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Blinded me with SCIENCE!

PeeDee

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Because I really wish we had a place, on AW, where we can natter on about the science of the world around us, some of which goes way beyond anything us meager sci-fi writers have even begun to cook up.

Here's a thread for it. I'll post a longer chatter about some fascinating creatures that live inside underwater volcano vents in a moment. It may take a second to type out. :)
 

PeeDee

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Right. So. The show I just watched, on my delightful Discovery HD, was focusing on a deep sea sub exploring active (and, more interesting) defunct volcanic fissures along the bottom of the Atlantic and Pacific, near the crevices of the tectonic plates.

What was fascinating were the HUGE swarms of creatures living on active volcanic fissures, which themselves are tall pillars that build and build themselves hundreds of feet tall as they boil away water, cool, leave deposits, and continue to spew.

All manner of creatures, in water that's 650 degrees, with almost four hundred PSI. There were delicate shrimp that lived to eat bacteria out of things which formed to look like bowls. The shrimp, who are not perhaps the brightest creatures, would dip in and out of the searing water, usually burning off their own exoskeletons and outer limbers.

...

What really fascinated me, though, were what happend when the volcanic fissures stopped spewing and went dead.

Of couse, all the millions of creatures who exist (impossibly) all died out. They couldn't move, they weree entirely dependent on this specialized enviroment, so they died out.

But when they showed footage of these defunct towers of sediment and volcanic ash....there are thin and glowing strands, like thick spiderwebs, stretched and draped across all of the sharp crags. And these creatures, huge and multi-legged and glowing pure white, who dispensed them.

Carrion eaters, of a sort. And so beautiful. I wish I knew what they were called, I'd find a picture of them to post.
 

veinglory

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I love the stuff around geological vents. That is where we found the first creatures in no way dependent upon the sun--and archeobacteria which are as difference from normal bacteria as they are from animals and plants. Crazy stuff.
 

PeeDee

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They sent a camera INSIDE the active volcanic tube and found inside, in temperatures and pressures that I didn't remember, but were unimaginably high. They were creatures, jelly like, in the shape of brains (really) with tentacles that sucked nutrients out of the nutrient intense water.

It was astonishing. It awed me more than most sci-fi has ever done. I'm a recent comer to science like this, and I'm blown away.
 

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Have you seen the Blue Planet series? I think that's what it's called. They focus on the world's oceans, and one of my favorite episodes that I've caught explored the undersea volcano colonies. Just amazing and so strange and alien--yet here it is on our own planet. I just checked out a book on deepsea exploration at the library, which I hope will discuss it too.
 

Little Red Barn

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Wow! Just shows what creatures can adapt to...I'm impressed by this stuff as well.
Thanks Pete!
 

PeeDee

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It's this unimginable deep sea stuff which comes to mind when scientists point out that obviously, nothing can live on (for example) Io, because it's got no atmosphere and it's all volcanoes and ash and so on. Or on barren asteroids, or on Mars, or anything. There's no air, there's no water, there's no life.

There are places in OUR world where things which we couldn't comprehend in a million years -- which are closer to Cthulu than to science -- exist in manners that shouldn't be possible. How on earth does a jelly creature survive in water that's upwards of five or six hundred pounsd per square inch? That shouldn't be possible. But it is.
 

veinglory

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I saw open where mineral made a sort of heavier lake under the sea with those tube creatures and all this stuff around the 'shore' where the two types of water meet. It looked just like seaweed on a beach.
 

PeeDee

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veinglory said:
I saw open where mineral made a sort of heavier lake under the sea with those tube creatures and all this stuff around the 'shore' where the two types of water meet. It looked just like seaweed on a beach.

I've read something about this. It pointed out that old wooden ships would only sink so far, which means in theory, they would be sailing along after a fashion on this heavier water at a depth that finally supported their weight.

Dead men sailing dead ships. It's a fun image.

I have no idea if it's true or not, though. If I weren't at work, I'd be posting all manner of links and photos to this thread.
 

Saanen

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veinglory said:
I saw open where mineral made a sort of heavier lake under the sea with those tube creatures and all this stuff around the 'shore' where the two types of water meet. It looked just like seaweed on a beach.

Ooh, I saw that too! I'd almost forgotten it. It was the most eerie and surreal image I believe I've ever seen--what was a very obvious lakeshore with shells and so forth along the waterline and (as I recall) even ripples on the lake, and then a FISH swimming ABOVE the water. Wow!

Was that the same episode with the blue whale skeleton and those horrible eel-like fish that can actually twist themselves into knots to get a better purchase on the rotting flesh they eat?
 

veinglory

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That was the one. I need to watch more Discovery channel :) -- but I have been lured over the the white rapper reality show. :(
 

PeeDee

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I watched NOVA when I was a young warthog, but now I'm almost obsessively watching Discovery, and Discovery HD. And History Channel. I get three history channels, and all sorts of Discovery-sort channels. I'm in hog heaven.

I watched a wonderful show on Vikings and how they navigated the oceans once they got out of sight of land. It was also fascinating. They knew the world was round, they understood the use of stars, and they had this amazing thing that looked like a sundial, except they would carve semi-circle lines in it, and so long as the shadow from the sun stayed more or less along the curve of the line, they could determine what course they were on and plot their needed course from there. Quite a lot more than north, south, east, west. They could carve new lines to mark frequent trips, for example.
 

PeeDee

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I wanted this to be a general science thread covering all manner of sciences....

...except for the bits I post, because at the moment, I'm utterly fascinated by deep sea life and living conditions.

I just read this:

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The elusive giant squid is one of the world's largest animals, reaching a length of up to 60 feet. It is the largest known invertebrate in the world.

The giant squid is a mollusk and is member of the cephalopod class, which includes the octopus and other squids. Very little is known about these mysterious animals because none have been seen alive in the wild.

Most of what we know about them comes from the bodies of dead squid that have washed ashore or been pulled up in fishermen's nets. These animals are carnivores, and will eat just about anything they can catch.

During World War II, stories from the survivors of sunken ships tell of shipmates being eaten by these creatures in the dark of night. There have even been reports of giant squid reaching out of the water and pulling men off small boats. None of these reports have been officially verified, but they paint a picture of a powerful predator.

The squid's eight long tentacles have strong suction cups which they use to hold on to their prey. A sharp, powerful beak finishes off their helpless victim with eerie efficiency. The giant squid appears to be a favorite meal for the sperm whale.

They have been found in the stomachs of dead whales and some these whales bear scars from the squid's suction-cupped tentacles.


I remember the giant squid (or was it a kraken? I must go research krakan's now) from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and I remember it terrified me. Particularly in the old movie versions. Reading about it is fascinating, and certainly spooky. Can you imagine it just reaching up and eating people, snapping them off small boats like delicacies off a tray? Urk.


[/FONT]
 

PeeDee

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A question, that maybe someone will know the answer to around here:

Only soft body animals can live at those depths such as jellyfish, sea anemones and other soft bodied animals.


Why is that? Thus far, all I have seen seem to indicate that the deeper you get, the softer-bodied the creatures get. Wouldn't it be logical to assume that you would need a harder and more durable exo-skeleton to survive the intense PSI down that deep....?
 

PeeDee

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That both fails to answer my question and makes me hungry for cheesy garlic biscuits....
 

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PeeDee said:
Why is that? Thus far, all I have seen seem to indicate that the deeper you get, the softer-bodied the creatures get. Wouldn't it be logical to assume that you would need a harder and more durable exo-skeleton to survive the intense PSI down that deep....?
My guess is that the pressure is so extreme that exoskeletons strong enough to withstand the external conditions would be difficult to grow, particularly if there were joints to allow mobility. There are deep sea tube worms that live in hard "shells", but they are anchored to rocks. To be able to both move around and live under high pressure, a soft deformable body (without any internal air pockets) might be the most practical construction.
It's this unimginable deep sea stuff which comes to mind when scientists point out that obviously, nothing can live on (for example) Io, because it's got no atmosphere and it's all volcanoes and ash and so on. Or on barren asteroids, or on Mars, or anything. There's no air, there's no water, there's no life.
I find "extremophiles" fascinating - not just the deep sea critters, but those that live at very high pH or low pH, in high temperature thermal vents or subfreezing temperatures, or eat oil or plastic or ammonia. I think all we can really say about life on Io or Europa or Venus is that it would be unlike any we know of on earth.
 

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Yeah I think we've all been fascinated by big squidy things and looked up the stories and stats. Bloody scary. They make sharks look like liberals who're prepared to sit down and listen to your viewpoint.

I've employed squids, lobsters and crabs (the big ones with claws, not the itchy little ones you need a cream for) to stunning effect in my many and varied Sci-Fi tales, unfortunately my avid readers have responded with gales of laughter rather than applause, the peasants.

Fluids don't compress* so a soft fluidic body seems logical for the immense pressure of the lower ocean depths.

*Oh go on, prove me wrong then.

-Derek
 

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Soft-bodied jellies and fish don't squish under deep-sea pressure because they're the same pressure inside as out. I've heard that many of them will virtually turn inside out when brought quickly to the surface, though, because of the change of pressure--although that may be a myth.
 

PeeDee

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Once you realize they haven't got internal air pockets, that makes perfect sense. I can see why they'd be able to live on those depths. The matter of the heat still fascinates me (why isn't organic material burning off at close to a thousand degrees?)

A fun sci-fi theory: What if we found a deep sea creature which we were able to transport and then set free, deep inside Jupiter's atmosphere, full of chemicals it can eat and live in, at a pressure it can survive at. Wouldn't that be cool? It wouldn't make a shabby sci-fi story, I think.

Fluids don't compress? So the ocean water would have the same parts per inch at 1000 feet down, as it does at 20 feet? So why does the PSI increase?
 

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PeeDee said:
Fluids don't compress? So the ocean water would have the same parts per inch at 1000 feet down, as it does at 20 feet? So why does the PSI increase?
The weight of all the water above, pressing down!

-Derek
 

PeeDee

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dpaterso said:
The weight of all the water above, pressing down!

-Derek

Sorry, I think I phrased that poorly. I meant, why is it with the increasing pressure of water as you get further and furthe down, why doesn't the water compress on a basic level?

I guess it can't. I guess you can't exactly have the molecules and atoms breaking down.

Hm. Hm. Hm.
 

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PeeDee said:
Once you realize they haven't got internal air pockets, that makes perfect sense. I can see why they'd be able to live on those depths. The matter of the heat still fascinates me (why isn't organic material burning off at close to a thousand degrees?)
Because in order to burn (another term for oxidize) a substance needs free oxygen molecules. The oxygen in water is bonded too well to hydrogen. (I think. Better chemists are welcome to correct me.)

A fun sci-fi theory: What if we found a deep sea creature which we were able to transport and then set free, deep inside Jupiter's atmosphere, full of chemicals it can eat and live in, at a pressure it can survive at. Wouldn't that be cool? It wouldn't make a shabby sci-fi story, I think.
I remember reading a piece by Carl Sagan, once, where he postulated beings on Jupiter might indeed be a lot like our sea jellies. Or, in the upper portions of the atmosphere, more like bags of gas (hot air balloon-like). Right up David Brin's alley. ;)

Fluids don't compress? So the ocean water would have the same parts per inch at 1000 feet down, as it does at 20 feet? So why does the PSI increase?
Think of it this way. Under normal experience, bricks don't compress much either. I mean, they don't change shape or anything in buildings that are several hundred feet tall. But, lie on your back and start piling bricks on your belly. You squish out way before you get hundreds of feet worth of bricks on top of you. Even if you take a sea jelly and put it on the sidewalk, it squishes out before you get more than a couple bricks on it.

So why don't they squish to nothing at the bottom of the sea? Because the sea is pushing on them equally in all directions. And, they're made of almost entirely of water, themselves. Somewhere else, you mention that beings with pockets of air in them (such as humans) can't survive well at great depths. That's true. Mainly because the air can't easily be brought up to the same pressure as the surrounding water. It is this high gas pressure that gives deep sea divers the bends when they try to decompress too rapidly.
 

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Small correction on one of the quotes above: Squid have ten tentacles, not eight... except...

On a cable doc the other night, which was about capturing the first photos ever taken of the giant squid alive, the narrator described the limbs -- unless I heard or remember wrong -- as eight arms and two tentacles. The two called tentacles are the two longer ones most squid have. These seem to be used for more grabbing and wounding of prey than the other, shorter eight. (Are tentacles distinguished by the presence of the suckers, maybe? The long tentacles of the giant squid have some mean, sawtooth suckers at the ends.) That was the first time I had ever heard that terminology. But the rest of my life prior to that, I had heard squid have ten tentacles, with two longer than the other eight.

Ah, since typing the last paragraph I looked up squid in Wikipedia and they repeat what the show said -- squid have only two tentacles. The other, shorter eight tentacle looking things are "arms." Well that's ink on my face.

From the looks of it, the giants are normally miles down. I imagine most of them get eaten immediately after they die, what with herds of sperm whales diving for them. That must explain why the remains they show scientists studying on these shows never seem to be the sailor-grabbing size from the cool sea monster stories of yore.

Oh, then there's a whole different species called "collosal squid" that is believed to grow even bigger than the giant squid.
 

benbradley

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PeeDee said:
Fluids don't compress? So the ocean water would have the same parts per inch at 1000 feet down, as it does at 20 feet? So why does the PSI increase?

The term fluids refers to both liquids and gases. Gases do compress relatively easily, and usually follow Boyle's Law (go ahead, google it).

Liquids do indeed compress a very small amount with an increase in pressure. The PSI increases as you go deeper because of the weight of the liquid above it pressing down on it.

Here's a little info on how much water and a few other liquids compress with an increase in pressure:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/tables/compress.html
Here's more than you wanted to know about the physical properties of water:
http://www.piercecollege.edu/offices/weather/water.html

When I was a kid I wanted to be a scientist, but I only turned out to be an engineer.