2 ms·
You don't need land to have fire. It's enough to have photosynthesis producing free oxygen. That produces an energy store at the water-air interface. That wo
by lisper 6y ago
You don't need land to have fire. It's enough to have photosynthesis producing free oxygen. That produces an energy store at the water-air interface. That would lead to life forms evolving to take advantage of the benefit of living at that boundary and that would eventually lead to the formation of biological rather than geological land masses.
Hm, sounds like a good premise for a SciFi novel. :-)
- isaacgreyed 6y agoI may be misunderstanding the free oxygen part, but if that's the case why doesn't that happen in our ocean?
- lisper 6y agoBecause it's easier to harvest free oxygen on land. So since we have land, free-oxygen harvesters live there. Then they turn around and eat anything close to the surface that could evolve into a land-equivalent. But on an all-water planet, the putative bio-land makers would not have to compete with actual land-dwelling creatures because there wouldn't be any. [UPDATE] Just to be clear: there's obviously no way to know whether this would happen. I'm only arguing that it could happen, and so lack of land is not necessarily a show-stopper for industrial civilization to emerge.