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Waterhabitat

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Mon, 2009-07-27 01:19

GregH

Waterhabitat

Seeing that we have uplifts from octopi, dolphins, and whales are there any habitats out there that are soley their own? The mental image that comes to mind is something structurally similar to H+ ideals, but with most of the habitable region being water and air (maybe a cylinder with a central core of air and a perpetual wave produced by spin). Obviously there will room for locals to store stuff and manipulate objects... but it ain't going to be some titanic aquarium for visitors to gawk at the inhabitants... Shamu isn't jumping for fish to entertain you and wants you off his property! Anything like that about?

Mon, 2009-07-27 02:11

kylleran

Well there's Europa...

I don't think we have any habs that are specifically aquatic outlined in the core book, though there are a few mentions of them iirc. There is also Europa one of Jupiter's moons which has liquid water far beneath its frozen atmosphere.

—

Brian Cross
Posthuman Studios

Sat, 2009-08-15 22:24

thefnord

Europa.

One of the problems would be that the water is kept in a liquid form thanks to the tidal heating effect caused by Jupiter's, to use the technical term, ginormous magnetic field. It's not as bad as Io, but in the current (No pun intended) case it's Europa and perhaps Enceladus' watery element that interests us.

The lacks of atmosphere on both those moons means the upper layer of water is frozen solid; the enormous gravitational pulls however move that ice in gigantic plaques on a nigh-constant basis, leading to huge, dynamic cracks in the surface. The hypothetic liquid core underneath the frozen crusts would make for a brilliant habitat for uplifted marine species with the proper technology.

-tF

—

Lorem ipsum dolore sit amet, motherfucker.

Wed, 2009-08-19 02:02

doctorbadwolf doctorbadwolf's picture

is the water oxygenated?

is the water oxygenated? Would this present a significant hurtle?

Wed, 2009-08-19 15:20

thefnord

Not as oxygenated as a fishtank...

....but enough to support life, I'd assume. It's not like it's dihydrogen monoxide or anything. : )

(I'm guessing if you're here you have more than half-a-clue, but just in case; water is H20. Which means it's two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. By default, there's oxygen.)

—

Lorem ipsum dolore sit amet, motherfucker.

Wed, 2009-09-23 22:36

saaxilk

Re: Waterhabitat

There is a comic, "Ocean", by Warren Ellis, and the story is about "something in the sea" in jupiter moon europa. Nice story, although a little to fast in the development

Mon, 2009-09-28 13:18

puke

Re: is the water oxygenated?

doctorbadwolf wrote:
is the water oxygenated? Would this present a significant hurtle?

thats actually a good question, and if its not oxygenated it would present a hurtle for basic biological life. its not like gills can break appart molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, after all. presumeably a technological colonist or something heavily bio-engineered could find a way to survive, possibly off other elements. if the technology exists to make sun whales, then it cant be too hard to overcome this. perhaps with ambulatory fungal bottom feeders that suck nutriants directly out of the seabed or something like that.

Mon, 2009-09-28 13:26

Rasumichin Rasumichin's picture

Lithoderms

According to the core book, there's an abundance of native marine life below the icecaps, mostly giant colonies of lithoderms (comparable to terrestrian corals). As there's no natural light source, i'm certain that these marine ecosystems will be based on something else than photosynthesis- probably the foundation for Europan ecosystems is chemosynthesis, as it is found in some deep-sea ecosystems on earth.