what about if their planet is doomed to never have o2, due to water being too scarce?
and water being rare would encourage things to be able to survive outside of it, and to be able to dissolve rocks in case they have water in them
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Aren’t oxygenless civs impossible to become spacefaring?
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the main reason that aerobic respiration is so much better than anaerobic respiration is that it releases all of the energy from the glucose, but there are way better oxidizers than oxygen, and combusting glucose with fluorine or chlorine, or fluorine peroxide, would release more energy and take less to start
and all it takes to have lots of fluorine in your oceans/lakes is sulfuric acid finding fluorite
even better though, fluorine can burn silica, so you could use F2 to use silica as an energy source, and have fluorosilicates as either a waste product or use them for a membrane or a shell
and a fluorosilicate membrane would make fully digesting you either: toxic, not worth it, or only doable by other fluorosilicate users
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Would fluorine be able to be used for metallurgy?
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yep, fluorine gas can even combust with water as well!
and ammonia
and literally anything that’s got electrons it can give away to fluorine, since it’s the most electron hungry element
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Is it/ would it be common enough though?
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I’m thinking that the society stage could be an alien in metal armour.
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So like an alien knight?
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