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Is the Ocean a Superorganism?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SQMkfkkzu0

This is a link to one episode of the series “Through The Wormhole.” It was broadcast late in June and is available on a couple of sources. I’m mentioning this because it interesting from a Sci-Fi -author perspective; namely trying to communicate with a truly alien life form.

The show surmises that when you look at the oceans of the earth from a macro perspective it has many of the characteristics that could define it as a living organism. It has a pulse, a circulatory system and even perhaps, mental synapses occurring.

If we take a giant leap somewhere, and assume that it is an intelligent life form then communication becomes a very interesting challenge. If it does have mental processes then how long would it take for it to form a thought. Does it even know we are here yet? If it takes a thousand years to form a thought, then we might still just emerging in its consciousness. If it takes longer to form a thought then, we’re a long way from communicating with it. Given a life span of billions of years it might take at least thousands of years to form a thought and even longer to create the equivalent of a sentence.

Who knows maybe it’s getting ready to speak to us?

Maybe we won’t want to hear what it says?

This might come into play if we ever send a ship to Europa to explore its oceans. Maybe we will find that the ocean is a living creature on the planet and any smaller organisms living in the water might be just the remora of the planet.

If we meet an alien in real life or in a story and its lifespan is radically different than ours, its rate of forming thoughts will likely be different. We might have to ask it a question then come back next week for the answer. Or in the other direction it might fall asleep from boredom waiting for us to finish the sentence.

Ray Jay Perreault

http://rayjayperreault.wordpress.com

Published inIndyauthorRJP Fun StoriesSci Fi BooksScience Fiction

21 Comments

  1. In that vein, the planet itself could be considered a super organism, as the atmosphere is respiration, the oceans circulation, and the organisms the cells that work within the body in an organized fashion – except when we don’t. Sometimes we cause an itch or a tweak in the back.

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  9. Ray,

    Fascinating.

    As a one-time oceanographer, I believe there is an intelligent reef. The ocean reefs are open systems, but many years ago they became closed. The tunicates developed an alternate generation that have much in common with the fish. The vertebrates left the ocean with the tissues and circulation within their bodies very much like sponges and plankton. In studying the biofluid mechanics of the human body, one is amazed at how reef-like are the tissues, cells, and fluids. We are the intelligent reef. But it is fun to speculate about other forms of intelligence. Data from NASA’s Kepler suggest there are about 600 billion stars in the Milky Way, about 10% are G type stars like our sun (that makes 60 billion G type stars). And of that 60 billion, 20% are in the habitable zone and Earth-like (that’s 3 billion Earths). Too bad none of them seem close enough to contact in our lifetime, but great fodder for space operas!

    Susan (S.B.K. Burns)

    • Ray Jay P Ray Jay P

      Very interesting. I agree enthusiastically. We need to look beyond a classical body to understand life and a living organism. Life and intelligence can come in many forms. There was a recent article considering if space, at a large enough scale, would have enough active molecules to be a computer or brain. A little far fetched, but I supposed possible.
      I have a book in work that has an alien civilization that has absorbed thousands of planets, they often finds microbial life, on rare occasions they find higher life forms and even less often intelligent life forms. They became so callous that they wipe out an intelligent life form by accident. Guess who the intelligent life form is.

      Excellent comments, I enjoyed reading them.

      Ray Jay Perreault

    • Ray Jay P Ray Jay P

      Susan

      Excellent points and I’m amazed by the parallel that you’ve drawn between reef structure and the human body; never heard that before. True the numbers regarding G type planets are immense, in fact the numbers are beyond comprehension, although we still must deal with the Fermi Paradox. I wrote a couple of past blogs on that and I find it interesting. In fact I have story outline regarding the Fermi Paradox that I want to flesh out someday and put on paper.

      One very interesting recent development is KIC 8462852. The potential of finding an alien structure is exciting. True it’s a long ways from being proved but it is still a fun point of speculation.

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