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Posted by: The Shadow
« on: April 08, 2010, 03:57:41 PM »

After a bit more web-searching:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 094450.htm

Mind-blowing.  They don't have mitochondria at all, but bacteria-like hydrogenosomes.  That is such a major change that I have to wonder if it's a survival from far in the past, rather than a recent development.

Note that the link also leads to two (free) scientific articles on the subject.  I'm reading 'em as I type.

EDIT:  They also apparently have symbiotic microbes, which may well be Archaea instead of bacteria.  That also would be strange and interesting.

I'm not yet clear on what they're respiring from the environment.  They produce hydrogen, but from what?  Their habitat is full of hydrogen sulfide, maybe that's it?
Posted by: The Shadow
« on: April 08, 2010, 03:28:38 PM »

Quote from: "Beersatron"
Animals without oxygen

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8609246.stm

Wow, that's quite the news story.  What are they doing for respiration?  (Mainstream news never gives the juicy details!)  Perhaps they've got symbiotic bacteria doing it for them?  Because it would be hard to imagine an animal evolving all the necessary apparatus.

EDIT:  I'm also inclined to doubt whatever method they're using would work for anything much larger than 1mm - but who knows?  I could be wrong.

EDIT:  A little more web-searching, and I find that they didn't say how it respires because they don't yet know.  I will be keeping an ear to the ground on this, it is of major significance.
Posted by: Beersatron
« on: April 08, 2010, 02:37:08 PM »

Animals without oxygen

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8609246.stm
Posted by: UnLimiTeD
« on: April 05, 2010, 10:51:48 AM »

True, radiation can be alot, like closely orbiting a new star on a planet with low atmosphere, but talking about nuclear radiation, the one we would expect from missiles, which we perceive "harmful", theres only alpha, beta, and gamma, all of which are extremely high energy and could sustain life that has adapted to utilize it.
Posted by: praguepride
« on: April 05, 2010, 09:19:36 AM »

The issue with "breathing radiation" is that radiation is a category that contains a lot of different things. Radiation comes in all kinds of sizes and effects.

Saying something can "breath radiation" is like saying you breath "gas." Although technically true, you can't abstract that out and say that you breath all gasses.

My understanding is that the radiation emitted from missile strikes is an abstraction of all sorts of "harmful" radiation. The game doesn't track little stuff, just the stuff that would kill your planet. So I'm not opposed to an alien "breathing" some specific form of radiation, but I think implying that an alien race would need to nuke a planet to colonize it is a bit of a stretch due to the abstraction involved.
Posted by: UnLimiTeD
« on: April 04, 2010, 04:08:58 PM »

Thats one really good page.
Posted by: Hawkeye
« on: April 04, 2010, 02:46:48 PM »

If you haven´t allraedy, you might have a look at the "Aliens" section of the Atomic Rocket site. It doesn´t concentrate on atmospheres, more on a general makeup of possible aliens

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3aa.html

I also reccomend the site as a whole, as it deals quite nicely with a bunch of misconceptions in popular SF


(I found Aurora through that site, so I think it is in order for me to promote it here)
Posted by: Andrew
« on: April 04, 2010, 02:17:57 PM »

Quote from: "UnLimiTeD"

@Andrew:
Alpha Radiation are practically fully ionized Helium Atoms, 2 Protons, 2 Neutrons, Beta Radiation are Electrons.
They have an inherent charge, and a race that requires that kind of energy, which we probably wouldn't call "breathing", could sustain itself by voltage differences on it's skin, or by inheriting bacteria or elements that want to stay the way they are and release energy whenever they switch back to their natural form after absorbing radiation, which would be the mentioned chemosynthesis. (unlikely with radiation)
Gamma Radiation is a form of energy, as it's basically Photons, those would still work with the second possibility.
Breathing is not necessary for intelligent life, if you create an intelligent machine, it won't breath aswell, at least not in our sense, and given that huge of a universe and practically infinite time (well probably only a few dozen billion years), it is very likely a race will develop somewhere that inherits some of these characteristics.
If we expect life to be probable at all, maybe life came to earth through some comet and the chance to actually develop on it's own is too low to happen on earth^^.
.
All known.
Still think the suggestion of breathing radiation is total idiocy.
I will avoid further comment and really don't mean to be rude(although I probably am  :( )
Posted by: UnLimiTeD
« on: April 04, 2010, 12:45:30 PM »

I meant that those are potentially breathable, thus reactive enough.
Though this is Auroras problem, actually, it should probably be Hydrogen. Isn't methane more or less the product of that?^^

The limits said are none because they don't change "how the world works".
Regarding complex Biology, we still have next to no idea how it is actually working, so coming up with strange kinds of aliens doesn't break any laws, and if it does, we can't possibly know it.

I sadly don't have a link to that experiment, I read it from a scientific paper I got by my chemistry teacher, and he didn't really dwell on it, it was more to support his view of life ("If you apply Voltage to a sausage, it smells like burning hair, now guess what's in the sausage") by ending it with the sentence "And then someone shut it down, and they were all gone")


Btw, this proof of concept did just proof that that kind of life could exist, it didn't result in actual Genetics being created. Like those experiments to produce aminoacids in what was believed to resemble the oceans a billion years ago, it was proof that life could develop in that soup, they didn't actually get any proteins.
The only reason from those experiments that we seem more likely is that we exist, over all, any kind of complex life at all, in any environment, is highly unlikely, yet it still exists.

Just as those life forms may all be unlikely, It is unlikely, nearing impossibility (of course never reaching it) that we would find an oxygen breathing race of roughly humanoid shape, that is intelligent, and has a desire to actually leave their planet.
Even if it exists, which is about as unlikely, actually finding it would pose an equally hard challenge.

Quote
Really? Then how come we don't see any smart plants? They seem to get by just fine by fast, massive reproduction for the most part.

Well, last time I checked, jellyfish did that aswell.
They don't even have a brain.

Btw, this comes up when you google "smart plants", and it's atleast going in that direction. Given an agressive Biosphere that provides enough energy by either photosynthesis or stealing it from other life forms, I think Intelligent plants would probably be a possibility. And possibly they would even breath Methane^^
Posted by: The Shadow
« on: April 04, 2010, 11:45:40 AM »

Quote from: "UnLimiTeD"
Those limits are none.

This is not physics, it is biology.

You aren't making any sense.  Are you seriously suggesting that biology (of any sort) isn't limited by the laws of physics?!

Life forms do not receive a "Get Out of the Laws of Thermodynamics Free" card when they're born, after all.  If they did, hamsters on wheels could be perpetual motion machines, powering the world. :)

Quote
As said, Life based purely on electricity is proven to be possible, just no one wanted to build huge generators and wait 2 billion years to test if it will become intelligent.

I don't think this has been 'proven'.  The experiment you mentioned sounded suggestive, but that's all.  Could you give a link on it?

Quote
Btw, SF contains the J'rill, I think atleast not breathing at all should ba an option, possible with the penalty of treating reative gases (both methane and oxygen) as toxic.

Wait, now methane is a highly reactive gas?!

No, it really isn't.  I mean, it does SN2 reactions reasonably quickly, but I wouldn't call it highly reactive.  Mostly it just sits there.  It's non-polar, not very electronegative, small, and unassuming.

It perhaps *seems* reactive to us because it burns handily...  but that's more due to the reactive nature of oxygen than methane.
Posted by: UnLimiTeD
« on: April 04, 2010, 05:55:58 AM »

Those limits are none.

This is not physics, it is biology.
As said, Life based purely on electricity is proven to be possible, just no one wanted to build huge generators and wait 2 billion years to test if it will become intelligent.

@Andrew:
Alpha Radiation are practically fully ionized Helium Atoms, 2 Protons, 2 Neutrons, Beta Radiation are Electrons.
They have an inherent charge, and a race that requires that kind of energy, which we probably wouldn't call "breathing", could sustain itself by voltage differences on it's skin, or by inheriting bacteria or elements that want to stay the way they are and release energy whenever they switch back to their natural form after absorbing radiation, which would be the mentioned chemosynthesis. (unlikely with radiation)
Gamma Radiation is a form of energy, as it's basically Photons, those would still work with the second possibility.
Breathing is not necessary for intelligent life, if you create an intelligent machine, it won't breath aswell, at least not in our sense, and given that huge of a universe and practically infinite time (well probably only a few dozen billion years), it is very likely a race will develop somewhere that inherits some of these characteristics.
If we expect life to be probable at all, maybe life came to earth through some comet and the chance to actually develop on it's own is too low to happen on earth^^.

We can't know.

Btw, SF contains the J'rill, I think atleast not breathing at all should ba an option, possible with the penalty of treating reative gases (both methane and oxygen) as toxic.
Posted by: The Shadow
« on: April 04, 2010, 03:52:00 AM »

There's two kinds of "realism".

The first kind is where we come up with a self-consistent system for how things deviate from reality-as-we-know-it.  The Trans-Newtonian elements fit in this category - and while I have a few nits to pick, I won't pick them here.

But in SF, authors usually try to keep the first kind to a minimum.  The rest of the universe works as-we-know-it - the second kind of 'realism'.  Steve seems, like any (reasonably) hard-SF writer, to value this kind of realism.  Certainly his system-generation code is pretty good - astonishingly good for a game.

There's a difference between changing high technology, and changing the way physics works when left to itself.  And frankly, it is, in my opinion, often more *interesting* to work around the limits nature gives you, rather than hand-waving them away.
Posted by: praguepride
« on: April 03, 2010, 09:19:08 PM »

I'm not a scientist nor do I have any background in biology, but why do we have to limit a space game with "trans-newtonian elements" to "earth logic."

Sure chemistry might say that Oxygen (or another high-energy chemical) is necessary for advanced life, but then again physics would say that you can't do the things that trans-newtonian elements can do.

Our understanding of chemistry is purely in earth-like environments. Who knows, perhaps at 0.5g's life can ge sustained at lower energy levels because it doesn't have to fight gravity as much. Or lifeforms on higher energy planets (i.e. ones that recieve more energy from the sun) could compensate for a low-energy chemical basis by somehow abosrbing energy from the environment.

Now, some of that might just be the ludicrious ravings of an ignorant mass, but why should we restrict a space game with earth logic?
Posted by: Andrew
« on: April 03, 2010, 04:01:24 PM »

Quote from: "UnLimiTeD"
Technically it is possible for a species to breath radiation, after all it's sort of a kind of energy.
!^^
Just a Question have you ever studied any science at any level ever?
Radiation is EM Energy correct (or High velocity particles alpha and Beta , fast neutron etc) .
Oxygen is matter, particularly an atom on the periodic table usually found as a gas .
Breathing involves the respiration process , this in any life form is going to involve a chemical reaction which produces energy (Most life on Earth uses Oxygen/hydrogen/carbon reactions)
The end result of this is that YOU CANNOT POSSIBLY BREATHE RADIATION AS IT IS NOT MATTER!!!!!!!!

Just copied this over from teh suggestion thread to save ranting in the more sueful thread
Posted by: UnLimiTeD
« on: April 03, 2010, 03:01:43 PM »

Well, we've found a middle ground surprisingly quickly.
Btw, again, I'm not saying that the cambrian "let's get more" stuff was possible without oxygen, but that it wouldn't have been necessary to result in intelligent life, and in itself is not a guarantee for it either, or in short:
Oxygen is not the only possibility, it just happens to be the one we have here.

Just, as Aurora doesn't really simulate all the needs and traits of humanity, it should be possible to have a race breath water, require radiation, or, in case of machines, not breath at all.

(Imagine a radiation race, you can bombard a planet with impunity as the radiation is required instead of a problem, but you have to waste expensive missiles on any planet to make it habitable. Ok, thats just dreaming, that won't happen, but it sure is interesting.)