Is fire necessary for technology?

[Moontanman]

I think can technology progress underwater has been asked before but what about advanced technology of higher than stone age or more advanced coming about in a non oxidizing atmosphere? If you can't have fire can you have anything more than stone age technology?

 

An example would if you had a super terrestrial planet with an hydrogen atmosphere could any life advance past the stone age since fire would not be possible in a reducing atmosphere.

[Mr Skeptic]

Well, in a reducing atmosphere you wouldn't need fire to have metals, since the metals would not be oxidized. In addition, there are other sources of heat, such as a solar furnace. Certainly not as easy to understand nor acquire as fire, but it would do the trick.

 

Now if you have an underwater civilization, the boiling point and heat capacity of water might be a problem, and likewise saltwater would mess with electricity and electromagnetic signals.

[Moontanman]

Well, in a reducing atmosphere you wouldn't need fire to have metals, since the metals would not be oxidized. In addition, there are other sources of heat, such as a solar furnace. Certainly not as easy to understand nor acquire as fire, but it would do the trick.

 

I know things like "native iron" would be possible but the smelting of iron requires fire, or at least a very high heat. Solar heat is a good idea but how would you generate it if you didn't have heat to begin with to make pure lenses or mirrors?

 

Now if you have an underwater civilization, the boiling point and heat capacity of water might be a problem, and likewise saltwater would mess with electricity and electromagnetic signals.

 

I honestly can't see under water going past stone age at most.

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I should say making iron into useful objects requires heat, native iron would be great but how do you make i-beams and other steel objects with out fire?

[Mr Skeptic]

You can heat up metal by hammering it, although that is hardly the ideal method.

[Moontanman]

Still i have to ask, could useful numbers of things like i-beams be made by hammering? Most of modern technology is based on using fuel and oxygen to make energy to make other things. Would a reducing atmosphere allow this? Solar energy stored in plants is exploited by animals by oxidization, so to does our technology.

[Greippi]

It seems likely to me that the discovery that metals can be melted and molded was accidental. It's hard to imagine a scenario in which this could happen without fire. Other methods of producing sufficient heat discovered by accident seem unlikely to me.

 

From an evolutionary perspective, why are there not highly intelligent creatures with technology living in the sea? We evolved from the sea to land, and it seems likely to me that one factor in our technological advancement was that we could now create fire.

[Mr Skeptic]

Well if you have a reducing atmosphere, you can keep a jar of oxygen as "fuel" that you can burn with the surrounding atmospheric gases. Or maybe hydrogen peroxide, if you prefer a liquid "fuel".

[Moontanman]

Well if you have a reducing atmosphere, you can keep a jar of oxygen as "fuel" that you can burn with the surrounding atmospheric gases. Or maybe hydrogen peroxide, if you prefer a liquid "fuel".

 

Yes but where do you get the oxidizer? I have given quite a bit of thought to the possibility of technology with out fire but i have to agree with Greippi, no fire no technology.

 

But! Huge word, lol, what if plants on the hypothetical planet made food as oxidizer instead of hydrocarbons as on earth? Is this possible?

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I think that an oxygen atmosphere and with it fire are the bottleneck that determines technology on any planet. No oxygen no fire, no fire no technology more advanced that flaking stone tools or maybe beating out soft ceremonial knives from native copper or gold or some other very soft metal at most.

[Mr Skeptic]

Windmills and waterwheels and wave power would all be available, and from there all electric stuff.

[Moontanman]

Windmills and waterwheels and wave power would all be available, and from there all electric stuff.

 

How do you smelt metals with a windmill? How do you generate or even use electricity with no metals?

[Mr Skeptic]

In a reducing atmosphere, you get many unoxidized metals. Regardless, all you need is a magnetic mineral like magnetite, and then any conductive metal, and you can make an electrical generator. You can use electricity as a heat source to heat metals; it would cost more but you also save a lot by not having to reduce metals before use.

[insane_alien]

look, without fire you ARE extremely limited in the things you can do off the bat. however, you AREN'T limited to nothing at all.

 

you can do some slight refinements and these refineents will open up other paths you can take to allow you to make more refinements and so on.

 

not only that but fire IS possible in a reducing atmosphere. all you need is a source of oxidiser and seeing as there is life, there should be enough around probably in the form of biomatter.

[Moontanman]

not only that but fire IS possible in a reducing atmosphere. all you need is a source of oxidiser and seeing as there is life, there should be enough around probably in the form of biomatter.

 

 

So you are assuming bio-matter in a reducing atmosphere would be an oxidizer? Why?

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look, without fire you ARE extremely limited in the things you can do off the bat. however, you AREN'T limited to nothing at all.

 

you can do some slight refinements and these refineents will open up other paths you can take to allow you to make more refinements and so on.

 

This is true, but on the Earth what we did would seem to be heavily dependent on having lots of fuel and oxidizer, can you really imagine modern technology with fire being a rare almost unknown thing?

Edited April 23, 2010 by Moontanman
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[Mr Skeptic]

So you are assuming bio-matter in a reducing atmosphere would be an oxidizer? Why?

 

Living things need to have an energy source. An energy source is a heat source.

[insane_alien]

So you are assuming bio-matter in a reducing atmosphere would be an oxidizer? Why?

 

becase life is dependant on redox reactions. in order for these to happen, it must have a plentiful supply of oxidizer (most likely from food) to be able to utilize a reducing atmosphere.

 

just like we have a plentiful supply of reducer from our food that lets us use our oxidising atmosphere.

[Moontanman]

becase life is dependant on redox reactions. in order for these to happen, it must have a plentiful supply of oxidizer (most likely from food) to be able to utilize a reducing atmosphere.

 

just like we have a plentiful supply of reducer from our food that lets us use our oxidizing atmosphere.

 

This is exactly where I was going with this, we often talk about intelligent life on other planets but we seldom give much thought to what it really means. first intelligent life predisposes large active animals or complex life. We seldom give much thought to plants, plants are complex life as well and plants require an energetic respiration just like complex animals do. Put a plant, a weed, a tree or any other complex plant, in an enclosed space, provide it with water, light and CO2 but take away the oxygen faster than it can make it and the plant will die. In the dark plants use oxygen just like animals do.

 

 

Just like complex animals complex plants did not evolve until oxygen was available on the earth.

 

In our atmosphere plants use sunlight to make carbohydrates and give off oxygen but they also use oxygen to get energy back from the carbohydrates they make. just like animals when they eat plants or each other complex life needs oxygen but oxygen represents stored solar energy just like carbohydrates.

 

In a reducing atmosphere it would make sense for plants to store energy as oxidizers because they couldn't recoup energy from carbohydrates any more than animals could get energy from plant or animal tissue with out oxygen.

 

so it would make sense for complex life to store energy as oxidizers if they lived in a reducing atmosphere. on a super terrestrial world hydrogen would be so all encompassing that oxygen would never accumulate the way it did on earth.

 

so for plants to use stored energy oxidizers make more sense than carbohydrates. Plants would take sunlight and use methane and water to make oxidizers and release hydrogen. animals would eat oxidizing plant tissue and breath in hydrogen and exhale methane and water vapor. it would be the opposite of what happens on the earth but with the same results.

 

so the argument that fire would not be possible in a hydrogen atmosphere is would not be true if complex life evolved on that planet. since complex life is based on solar energy and the ability to store that every for later use complex life would probably make fire possible by the simple need to store energy.

 

Possibly on that planet instead of large deposits of hydrocarbons they would have large deposits of oxidizers. percolates or peroxides. So the presence of complex life would indicates the possibility of fire and civilization even if free oxygen wasn't available?

 

the main problem i see with this is that a hydrogen atmosphere would already be in place before life, I'm not sure what effect this might have but it might allow complex life to evolve faster than it did on the earth.

[Mr Skeptic]

not only that but fire IS possible in a reducing atmosphere. all you need is a source of oxidiser and seeing as there is life, there should be enough around probably in the form of biomatter.

 

But would anaerobic life actually have high enough concentration of oxidizer to make a flame? I mean, if you consider terran anaerobic life, I'm not sure you would get much of a fire burning them in hydrogen or methane. Even as aerobic life, we have very little oxidizer in our bodies and oxidizer does nasty things to our biochemicals.

 

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Incidentally, we have anaerobic photosynthesis and even anaerobic animal life.

[Moontanman]

But would anaerobic life actually have high enough concentration of oxidizer to make a flame? I mean, if you consider terran anaerobic life, I'm not sure you would get much of a fire burning them in hydrogen or methane. Even as aerobic life, we have very little oxidizer in our bodies and oxidizer does nasty things to our biochemicals.

 

I think that what we are talking about is not strictly anaerobic, using hydrogen in this way is more akin to aerobic respiration than anaerobic. We or i am talking about hypothetical complex organisms that store photosynthesis as oxidizers instead of carbohydrates. Anaerobic simple organisms store very little carbohydrates either.

 

Also anaerobic respiration covers a huge field, many different chemicals used for respiration, some more energetic than others. On earth of all the respiration possibilities the one that is powered by oxygen that is also brought about by the most energy surplus of all energy synthesis, photosynthesis. Most organisms use some sort of energy derived from chemical reactions or radiation as a way to obtain hydrogen, there are organisms that use hydrogen directly to make food.

 

Incidentally, we have anaerobic photosynthesis and even anaerobic animal life.

 

Yes but we are talking about complex plants not microbes (no anaerobic complex plants) and the one animal that operates via anaerobic respiration is quite tiny and descended from aerobic organisms, it is a very specialized aerobic animal.

 

The idea, to me at least, is that complex life uses solar power, (so far chemo-synthesis has not developed any complex life forms but if it did i bet it would follow the same energy storage idea's set forth there)) and it also has to be able to store that solar power for later use as part of it's body structure. In a hydrogen atmosphere that energy would have to be stored as oxidizers of some sort for the energy to be released. if the energy storage is not possible then i see no way for large complex life forms to develop, plant or animal.

 

Now would that stored energy be able to make a fire when released? that is also a good question

[padren]

Would this world have active geology, could volcanic heat play a useful role in tool building?

[Moontanman]

Would this world have active geology, could volcanic heat play a useful role in tool building?

 

Yes, almost by definition a world large enough to have a hydrogen atmosphere would have active geology but using a lava to make tools would seem to not be possible.

[Mr Skeptic]

Yes, almost by definition a world large enough to have a hydrogen atmosphere would have active geology but using a lava to make tools would seem to not be possible.

 

What if they first let the lava solidify into a glassy substance and then used it to manufacture sharpened tools?

[Moontanman]

What if they first let the lava solidify into a glassy substance and then used it to manufacture sharpened tools?

 

That stage already happened on the Earth, it's called the stone age... we are talking about going further than the stone age, i should have clarified metal tools i guess but we already did that at the beginning of the thread.

[Mr Skeptic]

I know, I was just yanking your chain.

 

I think that the scarcity, danger, and unpredictability of lava would not be conductive to using it for technological advancement. Simply hitting a piece of metal with a hammer would do the job nicely, wherever and at any time, in a controllable manner. It's not like its technologically challenging to make things hot.

[Moontanman]

I know, I was just yanking your chain.

 

I think that the scarcity, danger, and unpredictability of lava would not be conductive to using it for technological advancement. Simply hitting a piece of metal with a hammer would do the job nicely, wherever and at any time, in a controllable manner. It's not like its technologically challenging to make things hot.

 

Obtaining that piece of metal to start with is the real problem. Even a hydrogen world would not have much in the way of native iron, and it does take heat to make steel. Although pure iron would be more common than the earth. With out a source of heat i doubt very seriously they would have anything even like the industrial revolution much less electronics.