General Q&A about worldbuilding and other speculative developments that can be extrapolated from science.
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if the amount of mass in the universe is finite, shouldn't there be a center of mass of the universe?
I have a planet orbiting one star in a binary system. When the planet is exactly between the two stars it will experience a double day; when the primary sun sets the secondary one rises, no overla...
I have a binary system in which my world orbits one of the stars, not the pair, in the habitable zone. The stars are relatively close together (because I want the secondary one to shed significant...
I have a binary system. The primary star is F- or G-class; the secondary is K-class, 20AU away, and in a small reflection nebula (suggested here). A planet orbits the primary in the habitable zon...
In this question I asked about the lighting patterns from this system: A really helpful answer there explained when the planet is getting how much illumination. This question is about heat. On...
I'd like to be able to see from my Earth-like planet, a very bright nebula that can even be seen during the daytime. I question, however, whether that is possible, because in order for it to be co...
Some answers to this question about mining asteroids suggest that it is easier and cheaper, in the long run, to bring the asteroid to you: move it into orbit around the planet where you are already...
Recent news reported the discovery of three "earth-like" planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system. This is interesting because the star is a small, cool red dwarf about the size of Jupiter. The three pla...
I'm currently designing a world where the inhabitants see the Aurora Borealis on an almost nightly basis almost all the way to the equator. The lights are so strong they rarely see the stars beyond...
Given the existence of neon kittens with: the internal properties and mentality of normal kittens bioluminescent fur. What evolutionary process outside of intentional human breeding/gene ma...
We know that planets can have multiple moons, sometimes quite a few (like Jupiter). Assuming that a planet with several moons were habitable in the first place and has significant oceans (greater ...
O'Neill Cylinder An O'Neill cylinder is a proposed long-duration spaceflight vehicle. The classic concept is a large spinning cylinder with an open interior in which passengers, cargo, and crew li...
I wanted to share some artificial gravity concepts. Natural Gravity The best gravity would be natural gravity. What if we took engines and fuel and strapped them to a very large mass (ice, rock, ...
I've been thinking about life on tidally locked planets of red dwarfs. Common arguments against it is that the light is too low and red dwarfs are prone to emit flares, destroying potential lifefo...
I've been researching the idea of spreading out vast sheets of aerogel across regions of Mars. This would theoretically have the effect of both warming whatever land is under the sheet - thus melti...
Low gravity golf was invented by Alan Shepard in 1971 when he hit two golf balls 40 yards on the moon. Surprisingly, this version of the sport with little atmosphere and much lower gravity, is the...
What happens if Earth's magnetic field shuts down? How exactly does this impact humans, and how long before we need to make significant changes for survival? Does it make any difference if Earth'...
Is there a real possibility that the Arctic vortex will collapse due to global warming and the melting of the Arctic Ocean sea-ice? If the possibility is real and it "dies" in the coming decades, ...
The Doctor's TARDIS is larger on the inside than on the outside. How can this be achieved? The conventional answer is that The TARDIS is dimensionally transcendental ... the interior exists i...
Modulation of BBO-Entangled Light Assuming this Video of Entanglement in Action is not incorrectly hiding some additional filter operation, it seems (from the video) that you can quite obviously m...
I've looked into the usual structure of typical animal rhinarium (hairless nose skin with nodules), and it looks possible? — Rhinarium skin structure and epidermal innervation in selected mammal...
I've sketched out an island, and then threw some tectonic plate boundaries on top hoping it would help me plot mountains. But the more I look at geological diagrams of plate boundaries, and read u...
What happens when PVA glue sets? I am curious about the white PVA glue that is commonly used for bonding wood and paper. Although an Internet search find lots of articles they mostly seem to be ne...
I recently learned that it's believed that the solar system once had one more gas giant, which was ejected by Jupiter some time in the past. https://thesolarsystem.fandom.com/wiki/Fifth_Giant Doe...
I know that this is a bit silly, but I want to make a calendar for my world and I'm really worried about having to do leap years and such to ensure continuing accuracy. Inaccuracy isn't an option;...
Hello! I am thinking about analogue mobile telephones, but they have some severe flaws- the most significant being privacy. How could an analogue system be encrypted? It doesn't need to be complet...
Hello everyone, I am thinking yet again about infrastructure. (my calendar project recently asked about... well, that's outside my expertise, I'll get back to that eventually) And I am thinking of...
The Earth-Moon Lagrange points have names: L1, L2, and L3 are Libration Points, the L4 and L5 points are the Kordylewski Clouds. The Jupiter-Sun L4 is named the Greeks, and the Jupiter-Sun L5 is n...
After an age of highly developed technology, including many different satellites in various Earth orbits, humanity loses the technology needed to control those satellites. After many centuries, how...
Living in space can be boring. What are some good home games for people living and working in free fall? I thought of a few - Bocce : in this variant the size of the jack and the player balls i...
I was investigating a few ideas on recreational solar sailing, and came up with some interesting things - The primary equation in solar sailing is $ F = {{2 R S A} \over {c}} \sin^2{\theta} $ Whe...
A speedometer is a gauge or device used for measuring instantaneous speed of moving vehicle roughly speaking, so for example the reading shown on the speedometer of a car parked at road side displa...
How would competitive wrestling change in a microgravity environment?
Theory If I am understanding this history of this correctly, in the 1920s the mathematical process of converting measurements with a certain amount of measurement error into numbers, then doing yo...
Nivea have developed a hair product which I personally found very special among this filled-with-generic-stuff market of products, which is named in German "Creme-Gel": I find Nivea's Creme-Gel sp...
Orbital rings are a proposed megastructure intended to dramatically reduce the cost to enter or exit a planetary gravity well. The ring is a solid structure, belting around the planet like a hula h...
Utility fog is a swarm robotics concept in which a mesh of robots barely larger than a grain of pollen (5 micrometer ( $10^{-6} $ m ) bodies and 50 micrometer arms) are dodecahedrons (12 sided pol...
During the summer of 2022 Europe has had several heat waves. As described in 2022 European heat waves: Climatologists linked the extreme heat to the impact of climate change, and experts predict...
How could I modify an alternate Earth to have less tornados in the American Great Plains area known as Tornado Alley? Maybe make the Rockies lower? Introduce an east-west range of mountains or high...
Price's Law is a hypothesis that in an organization, or across an industry, roughly half the productive output is being generated by a number of people equal to the square root of those participati...
These WorldFamous companies advertise that their lenses can control myopia for kids, NOT adults. But none of these lenses are approved by FDA. How can they work for adults too? Essilor Stellest ...
If this earth were cubed shape would it be possible for Magellan to prove that the earth is cube-shaped without going to space and looking at earth? It might seem strange to think that earth might...
I was recently introduced to the South Atlantic Anomaly. As I understand, for satellites and space craft, this is a natural feature that can wreck space craft by taking even computers designed fo...
Imagine a far-future spacecraft drive that accelerates its reaction mass to a small fraction the speed of light (say, 1,000 km/s). Say the mass flow rate to the drive were 1kg/s, and say the reacti...
Years ago I read a letter in a magazine suggesting a method for reducing the fire risk in an enclosed environment such as a space shuttle. The idea was to reduce the oxygen concentration to the po...
Should digging Depressions in seafloor to create artificial islands in nearby areas be sustainable And by the way, was it widely done somewhere in this planet already?
Is it plausible to assume that the total amount of water (edit: water molecules) on planet earth was, in different periods of earth's history, significantly lower or significantly higher, or rather...
I distinguish human-identification from bureaucracy-applied-to-humans: There was a period in human history in which no state existed so no bureaucracy-applied-to-humans existed and humans identi...
The way this would work is by creating lasers & pumping them into a chamber where it can't escape. The power for the lasers to be created is made either with a generator or by charging using an...
I imagined a person who's scapulae is overly developed and extruding outside the shoulder girdle like an elitra or fixed plane wings. They can be moved by shrugging the shoulders or rotated by rai...
