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Post by Atrox on Dec 6, 2015 23:18:16 GMT
www.newscientist.com/article/dn25894-meet-the-electric-life-forms-that-live-on-pure-energy/How cool would it be to have organelles in the game that will allow our cells to gain energy from electricity? I would imagine we would gain these organelles by engulfing and assimilating other microbes that consume electricity. I can imagine in the multicellular and aware stages you can specialize certain cells to allow your organism to gain energy from electricity as well. Of course for repairing and growing your organism would still need to eat some kind of matter, but energy would be gained from sources of electricity. This could lead to some interesting behaviors, such as storm chasing organisms, and could even lead to electricity being discovered early on in the Industrial stage or even as early as the Society stage. What do you guys think?
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Post by bigbombr on Dec 7, 2015 6:41:31 GMT
It would be cool, but would it be useful enough? Lightning is too powerful to capture, and aside from lightning, how much electrical charges are there in nature that can be safely harnessed? Evolving this would require an investment of resources, and is there any chance this would pay off? I see it only working for microscopic parasites which wrap around the neurons of their host. It would be a nice augmentation in the space/interplanetary stage though.
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Post by mitobox on Dec 7, 2015 7:19:14 GMT
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Post by bigbombr on Dec 7, 2015 12:42:49 GMT
Directly feeding on electricity seems to be a thing for single-celled organisms. But I don't think it's viable for multi cellular organisms (except maybe later as an augmentation, long after your species managed to harness electricity). |
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The_Wayward_Admiral
Spacefaring
The_Real_Slim_Shady
Atrox drew this awesome image of the Keldori!
Posts: 1,011 
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Post by The_Wayward_Admiral on Dec 7, 2015 13:07:11 GMT
It sounds (from the article) like these bacteria strip their electricity from reactive metals. So while I completely agree that lightning would produce dead organisms nine times out of ten, I think that it's plausible for a lithophage to derive energy this way.
Edit: Also, these things are super cool!
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The_Wayward_Admiral
Spacefaring
The_Real_Slim_Shady
Atrox drew this awesome image of the Keldori!
Posts: 1,011
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Post by The_Wayward_Admiral on Dec 7, 2015 13:10:17 GMT
Although as I say this, there would still be constraints on the size of the multicellular organism, unless it produced an electron transporter that could operate in blood plasma without loosing to much of the electron's energy en route to the cells.
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Post by Atrox on May 19, 2016 3:07:04 GMT
So I remembered this thread and had some more stuff to say: I gave an example of storm-chasing organisms, but one thing I didn't think of when I posted this was autotrophic organisms. As The_Wayward_Admiral said, lithophagic organisms could get electrons by stripping it from reactive metals in the earth, so picture this. A plant-like organism that assimilated electrosynthetic bacteria has a large root that burrows directly into the ground beneath it to find said reactive metals and strip them of their electrons. Electroplasts then use the electrons to provide energy for glucose production. It'd be like if the player chose a thermoplast in the beginning of the game, except instead of heat they look for electromagnetic energy. |
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Post by early0000 on May 19, 2016 20:48:26 GMT
I believe in a previous post I discussed on another thread I talked about having organisms with helium compartments to float. I would love to have a sort of "Sky whale" that lives off lightning and small organisms.
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Post by Atrox on May 19, 2016 20:55:45 GMT
As others have said, lightning might cause more harm than anything, though with LAWK turned off, maybe lightning rod creatures isn't impossible.
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Post by lowry on May 21, 2016 15:22:12 GMT
*cough* silicon based lightning rod life *cough*
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Post by Atrox on May 21, 2016 15:52:33 GMT
*cough* unfortunately silicon based life won't be added into Thrive, as cool as it would be *cough*
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Post by Narotiza on May 21, 2016 16:19:55 GMT
There's always mods
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