Life on a gas giant, the conworld

[Latinist13]

Would the most intelligent of species on your conwolrd, the Nephelai I believe you call them, have any real type of technology or tool use? I think that could pose a problem for creating such a thing as culture, with the absence of any sort of stone, wood, metal etc. And what physical shape would they have? Similar to that of the creature you posted in this thread?

I think it would be a similar situation to octopi, squid, sharks, and dolphins- highly intelligent but incapable of developing tools, and, thus, civilization, due to lack of resources in the environment.

[Torco]

Would the most intelligent of species on your conwolrd, the Nephelai I believe you call them, have any real type of technology or tool use? I think that could pose a problem for creating such a thing as culture, with the absence of any sort of stone, wood, metal etc. And what physical shape would they have? Similar to that of the creature you posted in this thread?

Yeah, that creature is to the Nephelai as a bear or a lemur would be to us: kinda similar, but not quite. For one thing, the Nephelai lack the specialized, heavily muscular neck and the large beak, as well as the two-sided camouflage pattern.

As for would they develop culture or not, I haven't quite worked that out yet. However, the Synnefo/huge ass floating rays would be relevant sources of hard thingies for them.

[cybrxkhan]

If we assume that the development of intelligence is related to predatory hunting skills or what not, then maybe you don't need "hard" tools per se - or at least not really hard ones, just some kind of intelligence to, well, hunt better and communicate. Or something.

[Torco]

https://sites.google.com/site/planetamp ... uka-dragon
Oh, look, an article about a green dragon named after a nazi plane

[Qwynegold]

These things that reproduce asexually but still "exchange genetic information", how do they do it and why? And those that feed off lightning, how do they avoid getting zapped to death?

[Torco]

those are next, stay tuned, I guess ?

[Mashmakhan]

Yes, life inside gas giants has been speculated about many times before.



And here is what sophonts in a Jovian planet might look like:



Also check out aerial life on Nereus and Furaha.

And about the comparative atmospheric density thing... Neil Comins wrote about this in his book What If the Earth Had Two Moons?

Properties of Giant Tyran
Let's briefly tour the young planet Tyran. I give it a rotation (spin on its axis) so that the Zon goes from one high noon to the next in twelve hours. That means the day on Tyran is twelve hours long, which is similar to Neptune's present sixteen-hour day.* There is a subtlety in specifying the length of Tyran's day: it doesn't have any surface from which to watch the Zon rise and set. I don't just mean that it doesn't have a solid surface. It doesn't have a liquid one either. Indeed, neither Neptune nor Tyran has a surface on which you could land or into which you could splash. Let me explain.
Here on Earth, you know you have landed in a swimming pool after you jump off a diving board, especially if you do a belly flop. On Tyran or Neptune, however, the atmospheres of hydrogen and helium get denser and denser as youdescend through them, but this region lacks a boundary that you would call the surface, as you would find between the water in your pool and the air. On the giant planets, you eventually get into sufficiently dense hydrogen and helium to say, "Hey, this is liquid," but getting there does not involve crossing a boundary. Technically, we say that there is no "phase transition" in going between gas and liquid on the surfaces of these planets. Although the outer layers do rotate, the length of the day for both Tyran and Neptune is defined by the time it takes the terrestrial planets deep in their cores to rotate once. That is, if you were standing on the core and could see through the thousands of miles of liquid above you, you would see the Zon go from noon to noon in one "day."

_________________
* A twelve-hour day isn't outrageous, considering that Jupiter, which has nearly three times the diameter of Neptune, has a ten-hour day.

(Comins 2010:45)

Namely, there is no surface at all so there would be no division of gases into "solid," "liquid" and "gas." You would need to take some of the gas out of the planet and then classify it. But then that brings the problam of intermediary forms. E.g. you might get a really thick liquidy texture, almost like mud, or you would get something like very thick steam, depending on the depth from which the atmospheric sample was found. In light of this, if you had a gas giant composed of something cooler than hydrogen and helium at liquid-like state, then you may get organisms that are more adapted to swimming than flying, gliding or floating. I don't suppose anyone would know if a gas giant composed almost entirely of H2O could exist? Just a thought.

_________________

REFERENCES (in MLA format)

1. Comins, Neil F. What If the Earth Had Two Moons? and other thought-provoking speculations on the solar system. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2010. Print.

[Bob Johnson]

Eosapien2.jpg

Everybody loves Barlowe. Eosapien was a predator of land-based animals though: those hands were for lifting things from the ground. I'd expect things like the rugose floater, ebony blisterwing, and maybe even skewer, but I'm not sure what use gripping appendages would be in a purely aerial environment, where there's no real point in carrying things away.

[Mashmakhan]

Eosapien was a predator of land-based animals though: those hands were for lifting things from the ground. I'd expect things like the rugose floater, ebony blisterwing, and maybe even skewer, but I'm not sure what use gripping appendages would be in a purely aerial environment, where there's no real point in carrying things away.

And what about other forms of object manipulation, like relocation? ...OK, that is technically the same thing as carrying it away. Point is, if there is anything in this world other than the creatures themselves, then a creature that can conceive of the idea of manipulating those things can and may evolve toward doing so.

The question that quickly comes to my mind is: "If life did evolve on this planet, where on this planet did it evolve and how did it get there?" Right now, we know that life requires liquid water as opposed to gaseous water in order to evolve or else there would not be any of this heed to habitable zones in a solar system - habitable zones are theorized to indicate where a planet needs to be in order to have liquid water on its surface. If we assume this is true (and I do) then on Torco's hypothetical planet there will need to be some inorganic object on which H2O can collect and become a liquid without being too hot due to the atmospheric pressure. These inorganic objects could be rocks or other types of minerals floating around in the upper atmosphere. Maybe the planet does have a non-gaseous core from which it spews small chunks into the upper atmosphere. Some creatures could evolve toward being able to do things with said inorganic objects.

This is just an idea and not meant to be an argument in itself, though I really do think that a creature would need to be able to maniulate something in its environment in order to become sapient. Otherwise, how could it possibly become sapient in the first place? Or intelligent, for that matter. Intelligence evolved on Earth because of the need to solve problems. What kinds of problems would a creature have oin a gas gant if there is nothing else around it?

[zelos]

My world is a gas giant but it also contain magic and other stuff so it does have landmasses floating

[Torco]

I don't suppose anyone would know if a gas giant composed almost entirely of H2O could exist? Just a thought.

Almost entirely? nah, I don't think so... no planet that I know of is composed almost entirely of any one compound or element.
What is possible, as far as I know, is a jovian or neptunian made out of a fuckton of water. Water is common in this universe: hydrogen certainly is, and oxygen, while not as plentiful as, say, helium, is the next most common thing, so water, a common occurence whenever oxygen and hydrogen meet, doesn't seem like a bad candidate to make up a decent chunk of a planet. Our own system has plenty of water-rich bodies floating around, so they could, in principle, coalesce and then migrate inwards.

And what about other forms of object manipulation, like relocation? ...OK, that is technically the same thing as carrying it away. Point is, if there is anything in this world other than the creatures themselves, then a creature that can conceive of the idea of manipulating those things can and may evolve toward doing so.

Well I do figure manipulation of things would be useful in a gas planet where a valuable resource is just solid stuff, be it food or nutrients. However, manipulation on earth is always a skill that organs originally optimized for locomotion adquire: hands were once feet, so to speak. Since hands and feet are redundant in a gas ocean, I imagine whatever animal develops manipulation would have to do so independently of locomotion, and the prime manipulator in that case is the mouth.

As for the origin of life, a few things.
being too hot isn't the problem, as far as life is concerned: boiling is. Our own abyssal trenches have obscene temperatures, but the pressure keeps them from boiling and so, there are crabs and fish and stuff. As for minerals on which water can condense, and, perhaps more importantly, from where early microbes might get nutrients and such, Amphitrite's lower levels are quite dusty, between the pressure, the volcanic activity of the core and the powerful winds any gas giant might have and I think we have sufficient condensation surfaces.

[Mashmakhan]

And what about other forms of object manipulation, like relocation? ...OK, that is technically the same thing as carrying it away. Point is, if there is anything in this world other than the creatures themselves, then a creature that can conceive of the idea of manipulating those things can and may evolve toward doing so.

Well I do figure manipulation of things would be useful in a gas planet where a valuable resource is just solid stuff, be it food or nutrients. However, manipulation on earth is always a skill that organs originally optimized for locomotion adquire: hands were once feet, so to speak. Since hands and feet are redundant in a gas ocean, I imagine whatever animal develops manipulation would have to do so independently of locomotion, and the prime manipulator in that case is the mouth.

Ah OK. Good point. I had forgotten about hands evolving from feet. So, yeah, I suppose manual manipulation would need to evolve from some other part of the organism's body. Mouthparts aren't a bad idea, either, now that I think about it.

As for the origin of life, a few things.
being too hot isn't the problem, as far as life is concerned: boiling is. Our own abyssal trenches have obscene temperatures, but the pressure keeps them from boiling and so, there are crabs and fish and stuff. As for minerals on which water can condense, and, perhaps more importantly, from where early microbes might get nutrients and such, Amphitrite's lower levels are quite dusty, between the pressure, the volcanic activity of the core and the powerful winds any gas giant might have and I think we have sufficient condensation surfaces.

Interesting. Though...have you accounted for the winds tearing everything around them apart? I do recall hearing about wind being a barrier to life on gas giants but maybe this might not be as much a problem as was once thought.

[Torco]

Most certainly, some winds are deadly! especially with so much dust, anything caught in it would be ripped to shreds. In fact, getting the fuck away from wind is a common evolutionary pressure for creatures from this planet. still, there should be enough relatively wind-free places where things can grow and evolve.

[Mashmakhan]

@ El Torco: Have you given any thought to aerobic respiration for your heterotrophs? Helium is an inert gas so all you are left with is hydrogen...unless your fauna have access to oxygen. But then, where does the oxygen come from? Earth's oxygen came from carbon dioxide and water so you are going to need at least one of those present since the beginning of the planet's formation. Or are you planning on external means to bring them to the planet?

.....

My world is a gas giant but it also contain magic and other stuff so it does have landmasses floating

You don't necessarily need to resort to magic (unless you want to) for your planet to have rocky landmasses floating around. For a sci-fi setting, all you need is a bunch of extrasolar debris - comets, meteors, etc. - to get pulled in by the planet's magnetic shield. Scientists theorize that one of the ingredients for life on a terrestrial planet may be a gas giant further out to suck up anything that might otherwise impact the terrestral planet. If your planet is a gas giant, it will no doubt be taking in a lot of space debris because of its gravity and/or magnetic field.

Of course, if you want to use magic, then by all means, ignore what I just typed.

[Torco]

Well, yeah... I envision the planet being made basically out of ice, as opposed to hidrogen and helium: this means that most of its atmosphere is the stuff one finds in icy bodies in, say, the kuiper belt: oxygen, water, hidrogen [which reacts with oxygen to make more water], ammonia, carbon dioxide, etcetera. carbon dioxide is a relatively common gas in the universe, so it shouldn't be much trouble bringing it into this particular gas giant. plus, oxygen itself is like the third most common thingie in the universe, and without much rock to oxidize, it should stay in the atmosphere in one form or another.

plus, there's plants! c02-h2o-sunlight-glucose plants, no less!

[Drydic]

My world is a gas giant but it also contain magic and other stuff so it does have landmasses floating

You don't necessarily need to resort to magic (unless you want to) for your planet to have rocky landmasses floating around. For a sci-fi setting, all you need is a bunch of extrasolar debris - comets, meteors, etc. - to get pulled in by the planet's magnetic shield. Scientists theorize that one of the ingredients for life on a terrestrial planet may be a gas giant further out to suck up anything that might otherwise impact the terrestral planet. If your planet is a gas giant, it will no doubt be taking in a lot of space debris because of its gravity and/or magnetic field.

Yes. This space debris normally clumps together, into bodies which are normally called 'moons'. Or sometimes they organize into features called 'rings'.

I got the feeling that what Zelos was talking about was more floating islands/(sub)continents than rockballs in an atmosphere. In which case magic is your best solution, since rockballs in the atmosphere are not really possible.

[popisfizzy]

My world is a gas giant but it also contain magic and other stuff so it does have landmasses floating

You don't necessarily need to resort to magic (unless you want to) for your planet to have rocky landmasses floating around. For a sci-fi setting, all you need is a bunch of extrasolar debris - comets, meteors, etc. - to get pulled in by the planet's magnetic shield. Scientists theorize that one of the ingredients for life on a terrestrial planet may be a gas giant further out to suck up anything that might otherwise impact the terrestral planet. If your planet is a gas giant, it will no doubt be taking in a lot of space debris because of its gravity and/or magnetic field,

If by "landmasses floating" he is referring to something other than satellites, then yes, he would need magic. Or science fiction. He'd need to have an extremely light-weight, extremely solid (i.e. dense) material that is very magnetically conductive for something like this to work. Basically, a very light, super-strong room-temperature superconductor. Just basic extrasolar debris are not going to work, even assuming he does want sattelites.

[Torco]

Weeellll... I guess that, if you stretch it, you could have the planet have a superconducting core: that would make any magnetic thingamajigs float around? or, rather, have some naturally occuring superconductor be the component the floating islands are made out of. either way, meisner effect

ooor... maybeeee... humm... a continent at a lagrange point in a planet-moon system?

I dunno, trying to make stone buoyant in air is hard!

[Kereb]

unobtanium

[Lithray]

The air would undoubtedly be denser then here on Earth allowing for all kinds of fun stuff. Might I suggest pumice? Large pieces of pumice were made on a moon or planet with low atmospheric pressures. When object formed say rings as it fell into the planet large pieces of pumice broke off. When it entered the atmosphere it slowed down enough to float once it found balance. You could have large gyres that bring these loose rocks together.

[Torco]

pumice filled with low pressure hydrogen in a high-pressure oxygen world? I *guess* that's possible...one would have to do the math, though, not to mention figure out if the little bubbles won't rupture under the pressure

[Drydic]

The air would undoubtedly be denser then here on Earth allowing for all kinds of fun stuff. Might I suggest pumice? Large pieces of pumice were made on a moon or planet with low atmospheric pressures. When object formed say rings as it fell into the planet large pieces of pumice broke off. When it entered the atmosphere it slowed down enough to float once it found balance. You could have large gyres that bring these loose rocks together.

Why would it slow down, and why would it find balance? The gravitational force that pulled it in in the first place hasn't stopped or anything.

The rest of your post is...rather confusingly written. Why would denser air allow rockballs OR pumiceballs to maintain themselves, rather than wearing them down even faster?

@Torco: I love this idea you're working with, do not get me wrong, I just don't see it being possible without unobtanium or magic.

[sucaeyl]

For the floating landmasses:
The gasses in the pumice don't, and likely wouldn't, be of a different pressure, just of a lighter density than the layer of gas on which said pumice floats, for example, hydrogen on CO₂.

Also, a revision to my earlier suggestion of biomass based landmasses:
If there was sufficient access to calcium or a similarly versatile material in your planet, you could have floating coral-like beings that would clump together and, upon death, leave massive, hard, and porous structures, which could be filled with say, hydrogen or another light gas as the waste product from some microorganism, or some other way of filling up the holes that you come up with. That could form huge, sprawling rock-like islands.

These porous structures would of course leak slowly, and sink, but if the top layer of each "island" was always made up of the living "coral," then there could be some interesting, almost tectonic activity as each landmass slowly sinks and is replaced by new material above, maintaining the average altitude of each island.

[Lyhoko Leaci]

Why would it slow down, and why would it find balance? The gravitational force that pulled it in in the first place hasn't stopped or anything.

Wind resistance + buoyancy.

The rest of your post is...rather confusingly written. Why would denser air allow rockballs OR pumiceballs to maintain themselves, rather than wearing them down even faster?

Buoyancy. And where did you come up with maintaining themselves, there'd still be erosion, just it would be a bit different on a floating rock pile than it would on Earth (and mainly caused by the rocks banging into eachother)... Certain currents just might bring a bunch of the stuff to one spot.

Torco: "hidrogen" in English is "hydrogen."

[Torco]

@Torco: I love this idea you're working with, do not get me wrong, I just don't see it being possible without unobtanium or magic.

what idea: the superconducting thing, or the more general carbon-based life on a gas giant thing?

I understand, but the question is twofold:
one, why would something evolve into the form of coral ? and two, why would such structures grow into a relevant size? winds and the like would likely break them up, which would end up being good for them.
Plus, air tends to have little calcium: my own continent rays, the only landmass-like-thingie in the planet, operates on a similar principle, though: bubbles of hydrogen bound by tissue, and bam they float.

hydrogen, then, ill try to remember