Questions tagged [alternate-worlds]
For questions about worlds other than Earth that are significantly different. This could be a water, ice, barren or other planet. For questions about planets similar to Earth with specific differences use the *earth-like* tag.
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Without regular interaction, what time of year would diseases spread? [closed]
Before all the kiddies swapped germs habitually every fall/winter and in turn spread it to their families who carried it to work, what season or time of year was the most common for the spread of ...
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Imagine a world where a drug that can greatly enchance IQ exist. Would it be legal? [closed]
I had a talk with my friend about limitless.
Imagine if we had a drug that
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Could a plant-like forest or jungle form in an underground lava dependent ecosystem?
Could an alien underground macroscopic ecosystem including human sized plant-like organisms evolve around lava as an energy source? These organisms could use heat and/or light from the lava to ...
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What's the longest plausible orbital period for a habitable planet with a 3:2 spin-orbit resonance?
What's the longest plausible orbital period for a habitable planet with a 3:2 spin-orbit resonance?
I want a planet with a 3:2 spin orbit resonance (which would experience 1/3 of a year of nighttime ...
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How many giant ants would it take to carry an adult/ how big does a single ant have to be to lift an adult? [closed]
Im writing a story about a less evolved world where a giant ant colony takes in a stranded stranger. In a world where ants are the size of a small tarantula, how many ants would it take to lift/...
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Plausibility/mechanisms for biogenic silica on a terrestrial planet with a reducing atmosphere
Situation:
a large terrestrial planet (a 'super earth', around 9 earth masses with a surface gravity roughly double earth's) with a mostly hydrogen atmosphere and ammonia oceans (pressure is high ...
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How would a lunar cycle of 18-19 days affect women's menstrual cycle?
Imagine an Earth-like planet with a moon that is closer to the planet than ours with a lunar cycle of 18-19 days. I am trying to imagine how this different cycle would affect human beings and animals. ...
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Can long-term exposure to high-energy radiation without corresponding visible radiation induce melanism in a species?
In some environments (think of the Faerunian Underdark for a fantasy example, or a planet orbiting a pulsar for sci-fi folks), high-energy (UV and up, but I'm mostly concerned about UV and very soft X-...
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Can a world go through multiple apocalypses without the dominant species going extinct or finding a solution?
My story idea is that on an Earth-like planet, with a human-like, intelligent dominant species (basically human), there are multiple apocalypses. Each gap between the apocalypses is called a cycle and ...
user23560
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Would a massive ocean yield larger storms?
Not sure if my intuition here is right.
All else being equal, would a massive ocean yield larger and more severe storms? If, say, we removed the Americas, would the new Atlantic-Pacific Ocean be much ...
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How to catch giant sea creatures?
One hundred years into the future, humanity colonizes the first planet in another solar system. A big ocean world! Yay!
But there is a problem: Most of the flora is toxic for consumption, so the ...
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Resolving anachronism: Have a modern society with outdated warfare
I am currently trying to resolve a problem of heavy anachronism in the story/world I am "building".
I will start of by giving a small summary of the story/world, and why there is an anachronism. (...
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How exactly would trading information take place if there were two virtually identical worlds that could message each other?
A virtually identical Earth has been discovered. Its history is almost exactly the same, with only incredible differences before about forty years ago. As a result, many books and movies are the same ...
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Observing the universe from a proton [closed]
I am trying to build an ultra-lilliput world.
Let's assume that sentient beings can exist on objects of the size of a proton.
Would they be able to observe the atom where the proton belongs, its ...
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Could a branch of canine creatures (instead of apes) evolve into humanoid animals?
What I mean is: instead of a "rat" evolving into primates and those tree hugging primate becoming bipedal great apes, imagine a "rat" evolving into a dog-like or cat-like animal, then that animal ...
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Planet with poles warmer than equator
I am trying to build an "exotic" planet under currently known physics and chemistry laws.
Besides having an highly tilted revolution axis (which results in 1 day lasting 1 year), which other ...
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Room-Temperature (or near enough) Superfluids
Are there (or can there exist) a room-temperature superfluid that is not toxic or in other ways dangerous to humans? (A superfluid being a liquid that can crawl up the sides of objects and completely ...
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Can the existence of an orthogonal reality be proven to those who cannot experience it?
In the following I consider "reality" to be "all the sensorial evidence a living being can obtain by interacting with its surrounding world".
I am setting up a world where two ...
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A planet inside out [duplicate]
I've had this dream tonight about a planet that is Earth but inside out. The outside of the planet are rocks, stone, a surface like that of the moon. There a few holes that tunnel through the surface ...
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How can I explain English existing in a fantasy world?
My hero travels from our world to a fantasy world where people speak English. While there are other nations that speak non-English languages, the particular land she arrives in does. How can I explain ...
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How to make a planet with differential gravity and constant daylight
I am hoping to create a planet with a greater rotational speed, making it oblong, thus causing differential gravitaion from the equator to the poles. I am hoping for the gravitarion to be lighter than ...
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A planet rotating twice per second; what mass is needed to hold it together, and how oblate would it be?
I want to create a planet that has a frequency of two rotations per second, thus making a "Planet without Night". The planet will be like a flattened disc, due to inertia causing the planet to be an ...
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Is there a reason why similar or the same musical instruments would develop?
In a lot of fantasy world's the instruments used are the same or very similar to our own, the real reason why is obvious: the creators would have to create a music system from the down up which is ...
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Infinite office building with main character trying to understand it [closed]
I was thinking about a story featuring a main character waking up in some kind of infinite alien "office" building.
Infinite by means of number of rooms and all three directions, maybe with gangways ...
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What are the consequences of a looping 3-dimensional space? [closed]
I was thinking of a world with a closed 3-dimensional space that would loop on itself. To describe it in another way: Forever traveling west, you came back to your starting point from east, same thing ...
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How would Water and wind current work on a fantasy earth?
My world is flat. Water constantly pours over the edge, where it becomes vapor and forms clouds.
Assuming that magic is involved to create Earth-like gravity, what effects would this setup have on ...
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What would it be like to live on a rapidly rotating planet?
On Earth we don't really notice many effects of the Earth spinning, apart from the day-night cycle. It took a long time for people of Earth to realise that it even was spinning, but there are ...
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Consequences of a completely friction less surface with gravity like moon
In the year 2588, ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) along with collaboration of NASA had discovered a new planet named Accio several light years farther than Pluto. Scientists have computed ...
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What type of architecture would an arachnid /crustacean likely to have? [SCULPTING FINISHED]
UPDATE!!!! - FINISHED THE SCULPT :D
[UPDATE: Much Much bigger response and feedback than i anticipated, I am hugely greatful and overwhelmed by the ideas and the help, I will keep the thread going ...
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How cold can a planet actually get?
The coldest place in the universe that we have observed is in the Boomerang Nebula. Similarly to a refrigerator, heat is carried away through a fluid, resulting in a space colder than the surrounding ...
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What would a world with a 45 degree axial tilt look like
If an alternate Earth had an axial tilt of 45 degrees, what would the seasons look like? Being the most extreme tilt a planet can have before simply replacing North/South with East/West, obviously ...
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How would a "reversed planet" be able to exist?
I want to write a novel situated in a “reversed planet”: there are two stars orbiting each other, and there is a little spot exactly in the middle of the two that is suitable for life. A normal planet ...
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How was Bladetree Magic created? [closed]
In my make believe world of Bladetree, there exists "Symbolic Magic" Where you are able to create magic powers and effects with "special" symbols. I will explain, before asking my question.
These ...
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Ecosystem of Bladetree, a tree that has a trunk growing horizontally over the ocean [closed]
Regarding the tree in this question, what kind of life forms would be possible if this tree were the only solid structure above water on this 50% of earths gravity, water planet? No land, just a ...
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Is an identical recreation of our world's creation happening right now? [closed]
If we assume the scientific idea of parallel universes, assuming that all universes that exist now are different from each other in the present and/or past, and so a new universe is created every time ...
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How much time would it take for a planet scale Miller-Urey experiment to generate intelligent life
Stanley Miller's experiment was an amazing step forward in unifying inorganic and organic chemistry. It was also a landmark development for the theory of chemical evolution.
Miller-Urey Experiment
...
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What would flora and fauna look like on a world in constant sunlight? [closed]
If a world existed in which, by any mechanism you like, the world were constantly exposed to sunlight or visible light of comparable brightness on all sides (so no side is correspondingly in permanent ...
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Trying to build a realistic dead-people, biologically and environmentally friendly world based on biological naturalness and ancestry [closed]
What would be wrong, with, say having an open area where everyone could be let there to decompose naturally (once dead). How long would it take, using this technique, for subside to reach the stage ...
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Life on Smooth World
Welcome to Smooth World.
Most of this planet (at least two thirds, but preferably more) has only tiny differences in elevation, 30-40cm at most. No hills, no mountains, no valleys. Even plains found ...
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Plausibility of fantasy setting
I'm really excited that this topic actually exists here. For the past weeks I've been thinking about creating my own fantasy world - because there are not quite enough yet. My primary aim is to make "...
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How would a planet-sized computer power receive power?
Imagine: A Kardashev Type I civilization mainly resides on a planet analogous to Earth, with one moon, analogous to Earth's moon. Eventually, the society grows so complex that machines filling space ...
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Would it be possible for iron and silver to be combined chemically into an alloy?
In a world with modern day scientific capabilities, would it be at all possible to create an alloy with a combination of both iron and silver that is usable within weaponry such as knives or swords or ...
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Interfacing with unknown technology?
Lets say humans from an alternate reality find a modern day laptop floating out in space and bring it back down to to study it. The humans are a little less advanced than us and are very curious what ...
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Do great minds really think alike? [closed]
On earth, there are humans that have been separated from each other for hundreds of years, living in isolation from each others cultures. Upon further examination into each different culture, you ...
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If magic was real, which sort of particles could explain it? [closed]
I was thinking along the lines of how particle physics will change, or need to adapt if we have something like magic being true. I mean there are all different types of magics which are possible like ...
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Other universes in a broad sense [closed]
When speaking about other universes people usually consider altered physical laws, while leaving logic and other basic things unchanged.
What if to consider other universes based not on different ...
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How would people with the wisdom of the 7th century describe or explain tectonics
This question is basically related to my former question: What would change if our Earth lacked mountains? (Geology)
So in my world people have stopped at a level of wisdom that might be similar to ...
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How much energy would opening a worm hole require approximately?
I'm building a story about a world where it has been discovered how to travel to any possible universe according to the many-worlds interpretation, and there's a company which is in charge of sending ...
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How can my Titan-like cryoplanet have clear skies?
I'm piecing together the biology and ecosystem of a Titan-like cryoplanet. And I want it to have clear or nearly-clear skies instead of Titan's complex hydrocarbon haze, so that my ethane-based ...
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can anime exist in a parallel universe [closed]
The Multiverse Theory states that there are might be infinite amount of universes each with different possibilites so is it possible for an anime universe to exist in some universes?
