non-humanoid aleins

[mr.fizzypop]

One of the things that annoys me about sci-fi aliens is they all just happen to be humanoid. Especially star wars. 1000 alien species in the universe and all happen to look humanoid! So I want see what non-humanoid aliens are there. Here's what I can think of:

-Daleks(dr. who)
-Hutts(star wars)
-The great race of Yith(call of cthulhu)
-Flying Polyps(call of cthulhu)
-Hanar(mass effect)
-Blancmanges(monty pythons flying circus)
-Horta(star trek)

Can you think of anymore? Note this list is only of sentient lifeforms, so no alien beasties.

[Hylleddin]

Star Trek:
Tholians

Stargate:
Goa'uld
The sentient water from "Watergate"
Gadmeer (sulfur-breathers from "Scorched Earth")

Animorphs:
Yeerks
Andalites
Hork-Bajir
several others I can't remember

Doctor Who:
The Adipose

Starcraft:
The zerg (except for infested terrans)

[Seonor]

The Culture series and the Algebraist, both writen by Ian Banks have both very different aliens. Also here (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StarfishAliens) is a long list.

[Knaight]

Most of Alan Dean Foster's aliens, most notably the Thranx. Which were good guy bugs.

[adanedhel9]

They're not really not that odd in writing. Just off the top of my head:

Pierson's Puppeteers from the Known Space books.

Rigelians, Velentians, and Palainians from the Lensman series.

Hrossa, Seroni, and Pfifltriggi from Lewis's Space Trilogy.

The aliens from The Gods Themselves.

I'm sure I could come up with more if I weren't so far from my bookshelf.

[kpenguin]

The Progenitors from Alpha Centauri's Alien Crossfire

[Belteshazzar]

The Combine: only their Transhuman Arm contains heavily modified humans as soldiers.

Yithians: technically trans-temporal body snatchers but their best known hosts don't even have feet.

Mi Go: insectile/crustation/fungus.

Tyranids: As a hive species a large variety of members are not bipedal, hell some of them are technically munitions.

Elder Things: Flying, spaceworthy, seaworthy, landcrawling ,radially symetrical (five points) pillars of bootleather.

[revolver kobold]

The Taurians from The Forever War.

[warty goblin]

The aliens from Crysis are pretty non-human.

[Yulian]

Back to Niven, the Outsiders from Known Space are bags of helium superfluid that can live in space or on a Pluto-like world.

Phil Foglio's Buck Godot comic is chock-full of nonhumanoids.

Actually, what you're running into, Fizzypop, is merely the limitations of SFX. No more, no less. It costs money to make nonhumanoids. It costs less money to make humanoids with weird features like D'argo or Scorpius in Farscape. it costs even less to throw on a simple nose/forehead prosthetic like the various Star Trek series have done.

No other explanation, really. Cartoons often have the same limitation because action figures cost money to develop and sharing a basic shape with other pre-existing toys can cut down on production costs. Humanoids are also easier for humans to relate to.

So literature is where you find all the strange aliens.

- Yulian

[Athaniar]

Species 8472 (Star Trek) - Only vaguely humanoid, with three legs and other cool CGI stuff.

Rutans (Doctor Who) - They're green blobs of ooze. Not very humanoid.

Nestene (Doctor Who) - Lovecraftian aberrations.

Vorlons (Babylon 5) - Actually energy beings.

Shadows (Babylon 5) - Also vaguely humanoid.

Energy beings in general, Star Trek has a great many of 'em.

Xenomorphs (Alien series) - Kinda humanoid, but that's just because they use humanoid hosts (I think). Facehuggers are definitely non-humanoid, though.

[The_Snark]

There are a number of these from Star Control II, which both parodies and defies the convention of humanoid aliens:

Aliens that are genuinely alien: The Ur-Quan (tentacled and vaguely serpentine/caterpillar-like), the Mycon (somewhat fungus-like), the Slylandro (gas-giant beings), the Spathi (sort of molluscoid), the VUX (tentacly), the Supox (plants), the Zoq, the Fot, and the Pik (unsure, but none of them are humanlike), the Chenjesu (crystalline), the Mmrnmhrm (robotic, but not at all human-shaped), the Umgah (blobby things), the Melnorme ([Biological data unavailable, as the fee for that information would have placed our entire race in debt for millenia]), and the Orz (*fingers*).

Aliens that aren't humanoid, but resemble other Earth animals pretty closely: The Ilwrath (who resemble giant spiders), the Yehat (pterodactyl-esque), the Pkunk (toucans).

Aliens that are humanoid: The Utwig, the Shofixti, the Druuge, the Thraddash, and the Syreen (who are also all blue-skinned, scantily clad women). The Arilou resemble stereotypical UFO aliens, and the Androsynth look human because they're actually cloned humans, rather than a separate race.

A solid majority of the game's aliens are not humanoid, which is a pretty good ratio. A considerably smaller number accomplish the job of seeming genuinely alien, rather than thinking like humans with a single overriding personality trait. Most of the rest are intentionally one-dimensional, because one of the other things the game loved parodying was aliens whose culture or personality revolved around a single trait, i.e. cowardice, evil, mercantilism, sense of humor, a proud warrior culture...


David Brin's Uplift books feature a few humanoid aliens, like the Tymbrimi, but most of them aren't; they range from vaguely familiar-looking, like giant bugs, to... stacks of ring-shaped beings who form communal intelligences, to name the weirdest I can think of offhand. And those are just the oxygen-breathing aliens. The other categories are hydrogen-breathing, mechanical, transcendent, memetic (don't ask), quantum, and hypothetical (there are no known species of this kind, but you never know, right?). It is pretty safe to say that none of those would be humanoid at all.

[Avilan the Grey]

I don't watch enough Sci-Fi to have an informed opinion; but didn't Star Trek try to explain this? (Seeded galaxy). As for the rest, I guess it all has to do with what kind of being the alien evolved from.

A four-legged creature with a single "head" will probably produce something vaguely humanoid or saurian: some things ought to be more common than others after a long evolution: Grippers of some sort ("hands") for example. And it is easier for evolution to take what is already there (front "legs") and convert to "arms" than to sprout a third pair of limbs.
I know that sometimes evolution goes limb-crazy (and that the is the thing that bothers me most with SPORE btw, primitive creatures, as a rule on this planet, has gone from no limbs to heck-of-alot of legs to few legs; in SPORE though you are encouraged to only attach one pair of legs at the beginning, it really should be the other way around; the higher evolved the lesser amount of legs should be the norm...).


(...) and the Syreen (who are also all blue-skinned, scantily clad women).

...And thereby fulfills one of the dreams of mankind since we first started traveling the galaxy (while wearing a lot of velour) :smallbiggrin:

[Closet_Skeleton]

-The great race of Yith(call of cthulhu)
-Flying Polyps(call of cthulhu)



Yithians: technically trans-temporal body snatchers but their best known hosts don't even have feet.

Mi Go: insectile/crustation/fungus.

Elder Things: Flying, spaceworthy, seaworthy, landcrawling ,radially symetrical (five points) pillars of bootleather.

Pretty much any Lovecraft creature (except for ghouls and mad scientist creations) can be classed as a nonhumanoid alien.

[bosssmiley]

What Does a Martian Look Like? (http://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Does-Martian-Look-Like/dp/0091886163) by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart (they co-wrote the Science of Discworld books) - shows how alien life may be even stranger than we think...

Neil Asher and Stephen Baxter also give good non-humanoid alien

[Serpentine]

Animorphs:
Yeerks
Andalites
Hork-Bajir
several others I can't rememberTch. Not only did you steal my source, but you missed the most obvious least-humanoid of the lot :smalltongue:
Taxxons! Giganting ravenous millipedes with a great big tooth-filled maw on the end with a long, sticky tongue and surrounded by "red jelly-like eyes".

But, yeah. There's no reason to think that a creature that evolved on an entirely different planet, under completely different conditions, would even have limbs or eyes or organs or anything remotely recognisable by us - hell, we might not even recognise it as life. The whole all-sentient-beings-look-like-slightly-modified-us bugs me, too.

[BRC]

From Schlock mercenary, there are Carbosillicate Amporph's, and whatever species Legs is.

[Om]

I recall the one time when this really struck me was in Mass Effect. The supposedly alien races had no trouble speaking perfect English with slight American accents and a knowledge of common idioms. The odd Russian character is far more alien than anything else you'll encounter in the game

[Hands_Of_Blue]

I recall the one time when this really struck me was in Mass Effect. The supposedly alien races had no trouble speaking perfect English with slight American accents and a knowledge of common idioms. The odd Russian character is far more alien than anything else you'll encounter in the game It's translators. It is all in the codex. It's basically says that some of the humans you meet are probably speaking spanish or whatever. And the hanar aren't actually "speaking" the translators are apparently good enough to translate their bioluminesce. And then there is the elcor who all sound monotone because they use pheremones to express emotion.

[snoopy13a]

And then there is the elcor who all sound monotone because they use pheremones to express emotion.

Ah, the Eeyore race.

Aliens should be humanoid so that Captain Kirk can sleep with their attractive women :smallbiggrin:

Nah, I always thought it came down to saving money in the prop department. I'm sure that TV programs have a much higher percentage of humanoid aliens than say, science fiction novels.

[GoC]

Schlock Mercenary-Schlock himself, Legs, the dark matter blobs, the AIs, the thingies with the edible young, that weird 3 legged creature only seen once, the intelligent carnivorous whales, the elephants, I think Elizabeth counts as non-humanoid. I'm sure there are others.

The fact of the matter is humanoids make sense (humanoids, not bumpy-foreheads), you need grasping hands and reasonable size to develope civilization. Symetry is good in nature and most things with odd limbs don't work. A minimum of two hands is a must unless these creatures can cooperate really well, but after that you get little returns. A four legs, two hands combo is cumbersome and reduces speed compared to normal four legged things while losing the agility of a two arms, two legs creature. You can't have underwater creatures because fire is pretty essential to technology. So what does that leave? Pretty much anything that doesn't run on evolution, but as far as we know that's the only way to get life.

Anyway, just me $0.02.

[Enlong]

Lavos and Lavospawn, from Chrono Trigger. Giant, shelled things that just so happen to be planetary parasites.
OK, so his final form is vaguely humanoid, but that's specifically because it was taking in DNA from the planet for 65million years. It's humanoid because there's humans, and that's only the part inside the shell.

[Muz]

Rygel and Pilot (and for that matter, Moya and Talyn) from Farscape. Numerous other puppetoid critters from Farscape, in fact. :smallsmile:

[mr.fizzypop]

Wow no wonder my list was so short, I haven't read too many read sci-fi books.

[kopout]

I reed a book with sapient telepathic trees that control a stone age civilization of Ewok looking people.

[puppyavenger]

lets see moties no still humanoid......


The "demons" from Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light I love that author, probably the only book ever where the protagonist re-creates Buddhism entirely as a culture-jamming tool.

[chiasaur11]

Hitchhiker's Guide has sapient shades of the color blue.

That nonhumanoid enough?

[hamishspence]

I think the sapient shades of blue were a joke on Lovecraft's The Colour Out Of Space- a sentient, very dangerous colour.

on Trees and Ewok-ish people- would that be Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead? It sort of fits- the trees are the adult stage of the Ewok-ish (actually more humanoid pig in looks) aliens.

[kopout]

I think the sapient shades of blue were a joke on Lovecraft's The Colour Out Of Space- a sentient, very dangerous colour.

on Trees and Ewok-ish people- would that be Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead? It sort of fits- the trees are the adult stage of the Ewok-ish (actually more humanoid pig in looks) aliens.

It would in fact be Exiles of ColSec by some one whose last name is Hill ( I forget the first name). He doesn't rely discribe them other than "short and vaguely humanoid" so I think of them as Ewok-ish ( I also call them the loraks) but thats just me:smalltongue:

[Rotipher]

Don't forget the original alien invaders, the Martians from The War Of The Worlds. If they'd even been humanoid to start with, they'd evolved into something far different by the time they attacked Earth.


FWIW, some elements of anatomy are likely to develop, no matter what the planet. Having a head is biologically useful, as it places your sense organs, brain, and mouth close together, the better to locate, identify, and ingest food efficiently. Likewise, having paired appendages is a reasonable "default" design for any life form that descends from swimming organisms, as swimmers move and control their orientation best if they have an equal number of limbs or fins on each side. And, barring telekinetic powers or other kludges, some degree of manual dexterity -- hands, tendrils, Puppetteer mouths, etc -- will also be necessary, if a species is to develop the technology to leave its natal planet.

[thubby]

the bulk of the zerg
the snake/vine thing from star wars if he wasn't counted

a large amount of humanoids isn't particularly unusual. we evolved into this form because it works, it gives us enormous advantages over other animals. not using a humanoid form would involve finding a body structure that could function just as well as if not better than a humanoid form. i would love to hear ideas that don't involve just adding a few extra limbs.

[The_Snark]

A large amount of humanoids isn't particularly unusual. We evolved into this form because it works, it gives us enormous advantages over other animals.

Hah. Really? Our bodies aren't all that great. We have two things going for us: manual dexterity, and intelligence. Aside from those two critical things, we have very little going for us. Even with those, we're hardly the most numerous life-form on the planet, nor the most long-lived; about the only thing we have going for us in the competition for the title of Most Successful Lifeform is that we're the ones setting the criteria.

(Disclaimer: As I am not a biologist of any kind, and we obviously can't say anything for sure about something we haven't seen, all of this is amateur speculation.)

There are some things that are conducive to intelligence, or just naturally beneficial:
-A centralized nervous system. I have no idea if it's possible to have a complex, de-centralized nervous system, but putting it all in one place is certainly much more efficient.
-Sense organs. Again, this is an efficiency thing; it's important for any animal to be able to perceive its surroundings as accurately as possible. (I don't think there's anything particularly beneficial to putting the mouth near it, though.)
-Some way of manipulating their environment. This isn't actually essential for intelligence at all, but it's necessary for developing technology.
-I'm less sure about this one, but very large and very small lifeforms strike me as less likely to be intelligent. With small lifeforms, there's a limit on how complex you can be. With large ones, you run into the inefficiency problem again.

Which is not to say these are inviolate, especially for the purposes of science fiction; I'd much rather see unlikely but bizarre aliens than aliens which happen to be basically human in shape. An intelligent race that evolved from a large, dominant herbivore (or something vaguely equivalent), and thus didn't need to think quickly, might have both a decentralized nervous system and a much larger body, would be interesting to examine.

[Rotipher]

Interesting, but also implausible: a "large, dominant herbivore" wouldn't have any reason to acquire intelligence in the first place. Evolving the brainpower to think about more than your next meal or next mate costs.

[thubby]

Hah. Really? Our bodies aren't all that great. We have two things going for us: manual dexterity, and intelligence. Aside from those two critical things, we have very little going for us.


we're substantially less fragile in many ways compared to other animals. and surprisingly more efficient. trained properly, a human can actually outrun a horse over a distance.

[Fri]

I think there were a way of hunting a herd of wild buffalo or something by chasing and annoying them for days until the herd were too tired to run and then the hunter can slaughter them in leasure. Man got more stamina than most wild animal. Eventhough a cheetah can run faster than man, a cheetah can only sprint for 30 seconds.

I think sometimes, even non humanoid alien are still too similar to human. I mean, cats and humans evolved in the same planet and the same environment, and they turned out really different. Even cats and humans share some similar DNA. What could evolve in really, really different environment, or even in another planet with somewhat similar environment?

[thubby]

Interesting, but also implausible: a "large, dominant herbivore" wouldn't have any reason to acquire intelligence in the first place. Evolving the brainpower to think about more than your next meal or next mate costs.

how about out-thinking your predator? under the right circumstances some herbivore could well get in an intellectual arms race with a carnivore/omnivore.

[The_Snark]

Rotipher- Yep. Any story involving them would have to explain why they became intelligent. Uplift, a different kind ecological pressure... it's possible, but it has to be explained.

Thubby- We're generalists, is the thing. We can climb trees better than a horse or a wolf, but not as well as tree-dwelling monkeys; we can run and walk more easily than the monkeys, but most animals designed for running are either much faster or have better endurance. We're omnivores. We survived by living in groups, being clever, and using tools. (This is still how we survive, actually; we just don't think about it very much anymore.) It's very conducive to developing intelligence, because we have to think about what the animal we're dealing with couldn't do and exploit that weakness, rather than relying on instinct and always responding the same way. (Fri's buffalo example is a good one: if an animal can outrun us in the short term, try to make it an endurance race; if the other way around, try to end it quickly.)

But a humanoid body shape certainly isn't the only sort of shape that could be like that. There are some body shapes that might be universal—fast fish, dophins, sharks, and ichthyosaurs all have to be streamlined, and a lot winged animals share similarities—but that's because those niches are constrained by the laws of physics: you have to be streamlined to go fast in water, wings only work in certain ways. The human 'niche' is intelligence, adaptability, and manual dexterity. No reason these should be associated with a bipedal, four-limbed body. It's certainly not a bad body, but I don't see why it would crop up all that often. Even within the examples I listed, there's a fair bit of difference- compare squid and dolphins, insects and birds.

[Fri]

In His Dark Material, there're a species of sentient elephant thingie. They use their trunk to make tools. And because each one only got one trunk, their civilization is more into cooperation than human, because they need at least two individual to, say, weave a basket.

[Don Julio Anejo]

A short point: something that's already too good, for example a very efficient body design with a bunch of tentacled hands, legs and a turtle shell to hide all of it wouldn't really have any reason to develop intelligence in the first place.

One of the leading theories is that intelligence got started as a result of primitive hominids developing complex behaviours to avoid predators and at the same time get food at a time where there wasn't very much of it to go around. Since being essentially chimpanzee-sized monkeys we could neither run nor fight that well compared to most predators. And we were too big to hide.

[Narmoth]

The polish (I think) author Stanislav Lem had several interesting aliens:
- a sapient, dream reading ocean that covered a whole planet (the novel and the movie Solaris)
- an evolution of robots, where robots were the only land living inhabitants on a planet, being survivors after the crash of an alien spaceship. They had to make themselves into more and more energy-saving forms, while at the same time fighting each other for the energy resources from the ship. They ended with making a hive mind of mosquito-like robots that vere individually harmless, but could kill of a space cruiser

[Fri]

A short point: something that's already too good, for example a very efficient body design with a bunch of tentacled hands, legs and a turtle shell to hide all of it wouldn't really have any reason to develop intelligence in the first place.



So THAT'S WHY octopuses hadn't conquered the world.

[Serpentine]

Heh, I just thought to bring them up :smalltongue:
I think, based on living Earth animals, squid, octopuses and cuttlefish are the best candidates for non-humanoid sapience. I mean, just look at cuttlefish: They can learn amazing things in the 5-7 years (or whatever it was) that they normally live. Imagine what they could do if they didn't die as soon as they bred, and could pass on what they learned do their offspring... Tentacles can be about as dextrous as hands, too.
The key advantage of intelligence is the resultant adaptability. When it got cold, we couldn't hibernate or move fast enough, so we made clothing. We're nowhere near tough enough to bring down any big food, so we made weapons. We can't bellow or howl information across huge distances, so we make pictures, writing or other means of communication. If we can't get enough food on land, we invent fishing and its apparat...i? I think that any planet that evolves intelligent life - whatever form that might take, and I've read somewhere that there's no reason do think that it'd be even as symmetrical as life on Earth is (did I say that already?) because it could have a totally different evolutionary path with a totally different origin - must be one that goes through fairly regular possibly catastrophic upheavals or changes, possibly with enough time in-between for culture to develop and be passed on.

[Avilan the Grey]

I agree with Serpentine, that particular branch of the invertebrate family would be excellent candidates for intelligence and civilization.

Again, look at how we look, and what is probably needed:

We are tall, upright, two legs and two arms with good gripping hands. We have a "sensor central" combined with out brain and food intake that is less well designed (basically, there could be more efficient placement of the different parts, but nature works with what is already there, not total reinventions).

An alien creature would probably be upright (or have the capacity to stretch tall), have two legs (more efficient than none, or four, not to mention one), and at least two extremities with good grippers. An alternative is a creature with say 4-or-more extremities that can double as legs as well as arms so that the creature at any given point can decide to use it's limbs for transport or manipulation.
If the creature have eyes I would suggest at least 2 placed for stereo vision. Same with ears.
As for mouth placement, it does not seem to matter much. We have our mouth in our head, for some strange reason.

[Setra]

I don't remember seeing it (half asleep so if it is there I may have missed it) but..

The Flood.

Also, the penis creatures from Spore.. and just about anything from Spore.

[Eldan]

Heh. Regarding humans:
Actually, we have several absolutely astounding natural adaptions, apart from our huge brains:
*Hands have been mentioned, along with bipedal movement. More complicated than it sounds, really. Interestingly: because we are able to freely move our heads, we are able to swim, which most apes aren't.
*Language: our tongues and larynges are extremely complicated.
*Endurance: due to lack of fur, specialized musculature and the ability to sweat in enormous quantities, humans are able to outrun just about anything. Our Anthropology professor told us this anecdote of an african tribe that had a tradition in which the young man of the tribe had to hunt down an antelope (or was it a gazelle? Something like that.) by running behind it for a few days, until it dropped dead from exhaustion.
*Eyes. Superior resolution, pattern recognition, colour sense and depth perception. Also, hand-to-eye coordination.
*Immune system. As far as I know, we have the best one around, by quite a margin.

Yes, humans rock from a biological standpoint.

Anyway, back to topic: has the Revelation Space universe been mentioned? Most of the Aliens there are rarely visible, and at least one of the different species is an avian humanoid, but there's also the giant maggots in the living spaceships, the intelligent oceans and a few other really strange things.

[GoC]

Hah. Really? Our bodies aren't all that great. We have two things going for us: manual dexterity, and intelligence. Aside from those two critical things, we have very little going for us. Even with those, we're hardly the most numerous life-form on the planet, nor the most long-lived; about the only thing we have going for us in the competition for the title of Most Successful Lifeform is that we're the ones setting the criteria.
Here's 5 criteria that I'd use to decide the most successful lifeform:
We've got one of the highest biomasses on the planet and the highest biomass for a land animal IIRC.
No other lifeform can threaten our survival.
We can exterminate nearly all other lifeforms should we choose to do so.
We can leave our planet and hence survive almost indefinitely.
We want an environment? We can get it no matter what is currently living there.

I disagree on any ocean dwelling creature creating a civilization with advanced technology. You need fire for that.

[Obrysii]

Star Wars has many:

Hutts (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hutt)
Whaladons (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Whaladon)
Duinuogwuin (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Dragon)
Frog-Dogs (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Frog-Dog)
Wol Cabba****es (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Wol_Cabba****e)
Shards (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Shard)
Sic Sixes (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Sic-Six)
Ebranites (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ebranite)
Grees (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Gree_(species))
Aganofs (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Aganof)
Oswafts (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Oswaft)

There's many more, I just don't have time to find them right now.


Edit: Heh, it censors the name of one of the races - I don't want to mask so you'll just have to click the link (it's to Wookiepedia) to see the name in full glory. It censors even the url name so you'll have to replace the **** with the "s word" ...

[Holocron Coder]

I dunno. I think, if anything, Star Trek was a worse offender than Star Wars...

At any rate, a small portion of the non-humanoid SW aliens:
Celegian
Charon
Chevin
Chironian
Cha'wen'he
Duinuogwuin
Ebranite
Florn Lamproid
Hutt
Iyra
Kushiban
Laboi
P'w'eck
Sljee
Ssi-ruuk
t'landa Til
Xi'Dec
Xexto

There's also a small sample of near-humanoids, that is, mostly humanoid features, but something odd enough that they are set a bit apart:
Bith
Ewok
Gamorrean
Mon Calamari
Rodian
Quermian
Squib
Talz
Toydarian
Tulgah
Wookiee

[Yulian]

The fact of the matter is humanoids make sense (humanoids, not bumpy-foreheads), you need grasping hands and reasonable size to develope civilization. Symetry is good in nature and most things with odd limbs don't work. A minimum of two hands is a must unless these creatures can cooperate really well, but after that you get little returns. A four legs, two hands combo is cumbersome and reduces speed compared to normal four legged things while losing the agility of a two arms, two legs creature.

I'm afraid that entire statement doesn't carry well...any weight, really.

Humanoid is the way things went with us because our ancestors already had that basic body plan. There is literally no compelling reason sapient life must end up humanoid. Not one. There are reams of text written on the subject by people who have spent a lot of time going over the problem and who have the education to back it up.

Niven's Puppeteers are 2-headed tripeds that are, according to most biologists, totally functional as tool-users. 4 legs, 2 "arms" works just fine for certain insects without being cumbersome. In fact, preying mantises are very quick and nimble. They are highly efficient hunters and can take on prey many times their size. Wayne Barlowe came up with his Eosapiens, which are stunningly nonhumanoid and totally functional (he has the education to back it up).

I'm afraid you're sort of talking through your hat regarding the humanoid form being some kind of ideal. Two legs somehow being "most efficient" is total nonsense. Really. There's literally nothing backing that up. We have 2 legs because mammals had 4 legs to work with. It isn't inherently more efficient than anything. The 2 eyes thing is also not a given. Many insects have five, but everyone forgets that.

Radial or near-radial symmetry would work just as well for tool use.

And as for the human design being so great, here's a fun question? Name another animal that can choke to death as easily as we can.

Hard, isn't it? Some of the adaptations that let us speak actually make us more vulnerable to choking to death on food.

Our immune system is nowhere near the best around, Eldan. I'm not sure where in the world you got that idea. In fact, many crocodilians and say...komodo dragons have an immune system that beats ours by leagues. In fact, they're being studied for that very reason.

Our eyes are also not the best around. Many birds have vision that is literally superior to ours in every way, including resolution, colour-perception, depth perception, and ability to pick out moving objects.

About the only ones you got right are the hands and endurance. That's one edge human did have. We can go forever compared to most other animals. Few other animals could run a marathon.

GoC, you are utterly wrong on biomass. Totally. Go read about ants and their biomass. Or number of species of beetles (300,000+ species). As for your other criteria, insects seem to have those to. Every human hand is raised against the cockroach. You see them going extinct anytime soon? Mosquitoes have killed more humans than any other cause throughout human history. We also can't leave our planet yet. We're working on it, but right now, we're as trapped as everything else.

*Sigh*, I see a lot of people here need to go read some bio textbooks. Heck, even speculative xenobiology books, too. Go. Read up.

Oh, and Narmoth? The second is from the novel The Invincible. Lem basically invented the nanoswarm in that book.

- Yulian

[AslanCross]

The aliens in Gunbuster were not humanoid in any way. The soldiers were 100-meter bugs, while the bigger ones looked like giant sea cucumbers and were several kilometers long. There was even one type that consisted of two cone-shaped halves that had "thrusters" on the vertex. These types would attack by smashing the enemy between the flat ends.

They could all function just fine in space, and the largest of them could not only warp, but could fight in subspace while the human battleships were mostly paralyzed in it. The largest was bigger than Earth, survived the impact of a thrown planet, and was able to control a black hole that it dragged around with it. They also reproduced by laying eggs in stars and accelerating their aging process.

[Eldan]

Hey, I was just quoting our Antropology prof. Most of it did seem convincing. It's been some time ago since I last had anything on immunosystems, though. And I spend pretty much my entire free time either on these forums or with my nose in some textbook. Though currently I'm on Behavioural Neuroscience, so I didn't have much time for Zoology, Biomechanics or Evolution Biology, so I might be a little rusty.

[The_Snark]

Here's 5 criteria that I'd use to decide the most successful lifeform:
We've got one of the highest biomasses on the planet and the highest biomass for a land animal IIRC.
No other lifeform can threaten our survival.
We can exterminate nearly all other lifeforms should we choose to do so.
We can leave our planet and hence survive almost indefinitely.
We want an environment? We can get it no matter what is currently living there.

The adaptability is a good point; there are few species that can live in as many different environments as we do. However, we can't survive in aquatic environments, meaning that almost any ocean-dwelling lifeform has more room to live in despite our adaptability.

You're dead wrong about the biomass, I'm afraid. Large animals and animals near the top of the food chain both come off badly by that measurement. We're doing quite well for large semi-carnivores, but still.

Leaving the planet is arguable, because while we have left the planet for short periods, we're not yet capable of sustaining life off our planet indefinitely.

As for extermination... I would argue that we can't, actually. We can exterminate ecologically vulnerable animals like large herbivores and apex predators, yes (and have done so accidentally). We have proven ourselves unable to remove, say, rabbits from an environment (see: Australia). Rats, insects, fungi, and especially bacteria are all very hard to kill. If all of us suddenly decided one day to exterminate all ants, and we were willing to go to incredible (and probably self-destructive) lengths to accomplish the task, we might be able to do it. But that's very implausible, nearly as implausible as all ants suddenly deciding to spend their lives seeking out and attacking humans.


I disagree on any ocean dwelling creature creating a civilization with advanced technology. You need fire for that.

Really? While I would agree that fire or another heat source is necessary for a lot of our technology, I would take issue that our technology is the only advanced technology there could be. A developing species that was intelligent in an environment without fire (liquid, no oxygen, whatever) might find another heat source, or simply do without, using whatever natural resources and chemical reactions they had on hand.

I think that the implicit attitude that humans and other Earth lifeforms are the best possible lifeforms is one of the two main reasons we see so many humanoid aliens. (The other is that it's much more difficult to design a truly alien culture than it is to design humans-in-masks, but that's more about culture and psychology than biology.) I'm going to try and cover, in two points, why it's unlikely this is the case—and even if it were, why we would still see others...

1. Evolution is a random process. Like Yulian says, sometimes something is a certain way just because that's how it works and there's no reason to change, not because it's the best. It does not produce ideal adaptations to a given environment; it produces, in tiny one-genetic-aberration-at-a-time steps, the adaptations that worked well at each individual step. Wings only developed because there was some advantage to having proto-wings (jumping, gliding, heat regulation, whatever). Perhaps whales would benefit from being able to breathe water as well as air, but there's no beneficial first step between "purely air-breathing" and "air-breather with supplementary gills"; therefore, it doesn't happen. (I use this solely for example; I'm not sure if that would really be feasible.)

All lifeforms are an amalgamation of the adaptations they developed in the past, as a product of the environments they were living in at the time. Which brings me to my second point...

2. Aliens come from alien worlds. That may seem like an obvious statement, but it's the reason why they're different. They don't have the same natural resources to draw on, their native environments are different, their ecologies will pressure them in certain ways. Their biology could even be fundamentally different. Certainly, the more different they are, the more fantastic your speculation is going to be, but that's okay; the entire point of science fiction is that it can use events and things that are only plausible (or even implausible).

Even on a mostly Earth-like world, there will be significant differences: the atmosphere may not be exactly the same (which in turn changes the climate), the moon(s) will be absent or different, the planet itself might be bigger or smaller, the axial tilt and the rotations will be different, the content of the seas and the mineral makeup of the planet will be different... Any of these would have a pretty big impact on developing life. And that's assuming a relatively Earth-like planet.

Personally, I find a work with bizarre, wildly speculative aliens preferable to one that asks me to accept that life can only arise in suspiciously Earth-like circumstances, and that the human shape is the best possible shape and will always develop. I'll still read/watch it, but I feel like a work that does that is limiting its imagination—and it had better have a reason for that, like wanting to focus on an issue closer to home. Otherwise, it's just being lazy.

Whew. Sorry if I seem a bit rant-ish; amazingly humanlike aliens are one of my pet peeves, in case it wasn't obvious, both because they stretch my suspension of disbelief and because I really like aliens that feel genuinely, believably different. It feels like a wasted opportunity to have

[BlueWizard]

Star Trek explained all this by having an ancient humanoid people spread their seed across the galaxy.

[chiasaur11]

So THAT'S WHY octopuses hadn't conquered the world.

I figure it's laziness.

Octopuses are the Major Bummer of the animal kingdom.

[hamishspence]

while water is common- and its reasonable to expect planets to have it, the nature of the planet- whether its "waterworld" or not, is partly related to size.

Based on a similar proportion of water to Earth, a large planet will have much more water surface. This is because gravity limits the height that mountains can be, and also, based on volcanoes pumping out water vapour in early phase of formation, surface area relative to amount of water avialable, will be smaller.

So, a planet that formed as Earth did, but with a bit more mass (say, 50% more) would only have a few islands, and mountains would never be very high.

[GoC]

1.I'm afraid you're sort of talking through your hat regarding the humanoid form being some kind of ideal. Two legs somehow being "most efficient" is total nonsense. Really. There's literally nothing backing that up. We have 2 legs because mammals had 4 legs to work with. It isn't inherently more efficient than anything. The 2 eyes thing is also not a given. Many insects have five, but everyone forgets that.

2.Radial or near-radial symmetry would work just as well for tool use.

3.And as for the human design being so great, here's a fun question? Name another animal that can choke to death as easily as we can.

Hard, isn't it? Some of the adaptations that let us speak actually make us more vulnerable to choking to death on food.

4.GoC, you are utterly wrong on biomass. Totally. Go read about ants and their biomass. Or number of species of beetles (300,000+ species). 5.As for your other criteria, insects seem to have those to. 6. Every human hand is raised against the cockroach. You see them going extinct anytime soon? Mosquitoes have killed more humans than any other cause throughout human history. We also can't leave our planet yet. We're working on it, but right now, we're as trapped as everything else.

7.*Sigh*, I see a lot of people here need to go read some bio textbooks. Heck, even speculative xenobiology books, too. Go. Read up.

1. Insects have small size. Four legs really aren't needed unless you're going for speed and the extra arms and mass associated with them kindof removes that advantage.
2. Might have a point there.
3. Point.
4. I found out that humans have a huge biomass from wikipedia. Humans have 1/5th of the biggest biomass per species on the planet. I can't find a list of biomass ordered per species though. Still that seems pretty successful to me.
Note: There are many species of ants, beetles and cockroaches. There's only one type of human.
5. They fail criteria 2,3,4,5.
6. Should we devote all our efforts to their extermination we can do it. What percentage of our resources are we currently employing against them? Less than 0.01%. If every human got up and decided that they were going to devote their life to the extermination of cockroaches and that everything else was secondary then we'd be able to kill them in a matter of years. If worst comes to worst we simply create an animal to outcompete them. cockroach killing viruses, salt the earth with nuclear missiles and destroy all plant matter wherever it is found to starve them out.
7. Give me some examples and tell me where to find them.

I'll admit my knowledge of biology is only A-level but some things seem fairly obvious.


Really? While I would agree that fire or another heat source is necessary for a lot of our technology, I would take issue that our technology is the only advanced technology there could be. A developing species that was intelligent in an environment without fire (liquid, no oxygen, whatever) might find another heat source, or simply do without, using whatever natural resources and chemical reactions they had on hand.
What heat-source could they use? They'd first need to isolate it from the water for it to be useful or the water would rapidly absorb it all. That's a difficult multi-stage process without technology. Humans discovered the use of fire by accident because it occured naturaly. How are these aquatic creatures going to discover this multi-stage technology?

[hamishspence]

aside from "cockroach killing viruses" possibly, these come under "self-destructive lengths"

Destroy all plant matter? by the time the last living roach has died, we will have been long dead. Same with "salt the earth with nukes" roaches are significantly better at resisting radiation than we are.

[GoC]

Destroy all plant matter? by the time the last living roach has died, we will have been long dead. Same with "salt the earth with nukes" roaches are significantly better at resisting radiation than we are.

But their food may not be so resistant.

[hamishspence]

Roaches can eat virtually anything- including dead wood, and soap. By the time the last bit of eatable matter is gone (including dead roaches) humanity will have wrecked its own survival- because we aren't nearly as good at digesting things.

[Mad Mask]

Star Trek explained all this by having an ancient humanoid people spread their seed across the galaxy.

Yes, but how did they do this ? Evolution is not some kind of pre-programmed process, to "guide" it you would have to stay on the planet and kill every life-form that derives from your plan, which is a bit nonsensical, even with robots.

[Yulian]

1. Insects have small size. Four legs really aren't needed unless you're going for speed and the extra arms and mass associated with them kindof removes that advantage.

<<snip>>

6. Should we devote all our efforts to their extermination we can do it. What percentage of our resources are we currently employing against them? Less than 0.01%. If every human got up and decided that they were going to devote their life to the extermination of cockroaches and that everything else was secondary then we'd be able to kill them in a matter of years. If worst comes to worst we simply create an animal to outcompete them. cockroach killing viruses, salt the earth with nuclear missiles and destroy all plant matter wherever it is found to starve them out.
7. Give me some examples and tell me where to find them.

I'll admit my knowledge of biology is only A-level but some things seem fairly obvious.


Seriously. #1. You have no idea what you're talking about.

Land animal life has 4 limbs only because the lobe-finned fish had 4 limbs they used to shovel around with. That's it. We humans are bipedal because...ready? We only had 4 limbs to work with. If we were going to develop organs for manipulation of our environment we didn't have anything else to work with!

You're basically just arguing from an anthropocentric viewpoint. "Humans are intelligent tool-users, therefore humans are the perfect intelligent tool-users."

Nothing in evolutionary biology compels bipedalism with 2 hands except the fact that our ancestors didn't have any additional limbs. Nature is notoriously "stingy", re-using or multi-tasking with existing parts rather than develop completely new organs. Less biological cost that way. That's why evolution is such a slow process. Totally new organs and systems take a lot of time to develop. That's one reason life on Earth was single-celled for most of life's history.

6 legs reduces speed? I have no idea where you came up with this.Citation, please? Arthropods tend to be slower at greater sizes only due to the inherent problems of having an exoskeleton. I also don't understand your statement: "Four legs really aren't needed unless you're going for speed".

That is blatantly incorrect.

Heck, humans don't even do bipedalism the way the vast majority of Earth life has done it already. You can't conceivably argue that we're doing it "right" considering most bipeds did it another way and were much faster than us when they did it. Can you outrun an ostrich? Think you could have outrun any of the Dromaeosaurs?

As for roaches. No, we can't. Go read up on the history of mosquito control. Then come back and tell me we aren't exerting a lot of resources on that little project. You are aware that roaches live where we do, right? To exterminate them we would also have to kill ourselves. Honestly, salting the Earth with nukes? That's preposterous. We wouldn't survive it. They have a decent chance of doing so.

Create an animal to outcompete them? This isn't Mimic, this is the real world. I'm afraid you're still way off base, here. We're looking at 300 million years of adaptation here. They are one of land animal life's greatest success stories.

Really, that point was just silly. Basically you said "well, we could destroy the world". That's not really viable.

I didn't number my points. What is #7? I'm sure I can provide examples of anything I've said.

- Yulian

[Tensu]

I disagree on any ocean dwelling creature creating a civilization with advanced technology. You need fire for that.

Bull. Fire is overrated. many sea creatures can create electric jolts. just cut out the middle man and go straight to running on electricity, using electricity to weld etc. yes, water does conduct electricity, but sense electic eels and torpedo rays (usually) don't shock themsleves to death, we can assume this undersea alien race could take the heat.

other candidates are bio-engineering, chemicals, water pressure, or something else we aren't even aware of. you don't need fire for squat.

what's more, why do you even need advanced technology to have a civilization. if some species had a trait useful enough, it wouldn't need to make anything. an intelligence arms race with it's prey or predator would explain how it got that smart. In a fantasy setting I came up with one of the regions is one big out-of-control evolutionary arms race with many of the inhabitants outsmarting those who think they're so great 'cause they're bipedal and have opposable thumbs. it's a fun place and I could see how something similar (though to a much lesser extreme) could appear on some alien world.

it's pointless to say "Life has to do this" because it doesn't. every time we say life needs something life proves us wrong. Life can do whatever the heck it has to to survive. that's the beauty of life.

[Graymayre]

Surely someone mentioned the Formics (also known as Buggers) from the novel Ender's Game?
Not only were they disimilar in shape and appearance, but their social system was so askewed from ours that one of the main points of the series was seeing if the Humans and Formics could ever see eye-to-eye.

Then there are the Puppeteers from Niven's novel Ringworld. I'm not sure if I recall the exact description but I think they had stalks that their eyes sat on, three legs in tripod formation, and a mouth on each hand (instead of fingers). Also, they were complete cowards.

[Yulian]

Then there are the Puppeteers from Niven's novel Ringworld. I'm not sure if I recall the exact description but I think they had stalks that their eyes sat on, three legs in tripod formation, and a mouth on each hand (instead of fingers). Also, they were complete cowards.

I did mention those.

Here, pics: http://www.larryniven.org/puppeteer/pgallery.shtml

I would say Wayne Barlowe's images (about halfway down) would be the definitive ones. Niven actually created them in defiance of the "only humanoid" idea.

"I was fed up with humanoids. Chad Oliver in particular, an anthropologist, wrote story after story claiming that THIS is the only workable shape for an intelligent being. The puppeteers were my first attempt to show him a shape that could evolve to intelligence."

Niven has yet to be properly refuted. It's a spectacular bit of bio-design work.

- Yulian

[GoC]

Ugh. Why do I always end up in these massive debates and noone else does?
Seriously, how does everyone else avoid them?:smallconfused:


Seriously. #1. You have no idea what you're talking about.
Probably true.


You're basically just arguing from an anthropocentric viewpoint. "Humans are intelligent tool-users, therefore humans are the perfect intelligent tool-users."
I'm not even sure I have any arguments anymore...
Perhaps I should stick to physics and leave biology to the biology students.


6 legs reduces speed? I have no idea where you came up with this.Citation, please? Arthropods tend to be slower at greater sizes only due to the inherent problems of having an exoskeleton. I also don't understand your statement: "Four legs really aren't needed unless you're going for speed".
Because with four legs you already have the maximum possible speed (the speed at which your legs go backwards). The extra two legs only get in the way. Look at how a cheeta runs.


Heck, humans don't even do bipedalism the way the vast majority of Earth life has done it already. You can't conceivably argue that we're doing it "right" considering most bipeds did it another way and were much faster than us when they did it. Can you outrun an ostrich? Think you could have outrun any of the Dromaeosaurs?
I never said humans were fast.


As for roaches. No, we can't. Go read up on the history of mosquito control. Then come back and tell me we aren't exerting a lot of resources on that little project. You are aware that roaches live where we do, right? To exterminate them we would also have to kill ourselves. Honestly, salting the Earth with nukes? That's preposterous. We wouldn't survive it. They have a decent chance of doing so.
Mosquito control did fairly well. And how many billions of dollars were they using?
Salting the earth with nukes would be the final stage.
They wouldn't survive because they'd have no food. In fact we could probably build some sealed farms underground that get their light from lamps powered by a few nuclear reactors. Yes, we lose almost all our population as you probably can't support more than a thousand or so humans this way.
But my point is that it is possible. Something you deny.


Create an animal to outcompete them? This isn't Mimic, this is the real world. I'm afraid you're still way off base, here. We're looking at 300 million years of adaptation here. They are one of land animal life's greatest success stories.
300 million years of a semi-random process. We could have designed a basic multicell organizism given the labeled blue-prints for single-celled ones, a few years and a thousand scientists. They took a billion years.


Really, that point was just silly. Basically you said "well, we could destroy the world". That's not really viable.
It's viable, just not very good for us.


I didn't number my points. What is #7? I'm sure I can provide examples of anything I've said.
Recommended books on zenobiology.:smallbiggrin:


Bull. Fire is overrated. many sea creatures can create electric jolts. just cut out the middle man and go straight to running on electricity, using electricity to weld etc. yes, water does conduct electricity, but sense electic eels and torpedo rays (usually) don't shock themsleves to death, we can assume this undersea alien race could take the heat.
Ugh. I'd completely forgotten about electricity.


other candidates are bio-engineering, chemicals, water pressure, or something else we aren't even aware of. you don't need fire for squat.
But why would they evolve the ability to make a small area of themselves hot?:smallconfused:


In a fantasy setting I came up with one of the regions is one big out-of-control evolutionary arms race with many of the inhabitants outsmarting those who think they're so great 'cause they're bipedal and have opposable thumbs.
Wouldn't the opposable thumbs race win due to more firepower?:smallconfused:


it's pointless to say "Life has to do this" because it doesn't. every time we say life needs something life proves us wrong. Life can do whatever the heck it has to to survive. that's the beauty of life.
Life needs very litte. Civilization (as poorly defined as it is) on the other hand...

Yulian: How would a pupeteer operate a forge? A lot of things we humans did to get to "civilization" require both dexterity and strength.

[Tensu]

because it's hard to swallow something that's super-hot?

there's a shrimp that can punch with the force of a bullet and a snail that can kill you in seconds on earth. in such an out-of-control arms race, who knows what would get evolved. firepower means little against a creature with scales harder than diamond or something like that.

again, it depends on your definition of civilization. besides, I was more talking about all the people saying "that's impossible because life needs this", which saying has done nothing other than put a lot of egg on a lot of scientist face in the past, and those who do not learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them.

[Eldan]

Mosquito control never went all that well, no. We've been doing it for centuries now, and Malaria still exists. And this includes things like first DDT, then BT toxin and, newest thing around, tailored virions. Ain't working.

[GoC]

Mosquito control never went all that well, no. We've been doing it for centuries now, and Malaria still exists. And this includes things like first DDT, then BT toxin and, newest thing around, tailored virions. Ain't working.
Ain't working as in there is no detectable effect? Or ain't working as in malaria still exists? Because I'd have to dispute the former...


firepower means little against a creature with scales harder than diamond or something like that.
It's not really possible to create anything harder than pure carbon. And I'd be very surprised if a creature could create the necessary conditions to create it. Cells don't normally survive 1000 degrees C at 100 atmospheres (numbers pulled out of hat).

[Tensu]

again, you're saying "life can't do this". given enough time and the proper conditions, life can do anything.

also I see no need to assume nothing is harder than diamond. who knows what the conditions of other planets could create? and there could be periodic elements out there that we haven't discovered. I mean there are substances we can only find in comets, so we have no reason to assume we've discovered every periodic element in the universe.

[GoC]

also I see no need to assume nothing is harder than diamond. who knows what the conditions of other planets could create? and there could be periodic elements out there that we haven't discovered. I mean there are substances we can only find in comets, so we have no reason to assume we've discovered every periodic element in the universe.
It was proven using the laws of physics/fundamentals of chemistry that no combination of elements results in a material harder than diamond-types (including anything with higher atomic numbers) but I can't remember where I saw this.

Basically bonds get much weaker the farther away from the nucleus and the more shielding there is so greater atomic numbers only make things worse. Turns out the optimum combination of of bond strengthxnumber of bonds/volume is pure carbon (at least for infinitely extensible molecules).

And life can't do anything. It can't violate the laws of physics, importantly:
The laws of thermo-dynamics(!!!!!!!)
Quantum mechanics->chemical bonding
General relativity

[Prime32]

It was proven using the laws of physics/fundamentals of chemistry that no combination of elements results in a material harder than diamond-types (including anything with higher atomic numbers) but I can't remember where I saw this.

Basically bonds get much weaker the farther away from the nucleus and the more shielding there is so greater atomic numbers only make things worse. Turns out the optimum combination of of bond strengthxnumber of bonds/volume is pure carbon (at least for infinitely extensible molecules).
Explain beta carbon nitride (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_carbon_nitride) and rhenium diboride (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhenium_diboride).

[GoC]

Explain beta carbon nitride (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_carbon_nitride) and rhenium diboride (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhenium_diboride).

Diamond-types. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggregated_diamond_nanorods)

[Tensu]

It was proven using the laws of physics/fundamentals of chemistry that no combination of elements results in a material harder than diamond-types (including anything with higher atomic numbers) but I can't remember where I saw this.

Basically bonds get much weaker the farther away from the nucleus and the more shielding there is so greater atomic numbers only make things worse. Turns out the optimum combination of of bond strengthxnumber of bonds/volume is pure carbon (at least for infinitely extensible molecules).

And life can't do anything. It can't violate the laws of physics, importantly:
The laws of thermo-dynamics(!!!!!!!)
Quantum mechanics->chemical bonding
General relativity

correction: no combination that we can think of. if Water can become less dense when it freezes, something else can defy the conventional rules. these "discoveries" are made on the assumption we already know everything about everything. and we don't. We can only talk about the things we;ve seen on earth with any degree of certainty.

and who says life can't defy the laws of physics? a while ago they where saying things like "life can't survive without sunlight" and "life can't survive in those hot springs" don't get me wrong, I doubt any life (as we know it on this plane of existence at least) is capable of defying the laws of physics. but to say it can't is to make an assumption with zero evidence.

[Eldan]

Now I have to change sides.

"Life can't operate without sunlight" is not a statement that is directly connected to the Laws of Thermodynamics, General Relativity or Quantum Dynamics.

Life can not defy the laws of physics, no Sir. It is possible, though extremely unlikely, that there's some law of physics we haven't discovered that life is using somewhere, yes. But it will still operate within Thermodynamics and Quantum Physics(if we assume these are valid enough to be accurate enough models of the behaviour of chemistry in living beings.)

The very example you gave, water becoming less dense, can be explained. I can't do it, but one of our chemistry professors did, and at the time, I thought hte explanation was good.

[GoC]

correction: no combination that we can think of.
See response after the next.


if Water can become less dense when it freezes, something else can defy the conventional rules.
That defies no laws of physics.


these "discoveries" are made on the assumption we already know everything about everything. and we don't. We can only talk about the things we;ve seen on earth with any degree of certainty.
... ugh. Just ugh.
I advize you to read up on exactly what science is and some of it's principles so you can realize what exactly is so fundamentaly wrong with this.


and who says life can't defy the laws of physics? a while ago they where saying things like "life can't survive without sunlight" and "life can't survive in those hot springs" don't get me wrong, I doubt any life (as we know it on this plane of existence at least) is capable of defying the laws of physics. but to say it can't is to make an assumption with zero evidence.
Those are not defiances of the laws of physics.
For the latter part of your argument... same "Ugh." as above.

[The_Snark]

I believe that what Tensu is trying to say is that our knowledge of the laws of physics is not perfect. There are a lot of known exceptions to physical laws. I use the word "exception" loosely here, because we've studied them and as you say, they don't break the laws of physics; they're just the result of different laws coming into play. However, had we not seen what looked like an impossibility, and studied it to see how that was possible, we wouldn't know about a lot of those. Alien environments could easily contain things we haven't studied much; on Earth, there's neither an easy opportunity to study high-pressure weather patterns (like you might find on a gas giant), nor much of a reason to.

And I still firmly dispute your argument that fire is necessary for technological development, by the way. Combustion is, in our environment, one of the easiest ways of getting heat, but it's not the only one out there; in an alien environment, other reactions might be more common. And even that is assuming that heat is absolutely necessary for developing technology; it's certainly necessary for metallurgy, which provides us with the majority of the tools we use in other fields, but I'm very reluctant to accept the sentiment that our technological development is the only one possible.

[Dervag]

Re: The "Alien life might not follow the laws of physics" thing:
No. A very large no, even.

It's not obvious to someone who doesn't make a habit of studying how the universe works, but there are two very different kinds of statements about how the world works. I'm going to call them 'rules' and 'laws'.

Some things are laws: "This is how protons work." Those laws don't have exceptions; a proton here works the same way as a proton in Andromeda. If it didn't, there would be very observable consequences, such as our not being able to see Andromeda (we can), or not being able to explain what we were seeing (we can).

The normal way of coming up with explanations in the sciences is designed to weed out things that aren't really "true-everywhere laws." People work really hard at it. It goes like this:

Come up with an explanation. Come up with something that explanation predicts, something specific that no one has ever gone looking for. Something that no one would have any reason to expect if it weren't for the details of how your explanation works.

Then go looking in the place nobody looked before. If your explanation is right, you should see that specific prediction coming true. If it isn't, you really really shouldn't. We shouldn't observe exotic particles with certain masses and lifetimes if our theory of how subatomic particles work wasn't true. And yet we do.

For the basic laws of physics that we think are "true-everywhere" to be false, the universe would pretty much have to be designed by a malicious God to fool us. In some cases, even that wouldn't explain it, because there are some physical laws that come attached with a mathematical proof of "uniqueness"- they provide the only set of equations that can describe something in a way that will provide consistent results when you do simple tests. Tests like rotating your measuring equipment (an object six inches long should still be six inches long if I turn my ruler around, and a nine volt battery should still be a nine volt battery).

On top of that, a lot of modern technology is designed using the "true-everywhere" laws to predict how it will work. If those laws are wrong, there's no reason to expect things like radio antennas and microchips to work at all, let alone to work exactly as we expect them to.
________

But not everything in the body of general knowledge about the universe is a "works everywhere" law. Some things are just working rules: "when you freeze something, it takes up less space than its liquid form did."

There are reasons why that is usually true, but they aren't necessarily true everywhere in the universe for everything that can exist. You can find liquid chemicals with molecules that interlock to form big puffy crystal shapes when they freeze, and which take up more space in the frozen state than in the liquid state.

Many of the things biologists used to call laws of biology were "usually true" rules. We have since discovered exceptions to a lot of those "laws of biology," because the laws in question weren't really "laws" in the sense I used above. They were just general working rules.

There are big differences between the two. One good way to tell is by the use of math. Ideas properly expressed as a sentence (stuff shrinks when you freeze it) are more likely to be rules and not laws, while ideas properly expressed as an equation (E=mc^2) are more likely to be laws and not rules, assuming the equation ever works at all. This is mostly a question of testability. Equations are easy to test, and you can test them in all kinds of different conditions to see if anything unexpected pops up. Sentences are a lot harder to test, because they are more vague.
______

The important thing here is to know the difference between the "true everywhere" stuff and the "true most of the time" stuff. "How atoms work" is true-everywhere. If it weren't, things like stars could not exist. Or rather, there would be no reason to expect them to exist, as opposed to having something very different existing instead. Assuming that the universe isn't an elaborate attempt to trick us into thinking it follows consistent laws, atoms have to work pretty much the same way in Andromeda that they do here, to the point where the differences won't make any difference you could notice.

"Where organisms can live," as stated by biologists, is normally "true most of the time" stuff. Biologists state that nothing can live around a deep sea geyser, but they can't prove it until they go down and take a look.

But when you start talking about organisms living in certain really extreme places (say, inside a black hole), or about organisms using chemical elements not known to today's science, you run into problems. Now you're crossing swords with the "true everywhere" laws- the ones that can't be false without modern technology being a hallucination.

=====


Bull. Fire is overrated. many sea creatures can create electric jolts. just cut out the middle man and go straight to running on electricity, using electricity to weld etc. yes, water does conduct electricity, but sense electic eels and torpedo rays (usually) don't shock themsleves to death, we can assume this undersea alien race could take the heat.

other candidates are bio-engineering, chemicals, water pressure, or something else we aren't even aware of. you don't need fire for squat.With a lot of those methods, you run into problems. For instance, we humans tried to advance our technology with bio-engineering in parallel with our development of technology based on fire and rocks and stuff like that. We spent millenia trying to breed faster horses and more productive forms of wheat.

But eventually, we ran into a wall, because we couldn't breed organisms that would give us the tools we needed to learn how organisms work. Stuff like microscopes and X-ray diffraction equipment. Which, in turn, limited our ability to breed more useful organisms.

Technology is most likely to develop in environments where people can use more than one line of research to invent useful tools. For instance, fire let us develop mud-based technology in the form of clay pots. Pottery makes it worthwhile to domesticate grains, because now we have something to put grain in for long periods of time. Having harvested grain sitting in storage (a bio-engineered tool) give us leisure time to sit down and figure out how to make metals using advanced applications of rock and mud technology. Which opens up whole new vistas of technological progress, and so on.

Organic and inorganic technology, and different subtypes of each, have synergy with each other. If you live in an environment where some of the subtypes aren't available, you wind up getting stuck and spending a lot of time stuck with a set of tools that a different civilization would have long since replaced with better ones.

Which is not to say that you can't get intelligent species in environments that limit the kinds of technology they can use. All environments pose constraints on what you can build, after all. But you probably won't see a starfaring civilization of dolphin-equivalents unless someone else made the effort to "uplift" them.

[GoC]

I believe that what Tensu is trying to say is that our knowledge of the laws of physics is not perfect. There are a lot of known exceptions to physical laws.
I am unaware of any violations of the second law of thermodynamics, general relativity or what I know of quantum mechanics.


However, had we not seen what looked like an impossibility, and studied it to see how that was possible, we wouldn't know about a lot of those. Alien environments could easily contain things we haven't studied much; on Earth, there's neither an easy opportunity to study high-pressure weather patterns (like you might find on a gas giant), nor much of a reason to.
Physics however is constant, at least in our local region. I've heard some people have proposed that physics "constants" can vary very slightly in time and space but said views aren't mainstream.

btw: I greatly admire Dervag, he always seems to know what he's talking about! Sometimes I suspect he's secretly a genius with PhDs in every subject, working for a secret, influential world-spanning organization to cure cancer, solve the energy crisis and create a working Grand Unified Theory!:smallbiggrin:


And I still firmly dispute your argument that fire is necessary for technological development, by the way. Combustion is, in our environment, one of the easiest ways of getting heat, but it's not the only one out there; in an alien environment, other reactions might be more common. And even that is assuming that heat is absolutely necessary for developing technology; it's certainly necessary for metallurgy, which provides us with the majority of the tools we use in other fields, but I'm very reluctant to accept the sentiment that our technological development is the only one possible.
I said that getting heat for forging (very important for civilization) would be nigh-impossible underwater due to all the heat-loss.
You could still possibly have alternate methods of heat generation on the surface.

Could you give an example of an alternate tech-tree? I see no way we could have arrived where we are now without metalurgy.

[Tensu]

You misunderstand me. I don't think that there is anything in our universe capable of defying the laws of physics, I'm saying I wouldn't be surprised if there was. I'm also saying what you think the laws of physics are and what the laws actually are could be two different things, and just because something happens on earth or is practical on earth doesn't mean it works that way somewhere else. I wasn't citing things that defy the laws of physics, merely anomalies and times where we made assumptions based on what we had seen only to be proven wrong when we went somewhere new. they where never meant to be examples of breaking the laws of physics. they're examples as to why you can't think in absolutes.

why is forging important for civilization? it isn't. you don't need metal to build tools or structures. heck, on some other world there could be a material more useful than that world's metals. you don't know. saying anything is necessary on any planet other than earth is flawed logic by default.

you misunderstand what I mean by bio-engineering. you are, again, assuming that life on another planet will be a lot like life on earth. just because we couldn't find enough good species to bio-engineer on earth doesn't mean such will be true on another planet. I'm also not saying that that will be their only technology and I don't know how or why you would make such a presumptuous assumption. I'm saying they would compensate being less advanced n metallurgy by being more advanced in another field.

I'd also appreciate it if you didn't treat me like an idiot. I know what the laws of physics are and don't need them explained to me at length. I know that we assume they're unbreakable. I know we have no reason to assume otherwise. but I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out something could defy what we thought of as a law, though I find it as unlikely. I guess this would be less breaking the laws of physics and more disproving the existence of laws of physics, but you get what I mean.

however, I also understand that until we find any evidence that the laws of physics are unbreakable, we're better off assuming that they are. I just want you to admit that this is in fact an assumption and could be disproved by future knowledge.

[GoC]

however, I also understand that until we find any evidence that the laws of physics are unbreakable, we're better off assuming that they are.

Until we find evidence that I am not in fact telekinetic, it's better to assume that I am.
Oh wait! We do have evidence that I'm not telekinetic! Namely: All my failed attempts!
The exact same thing applies to physics.

I don't think you're an idiot, merely very very misguided.


EDIT: Comma management classes needed.

[Graymayre]

With all this talk of unbreakable laws, it's been itching me to bring up the theory of multiple dimensions.

If this theory is true, and that there are infinite dimensions, then there are also an infinite amount of universes capable of supporting life.
This also means that there is an infinite amount of universes of any type and combination of scientific laws, including ones that would be absolutely improbable in our own.
Converge this with the universes that support life, and you get a multiverse that is capable of supporting any type of wildlife imaginable.
In fact, if this is true, it would be impossible not to have universes to support said wildlife.

The worst part is, this theory also means that there are universes with timelines where roleplaying games were never invented on Earth. :smalleek:

[Tensu]

that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm not saying that we should assume it's possible to break the laws of physics. I'm saying we should accept that we're 99.999 repeating percent certain we can't and allow for the possibility that we're still wrong.

that said, we've gotten way off course. my statement was never intended to challenge the laws of physics not do I have any intention of challenging the laws of physics, nor do I believe that the laws of physics need to be challenged at this present time. I'm merely saying that all of your "it must have this" is flawed thinking when speaking about alien worlds because you don't know. the laws of physics was merely a footnote, my saying that I wouldn't be surprised in there was a creature out there that has that ability, not saying that I expect one or think it probable one actually exists.

I repeat, it is not and never was my intention to challenge the laws of physics or to say that I don't believe in them.

Edit: I'm a big fan of multiple dimensions. In my homebrew RPGs the setting takes place in an alternate dimension, and there a loads of people who are descended from earth humans. it's how I explain humans existing in the setting and the frequent use of words that originated on earth and wouldn't likely appear on another world due to being rooted in the planet's history.

[The_Snark]

I am unaware of any violations of the second law of thermodynamics, general relativity or what I know of quantum mechanics.

Physics however is constant, at least in our local region. I've heard some people have proposed that physics "constants" can vary very slightly in time and space but said views aren't mainstream.

I know very little about physics, which is why I haven't been giving specific examples, but with chemistry, at least, there's plenty of fiddly little exceptions to rules when they intersect: the aforementioned example about water becoming less dense when it freezes, for example. It makes sense when you know about the structure, but it nonetheless contradicts the general rule that the colder something is the less dense it is.

The basic laws like thermodynamics are inviolate, but the rules we extrapolate from the basic ones are not.


I said that getting heat for forging (very important for civilization) would be nigh-impossible underwater due to all the heat-loss.
You could still possibly have alternate methods of heat generation on the surface.

Could you give an example of an alternate tech-tree? I see no way we could have arrived where we are now without metalurgy.

I'm not sure I could give a specific example; I'm not well-versed enough in the sciences to say what might work and what might not.

I do agree with you that to have what we'd probably define as technology, a race would need some way to improve upon the natural materials it had. And since a lot of technology involves a great deal of heat and stress, and metals are good at handling that , I suppose metallurgy is to a degree essential.

More to my point, though, I'm trying to say that it's hard to know what's possible. Just because we know the laws of physics does not mean we know every way to harness the laws of physics, especially in radically different environments such as other planets: pressure, commonly occurring elements, temperature... all of these will be different to a degree, and all of them have an influence on what's easy to do (chemically speaking) and what isn't. Nobody's ever seriously given a look at what technology you could develop in supercold seas (like Europa), or in an environment where metals aren't at all useful because they'd have to be supercompressed in order to be solid (a gas giant). But even from my amateur perspective, if anything developed at all it would be very different.

[chiasaur11]

With all this talk of unbreakable laws, it's been itching me to bring up the theory of multiple dimensions.

If this theory is true, and that there are infinite dimensions, then there are also an infinite amount of universes capable of supporting life.
This also means that there is an infinite amount of universes of any type and combination of scientific laws, including ones that would be absolutely improbable in our own.
Converge this with the universes that support life, and you get a multiverse that is capable of supporting any type of wildlife imaginable.
In fact, if this is true, it would be impossible not to have universes to support said wildlife.

The worst part is, this theory also means that there are universes with timelines where roleplaying games were never invented on Earth. :smalleek:

Worse, there's no reason a bomb that destroys all universes hasn't been invented if cross universal travel is possible, unless there are multiversal constants.

Upside: Robot Batman.

[Tensu]

I personally doubt that there is a truly infinite number of dimensions, and if there is, I doubt that such a weapon would be possible.

[Dervag]

I know very little about physics, which is why I haven't been giving specific examples, but with chemistry, at least, there's plenty of fiddly little exceptions to rules when they intersect: the aforementioned example about water becoming less dense when it freezes, for example. It makes sense when you know about the structure, but it nonetheless contradicts the general rule that the colder something is the less dense it is.

The basic laws like thermodynamics are inviolate, but the rules we extrapolate from the basic ones are not.True. My objection is to people who start saying things like "life can do anything," and then proceed to say that "anything" includes the basic laws like thermodynamics.


More to my point, though, I'm trying to say that it's hard to know what's possible. Just because we know the laws of physics does not mean we know every way to harness the laws of physics, especially in radically different environments such as other planets: pressure, commonly occurring elements, temperature... all of these will be different to a degree, and all of them have an influence on what's easy to do (chemically speaking) and what isn't. Nobody's ever seriously given a look at what technology you could develop in supercold seas (like Europa), or in an environment where metals aren't at all useful because they'd have to be supercompressed in order to be solid (a gas giant). But even from my amateur perspective, if anything developed at all it would be very different.Absolutely. My point is that there would be some big handicaps involved in building a thriving civilization in such an environment.

For a fascinating example of this, consider the Gwo'th, a species of aliens in a recent book by Larry Niven and a collaborator I can't remember. The Gwo'th are intelligent starfish-like aliens living under the ice of a moon much like Europa. We get an alien's eye view of the process by which they develop technology, and it's impressive as hell. As long as they're stuck under the ice the Gwo'th are limited, and they spend massive amounts of time and effort on science to try and understand the nature of their world. Eventually, they figure out how to build things like satellites and nuclear power plants.

But there's a catch. To launch the satellites they need rockets, made of metal. Which they have to work by smelting. They obviously can't do it underwater, so they need another environment to work in. The only one available is above the surface of the ice. Which, I might point out, is in vacuum. So first they must break the ice, then they must find a way to create an atmosphere to smelt metal ores that they mined under the ice at the bottom of their ocean. And to do this work they must wear the equivalent of spacesuits, because they're water-breathers operating in vacuum or air. I can imagine the scale of labor it would take to make all this happen in human terms, and it's staggering.

The Gwo'th as portrayed by Niven are amazing. And for some reason, I don't like it when people say that some species like the Gwo'th could do all the stuff we do using a different set of tools, but do it just as easily. To me, it demeans the amount of exploration and effort those very alien beings would pour into building an advanced civilization for themselves.

To use a cliche, intelligent life is a very special thing in a large and uncaring universe. The struggle to build a space for it under adverse conditions is one of the greatest kinds of heroism I can imagine.

=======


You misunderstand me. I don't think that there is anything in our universe capable of defying the laws of physics, I'm saying I wouldn't be surprised if there was. I'm also saying what you think the laws of physics are and what the laws actually are could be two different things, and just because something happens on earth or is practical on earth doesn't mean it works that way somewhere else. I wasn't citing things that defy the laws of physics, merely anomalies and times where we made assumptions based on what we had seen only to be proven wrong when we went somewhere new. they where never meant to be examples of breaking the laws of physics. they're examples as to why you can't think in absolutes.The picture is more complicated than just shrugging and saying "nobody knows, so it could be anything." We have observational evidence of things happening in other parts of the universe, thanks to the astronomers. From this, we deduce interesting things.

On Earth, hot objects glow. Hotter objects radiate more energy in the form of short-wavelength light, which is why "white hot" is hotter than "red hot" is hotter than "infrared hot." Some very clever physics research done between about 1880 and 1900 allows us to predict the spectrum radiated by a hot object- so and so much red light, so and so much orange, so and so much ultraviolet.

We look in the sky and we see stars. The interesting bit is that the spectrum produced by stars is precisely the kind of spectrum predicted for hot objects (of varying temperatures) by the physics I was talking about. And that's true even of stars in distant galaxies so far away that we can't pick them out as individuals, but only as clouds of luminous fog. Even stars out to the edge of the part of the visible universe where there are stars, near the very beginning of time, and at distances so far away that they aren't really comprehensible in Earthly units.

Why would that be? If distant stars operate on some completely alien principle unknown on Earth, why would they look exactly the way hot objects do on Earth? Why would they radiate "so much red, so much orange..." just as predicted by the equations of Planck and Wien for hot objects on Earth? Why wouldn't they just radiate nothing but green light, or bursts of gamma rays, or a continuous stream of radio static? Why would they radiate light as we understand it at all?

When we think about this question, we come back to the simple reality that stars look exactly as if they were objects heated till they glow. Now so far I haven't said anything about how stars became hot; that's another question that can be addressed in other ways. But the point remains that they sure look like hot objects should look.

We have two choices. One is to conclude that this fact about stars tells us nothing about stars, that we know nothing. That light and heat and temperature as we understand them are purely Earthly phenomena. But in that case, we are left with an improbable mystery: if they aren't hot objects, why do they look like hot objects? Is there a powerful God with a perverse sense of humor who is trying to trick us all, for reasons we don't understand?

It strains belief that the entire universe could just happen to look exactly as if it was filled with stars that are hot, to the point where in hundreds of years of looking no one has found a flaw in that explanation, when in fact it's something completely different. So scientists conclude that stars are in fact hot objects, because the alternative is, for lack of a better term, crazy.

But just knowing that stars are hot tells us some things. It tells us that thermodynamics has to work in those stars the way it works on Earth. It tells us that atoms, collections of physical particles, have to exist in those stars, because temperature is a property of collections of particles.

This, and other lines of reasoning like this, tell us that the distant stars and the space they are in has to be filled with the kinds of matter and forces that we observe in our own back yard. We do not see evidence of strange, alien forces that work, or of unknown chemical elements in other parts of the universe. And if those things were out there, we'd expect to see them. Or at least we'd expect them to mess up what we do see to the point where we could no longer explain it without figuring out what the heck is causing that mysterious X-factor.
________


why is forging important for civilization? it isn't. you don't need metal to build tools or structures. heck, on some other world there could be a material more useful than that world's metals. you don't know. saying anything is necessary on any planet other than earth is flawed logic by default.The problem is that there are limits on how far you can take this argument. Iron atoms have the same properties here as it does in the Sun, or in the distant stars; this is a measurable and testable proposition. So an iron knife will work as well on Planet X as it does here. Which is not to say that more useful materials cannot exist, but it's likely that the materials in question will raise their own interesting problems when it comes time to work them into tools and structures.

Could a civilization exist without metal? Certainly; just look at ancient Sumeria. Could a civilization become sophisticated and highly capable, by the standards that a developed nation today would use, without using metal at all? That strikes me as less likely. I'm not saying it can't happen, but I am saying that it would be a lot harder to do it that way than to have all the other neat stuff available on this alien world and have metal.
________


you misunderstand what I mean by bio-engineering. you are, again, assuming that life on another planet will be a lot like life on earth. just because we couldn't find enough good species to bio-engineer on earth doesn't mean such will be true on another planet.Thing is, there's no reason to expect species with uses in a civilization to be lying around in nature (on any planet). There will most likely be some on any world, but why would the Perfect Animal, the one that makes locomotives and sailing ships obsolete, just happen to be kicking around?

The civilization limited to more realistic draft animals, ones that evolved for their own reasons in their own habitat and have to be specifically adapted to be useful to civilization, will have problems. Especially if their access to other kinds of technology (mechanical power sources and metals) is limited compared to what we enjoy.

And isn't it just as likely that the alien world will have no useful draft animals, or that the draft animals that do exist will be fierce and unreasonable and difficult to control? Likewise, why would there just happen to be tree-equivalents that grow wood that's as good for all kinds of engineering as iron, or glass?

Unless we assume that an alien world will be very lucky and get showered with "manna from heaven" in the form of all kinds of useful flora and fauna, far more useful than their earthly counterparts, it's a pretty safe bet that the alien civilization will have strong incentives to develop inorganic technology. If their environment makes that impossible, it's going to put a dent in their ability to set up large, thriving civilizations. Will it rule that out? Probably not. But it sure isn't going to be easy.
_______


I'd also appreciate it if you didn't treat me like an idiot. I know what the laws of physics are and don't need them explained to me at length. I know that we assume they're unbreakable. I know we have no reason to assume otherwise. but I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out something could defy what we thought of as a law, though I find it as unlikely. I guess this would be less breaking the laws of physics and more disproving the existence of laws of physics, but you get what I mean.I don't intend to treat you as an idiot, but I've seen this argument before several times. It almost always comes from people who are not intimately familiar with the way science is done, or with how its findings form interlocking structures.

Does that mean that scientists have the One True Answer for Everything? Hell no. But it does mean that scientists have the One True Answer for Some Things, or something so close to the one true answer that we literally can't build an experiment that finds the difference.
_____


however, I also understand that until we find any evidence that the laws of physics are unbreakable, we're better off assuming that they are. I just want you to admit that this is in fact an assumption and could be disproved by future knowledge.The future knowledge in question would have to be pretty bizarre. Discovering that we don't really understand how chemical elements work at this point would be like waking up and finding out that the Earth is actually shaped like a taco instead of a ball.

Can I imagine it? Yes. But think about the implications. If the Earth is actually taco-shaped, then our entire understanding of geography is all wrong, and many very careful explorers have somehow screwed up horribly without anyone noticing. Satellites that, by all appearances, orbit the world at a constant altitude are hard to explain if the Earth is taco-shaped. If the Earth were taco-shaped, there should be places on Earth where you could look up into the sky and see other parts of the Earth, aside from the usual stuff like mountains. Why aren't there?

For us to wake up and find out that the Earth is taco-shaped instead of ball-shaped would be a horrible and confusing revelation. It would be almost impossible to explain without positing that much of our past five hundred years of life on this planet was a big hoax or hallucination. So I can say, with absolutely no fear of contradiction, that the Earth is not shaped like a taco.

I can imagine finding out that I'm wrong about that, but I can't believe that I am wrong about that. And it would take one hell of a lot of evidence to convince me of that, because it is far more probable that I have done the measurements wrong or have gone mad than that the Earth is shaped like a taco.

[Tensu]

Ok, no. just. freaking. no. cut that in half and I'll be back.

[Dervag]

I got carried away and spent too much time writing it, but I don't feel that makes me wrong.

[Kcalehc]

Thing is, there's no reason to expect species with uses in a civilization to be lying around in nature (on any planet). There will most likely be some on any world, but why would the Perfect Animal, the one that makes locomotives and sailing ships obsolete, just happen to be kicking around?

The civilization limited to more realistic draft animals, ones that evolved for their own reasons in their own habitat and have to be specifically adapted to be useful to civilization, will have problems. Especially if their access to other kinds of technology (mechanical power sources and metals) is limited compared to what we enjoy.

And isn't it just as likely that the alien world will have no useful draft animals, or that the draft animals that do exist will be fierce and unreasonable and difficult to control? Likewise, why would there just happen to be tree-equivalents that grow wood that's as good for all kinds of engineering as iron, or glass?

Unless we assume that an alien world will be very lucky and get showered with "manna from heaven" in the form of all kinds of useful flora and fauna, far more useful than their earthly counterparts, it's a pretty safe bet that the alien civilization will have strong incentives to develop inorganic technology. If their environment makes that impossible, it's going to put a dent in their ability to set up large, thriving civilizations. Will it rule that out? Probably not. But it sure isn't going to be easy.

There is one possibility not covered. A species that can manipulate its own DNA, to 'give birth' to organic technology that performs a function it desires. (Theres no reason to assume that our emotional connection to our spawn is universal). The technology, and I use the term loosely, is created, rather than being native. A brain in a jar with a tactile input output device serves as a computer, synapses and nerves act as routers and network cables, bone and chitin can cut, and make exoskeletons. ; huge creatures birthed solely to process nutrients out of the atmosphere - just got to remember to feed it once in a while...
While it is unlikely, its not wholly impossible, and not a product of the environment, but a product of an intelligent lifeform. It may be limiting, combustion for space flight, for example, would be difficult in an organic environment, but a reasonably advanced civilisation could occur.

[Tensu]

@ Dervag: it doesn't make you wrong, but it dose make me unwilling to read and reply to your post, because your posts have been reliably doubling in size, and I'm not going to type a whole novel just to have to read and type an even bigger novel next time. give me the summery.

@ Kcalehc: Interesting as that is, that's far from the only possibility. a prolific, highly mutagenic symbiotic creature with short reproductive cycles could be selectively bred into a number of tools.

[Kcalehc]

@ Kcalehc: Interesting as that is, that's far from the only possibility. a prolific, highly mutagenic symbiotic creature with short reproductive cycles could be selectively bred into a number of tools.

I didn't say it was the only possibility, just that is was 'one possibility.'

(for some odd reason I'm offended by being spoken 'at,' normally people speat 'to' one another, or make comments 'for.' @ just somehow seems impolite to me.)

[Dervag]

There is one possibility not covered. A species that can manipulate its own DNA, to 'give birth' to organic technology that performs a function it desires.See below. I have some questions about the idea of a creature having a natural faculty for editing its own DNA.


While it is unlikely, its not wholly impossible, and not a product of the environment, but a product of an intelligent lifeform. It may be limiting, combustion for space flight, for example, would be difficult in an organic environment, but a reasonably advanced civilisation could occur.Most likely, the "organic tech" species would eventually learn how to complement its organic tech with "metal tech." Just because it uses giant amoebas for a lot of things doesn't mean it won't eventually notice all that iron ore lying about in the ground.

======


@ Kcalehc: Interesting as that is, that's far from the only possibility. a prolific, highly mutagenic symbiotic creature with short reproductive cycles could be selectively bred into a number of tools.That's a much more likely example of how alien life could look very different, for the following reasons:

-A creature capable of editing its own DNA would probably not be interfertile with other members of its own species, because its edits would tend to make it incompatible with other members.
[This is not a problem for creatures that reproduce asexually]
-A creature capable of editing its own DNA would have to somehow be able to sense what its own genes looked like and store this information in its brain-equivalent. That would be a very demanding process from a biological and computational standpoint, one that would take up a lot of energy that could be used productively in other ways.
-A creature that edits its DNA badly would kill itself in a hurry. Which means that the faculty for editing your own DNA would have a hard time evolving naturally. Having bad eyesight gives you an advantage over no eyesight; having tiny wings can give you an advantage over no wings. But having bad DNA-editing will kill you much faster than having no DNA-editing.

======


@ Dervag: it doesn't make you wrong, but it dose make me unwilling to read and reply to your post, because your posts have been reliably doubling in size, and I'm not going to type a whole novel just to have to read and type an even bigger novel next time. give me the summery.OK, but:
a)I note that you are under no obligation to reply to me at novel length. Also,
b)I'm going to laugh my head off if you tell me I didn't justify the things I'm about to say, for obvious reasons.
____

Summary begins:
On the consistency of physical laws:

1) We have observational evidence about what is going on in other parts of the universe.
2) We have physical laws that can be identified and verified using experiments we build on Earth.
3) The observed stuff happening elsewhere in the universe is a suspiciously close match for said physical laws.

4) "Suspiciously close" meaning that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to explain or imagine another reason for the universe to look that way. Often there is no reason except the little details of how our own observed physical laws work that explains why we see certain things. If atoms in a star don't work the way we think they do, why do we see emission spectra identical to the kind we see on Earth? Emission spectra depend, by nature, on the details of how atoms work, after all.
5) Personally, the only way I can imagine the universe appearing to match all the laws of physics we see on Earth and yet working in some completely different way that allows alien chemical elements on alien planets would be if God was trying to trick us. The match is that close; if it isn't the natural result of certain natural laws, it's too improbably to occur by chance.
6) As in, the match is so close that we literally cannot figure out how to build an experiment capable of finding the discrepancies.
_______

On the subject of alien civilizations that grow without things available on Earth:
7) Because of the consistency of physical laws (see above), we can make some confident predictions about what aliens living in a given environment won't be able to do. Some things violate the consistent physical laws, and not just the general guideline pseudo-rules like "stuff gets smaller when you freeze it." Aliens will not be able to do those things.
8) On Earth, different types of technology play off each other in ways that create a lot of room for progress.
9) On an alien world where some of the major types of technology used on Earth are not available to the local species, there will be less of this. Obviously, if they can't smelt metals, they will not be able to do things that can only be done with metals unless they find a substitute for metals.

10) And there are things that can only be done by metals or a specialized metal-equivalent, or possibly only by metals. Metal has a great advantage in strength and durability over most organic chemicals. Metal can be machined into precise shapes that are useful for making stuff with interchangeable parts, whereas organisms that are grown have more trouble with interchangeable parts. Swapping out my kidney is much harder than swapping out my carburetor, and there are good reasons for this to be true.
11) Since metals are naturally occuring and common throughout the universe, (see consistency of physical laws, above) finding a substitute is liable to be harder work than using metals.
12) This requirement of hard work will limit and delay the progress of the society trying to make do without them, compared to a society that had access to the things they have and metals.
_______

13) Many of the ways to create a substitute for metals that you or I can imagine depend on what amounts to luck. Why should there be a tree-equivalent that produces wood that can substitute for metal? Why should it then be possible to work this wood without metal tools? How would organisms evolve the trait of being able to edit their own DNA; is this even possible?
14) These are not trivial questions, and they are not produced entirely by a lack of imagination. Given the things we know are true about how matter works, there really are some limits on what an organism can do, even in an alien environment.

15) This does not mean only what I imagine to be possible is possible. But while I'm willing to keep an open mind, I refuse to open my mind so far that my education and common sense fall out. And so long as I am informed by those things, I see limits on what can be done by imagined "metal substitutes" or "editable DNA."
16) It's not a good idea to claim all kinds of awesome powers for a thing that we don't understand, on the grounds that we don't know it doesn't have those powers.

[Adlan]

Ok, in No particular order, and without going back and quoting which points I'm chipping in on.

Underwater Heat. Thermal Hot Springs and Magma Vents, particulalry underwater volcanic activity, could all be a source of underwater heat for smelting copper at the least, and it is know that native metals form on the sea floor in some conditions.


No Humaniod Aliens - Mother of Demons (avilible free from Baen), has some very good non Humaniod Aliens. Giant Moluscus.

Water Floating when Frozen. I'm only a 1st year chemist, but here's a rough explanation:
Water is very odd. It shouldn't really be a liquid at all (much heavier things, like CO2, are Gases), however, Bonding between the slightly positive Oxygen and slightly negative Hydrogens between molecules of water cause it to be a liquid.
These Bonds are also what cause it's odd densities. Water has several lattice states while a Liquid and as a Solid. as a Solid it actually forms a peculiar hexagonal lattice, which occupies more space than the less regular liquid lattices. Thus, ice is less Dense than water, and floats. As water approaches freezing, it begins to get more and more ordered in this hexagonal lattice, creating more space between the molecules, lowering the density.
In 'Normal' Liquids, denisity increases as it approaches freezing , as the Molecules have less energy, and vibrate less (and begin to pack into a lattice), In water, the maximum between density due to lack of vibrational energy, and the expanding lattice structure is around 277 Kelvin (AFAIK), and so the bottom of the ocean stays liquid (any water getting colder floats to the top), and the sea floor stays at a temperature that can support life.

[Tensu]

Kcalehc: first off, my intention was not to offend anyone. at the bottom of this post I'll give you a little more insight as to how the "@" thing got started.

second off, I apologize for my earlier assumption.

Dervag: I'd again like to repeat that I don't expect to run into any creature from this universe/dimension capable of defying the laws of physics. merely that I wouldn't be surprised if I did. I think you feel the same way I do judging by the bottom of your post. I'm just saying the glass is 0.0000etc.001% full, and your just saying the glass is 99.99999repeating% empty. but we're both agreeing on the same odds. It never was my intention to throw years of scientific study to the wind on the off chance of being wrong

though I wouldn't be surprised if God was messing with us in such a fashion, as that would certainly knock us down a few necessary notches:smalltongue:

as for metal, we know that metal is common in Our part of the galaxy and there is no better substance on earth. the possibility of alien substances is very probable given the size of the universe and some of the stuff we pull out of comets. as for substitutes I could imagine a tough bone or wood evolving under the right circumstances, and as for what to shape it with, well, cut diamonds with diamonds. If it's bone you could find a tooth or rib or other pointy part, if wood, well, I've bumped into some pretty pointy sticks in my day. and something strange might turn up on another world, like a type of clay that's really tough when hardened that hardens in the presence of a certain chemical. given some earth chemical reactions, I wouldn't be surprised.

to whom it may concern: the evolution of my posting style

I came from the magic forums on gleemax. terrible place, that gleemax. full of trolls, flamers, elitists and jerks of every sort. so anywho, there people chop up posts quoting one section at a time. this would be fine if they only did it for separate points. but they would chop up paragraphs and even sentences, taking things out of context and responding to them out of context. thus one debate would become five. posts would take hours to write, and before long people began to forget when we had been arguing about in the first place. in spite of this, the gleemaxers insisted this was the most efficient way to post and routinely made fun of me for refusing to play their little game. instead, I had a paragraph for each person, responding to their post as a whole, in hopes of them in return looking at my argument as one big argument and not a bunch of little ones. people often complained that they couldn't tell who I was talking to, so I decided to add the little @ so-in-so:'s at the start of new paragraphs. I never really considered that could come across as rude.

also, they had a unique way of arguing that mostly steamed on baseless accusations and working the crowd with mob mentality instead of reason. because of that style I've become very defensive in my posting and have been trying to cover p tracks when I should be explaining intentions. My defying the laws of physics comment is an example of this. instead of explaining calmly as to why I made the comment I panicked and put my shields up. that was wrong.

[Dervag]

My view is that there comes a point at which saying "X might not be true because of the 1 in 10^100 chance that we're all hallucinating" is intellectually dishonest. If a piece of inductive reasoning is solid enough, then while it may be "a theory" it isn't "just a theory" in the sense that young-earth creationists use with regards to evolution.

Nobody feels any doubt about saying things like "water is wet" or "human beings are mortal." And yet those are properties we have found using inductive logic- we see X, so we conclude Y, even if we can't come up with an intricate mathematical proof of why Y has to be true in any conceivable universe.

And if I shouldn't feel doubt in saying things like "human beings are mortal," why should I feel any doubt about saying things like "Maxwell's laws are true?" To be quite honest, at this point the number of times someone tried Maxwell's Laws they turned out to work is probably greater the number of times someone has turned out to be mortal.
______

What I've been trying to get at all along is that the ability to imagine something existing and working doesn't mean it automatically works so well that we should ignore the things we know do work. Metals do work, and we have reason to expect them to be useful for aliens almost anywhere.

That doesn't mean the aliens have to be humanoid, or that they have to have the same motivations humans do, or that workign metals will be easy for them. But I think it's a fair bet that if we observe aliens who live on a planet where metal is available, they will use metal for some things and will consider metal to be the most useful material for some things.

[Kcalehc]

-A creature capable of editing its own DNA would probably not be interfertile with other members of its own species, because its edits would tend to make it incompatible with other members.
[This is not a problem for creatures that reproduce asexually]
-A creature capable of editing its own DNA would have to somehow be able to sense what its own genes looked like and store this information in its brain-equivalent. That would be a very demanding process from a biological and computational standpoint, one that would take up a lot of energy that could be used productively in other ways.
-A creature that edits its DNA badly would kill itself in a hurry. Which means that the faculty for editing your own DNA would have a hard time evolving naturally. Having bad eyesight gives you an advantage over no eyesight; having tiny wings can give you an advantage over no wings. But having bad DNA-editing will kill you much faster than having no DNA-editing.

Hmm, your response doesn't mesh with what I actually meant - though its probably what I said, I may have put it badly. I didn't mean that it manipulates it's own DNA per se, I mean the DNA of its future offspring - in order to birth a useful tool. So like human women are born with eggs, so is this creature (and the ability to grow more), it then manipulates the DNA inside the eggs before gestating and birthing the required thing. It would also have unedited eggs available for propogation of the species and would be interfertile.
Though I do agree it's certainly unlikely still, and massively energy draining as you say.

[Tensu]

My view is that there comes a point at which saying "X might not be true because of the 1 in 10^100 chance that we're all hallucinating" is intellectually dishonest. If a piece of inductive reasoning is solid enough, then while it may be "a theory" it isn't "just a theory" in the sense that young-earth creationists use with regards to evolution.

Nobody feels any doubt about saying things like "water is wet" or "human beings are mortal." And yet those are properties we have found using inductive logic- we see X, so we conclude Y, even if we can't come up with an intricate mathematical proof of why Y has to be true in any conceivable universe.

And if I shouldn't feel doubt in saying things like "human beings are mortal," why should I feel any doubt about saying things like "Maxwell's laws are true?" To be quite honest, at this point the number of times someone tried Maxwell's Laws they turned out to work is probably greater the number of times someone has turned out to be mortal.
______

What I've been trying to get at all along is that the ability to imagine something existing and working doesn't mean it automatically works so well that we should ignore the things we know do work. Metals do work, and we have reason to expect them to be useful for aliens almost anywhere.

That doesn't mean the aliens have to be humanoid, or that they have to have the same motivations humans do, or that workign metals will be easy for them. But I think it's a fair bet that if we observe aliens who live on a planet where metal is available, they will use metal for some things and will consider metal to be the most useful material for some things.

And all I'm trying to say is that I KNOW and UNDERSTAND that, and I WISH YOU WOULD LET IT GO.

[Yulian]

Getting way back in the thread a ways...

Why wouldn't a Puppeteer be able to use a forge?

They have 2 limbs, 2 mouths that function as hands, and eyes.

You start a fire in a forge, use bellows to blow air through it, put on a "mouth-glove" with an eyehole, then pick up a hammer and start working.

You'd have to be careful about your eyeball, but then they might have developed protective lenses for the mouth-gloves since they had a need for it.

- Yulian

[Graymayre]

Getting way back in the thread a ways...

Why wouldn't a Puppeteer be able to use a forge?

They have 2 limbs, 2 mouths that function as hands, and eyes.

You start a fire in a forge, use bellows to blow air through it, put on a "mouth-glove" with an eyehole, then pick up a hammer and start working.

You'd have to be careful about your eyeball, but then they might have developed protective lenses for the mouth-gloves since they had a need for it.

- Yulian

Or maybe they could find a completely different process of smelting to safeguard themselves (after all, they are a cautious race).

[GoC]

Tensu: Welcome to the board and I'm sorry about being so harsh. The concept of science is my berserk button.

Please note, however, that this does not mesh with your post just before it:

And all I'm trying to say is that I KNOW and UNDERSTAND that, and I WISH YOU WOULD LET IT GO.

Yulian: A lot of inventions in our history required a strong grasping arm, not just dexterity. Would these creatures be able to use a hammer? I think not due to:
The neck must contain a lot more than just bone and muscle
The impact would be pretty jarring if they keep their brain in their head.
Those little "fingers" seem poorly suited to the firm grasp required for a hammer
They'd have to rotate their head to use it (or awkwardly turn their neck, possibly straining something with each impact) and the rotation muscles are probably signficantly less strong

If their brain is elsewhere then they've got the problem of a comparatively long delay between seeing and reacting.

Also, the neck has many segments and is only as strong as it's weakest segment (I'm not 100% sure of this as I haven't yet laid out all the physics involved) so they can't do much heavy lifting.

Having your eyes on your prime manipulating appendage is also a pretty bad idea. Means you can't really do any heavy work with it or things like hold a spear.

[Tensu]

Oh, ok. I of all people can understand berserk buttons. I have quite a few.

I apologize for raising my voice, but I felt like my past four or five attempts to explain myself where just flat-out ignored, as if Dervag thought he knew more about my opinion than I did and was trying to tell me what my opinion was. something I've had to put up with a few too many times.

note: I'm not saying that was the case, only how it felt from my end.

I'm tired of constantly having to put disclaimers and follow up with longwinded arguments after everything I say. I wish people could just accept that I meant what I said, and nothing else.

wow, that came out a lot more... condescending than I had intended. Bt you know what I meant. right? right?

[GoC]

Me and Dervag (I think) still felt that you did not truly understand why your agrument was fallacious, I felt it revealed a deep but very common flaw in the understanding of science.
I'm think I understand now though. You really didn't want to admit a mistake for fear of it affecting your credibility? If so then don't worry, I don't think anyone here will hold it against you.

[Tensu]

Well not exactly. It's more that I got defensive and did not word things correctly. As a result I appeared to be taking a stance I wasn't.

"I wouldn't be surprised if we found something that defies the laws of physics:smallbiggrin:"

became

"I wouldn't be surprised if we found something that defies the laws of physics:smallyuk:"

So I admit fault in my attempts to communicate what I was trying to say and not taking into account the fact that things like tone and inflection are difficult to discern on the internet, And thus not making clear exactly what I was thinking yes. I also admit fault in getting overly defensive, and not thinking about what the best way to communicate my thoughts and ending a nonexistent argument would be. I never meant to say "since it could all be an illusion, better not to believe in anything". far from it. it would be hard to live like that. but more "I wouldn't be surprised if we ran into something that disproved a great deal of our earlier work. I doubt that will happen, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did."

I was less attacking the laws of physics and more the general idea that we can pigeonhole life into certain roles and forms based on what we've seen on earth. the "laws of physics" comment was never meant to be something taken seriously: just a passing comment for emphases. my undue defensiveness turned it into far worse.

[GoC]

"I wouldn't be surprised if we found something that defies the laws of physics:smallbiggrin:"
:smallfrown:
What would it take to surprise you?
I'd personally be more surprised at this then finding out I'm immortal.

[Tensu]

who told you you weren't immortal?

they're lying.

[Dervag]

Hmm, your response doesn't mesh with what I actually meant - though its probably what I said, I may have put it badly. I didn't mean that it manipulates it's own DNA per se, I mean the DNA of its future offspring - in order to birth a useful tool. So like human women are born with eggs, so is this creature (and the ability to grow more), it then manipulates the DNA inside the eggs before gestating and birthing the required thing. It would also have unedited eggs available for propogation of the species and would be interfertile.
Though I do agree it's certainly unlikely still, and massively energy draining as you say.It's still likely to have all the problems above, just at a one-generation remove. The biochemistry of deliberately editing the DNA in one's own germ line cells is just about as complicated as of doing the same to the somatic cells. The DNA-modified creatures will not be able to interbreed with others of their species (parent species?). And creatures that have only a rudimentary ability to do this would not have a reliable advantage over creatures that lack the ability entirely, because tweaking your children's DNA badly is a less effective strategy than not tweaking it at all.

Think about it this way: a DNA-editor creature will have some percentage of generalist offspring that are fertile, but also some percentage of specialist offspring that are most likely sterile. Producing sterile offspring is an evolutionary disadvantage unless the sterile offspring greatly enhance the reproductive chances of the fertile offspring.

There are examples in nature where that works; ants come to mind. But ants don't come with freeform genetic editors that allow queens to customize the next generation of ants. Even if a queen had the ability to alter her own egg cells to do that, the ability would be more likely to create worker ants with congenital defects than to create more useful workers.

When that happens in a simple mutation, the colony probably dies unless the queen ant happens to win the mutation lottery. But if the queen has a gene which leads her to do this all the time, with little or no quality control, she's probably going to be at a major disadvantage. The effect would be sort of like other things that introduce rapid, random mutations of germ line cells... such as radiation and mutagenic chemicals.

Half a wing or half an eye can provide a limited evolutionary advantage; half a DNA editor would have a harder time doing it.
_______


TYulian: A lot of inventions in our history required a strong grasping arm, not just dexterity. Would these creatures be able to use a hammer? I think not due to:
The neck must contain a lot more than just bone and muscle
The impact would be pretty jarring if they keep their brain in their head.Pierson's Puppeteers do not keep their brain in their heads; they keep it in their torso.


Those little "fingers" seem poorly suited to the firm grasp required for a hammerOn the other hand, they can also use the muscles used for biting to grip the hammer. Since many animals have very high bite strength, I see no reason why this couldn't provide the needed grip.


They'd have to rotate their head to use it (or awkwardly turn their neck, possibly straining something with each impact) and the rotation muscles are probably signficantly less strongYou have a point. However, the amount of evolution of the neck structure needed to make that work doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

After all, humans evolved from having "arms" and "legs" that were nigh-interchangeable to having arms specialized for tool use and legs specialized for bipedal motion and balance in less than ten million years. In the process, we had to make significant changes to the muscles and joints of our limbs, to the point where our arms and legs now look quite different.

I don't see why a similar amount of physical change couldn't happen in the process of evolution of the Pierson's Puppeteer.


If their brain is elsewhere then they've got the problem of a comparatively long delay between seeing and reacting.Very true, but they're herbivores. Herbivores don't need a fast-twitch reflex quite as badly as omni/carnivores do. They need to know when to run, but they can probably afford a fifty millisecond delay for signals to propagate down a meter long neck. For that matter, we don't know what Puppeteer nerve conduction velocities are, and it's quite possible for aliens to evolve superhuman (or subhuman) nerve conduction.
____


I was less attacking the laws of physics and more the general idea that we can pigeonhole life into certain roles and forms based on what we've seen on earth. the "laws of physics" comment was never meant to be something taken seriously: just a passing comment for emphases. my undue defensiveness turned it into far worse.Sorry. The idea of physics working differently on Alpha Centauri or in Andromeda is one of my berserk buttons. I know why I have every reason to believe physics works uniformly throughout the universe, but most people aren't as big on cosmology nerd-ery as I am. So I get that a lot, often from people who stopped learning science some time in high school. It's something I need to watch out for.

And I second GoC's comment; I too would be more surprised by a Maxwell's Law violation than I would be to discover myself being immortal. Assuming, at least, that my immortality didn't itself violate Maxwell's Laws...

[Dervag]

Hmm, your response doesn't mesh with what I actually meant - though its probably what I said, I may have put it badly. I didn't mean that it manipulates it's own DNA per se, I mean the DNA of its future offspring - in order to birth a useful tool. So like human women are born with eggs, so is this creature (and the ability to grow more), it then manipulates the DNA inside the eggs before gestating and birthing the required thing. It would also have unedited eggs available for propogation of the species and would be interfertile.
Though I do agree it's certainly unlikely still, and massively energy draining as you say.It's still likely to have all the problems above, just at a one-generation remove. The biochemistry of deliberately editing the DNA in one's own germ line cells is just about as complicated as of doing the same to the somatic cells. The DNA-modified creatures will not be able to interbreed with others of their species (parent species?). And creatures that have only a rudimentary ability to do this would not have a reliable advantage over creatures that lack the ability entirely, because tweaking your children's DNA badly is a less effective strategy than not tweaking it at all.

Think about it this way: a DNA-editor creature will have some percentage of generalist offspring that are fertile, but also some percentage of specialist offspring that are most likely sterile. Producing sterile offspring is an evolutionary disadvantage unless the sterile offspring greatly enhance the reproductive chances of the fertile offspring.

There are examples in nature where that works; ants come to mind. But ants don't come with freeform genetic editors that allow queens to customize the next generation of ants. Even if a queen had the ability to alter her own egg cells to do that, the ability would be more likely to create worker ants with congenital defects than to create more useful workers.

When that happens in a simple mutation, the colony probably dies unless the queen ant happens to win the mutation lottery. But if the queen has a gene which leads her to do this all the time, with little or no quality control, she's probably going to be at a major disadvantage. The effect would be sort of like other things that introduce rapid, random mutations of germ line cells... such as radiation and mutagenic chemicals.

Half a wing or half an eye can provide a limited evolutionary advantage; half a DNA editor would have a harder time doing it.
_______


TYulian: A lot of inventions in our history required a strong grasping arm, not just dexterity. Would these creatures be able to use a hammer? I think not due to:
The neck must contain a lot more than just bone and muscle
The impact would be pretty jarring if they keep their brain in their head.Pierson's Puppeteers do not keep their brain in their heads; they keep it in their torso.


Those little "fingers" seem poorly suited to the firm grasp required for a hammerOn the other hand, they can also use the muscles used for biting to grip the hammer. Since many animals have very high bite strength, I see no reason why this couldn't provide the needed grip.


They'd have to rotate their head to use it (or awkwardly turn their neck, possibly straining something with each impact) and the rotation muscles are probably signficantly less strongYou have a point. However, the amount of evolution of the neck structure needed to make that work doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

After all, humans evolved from having "arms" and "legs" that were nigh-interchangeable to having arms specialized for tool use and legs specialized for bipedal motion and balance in less than ten million years. In the process, we had to make significant changes to the muscles and joints of our limbs, to the point where our arms and legs now look quite different.

I don't see why a similar amount of physical change couldn't happen in the process of evolution of the Pierson's Puppeteer.


If their brain is elsewhere then they've got the problem of a comparatively long delay between seeing and reacting.Very true, but they're herbivores. Herbivores don't need a fast-twitch reflex quite as badly as omni/carnivores do. They need to know when to run, but they can probably afford a fifty millisecond delay for signals to propagate down a meter long neck. For that matter, we don't know what Puppeteer nerve conduction velocities are, and it's quite possible for aliens to evolve superhuman (or subhuman) nerve conduction.
____


I was less attacking the laws of physics and more the general idea that we can pigeonhole life into certain roles and forms based on what we've seen on earth. the "laws of physics" comment was never meant to be something taken seriously: just a passing comment for emphases. my undue defensiveness turned it into far worse.Sorry. The idea of physics working differently on Alpha Centauri or in Andromeda is one of my berserk buttons. I know why I have every reason to believe physics works uniformly throughout the universe, but most people aren't as big on cosmology nerd-ery as I am. So I get that a lot, often from people who stopped learning science some time in high school. It's something I need to watch out for.

And I second GoC's comment; I too would be more surprised by a Maxwell's Law violation than I would be to discover myself being immortal. Assuming, at least, that my immortality didn't itself violate Maxwell's Laws...

[Elfey]

And I second GoC's comment; I too would be more surprised by a Maxwell's Law violation than I would be to discover myself being immortal. Assuming, at least, that my immortality didn't itself violate Maxwell's Laws...

"The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation — well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation." — Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)

True Immortality violates the second law...

As to the main thrust of this debate, Larry Niven is the king of imagining strange races that aren't just some version of something we have on Earth. The Puppeteers, Bandersnatch, Tnuctip and Thrint, Trinocs, Jotoki, all exist and interplay in Known Space. What's more his work on The Mote in God's Eye created the 'Moties' which have a distinction of being non-symmetrical (3 arms, 2 on right and 1 on the left that's much stronger called the Gripping Arm). Then again you also have the race in footfall which are more or less mini-elephants with a trunk that splits into two sets of 'hands' at the end.

[Eldan]

Would Immortality necessarily violate the second law? I mean, I'm no Physicist, but a living creature is not a closed system, so couldn't it technically be long-lived enough to never die of old age? (Of course, a stupid statement, since many people don't die of old age, but what I mean is, a creature that is somehow able to withstand age and diseases).
Of course, I know that this would be an evolutionary nonsense, but just talking from the physics point for now.

[Elfey]

Would Immortality necessarily violate the second law? I mean, I'm no Physicist, but a living creature is not a closed system, so couldn't it technically be long-lived enough to never die of old age? (Of course, a stupid statement, since many people don't die of old age, but what I mean is, a creature that is somehow able to withstand age and diseases).
Of course, I know that this would be an evolutionary nonsense, but just talking from the physics point for now.

By True Immortality, I mean living literally Forever. But merely living for tens of thousands of years to millions or billions could happen. It's just that being truely immortal, to live to the heat death of the universe would violate the second law.

[Eldan]

Would it? Living *to* the heat death not necessarily. Just living beyond it, which is of course impossible.

[Tensu]

Dervag: You know what? I'm not even going to say anything*, because you're just not listening, and if you're not going to listen to what I'm saying, I'm not going to listen to you.

I could easily imagine a being that, as long as it had enough food/water/whatever it uses for sustenance, could live until killed by another creature or environmental conditions.

*excluding this sentence, of course.

[Mad Mask]

I could easily imagine a being that, as long as it had enough food/water/whatever it uses for sustenance, could live until killed by another creature or environmental conditions.

Beings like that actually exist on Earth. Hydras and Turritopsis nutricula are a few of the animals that are biologically immortal.

[Tensu]

Beings like that actually exist on Earth. Hydras and Turritopsis nutricula are a few of the animals that are biologically immortal.

awesome!:smallbiggrin:

[GoC]

Dervag: You know what? I'm not even going to say anything*, because you're just not listening, and if you're not going to listen to what I'm saying, I'm not going to listen to you.
Umm...
You either:
A. Were giving very misleading signals.
B. Didn't understand.

Either way it's not Dervag's fault, especially as his latest post was an apology and an echoing of my post.

[Tensu]

It just felt really sarcastic and like it had "you're still wrong" overtones.