05-17-2014, 09:14 AM | #11 | |
Join Date: Dec 2010
|
Re: [Space] Panspermia and the Campgaign
Quote:
I think panspermia is a perfectly fine explanation for having compatible biochemistries on neighboring planets, in a "soft" sci-fi game. As a rigorous theory it has numerous problems, but so what? Rule of Cool it for maximum campaign enjoyment. If you want to make it a little more rigorous, you can always opt for "Ancient Astronauts" notions - an ancient civilization developed space travel, seeded the system, then collapsed (for whatever reason... space plague? Gamma ray burst? whatever). Leaving the descendants of the organisms they brought with them on all the worlds they visited. Some places look just like the earth-analogue, some look quite different. You can posit intelligent life, closely related to humans (as the descendants of old colonists, sent back to the stone age and unable to bootstrap themselves up to UT without fossil fuels left by past epochs that didn't happen on non-earth-analogue planets), or not. It's your game! A more serious answer to your questions: Unless they're evolved for it, you're not going to get terrestrial seeds clinging to meteorites. On the other hand, what's to stop the whole system from being seeded by some exterior source specifically evolved for interstellar distribution? Lots of fiction has space-based organisms, or organisms with a partly space-based life cycle. Something like this: a great interstellar tree approaches the main star of the system eons ago, but is shattered by a rogue planetoid. Pieces of its destroyed body, with all the attendant microorganisms, parasites, and symbiotes that usually ride with it, fall to ground on most of the planets in the system. The great tree is gone, but conditions on the proto-worlds are similar enough to the host for some fraction of attendant life to survive. Everything gets seeded at the same time, all the biochemistry is roughly similar, and when intelligent life evolves on of the planets it finds that its neighboring worlds are strangely (or not-so-strangely, probably, from their perspective) hospitable. As for the sentience problem, it's only as much of an issue as you want to make it. As another poster mentioned, we've been on this planet for several billion years (for a loose definition of "we") and only one technological species has evolved in all that time. So hey, if you don't want there to be sentient species on the other planets, there aren't. If you do, then there are. it's your game, and either is just as reasonable as panspermia in the first place. |
|
05-17-2014, 09:29 AM | #12 | |
Banned
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: a crooked, creaky manse built on a blasted heath
|
Re: [Space] Panspermia and the Campgaign
Quote:
:) |
|
05-17-2014, 11:48 AM | #13 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
|
Re: [Space] Panspermia and the Campgaign
I'm sure it didn't go from Earth to Mars and back (there's no real mechanic that would allow rocks to be ejected off of Earth), but you'll get a significant number of meteorites that have been colonized after landing.
|
05-17-2014, 11:50 AM | #14 |
Join Date: May 2013
Location: Ellicott City, MD
|
Re: [Space] Panspermia and the Campgaign
Large impacts have no issue launching rocks at escape velocity. So, yes, the mechanic certainly exists.
|
05-17-2014, 11:53 AM | #15 | |
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Vermont
|
Re: [Space] Panspermia and the Campgaign
Quote:
Also large volcanic eruptions like Tambora. Is that incorrect?
__________________
My ongoing thread of GURPS versions of DC Comics characters. |
|
05-17-2014, 12:30 PM | #16 |
Computer Scientist
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Dallas, Texas
|
Re: [Space] Panspermia and the Campgaign
That's not the whole story; pre-life Earth did not have a breathable atmosphere or surface water and you can see how Venus has a similar distance from the sun but a very different condition from earth's current one.
|
05-17-2014, 12:34 PM | #17 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
|
Re: [Space] Panspermia and the Campgaign
Quote:
Bill Stoddard |
|
05-17-2014, 12:36 PM | #18 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
|
Re: [Space] Panspermia and the Campgaign
Quote:
Bill Stoddard |
|
05-17-2014, 12:45 PM | #19 |
Join Date: May 2013
Location: Ellicott City, MD
|
Re: [Space] Panspermia and the Campgaign
Breathable to us? No. For anoxic life? It was perfect!
|
05-17-2014, 01:41 PM | #20 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
|
Re: [Space] Panspermia and the Campgaign
Hm. I may have overestimated the difficulty, it looks like at least some astronomers think it's possible.
|
Tags |
evolution, space, system generation |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|