Given that my surface scanner can virtually detect a tussock in an area the size of Wales on planets that are little more than deserts, why can I not detect ANY bio signals on Earth type planets? It cannot be because those planets are (lamentably) un-landable. Ammonia and water gas giants are un-landable but still give back signals.
Bio signals on Earth type planets.
- Thread starter Rufus Ruffcut
- Start date
Yeah, what do you think why. Go try and land on one and you'll probably find out.
The aliens that inhabit them have shielded them effectively from prying, knowing that the Pilot's Federation membership are of dubious reputation?
So once you have scanned them can you scroll through the types of bio in the DSS? Because if you are just talking about the "gas giant with oxygen based life" report, well they really don't need to do that for ELW's, because the definition of an ELW is that it has oxygen/carbon based life forms, otherwise it wouldn't be an ELW, and it does actually report that in the FSS. If I have your meaning wrong maybe a few screenshots to clarify what you mean would help.
My point was that, being able to detect life on the land-able planets (frutexa, conchas, fungoid etc) why don't Earth-like planets give me Biological information?
You don't need that info, because you can't land on them.
I know I don't NEED the information as you say, but is the DSS (a hardware mechanism) making a judgement call? That would be like my landing gear failing to deploy because it doesn't like the look of the ground.
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Just a handful of extremophiles can survive on the thin-atmosphered planets. They stick out like a sore thumb. As you would notice a spot of lichen on a concrete wall, the probes will notice them.
Earth-likes, on the other hand, are a big mess of tens of thousands of species. Every square meter of a meadow has a dozen plant and another dozen invertebrate species, not to mention bacteria, protozoans and other micro-organisms. It's a big mess and the simple probes that we shoot at planets just see it as "Yup, that's a lot of life here" unable to discern what lifeforms exactly are present. It's a long, hard work seeking out and documenting all the species in a transect for a human being, a short-lived probe equipped with simple cameras, spectrometers and radars has no chance of doing that.
Earth-likes, on the other hand, are a big mess of tens of thousands of species. Every square meter of a meadow has a dozen plant and another dozen invertebrate species, not to mention bacteria, protozoans and other micro-organisms. It's a big mess and the simple probes that we shoot at planets just see it as "Yup, that's a lot of life here" unable to discern what lifeforms exactly are present. It's a long, hard work seeking out and documenting all the species in a transect for a human being, a short-lived probe equipped with simple cameras, spectrometers and radars has no chance of doing that.
Haha, sort of.I know I don't NEED the information as you say, but is the DSS (a hardware mechanism) making a judgement call? That would be like my landing gear failing to deploy because it doesn't like the look of the ground.
But I still think that it's a built in feature of the DSS (possibly to avoid overloading the module could be lore reason) to ignore (or to not relay them to the user) any bio/geo signals that come from bodies that are deemed landable.
Given it would have to be spectral analysis matched against known ranges for particular genii there likely wouldn't be a simple method for doing that with the billions of species on any planet that had reached the Cambrian level of development.
Indeed that could explain the apparent panspermia of exobiology as being an artefact of what our probes are tuned to detect.
Indeed that could explain the apparent panspermia of exobiology as being an artefact of what our probes are tuned to detect.
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That information is classified secret and only given out on a need to know basis to appropriately classed personnel... 
First, because an ELW should give you billions of responses, that's what being an ELW implies? Second, because you can't land on them no actual bio data is connected with that body. A bit of into, the non-landable bodies don't actually have surfaces, they are just a 2d bitmap so there's nothing there except a simple 2dmesh with a wraparound bitmap to give it a bit of texture, all those clouds and islands and bodies of water don't exist, they are just pictures, so there's nothing to hang any bio data onto.
It's useless data. Literally unusable trash. Noone would want that to clutter their UI.I know I don't NEED the information as you say, but is the DSS (a hardware mechanism) making a judgement call? That would be like my landing gear failing to deploy because it doesn't like the look of the ground.
Remember the DSS is providing this data and Geo data maps on worlds that have little or no atmosphere, so it is possible that the mapping capability doesn’t work on bodies with a more substantial atmosphere.I know I don't NEED the information as you say, but is the DSS (a hardware mechanism) making a judgement call? That would be like my landing gear failing to deploy because it doesn't like the look of the ground.
1.7 million according to google. Imagine scrolling through the heat maps.
The atmosphere is too thick, interfering with the probe's biological scans. The signals detected are likely too many and/or too similar to atmospheric composition. The geological part of a probe's scan is looking for something totally different from atmospheric composition, so the overall surface scan still works. ELW's are likely too tectonically stable for any significant vulcanism to be detected, so no geological signals are returned.
I am assuming this is a rhetorical question. Similar to:
- Why does vista genomics only care about bio found on planet surfaces? What about bio floating around space?
- Across millions of planets with bio samples, separated by thousands of light years, possibly millions of years to evolve or mutate... why are there relatively few varieties?
- When doing exobiology and I crash my ship on planet surface 30K Ly from human space... who picks up my escape pod?
IOW: It's a game, just enjoy what we have
Thick atmosphere and data overload seem logical.