GEOGRAPHY | PART 1 | ATMOSPHERIC CIRCULATION AND FIRST CLIMATE DRAFT

PURE DESERTS, RAIN FOREST, OR ICY PLANETS? PROBABLY BUT QUITE UNLIKELY...

Hello there, Valent here, lets go down to climate/biome definitions before we make a map of our planet and stuff, and if you already have it, well, it may need some changes in it's climate.

Well, just before we go down to practical stuff, I would recommend a look into Edgar's (Artifexian) material on the topic, so here a list of his videos, not much more than an hour of watching videos and taking notes:

1. Fantasy Maps & Plate Tectonics

2. Ocean Currents: Terrestrial, Waterworld & Tidally Locked Planets

  

3. Atmospheric Circulation: Wind, Weather and Mordor

4. Worldbuilding: How To Design Realistic Climates 1

5. Worldbuilding: How To Design Realistic Climates 2

6. Worldbuilding: Climate Zones Of RETROGRADE Planets

7. Albedo: Mapping with Temperature

Nice, with that in mind, you might already have hand drawn your planet, or digitally made a map, I want to present you with Donjon SciFi World Generator, it creates customized maps and gives you a sample of stats to work with, like planet mass and atmosphere composition, all generated within a seed which could be random, or copied for later recover of the map stats.

The first map of Paart was been generated using Donjon, I will work it forward and backwards in time in order to represent each Era of Paart. So let's start with Paart during the Eoepertonian Period, which came looking like this:

If you haven't saved any of your seeds or stats, don't worry, we can recover much of that using the Image Color Summary, which tells you what are the color proportions in an image, since I haven't saved any stats, I am expecting to get landmass area (orange), icecap cover (white) and ocean area (blue), from it:

Oceans 66,6%

Landmass 23,3%

Icecaps are 10%

This method can be very useful in figuring out how much area a climate covers of our planet, after we color each climate.

Let's first take at look at our planet physical stats:

With a rotational period this long, 22,094h, we can much expect Paart's winds to behave pretty Earth-like, divided in 6 cells.

I also divided the planet's crust into 12 plates, that will be 1,8x as active as Earth's.

Plate Map: 

 

Here a globe gif:

Seems alright to me, so this are the Paartene Winds Cells:

And then, here are the Simplified Currents Map:

 

And now with enhanced relief and currents, ready to work on climates:

Here is the final climate map, as following the videos instructions:

The color purple is a new 'biome' native to Paart, is rocky sterile land of titanium/bismuth and aluminum/ferric compounds.

And here is how it ended up as the final approximation of natural color, note the grey tones of natural rock of titanium carbide in the deserts sand and the blueish shades of green of local vegetation.

 

Based on this rough albedo model, average and medium channels are 66 and 47 respectively, on a scale of 255, it means our values fluctuates roughly between 25,88% and 18,43%, by area ≥37,24% of our planet surface is responsible for directly reflecting light, clouds and land/ice.

By color code, the minimum albedo is  9,4% and max is 55,6%.

Since 18,43 our lowest average, and is 71,21% of 25,88, we could extrapolate a maximum of 33,12 for our albedo, and average Paart's albedo at 25,81%.

Which means Paart reflects ( 25,81 / 29 = 0,89 - 1 = -0,11 ) ~11% less light than Earth does...

Updating climate data for these new conditions:

Paart's average temperature would wander around 38ºC, 311K, or 100F, way hotter than the previous calculations on atmosphere (13ºC).

As such, atmospheric data at Sea Level: 0,948atm, ~38ºC, 37,13 moles per m³, air density 1,083kg/m³.

Composed of 81,34% N²; 16,51% O²; 1,2% Ar; 0,855% CO²; 0,065% CH⁴; 0,023% Other trace gases, an oxidizing atmosphere. Note the greenhouse situation with 36x more methane 2x as much CO² than Earth does.

Given the amount of work this took to accomplish, I consider making maps in 85~120Myr intervals.

Here are some pictures I took with my phone (oof reasons) rendered with PlanetMaker.

Paart's Western Hemisphere

Paart's Eastern Hemisphere

And a little bit of spoiler for what comes next in 38Myr...

 

 Bye, and good modeling ^.<

-M.O. Valent, 18/09/2019

BIOLOGY | PART 4 | THE PAARTIAN BODY-PLAN

PAARTIANS ARE HEXAPODS, YAY ...with teeth!

Last time we took a look at Paart, we skipped pretty much 4,2 billion years of history, which I am later coming back to, but for now, we head to what - on Earth - we call the transition from the late Pennsylvanian to the Early Permian period, it occurred about 300 million years ago.

The salamanders are no-longer the masters of the landmasses of Paart, but the pseudo-synapsids and pseudo-sauropsids, yes, I am using 'pseudo' because those terms are only applicable to Earth's life, terms like fish or reptile may be used eventually due to obvious similarities, but those are merely of comparative/familiarity choice, nor species of other planet are by far relatable to those of Earth even though convergent evolution made the same adaptations on both.

Remember Lisa? She and her other amphibian counterparts started to colonize the land during the Paartian equivalent of the Lower Carboniferous period. 

The Paartian body plan has been defined by the hexapods, as follows, a simplified design bellow.

Two eyes, one mouth, six censorial/mood/display antenna (detecting air variations, as they can't see through the UV mist), two ear-drums (not marked but located between eyes and antennae), frontal limbs closer to the body to grand fast push up and steering, intermediate limbs most apart from the body to avoid limb overlap and grater balance over cliffs and to crawl over rocky beaches, hind limbs extend longer than others and is the strongest of the limbs, it's position is quite efficient in burst-sprints to evade other predators over land.

This design evolved from fish that developed muscles in a manta-ray configuration, these muscles had the function of undulate in coordination in such way to provide impulse, like mantas do.

Like this...

This design later evolved to individual "mantas" or primitive fins, and later to fully formed fins, the continental drift that dried out several cyanobacteria colonies on the beaches, also created access to inland through bays, and atolls of dead stromatolites created shallow and safe waters for low depth fishes, those fishes needed to excavate to properly bury their eggs, and those further developed stronger muscles and more adequate sizes to the task, as follows, amphibians eventually appeared, leading to the Great Ancient Salamanders, like Lisa, and following these, creatures able to stride several hundred kilometers upon land and feed of insects and brachiopods, pretty safe having only to compete with other few dozen species that had achieved the same ability.

As well, like Lisa, those new Paartians would have inherited the magnesium based Porphyrin IX-rich metabolism, and sodium bismuthate reactions for energy acquirement, ie, purple blood cells with fairly yellowish secretions, most of them would have a quite dark skin marked by phosphorous UV marks, but that may vary later on as we will see in some million years...

- M. O. Valent, 04/09/2019

BIOLOGY | PART 3 | A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO EVOLUTION

IMPROVISE. ADAPT. OVERCOME!

Hell yea  E V O L U T I O N, finally we got there, been trying to come up with a consistent creature lineage for months and I and got it, be showing the first ones next post.

So, let's recap some of what evolution is:

- The process by which different kinds of living organisms are thought to have developed and diversified from earlier forms during the history of the Earth.

- The gradual development of something, especially from a simple to a more complex form. 

Nice, then let's fix some misinformation about it:

EVOLUTION HAS A GOAL, AND THUS IT "STOPS" WHEN THE SHAPE IT ACQUIRED IS "PERFECT" / EVOLUTION ONLY WORKS AT TIMES OF CRISIS.

No! It doesn't work like that. Evolution has no specific GOAL body-plan, but to shape it in a way to better suit to it's environment. Any given creature/species keep evolving even at "stable" conditions, crocodiles existed for millions of years and maintained a fairly regular shape, but they haven't stopped evolving, evolution doesn't always express in it's phenotype, ie, the part of the genes that are responsible for external features (crests, eye color, skin color, etc.), evolution continues to happen slower and more internally in a "stable" environment, crocodiles will continue to fight bacteria and viruses and develop resistance against them from generation to generation, rates of reproduction and means of reproduction will still be under miss-copying of DNA codes leading to variation, life works this way, because one day or another these variation ponds will be essential for the survival of the species. When a crisis happen, like rapid-changing climate or vegetation, which may affect a large potion of the gene pond, those changes are clearly more visible and if so happens, individuals will have drastic mutations variants compared to their predecessors, and those will have more chances to survive.

For instance, we have a certain set of bugs which colors range brightly from light green to red, and a storm takes some over to an neighboring island, where birds doesn't see much of red, due lack of red fruits in the area.

Birds will prey on light-green, and yellow bugs, but not much on the orange-red ones. After some generations, the entire species of bug will not "become" red, but rather, the green and yellow phenotypes, or at least the active ones will be long gone, letting only the ones with red coloration. The gene pond will be always there, if by some manipulation of the environment, say by removing any predators, the green and yellow will slowly come back to existence, although in small numbers. Some times in cases like these, the separated group become a totally different species, let's say, if the birds are eating these bugs because they're shaped like peas, then the newer bugs beside red, will also be more elongated like  grains of rice or peanuts so it doesn't fit well in the bird's beak.

There is a good reason why evolution is often misinterpreted this way, it is called Convergent Evolution, when two or more unrelated creatures converge into one similar design, see Dolphins - a mammal, and Sharks - a fish.  This argument also lead many of sci-fi writers and scientists at the early 20th century to discredit H.G. Wells in his book The War of the Worlds, which presents advanced alien invaders as octopus-like creatures with beaks. Those scientists discredited any alien representation under the argument of convergent evolution, that any other alien advanced enough to develop a society should resemble the human body-plan, as that would be some sort of requirement for success as an species.

EVOLUTION IS LINEAR, THE "MARCH OF PROGRESS"

Well, is very common evolution to be depicted by the march of progress:

Probably the first thing that comes to mind when we think of evolution besides dinosaurs and Darwin.

To state a species come right after another like in a domino trail is by far the worst depiction of evolution, and again, it subjectively states evolution has a "goal" body-plan.

An evolution representation that better suits reality and still, very pretty spaced because we can't list every single path, but the significant ones where we able to distinguish with our eyes, it is called a Cladogram.

Where at the base we have the common ancestor of all the above species, each bifurcation is a common ancestor of the upcoming branches, like the first Theropod, that may have resembled a bit of a small velociraptor or coelophysis, but from there begun the branches to the dylophosaur, t-rex, and ultimately, birds.

Some animals been there since the beginning of time, like mammals, we just come to shine in the last 60 or so million years, but mammals and their ancestry been present since the Permian period, 270 million years ago, take as great example, the Dimetrodon, yes it is not a dinosaur, is one of the ancestors of mammals.

And lastly:

EVOLUTION CAN TAKE CRAZY PATHS

Yes, it can, but consistently. You can't have six-legged and four-legged creatures coexisting in the same planet for long, one will eventually outpass one another, all Earth animals (wayyyy general case for non-arthropod) are tetrapods, ie, decends the four-legged ancient salamander.

A head, two superior limbs, two inferior limbs, two eyes, two hearing apparatus and a tail, characteristics inherited from the first tetrapod.

As well, if your planet has been colonized by a hexapod, or octapod, all animals proceeding this common ancestor should have a similar body structure, just re-scaled or lost limbs/parts.

 

Bye!

- M.O. Valent, 03/09/2019