Aquatic races

[Me_]

Psychics are modern age wizards. In real-life theory crafting we remove them from equation. Also, using unmened probes in orbit also counts as space-faring. Once they will be able to build rockets - they are capable of space flights. But the problems are reaching that level.

You realize that Psychics are being made a major feature in Utopia, including Hive Minds being statet by devs to be using natural Psychic (read magic) powers as justification of how they work?

 

[Saviour of Galaxy]

You realize that Psychics are being made a major feature in Utopia, including Hive Minds being statet by devs to be using natural Psychic (read magic) powers as justification of how they work?

Yes, and if you read all my posts you would know I am completely FOR making aquatic or fish like civilisation playable no matter how implausible it is.

 

[Robrecht]

Seriously, people, there's a difference between 'they wouldn't be able to do it the same way we did' and 'it's impossible to do at all'.

I did a bit more research and forging metal (as in heating metal up and then hammering it into the right shape) underwater is pretty much a no go, there's too many issues with with both how hard it is to hammer something underwater due to the resistance of water vs. air (though it's theoretically possible if the aquatic aliens are very strong, relative to humans) and how to manage heat (although the aquatic aliens could be able to handle much more extreme temperatures than humans can). However, casting metal into a mold and then sanding it smooth once it's cooled is a perfectly viable alternative, even underwater.

In addition it seems both electroplating and electroforming in a salt basin is a pretty viable method for an aquatic species to create metal tools. Even, for example, on Earth. There are areas of our planet's oceans where the interaction between tidal flows and seasonal currents create massive amounts of static electricity. All an enterprising aquatic species looking to make metal tools would need to do is notice that the metal accumulates naturally on some rocks at those points, realize that the reason this happens is because hollows in those rocks are filled with silt (specifically metallic salts) and then for one of them to decide to use stone tools to leave a hole in the desired shape at that location and fill it with the right kind of silt. When they come back after the tides have come and gone (perhaps a couple of times), they'll find a piece of metal in that shape in the hole and, boom, they've discovered underwater metallurgy.

 

[Drowe]

Water and air both have differing coolant properties. Water is able to absorb a lot more heat than air, which means that cold, flowing water is a lot better at extracting heat from something than air is.... But water also loses heat a lot slower than air, which means it's a terrible coolant once it's already warm, especially if it doesn't have air around it to evaporate into. This is why we use water as both a coolant and as a heater (in central heating, for instance, where water's slow heat release allows us to heat a room far more consistently and with greater fuel efficiency than hot air). An oven that contains water and is heated to a given temperature is far more efficient than one that contains air (see: a pressure cooker. And before anyone goes 'oh, but you need metal to make a pressure cooker!': That's only true for us because we don't live underwater. The added pressure of an underwater environment makes pressure cooking viable with less strong containers. See: boiling a whole egg vs. air-heating a whole egg. The former results in a delicious boiled egg, the latter results in an exploding egg, due to pressure differences).

Also, for reference: A naked flame is a flame that is completely unprotected (i.e. a candle). We use covered flames for most of our uses of fire (be it ovens, forges, etc...) specifically because airflow IS a pretty good coolant (which is why a candle goes out when you blow on it) and leaving the flame unprotected is a good way to lose a lot of useful heat. An internal combustion engine or the turbines in powerplant (which work by heating water, by the way, just saying) are decidedly not naked flames, they're contained.

The fact of the matter is that an Aquatic species wouldn't even need to invent a way to make fires to reach the Iron Age (or more accurately the Naval Brass age). All they need is to set up a forge around a hydrothermal vent to capture enough heat to forge the Copper, Zinc and Nickel that are already very common around said vents into water-resistant brass (which requires fairly low temperatures to make any way) and, presto, metal tools.

Air is only a useful as a coolant because it can be moved very easily, and can therefore be used as an easy way to disperse heat, something you can't do with water quite as easily.

That is also why water is a terrible medium to live in if you want to use heat for processes like cooking food or smelting metals. The first problem is, that without advanced technology it is impossible to choose the location where you do it, you are bound by naturally occurring sources of heat. But using those naturally occurring heat sources like geothermal heat vents is a whole different matter. As you said water is a good coolant but doesn't lose that heat easily, so water around such sources can be pretty hot, far hotter than the 100 °C that water would boil at on surface level. Very few organisms can get close enough to such a heat source under water to use it for smelting metal, and those are tiny. It is unlikely for evolution to develop an intelligent creature that can survive these conditions, because an intelligent creature doesn't need that trait.

By the way, the candle doesn't go out if you blow on it because air cools it down. It goes out because you shut down the chemical reaction by separating the heat source from its fuel. Alternatively methods are depriving the heat source of oxididizer which is what you do if you throw water on a burning log, the vaporized water displaces air and deprives the fire of oxygen.

But I did already say, that I would grant them reaching until just before the steam engine, because at that point it becomes a problem. And manned space flight is out of the question.

 

[Melfice_Cyrum]

Sword of the Stars had an aquatic race. Sort of.

 

[Primarch Victus]

I don't have to give a detailed explanation of how an aquatic species would go all the way from the stone age to space while explaining every challenge they might face and how they'd overcome it. All I have to when you say 'It's impossible for Aquatics to ever get beyond the Stone Age!' is give one plausible way in which they could advance beyond that and then the fact that they have the ability to advance technologically means they have the toolset required to eventually get into space.

My friend, I know there is this thing called "suspension of disbelief", but even that has its limits... and I'm tired of seen the stupid "rule of cool" comanding sci-fi. What happened with the goodl old science and common sense?

Also, since you asked, you're wrong about hydrothermal vents existing only in the deepest part of the ocean. That's Black Geysers. Hydrothermal vents are relatively near the surface in places like Japan and Hawaii and other volcanic islands.

And I thank you for correcting me.

Also remember: It's possible for things to float on water and to be buoyant within water. There's no guarantee that an aquatic species would even need to go near land to launch a rocket, they can just load up the rocket all the way at the sea bottom and float the entire launch platform to the surface fully loaded as part of their normal launch procedure. Heck, aquatic species would probably be so well-versed in buoyancy that they could float an entire spaceship launch platform into the upper atmosphere on rigid air balloons and get around the issue of 'water is heavy' that way or something. (Plus you know our issue with transporting water to space is that it's expensive, not that we can't do it... Our priorities on that might be different if water, rather than air, was the stuff we needed to be in to not die)

Er...what?! are you serious??? did you read what I said about "suspension of disbelief" and that stupid "rule of cool"????

 

[Robrecht]

My friend, I know there is this thing called "suspension of disbelief", but even that has its limits... and I'm tired of seen the stupid "rule of cool" comanding sci-fi. What happened with the goodl old science and common sense?

Yeah, you're right, what has happened to science and common sense?

At this point I feel personally insulted by this. I've done all this research, I've spent three goddamn hours yesterday reading up on the conditions required for successful electroplating and electroforming and on whether those conditions are able to exist underwater (until finally finding that not only is it possible, but it happens naturally right here on Earth).
Before that I spent hours reading up on whether it was possible and practical to use hydrothermal vents to smelt metal. The answer being: Yes. Because while hydrothermal vents heat water up to extreme temperatures, they do so in the same way that fire heats up air to extreme temperatures: Most of the heat goes upwards, not to the side. Our hypothetical aquatic blacksmiths might need to use some kind of protection ( i.e. whatever their equivalent of the same thick leather gloves and aprons above-water blacksmiths use to deal with heat) while they're building their heat chamber but once the side walls are in place, they're fairly well protected. I even acknowledged it when I worked out that the above-water technique of forging (with a hammer) wouldn't work under water, but an article about underwater construction (of tunnels and oil platforms) reveals that not only do we humans use underwater metalcasting to create steel braces that tie slabs of concrete together, but divers heat the metal on the spot and the resulting steel is actually slightly higher quality than if the same steel mix was cast on land, due the there not being as much oxidation.

I've been using science (or well, researching science done by others, really) to figure out what is and isn't realistic for an underwater species. And all you and SoG have done is completely ignore that in favour of just going 'No! It's impossible, because I say so'.

So fuck it, I'm just going to repost this link from earlier in the thread.

Science and common sense, bish.

 

[Primarch Victus]

Sorry, but I still think that amphibious space-faring species (like the Mon Calamari or the Quarren) make far more sense than a completely aquatic space-faring species like the Xind-Aquatic.

 

[Nervian]

You are assuming a world where life is carbon based the "water" is dihydrogen oxide and the air contains oxygen. It's full well possible for a ocean world to have easy acess to exothermic chemical reactions in their oceans.

Not to mention their metal purification process may not utalise heat at all, it may be entirly chemical. Or even biological.

 

[Drowe]

You are assuming a world where life is carbon based the "water" is dihydrogen oxide and the air contains oxygen. It's full well possible for a ocean world to have easy acess to exothermic chemical reactions in their oceans.

Not to mention their metal purification process may not utalise heat at all, it may be entirly chemical. Or even biological.

What else would it be based on? There is a good reason to expect all complex life to be carbon based and require oxygen and water. It's because the elements with low atomic numbers are much more abundant than heavier elements. They are also more reactive than heavier elements. Oxygen for example can not exist as a free element in the atmosphere without plant life to replenish it. But at the same time it doesn't cost too much energy to break the bonds, so it can be regained. No, I think it's impossible for life so fundamentally different in its chemical makeup to exist and be intelligent and recognizable as life.

 

[Ashantai]

Thread necromancy is not cool, especially ones almost a year old.

I was tempted to let it continue, but the thread is veering off the rails. I suggest a new thread which stays on topic be started.