Sunday 26 May 2013

Making Sense Of T'Kela

Would it really be possible to make a profit selling drink and spices after crossing interstellar distances at super-light speeds and negotiating with alien intelligences? It sounds like an astronomically expensive way to do it.

In "Territory," Nicholas van Rijn visits the planet t'Kela:

t'Kela's sun is a very old type M dwarf with few heavy atoms;

half an AU out, t'Kela is about 40% more massive than Earth with a low specific gravity but some iron and copper;

suns like t'Kela's emit so little ultraviolet that they do not energize "...primordial organic materials..." to interact very fast (David Falkayn: Star Trader, New York, 2010, p. 24);

so life starts slowly in the liquid ammonia oceans;

it usually uses carbon dioxide and ammonia to photosynthesize carbohydrates and nitrogen, the latter breathed by animals;

but, possibly because of some catalytic agent, life sometimes evolves differently, for example on t'Kela and, in another planetary system, Throra;

oceanic ammonia hydroxide contains some liquid water;

t'Kelan and Throran plants use gaseous carbon dioxide and "dissolved" water to photosynthesize carbohydrates and free oxygen;

animals reverse this process but a specialized molecule holds the released water in their tissues so that plants have to retrieve it from decaying organisms;

oxygen from plants attacks ammonia but slowly because solid ammonia sinks to the bottom of lakes and oceans where it is protected from the air;

gradually, "...ammonia and oxygen yield free nitrogen and water..." (p. 25);

water freezes, seas shrink, air loses oxygen, deserts grow;

on Throra, a bigger planet with a denser atmosphere, therefore more heat conservation, nitrogen-fixing bacteria halted the drying-out a billion years ago;

on t'Kela several thousand years ago, so much ammonia was lost that the greenhouse effect, dependent on carbon dioxide and ammonia vapor, was significantly reduced;

increasing quantities of ammonia solidified and fell to the bottom where they were protected from melting;

carbon dioxide seasonally condensed or even solidified;

plants, needing carbon dioxide and ammonia, died and animals with them;

continent-sized areas became barren, agricultural civilization was destroyed and nitrogen-fixing bacteria were annihilated;

higher animals will be extinct within a thousand years, all life in ten thousand;

however, human beings from Esperance will reintroduce nitrogen-fixing bacteria;

a microagricultural program using soil chemistry will produce a suitable ecology;

the Esperancians will also melt and electrolyze water, releasing oxygen both to refresh the air and to burn t'Kelan petroleum, thus generating carbon dioxide to strengthen the greenhouse effect;

released chemical energy will supplement newly installed nuclear power stations "'...to do the electrolysis and to energize the combination of hydrogen from water with nitrogen from the atmosphere, recreating ammonia.'" (p. 27)

The Esperancian Joyce explains this process, then t'Kelan society, to van Rijn, thus enabling him to deduce why t'Kelan and human psychologies differ. He articulates some basic insights about the evolutionary and biological bases of psychology but these will have to wait until a later post.

7 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

Quite complex, the description given of t'Kela's ecology and environment in "Territory." And it's esp. admirable how Poul Anderson was able to put all this data in a short story without it looking clunky and clumsy. And I also thought Anderson's description of the sociology and politics very convincing.

Sean

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi,Paul!

I forgot to add that Poul Anderson speculated in his Technic History stories that interstellar trade would focus focus on luxuries, rare and costly goods easier or cheaper to import from other planets than to make at home. And works of art also comes under "luxuries." The planet Trillia, for example, is mentioned as producing charming art works valuable enough for a League ship to drop by that world once a Terran year or so. The Trillians used these exports of art works to pay for various items of modern technology as they slowly modernized themselves. And of course there would be exchanges in ideas, philosophies, faiths, etc.

So, yes, I think there could very well be a market for things like wines, spirits, spices, etc., which both human colonized planets and a fair number of non humans as well would import from Terra.

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Yes. I do not understand all the data about t'Kela but that is because my understanding of nitrogen and ammonia is limited to non-existent. Either I just assume that the author knows what he is talking about or I try to come to grips with the information by studying it like this. The next stage, of course, would be to read up on the chemistry.

Also, I agree that PA does a good job of rationalising interstellar economics.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

Like you, Poul Anderson knew far more about biology, chemistry, physics, etc., than I ever had learned.

To round out my comments about interstellar eoncomics, I should haved added I agreed with Anderson that a reasonably well endowed stellar system would be self supporting. That is, both a human colonized world or planets inhabited by non humans would produce most of what they need in bulk for survival (such as meats, grains, fruits, etc.). Altho some worlds (such as Nike) might be so metal poor that it limits what the settlers can do if they are unable to import iron, steel, copper, gold, etc.

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

"Margin of Profit" tells us, "Automation made manufacturing cheap, and the cost of energy nose-dived when the proton converter was invented. Gravity control and the hyperdrive opened a galaxy to exploitation." Same point in different words in the revised version. Thus, he makes it plausible that production (mainly of luxuries, agreed) could happen on a vaster scale then before without ceasing to be profitable.

Jim Baerg said...

I'm not sure Anderson gets the physics of an ammonia rich world right.
If there is a lot of both water & ammonia, they will dissolve in each other, & I doubt any world with much ammonia will have less water. So the oceans will be an ammonia-water mix with each component being a few 10ths of the total.
Here is an ammonia-water phase diagram I found.
https://media.cheggcdn.com/media/36d/36ddc039-e133-4fc3-b2e1-647c5aacef97/phphBJsl4.png
Robert L. Forward wrote a novel about human explorers on a world with ammonia-water oceans, "Flight of the Dragonfly" in which the complexity of that phase diagram & the way some of those ices will float & some sink under different conditions becomes a plot point.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Jim!

It's a pity you can't discuss these points with Poul Anderson himself. I think he would have either convinced you the chemistry of t'Kela was viable or you would have shown him a flaw or weakness in the story.

Ad astra! Sean