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Multipoda; A planet with tripods, quintapods, and hexapods.
Topic Started: Mar 28 2010, 02:10 AM (2,564 Views)
Pando
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On multipoda there are 3 continents that are isolated. On these continents life could not be more different.
There are 3 phyla of land animals, the tripods, quintapods, and hexapods. What kind of life could exist on Multipoda?

The creatures have a carbon composition, the star is a K star slightly smaller than Sol, multipoda is covered in water and there are no ice caps.

Multipoda:
Size: 90% Earth radius.
Gravity: 95% Earth gravity.
Atmospheric composition: Methane, oxygen, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, argon, nitrous oxide (laughing gas), nitrogen, water vapor, and ammonia.
Atmospheric composition by percent: 30% Nitrous oxide, 15% oxygen, 15% nitrogen, 20% chlorine, 5% chlorine dioxide, 5% nitrogen dioxide, 5% carbon dioxide, 2.5% xenon, and 2.5% water vapor.
Atmospheric pressure: 130% Earth.
Distance from star: 1 AU.
Temperature: 6 degrees hotter than Earth. Keeps hot because of the nitrous oxide (over 200 times as effective as carbon dioxide) and carbon dioxide.
Star: Orange dwarf star 0.8 solar radius and 0.6 solar luminosity.

Because of the the high amount of xenon (make up 2.5% of the atmosphere) spectacular lightning storms exist on Multipoda.

The creatures mainly breathe nitrous oxide (N2O) and ammonia (NH3) (but they can use any mixture of nitrous oxide, ammonia, oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen) to use the oxygen and hydrogen they breathe and combine it with the carbon they eat to form glucose and the nitrogen they use for the electron transport system (because the 2nd shell has only 5 electrons in it, it can take 3 electrons in the electron transport system instead of the 2 as in oxygen, so that 2 transports of nitrogen forms 3 glucose, while oxygen would form 2 glucose, making nitrogen more effective) (knowing biology rocks).

They breathe through holes on the top of their bodies, have 4 eyes (1 pair seeing in infrared, the other pair seeing in visible light) and reproduce by holes usually at the base of the tail or neck that can close with a hard covering so that they're protected.

Who likes the idea?
Edited by Pando, Mar 29 2010, 01:50 AM.
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Margaret Pye
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So each continent had life emerge from the water seperately?
My speculative dinosaur project. With lots of fluff, parental care and mammalian-level intelligence, and the odd sophont.
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Pando
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Yes.
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Dorylus
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Did they do so simultaneously? If so that's very unlikely but as a pessimist i say if it can happen it will.
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T.Neo
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You need to check your atmospheric composition. That hydrogen will make the whole planet go boom spectacularly at the first volcanic eruption or lightning strike.

Maybe the organisms could have different leg arrangements if they all went onto land seperately (as long as the continents are seperate and they stay that way). But I can't help thinking that organisms will cross continents via rafting or flying...

Also, mass and luminosity are slightly more helpful than spectral class- some of the smallest and some of the biggest stars are class M, for example.
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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Pando
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I don't know if they did it simultaneously. But they are different groups, and live on different continents.

What can I do instead of hydrogen? More ammonia?

And I'll be more descriptive about the star.
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T.Neo
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More nitrogen.
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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Pando
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I added more oxygen and nitrogen and added water vapor, bringing down hydrogen to 3%. And the star info is up.
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Holben
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I'd like to know how they managed to keep all that hydrogen, especially when it's hotter than Earth. Ours escaped billions of years ago, and even on Mars the hydrogen is lost. You need something with several times earth gravity which is very cold to hold on too hydrogen.

Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
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Pando
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Well, then I'll make it bigger than Earth. With the thick atmosphere big creatures will still be able to fly.

And I'll be replacing the xenon with methane.

And I've got how the photosynthesis works.

The plants breathe in methane and carbon dioxide, and emits oxygen and hydrogen into a chamber which combines them to form ammonia, but some escape and not all plants have that chamber. And fungus-like plants eat decomposing creatures and photosynthesize, breathing in carbon dioxide and methane and emitting oxygen, and combines the oxygen and nitrogen to form nitrous oxide and emit the nitrous oxide and hydrogen.

The fungus plants are the dominant flora on Multipoda, but the ammonia plants are also strong.

--EDIT-- I've been thinking of replacing ammonia and hydrogen (and other hydrogen) with fluoride.

--EDIT 2-- I could also replace the hydrogen with chlorine. Then I can reset the planet to its original size and gravity.
Edited by Pando, Mar 29 2010, 01:20 AM.
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Empyreon
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Are you plausible?

Not only would the shift to land life have to happen independently from each other, but they would have to come from different lineages. For example, we get our earliest tendencies for tetrapodia not from amphibians, but from fish, some of which can readily swim from continent to continent. So in order for this to work, you'd have to have three different aquatic creatures that have respective tripedal, quintapedal, and hexapedal bauplans, then make sure that no single intermediate species can encroach on another's territory (like if the hexapeds retained enough swimming ability to go over and oust the quintapeds or something).

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Well, then I'll make it bigger than Earth. With the thick atmosphere big creatures will still be able to fly.

The size and gravity of a planet doesn't correlate directly with the density of its atmosphere.

And if oxygen and hydrogen are byproducts of the planet's plants, then why don't they combine into water instead of isolated components of the atmosphere?
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Pando
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Actually I've changed the hydrogen to chlorine. With 1 more available electron in its outer shell it can form bonds like hydrogen does. But that doesn't mean that organic molecules can have hydrogen bonds.

And just because land creatures on Earth became aquatic doesn't mean that there will have to be aquatic land creatures on Multipoda. And the hexapods will be on the most isolated continent.
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Empyreon
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Are you plausible?

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And just because land creatures on Earth became aquatic doesn't mean that there will have to be aquatic land creatures on Multipoda. And the hexapods will be on the most isolated continent.

That doesn't change the notion that the land creatures evolved from something aquatic. In the oceans you would have to have tripeds, quintapods, and hexapeds all on the cusp of emerging onto land at one point or another, and there would be competition in the water as well wouldn't there? What keeps them all so isolated?
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Pando
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Well, maybe they're not so isolated. They could of been attached at one point, but at the continents one group outcompeted the others, and you end up with 1 continent with tripods, the other with quintapods, and the last one with hexapods.
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Are you plausible?

I'm interested to see how all that balanced out.
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