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| The Silence of Life; my exobiology book | |
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| Topic Started: Jan 31 2009, 02:13 AM (751 Views) | |
| Canis Lupis | Jan 31 2009, 02:13 AM Post #1 |
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.
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My new book goes something like this: In the 2050's, miners are sent across the galaxy to mineral rich planets to obtain minerals that Earth does not have anymore. A team of ten miners is sent to the planet Cavernia and disaster ensues. That is what I need your help on: Cavernia. Cavernia is a planet orbiting a sun just a little bit smaller than our own. It orbits at the fringes of its star's habitable zone. Its core has cooled, meaning that the magnetosphere, atmosphere, oceans, most organisms are dead. The lithotrophs (rock-eating bacteria) are the only things that survived this event (I call it the "Big Vent"). They can withstand mass amounts of radiation and as long as rocks exist, they'll survive. Now, under Cavernias crust, lies a network of caves and caverns, carved by these bacteria. They eat the rocks and produce methane as a waste product. As a result, all the caverns are filled with methane. The planet is about the size of Mars and hardly any light reaches the caverns. Water is reduced to small trickles. Not very abundant. All organisms on this planet have three different kinds of symmetry: 1. cut the organism through the center from the head to the butt, the sides will be identical. 2. cut the organism through the center from left side to the right side, the sides will be identical. 3. Create a plus sign and cut the organism with that (the place where the two lines meet should be placed at the direct center of the organism. Basically, the head is the same as the butt, the left is the same is the right, and the head-left is the same as the head-right, butt-left, and butt-right and vice versa. The "plants" are mushroom-like creatures with an intricate root system penetrating through the rocks, absorbing as many nutrients as it can. They don't photo- or chemosynthesize anything: they just break down rocks and the nutrients they find. Some "plants" filterfeed the lithotrophic bacteria as they move from wall to wall (the bacteria have cillia around their head and butt that they move to stick in microscopic holes in the wall). Not sure about the "animals" yet, but they will be quadropeds (though some organisms (particularly the predators) evolve tentacle-like structures around the middle of their bodies). If you have some species concepts for Cavernia, please tell me. I'd like to see them. And I've got a question for you all, concerning respiration in the "plants" and "animals": how would an organism that inhaled methane be different than one that inhaled oxygen? |
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| Sliver Slave | Feb 4 2009, 09:51 PM Post #2 |
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I'm going back to basics.
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So the animals are radially symmetrical? |
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Something is upsetting the ostriches. Spoiler: click to toggle | |
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| Canis Lupis | Feb 5 2009, 01:02 PM Post #3 |
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.
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Somewhat. I'll explain: Almost all animals (called Scinrefarians) reproduce asexually. They are divided up by how they reproduce asexually. Here are the phylums I have so far. They are quoted to seperate them from other text: Echinoparalius:
Speculabestia:
Does that answer your question Sliver Slave? Edited by Canis Lupis, Feb 5 2009, 02:40 PM.
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| Viergacht | Feb 7 2009, 12:20 AM Post #4 |
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faceless fiend
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That's pretty amazingly cool. |
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| mnidjm | Feb 7 2009, 01:44 AM Post #5 |
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King of Mars
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You should probably change the year. I doubt that we would develop intergalactic space travel in 40 years. Maybe 90.
Edited by mnidjm, Feb 7 2009, 01:47 AM.
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9:41 AM Jul 11