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The Moon, Pandora, from the film "Avatar"
Topic Started: Dec 20 2009, 02:13 PM (8,062 Views)
Yorick
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I took someone's suggestion and created another topic to speculate on the moon's inhabitants' evolution.

So...speculate!
"I believe, that whatever doesn't kill you, simply makes you...stranger"

-The Dark Knight (2008)
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Practically Uninformed
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Perhaps the queues have to do with its submission? They're used for mind control of animals in Na'Vi, so maybe the less intelligent animals use their own queues for something of that nature.
You may be a king or a lil' street sweeper, but sooner or later, you'll dance with the reaper!
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Canis Lupis
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.

Woah woah woah. Back up. Mildy radioactive animal? What? How can an animal be mildly radioactive (radioactive enough to kill is what I'm insinuating) without committing suicide? It makes no sense to me.
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Ddraig Goch
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No, Canis, you've misunderstood me. I wasn't talking about an animal, I was talking about a plant, known as the Popsicle (or Somtilor to the Na'vi). It absorbs xenon from the atmosphere, including some unstable isotopes that undergo radioactive decay. Apparentely, they are usually a few degrees warmer than the surrounding area. All of the lifeforms in my last post were plants (ie, the Baja Tickler and the Banshee of Paradise).
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Canis Lupis
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.

Same argument still applies. Plants can still develop cancer, radiation poisoning, and other forms of radiation sickness. A bit counter-intuitive if you ask me.

Frankly, something better than a radiation-producing plant would be an electricity-producing one. Think of an electric eel that grows in the ground. Prey is attracted to the plant via bioluminescence. When the prey lands on the plant, BAM! they are paralyzed and the plant closes its leaves around the prey to bath it in digestive juices. However, if it is a large animal like a titanothere, hexapede, or even a Na'vi, all they will receive is a mild shock like static electricity. In fact, the Na'vi may get a high from doing this and develop their own drug (not like asprin but like meth) from the plant.
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C.Lupis, I found what Ddraig Goch is talking about.
Apparently, an alternative name for it is the "Octoshroom".
http://james-camerons-avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Octoshroom
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Canis Lupis
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.

Oh, that's what was meant! Okay doesn't sound TOO implausible. It doesn't seem like they use much radiation at all. In fact, they probably get the same amount of radiation humans due. Though maybe just a tiny bit more.

Not as implausible as I thought.
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I just remembered something; there's bamboo on Pandora.
Why would that be, I wonder?
You may be a king or a lil' street sweeper, but sooner or later, you'll dance with the reaper!
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Canis Lupis
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.

James Cameron fails at botany. Endo story.

He claims that fragments from the asteroid that killed out the dinosaurs escaped Earth and carried both bamboo and cycad seeds to Pandora and that they've been evolving with the Pandoran ecology ever since.

I would have preferred he just say convergent evolution.
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He seriously said that?
Well, chalk up 1 point for Cameron's grasp of science.
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T.Neo
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Cameron is actually pretty good when it comes to science. I think the Terran plants are due more to the fact that convincing alien plants are bloody hard to create.

And if he really said that, he's just a moron. Plant seeds travelling 4.4 light years in asteroidal fragments and surviving to germinate in an alien environment? Nice one, James. :|
Edited by T.Neo, Feb 23 2010, 09:35 AM.
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Empyreon
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Are you plausible?

Quote:
 
He claims that fragments from the asteroid that killed out the dinosaurs escaped Earth and carried both bamboo and cycad seeds to Pandora and that they've been evolving with the Pandoran ecology ever since.


Is there a source for that?
Take a look at my exobiology subforum of the planet Nereus!

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food for thought
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Ddraig Goch
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Quote:
 
C.Lupis, I found what Ddraig Goch is talking about.
Apparently, an alternative name for it is the "Octoshroom".
Well, there is that plant, but I was referring to a dirrferent one that also emits radiation. Not as a weapon, you understand, but as a by-product of absorbing xenon.

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Canis Lupis
 
He claims that fragments from the asteroid that killed out the dinosaurs escaped Earth and carried both bamboo and cycad seeds to Pandora and that they've been evolving with the Pandoran ecology ever since.


Is there a source for that?

Yes, in the Avatar Survival Guide. In it, the "seeds-coming-from Earth-idea" is described as a "widely discreteted theory".
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T.Neo
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Aside from the high improbability (even in a universe filled with blue cat people and floating mountains) of the plants coming from Earth, it should be fairly easy to discredit due to the differences between Terran and pandoran life (DNA vs the local equivalent etc).
A hard mathematical figure provides a sort of enlightenment to one's understanding of an idea that is never matched by mere guesswork.
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Empyreon
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Are you plausible?

I now quote from James Cameron's Avatar: An Activist Survival Guide, pages 124-125:

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Although it is possible that identical life-forms could have evolved on two separate planets, geological and atmospheric differences between Earth and Pandora have led some to speculate that cycads were transported to Pandora from Earth, possibly on a meteor chipped off from the Earth during the Yucatan asteroid strike.

Nowhere in that do I see it stating definitively that pandoran cycads do in fact come from Earth. It is only speculated by some, after acknowledging the possibility of convergent evolution. The text continues, saying:

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Given the remarkable chain of events that would need to have occurred to make this possible, however, most xenobotanists and astronomers dispute this theory.

Even though an idea is postulated, its counterargument is presented in the very next sentence. On the next page (125), there is one of the ubiquitous addenda, apparently scrawled into the book by whatever activist has smuggled it out of RDA hands:

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CHANCES OF EARTH SPORE TRAVELING TO PANDORA ARE INFINITESIMALLY LOW. MORE RDA PROPAGANDA TO VALIDATE THEIR PRESENCE ON THE MOON [sic]

Okay, so not only does the "approved" RDA text support the idea of disparity among the scientific community, but the books "other author" calls the theory propaganda designed to justify RDA's presence on Pandora. In essence, "if Earth life is already introduced here, then we're not violating any ecological laws by setting up our industry," or so the RDA would have us believe.

Aside from all that, I found no mention of bamboo anywhere in the book (somebody give me a page number if it's in there).

For those who can't be bothered to read all that, here is my conclusion:

The idea of terrestrial life deposited on Pandora-- as presented in the book-- is dubious at best, so perhaps we should read what's written on the matter before coming to conclusions regarding James Cameron's development of Pandoran ecology.
Take a look at my exobiology subforum of the planet Nereus!

COM Contributions


food for thought
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Ddraig Goch
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Very thorough!

And, no, bamboo are not in the book. However, there is some in the movie itself, in the scene where Jake's avatar gets chased by a Thanator.
Save the Blibbering Humdinger from extinction!
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