Darwin IV

Darwin IV

Darwin IV is a fictional planet that was the subject of Wayne Barlowe's book Expedition and the television special, Alien Planet, based on Expedition. Although the details of the discovery and exploration of Darwin IV differ in the two presentations, both are essentially the same in their depiction of the planetary environment and its native life-forms, whose abundance and variety prompt the name Darwin.

Introduction

Television

In Alien Planet, a more basic scenario is presented where a ship called the Von Braun is sent to explore an alien world outside the solar system. The Von Braun is sent to a binary star system about six and half light years from Earth. At 20% of the speed of light (0.2c), it takes about 60 years to travel to this system. Upon arrival it goes into orbit around Darwin IV, the Von Braun deployed the Darwin Reconnaissance Orbiter to scan the planet from orbit. The Von Braun also dispatches three identically shaped lighter-than-air probes to the planet surface. These three probes are:

In both stories the low gravity and dense atmosphere allow for aerial organisms that would be impossible on Earth.

The binary star system best fitting the described one above is Luhman 16, a binary system of brown dwarfs 6.59 light-years away, though it is questionable whether a brown dwarf could actually support life.[1]

Geography and evolution

It seems likely that Darwin IV was covered with large oceans a few million years ago, just like Earth. But because of important climatic changes, the oceans evaporated and most of the ocean water became part of the atmosphere of the planet. The continents are now mountain chains and plateaus, while the ocean floor has become a large, open plain of deserts and savannah. Thus, most of the creatures who now inhabit Darwin IV are descendants of land-dwelling animals

The dense atmosphere is full of clouds and meteorologic activity and the plains sometimes resemble "weather oceans". Most of the water is found in the atmosphere, but there are also millions of tons of frozen water in the regions of the poles, and big lakes and rivers where the 'pocket-forests' reside.

In the deepest part of the evaporated ocean basins, there is a "lake", the Amoebic Sea, composed of tons of microscopic creatures who have evolved to conserve the last of the remaining sea water inside their bodies in order to survive.

The continental plates are still moving, and the areas where they collide are full of earthquakes and volcanic activity, phenomena that remain mostly unseen on Earth since there they occur under the surface of the oceans.

Senses

The species on Darwin have all evolved sonar, echo-location using a variety of sounds as their primary sense, rather than perceiving light, as most animals on Earth do. Many have complicated cephalons to aid in this sense. The majority have also evolved biolights; but rather than communicating information in the visible light spectrum, biolights on Darwin IV function in the infrared range, as all Darwinian animals are quite sensitive to that spectrum. Their sensory organs to detect light in the infrared spectrum are more comparable to thermoreceptors found in pit vipers or rattlesnakes. The Rimerunner still has one bizarre, retractable, atrophying eye, a remnant from a time when sight-based organisms still had a place on Darwin IV. Also, most species are hermaphrodites.

List of species

Below is a list of the species found on Darwin IV. NOTE: Species marked with a "*" are featured in both the Alien Planet TV special and the book Expedition. Unmarked species are found exclusively in the book.

All species in Alien Planet were mentioned or depicted in Expedition; however, it should be noted that the Electrophyte was only briefly depicted in the book and was only fully explained in Alien Planet.

Animals

A Forest Gulper prepares to devour an unsuspecting Spade-nose

Animals (morphology)

In his Expedition, Barlowe clearly states that he wanted to represent the most impressive, most appealing animals of the planet. There are millions of species who are not represented in detail, even though they have to be an essential part of Darwin IV's ecosystem. Barlowe refers to them as the 'microflyers', tiny animals and plants living in the atmosphere of the planet like plankton lives in the oceans of Earth. Most animals represented in both the book and the movie belong to one of two essential groups: the floaters and the ground-dwelling species. However, there is a great variety inside the landdweller family. While on Earth animals are classified by characteristics such as mode of reproduction and metabolism, the large Darwinian animals are classified by their number of limbs. There are four classes: quadrupedalians, tripedalians, bipedalians and monopedalians. However, sometimes it is difficult to say to which group an animal belongs. In fact many animals lose some of their limbs when they grow up, and thus "change" their classification. The forest slider, for instance, has four legs as a juvenile, but only two legs in its adult form. Most Floaters appear to have no limbs, but eosapiens seem to have evolved from bipedal ancestors for they still have two arms. However, these could as well be highly evolved appendages. Many unnamed creatures appear only in sketches.

Plants

The Expedition

Expedition members

Technology

References

  1. ↑ "Habitability of Brown Dwarf Planets". ResearchGate. Retrieved 2016-03-10.

External links

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