We began this study with a set of basic rules for the development of intelligent tool using life – as we know it. We said conditions must allow for,
a) the availability of liquid water, b) the planet would need to have an average surface temperature between 0º and 60ºC, the freezing point of water and the temperature at which protien is denatured, and c) the planet’s mass should fall within the range of 0.25 and 3x Earth’s mass.
We went on to determine cloud cover, albedo and the associated range of solar constants.
We learned how to calculate the planet’s orbital radius, it’s day and year length.
We considered the intelligent alien’s morphology, it’s height, body build and general need for protective skin pigmentation.
We determined what class of main sequence stars could support a life giving ecosphere and learned how long these stars would remain stable for life to develop.
Now it time for our mind’s eye to float down and settle on these alien worlds.
As a child awakening in a new world, we’ll begin to tie together the things we learned from, a) conditions on mother Earth, b) our understanding of bio-organic chemistry, astronomy, atmospheric physics, etc.
Using the SRAPO construct, we’ll now begin to draw and label images for what we may expect to theoretically find on a given alien planet.
Within complexity lies basic uniformity and structure is related to function. Structural shifts occur within the matrix of complexity, but the matrix remains uniform in function. Mr Larry
The patterns of temperature, precipitation and atmospheric circulation carve out the basic land environments on Earth; we can expect these factors to play equally important, roles on other worlds.
As we go through our early years of schooling, we learn to associate terms like, ‘equatorial wet forest’ with an area that is hot, wet and jungle like. We call the Sahara, Gobi and Mohave deserts-‘deserts’. Our language can tend to limit our understanding of alien worlds, because we tend to classify environments with a name associated with a mental picture of that environment.
When we are creating planetary models, we need to associate environments with wholistic patterns, combining average planetary surface temperature, atmospheric circulation, illumination levels across the latitudes and biological adaptation. We need to think of an environment as a process and biological adaptions as shifts with in the matrix of interplay between the given planetary and solar parameters.
By definition, a desert is a region left unoccupied; waste, barren; it is also an arid region lacking the moisture to support much vegetation. Our perceptions of a ‘desert’ relate to the later narrow description, yet in a broader context we can define other deserts, as;
• Aquatic Nutrient Desert: Where there is a lack of available nutrients; such conditions exist on Earth’s ocean surface, beyond the continental shelf.
• Cold Desert: The continent of Antarctica.
• Arid Desert: The arid Gobi, Sahara, Kalahari, Rub Al Kahali, Mohave deserts, etc.
• Heat Desert: As located on some of our warmer planetary models; heat is the biologically limiting factor.
• Illumination Desert: Located near 90º latitude on very warm, low axial inclination planets. Perpetual, extremely low levels of illumination are biologically limiting factors, unless nutriens feed into the illumination desert from biologically active areas.
The pattern in which each of Earth’s biological communities have developed was influenced by temperature, precipitation, atmospheric composition and circulation, axial inclination, planetary mass, stellar spectral class, the existence of other orbiting bodies (‘moon’, binary star system), etc. If we shift the values of any of these variables on Earth, there would be a direct impact on the morphology, size and distribution of our biological community, changing them away from what we hyave considered the norm. The norm that we find on extraterrestrial worlds will have developed under their own interplay of planet-star conditions. Intelligent, tool using creatures may seem quite different