An epipelagic creature might be able to build rafts and other boats, which could be used to house smelters and other fiery things. They could discover this fire, by experimenting with dried stones and plants
So, umm, sorry about this but I gotta criticize this. You didn’t seem to get the specialization arugument: why could humans make 0s and calculus? I mean, they were just concepts that barely did a thing for our immediate survival. I mean, what about rockets and Turing era computers? Simple, we had stability. Einstein and Fermi could work on things that were important as they didn’t have to make food. Recall when we made siege engines, even just wooden ones? Well into the bronze age. Why? As Arcamidies didn’t have to spend his time on food finding, and why is that? Metal. Before the discovery of metal everyone needed to gather, of farm, or make obvious advancements, and if metal is this hard to make its a not obvious enough. Also I found out that fish swim bladders are sometimes full of oxygen, so if you popped one in a bubble you’d get some oxygen in there.
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Wait, do you claim that underwater cities can not keep with technological specialization because the needed technologies aren’t obvious enough? If you want to submit specialization so a species has nothing better to do, they’ll just need supply of essential things to live which is achieved by farming items. If you want specialization I imagine you give everyone easy access to essentials so they won’t have to work hard for it themselves, and then you’d just need some sort of idea passing system (or school) so people gain knowledge through others. This causes interest in some of the most random things and eventually some individual will gain interest on it. Governments and human-like political forms usually don’t pick up on short term benefits except to boast, but anyone else could. After the individual gains certain material and sufficient amount of labour their project will be done. Just to be clear, the steam engine and metal forgery didn’t start specialization, they’ve only amplified it by spreading ideas. The real starter was agriculture which allowed people to do other things than look for food (they can settle down and think). Also, you hinge more into the industrialization of farming. The industrialization factor does not deal with steam engines at all, that was just am amplifier for production. You also seem to not account the fact that industrial production refers more on the term of trading items, goods, and services and not what fancy tech you can use to do so. There are still technologies and concepts that have specialized outside of such a range of metals.
Yeah, I agree, it’s just that the examples you used (landing on the moon, laws of physics, space probes and whatnot) require that leval of automation, metal making in this example doesn’t so yeah, I agree. But now we need to discuss the creation of underwater spicalization so I’ll make a thread for that. Edit, made it!: The thread, ta-da
I understand what you mean now. Though in my case I meant more on the tenacity and toil towards a risky goal, it’s still a bad example because the production needed is high level. I think this type of experimentation is still highly possible after the creatures are able to settle down and feel more curiosity.
Well, the three (this is take three arter all) prevailing solutions to the underwater civilization problem are:
1 amphibians, they could forge above water or enslave a terrestrial species but mostly live under water.
2 rafts, a aquatic species may stumble across fire and make rafts to store it.
3 bubbles, they can be sealed in a storage container and filled with the air from photosynthesis or swim bladders, both of which are oxygen.
How could a bubble-system work with tuyeres? Tuyeres seem pretty important to smelting, and I’m unsure of how a container can accept air from a tuyere and output depleted air without water getting in
EDIT: I’ve read that some metals can be smelted at low enough temperatures to be smelted without tuyeres if the fuel is hot enough, but I think tuyeres would still be needed to make high-quality metal
There is the concept of splitting shells of bubbles off and flowing different things into different spots. Something like those interesting iconic chemistry/alchemy set ups.
The air still needs to leave at some point
And so it will, as waste bubbles. Basically like those CO2 clouds from factories but as boiling bubbles underwater. Heck, maybe the pressures might be enough to ignore an air-water filter? May or may not do math for that later.
The filter would either have to withstand the heat of the furnace, or the system would likely have to be so long as the require a ludicrous amount of power to operate
You have a literal outside water coolant as an advantage, you can utilize that by flowing water through pipes to carry off any heat, probably infusing it into your design.
The water around the pipe would heat up rather quickly if it was just standing, and if it was being moved through pipes it would require even more power to operate
Heat differences could do some of the the work, the hotest water goes up, and upward is a current of cool water, but once I cools down the only way out is down a pipe, that happens to feed into the bottom of the- thing.
The only reason why fire doesn’t happen underwater is because water takes the heat away too quickly (ignoring chemical fires). You just have to literally insulate a fire away from any water, ignite, and then it will sustain. Bubbles filled with flammable chemicals and oxygen however will continuously combust and sustain until water pressures condense them, which is why you put the chemical bubbles in a shell.
Fire alone is not enough to smelt metals well. You would need a tuyere, and therefore some method to let out excess air, to add extra oxygen, which would be far more important in an isolated bubble
When i read about the underwater fire i think about fluorine as alternative for oxygen in burning.
Yes, it has many disadvantages as deficiency because of chemical activity, deficiency in the deep, but if will be the underwater well of it…
Water will fire near to it and maybe (just maybe, I don’t know exactly) it will be enough warm to melt some metal. So, hydrogen will swim up, oxygen difluoride too and will happen enough temperature…
If i tell something wrong, give me to know.
P.s. I know, on Earth fluorine as simple matter(?) is rare, and wells of fluorine are only in theory, but Thrive can do them. Because why not
Fire is to sustain the smelting process and you probably get what I mean by any form of combustion in a case like this. As for the flow of air, it’s as easy as letting the pressure of hot air bubble outwards, pushing water out of the way. Of course, this a less safe version of what you can do to filter air underwater. Still viable and possible.
I can find no examples of even modern technology keeping out water with air-flow alone, which indicates to me that it is difficult and likely requires far too much power for a pre-metallurgical society. And using a filter would require some sort of cooling of the output, which also requires extra power
To this method’s defense, why would this ever have to be made *by humans? Also, it’d depend on pressure given off of air, depending on heat and buoyancy. Again, less feasible and reasonable to do so.