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| [Member Project] Charybdis; A gloomy, misty world. | |
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| Topic Started: Dec 9 2010, 01:07 AM (6,113 Views) | |
| Empyreon | Dec 9 2010, 01:07 AM Post #1 |
 
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Due to a sudden influx of inspiration, as well as some interest from members of the community, I'm starting a thread for my second xenobiology project: Charybdis. A lot of my initial inspiration for this project comes from a book by Terence Dickinson and Adolf Schaller called Extraterrestrials: A Field Guide for Earthlings. In it they describe "a transitional celestial body between terrestrial planets and gas giants." While there are several terms in that description I disagree with, I think the following concept is interesting:
I'm sure that as I develop the planet it will stray from this description, but the general starting point is a large planet with a very dense atmosphere, lots of water (both as vapor and in oceans), and therefore very thick, dark cloud cover and frequent foggy conditions. If I could introduce atmospheric characteristics from jovian worlds it would be great, but the priority is of course habitability. I'll be doing a native sapient species for Charybdis, and as been suggested in the alien senses thread, there are several potential points of interest in the Charybdan's sensorium: - Visual hypertrophy. Since the cloud cover filters out a lot of light, eyes will have to draw in more light to see. Also, UV light is able to penetrate the fog so visual sensitivity will likely skew in that direction. - Pressure sensitivity. Due to the dense atmosphere, an ability to detect disturbances in the air can warn of oncoming storms (which would be more intense with dense air) and even alert creatures to stalking predators like a sort of passive sonar. - Echolocation. As an active complement to the pressure sense, this could more finely detect objects that may be outside visual range due to fog. An interestesting corollary is the countermeasures prey would come up with to avoid detection. There are of course other senses, but those three stand out in my mind as noteworthy. I haven't put too much thought into the sophonts' bauplan, but a part of me would like to see how many criteria of T.Neo's humanesque test I can pass while still looking plausibly non-human, just for the challenge.  I also have a few different ideas bouncing around for life cycles/reproduction: - A drastic metamorphosis from an aquatic larval stage to a land dwelling adolescence and finally an airborne adult. - A hermaphorditic sexuality where the male organ is akin to a venomous fang, piercing the mate/opponent and fertilizing the zygotes through the bloodstream. The impregnated parent slips intoa coma and becomes food for the young. - A system with three distinct sexes, each one with cultural mores than interact in a complex society. So any thoughts, comments or questions about the planet or its sapient natives at this point? |
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| Pando | Dec 9 2010, 01:56 AM Post #2 |
Obey or I'll send you to the moon
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Sounds interesting, and with your Sketchup/Photoshop duo for critters it will be better. How many limbs do they have, and how exactly do the sophonts fly? (I'm thinking of floating with gasbags, so they can still be semi-humanoid) |
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| Empyreon | Dec 9 2010, 01:59 AM Post #3 |
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They will likely only fly in their adult stage (if I go with that life cycle), which won't look that humanoid any more but something more like a dragon or a ray, or something. As I said I haven't really figured out a bauplan I'm happy with. |
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| colddigger | Dec 9 2010, 02:31 AM Post #4 |
Joke's over! Love, Parasky
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The hermaphroditic idea doesn't sound very sophont oriented... Such a form of reproduction would likely result in being naturally extremely distrusting of others as rape-murder would be the only form of reproduction and such activity would likely be the first thing you do when you come in contact with a stranger, since certainly you would not do it to a friend. If you even had any. The three sexed idea actually sounds pretty much like a slightly more extreme version of our own sex segregation induced subcultures. The first one sounds interesting, I'm curious as how the different stages in their life cycle would work out and be defended, if even. An airborne adult doesn't sound very fit to defend an aquatic larva from "fish" is what I worry about, so perhaps releasing thousands of eggs (or what-have-yous) into the water then communally caring for the terrestrial adolescents so that if some of your offspring have survive then at least someone is caring for them. |
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| Empyreon | Dec 9 2010, 02:46 AM Post #5 |
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Unless a behavior/culture were to develop in which reproducing were considered an ultimate sacrifice. You know, giving your life for your children and all that. But you're right. Generally speaking, this would likely lead to a very aggressive and violent race. Humans debark from their starships, extend a hand of peace and fellow ship, then get throttled and stabbed through the gut. Ah, the joys of diplomacy...
Yeah, that's pretty much it. As I'm imagining it, they would actually divide the genders up into all sorts of "sub-genders" and class distinctions, etc. It would be fun to explore the variety.
The larvae would probably be kept in confined little pools well fortified against intruders. Adolescents would do the protecting, rearing, and hence civilization building. Adults would be interested in only three things: Mating, eating so they can continue mating, and defending themselves so they can continue mating. They'd return to the nest/village/tribe/cave to deposit their eggs then fly off for another chance meeting. This species could also be hermaphroditic, but it doesn't have to be. All three ideas seem interesting to me, so I'm having difficulty choosing just one. I mentioned them so I could see what you guys thought. |
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| Oceaniis | Dec 9 2010, 05:41 AM Post #6 |
Adolescent
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Very interesting, I had a similar project but it loses some habitats like polar caps, and sea level land whould be more simillar to water than air... So I gave up on it. Do you have more details about the planet? Like air pressure. It have rock surface? Ocean worlds have the problem of low minerals at surface I think... I don't know if you allready made the astrophysics stuff but elliptical orbit would be very nice on this kind of planets! |
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| Cephylus | Dec 9 2010, 06:45 AM Post #7 |
Berseerrrrrkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk
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Interesting  The reproduction method of rape/murder sounds crazy. Would the sophonts even be able to build a civilization? I mean, most individuals won't be willing to sacrifice themselves, and I wonder if their societies would be very big in scale, 'cause the increase of population will be very, very slow, and I wonder if a sophont species of this kind of violence/aggressiveness towards each other would even live in groups? Unless I have misunderstood... And the planet's name is inspired by that mythological greek whirpool monster, isn't it? Edited by Cephylus, Dec 9 2010, 06:47 AM.
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| T.Neo | Dec 9 2010, 09:46 AM Post #8 |
Translunar injection: TLI
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I dunno- whether a planet becomes a gas giant or not depends on it's mass, not the chance of what materials in the accretion disc it formed out of. Of course a larger planet is going to have both a thicker atmosphere and more water, but you get to a point where you end up having so much water that the planet is a world-ocean, with a water layer tens or hundreds (or even thousands, in large superterrestrial worlds) thick. I'm in doubt if it would be extremely dim on the surface- it would still definitely be bright enough to see, perhaps equatable to a heavily overcast day on Earth, or the light levels underneath a thunderstorm. Combine that with a biome similar to a thick forest, though, and you have potentially a very dim environment. I wonder what it's like in a rainforest during a thunderstorm? A large enough super-Earth might be able to hold onto a hydrogen atmosphere, but one twice thhe mass of Earth would not. In any case, geological processes and reaction with free oxygen would tend to remove elemental hydrogen from the environment.
Have you considered smell? Due to the thicker atmosphere it could be stronger and carry more easily, just like it does in water.
If you decide to go down that route, I'd love to see the results (and other organisms that it'd be related to). 
Possible, especially if we consider that airborne organisms often spend a lot of time on the ground; I can't think of a biological reason for it, but I can partially imagine the adolescent phase to be taken up by wing growth and maturation, a time during which the organism has matured out of the phase of living in water, but has not yet gained the ability to fly.
I doubt that would be conducive to sapience, or even advanced (i.e. birds and mammals) organisms. We only see traumatic insemination in invertebrates- relatively simple creatures. Insects in particular can lack nocioception as well. In addition, the most advanced organisms that die after mating are octopi, and I would not be surprised if this facet to their reproduction is something that limits their evolution. I think it would be impossible for a sapient to develop with this system of reproduction- for one, the social ties and the intelligence that they promote would not exist.
Potentially possible, though biologically it would probably be more plausible for the third gender to be a different version or "morph" of one of the other two genders.
How so? It is going to create seasons, but how important will that be, especially with a thermally stable, thick atmosphere? I think there is very large potential for airborne organisms here, due to the thick atmosphere. Getting onto land will be far easier, with the thick, potentially oxygen-rich atmosphere, large amount of atmospheric moisture, an diffuse sunlight- the constant problem of dessication that we have on Earth would be virtually nonexistant. Sessile organisms could get a large amount of water from fog as well, and could thus grow quite high. Considering the cloud level and the available amount of light though, the motivation for vertical growth would probably be somewhat different. Edited by T.Neo, Dec 9 2010, 09:50 AM.
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| Spugpow | Dec 9 2010, 10:32 AM Post #9 |
Adult
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If the aliens have hypertrophied eyes they're probably not going to need echolocation. |
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| Oceaniis | Dec 9 2010, 10:44 AM Post #10 |
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Adolescent
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High viscosity and density system become gas plant systems, low density and viscosity an becomes rocky planet system, in the middle becomes something like solar system. So, I'm guessing that in this case it would be somewhere near the middle but more to the high density and viscosity side. With an eccentric orbit, it could have seasons, since the thermal stability would make normal (axis) seasons disappear. So with some eccentricity it would have some difference. When the planet is approaching the star, the atmosphere would grow and it would have a drier than normal weather due warming up, during the perihelion it would have severe storms, and when moving away severe rain would fall due the atmospheric cooling. With big eccentricity, surface pressure maybe varies! |
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| T.Neo | Dec 9 2010, 11:18 AM Post #11 |
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Translunar injection: TLI
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Bats have both good eyesight and echolocation. The key to echolocation is due to the fact that fog is transparent to it, it can allow for sensing at longer ranges than vision in thick fog.
I don't know what you're trying to say. The "viscosity" of a protoplanetary disk has me extremely confused. 
I dunno. I have a feeling that thermal stability is going to even out the temperature differences between perihelion and apohelion. Maybe not as much as with a axis-season (as both seasons are occuring on the same planet and atmospheric currents distribute heat), but the planet will still retain a lot of it's heat. Warmer weather is going to cause more atmospheric moisture, because ocean water etc is going to evaporate and join the atmosphere. Rains falling with a temperature drop makes sense, but something tells me that due to the larger amount of atmospheric water vapor in the summer months will cause frequent rains as well. If your eccentricity is large enough to cause atmospheric pressure to change significantly, you have other, bigger problems... 
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| Oceaniis | Dec 9 2010, 11:45 AM Post #12 |
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Adolescent
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I like creating problems, it makes the planet more alien for us  Oh here is a link for the system viscosity thing: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14492-solar-systems-like-ours-may-be-rare.html Edited by Oceaniis, Dec 9 2010, 11:50 AM.
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| T.Neo | Dec 9 2010, 12:01 PM Post #13 |
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Translunar injection: TLI
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Yeah... except, if your problems are too big, nothing survives there.  Also:
I understand the gist of the study, but can't fathom for the life of me how a collection of gas and dust in space can have anything like a viscosity. |
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| Empyreon | Dec 9 2010, 02:33 PM Post #14 |
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Why give up? Strange features like that are what make projects like these interesting!
Nothing concrete at this point. Air pressure will be high enough that swimming in water and flying in sea-level air will be roughly similar in effort. I would like to have a "dry" surface somewhere; I put "dry" in quotations because the planet will likely be warm and muggy.
An elliptical orbit would introduce seasons if it's extreme enough; and the changes in environment may promote adaptability (read: intelligence/sapience). You also mentioned air pressure drop/rise based on the seasons, which could potentially make flight a seasonal thing. So long as the numbers can be tuned to keep life as we know it feasible, I'm willing to explore elliptical orbits. However, if the numbers don't come out, as T.Neo speculated, then they'll just have to settle with almost no season due to atmospheric normalizing or have seasons based on axis tilt.
Unless I've misunderstood, your questions are based on the assumption that such a sexual drive would be constant or frequent. Consider a more seasonal drive along with a type of biological incest inhibitor: as the designated time comes around, the tribe, who feels no urge to kill-mate with each other, marches out to find an enemy tribe and slaughter them. The tribe that survives or doesn't flee gets to gather up the bodies and raise the progeny. But the general consensus seems to be that this system is nonviable for complex life forms. I may just have to save it for less scientifically stringent settings.
Yes.
I would like to find that point and fall short of it.
My logic follows that if a thick thundercloud can block as much as it does then if we can figure out how to make the cloud thicker then it will block even more light. Of course, that will never block all light, so as you said it will be dim, but not extremely so. Even our eyes would probably be able to do okay with the daylight there. Night time is another matter.
Yes, I considered such a matter of course that I omitted it from the list of senses that I felt needed verifying.
Isn't the time needed to develop the necessary organs/musculature for flight enough of a biological reason? In any case it's looking like this is the life cycle I'll be implementing.
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| Oceaniis | Dec 9 2010, 02:59 PM Post #15 |
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Adolescent
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My project is based on a list of things that I want on a planet, some of them like forests (need light at surface), beaches (high density atmosphere would make the ocean behave in a way where no sand could sediment), and many others. But seeing how the plante was just 2 years ago, it was just Earth. Now is a bit different, sometimes I just gave up of an idea and make it more alien! But is difficulto to "sacrifice" some of the ideas. So times I'm lucky to find a solution, for example, I wanted tropical forests but also extrem seasons, so I made the solution of adding a 3rd star which the planet was tidally loocked to it and I had to different hemispheres were I could play! Another ideas that I gave up were a reducing atmosphere (the lack of fire and green oceans (yuk!) were the main problems), or a carbon based planet (instead of Silica based) which showed to be very difficult to predic the new compounds. Also Si based life was great, but the lack of water oceans in a hot planet... I LOVE Water!! When I said difference on atmosphere pressure was an effect of the evaporation and precipitation, just a few bar... for example: if you have 100 bar the diference would be less than 5-10bar, it would compromise the flying... unless you have gigan flyers. When you decide the pressure have in acount the critic points of some gases, your animals could fly on supercritical fluids! Forget the water is to extreme the to its critical point =P |
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