
[Question] [ Building on this question about space exploration on the slopes of a [50 mile high volcano](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/96872/exploration-of-a-50-mile-high-mountain), I'm curious what would happen when the volcano erupts. The volcano is: * 50 miles high, just on the edge of official...
[Question] [ I’ve seen a lot of questions on here about the possibility of more than two sexes but I’ve found nothing on the possibility of only a single sex. The closest thing I’ve found is [isogamy,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isogamy) is there any way to scale that up into complex sentient beings? Or is there a...
[Question] [ There are a lot of acids in the world, many of them present in biological creatures. Humans, for instance, have hydrochloric acid in their stomachs. What I'm wondering here is just how nasty it could be if one such creature could use such an acid as a weapon. I suppose this is a two-part question: **just...
[Question] [ I would like to genetically modify a human being in one concrete case like I did in other parts of my little series of [How would it affect a human to suddenly...](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/91230/how-would-it-affect-a-human-to-suddenly-have-the-visual-senses-of-a-martial-eagl) Thi...
[Question] [ The ground shakes as a colony of Triopticpelorovenatorius Baromassobrachiosaurus (T.B.) shamble across the forest floor. A glorious mix of blue, purple, and green colors shift under the treetops as our camera crew provides us with a perfect birds eye-view of the sparse alien canopy. [![Isometric View](ht...
[Question] [ Underground societies have been a trope in fiction for a long time, but in the real world they don't seem to exist (at least not in the way they are often portrayed). Yeah, we sometimes see people living right near the surface in partially excavated [cave dwellings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undergro...
[Question] [ **Summary** In my world, I have created a species of anthropomorphic wolves, who are nomadic hunter-gatherers. They are like humans in some respects and like wolves in others, but with some minor physical differences unique to them, as they do not live on Earth. When they hunt, they rely upon their teeth...
[Question] [ I have a magic carpet, but the only thing magic about it is that it flies where and how its owner directs it. No bubble around it, no other magic; she has to hold onto it. I'm wondering how fast and high it can go. It is large - 3m x 4m (and very stiff) - and ALL other factors are based on using 11th Ce...
[Question] [ Bob is a thirty year old atheist man from our modern times. One day, he is irreversibly thrown back into medieval France around 1300 C.E. His education consists of a Bachelor's degree in mathematics, and unfortunately he does not bring back any modern technology with him. By handwave, he becomes the king...
[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. Okay...
[Question] [ So here's what I'm trying to do. I've got a setting that at a medieval level of technology and is rather similar to Europe with knights, castles and all that jazz. However to give the setting some character, I thought I replace the horse with a suitable dog based alternative that been breed to a suitable...
[Question] [ Okay, I will make a little premise/context to give the question a decent background. I know that the scenario could look rather "handwavy", but take it as the framework on which the answer should be given (I will elaborate more on the causes, but this is *not necessary* inside this post). > > Oceans and...
[Question] [ In my world, for reasons that are unimportant for now, there can be no agriculture. Because of this, civilization can not depend upon agriculture, as we practice it, for a food supply. A solution for this would be a food chain **similar** to the marine food chain on Earth. In this system 70% (give or tak...
[Question] [ From what I know about these music styles, the only problematic part may be the instruments - [sampling](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(music)) was impossible in medieval times. Apart from that, is there anything, which would rap music impossible in the European Middle Ages? Notes: 1. Some scient...
[Question] [ On earth most of our sealife is fishlike (excluding a few other species such as squid/octopus). As far as I'm aware there are no legged creatures which live solely in the sea. In my world I'd like to have creatures like the [sando aqua monster](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Sando_aqua_monster) from Star...
[Question] [ Suppose a very large planet orbited a star or other spacial body in an oval shaped path, similar to Earth's but closer to induce a varying gravity during orbit. The planet has a large gravity well and the star or other body has a stronger one when nearest to it on the planet's orbital path. 1. Is this p...
[Question] [ My very fancy planet, has a green blotch approximately the size of Africa on its surface, which looks like a forest from space but is actually the planet's ocean. A sea, which, over millions of years, has been colonized by a free-floating species of halophyte. This plant was so prolific that nearly 100% ...
[Question] [ I just found out how European colonisation of Africa was aided by the spread of diseases such as small pox and measles, which the the colonisers were relatively resistant to. Of course, its goes both ways; Africa was called the whiteman's grave because of malaria and other tropical diseases. More relevan...
[Question] [ My scifi settings armory is filling up with many interesting weapons. However, while energy weapons, Gyrojets, Tangler guns and the like outperform slugthrowers in special applications, concentional slugthrowers still reighn supreme as all-round guns. The wide array of special ammunitions make them even ...
[Question] [ Assuming you could "read" the memories of a once living person, how long after death could you read the memories stored in the human's head? How long does it take for the pathways (dendrite, axon, etc.) to break down? Is there a difference in the literal decay times for areas & physical methods used by t...
[Question] [ Scenario: two states, (A) and (B). Both nations contain a very small percentage of supers, or rather, citizens with extended abilities (though low-level in nature, more circus acts than comic-book heroes). (A) is reasonably small, moderately prosperous, and more-or-less democratic. It treats its supers ...
[Question] [ **Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- This question does not appear to be about **worldbuilding**, within the scope defined in the [help center](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/help). Closed 4 years ago. [Improve this que...
[Question] [ What would the appearance and structure of trees be like if they used chitin, instead of lignin, for cell walls? This is assuming that all other properties are basically unchanged. These trees would be in a tropical environment with nutrient rich soil and plenty of water and sunlight available. They util...
[Question] [ **Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- This question does not appear to be about **worldbuilding**, within the scope defined in the [help center](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/help). Closed 4 years ago. [Improve this que...
[Question] [ I'm developing an independent cartoon web series with talking dragons. The designs of the dragons in Spyro (especially the Legend of Spyro) is one of the main influences in how I want my dragons to look. But despite its cartoony nature, I want to take a realistic approach to what their voices would sound...
[Question] [ In a world of magic, spells are songs. They aren't easy to sing and becoming truly proficient requires a similar amount of time and effort as it does to become an opera singer on Earth. Of course some people are just naturally talented singers and in fact this is how magic was originally discovered by so...
[Question] [ Working on a future history setting; the question arises, since the world cannot run on fossil fuels forever, one way or another, something must end up replacing them; what will that something be? A co-author has suggested using nuclear energy to electrolyze water for hydrogen which is combined with carb...
[Question] [ I'm creating a near future world where laboratories could create human gametes (sperm & ova) using chromosomes from different people. So theoretically we could take 1st chromosome from a 1st person, 2nd from the 2nd, 3rd from the 3rd and so on. In the end sperm (ova) has 23 chromosomes same as natural on...
[Question] [ In the sci-fi setting that I've had on the backburner for a while now, there is a species known as the Azmarans. They are a very socially adept species, between them having a rather communicative psychology to their unique ability to conform to whatever shape they might need in dealing with another speci...
[Question] [ It takes a lot of work, but it can be done. The Mongol [Yam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yam_(route)), a horse-based mail system, is probably the best example that has been done before. But after visiting the local science museum recently, I saw [these](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_mirror). ...
[Question] [ If someone from our Earth- from, say, NYC or some other big city- ended up on Planet "Qwerty" for some reason or the other and bit someone in a no holds barred fight, would diseases transfer between the combatants? If so, which direction is more likely and how quickly would effects show? Assuming the pla...
[Question] [ So Chlorine Trifluoride is a very dangerous chemical known to burn through things like concrete and asbestos. It's so bad that the Nazis, THE NAZIS, decided it was too dangerous to use. So I need an organic substance that takes forever for this compound to burn through (3 hours to a day) that is about as...
[Question] [ I've been conceptualizing a species of intelligent insects. They would have 6 limbs, they can fly, but they walk bipedally. I've been thinking of having them get down on all limbs of they need to go fast and can't fly away from something, but I do want them to be at least mostly bipedal. Here's my proble...
[Question] [ A *normal* respiration is: $${\displaystyle C\_{6}H\_{12}O\_{6}+6O\_{2}\to 6H\_{2}O+6CO\_{2}+38ATP}$$ A *normal* cellular respiration uses O2, so my question is if it's possible to have a respiration with **CO** instead of **O2**. Something like this (an example of how can be done that): $${\displaystyl...
[Question] [ I'm trying to plan a rotating wheel space station for a project. It should be noted that I have to stay as close to real physics as possible, although it takes place in far future. The space station is orbiting an Earth-like planet. The deck 0 is one with reactor core. Besides it's practically a one lon...
[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/42897/edit). Closed 7 years ago. [Improve this question](/pos...
[Question] [ # Background and Explanation I recently asked [a question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/23430/what-us-states-are-most-likely-to-rebel) inquiring which US states would be most likely to rebel in the event of a secession war. Now, it was pointed out in the comments on @Samuel's answer ...
[Question] [ It would be useful for a story I'm working on to color the world or various dominant parts of it red. I'm trying to look into the following alternatives, but am open to further suggestions. Essentially I'd like to know what gives some things their color and how this could be plausibly explained to be red...
[Question] [ I'm currently doing some research for my first book which involves a planet with an empire that has had its roots in Antiquity. It's basically a country that formed about 2200 years ago and has started to take over the world 1500 years ago, forming a global empire around 200 years ago. What would a globa...
[Question] [ **This question already has an answer here**: [What would the Universe be like if gravity was slightly stronger?](/questions/2870/what-would-the-universe-be-like-if-gravity-was-slightly-stronger) (1 answer) Closed 6 years ago. Almost the same as my [other question](https://worldbuilding.stackexcha...
[Question] [ [Here](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/2639/is-it-possible-to-terraform-a-hot-planet), I asked if it's possible to terraform a hot planet. But now, if we have a volcanic active planet, can we use the same techniques to cool it down? 1. Normally, the planet cool off slowly after its for...
[Question] [ I perceive multiple distinguishable and yet interdependent components of any world. Things like: * individual creatures * societal constructs / interaction * geography * history * sources of strife * etc. However, it is daunting to design all of them completely simultaneously. **Is there a natural start...
[Question] [ **Backstory** There is a double planet system. Both planets are habitable. One planet has humans and the other one animals. So instead of seeing a grey Moon in the sky, the humans living on the first planet see another world with forests, oceans, rivers, etc. So it is widespread knowledge that the "Terra...
[Question] [ ## How do you simulate tidal currents in an O'Neill Cylinder to maintain a healthy biome for aquatic life? The O'Neill Cylinder contains artificial rivers, freshwater lakes, and "Oceans" which are just 60m deep large bodies of saltwater simulating continental shelf biomes. This question has a lot of poss...
[Question] [ James Cameron's *Avatar* featured floating mountains which stayed aloft due to the Meissner effect; they contained large quantities of the room-temperature superconductor unobtainium, which, due to their strong electromagnetic fields, were suspended above the ground. Would this really work though? I've s...
[Question] [ Mobile cities are a common sci-fi setting. They are a staple ingredient in novels like "Mortal engine quartet" and "The inverted world" Plot set aside, what justifies mobile cities *on land*? [Giant excavators](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/136070/could-a-giant-excavator-like-bagger-2...
[Question] [ I would like to have an Earth-like planet (~Earth gravity, ~Earth day, ~Earth year, and liquid water oceans) with extreme variance in its tides. I want the lowest tide to reveal about 30 miles of floodplain, and I want there to be occasional massive tidal waves. I understand that, in theory, this might b...
[Question] [ ## Context To revive the Carboniferous period of earth one man and a group of other scientists have been genetically engineering and breeding land arthropods into giant sizes and exotic shapes since the 50s. The second part of the plan is to release the arthropods starting in Georgia and spreading them t...
[Question] [ Living in Budapest I see almost everyday the Budapest Castle. Being into zombies I often wonder how useful could be a castle of this kind in a world where zombies taken over. Most, if not all, the zombies movies and tv shows are set in America, where solid buildings aren't common as in europe, and mediev...
[Question] [ In a story I'm writing, the setting is a **tidally locked planet** with a moon a fifth its size in a binary system of a mature **red dwarf** and much smaller second sun. I haven't decided the planet's exact **orbital period** (30-40 earth days) at 0.5 AU from the larger sun, but its inhabitants experienc...
[Question] [ **This question already has answers here**: [What are some tips for designing symbols for a constructed language?](/questions/49385/what-are-some-tips-for-designing-symbols-for-a-constructed-language) (6 answers) Closed 6 years ago. I could spend weeks trying to make a script and the glyphs are st...
[Question] [ There are many theories about how teleportation could work (warning: [tvtropes](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Teleportation)). One of them is that the body is completely disassembled on a molecular level and reassembled at the target destination. This leads to ethical problems like “Am I sti...
[Question] [ I had to think this one through, and even now I don't know if it belongs here, hopefully you guys can help. Most scifi media has the World War II approach to combat, chasing and maneuvering in dogfights or "running silent" when it comes to larger ships. What I want to know for now is: Is "jousting", in t...
[Question] [ In my narrative several people can hear a soft buzzing when it is very quiet. It's almost unintelligible, but discovered it is what's on the radio. The people aren't related, but they may be very distant relatives. I'm thinking there's a trigger gene that, say, when they hit their head a certain way an e...
[Question] [ I am designing a world where humans have achieved FTL by means of the Alcubierre warp drive and are colonizing the stars. Originally I had communication pegged as being done with quantum entanglement and the like, but I recently heard of the no-communication theorem that, seemingly, prevents this from c...
[Question] [ Consider a scenario where there is an over-populated solar system (not necessarily *our* solar system). Several other rocky planets and moons in this solar system are inhabited by the same humanoid race, and every planet's population is reaching its [Malthusian limit](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthus...
[Question] [ This was spawned from this [question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/4190/being-cooked-for-dinner-or-what-danger-of-blueshifting-em-into-x-rays-and-beyon) about Blueshifting (BS) when traveling near the speed of light. I had found this while learning about the other question. @99.9999...
[Question] [ Imagine a world with a very wacky magnetic field, the magnetic poles are not aligned at the top of the axial tilt and the sun is active enough to cause huge northern lights each night. I know electronic systems would fail but would a compass still point at the magnetic pole or would it be rendered useles...
[Question] [ If a planet had such a large imbalance of protons and electrons that it possessed a net negative or positive charge what would happen to it and its solar system? First, could it be stable, or would it simply disintegrate? Would the charge act against the pull of gravity and make everything on the surface...
[Question] [ > > **NOTE:** The offered "duplicate" question ***IS NOT WHAT I AM ASKING.*** Alternative methods of navigation ***ARE NOT ACCEPTABLE*** as answers. I am specifically asking whether or not a ship traveling in the method described could re-identify the destination star on approach because the perceived l...
[Question] [ The Cult of the Holy Mother is a female-dominated sect within a larger religious organization led by a male patriarch. Although the cult is small, it retains a significant role in the imagination of the populace. The cult is made up of priestesses that enter into holy matrimony with their deity. These wo...
[Question] [ I have this idea for a world orbiting a type O star, a particularly active kind of star producing intense radiation. As a form of adaptation, the microbial life has become bright white so to reflect the radiation. This makes the planet look like it's covered in ice when it's actually pretty lukewarm. The...
[Question] [ I would like to have a zero-g spaceship factory in orbit, and would like to know if this is a viable way to work: I imagine melting metal into a big blob, then inserting a tube and pumping in gas to inflate it. Perhaps external struts and molds can push and pull on the form to shape it as it expands and ...
[Question] [ Some background: I'm developing a world that could, theoretically, be inhabitable by humans (with a high enough recruitment success to at least keep a stable population), randomly determining environmental parameters based on the range our physiologies can tolerate. This world has [50 atm of pressure](ht...
[Question] [ So, I decided to replace elves with tengu, a race of six-limbed humanoid birds. Firstly, because I'm tired of seeing Legolas everywhere. Second is that compared to a bog-standard human-elf romantic subplot the fact, that a tengu is an anthro bird that can slice you open with their talons when angered eno...
[Question] [ In many movies, alien species often have the ability to impregnate "every and any" species and have their mutant offspring. I have a story setup where some, not so conscientious, scientists decide to make that happen, for whatever reasons. But I wish to explain "how it worked", what's the biology mechani...
[Question] [ I was hypothesizing an organism that could create it's own fire with the use of a flamethrower-like organ. I was thinking that this animal has a oxygen-free organ that hold diethylzinc and when the animal feels threatened or such, its sprays out the diethylzinc with instantly ignites when in contact with...
[Question] [ ## How Long? In the 1960s, unknown to most, the United States set up a secret base on the moon manned by an "extra" aboard each Apollo lander. NASA architects decided that the base must be built into the native rock, taking advantage of [lava tubes](https://www.space.com/32795-moon-lava-tubes-protect-ast...
[Question] [ We do not know how exactly it happened, but poor John Doe made a space-time trip along a three dimensional analog of a Möbius strip (a Klein bottle). He is now back on Earth, but he is now the mirror image of his former self: His heart beats on the right side, he is left-handed now, and even worse: All t...
[Question] [ In my military scifi novel the military is, obviously, very concerned with security aboard its spaceships. They don't want other people to be able to receive any information about what happens on their ships. They also don't want other spaceships to be able to send any signals to the computers and other ...
[Question] [ I'm writing a short story that takes place on an imaginary planet that is 88% ocean. The planet has two moons and one continent that is regularly flooded under 500 to 1500 feet of water. The tides are only extreme once or twice a month. I'm trying to work out the parameters for a two-moon system that pro...
[Question] [ I am the new king of Earth. All current wars have ceased, and the whole planet operates as one kingdom. We have also decided on a currency. However, in order to pay off debt/create more buildings and roads/create more public services, I'd like to print off more money. That, in the normal world, would cau...
[Question] [ When you write about the world you built, you have to immerse the audience on it by describing the environment. I'm on the process of worldbuilding a world with lots of deserts in it. Problem is: I've never been to a desert. And don't have the economic means to travel to one just to know how to describe ...
[Question] [ I'm trying to create a nation that is greedy, opportunistic & obsessed with profits and trade. They are cunning, treacherous schemers that will swindle you despite all the pleasantries and assurances to the contrary. If they had any religion it would be [Ferengi rules of acquisition](https://projectsanct...
[Question] [ **How can I make a colonizable planet/moon that receives intense UV/x-ray radiation on parts of its surface while receiving much less on the rest of it?** The most obvious way of doing this is to have the atmosphere over most of the planet significantly reduce the received radiation, but to have one spot...
[Question] [ According to a [recent National Geographic article](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/11/nasa-astronauts-eyeballs-flattened-blurry-vision-space-science/), astronauts returning home after longer missions suffer **permanently impaired vision**. This is a problem that must be addressed in [hard-scienc...
[Question] [ The Hoatzin is a jungle bird whose only remarkable trait, other than looking fabulous, is that their wings have fingers. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PWBsv.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PWBsv.png) Is it possible that these wing fingers could evolve into arms? What about l...
[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 a...
[Question] [ I was reading [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/51387/how-to-convince-readers-to-accept-tolkien-esque-fantasy-where-people-of-color-ar) last night about people of colour in fantasy stories. I've read so many fantasy stories where any mention of colour is associated with th...
[Question] [ If there were some way (sub question: IS there some way?) to get neutron star material out of the gravity well of a neutron star, -say maybe a high-speed collision of two such stars- how would that material behave away from the gravity well? Would it continue to be as dense? What dangers would it pose i...
[Question] [ I'm not going to go into the magic in my story in much detail here, because it's hard to put into words. But basically, magicians say what they want and if they are concentrating hard enough, it happens (Sorry for the run-on sentences, I've been studying Biblical Greek recently). If you teleport an obje...
[Question] [ Imagine a world much like ours, except our ape ancestors decided they liked the trees and never climbed down and decided to try out these 'tool' things. sapient apes never evolved. Instead a predominately aquatic race evolved (race with limited ability to go on land, such as just long enough to lay eggs,...