People often say ocean worlds can't possibly have technological life because they wouldn't be able to light fires under water. And harnessing of fire was the greatest human technology that enabled most of other human innovations. Which I do agree with the second part. But really, why are people so certain about this?I can think of how technological life could emerge on ocean worlds. Semi aquatic life that evolves to live on floating debris on the surface of the ocean like icebergs, dense clusters of floating algae or some other material that floats. Like seals, and then they evolve to build floating and semi submerged shelters like beavers. They become intelligent and build submerged cities like giant boats or semi submerged ocean platforms. They'll be able to burn dried out aquatic vegetation for fire, or their own and animal waste. They can develop over shallows and build artificial islands. Eventually they discover fossil fuels and even coal can be mined under oceans and the rest is like human development. All this solves the can't light a fire on an ocean world problem.
I want to add, the ordering doesn't really matter. A species could be intelligent when it is completely aquatic. Then they become semi aquatic later. Maybe they even stay mostly aquatic and only leave water when necessary. But I think this kind of life would tend to be on a scale between a seal and beaver in terms of its semi aquatic nature
>>16869517you can light fires in water worlds though. you need oxygen to light fires, and H2O has oxygen in it
plasma still works under water
>>16869552Oxygen will escape the water and enter the atmosphere and there could very well be a lack of oxygen sinks in the ocean. Notice that I mentioned in the OP dense clusters of floating algae. Half of the oxygen in the world is produced by algae. An ocean world have oxygen saturation to feed fire. I imagine there are a lot of ocean worlds in the milky way with a similar oxygen saturation of earth's atmosphere
>>16869517The most important thing I think about humans harnessing fire is how much it affected our brains. Not only would cooking food make Chewing and digestion be easier, but the reduction of disease and the amount of nutritions with cooking. Most importantly it allowed our brains to increase and become more intelligent. Without fire humans wouldn’t be capable of being intelligent enough. Intelligent life is already really hard on our world. Out of the 4.5 billion years on Earth only humans have become intelligent.
>>16869517who needs fire if you snap your fingers and get 5000 kelvin at 80 bar with a nice camera flash
And i mention dense clusters of algae because i knew somebody was going to say there wouldnt be an enough concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere for fire and i didn"t want to argue about oxygen levels
>>16869575Whoops
there still could be a shit like oil floatin on that ocean worldget a thunder bum fire discovered
>>16869517This all seems really specific and unlikely. We don't have anything remotely like it on Earth, and the closest equivalents all evolved on rocky continents for hundreds of millions of years before adapting to sit on ice or build shelters out of also-terrestrial plant life. They're not frontrunners for intelligence, tool use, communication, or any of the other indicators you might expect a civilization to emerge from.It also glosses over metallurgy, which is kind of a big deal for technological development. It's not impossible, but building artificial islands and coal mines with bare flippers or sharpened kelp is probably not the greatest path to spaceflight.
>>16869706Artificial islands come later, but I suppose it could be done early on in their development just by throwing generational bodies at it. What comes early is probably is dense floating platforms like icebergs. Whole towns could be built on large icebergs. Artificial platforms built in shallows could be next, or daming off shallow bays and making an inverse bay with dry land in the middle.Like how apes evolved with predation the ground to escape to tree tops where they were safer. It could by similar on an ocean world where complex life evolves to be semi aquatic over dense floating debris to escape heavy predation in the water
Anyway, I'm not saying that it is more likely for technological life4 to emerge on ocean worlds. I'm saying that it is possible based off what we know of life on earth. And all the people that claim it is completely impossible are probably wrong.Of course, on some ocean worlds it may be completely impossible like mot enough oxygen saturating the atmosphere because of oxygen sinks. Those worlds probably exist and Earth used to be one such of these worlds billions of y4ears ago.And this is without getting into the history of the planet. Maybe the ocean world that's being looked at was an earthllkie world 100 million years ago and intelligent life survived the transition to to an ocean world.I just don't think ocean worlds should be completely written off as not possibly having technological life. They may even be the second most likely planet type for technological life to emerge based on what we know of earth life. As well, at this point, we also know there are a lot of ocean worlds in the galaxy and they are more common than earthlike worlds.
>>16869517>People often say ocean worlds can't possibly have technological life because they wouldn't be able to light fires under water. And harnessing of fire was the greatest human technology that enabled most of other human innovations.What would be there to stop intelligent life from learning to harness hydrothermal vents or create exothermic reactions underwater? Or a biotechnological civilization where instead of fire they do weird alien alchemy using enzymes?
>>16869836Probably because they'd need a level of technological development before harnessing these forces. And if they don't even have metallurgy it'll be hard
>>16869517
>>16869850You don't need any real technology to make basic use of geothermal vents, only some kind of primitive pincers so you don't get cooked along with the thing you're heating. And you don't need any technology at all if it goes the biological route I suggested. There are many chemical processes inside the body more elaborate than a fire. Why couldn't some of them evolve to become externalized and manipulable?
>>16869864Sure maybe wildly alien complex life is possible but I avoided getting into it because it would be pure conjecture. Like getting into stars and vacuums being habitable. I can make better guesses with a basis complex earth life.
>>16869517>Semi aquatic life>seals>beaversYou know who else counts as semi aquqatic life [spoiler]you, you fucking moron[/spoiler]If anything, non-aquatic life cannot survive in space because you need to swim to navigate in zero Gs. Astronauts train underwater for a reason
>>16869706>>16869850I get that technology without metal doesn't exist on Earth but I don't see why it couldn't be the case
