Come to think of it, my example in the second post of hydrocarbon fuels wouldn’t necessarily even hold. By our standards, hydrocarbons are energy-dense, but that’s only because we have a free and ready supply of the other reagent. But an alien planet won’t necessarily have oxygen in the atmosphere, and if they haven’t evolved around oxygen for the past few billion years, they would probably regard it much the same way as we do hydrogen fluoride: It has its uses, in carefully controlled environments, but it’s much too dangerous for the masses to use on a routine basis.
Well alien life might not even share a similar metabolic level to us. Time as we know it is all about perception, and speed is a function of time and distance. If your perception of the rate of time slows your perception of your of travel speed increases
What this means is to a race of anaerobics 60 mph might seem like 600 mph. We are technologically capable of building cars that go much faster, but we don’t. ~100 mph seems to the be the general limit because that’s just above what most people consider safe speeds.
How would automotive technology have developed if cars had to run much slower but much longer? How would you design a car that needed to economically run for a solid day while traveling 25 miles?
On the flipside how would you design a car for a very reactive critter to whom 300 mph is as 60 to us?
Whilst science would be the same, applied science doesn’t have to be. A lot of our applied science is dependent on the order in which we developed things. Whilst it seems a “natural” progression to us, it aint necessarily so.
Our city designs, and a lot of the technologies we use to make our cities function, owe as much to history as to logical arrangement. What if an alien civilisation developed mass-transit before the metropolis? Or what if they had a catastrophe resulting in a step-change in lifestyle sometime in their history?
Once you take this possibilities into account, a species identical to our own on an identical planet could have different technological niches due to historical developments.
On a different train of thought, the particular science that we apply to a particular problem isn’t fixed, just a design decision. Semiconductors are intrinsic to our computers which are intrinsic to most of our modern equipment. That doesn’t mean you can’t have computers without semiconductors (steampunk!) or technology at our modern level without embedded computers.
More aerodynamic and shiny. Except the probes.
You have two main issues to consider: How are your aliens built, and what do they have to work with. As some posters above pointed out, we use what is plentiful and generally not too poisonous. Who knows what kinds of elements, metals, and alloys might exist on other worlds where the chemistry is different. Consider a world where impacts from space are a regular occurrence. Perhaps the local organisms have evolved to incorporate silicates or metals into their biology. a whole host of human invention was based on the need for, and improvements upon shelter. These aliens might not have any need of it other than as a place to put items that might be broken. In reality, If an alien race has a similar carbon based biology and vaugely humanoid body plan, then their tech should resemble ours in the basic sense.
I think lots would be similar in fundamentals, but obviously highly different in the details(but not always).
A gun, for instance. If they created them, they they probably followed the same general form as we did, since it doesn’t get much more basic than muzzleloader. Breech loaders would eventually be developed, as well as magazines.
A vehicle would be largely similar as well, enough so that we could ascertain its purpose immediately. 4 wheels is likely, as thats the most stable form. It would have an enclosed cab towards the front, and passengers/loads in the back, so as not to restrict the drivers view. But who knows what they would have for a seat or a steering wheel. A human may be able to discern its operation, or at least intended function, but it would probably be uncomfortable to drive unless the alien went with a tailless biped configuration.
An airplane would still have wings, a cockpit. Probably a tail and aileron. But they also might have embraced flying wings, or lifting bodies.
Lots of things like that would be similar in function, and somewhat general form, but up close would be hard to recognize, because of different useability requirements.
Still, I’d bet good money on lots of things they developed not only being readily identifiable, but also eerily similar in form and function to earthly counterparts. Ferinstance, I’m sure that somewhere out there, an alien factory is churning out plates that wouldn’t be out of place in your dish cabinet. But their forks are just weird, man.
Don’t be so sure about that. A lot of our use of certain designs could be based of of our bipedal nature. We have kick- ass balancing abilities naturally. Since locomotion is sort of a controlled fall we are comfortable with things like wheels. Aliens with a different body plan might well skip the single wheel altogether and go for treads, or something like the locomotion of fast snakes. They might have less need for vehicles in their early stages of civilization too. Perhaps they are stronger and have better carrying capacity vs material utility than humans do. They might go in for biologicals here as well. Perhaps their planet has strong gravitational winds that blow constantly. The intelligent species could well be a flyer and have little use for vehicles altogether other than space travel. Who knows how a species like that would solve that problem.
One of the first major novels featuring non-human aliens, H.G. Wells’ War of the World, takes precisely this tack. His Martians don’t use the wheel*, something I believe is remarked upon in the book. It’s why they get around on those Tripods, rather than wheeled vehicles (or treads, which still employ wheels in their construction). This was noted and was used consistently in the second volume of Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (for instance, the shots of the interior of the Martian Tripods show push-pull control levers, not rotating knobs) and in Spielberg’s recent adaptation (where the Martians visiting the basement are briefly fascinated by a bicycle wheel, and spin it).
*although, oddly, they have the Screw – it’s how they get out of their Cylinder/Spaceship.
OH-HO-HO-HO-HO!
Increase Earth’s atmospheric Oxygen level by abour 20% or so, as it was during the Carboiferous, & the blast the gunpowder produced would kill the shooter sooner than the target.
No need to assume wheels, legs work too.
Zeppelins have no wings.
Too much Ego in your Cosmos, my friend.
Gunpowder doesn’t use atmospheric oxygen. You just can’t get enough air into the barrel fast enough. Unless you’re referring to the muzzle flash igniting nearby materials?
I’m refering to the flash fires started in high oxygen atmospheres.
Remember Apollo 1 ?
While things might be very different, I wouldnt be surprised if things were surprisingly similar overall. As in Im not convinced you’d see a lot of intelligent life in settings significantly different to our own setting, ie oxygen, DNA, competition, cooperation etc.
Many of the amazingly different things you see in books are more for setting a sci-fi feel rather than necessarily practical in my view. The wheel is a pretty fundamental building block for instance, regardless of whether one is bipedal or not. If you had intelligent life unable to invent that they would be massively impeded in technological progress.
Edit: High oxygen would result in most oxidisable material being gone in short order. Gunpowder would be developed at a level that took that into account, either by reduce use of the oxidiser, or other corrective measures.
Otara
Can we look to evolution for some clues? There are instances of convergent evolution - octupuses and mammalian eyes work pretty much the same; and examples of vision that use very different systems, from compound eyes, to multiple retinae in the same eye that operate at different focal lengths. What determines if the solution is convergent or not? Once we understand that we can make a guess as to technological development as well.
Another point: the wheel as a technology was not extant in America before Columbus. Yes it was used in toys, but as there were no draft animals to pull things it was not used in transportation. And without that as a model the nature of the analogies about the world around them was different than for, say, the Greeks. And the other tools that developed were different as a result of that as well. Even with the same biology and otherwise similar needs, the technology developed very differently to a very large degree. Yet Mayan mathematics was very sophisticated and put cotemporaneous Western and Eastern mathematics to shame.
“Another point: the wheel as a technology was not extant in America before Columbus. Yes it was used in toys, but as there were no draft animals to pull things it was not used in transportation.”
And their technology was massively impeded as a result and was one reason why they were rapidly overtaken by other societies that had access to it. They were essentially limited to the stone age rather than managing to progress ‘around it’.
We’re looking at an entire world with a variety of settings, so its not a question of not being developed in one place, its a question of what would have to happen for it to not happen anywhere but for significant advancement to still take place.
Im dubious this would happen in practise, my theory is either someone would eventually develop its use as other technologies became available, or their advancement would stagnate considerably until it was.
Otara
I would posit that the more significant reason for Western technologic superiority was trade and contact across and to other cultures, not the wheel per se. Trade across the Sea mandated advances in navigation (whereas the Mayans studied the stars for religious reasons). Trade also brought in ideas from a wide variety of cultures, such as gunpowder from China, and invention results from exposure to new and different ideas.
But that is a bit of a hijack - the point is that inventing the wheel was not something that had to happen, it happened, apparently, because of a particular circumstance. Without draft animals there was no need for that particular technology and without that, the course of development alters.
You are saying that the wheel was a key technology in that it inspired much of the progress that followed - which I can agree with - and then saying that if a species as intelligent or more intelligent than humans existed in another world that had no circumstance that led to a wheel (as such a minor event like no draft animals is supposed to have been for the Americas) then there would be NO OTHER path to technologic advancement, that was also a requisite technology. That part seems dubious. Our sort of eye must a good sort for it to have developed convergently in two very different lines of animals, but it is not the only route to vision; neither is it likely that wheels are the only route to advanced technology.
Why so certain? Projectile weapons are nothing more than a logical extension of our species’ need for a tool to help us kill each other. An alien species that did not evolve away a natural set of weapons may not develop weapons technology. They may not be as warlike as us either. their group dynamics might be vastly different. Perhaps they share a monoculture without significant enough variation to create “us” vs "them mentality.
Acch. I know it’s arguably a hijack but what would Mayan technology look like if they never invented the wheel but did have the good fortune to have some malachite fall into the kiln and thereby develop copper smelting and eventually iron, and independently discover gunpowder? Neither one required the wheel first, they were fortuitous events that spread as ideas across a connected world …
Well the obvious problem is n=1.
Maybe with time they would have progressed without the wheel, but thats the whole problem in a competitive environment, you dont get time.
As far as the oxygen goes, my theory is competition is a part of development. I find the idea of a world wide cooperative society implausible. Also high oxygen atmospheres pretty much have to degrade over time by oxidising - the only way you’d have it stopping is a high ongoing source of oxygen and/or an exhaustion of oxidisable substances. WIth earth its a source - life, but that can only go so far I suspect.
Otara
Edit bah sorry double post.
We are in a thread speculating about alien cultures and their technology and convergence of form or not … I think hypothesizing a few what ifs may be not too out of bounds.
An alien culture might have the time.
Speculate a little. What would Mayan civilization have become with no wheel but but with metallurgy and explosives and a thousand years?
It is hard for me as so much of the technology I know of is based off of the wheel in some way or another …