Fun topic; evolution into a technological civilization under water

[Tatian]

I am an enormous fan of science fiction as well as science and know it's less likely that a technological society would develop under water, but if you can think of a way for it to happen, maybe it could happen in nature.

Technological to the point of star travel is what I would like to work up to. A bit of a reach as we haven't achieved that and we don't have the challenge of living under water.

There are a lot of challenges, and I am just as interested in the challenges an intelligent race would face to get into space and travel the stars as I am in what you do to overcome them.

Sense there are so many considerations, assume the conditions on the planet this oceanic species lives in is the same as the earth for the sake of making this a little more simple.

When I think of this topic, it is really difficult not to try and take our tech tree and force its development in the water. The difficulties to this are obvious and frequent.

1. Fire? This is not going to happen. You have to replace this source of heat energy if there is going to be any kind of smelting. Calcium Phosphide? Quicklime? Perhaps they would learn to use hydro-thermal vents as a kind of forge.

2. Electricity? This might be even tougher than fire, though perhaps they would observe it in their own habitat, such as an eel. I know eels are fresh water creatures, but its not so difficult to imagine a salt water version of it.

3. I could envision getting up to star travel taking twice as long as it would take a tech civilization on land. They would most likely first conquer land before they got to the point of travelling to a star, and may have some trouble conquering the land for some time. Imagine one of our astronauts trying to fight a hostile animal that evolved in space. This may be a good analogue to a member of a water bound civilizations first encounter with a lion.

I can think of a couple advantages, too, though both of them are are on the far end of the tech tree, if humanity were used as the measuring stick.

1. The Ocean has abundances of Deuterium and so if they could get that far, they might be able to create nuclear reactions quite easily, leading to an understanding and employment of nuclear technology outpacing us.

2. Even further along on the tech tree, assuming an aquatic star travelling race could develop, it is foreseeable that, much as we fill our ships with atmosphere, they would do the same. Water makes for a great insulator against radiation, something that is a very large concern for travelling in space for us. This is frequently not mentioned in all our science fiction, but this remains one of our largest problems, albeit one that is further down humanities to do list and rightfully so.

Over all, it is difficult to imagine our tech tree developing under water. It's easier to assume that, if one developed at all, it would be something different that lead them to the stars. It's just difficult to imagine something that would be so alien to what you are familiar with. However, I would love to read some thoughts on this too.

This is entirely imaginative, so please feel free to barrow a creative license on this.

 

[Standing_Ultraviolet]

I don't imagine the issue with metals having so much to do with generating the heat to smelt them (like you mentioned, if a society had volcanic vents, it could probably eventually figure out how to use them as forges). I think that the major problem would be with making good metals. To make high quality metal products, you have to be able to control the temperature, the time the metal spends at that temperature, etc. Underwater, that takes on a whole new dimension of complexity.

I wouldn't rule out the possibility of a technological society developing underwater, just because the scale of the Universe suggests that it might have happened somewhere. Still, I would imagine that it's extremely rare if it does happen, and it probably takes a very long time to occur.

 

[metherion]

Well, remember, we have critters like electric eels who biogenerate electricity, and humongous amounts of bioluminescent fish here on earth. What we might see is an underwater society raising them and farming them and selectively breeding them, at first for food and defense but later to harvest the responsible organs and use them for... whatever, once they figure out what electricity is and what it does and whatnot. Especially if they've explored the upper ocean, and see lightning and wondered what it is/does, assuming they have weather like we do, they'd eventually probably figure out the link between the small scale zaps like electric eels and the big scale zaps like atmospheric lightning.

Metherion