real life questions: can the earth be attacked by things such as space amoebas?

[Empire of Terra Nova]

so what does the science say about the chance that such huge creatures exist?

and if they do, wouldn't their neural system be proportionally enlarged too (compared to a normal amoeba)? so they might end up having more brain mass than humans, no?

ingame they only attack ships and stations, never the planet. why?

 

[Quinzal]

wouldn't their neural system be proportionally enlarged too (compared to a normal amoeba)? so they might end up having more brain mass than humans, no?

In game, they're only called 'Space Amoeba' due to convenient misconceptions on their actual size, which every empire seems to have simultaneously. They're not actually amoeba.

A large brain means a lot of required food, and I don't think food is very abundant in the vacuum of space. They probably have a similar brain-to-body proportion to a whale; larger than ours, but not large enough for complex thought since most of it is tied up in keeping the massive behemoth organism alive.

ingame they only attack ships and stations, never the planet. why?

Probably for the same reasons that sharks don't attack gophers, and why you never see ants killing squid. Different environments that are surprisingly lethal to one creature but not the other.

They are also not as big as you see represented in game. A lot of stuff in Stellaris is enlarged and warped for QoL. Otherwise, if everything were at real scale, planets would be pixels compared to a star the size of your cursor. Space Amoeba, similarly, are probably the size of a Battleship or something, which conversely might be the size of a small city, and considering gravity, wouldn't do well in combat while plummeting to their death inside of a gravity well.

 

[Reedstilt]

so what does the science say about the chance that such huge creatures exist?

The chances are virtually nil. There are some scientifically plausible that a spaceborn ecology could naturally form. But the amount of hurdles they'd have to jump over to become something like Stellaris' space amoebae make them outlandishly improbable. Even regular old amoeba-like microbes would be a enormous challenge.

The two big hurdles are sustaining a metabolism and surviving radiation.

and if they do, wouldn't their neural system be proportionally enlarged too (compared to a normal amoeba)? so they might end up having more brain mass than humans, no?

Possibly. But we really know nothing about the neural systems of space amoebae. True amoebae are single-celled organisms so they don't have a neural system so we couldn't make a direct comparison even if the two were related to each other. Things like sauropods were gigantic too with an extensive nervous system. Not that they really did much with it as far as we can tell.

ingame they only attack ships and stations, never the planet. why?

A species whose natural environment is 0g probably isn't going to handle falling out of orbit and onto a planet very well.

Then again, the space amoebae have natural hyperdrives, so who knows. Maybe they can warp spacetime around themselves enough to float in a planet's atmosphere and just don't like to do it.

 

[Empire of Terra Nova]

In game, they're only called 'Space Amoeba' due to convenient misconceptions on their actual size, which every empire seems to have simultaneously. They're not actually amoeba.

A large brain means a lot of required food, and I don't think food is very abundant in the vacuum of space. They probably have a similar brain-to-body proportion to a whale; larger than ours, but not large enough for complex thought since most of it is tied up in keeping the massive behemoth organism alive.



Probably for the same reasons that sharks don't attack gophers, and why you never see ants killing squid. Different environments that are surprisingly lethal to one creature but not the other.

They are also not as big as you see represented in game. A lot of stuff in Stellaris is enlarged and warped for QoL. Otherwise, if everything were at real scale, planets would be pixels compared to a star the size of your cursor. Space Amoeba, similarly, are probably the size of a Battleship or something, which conversely might be the size of a small city, and considering gravity, wouldn't do well in combat while plummeting to their death inside of a gravity well.

so space amoebas are somewhat bigger than dinosaurs? then theoretically they could also land on a planet (maybe not necessarily the earth as it's gravity is pretty high but maybe somewhere on the moon or so?

it's actually pretty intriguing if you take hypothesis into account that postulate extra-terrestrial origin of aminoacids, the elements if all life on earth. as far aa i'm aware of scientists weren't able to recreate their chemical evolution so far... and the first creatures that developed out of that grew into really huge water dinosaurs. one could even assume that it were some organic leftovers of huge space fauna creatures that landed on earth and then readapted themselves to the environment they've found here

 

[Empire of Terra Nova]

The chances are virtually nil. There are some scientifically plausible that a spaceborn ecology could naturally form. But the amount of hurdles they'd have to jump over to become something like Stellaris' space amoebae make them outlandishly improbable. Even regular old amoeba-like microbes would be a enormous challenge.

The two big hurdles are sustaining a metabolism and surviving radiation.

they might not even be actually voidborn buy simply spaceborn in a time when the universe was still pretty compressed and was expanding like crazy, the space might have been filled with all kind of matter, leading to creation of space amoebae-like creatures. and die to their ability to encapsule themselves in hostile environment they survived... i even recall once hearing about single-celled creatures on earth that have been living here for millions of years deep down in vulcanic environment, and that they are potentially immortal

Possibly. But we really know nothing about the neural systems of space amoebae. True amoebae are single-celled organisms so they don't have a neural system so we couldn't make a direct comparison even if the two were related to each other. Things like sauropods were gigantic too with an extensive nervous system. Not that they really did much with it as far as we can tell.



A species whose natural environment is 0g probably isn't going to handle falling out of orbit and onto a planet very well.

Then again, the space amoebae have natural hyperdrives, so who knows. Maybe they can warp spacetime around themselves enough to float in a planet's atmosphere and just don't like to do it.

lol... when thinking of the breeding grounds systems in stellaris i actually picture some amoebae mistaking some of the smaller planets for mating partners. i think i might even have see it in some scifi show

 

[Quinzal]

so space amoebas are somewhat bigger than dinosaurs? then theoretically they could also land on a planet (maybe not necessarily the earth as it's gravity is pretty high but maybe somewhere on the moon or so?

Probably not. When you've evolved in 0G, you've probably also evolved as a blob of liquid held together by membranes. Bones are useful for terrestrial beings because they give us structure to help us work against gravity. If there's no gravity, you don't need bones. So if you land on a planet with no bones, you're probably going to die.

 

[Talanic]

The chances are virtually nil. There are some scientifically plausible that a spaceborn ecology could naturally form. But the amount of hurdles they'd have to jump over to become something like Stellaris' space amoebae make them outlandishly improbable. Even regular old amoeba-like microbes would be a enormous challenge.

The two big hurdles are sustaining a metabolism and surviving radiation.

A single-celled spaceborne life form is a large part of the premise of Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary. He also wrote The Martian. Like any tale including creatures that live in vacuum, there's a number of improbable things about the creature, but it's all acknowledged on the spot by the biologist who's studying them.

 

[Reedstilt]

they might not even be actually voidborn buy simply spaceborn in a time when the universe was still pretty compressed and was expanding like crazy, the space might have been filled with all kind of matter, leading to creation of space amoebae-like creatures.

What's the distinction you're making between "voidborn" and "spaceborn"? To me, they'd be the same thing.

In any case, one of the plausible (but admittedly still unlikely) scenarios for spaceborn ecologies is that they might have evolved during the hypothetical "habitable epoch" of the early universe. This would have been a period around 10-17 million years after the Big Bang, during which the ambient temperature of space was suitable for liquid water. There's still some huge obstacles to forming life during that period. For one, even though the universe's temperature was suitable for liquid water, without sufficient air pressure water turns into a gas - so in space it would remain a gas rather than a liquid. And, of course, that assumes that water even existed at the time. This is so early in the universe's history that stars might not have been a thing yet or, if they were, would have been few and far between. Without stars - and more importantly - dead stars, elements heavier than helium are vanishingly rare. You can't really build complex chemistry out of just hydrogen and helium.

As far as I'm concerned, the most likely route for spaceborn lifeforms would be those that initially develop without a small icy moon similar to Enceladus and get blasted into space by cryovolcanism, with a lucky few surviving on volatile chemicals contained with other nearby icy bodies. At any rate, that's the model I used for my own scifi setting.

i even recall once hearing about single-celled creatures on earth that have been living here for millions of years deep down in vulcanic environment, and that they are potentially immortal

You may be thinking of the bacteria that got dredged up from the Pacific last year. At the time, a lot of news reports made it seem like the individual bacteria themselves had survived for millions of years. In reality, it's a community of bacteria that has lived in isolation for 100 million years or so, cut off from the rest of the world, but living, reproducing, and dying like any other lifeform on Earth.

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

I would say the biggest worry at the present time would be: if something like this COULD exist, the biggest threat it would pose would be mistakenly entering our gravity and plummeting to earth, with similar consequences to that of a large asteroid crashing to the planet surface (with all the ramifications that would entail)

 

[Eled the Worm Tamer]

I mean space is big, but its also empty, with very little matter and energy in the places most space-like.

This means that if you got a space born organism it probably looks more like the Dust clouds than the space amoeba, something huge and cold and so loosely distributed its just a more orderly nebula with some odd chemistry, bound up in vanderwals forces with nothing so solid as a 'cell' or DNA sequence to call its own.

Such a creature would be vastly more vulnerable to us than vice versa, thanks to our small, dense hot existences. It'd be like an elephant made of marshmallow fighting an ant made of sub critical uranium. The ant could do lethal damage just effortlessly tunneling though the marshmalophant.

 

[Empire of Terra Nova]

What's the distinction you're making between "voidborn" and "spaceborn"? To me, they'd be the same thing.

In any case, one of the plausible (but admittedly still unlikely) scenarios for spaceborn ecologies is that they might have evolved during the hypothetical "habitable epoch" of the early universe. This would have been a period around 10-17 million years after the Big Bang, during which the ambient temperature of space was suitable for liquid water. There's still some huge obstacles to forming life during that period. For one, even though the universe's temperature was suitable for liquid water, without sufficient air pressure water turns into a gas - so in space it would remain a gas rather than a liquid. And, of course, that assumes that water even existed at the time. This is so early in the universe's history that stars might not have been a thing yet or, if they were, would have been few and far between. Without stars - and more importantly - dead stars, elements heavier than helium are vanishingly rare. You can't really build complex chemistry out of just hydrogen and helium.

this "habitable epoch" is what i meant, when thinking of it the picture of species 8472 comes into my mind which lives in a parallel universe in "fluid space". so i somewhat unintentionally make a difference between that sort of filled space and the void, which then would be vacuum space. but yeah, there must have been pressure coming from somewhere to keep all that together

As far as I'm concerned, the most likely route for spaceborn lifeforms would be those that initially develop without a small icy moon similar to Enceladus and get blasted into space by cryovolcanism, with a lucky few surviving on volatile chemicals contained with other nearby icy bodies. At any rate, that's the model I used for my own scifi setting.

sounds interesting. what kind of scifi setting was that? a mod or so?

[BGCOLOR=rgb(31, 50, 44)]You may be thinking of [/BGCOLOR]the bacteria that got dredged up from the Pacific last year.[BGCOLOR=rgb(31, 50, 44)] At the time, a lot of news reports made it seem like the individual bacteria themselves had survived for millions of years. In reality, it's a community of bacteria that has lived in isolation for 100 million years or so, cut off from the rest of the world, but living, reproducing, and dying like any other lifeform on Earth.[/BGCOLOR]

yes, that's what i thought of. the article i read made it sound like it was actually every bacterium of said population that lived practically for ever in a secluded environment. though it's interesting to see that such continuity of life in total isolation is possible (it's almost like a universe within a universe)

 

[drawar]

Probably not. When you've evolved in 0G, you've probably also evolved as a blob of liquid held together by membranes. Bones are useful for terrestrial beings because they give us structure to help us work against gravity. If there's no gravity, you don't need bones. So if you land on a planet with no bones, you're probably going to die.

Bones aren't there just because of gravity, many marine animals have bones or cartilage, even if they are floating in the water.
Terrestrial organisms have also developed alternatives, even if they are often small, well, except trees ...

However, yes, an organism which would have evolved to live in the "space vacuum", unless it sometimes reenter the atmospheres of planets to "feed", would probably not be adapted to survive gravities and the other, but it depends on the physiology of the species.

For example, I know that octopuses are able to temporarily come out of the water. I remember an example where an octopus came out of its aquarium to go eat in another aquarium ...
Always facinating octopuses, especially since some can even eat sharks ... Another mishap in another aquarium ... XD

 

[TrotBot]

I mean space is big, but its also empty, with very little matter and energy in the places most space-like.

This means that if you got a space born organism it probably looks more like the Dust clouds than the space amoeba, something huge and cold and so loosely distributed its just a more orderly dust cloud, bound up in vanderwals forces with nothing so solid as a 'cell' or DNA sequence to call its own.

Such a creature would be vastly more vulnerable to us than vice versa, thanks to our small, dense hot existences. It'd be like an elephant made of marshmallow fighting an ant made of sub critical uranium. The ant could do lethal damage just effortlessly tunneling though the marshmalophant.

i wish there was a sad react cause that makes me sad

 

[Quinzal]

Bones aren't there just because of gravity, many marine animals have bones or cartilage, even if they are floating in the water.
Terrestrial organisms have also developed alternatives, even if they are often small, well, except trees ...

Well, aquatic animals still have to content with gravity to an extent, as well as the ~crushing pressure of the ocean.

But I get what you're saying, I was generalizing.

 

[FuriousGreg]

marshmalophant

 

[Eled the Worm Tamer]

No laughing matter sadly, despite their value to confectioners they proved far harder to domesticate than the Chocolate Labrador and over hunting has meant that artificial substitutes have had to be found, while poachers sell small quantities of the 'real stuff' on the black market.

Particularly sad is the trade in Marshmallow Fluff, made from the downy high sugar insulating outer layer, without which young Mallowphants are unable to survive the nighttime temperatures of their marshy habitats.