New to Orions Arm

[epatterson]

Ive been trying forever create an ammonia based alien species but all the literature focuses on what it couldn't be rather than what it could be. I know pure ammonia wouldn't be compatible with oxygen or lipid bylayers or phosphate groups and would prevent any real development of technology because they couldn't have fire. I was excited when i discovered the article on the Soft Ones, but it makes no mention of what their respiratory mechanism would be. Would aliens based on an ammonia-water solvent be able to breathe oxygen?

[Vaktus]

Ive been trying forever create an ammonia based alien species but all the literature focuses on what it couldn't be rather than what it could be. I know pure ammonia wouldn't be compatible with oxygen or lipid bylayers or phosphate groups and would prevent any real development of technology because they couldn't have fire. I was excited when i discovered the article on the Soft Ones, but it makes no mention of what their respiratory mechanism would be. Would aliens based on an ammonia-water solvent be able to breathe oxygen?

Hmm, probably not oxygen. Their respiration would probably include the ammonia-water mixture along with some other gas that is abundant in that atmosphere like methane.

[Drashner1]

Hi There - Welcome to OA!

Biology is not my area of expertise in the project, but we do have a number of members with varying amounts of bioscience background who will hopefully weigh in as time and interest permit.

Looking at the Soft One article (and the Muuh article, for that matter) I was reminded that both date back to the very beginning of the OA project and have not received the kind of ongoing biological attention that the To'ul'hs have in terms of their biology, or the planetology of their homeworld and the associated ecosystem(s). The Muuh have had much written on their history, technology, culture, etc, but not about what their world(s) are like or what kind of non-sophont lifeforms they share them with. The Soft Ones have had even less written about them.

All of which adds up to the conclusion that both races could use some love

Anyone interested in fleshing either one or both of them out more? Note that this includes you @epatterson, if you'd like.

Be interesting to see what sort of discussions shape up in this area.

Once again - Welcome to OA

Todd

[stevebowers]

Ammonia reacts with free oxygen to create water and nitric oxide (NO), so an ammonia/oxygen mixture would be unstable. Biochemistry using liquid ammonia as a solvent would almost certainly be anaerobic.

[Drashner1]

Ammonia reacts with free oxygen to create water and nitric oxide (NO), so an ammonia/oxygen mixture would be unstable. Biochemistry using liquid ammonia as a solvent would almost certainly be anaerobic.

As mentioned earlier, biology is not my area of focus in OA. However, out of curiosity, I did a quick bit of googling and turned up this page.

Would some kind of ammonia based ecology based using these sorts of processes be viable, in particular for the development of higher/more complex lifeforms possibly up to and including xenosophonts of some sort?

Todd

[epatterson]

This may help get me started. Sounds like ammoniaonly really reacts with molecular oxygen so if the world is designed to some other oxidizing agent it may be doable

Ammonia reacts with free oxygen to create water and nitric oxide (NO), so an ammonia/oxygen mixture would be unstable. Biochemistry using liquid ammonia as a solvent would almost certainly be anaerobic.

As mentioned earlier, biology is not my area of focus in OA. However, out of curiosity, I did a quick bit of googling and turned up this page.

Would some kind of ammonia based ecology based using these sorts of processes be viable, in particular for the development of higher/more complex lifeforms possibly up to and including xenosophonts of some sort?

Todd

[epatterson]

Based on most of my research, ammonia based life would probably benefit from a hydrogen atmosphere, which unfortunately isn't very likely to form on any kind of terrestrial planet or moon. So ammonia life would probably most likely exist in gas giant atmospheres where there is plentiful ammonia and hydrogen. They would be slow, almost like gas bags or jellyfish-like colonial organisms which would probably fit in nicely with the idea of a biochemistry that uses gels and macromolecules instead of cell membranes.

The only way i could think of the Soft One inhabiting an icy rock homeworld  is if there is cryovolcanism that spews methane into the atmosphere, where it is broken down into hydrogen. A lot of this would escape into space but some may distribute to the surface, providing respiratory gas for the Soft Ones similar to how the Muuh breathe. But then that still leaves the question of what they would metabolize, since they obviously don't come from the same kind of planet.

[Drashner1]

Based on most of my research, ammonia based life would probably benefit from a hydrogen atmosphere, which unfortunately isn't very likely to form on any kind of terrestrial planet or moon. So ammonia life would probably most likely exist in gas giant atmospheres where there is plentiful ammonia and hydrogen. They would be slow, almost like gas bags or jellyfish-like colonial organisms which would probably fit in nicely with the idea of a biochemistry that uses gels and macromolecules instead of cell membranes.

The only way i could think of the Soft One inhabiting an icy rock homeworld  is if there is cryovolcanism that spews methane into the atmosphere, where it is broken down into hydrogen. A lot of this would escape into space but some may distribute to the surface, providing respiratory gas for the Soft Ones similar to how the Muuh breathe. But then that still leaves the question of what they would metabolize, since they obviously don't come from the same kind of planet.

OA actually does have lifebearing gas giants here and there - and a mention of at least one spacefaring sophont gas giant species. There isn't much detail on either of these, but from what you're saying you may have found a basis for at least some of the ecosystems.

One way such lifeforms might develop technology (up to and including spaceflight) could be to develop (or gengineer/breed) the ability to extract heavier elements from the atmosphere and shape them into useful stuff. This process might work similarly to how bubblehabs operate on various worlds - sifting heavier elements out of the atmosphere and growing them via nanotech into their own structures and other things - like tools and the means to eventually expand into space.

Taking this back to the Soft Ones and the Muuh - Given how little information we have on the Soft Ones - perhaps the Soft Ones were originally gas giant dwellers and the Muuh found them, found them promising but 'stuck in a rut' on their home gas giant, and so provolved and gengineered them to both sophonce and life on a icy rocky world not terribly different from the kind of world the Muuh preferred. Or maybe the Muuh provolved them to have a technological civ on their gas giant and the 'Soft One' that Terragens first encountered was some kind of Soft One drone or bot or something.

Or maybe we can keep noodling away at this and figure out a way for them to work on a solid planet.

Speaking of which - Hydrogen certainly would tend to escape quickly into space on an Earth size or smaller body - but what about a much larger body?

Put another way, could you have a super-terrestrial planet that is massive enough to retain an H2 atmosphere (or a mix of H2 and something(s) else) while still being small enough to not be a gas giant? Maybe a gas dwarf?

Thoughts?

Todd

[stevebowers]

Some of the larger superterrestrials could have hydrogen atmospheres - but because hydrogen is so abundant, this is likely to dominate the atmosphere and to form a thick envelope around the planet. But I'm fairly sure there will be a fraction of all superterrestrials which are large enough to retain a hydrogen atmosphere but not quite large enough to become a gas dwarf. As the local star gets more luminous on the Main Sequence some of this hydrogen would be lost, until the atmosphere is relatively sparse and reasonably similar in pressure to other terrestrial worlds. Such a planet could presumably hold a biosphere for a certain, limited amount of time, in the best cases a billion years or more.

There would be helium as well, acting as a buffer gas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffer_gas

[SeanR]

Some of the larger superterrestrials could have hydrogen atmospheres - but because hydrogen is so abundant, this is likely to dominate the atmosphere and to form a thick envelope around the planet. But I'm fairly sure there will be a fraction of all superterrestrials which are large enough to retain a hydrogen atmosphere but not quite large enough to become a gas dwarf. As the local star gets more luminous on the Main Sequence some of this hydrogen would be lost, until the atmosphere is relatively sparse and reasonably similar in pressure to other terrestrial worlds. Such a planet could presumably hold a biosphere for a certain, limited amount of time, in the best cases a billion years or more.

There would be helium as well, acting as a buffer gas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffer_gas

I can't see a billion years as long enough to produce not just complex life, but sentient life. What mechanisms could exist for regular replenishment of a hydrogen atmosphere, that wouldn't kill all the inhabitants?
Very regular visitations by comets? Outbound from a Jovian, so it ended up "downwind" a little less than once a year?