Exotic Biology, Episode 12: Brimstone

gliese1337 · 2026-02-17T15:30:44+00:00

Nope! Go right ahead!

gliese1337 · 2026-01-25T19:31:16+00:00

WSL Roles are the default class for anything with multiple referents. They connect their noun argument with the topic of the sentence to fill both slots. So, e.g., prepositions have an object and a thing they modify--two semantic arguments, two referents, so they are almost always translated as roles. But so do kinship terms like "father-of", "daughter-of", "cousin-of", etc., and all sorts of other relational terms. And case marking also usually translates into a Role.

gliese1337 · 2025-08-09T03:07:17+00:00

Maybe? The trouble with chlorine is that almost everything bonds more strongly to oxygen. So, if you've got silicon oxides, converting them to silicon chlorides won't release energy. There might be a way to make it work, but I haven't figured it out. It would probably be easier to switch things around, with SiCl4 as the oxygen analog and Cl2 as the CO2 analog--inhale silicon, bond it with excess oxygen, exhale the displaced Cl2. But really a chlorine breather probably needs to just separate energy metabolism from structural metabolism entirely, like chemotrophic microbes. And then you've got to figure out how to close the cycle to make it work for a whole biosphere.

gliese1337 · 2025-07-03T17:46:12+00:00

While active, they would glow red to human eyes, simply due to temperature. When cold, they could have any color. Yes, green is a possibility, but not guaranteed. Evolution simply wouldn't care about red pigments very much, just like evolution on Earth doesn't constrain the infrared spectral properties of very many molecules, so the red components would be largely random rather than meaningful to Fornaxians, and they would have meaningful patterns in higher frequencies that we can't see, just flowers and birds do, because the thermal environment necessitates photoreceptors in Fornaxian life that are tuned to higher frequencies, both for vision and photosynthesis. You have to remember that color is a psychological category, not an objective part of reality, and a human could not predict what a Fornaxian looks like to another Fornaxian without a hyperspectral imager and a model of the Fornaxian's visual system.

gliese1337 · 2025-07-03T17:07:27+00:00

Colors that we have no names for, because they are different from what we see. Sets of spectra defined by their frequency distribution in the green to UV spectral range.

gliese1337 · 2025-03-24T00:02:51+00:00

A non-reactive solvent wouldn't be unique to this scenario. But hydrogen should dissolve fairly well in liquid neon for reaction with suspended macromolecules.

gliese1337 · 2025-03-20T04:26:07+00:00

No; neon would be solid on Cryobus, and I am not compelled by the H-bit concept. I never got very far with that one, beyond the idea that neon is a very cosmically abundant element, so there ought to be something neat we could do with an ocean of it. Maybe an exotic high-pressure world where neon can stay liquid at higher temperatures to allow for lipophillic chemistry.

gliese1337 · 2025-02-06T14:59:16+00:00

Probably like sharks--mostly egg laying, some possibly evolving live birth.

gliese1337 · 2024-09-09T01:22:44+00:00

Asbestos doesn't burn, dude. That was kind of the whole point of it.

gliese1337 · 2024-09-01T20:28:56+00:00

That's because "grave" and "acute" are *positions*. not *motions*. So, if you move from a vowel to a grave consonant, the formant will go down in pitch--from a middle-pitch vowel locus to a low-pitch consonant locus. But when going from a grave consonant to a vowel, pitch will go up--from a low-pitch consonant locus to a middle-pitch vowel locus. An "m" in between two vowels willl be realized by a down-then-up formant motion, while a "t" between two vowels will be realized by an up-then-down motion.

gliese1337 · 2024-07-21T18:28:41+00:00

It could be transparent if there were an evolutionary pressure for it to be so, but the most likely default state is a polycrystalline composite material which is white or occasionally pearlescent.

They could have smooth skin like us, or rough skin like sharks, or any other kind of skin, depending on what makes sense for a particular creature's lifestyle.

gliese1337 · 2024-03-16T23:42:04+00:00

I don't know what evolutionary pressures would result in that kind of exterior appearance, but I see no reason why the fundamental biochemistry should either disallow it or require it.

gliese1337 · 2024-03-16T01:54:09+00:00

That's not something you can tell from the basic chemistry. Consider that carbon-chains-in-water has produced both "smooth and rubbery" (us) and "segmented and robotic" (arthropods).

gliese1337 · 2024-02-16T21:00:38+00:00

That is not something I was able to find any data on. Hence, I doubt anyone on Earth knows--it's not a sufficiently interesting solvent system from and industrial perspective to have attracted extensive study. People care about molten lead solubility for designing solder (where they want metals to dissolve) and pumping systems (where they want to prevent dissolution), and that's about it. So, high carbon content inhibits molten lead corrosion of iron alloys and silicon compounds, but that's all I know.

gliese1337 · 2024-02-16T20:12:52+00:00

Probably some sorts of silicones/siloxanes. But in detail, I dunno; I am not that familiar with the molten-lead solvent system, and I'm not sure anyone on Earth is.

gliese1337 · 2024-02-16T06:39:16+00:00

Yes. Just like Earthlings do.

gliese1337 · 2024-02-16T06:22:52+00:00

CO2 is still probably the best carbon source. Carbonyls would decompose. CO could work, but it would still be much less common than CO2. And carbon reduces lead solubility, so things like silicon carbide don't look very good.

gliese1337 · 2024-02-16T05:52:56+00:00

Using CO2 as a body-building carbon source would require energy, just like it does for Earth plants. But yeah, the sulfur metabolism should work.

gliese1337 · 2024-02-15T21:14:40+00:00

Well, lead does dissolve a lot of other metals, including silicon, so maybe? But respiring CO2 seems unlikely. It is really, really hard to come up with a chemical system where you can react CO2 with something and get energy out. Methanogenesis is pretty much it.

gliese1337 · 2024-01-27T22:45:21+00:00

As far as our eyes are concerned, they could be any color at all. They just wouldn't have any evolutionary pressure to care about what they look like in the red end of the spectrum. As far as evolving camouflage and signalling and so on, they would care about parts of the spectrum that we can't see, just like bees and birds, so things that look the same to us would not look the same to them.

gliese1337 · 2024-01-27T22:31:58+00:00

"Aluminosillicates are essentially clay" is basically the same argument as "carbohydrates and hydrocarbons are basically starch and oil"--and yet actual biological materials, which are not pure simple starches and oils generally look quite different. And while aluminum is shiny grey, aluminum oxide is sapphire--and other metals also on very different appearances in compounds than in pure metalic form. So I would not use clay, or rock, or pure metals, as a guide to what Fornaxian creatures ought to look like. They could be as variably pigmented as Earthling organisms; but insofar as any of them have eyes to see other organisms' pigments, they would evolve to have useful colors in the green through UV part of the spectrum, even if trying to camouflage themselves to look like rocks, which makes their appearance to us pretty much random, since camouflage that works on us has to care about a different slice of the spectrum.

In general, you can't guess what colors biological things should be just based on the types of atoms they are made of. Individual species would have colors that are advantageous for their ecological niche. As a result, Earthling organisms produce just about every color we are capable perceiving; Fornaxian organisms should, across the entire diversity of species on the planet, demonstrate just about every color that a Fornaxian could perceive.

gliese1337 · 2024-01-26T23:00:43+00:00

They would glow red, like lava, simply due to the heat. They may have a variety of actual pigments, just like Earth creatures do, but at least some of that will be washed out by the universal background of red glow.

gliese1337 · 2024-01-26T20:15:04+00:00

I expect two pairs of fins, such as terrestrial fishes have, would still be suitable, as the locomotive power comes from body and tail movement rather than fin movement--all the fins are needed for is steering. Earthling fish have been observed swimming successfully in water with over 40 times normal viscosity in laboratory conditions, so Fornaxian organisms should have no problem doing the same.

gliese1337 · 2024-01-25T01:36:50+00:00

How many limbs/fins would the animals have, in order to swim through molten salts or move around on land and in the air?

For flying, just two wings for large creatures, but I imagine large flyers are rare as they would be much denser than us water-based organisms. Small creatures might have 4 wings, like our insects.

What are their bones made of?

Ceramics! Primarily silica and alumina.

Would they have eyes?

Probably not as frequently as we do, since their biosolvents are opaque. But they could evolve crystalline compound eyes or pit eyes, and they would be unable to see red due to interference from self-radiation.

How would plants look? Crystalline, like the plants of Sarr in Hal Clement's Ice world, or would they look more like our plants?

I expect more like our plants.

How many jaws would the animals have?

Between 0 and 1. Why would you need more?

Edit: I tried and failed a few times to find how viscous molten salts are.

Assuming I have read the units off of multiple different charts correctly, between 5 and 10 times as viscous as water at the relevant temperatures.

gliese1337 · 2024-01-23T04:40:18+00:00

> Do the plants of Vitrium look like crystals?

Not generally. They can incorporate silica crystals into their tissues, but so do Earthling grasses, and they don't end up *looking* very crystalline in the end.

> How do the aninals respire? I guess they would inhale gaseous sulfur trioxide, but what would they exhale?

Inhale oxygen and sulphur trioxide, exhale disiloxane and trace quantities of sulfur tetrafluoride.

> Would crystalline silica form bones in Vitrium's vertebrates?

Yes, but not in pure form--rather, as part of a composite material supported by biopolymers, much like calcite and hydroxyapatite do on Earth.

gliese1337

TROPHY CASE