PLANETARY MODEL | PART 3 | ENERGY BUDGET

THE ENERGETIC BUDGET OF YOUR WORLD

Seriously, Planetary Energy Budget should be in the BUILDING BLOCKS-section but, I guess is too far away from basic stuff, although is something you should care about anyways.

Imagine an aquarium, the fish inside can only grow as large as the amount of food you give them, or a garden, where plants will only grow as large as the minerals available in the soil.

Getting it? Now try picture all of the energy coming from the Sun, and how it flows across the atmosphere, the sea, the soil and biomass, the chain that starts with chemicals born in the atmosphere, absorbed by plants, absorbed by plant eaters and then by YOU... What may seem practically infinite, is an enormous but FINITE amount of energy, given to us through sunlight...

Our ENERGY BUDGET, is basically the measurement of how much is are allowed to happen in a certain place given the available amount of energy.

The same way a plant won't grow well (will certainly die) only with indoor lights, plant-life won't grow well around star that is not as luminous as the Sun, or the same way bacteria on your gut won't evolve beyond their current state because their energy budget is limited to our body heat and food, life on a world too far away from it's star (like the moon Titan) will have it's energy budget limited to it's internal heat and chemosynthesis.

 To prevent THIS from happening to your planet, in other words...

OK.

Earth's ENBUT ("ENergy BUdget" + "inpUT") happens to be 100 units, or 1.360 W/m² facing the Sun.

How those 100u are spread across Earth

Luckily, we always measure everything relative to Earthly values...

If our star has L = 0,5, it outputs half the energy / light as our Sun.

Thus, the amount of light that reaches a planet 1AU away is basically half as Earth's, ie, probably it's capacity is around 1/2 as Earth's.

I said probably because we need to take into account how large it's illuminated side is, what can be made with quite an ease, having the maps and previous calculations ready.

For the overall reflectivity/absorbency of the energy by your planet, I suggest you to pic your map/texture (clouds included), greyscale it in such a way your ice-caps' (if you have some) RGB goes up to 255-255-255, then blur all of your image, blur it until it look like a "single homogeneous" shade of grey, divided its repeating code by 255.

If for instance it's final average tone is 170-170-170, follow as 170/255 = 0,66, then your planet is able to absorb around 66% the light it receives, then it also reflects about 34% the light it receives.

The more Earthly your planet appear to be, the more closely it will distribute its energy like Earth does:

1/3 reflected back to space.

1/6 absorbed by the high atmosphere.

1/3 used by the water cycle.

1/6 directly absorbed and radiated to space by ground.

Now that you have got this proportions, we have to find if at least your planet can maintain a reasonable water cycle, since the movement of water in our atmosphere is the big climate player. Since we know that an Earthly atmosphere could still hold enough heat to maintain liquid water.

Take 1 ENBUT Unit as 13,6 W/m2.

Still, with that half luminosity planet as example, at 680 W/m², our ENBUT is about 50 units.

If 1/3 of that is used for the water cycle, we have about 16 units for that, which is half as the used on Earth, if that planet holds as much water as Earth then most of it is very cold or frozen, unless the planet has little water available so that is enough to run it well.

Compare this to warming a liter of water over a stove, the stove is energy by the Sun and the water is water available on Earth. Now if our planet has a liter of water but is heated by a smaller stove burner, then it won`t boil at all or not so fast at least, but if we have less water on the pan using the same small stove burner, then we can boil it faster if not at the same rate.

It is a very interesting thing to think about, imagine aliens that come to Earth but have to eat a lot more than usual because our food is less nutritious coming from a dimmer star than theirs. Or the reverse, we having to farm on Venus due the greater ENBUT available there.

Keep in mind that Oxygen reactions gave life more energy to grow and evolve, past 3Byrs without breathing Oxygen they were stuck in single-celled life, then when it happened, BOOM, in 600 million years life got multiple cells, thrived in dry land and went to the Moon.

<.< this is why Superman is kinda weird since our yellow sun is actually dimmer than Krypton`s Red Giant, if his powers depend on the star light, then he would be stronger under a Red Giant...

Expect worlds with a large energy budget to have extreme weather/life, in the sense of great rainstorms, brighter auroras and stuff, or life to be flourishing at amazonian levels everywhere, while planets around dimmer stars are stuck into rather simple and small beings.

In Paart's case, being 1,11AU away from Vol, it's average lighting is about 65% Earth's, so Paart have about 65u to spare, I define, ~16u which is bounced back into space 'cause of clouds, ~18u used for the water cycle, ~21u absorbed the dark ground and ~10u absorbed by the thin atmosphere.*outdated*

Here we have it, as far, Paart uses half of the energy Earth uses for it's oceans, being of similar size and having as much water, it is expected to have more calm oceans, with at least with half the waves strength and stuff, which I'm going to let like it is, because still water is more likely to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, hence CO² breathers we mentioned before.

As well, it is absorbing 1,26x more energy on ground, since it is darker and have a larger surface area than Earth, opens an interesting possibility, because the amount of plant-life and artificial buildings can directly alter the planet's albedo and thus it's climate.

- M.O. Valent, 23/05/2019

BIOLOGY | PART 2 | THE WORLD OF LISA

DESCRIBE YOUR WORLD, WHAT RESOURCES ARE AVAILABLE FOR LIFE TO USE?

 WARNING, THIS TOPIC IS VERY EXTENSIVE !
[and requires further study]

This post is a thought experiment, and does not properly reflect the canon biochemistry of Paart

 

Just remember what elements makes up your planet's crust, what kind of weather favors some to appear as some kind of mineral. What is your star light output and so on. For instance, Paart has lots of Titanium, Silicon, Aluminum and Bismuth, so expect them to be all around

It is a cool day of summer, the seas gently roar as the waves break at the rocks made of titanium silicon carbide bearing plenty of anorthite... The wind take away the gas and fume from the few active volcanoes at the horizon. Nearby some ancient rocky structures rest to the sun, those lifeless buildings once harbored the bacterial ancestors of all Paart's lifeforms, 1 and half feet of continental rise doomed them to starve eons ago, and now some of their offspring thrive to colonize the land along with few algae and biotic paste made of photosynthetic bacteria.

As the waves wash out the black sand of titanium carbide at the beaches of Paart, something moves, it is not the wind, not the water, is a living being.

It's slimy dark skin with yellow bright spots is washed out from it's eggshell and sand, it barely knows it is alive, the newborn salamander-looking hexapod is a female, she made an unimaginable effort upon birth, she may now rest under Vol's light.

The world is now 4,2 billion years old, and to then, all of life's history have been told in Paart's seas...

She is awake, after resting for about 5 hours at the sun, let's give her a name... Lisa.

Lisa's species and their close relatives have been laying eggs in the beaches for safety from the fish and other predators, like turtles do. But Lisa, her brothers and sisters, cannot return to sea yet, it is a too savage world for their delicate existence, it is why they're born with lungs and filters, to breathe both air and water.

By air I mean carbon dioxide, and small amounts of ozone and oxygen gas.

Lisa move around her triangle-shaped head, she cannot see, the sea haven't washed her nicely, she opens her indigo-colored mouth (tinted by her magnesium porphyrin IX rich metabolism) and sweep her long tongue all over her head again and again, until she managed to catch the egg membrane blindfolding her, her first meal, although it was supposed her to feed from the algae and biotic paste around, which is rich in oxygen compounds for her young metabolism...

Atmospheric oxygen and oxygen bonded on this algae is enough to execute some basic tasks in her body, although the main source of it still the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The compound NaBiO₃ is a strong oxidizing agent that can be used as energy source in other reactions like breaking food. This dual diet of algae and meat can ensure that the young will not compete with adults for food and that adults don't deplete the food supply when it is low.

 

Her bright green eyes, which ports a pentagonal pupil muscle, finally see the world, her species along with several predatory animals need to distinguish their prey among the colorful algae and coral, some animals try to be invisible tinted in ultraviolet pigments, but she can see them, she has 4 types of receptors, ~730nm red, ~665nm orange, ~535nm green, and a special rod with Bismuth-based pigment.

Lisa at the sunset, made by me

What is the sky color for her? And what is the sky color if you, an human explorer could be sat on a rock there?

If Paart's atmosphere is similar to that of the Earth in an overall sense, it is certainly blue for a human, and a copper-grayish gradient for Lisa, since she has no blue cones, she can't see blue, thus, the sky for her is made of the few yellow and red photons that manage to go through.

If a human standing beside could see as she sees, although the true horizon stands 4.8km away, it couldn't be really seem, for the current fauna, Paart is a hazy world. Why? Because short wavelengths like ultraviolet scatters too much in the atmosphere, which means that light bounces and refracts on the particles way more than ordinary visible or radio, seen by us as a sort of haze that blends the clouds to the sky, cutting the visibility down to 2km at the best estimate.

 Some altered images to simulate what Lisa sees...

As well, if some creature could see in the infrared spectrum, then it would see crystal clear, with the effect that gases like carbon dioxide, methane and ozone would seem pitch black depending of the wavelength band you're in, the sky would definitely be dark as night because there is almost no scatter to longer wavelengths.

Infrared, unlike visible and UV light, doesn't depends on the sun or artificial sources to be present, that's why it is so useful in night googles used in modern warfare, some creature seeing in infrared could easily track their preys' body heat.

Then why not we evolved to see in infrared? Or ultraviolet? Why a great slice of animals with eyes sees in the visible light or it's extremes (near UV and near IR)?

In fact, it is a matter of simplify life, to make less effort to stay alive.

Ultraviolet light is harmful to life for its high energy photons, often bringing photo-dissociation to our sugars and DNA. Although today some animals see in ultraviolet is rather unlikely that early life with eyes use ultraviolet. It hits our molecules too hard, unless you have some serious biology to deal with it, like melanin that re-irradiates it as heat.

This might seem slightly off-topic, but take a microwave, or that parabolic antennas that are made not from entire piece of steel but from a sort of grid. The microwave door is covered with a grid, to block microwave wavelengths from going through and cooking your eyes, the grid on the antennas does reflect radio wavelengths back to its receptor.

Now here is the thing, red light is around 700nm in wavelength, 700nm is a big structure, but is achievable due our body size, we can build a sensitive structure that is this wide and be strong enough to support the energy of red photons, but if we wanted to see infrared like at 900nm or at 2μm, we would need a way bigger structure to catch it, if we wanted to see in radio waves, we would need the space between out photo-receptors to be 1-5mm wide like the antenna's grid, and because our eyes are not that big, we wouldn't be able to catch enough light of those infrared radiation so it is useful to us, and to nature, what is not useful to a living being is lost, it is wasting too much energy to have few feedback.

And also, our Sun emits lots of green light, if light help our perception of the world, then is logical that we would use it to increase our survival chances. See Color Vision.

   

For ultraviolet vision is a kinda funny story, there is a two way down to deal with it, either you absorb it and re-irradiates it as heat, or do you reflects it back to the environment, ie, you glow in ultraviolet.

Plants that produces those kind of pigments that are not perceivable I'm visible light but glow in ultraviolet suffer two effects, they are ignored by those with near IR and Visible vision, but preyed by those with UV vision, and the ones that happen to produce it where it can be spotted and useful, like pollen and fruit UV markers can thrive and pass those genes on.

Small animals are more likely to see in ultraviolet because the amount of space needed to support a certain amount of data is smaller, if your eye is 1/2 the size of a human eye, your retina is 1/4 the area, tho at the same proportions of human cones and rods you would see 1/4 of the light we see, unless you raise this cone/rod density changing your structures to see shorter wavelengths, and it wastes less energy to your body size.

That is why Lisa and her relatives have yellow spots, secretions of sulfur and phosphorus compounds are yellowish and bright in ultraviolet, those and other kind of salts help retain water on the creature's skin, and it's secretion of ortho-phosphoric acid grants a protective coating against the dry weather of the surface and harmful bacteria, this acid syrup is pretty weak but enough to cause some burns to human skin if handed unprotected.

That explains the blue gap in her sensors, the sea is blue already, her species and other predators don't need that useless input of data, but they need green because they feed on algae when prey is not around, red and yellow help see their relatives and mates with ease.

As the rocks are darker they absorb and re-irradiates IR with ease, thus, seeing in IR would not be really advantageous, since a creature could easily blend their heat signature into the environment (like in movie Predator, but more accurate).

Yet, if her photoreceptors are made of bismuth compounds then, as bismuth-based pigmentation is stimulated through ultraviolet radiation, the bismuth nuclei of the pigments gets excited and emits it's spectrum back, ie, glow inside the eye, as those wavelengths are in the green, orange and red bands, it works as photomultiplier for UV light into visible spectrum.

For now, it is all.

- M.O. Valent, 17/05/2019

PLANETARY MODEL | PART 1 | BASIC CLIMATE MODEL

CLIMATE MODEL OF YOUR WORLD

Being 4,2Byo, Vol is a main sequence star, bearing 80% the Sun's luminosity and pushing Paart into the mid-HZ.

The planet receives ~72% the light Earth receives from the Sun, what sounds bad 'cuz is a little bit more than what Mars receives and it is pretty cold.

Paart has lots of Titanium, Silicon, Aluminum and Bismuth, combined with Oxygen and Carbon, those can form black rocks of Titanium silicon carbide, Titanium carbide, a black sand made of carbon and titanium, anorthite, a mineral rich in aluminum crystals, and of course Bismite ores.

But that is where enters the magic if physics and chemistry my friend, proportionally, Paart's average temperature should be around 10 degrees Celsius if it had Earth's Atmosphere, but remember the color of the rocks?

They're black, and dark colors absorb light re-irradiating it as heat, at the time, Ozone is not so present and UV and X-ray help warming up the place, with lots of volcanism, even at 4,2Byo Paart has a great balance of greenhouse gas emissions.

Talking about greenhouse effect, the few gases we have proportionally in our atmosphere warm the planet up by ~33 degrees Celsius, without them Earth would be freezing at -18 degrees in average.

Earth at 4,2Byo had a proportion of around ~35% Oxygen to ~65% Nitrogen.

That peak of 35% occurred during the Carboniferous when plant-life over produced Oxygen while consuming the Carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere and volcanic soil.

At the time, Earth average temperature was ~20 degrees Celsius.

Note, our current average temperature is around 15°C.

At the Carboniferous the amount of Carbon dioxide was around  800ppmv, or ~3x times Pre-Industrial Age (~280ppmv), today the average concentration is around ~410ppmv.

Lets assume for a moment that Carbon dioxide is directly related to global temperature, WHICH IS NOT, but we will take that to a future post.

We need ~12,4ppmv per 1°C increase in the global temperature, as taking from -18°C to our global average 15°C.

And then ~80ppmv per ~1,5°C increase to reach the Carboniferous 20°C average at 800ppmv.

(reality shows roughly ~100ppmv per ~1°C).

This change in scale is needed probably due to the atmospheric pressure, when the air can't get any denser in order to increase it's heat transfer capacity, unless you have some serious amount of CO² like Venus.

Anyways, we can consider any value between 400 and 1000 as "Valid" within 10°C margin.

Using this model I poorly made, we can tell a certain range of temperature increase for certain amounts of Carbon dioxide in a Earth-like atmosphere pressure/basic composition.

I don't want to flee much from Earthly standards, remember when I said stromatolites are dead due continental rise? We can say that by this time the Great Oxygenation Event didn't happen in Paart, life went on after the stromatolites died and life on Paart didn't needed to breath oxygen at all, they can use all that available carbon dioxide to obtain the oxygen gas and carbon needed for their metabolism to work nicely, that's why I choose some kind of amphibian-like creature to start, not only because it is the age of the first tetrapods hexapods, but because they can breathe through their skin, releasing some methane and carbonic gas as output of their functions.

Carbon absorbed through respiratory system can easily make up the pearl-looking bismuth oxides, the dark-blue copper compounds in shells of marine animals, scales of armored fishes, teeth and claws of other animals, like some deep sea worms actually have.

In this case, Paart's atmospheric carbon dioxide content may be around 855ppmv.

For now we stick with the average temperatures ranging from 10° to 30°C.

If you plan an earthly biology going around, keep it below 1000ppmv (0,1% atmosphere).

UPDATE

A planet's average temperature relative to Earth is given by:

Where T~Earth = 1 = 255K, L is the luminosity of your star to the power of 1/4 and D is the distance of your planet to the star in AU to the power of 1/2.

In this case, Paart is T~0,899, or about 228K, or -45ºC, what makes sense of a planet without any atmosphere, as said Earth is expected to be at -18ºC without an atmosphere.

But, the formula doesn't take into account, the Greenhouse effect, the more far away from 288K you get, the less reliable it will be, so comes Indiana's Planetary Temperature Calculator.

Using Indiana, the result is around 30°C, pretty close of what we previously established already, hence I would recommend calculating your Greenhouse effect into the amount of carbon you have, at 855ppmv, I consider Paart as having ~2,08x the greenhouse effect than on Earth, hence -15ºC + 2(33ºC) = 51ºC, but Paart only receives as much as 64% sunlight as Earth, then 51ºC*0,64 = 32,64ºC, which is also into the range we defined earlier.

Good modeling, bye :)

- M.O. Valent, 13/05/2019
- M.O. Valent, Updated in 09/09/2019

BIOLOGY | PART 1 | PILLARS OF LIFE

PILLARS OF LIFE

Before going crazy spreading weird creatures like it's the Cambrian Explosion, let's first take a quick look at how life goes from Primordial Soup to some primate on a computer reading mah blog...

WARNING, THIS TOPIC IS VERY EXTENSIVE !

Time counting scale reading:

1Ky = 1 Thousand years (Kiloyears) ; 1Kya = 1 Thousand years ago.

1My = 1 Million years ; 1Mya = 1 Million years ago.

1By = 1 Billion years ; 1Bya = 1 Billion years ago.

No, not there yet buddy...

Lets come back to our planet...

Mine in the case, during the course of this blog, every biology stuff related to Earth-like planets will be centered in the planet Paart, from the Vol System. Not at random that Vol can mean VOLUNTEER.

Being a pretty complete system, and around a pretty old star, we can study and make observations about the entire evolution of simple star systems and life within them.

As said in previous post, Vol is a star old enough that Paart could start life from ZERO 4 TIMES before Vol turns the system uninhabitable. That's exactly what we are going to do along the blog, explore 4 possible scenarios for life to develop before a catastrophe ruin everything.

Just to catch back from where we left, here is the Vol System:

And here are the planets to scale:

I have never defined Paart's body data, so lets do that...

Planet image is a young-Venus made by me

SYSTEM BASIC ORBITAL DATA:

VEEK   -   0,31 AU

HOOL   -   0,58 AU

PAART -   1,11 AU

COMET -  2,15 AU

SEEY   -   4,20 AU

LAHAART  -  8,26 AU

I can figure out the other system's planets in future topics about planet types...

During the formation of the Vol System - pretty much like our Solar System and other young systems we are able to observe - there was chaos, rocks and vapor wandered around the young star, starting to condense and form the primordial blobs of rock and gas that gave origin to at least ~100 planets in the first 250My of existence, some get ejected out the star system by gravitational resonance of major bodies or get fused together, other may be cracked out in asteroid belts and ejected in very elliptical orbits that take WHOLE EONS to complete a lap around Vol (spoiler alert, there will one of those soon).

Pretty much every rocky planet goes through a phase called HADEAN, after Hades, the greek underworld god, often described as a hellish landscape, is the chaos phase during planet formation, I think there is no much need exactly tell how it happens, just a bunch of hot rocks crumpling around into bigger rocks, keep in mind from last post, that it takes usually ~500My for a planet similar to Earth in size/mass to cool down enough.

Bellow, some images made by me...

By the time Paart is cooled down, at age 550My, Vol as young star shines with roughly 25% less energy than Main Sequence, which means that for now, that its habitable zone lies between 1,29AU and 0,43AU, in our best scenarios, Paart is currently on the outer edge of the HZ.

Also means that Vol is a smaller star by 10%, being currently 1,19 million kilometers wide.

What takes us to the...

FAINT YOUNG SUN VOL 'PARADOX'

What we currently know about young stars?

They are very active, believed that the early life of stars are as Flare Stars, when the magnetic field from nuclear fusion carries away lots of atmospheric material from the star and throws it away to outer space in bursts of plasma, X-ray and alpha particles (Helium nuclei), known as Coronal Mass Ejections.

pretty much like this...

Today, a few of those are bright and powerful enough to do some damage to Earth, and when it happens, it shoots to any other direction but Earth. When the Sun was younger it happened more frequently, and of course it hit Earth a dozen, a hundred, a million times during 1 to 2 billion years...

The Earth is ~4,5By old, just count back ~2By and we found that Mars probably received a so powerful charge that it lost it's magnetic field and atmosphere (helped by asteroid impact in the northern hemisphere led to core cooling and thus, no volcanic activity to renew the soil or melt remaining ice).

SO WHAT?!...   >:/

 SO WHAT that this GIF never been so accurate lol

The atmosphere of the early Earth as we can read from rocks were pretty different, formed by Nitrogen gas and Carbon compounds, almost no Oxygen, which means NO OZONE.

With a more violent Sun, and no ozone, x-ray and ultra-violet can easily reach the surface of the planet, and heat it up, not only by being in the most energetic range of the Electromagnetic Spectrum, but by Photo-dissociation, high-energy photons can easily break the chemical bounds in any compound, as the most abundant reactive one was the water in Earth's oceans, we have now a source of Hydrogen gas and mono-atomic Oxygen.

Which reacts with the Nitrogen gas creating Nitrous Oxide (N2O) which is ~300x more efficient in holding heat than Carbon Dioxide (CO2), also, Hydrogen gas reacts with mono-atomic Carbon to create Methane (CH4) which is ~30x more efficient than Carbon Dioxide, Hydrogen Cyanide (HCN), and Ammonia (NH3), along with Sulfur compounds.

During day-time this intense radiation bombardment would eventually also destroy these compounds, at night with a very active magnetic field due reaction to strong stellar wind and flares, free electrons can create ecumenical storms around the young Earth since there is not great continents that can stop winds and tsunamis, electrical storms can restore greenhouse gases broken during the day at night and maintain a reasonable balance of heat required for rain to fall down with those chemicals into the oceans...

"the entire world is now an ocean"

 

As Vol ages, radiation bombardment gets less frequent and eventually allows the "photo-greenhouse cycle" to be broken.

By the way, ~4Bya is possible that Venus beared with the same conditions as Earth, remember the young flare-Sun? Now remember some geology, gases get trapped in rocks, rocks tell us what kind of atmosphere Earth had at the time they formed, we can't yet study a rock from Venus, BUT, we now have some idea...

During the Hadean of Venus, as well as Earth's and any other rocky worlds, gas and rock vapour were free to circle the ball of flaming rocks that was Venus, those gases got trapped in its rocks, and through Photo-dissociation those gases can be released to the atmosphere, we know that Venus lacks free oxygen and oxygen gas, that makes up ozone, no ozone means free way to high-energy X-ray and UV light to release trapped gases from surface rocks. Venus may had oceans like Earth, even shallow ones would do the work, water combined with sulphur compounds makes acids, like sulphuric acid, which corrodes more rock, releasing more greenhouse gas.

Not being protected by an ozone layer means that when the greenhouse effect evaporates all its water to the higher atmosphere, it will be dissociated into Oxygen and Hydrogen gas, later combined with Carbon to make carbon dioxide, or be mostly wiped out to outer space, and maybe, captured by early Earth.

The now ionized toxic gas atmosphere of Venus is full of carbon dioxide and vitriol clouds by the same effect that saved Earth from being a snowball in it's early days.

Personally, I advise you to when making calculations about planetary distance to star, attempt not making it too close to its star, being at the HZ doesn't make it habitable, account this Flare-phase of your star to it, too close and photo-dissociation will turn you planet into a Venusian hell too fast, too far away and it won't happen at all and turn your planet into a radioactive desert like Mars, unless it's your intention from the start.

Attempting making similar compositions for your planet's crust as it is from Earth, changing some few percent can be game-changing already for biological and physical purposes.

By now, is utterly good that our planet Paat lies on the outer HZ.

Archean Earth by Norbert Toth on ArtStation

How our planet might look by age 640My...

Paving the way...

Here are some vids to help you understand how chemical soup turns into LIFE:

CRASH COURSE BIG HISTORY #4

OPARIN-HALDANE THEORY

 

MILLER-UREY EXPERIMENT

CHEMICAL EVOLUTION <- MY PERSONAL FAVORITE

RNA WORLD HYPOTHESIS

And some inspiring history of our planet:

Earthly Universe (15 parts)

The first life...

OKAY, the Coacervate (some times called Microsphere), is formed from naturally occurring fatty acids layers bent into a sphere, which isolates the inner room from the outer world. This coacervates allow new chemical reactions to occur inside them, but they're not alive YET.

A ribosome

A ribosome is 'nothing more' than entangled molecules than replicate other molecules around.

Modern cells uses ribosomes as a jack-of-all-trades, need some protein? Ribosome can do it! Need some fatty acid? Ribosome can do it! Need some RNA? Ribosome can do it! Need a girlfriend? Ribosome CAN'T DO IT . _. <sigh>

You got the picture here... Oversimplifying, a coarcervate is dumb/primitive ribosome that is able to reproduce even tho not being alive, how?

Ever blowed a soap bubble in a way it split in two or more? If no I recommend you to test it yourself.

Not exactly like a soap bubble, but a coacervate is made of fatty acids bent into a sphere by hydrostatic equilibrium and water polarity, if you have/absorb/inject too much content into a coacervate it will naturally split into two, that's why it was initially thought to be alive, it grew, reproduced and had movement.

Coacervates are nature's blank canvas for life, or like test tubes for a chemist, they are places you can make reactions and test chemical systems.

Chemical reactions need energy to occur, it can be already stored in the chemical bounds of the reagents, or provided by an outer source, like heat from a lab stove or sea chimney, or light from a lamp or the Sun.

Earth's oceans had turned dark brown/purple with the primordial soup, created with the chemicals from the atmosphere that rained for millions of years. Dark colors absorb light, which means that our oceans had turned into a warm "rotten" fluid that goes as far you can see the horizon. Earth's atmosphere was full of ions created by the radioactive bombardment of the young-Sun, as well ones created during thunderstorms, ions need counterparts to stabilize, so once those ions reach the water, they're great starters for chemical reactions near the surface.

At the bottom of the ocean, we also have ions along with volatile substances that are essential in supplying coarcevates with material for making their stuff, cooking new molecules inside them.

Molecules that overreacted to the environment of the coacervate, eventually destroyed it, which means that it can't continue to react, the ones that helped the overall structure to keep itself "alive" got reproduced along, as coacervates fuse during collision or heating those isolated chemical substances get to react together and if doesn't destroy the new environment it is allowed to continue existing, and yes, that's a parallel with plasmid transfer that some bacteria and archaea actually do for survival.

I'd like to say that Earth's early days were like "Sandbox Mode" for pre-life things, you got a very energetic environment when all you need are some dozen calories to exist. Those things went crazy testing the periodic table around and mixing recipes, until we have something complex as ribosome being born, and oh boy, yeeeee boyyyy, what do you think it will happen if a pretty advanced coacervate swallows one that is able to build its own stuff instead of just selectively absorbing pre-made parts???

PROTO-CELL! By absorbing the right kind of 'pseudo ribosomes' you can have your own "organelles".

Early Earth's atmosphere and seas was full of what??? Simple stuff, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, acetates, formates, methanol and methylamines.

once most of sunlight is blocked by the soup itself, energy can be drawn from those compounds reactions, this creates Methane, and then you have your first methanogens, develop a way of preserving this recipe, like chunks of simple RNA, and they later can evolve into the first archaea that are far better in doing that.

Note: Methane is a greenhouse gas, and as such, it raises water vapour into the atmosphere, water later dissociated by UV and turned in some small amount of Ozone and hydrogen gas, of course, depending of its concentration it can be harmful or not to the biosphere bellow.

Remember I said the ocean is now purple? Purple is on the energetic side of the visible spectrum along with blue, as well ultraviolet. By nature this thing is ridiculously dangerous for our proto-cells and our archaea. Ultraviolet and X-ray broke the water and rock apart for millions of years, that's why we now have hydrogen and a handful of greenhouse gases in the air in the first place. We (first life) want to keep that away.

As the waters beared with all types of 'creatures', mostly reflecting the UV like a hot potato through the water. We can assume that some unprepared little ones obviously got dissolved when hit by ultraviolet, and some reacted to it, hydrogen and carbon are required to make methane inside of what we now can call a CELL, there is also water along with other chemicals. When ultraviolet breaks water inside the cell it releases hydrogen and oxygen, we can also assume it may break some carbon dioxide, when those react at some proportions you have either alcohol, which kills the cell from inside, or SUGAR, which can be broken later for ENERGY.

Hey little cell, you just figured out Photosynthesis!

Now you just need to do that again, and again, maybe create a substance that reacts better with UV and increase your food production, you now can be either red, black or green. WAAAAIIIIT!!!

OH NO!

I think we just released some oxygen gas into the atmosphere, and that stuff is toxic for you anaerobic comrades. Sorry, it was a pleasure to... To... Swim around with ya?

The Phylogenetic Tree of Life

Even tho your story doesn't directly involve a swimming microscopic being, remember The Phylogenetic Tree of Life, that small change in the environment eons ago will give some microscopic life certain apparatus to be inherited by its offspring over the phylogenetic tree. 'Cause, it doesn't make sense any alien species having some special ability if their planet's fauna, their phylogenetic relatives doesn't have it, even to some extent.

History of early life doesn't have to end here (yet), what if instead of conventional photosynthesis, they used the chlorine cycle? Or Helium hydrate as agent for reactions? Or still, leading to breathe hydrogen compounds (hydro breathers are a topic I actually used in one fiction story I wrote). Imagine the possibilities of biological warfare for the sea control before it evolve into moss made of styrofoam or PVC, even white blood of titanium oxide.

Whatever weird chemistry your aliens may have, it starts here, in a warm pool containing all sorts of chemicals and amino acids, set at the sun, in a warm world, under a strange sky...

- M.O. Valent, 03/05/2019