[TML] Waterworld Ecology

[Timothy Little]

On Wed, Oct 03, 2007 at 04:32:13PM -0700, royce at efn.org wrote:
>    If so, then what implications does this hold for waterworlds, if
> any?  Would a world ocean that is deep all over have less life than
> would a world ocean with shallow regions (say, submerged
> continents)?

I'm not sure; I haven't studied marine biology.


>    How might life have evolved differently on Earth if there'd been
> enough water to cover all but the high mountain ranges?

One possibility is that we may have had no life at all!  The early
Earth had a lot more water than it does now, and so might have had no
land/sea boundary if there had been much more water.  Most speculation
for how life arose on Earth focusses on the particularly interesting
conditions near the shores of early Earth's seas.


> 2. Also, what about storms?  How big might hurricanes get?  Could
> permanent hurricanes develop?

Permanent hurricanes are not likely to happen.  Hurricanes form and
survive only under fairly narrow conditions of atmospheric humidity,
instability, low wind shear, and high sea surface temperatures.

However, that is not to say that other high-power phenomena could not
be permanent features.  In particular, a hot, fast-spinning, highly
tilted waterworld with a few shallow basins and a dense atmosphere
would very likely exhibit atmospheric activity that would dwarf
anything on Earth.


> 3. VENUS, as in the Golden Age of S/F, when it was veiled in
> mystery.  If I include a Golden Age Venus in my subsector (call it
> Aphrodite), what might a continuously cloud-covered habitable world
> be like?

If the cloud cover was like Venus' - continuous and optically very
thick - then photosynthesis would be almost nonexistent.  I'd wonder
where the oxygen was coming from.


- Tim