Barnacles are living creatures!

Quantis Trap

Quantis Trap
I bet Barnacles are living communication nodes which are part of the Thargoid hive mind. They are largely in a dormant state because there are not many Thargoids near. When we cut into them to get meta-alloys it's like sticking a knife into the collective Thargoid brain. Billions of Thargoids are now being very unpleasently awakened by what we are doing and will be ... VARY CRANKY ... when they get to the bubble from wherever they are now!

They are probably like ants and/or bees in that they build huge planet sized hive ships. They may be like locusts and may have been hibernating in various places for hundreds of years and are now prematurely awakened by what we are doing to the Barnacle communication nodes.
 
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DeLorean

DeLorean
I haven't read much of the ridiculously large "UAs, Barnacles & More Thread"s. I imagine that this has been mentioned, but I've always been slightly bothered by the handwavium of a galactic civilisation that can build huge cities in space, terraform worlds and travel faster than light, but can't take a JCB to a discovery as significant as the barnacles and dig them out.
 

[VR] Deggial

[VR] Deggial
The term 'living creature' includes not only "spiders and animals", but also all sorts of microbes, fungi and plants. Really, nothing annoyed me more in those old 'Star Treck' episodes than when Kirk stomped through this lush forests and Spock did let him know the sensor results: "No life-forms detected, captain!"

The fact that barnacles are alive doesn't imply a neural system. They could be nothing more than the gigantic equivalent of a slime mold. A bioengineered leaching device. Of course their destruction might annoy the owners - but it doesn't necessarily upset them due to our immoral cruelty.

However... we DON'T KNOW!
 

CMDR Ducky

CMDR Ducky
All this fuss over a thargoid allotment. :rolleyes:

Some poor old thargoid geezer wants to grow his minerals in peace and instead gets all these humans trying to blow it up.
 

InMemoriamSirocco

Banned
InMemoriamSirocco
Deggial said:
The term 'living creature' includes not only "spiders and animals", but also all sorts of microbes, fungi and plants. Really, nothing annoyed me more in those old 'Star Treck' episodes than when Kirk stomped through this lush forests and Spock did let him know the sensor results: "No life-forms detected, captain!"
Click to expand...

Hah! :D I remember getting sarcastic about it and talking towards the screen: "Really, Spock? Worst. Science. Officer. Ever." (also, which genius built that defunct tricorder?) :D
 

CMDR Zadian Lichtfrost

C
Some alien stuff could be living creatures.

People are in shock.
People get angry that other people kill those creatures to get resources.

People take "kill 50 civilians" missions without even thinking about it. People kill others because alien stuff could be creatures and killing creatures is bad.


Hopefully any sentient alien species is intelligent enough to stay away far, far away form humanity.
 

CHOPP3R

CHOPP3R
Cross posted from the UA/barnacle mega-thread as it seemed relevant to put it here too for discussion:

In light of Mr Braben's recent confirmation that barnacles are indeed a lifeform/living creature:

One thing that all living creatures have in common is the need and ability to reproduce. With barnacles it's clear that they spread to other planets when they do so.

The only mechanism we've seen so far to do this are the UAs. Theories have already been put forward that they are seeds or a juvenile form of the barnacle (as others have pointed out if you look at the top section, it looks like an unformed barnacle).

The UAs are seemingly spread by being collected by curious explorers (a type of space farer that tends to be curious by their very nature) who love to go to nebulae where they are located in a shell approximately 150LY around them.

They then cause the ship to decay which leads to them crashing on planets in some cases which allows the barnacles to spread to these new locations.

Their collection and distribution is very similar to birds eating fruit and then depositing the seeds elsewhere except more parasitic in nature.

The barnacles also however have some sort of mark on them which would lead one to believe that they have been made, or at the very least genetically branded, by someone or something.

They also need a relatively new invention (space ships) to allow them to reproduce and successfully spread their seed which would mean they are unlikely to have evolved in the manner that they have without some sort of intervention/creation by another intelligence unless other forms of spaceships that enjoy travelling to nebulae have been around for millions of years.

If they have been engineered then what is their purpose? Is it communication? Are we supposed to work out what the symbol means and try and communicate with them, or is the symbol on them a warning or territorial marker?

Are they slowly terraforming planets to make them suitable for a race that intends to occupy them at a later date or are they perhaps there for another race to mine the minerals that we see produced when they are destroyed/harvested like a crop? If so, how will they react when they see that we have already plundered the resources that they went to such great efforts to gather?

Further studies are required.
 
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