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Chocolate World
Topic Started: Mar 1 2010, 06:56 PM (1,129 Views)
TheCoon
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Happy merry Jesusmas inhabitants of the Spec Forums!
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I... was just watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and I had this idea.
A world in which the main species is a type of fungus/plant or something similar, that covered the ground and the rocks, and that was brown-colored and sweet. It would be like a secondary layer in the planet, consisting in a colonial-type of life, but that it was coincidentialy similar to chocolate in the physical properties.
Edited by TheCoon, Mar 1 2010, 06:57 PM.
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agatharights
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Animals eat off hte ground. Hell, I eat stuff off the ground.

:U Plus, I'm sure it wouldn't grow on *everything*. I could see creatures with specialized teeth for scraping off the chocolate, too.
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Ddraig Goch
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Ar hyd y nos

Mind you, I doubt that there would be any animal life on a chocolate-covered planet. They would soon die off from soaring obesity rates, rocketing calorific intake, and rampant tooth decay.
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TheCoon
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Happy merry Jesusmas inhabitants of the Spec Forums!
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But this is not chocolate. It only has the physical properties of chocolate, but chemically they're just fungus.
Greetings young life form! Procyon Lotor at your service.

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Scrublord
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This topic's going nowhere. This is the kind of the thing I always thought this forum SHOULDN'T have.
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Empyreon
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Are you plausible?

I don't really see it as going nowhere. A planet with a universal food source distinct from plants has intellectual merit. I mean, consider the methods primary consumers could develop to eat the stuff. yellowdrakex suggested scraping teeth, to which I'd like to add some sort of slurping proboscis as a viable method.

Now, if your objection is to the implied caricature of a "chocolate planet" and the tongue-in-cheek remarks associated with it, then this topic is already in good company. I mean, we already talk with impunity about pokemon, cryptids, and man adapting to live in vacuum. So where do we draw the line between an unusual or whimsical inspiration for a speculative idea and an asinine one with no place in SE?
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food for thought
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Hmm... maybe it is close to chocolate. All those sugars could be made to store a lot of energy over a long period of time. Plus dark in coloring to collect it and to help stay warm. Maybe this is a planet with a fairly distant or erratic orbit? I'm leaning towards erratic, since I doubt it would use such large complex sugars if it was away constantly, it would be too hard. However, if it came close, it would have enough of a surplus to make them.

I mean erratic in the eccentic sense, not chaotic sense. We're talking about a planet after all, not a NEO.
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lamna
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Assuming that we are not talking about White sickly alien fungi analogue.

Speaking of being a bit silly, rivers often pick up tannins from dead leaves is possible that water could pick up Polyphenols from leaves falling into it, and get heated by volcanism? Seems so to me, though I suppose milk and sugar is out of the question though.
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agatharights
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I think chemicals similar would be possible. I mean, it'd be tasty, but you probably wouldn't want to go around eating everything you see on this planet.

Evenif it would be delicious; that almond tree is *not* chocolate and almonds.
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Footprints
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Or... (Hi, Spec Evolution forums, it's been a while!) Say the waters are generally full of a different, waterborne sugar-based algae or protist, that has some lactose? This off the deep end of the probability scale, to be certain, but...
Also, I doubt a planet like that could have much very large animal life. But I can see, maybe, tons of little crabs and urchins along the water, eating each other and the algae, in tide pools... Filter feeders would also prosper in the water. Chocolate sponges. Yum yum.
Okay, it's not realistic, but it's pretty, okay? :p
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agatharights
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I'm picturing dozens of tiny, brightly-colored crabs that superficially resemble cupcakes at first glance

I'm trying ot make it as horribly cheesy as possible in my mind. THey'd have little pink shells over their spongy brown or vanilla skin.
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agatharights
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Some brief ideas-

Cake Family
From the smallest member, the cupcake, to the largest member, the wedding cake, these crablike creatures boast impressive, often times elaborate or brightly colored shells that resemble the frosting atop of cakes. Their skin is spongy and soft beneath the shell, and is typically either brown or pale yellow, or even marbled in appearance, except for the velvet cake, which has a striking red coloration.

Muffin Family
Closely related to the cakes, these dull relatives of the cupcake superficially resemble their brightly-colored cousins. This family is smaller in number.

Parasitic Growths
Cherry - A growth with a swollen, red bulbous root that attaches to it's host, resembling a cherry. When active, it puts out green leaves.
Candle - A tall wormy growth that covers itself in a hardening waxy shell. When threatened, it can cause a chemical reaction that starts a breif flame.
Sprinkles - Tiny bugs that get on...well...everything.
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colddigger
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Joke's over! Love, Parasky
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i think the dominant species should be a massive slime mold.
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T.Neo
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Also, I doubt a planet like that could have much very large animal life.


Why?

Tidal effects should be fine as long as both bodies are tidelocked, which they probably would be. See Pluto and Charon.

Double planet is not an official term, btw. But it is a cool name for a subsystem in which the barycenter of the secondary and the primary is above the surface of both bodies.

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?

One thing that comes to mind is temperature. In some high-temperature regions of the planet won't the sugars carmelize? What will that mean for live in those areas?
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food for thought
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agatharights
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I assume that the sugars would be slightly chemically different, enough to resist heat some.
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