zompist bboard

Ever wondered if a gas giant might harbor life? intelligent life even? here's your chance to find out!

https://sites.google.com/site/planetamphitrite/

yup, here it is. it is extremely barebones as of now, but I thought I'd share and get some feedback.

I've always been fascinated by this possibility.

I look forward to details.

I can't find it now, but a while ago, I saw a documentary that at least partially touched on the subject of this possibility. On Jupiter, specifically. Beings spoken off were ones with, for example, air-filled sacks that would allow them to float about in the air and not fall into the gases below. There were others, but I can't remember them now. Everything was flying, anyway.

I read a scifi book with some aliens that were, as you say Skomakar'n, "air-filled sacks that would allow them to float about in the air and not fall into the gases below". Can't remember what book it was now.

Now that I recall, I do remember coming across it somewhere... there was a book, or website, or something, where someone hypothesized what life on other planets in the solar system might be like. I think he/she took some liberties because there were hypothesized life forms for every planet.

Anyhow, intersting stuff. Moar.

cybrxkhan wrote:Now that I recall, I do remember coming across it somewhere... there was a book, or website, or something, where someone hypothesized what life on other planets in the solar system might be like. I think he/she took some liberties because there were hypothesized life forms for every planet.

I think Asimov and Baxter both tried their hand at such speculation for as many Solar System worlds as possible.

treegod wrote:I read a scifi book with some aliens that were, as you say Skomakar'n, "air-filled sacks that would allow them to float about in the air and not fall into the gases below". Can't remember what book it was now.

Saturn Rukh?

I imagine they would probably be very big since the density of air is so low. Though some scientists believe Jupiter has liquid deep inside it, and maybe even solid rock at the very center, the temperature (36000°C) and pressure (3 million times more than Earth's surface) would be too severe to support anything like what we could call life.

Will any species in this conworld be able to use language?

i'm having trouble imagining what it looks like. do you have any drawings or anything?

It's been done by various authors; the first one to mind is the 2001 series, though it was just a throwaway mention during Jupiter's collapse.

Soap wrote:I imagine they would probably be very big since the density of air is so low. Though some scientists believe Jupiter has liquid deep inside it, and maybe even solid rock at the very center, the temperature (36000°C) and pressure (3 million times more than Earth's surface) would be too severe to support anything like what we could call life.

The density, temperature, and pressure would vary throughout the air column; presumably there would be an altitude somewhere in the ~70Mm that would admit survival of life, for some value of life...

cunningham wrote:i'm having trouble imagining what it looks like. do you have any drawings or anything?

Dirigibles with tentacles.

sucaeyl wrote:Will any species in this conworld be able to use language?

Sure, the Nephelai speak. I haven't decided how human is their language, though.

cunningham wrote:i'm having trouble imagining what it looks like. do you have any drawings or anything?

hell, I wish. I draw a bit, but not at the level required for this proyect. however, as for the landscape, the atmosphere is nitrogen, oxygen, neon and carbon dioxide, with water vapor clouds, so, say, the cloudmoss layer around the mesosphere... it shouldn't look too different from this. As for drawings of the creatures, well... no, not that either, sadly.

Also, flight and swimming get all mixed up at 50 atmospheres pressure.

http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/stephen ... -life.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuVy5VvCew8

A couple interesting links I found about life on gas giant worlds.

El Torco wrote:

sucaeyl wrote:Will any species in this conworld be able to use language?

Sure, the Nephelai speak. I haven't decided how human is their language, though.

cunningham wrote:i'm having trouble imagining what it looks like. do you have any drawings or anything?

hell, I wish. I draw a bit, but not at the level required for this proyect. however, as for the landscape, the atmosphere is nitrogen, oxygen, neon and carbon dioxide, with water vapor clouds, so, say, the cloudmoss layer around the mesosphere... it shouldn't look too different from this.

As for drawings of the creatures, well... no, not that either, sadly.

Also, flight and swimming get all mixed up at 50 atmospheres pressure.

They are basically the same thing, just in a different medium; that's why penguins so easily adapted back to being swimmers rather than flyers. At 50 atm it's going to have more in common with "swimming" than "flying", of course.

Have all the cells in this world, both of single and multi-cellular life developed structures similar to the large central vacuoles in plant cells, but filled with gas instead of fluid?

And do any of the organisms (most likely larger creatures) have a way to change their buoyancy and thus not be confined to one layer of atmospheric pressure?

Lastly, are there any floating biomass islands, perhaps on which not floating/swimming creatures could evolve?

This may be one of the most intriguing conworlds Iv'e come across.

This is looking very promising. Please sir, may I have some more?

sucaeyl wrote:Have all the cells in this world, both of single and multi-cellular life developed structures similar to the large central vacuoles in plant cells, but filled with gas instead of fluid?

And do any of the organisms (most likely larger creatures) have a way to change their buoyancy and thus not be confined to one layer of atmospheric pressure?

Lastly, are there any floating biomass islands, perhaps on which not floating/swimming creatures could evolve?

This may be one of the most intriguing conworlds Iv'e come across.

Although would such islands be stable enough to give enough time for such life to evolve on them. I think any such islands would get torn apart by the high winds common to gas giant planets. Interesting idea, though.

prettydragoon wrote:This is looking very promising. Please sir, may I have some more?

sure! ask away, or wait until I produce more, which should be soon, since I'm psyched about the idea myself.

sucaeyl wrote:Have all the cells in this world, both of single and multi-cellular life developed structures similar to the large central vacuoles in plant cells, but filled with gas instead of fluid?

And do any of the organisms (most likely larger creatures) have a way to change their buoyancy and thus not be confined to one layer of atmospheric pressure?

Lastly, are there any floating biomass islands, perhaps on which not floating/swimming creatures could evolve?

This may be one of the most intriguing conworlds Iv'e come across.

I imagine life evolving on the lower levels of the world, where buoyancy isn't such a big deal since it's pretty dense and heavy to begin with. Still, hidrogen vacuoles in a hidrogenless gas giant seem like a logical thing to evolve for complex microorganisms. But no, not all cells have them. The first complex organisms were clusters of green algae-like things that used the same hard tissue that they used to connect with dust particles and water droplets to coalesce around a bubble themselves.

Sure organisms have a way to change their buoyancy, they just dump the hidrogen to drop and manufacture some more to rise. still, for most slow organisms like esperzoa and rays the process is expensive enough that they almost don't use it. It's the fast guys, the hookfish and the gliders, as well as some sort of floaters, that can traverse different altitude layers with any ease. The nephelai and most prime gliders [the genus to which the nephelai belong to, kind of like primates, having prehensile digits and stuff] are also able to float way down to get nutrients and way up to get energy, in fact they evolved big brains precisely to deal with the complexities of traveling from above the cloudmoss layer to the underdark; different predators, different prey and, perhaps more importantly, different demands placed upon locomotion, which in turn requires one to be pretty smart.

Nope, no biomass islands, they would get torn apart by wind, not to mention eaten by carrion eaters, fungi and the like; consider that nutrients are, for the most part, the main scarcity in such a world: there's oxygen and water aplenty, as well as nitrogen and carbon, but phosphorous, iron, selenium, fluor and the like are hard to come by. The Synnefo, a kind of buoyant ray that is pretty large, acts as such an island, though: there's plenty of animals that live off it's moss cover, and even off its blood. Of course, most of them are either able to fly or able to disperse flying seeds or eggs, so there's no true earthbound creatures to speak of.

Skomakar'n wrote:I can't find it now, but a while ago, I saw a documentary that at least partially touched on the subject of this possibility. On Jupiter, specifically. Beings spoken off were ones with, for example, air-filled sacks that would allow them to float about in the air and not fall into the gases below. There were others, but I can't remember them now. Everything was flying, anyway.

This was probably Carl Sagan's Cosmos, which gave us the phrase "Billions and billions" via a parody.

Laura in Space wrote:

Skomakar'n wrote:I can't find it now, but a while ago, I saw a documentary that at least partially touched on the subject of this possibility. On Jupiter, specifically. Beings spoken off were ones with, for example, air-filled sacks that would allow them to float about in the air and not fall into the gases below. There were others, but I can't remember them now. Everything was flying, anyway.

This was probably Carl Sagan's Cosmos, which gave us the phrase "Billions and billions" via a parody.

Cosmos did have a segment on speculative jovian life. Also, if you want to bake an apple pie from scratch.

El Torco wrote:

Laura in Space wrote:

Skomakar'n wrote:I can't find it now, but a while ago, I saw a documentary that at least partially touched on the subject of this possibility. On Jupiter, specifically. Beings spoken off were ones with, for example, air-filled sacks that would allow them to float about in the air and not fall into the gases below. There were others, but I can't remember them now. Everything was flying, anyway.

This was probably Carl Sagan's Cosmos, which gave us the phrase "Billions and billions" via a parody.

Cosmos did have a segment on speculative jovian life. Also, if you want to bake an apple pie from scratch.

Cosmos: Jovian Life

Seems like you are on the right track, Torco

Okay, first illustration-like thingie of this world. It's a species of glider that's flying inside the cloudmoss layer.

I really like this - eagerly anticipating more development. Is it in the same star system as Suenu?

the duke of nuke wrote:I really like this - eagerly anticipating more development. Is it in the same star system as Suenu?

Matter of fact it is. I'm not sure if the system would be stable, with a superearth-neptunething so near the terrestrial, but I've decided to not care about such things

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?