Questions tagged [aliens]
For questions about a different and uncharacteristic species or object that has come to the world from another world. NOT for questions about extraterrestrials in their native environment.
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Aesthetic and design difference between opposing factions [closed]
Is it a good idea to make two opposing factions to have radically different look from each other?
I'm having an idea for a tactical first-person shooter in my head for a while, but I want to have all ...
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How would a "universal language field" work? [duplicate]
Looking to work with the topic of interspecies translation, covering a very wide variety of alien types and biologies, with a "universal translator"—but rather than a universal translation ...
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Carbon planet gardens [closed]
This is a restart of my previous question: let's say there was a carbon planet with life. That means it would use hydrocarbons as a solvent and since the molecules are more complicated, all reactions ...
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How do I design a scientifically plausible alien being that is a network of space dust?
My alien is a consciousness physically embodied in a network of space dust. It lives in the interstellar void.
How could I make this scenario semi-realistic? What would be the being's source of energy?...
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Carbon planet autotroph [closed]
Life on a carbon planet is supposedly plausible. But what would the autotrophs, or plants, be like? The life would use hydrocarbons for a solevant, but that's all of the biochemistry I have fixed, ...
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What feature of Earth would be most likely attract the interest of aliens?
What feature of Earth would be most likely to attract the interest of a curious alien intelligence searching the Milky Way marking the Earth as an unusual world and how close would they have to be to ...
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Biodiversity through radiation
I was wanting to make a species on an alien planet that reproduce purely asexualy, and their star produces enough radiation to cause common mutations among the children to cause something similar to ...
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Creating a blue-skin look
There are several previous questions on this group regarding blue skin but none of them fit the needs of my world.
I need to allow a group of very pale skinned aliens (albeit with typical mammalian ...
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The alien invaders are all actually... beautiful women?! How will earth resist this? [closed]
Greetings. We are the Monogatrons. While your species was still toying with fire, ours mastered the science of functioning committed relationships. As the latest planet to develop our app you will now ...
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How can advanced aliens seed life in a way that will likely grow to the same humanoid form
Let's say you have some advanced aliens seeding life on multiple earth like worlds. They want sapient roughly humanoid creatures to evolve from this starting seed. However, they are not dropping ...
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Scientifically plausible alien species: skin pigmentation
What variables (in a hypotetical alien planet) can lead an underground alien species to have red skin pigmentation? I was thinking of widespread presence of pervasive ferrous compounds in the ...
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How hard is it to ruin the Earth permanently?
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,...
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How would a photon-based intelligence work in regard to relativity?
I want to do something interesting with Caleb Scharf’s speculation that hyper-advanced aliens could make themselves immortal by uploading themselves into the cosmic background radiation. These light ...
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What would a crystal-based creature look like? [closed]
One kind of alien concept I want to explore in my sci-fi is Jean Schneider’s hypothesis about a non-chemical crystal biology. According to Schneider, the organism’s primitive ’central memory’ is based ...
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How to make my hyperfast-immersion language-learners still be fooled by code-words & cyphers
In a story I'm writing, I have a group of beings who can learn any language by just listening to voice-recordings* of someone speaking that language over-and-over again** (almost like a highly ...
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How would a large invading alien vessel trick us into believing it's a much smaller asteroid?
In my book, Oumuamua was actually a large alien invasion/colony vessel.
So, suppose we have an invading ~100 km long alien colony ship flying towards Earth. Suppose also that the aliens are unable to ...
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Replacing proteins with starch in alien biochemistry
So, I am trying to come up with forms of alien biochemistry that are different but not so different that these life forms are drinking battery acid or breathing methane. One idea I read about on Orion’...
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Leg structure in a shallow sea world [closed]
I am currently building an alien planet that is based around a creative drawing exercise, where I drew an alien with different bug like features. They are bipedal humanoids, but along with other ...
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How can human feed themselves on a planet without organic compounds?
I have a planet that is mostly inhabited by "animals" that aren't carbon based, with intentions for humanity to eke out a way of living there. Now, easily I could reason that they just ...
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How would a sapient species with two tongues organize their language? [closed]
I created a species of catlike aliens called Raachtunami (singular Raachtun) or Tutoans. They have extremely perceptive ears, a syrinx, and two tongues. This allows them to use several human phonetics ...
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Two sets of fins, two different functions?
Let's say you had a fish analogy organism in the oceans of an alien world. Assuming it's ancestry allows for more the number of limbs, would it be possible for it to have one set of fins for swimming ...
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How can my sapient sea-star centaurs have four different sexes?
The Cochlequestrians (from the Latin for “snail horse”). are a sapient species much older than humans. They have much more advanced technology than other sapients. They resemble Pierson’s ...
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Is it believable that a civilization is governed under one country?
Me and my friend have a story we are working on, and in this story are alien civilizations that are around 500 or so years more advanced tham humans, one of these civilizations only has one country ...
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What could a technologically lesser civilization sell to a more technologically advanced one?
In a Lil sci-fi universe I'm currently writing
Humanity has reached the stars, quickly establishing an impromptu interstellar colonial empire made up of hundreds of star systems, puttering along the ...
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Red mist: what could create such a phenomenon?
In my science fiction story,there is a phenomenon happening on the moon that looks like a red mist (or nebula, if you will). This mist can slowly move around, because it is controlled by an advanced ...
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How can blind worm aliens travel into space if they cannot even see stars? [duplicate]
In several previous questions I asked about aliens native to an eyeball earth that evolved from burrowers. They have a serpentine shape and hold their heads up like cobras. I've concluded they wouldn'...
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Could biologically generated flux tubes be a thing?
I have a project about organisms that use ammonia as a solvent. The creatures live on such a cold world that chemical reactions are slow and inefficient. Due to the inefficiencies, the organisms move ...
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Lateral bipedal centaur [closed]
I keep finding createures that are centaurs but with only two legs one behind the other.
How or why would this evolve? A low gravity environment is the first thing to come to mind, but also the only ...
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What's the most distant radio message we could detect with today's radio telescopes, if the message is initially broadcasted in all directions? [closed]
An additional assumption is that broadcasting the message may require using a medium-sized star, like the Sun, for an hour, by e.g. Dysoning it.
I don't know enough to answer the question myself. If ...
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How can my alien symbiotes identify each other?
My aliens are little symbiotes (think Venom from Spider-Man) who appear to be like crown-of-thorns starfish when not attached to a host. They have general mimicry and camouflage similar to an octopus ...
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Alternative versions of breathing?
(Hoping this isn't another too-broad question...)
I just want a different way for my aliens to breathe that isn't obvious to a human's eyes; it makes them seem like they don't breathe at all, and ...
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How would an alien race destroy all nuclear weapons on earth? [closed]
An alien race has decided that earth is the best place to recruit new soldiers and prepare for a war, and they want to eliminate all nuclear weapons (explosive ones, not dirty bombs) to prevent ...
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What types of adaptations might alien life have to survive high atmospheric pressure?
I’m wondering if anyone has any scientifically plausible ideas for adaptations to a high atmospheric pressure (10 atm) environment. This pressure would be too high for humans to survive for extended ...
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What chemistry other than that on Earth could support life on an alien planet? [closed]
I like designing aliens, similar to how Biblaridion did it on his videos on YT where he establishes the world conditions and chemistry of the world and proceed to create an evolutionary tree from ...
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How can a species be fine with digesting poisons and toxins?
I have an alien species of roughly earthlike anatomy and biochemistry (so they can consume earth food, and humans would be able to digest their foods as well)
These species have a trait that allows ...
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An alien spaceship is predominantly "white" inside. What color does a human see this as? [closed]
Human-made space-travelling objects seem to follow certain colour palettes. For example the interiors of human space stations seem to have been predominantly white, or a similar neutral shade like ...
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How Can I Make My Sapient Species Look Plausible? [closed]
So I have this sapient alien species that I created, this is for a movie that I am planning to create in the future, they are called the Centamocoras, they are from the planet named Proxima Centauri B,...
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Would a genetically engineered animal with wheels be a viable species? [duplicate]
There have been several discussions both on this website and others about the viability of wheeled animals and why there are no current biological examples of it. A big issue with an animal evolving ...
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Would communicating through an external, circular "larynx" be viable?
These aliens live on a planet with a thick atmosphere and light gravity, and spend most of their life in the air.
They communicate through a series of piercing whistles and sound-wave vibrations, and ...
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What characteristics would my Enslaver Aliens find attractive in each other? [closed]
Each photo I have here is that of an Enslaver Alien. Thank you midjourney for helping me create these creatures. They are an alien species that can grow to the size of a fifteen story building and are ...
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What kind of alien homeworld would result in the following kind of alien (i.e. my Enslavers) naturally evolving? [closed]
Pictures are provided below. But overall there are three sentient alien species, at the top of the universe food chain in my setting. One of them are the Enslaver Aliens (different individuals shown ...
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Does a digitigrade biped need a tail? [closed]
One of my writing buddies keeps insisting that my biped/digitigrade alien species would need a tail to act as a counterweight and shift their centers of gravity. Would a tail be required?
EDIT:// the ...
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What would a War time Economy look like in a modern, first world setting?
In this instance I'm kind of curious as to what a war economy would look like in a Modern first world nation like say Canada?
Overall what kind of shifts and changes would one expect from an economy ...
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How would you show battles that take place in temperatures of between -120 to -150 Degrees Celsius? [closed]
So basically what I'm talking about here are my Enslaver Aliens. This brings this back to my previous post. Such Aliens, when they appear, have an area wide effect. Whilst their main ability is to ...
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What kind of daily combat or exercises should see regular soldiers burn 6,000 to 7,000 calories a day?
Basically I'm trying to create a combat situation and training where recruits and people on the front line are expected to burn 6,000 to 7,000 calories a day. Now despite how messed up the war is ...
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Symbiosis centaur male?
My previous question Sexual parasite centaur? was about a symbiotic relationship where the males and females of the species are conjoined in such a way that they form a centaur shape. They start in an ...
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Sexual parasite centaur?
I have this idea for an alien centaur species which goes through an aquatic juvenile stage looking vaguely like this:
Then the males attach themselves to the females and they're able to leave the ...
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Would a non-round eye, one that doesn't look like a circle from the outside, be possible and functional?
Could an eye that is triangular-looking from the outside have any sort of advantage over a round eye?
I'm interested in any nonconventional eye form discourse so anything on the subject is appreciated....
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Organic reactions in alien peat [closed]
So imagine there's a peat composed of a mixture of partially decomposed polypropylene and polyethylene. Another girl and I worked out the reactions for polyethylene and its decomposition byproducts, ...
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Abiogenesis of solid-state organisms that reproduce through rock melting and magnetism [closed]
When looking for alternatives to the classic carbon-based life I often found replies on why carbon is still the most likely element to base life on because it can create complex molecules, it can ...
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