On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Science Fiction

[ctg]

You should take a look at the Jupiter and the Saturn moons. Thing is that many of those moons are far colder then Mars, as they lie in so called "inhabitable zone", where they receive tenth of sunlight compared to the Earth. However, as these gas giants are so enormous they create a powerful gravity field around. This field is able to create movements inside orbiting moon crust, and therefore, creating geothermal activity. Therefore, these moons can possibly harbour life or at least provide a place for a base in otherwise inhospitable world.

 

[whyzz]

Thanks, ctg. I hadn't thought of moons--Titan is quite large, I think?

That seems reasonable. I do remember a Heinlein novel about a colony that used the gravity or electromagnetism to create some kind of atmosphere for one of the Jovian moons--which of course shut down and killed a bunch of folks and animals by freeze-drying them.

I'll do some more research about them. Some moons have ammonia, methane, and other organic compounds which can be rendered into something less toxic for people.

If the moon rotated like our moon does, that would eliminate some of the periodicity, since the same side would always face the gas giant.

That might do very well.

 

[ChrisBfla]

My feeling (and this is just personal as I like hard Science fiction), is to use plausable planetary systems. Aslo, having a background in astronomy does not hurt. For stars, the best choices are G-type (yellow suns like our own) and K-type, smaller orange suns. Red dwarfs have far too small a habitable zone for planets with liquid water and stars from A up are too short lived (a few million to 1 billion years at most) for anything other than simple bacteria to evolve.

Multiple stars are fun, but the seperation between then has to be enogh so that their gravity fields do not distort the orbits of any planetary systems. For example, both Alpha Centuri A (A G type sun and B, a K-Type sun could both have4 habitable planets in their life zones as they are far enough apart to have stable solar systems.

A planet can be a moon. Look at Jupiter. It has four large moons, one of them, Europa, could have a vast ocean under a thin sheet of ice. Many of the extrra solar planets found so far are 2 to 3 times larger thatn Jupiter and could have Earth sized worlds for moons.

Unless you really want to push the limits of biology, liquid water needs to be present for life to evolve. Also, any intelligent being must have a means of manipulating their environment. Dolphins are intelligent but they have no opposable thumbs. On sepecuation, what if the asteroid had never hit Earth 65 million years ago? Could Troodont, a small raptor with grasping hands and opposable digets have evolved into an intelligent species? These raptors did not fit the regualr profile for these animals. They were small, about five feet tall, were ominvors from evidence of their teeth and not very capable of defense against the more deadly Velocoraptors of that age. How did they survive? They had the highest brain size to body weight of any dinosaur, excellent foward facing vision and most likely worked in packs and teams to communicate and hunt down prey. These creatures could have easily become a technological species, given a few million more years to evolve.

Chris

 

[ctg]

You do know that ant brain in the largest one in whole animal kingdom in comparison to the size. They also have a photographic memory. And they are very intelligent, but they model their intelligence against the hive colony. As we don't see them building space ships or driving cars, we assume that they're stupid and we're on top of the evolution. Who knows how they see us?

 

[whyzz]

ChrisBlfla:
I share your feeling about plausible systems--hence the question. This is a colony, not a naturally occurring species. The removal of the environmental markers inherent in the "mother culture" is part of what I want to explore. The current residents have no living memory of living outside a contained enviroment, as no one is still living from the original ship, and even the ship's passengers were born in space.

I had planned on using a barren planet, and so outside the habitable zone. My people are looking to hide--another reason for being underground.

I'm sure they would start some local evolution by adding oxygen and liquid water, but would not have indigenous life to deal with. that in itself could be interesting, since they have to keep life support going, air, water, human remains recycling, and there were certainly be different concentrations of metals and so forth.

There are numerous stories about intelligent reptiles, and since a turtle has joined my family for the last 7 years, I have learned a lot about the intelligence of the cold blooded. I know someone who claims to have met a live reptilian alien (a draconian). But then I have some friends who live in both worlds.

 

[whyzz]

ctg: I wonder if ants DO see us? Do we exist in their world at all? They know where our food is but they don't seem to mind us much. They don't run away unless we smash them--messing up their pheromone trails. Maybe they know how dumb we are. And the hill will outlive us though the individuals don't.

 

[ctg]

Ants outnumber us. There's 100 billion of them in this planet. And they must know us and they're not afraid of us. You cannot find them from polar regions, but they do live in worlds were the surface temperature is close to 10 Celcius. In minus degrees they close their hive and live underground. I wouldn't be supriced if one day we would find ants in the Saturn or Jupiter moons.

 

[whyzz]

Or maybe roaches, since they can survive in microwave ovens. I don't know much about insect or arachnid evolution or biology. But there would be bugs of some kind, if nothing else because the colonists would bring some along.

I remember reading Doug Hofstatder's book Goedel, Escher, Bach, which includes a conversation with a a turtle, someone else and an ant hill. Something happened during the conversation--a flood or some other disaster--that disrupted the ant hill. It reorganized itself to have a different identity and personality despite the number of individual ants who died.

I suspect that individual ants don't see us, unless we disrupt the nest, but the ant colony probably does, and I wonder if they are networked between colonies, much as we are on the internet. An interesting idea.

 

[ctg]

Fruit flies can take 100 000 rads, cockroaches only 10k and humans only around 500 to 800 before the end comes. But it's interesting tale you tell about the new ant hill personality. Terry Pratchett uses 'Ants Inside' joke in the Unseen University computer scene that's in the 'HogFather' story.

 

[chrispenycate]

"Anthill inside", please.

Individual anthills have no stimulus to develop society; they are competitors, and smell wrong, and the cross-breeding that takes place is no more signific-ant than the exchange of royal bloodlines during mediaeval European wars between kingdoms.

Nothing can be a friend to a pismire.

 

[whyzz]

I love the Hex machine! Ants and all! I guess all ants are piss-ants then?
Fruit flies like a banana. I'm sure there would be some flies around, maybe ants too.

 

[seraphim26]

Oh crud...I think my story just got a whole lot more complicated lol
please forgive me if I've missed this question somewhere else in this post, but here goes -
a) do all planets always form around stars or can they use other environmental conditions in space to form (ie gravitational effects from other things?)
b) If a planet has a colony, would that planet have to be near/er a sun?

c) Would terraforming (making a planets environment habitable) be possible on any type of planet (within reason) given the right technology, or would some physics/geoligical issues always cause problems?

d) Travel between star systems takes a seriously long time. If a star system has more planets, would they (the planets) have to be further apart to reduce any catastrophies, or is there usually set minimum/maximum distances to keep them together, and does this greatly affect the time it takes to travel between them?

e) is there a limit on the number of planets that can orbit a star?

Thats it - I think. Again I hope I haven't re-issued any questions here, and they aren't too far off the mark?
Thanks
Seraph.

 

[chrispenycate]

Chrispy Cosmic, universes built to specification.

You’re the one who’s more interested by the images the Cosmos throws up than the interaction between life forms within the frames, no? (No, not a criticism, just a comment)
We met in ‘critiques’, and I did (look how many other posts I’ve made in this thread) so tremble…

Lets take these problems one after the other (although they are interactive, and explanations will tend to spill over a bit).

It seems likely (all these analyses are going to be prefaced by disclaimers like that; we don’t know enough about the situation for answers to be absolute) that planets can accrete outside stellar discs. There is a theory that Pluto might have been formed like this, and been captured into the solar system later, capturing Charon in the process. However, extra-stellar planets would consist in majority of the two most common elements in the universe, hydrogen and helium,. Not a good start for terraforming. And they would be far more homogenous than equivalents formed faster, in stellar back gardens, as infall energy would never be enough to give them a proper molten core.

Cold forging planets out of interstellar dust clouds is not a subject I’ve given much thought to until now. Perhaps if you got a pair of nearly synchronous pulsars a light year or so apart, producing sinusoidal magnetic fields, the interference patterns between the two sine waves would produce a gridwork of magnetic nodes which would tend to concentrate matter. Then, if you sailed the entire system through a dense and relatively homogenous dust cloud those high probability points would capture enough matter that positive feedback would start, and their gravity would start pulling in more matter. Infall energy would be enough to weld them into planets, if not very terraformable ones (look, I’m trying, all right?) which would, if the cloud’s density were regular enough, be roughly the same size. To an order of magnitude, anyway. And they’d tend to stay in place rather than bumping into each other because of the series of ‘low points in the magnetic grid, which removes my previous hang up of trying to get them into a stable Klemperer rosette, an exercise that had me concluding an extra-terrestial artist had produced the display, or a very large alien had lost her necklace.

I don’t know whether this would work – they won’t let me do the experiment, and it would take several hundred million years anyway – but I doubt if anyone else could prove it wouldn’t.

In terraforming a planet, it is really convenient that the relative proportions of elements are largely similar to Earth, i.e. a rocky inner-system planet with a metallic core and silicatious outer shell (atmosphere is handy, but only a tiny fraction of the mass we’re playing with. These between-system created planets contain far too many light elements, nowhere near enough heavy for convenient modification. If our technology is sufficiently advanced we could consider mass transmutation, fusing hydrogen not into helium, but carbon, oxygen, iron… The inconveniences of this are firstly that the energy generated would not merely lift the temperature above its original three degrees or so Kelvin (a good thing) but raise it to stellar levels, and radiating this heatoff in a mere thirty years or so doesn’t seem likely.
More, the reduced number of molecules, as the mass will have stayed more or less constant (in fact several billion tonnes will have evaporated of into space) while individual atoms have got heavier means that the planet will be at best a tenth of its original size; no problem for terraforming, but inconvenient for your pictures.
And, of course, we can’t start surface treatment and atmosphere generation until there’s a couple of kilometres of solid crust to walk on.

Furthermore, I can’t imagine any culture with this sort of technology on hand requiring mineral wealth of any description. They are post mining.

So I respectfully suggest that, instead of trying to terraform the entire planetary surface and colonise traditionally, you build a handful of domes the size of greater London, mount them on thermal insulators and make then self contained biotopes. Mining is done by teleoperated waldoes and robots; when human intervention is essential, it’s in sealed vehicles and suits.

This also removes the need to put energy satellites in orbit, beaming down the power and light needed by any ecology. Lighting the inside of a dome is child’s play. And it’s high enough inside to have weather, and enough contained atmosphere that a meteorite strike is unlikely to cause rapid decompression.

These domes could either be built in situ from prepared parts, or flown in as spacecraft themselves, already equipped with a functioning society and ecology, and soft landed on the planet at a fraction of the cost of redoing the entire body.

 

[seraphim26]

My head hurts....
Thanks Chrispen. I guess that any race, that has such capabilities would have to be either very choosy or very clever about the planets they choose to terraform. It's almost like the chef picking and choosing the right moments and right ingredients to make a masterpiece dish. Involved!

The setups I show in my story as shown in critiques (where we met ) are for just the kind of thing you've described, really - not entire surfaces terraformed, but small colonies using the planet/systems for their needs/greeds. My initial thoughts regards the imagery of terraforming harked back the Aliens movie. I don't think a planet would have to go through the full throes of terraforming unless the desire and ability to turn it into an Earth like environment was there, as you said, finding such a place, and successfully pulling it off, would take some doing.

My thoughts were more towards the diversity of places that humanity would be able to inhabit, and the size and types of galaxy that would encompass. Does it always have to be a system like our own? If so, what are the odds of such systems being available, and within a sensible distance of each other? If we were to truly try and create an empire in the stars, how realistic an idea is it - or is space just too vast?

Seraph.

 

[chrispenycate]

Am I supposed to write "Aspirin" at the head of each of my 'technical' posts?

I will add that, due to my extremely slow typing rates, my original (handwritten) version was twice that length, and contained references to "Fleet of Worlds" (Larry Niven; Klemperer rosette of habitable planets with artificial satelighting), "Ringworld" and "the Smoke ring" from the same author, "Rocheworld" from R.L. Forward and "Red/blue/Green Mars" from Kim Stanley Robinson (All of which are worth checking out)

I personally suspect that the poverty of immediately viable habitats combined with the years of city living, almost divorced from nature (and the decades of early space exploration where totally synthetic environments will be essential) will leave us less impatient to walk naked on a planet's surface; it's even possible that our cities will have to experiment with becoming self contained biotopes on Earth before your scenario comes to bloom.

I can't see a decent terraforming in less than a thousand years or so; and, if the place requires little work, that indicated it already has an ecology (most of the conditions for life are produced by life); do we have the moral right to wipe this out and replace it with one better adapted to out needs (or, from the species that has introduced rats, mongooses and cane toads to regions where they had no natural control, the wisdom to do it right)?

Still, a synthetic environment can't support a regressed society for long (there have been a lot of books about this), and a feedback stabilised ecology is a much safer long term bet, so if we can convert planets with reducing atmospheres to our needs, so naked savages can run around without worrying where their next lungfull of air is coming from, it behoves us to do so.

An interstellar empire is dependent on times to planet hop, masses transportable, and the economics of the transport. Your ships travel very fast, (intergalactic in days? That's ridiculously fast. Or perhaps they don't travel, in the sense of being at points between A and B at all) but I don't know their capabilities. In early days you wouldn't need an empire, anyway; economic forces would suffice. By the time a few colonies had claimed their independence, it'd probably be too late for the authorities to clamp down; though, being politicians, they'd probably try. Only a devastating technical innovation could then make reconquest a viable option.

You've obviously got an 'ansible' instantaneous communications system; that helps maintain authority over great distances, but is not, in itself, enough. It's existence tells us that we are not in an Einstinnian universe, nor even one where we can be certain 'distance' has a real meaning.

I'm looking up references of 'maximum number of planets', although perhaps 'maximum number of terraformable bodies' might be better (a hot gas giant might have any number of moons falling in the liquid water zone) or 'the number of places in which DNA based organisms might be able to find a niche'.

 

[seraphim26]

lol perhaps a reply sponsored by glaxo? lol
I would suppose that the colonies (such as those in my story) would be at the very limits of what is capable, with each corporation funding only the necessaries to make it finacially sound. I think distance wise, I'm looking at each corporation controlling its own area of space - therein the distance between the home worlds and colonies wouldn't be overly far, but maybe enough to stretch some limits, as a new resource is found etc. I'm working along the lines that there will always be those colonies that fall among the outer edges of a system, rather than being neatly grouped. As for communication, long distance comms I would imagine would always be difficult over vast tracts of space, but this may be compensated by some form of relay system? (not a new idea, I know) whether that would entail physical stations or via digital etc means, the possibility lies there.

I don't think that our visions of a beautiful blue Earth version 2 will exist for quite sometime - this is a project that is vast beyond any of our current or near future means, let alone accounting for the ability to get to said place and get everything you need there too. Your mention of biospheres and self contained environments I would agree to be more sensible - in my story I have hinted at such things in one of the home world cities, where plant life and natural environments are self contained. And as for replacing a planets own life wth our own to suit our needs - as immoral as this is, I can see it happening - another classic downfall of humanity? - I guess that would make an interesting addition to a story somewhere.

Travelling within each of my stories systems would rely on fast transport, yes. I would hope that I can suggest that this isn't at a daft rate of knots, but instead something that is within reason - weeks over days, months over weeks where needs be. As for inter system travel, I think this would have to be done by larger, faster, more high tech vessels, to keep the whole thing tied together - otherwise you just have three seperate pools that each group is stuck swimming around in, and no way to get out.

I would imagine that a where there are seperate groups of humanity, there would be self governance, all seen over by the big chiefs back at home, who like you say would try their best to maintain their influence. Isn't that one of the problems of having a vast empire? Sustainability? To my mind even in our history, no empire has lasted, and in the end have all crumbled in one way or another.

Thanks for the help regards the no. of planets. I wondered about this due to it's additional possibilities within a storyline. The more the merrier?...

thanks again.
Seraph.

 

[jezelf]

been playing around wit this of late - very handy and excellent tool!

dunno if it's been posted here already, but great for creating solar systems that have correct calculations - particulary handy is getting the length on days and years (as well as the atmospheres) that will have influence on your civilisations and their evolutions.

I've put this in the Science Fiction thread but I'm actually using it for my Fantasy Epic.

StarGen - Solar System Generator

Run StarGen

 

[clorky]

Hi all,

I am working on a game in a sci-fi setting - briefly, it's about human colonists establishing themselves on an extrasolar planet. The planet is sufficiently friendly that humans can breathe and live outside unaided.

Go here for the game's development blog: removed

I am in need of ideas for the alien ecology on this planet. I have already established that I want the colonists to grow earth grops and rear earth animals - possibly genetically modified to fit the environment better.

In-game, I will be simulating the terran (transplanted) ecology in more detail than is usual in computer games. Consumption of nitrogen and water as well as soil types (sand/clay) will be simulated. Inter-species and intra-species competition, herbivores and carnivores will all be simulated.

I'd very much like a brainstorm of ideas for the alien ecology. How can it be made different/interesting/weird while still being plausible?
The best would be if the alien ecology could be simulated on the same order as the terran, and still feel different. If the two ecologies could interact in competition of the same resources, but still have a different feel, it would be ideal.

 

[chrispenycate]

If the planet is immediately inhabitable by Earthlife, it's pretty certain that the base ecology is fairly similar (something to concentrate simpler chemicals into more complex ones, something to store external energy (from sunlight, heat, volcanic chemical concentrations, something; it could even be electrical, if the planet spun fast enough) in chemical form; otherwise you wouldn't get the oxygen concentration. Then there will be something to eat the energy concentrators, and quite likely something to eat these (equivalent to carnivores) and things to break back down all of above into simple chemicals again, to restart the cycle.

Chemical balance might be a bit different (which could turn out very important when actually trying to settle there) but essentially it has to be fairly close to Earth norm, or you're not going to get a breathable atmosphere ("fairly close" does not guarantee even as close as a toxic landfill with heavy metal deposits, of course, or a lack of arsenic in the water. That's all possible on Earth, after all.)

And biochemistry, while "equivalent" to Earth's, need not be in any way identical; indeed, a bit of distance will probably prevent cross infection and plagues (while leaving open some really splendid allergies).

The morality of replacing native lifeforms with imported I will leave to someone else; the practical side is that the local life is totally adapted to its environment, while the invaders are trying to establish a beachhead. You'll need to import a complete working lifecycle, with bacteria, fungi, worms… Probably fire sterilise a valley, set up a sealed environment dome, get your compost heap running and mix bits of it with the ashes of the previous life, and plant seeds. If you've arrived in a generation ship, you already have a compost heap; if not, your robot probe sends off the order to be imported with colonists. When you've found out what plants grow best (doubtless weeds), then you can go out with the flamethrowers (or plasma guns) and prepare the terrain for direct competition and may the best ecology win)

Although biochemically there may be a lot of similarities, physically there need not be. Just look at the variety achieved on Earth, with a very limited number of physiological choices. Essentially all terrestrial multicellular animal life is based on a choice made by a worm for bilateral symmetry. A very few starfish and polyps come from before this choice, which was obviously a good one, but the Burgess shales demonstrate, not the only possible one. And look at the diversity even so. There is virtually no physical form that hasn't been attempted (admittedly many beneath the sea, where gravity is less of a constraint) And they're all topological torusses, doughnuts, a digestive tube with walls all around, open at each end (and a very large percentage of them based on one of two skeletal systems) The choice has been made for every cell to have the same genetic makeup (not essential for life, but essential for producing an entire organism from a single cell, as our ubiquitous reproductive system dictates. With a very few exceptions physical form is fixed, and organs specialised, even if occasional metamorphoses occur during a lifetime; not an essential choice, either. On Earth there are very few cases of in-depth symbiosis (like lichens), which seems to be missing out on a lot of possibilities; but Earthlife has made choices, with survival as a lottery reward.

Even single celled organisms use only one cell structure; since there is some evidence that the constituent elements of this were once independent, even this is choice. I suppose you can claim the symbiosis is at that level.

Some things (but very few) won't change. Population density set by scarcity of certain resources. Any organism discovering an alternate source (or a way of functioning without) will undergo a population explosion; at least until it itself becomes a source for some other organism. Diversity is a better bet than optimisation. Some means of transmitting characteristics (be it sex, or mosquito bites) makes for faster adaptability than vegetative reproduction.

 

[clorky]

Thanks alot for this insightful post.
I agree that I am fairly locked in with regards to creativity when I want a breathable athmosphere. Something has to provide the oxygen, whether this would be from biological processes concentrating matter and energy or from something else. But if the oxygen production was a separate process (geological? chemical?) from the biological ones, this could provide more freedom, I guess?

Regarding biochemistry, carbon based lifeforms are still the most plausible as I gather. So this points to photosynthesis and plant life as we know it. To get a more alien/weird variation on this well-known theme, I am thinking of photosyntesizing animals, or plants capable of moving (slowly? depends on energy needs I guess) to resource-rich areas.

Basing the two biologies on the same principles means that they will also prey on each other - consider humans, we can derive nutrition from bugs and sea urchins even though they are obviously very different from us. I think this is an advantage, because it means that the two ecologies will be able to interact more dynamically than would be the case if they only competed for the same space.
And obviously the native life will be more well adapted to the environment - meaning that the humans must sterilize areas and control pests for the earth life to stand a chance. at least until it is well established.
You are right about the diversity on earth with regards to forms and shapes - this poses a creative challenge to come up with something truly new. I am also thinking about symbioses and multi-staged life cycles as inspiration for weird and alien life.

About the compost - how necessary is this really? I would have thought that it would be sufficient to fertilize and provide pest controls to grow earth crops. The earth needs nitrogen-fixing lifeforms in it, but considering that it's possible to grow asperagus in mars soil I wouldn't have thought it would be critical to manufacture a whole new top soil layer.