![]() Nonetheless, for your implant suggestion, the neurons are known, and so you can simply rattle off the names in there and say you have a way to alter their signalling. The regulation of this response is a bit complex, because there are multiple locations where CO2 is being sensed and the mechanisms overlap with regulation of blood pressure and other vital physiology. ![]() High levels of CO2 also make the blood acidic, because it reacts with water to make carbonic acid. Our bodies use CO2 as the first signal to tell us to breathe, so we respond to high levels by assuming we need to breathe more, no matter how much oxygen is in our blood. Go much above that, and the urge to breathe faster sets in. Below 1%, the effects are subtle, mostly of concern to air conditioning technicians looking to sell you larger machines, but living on a planet with that going all the time you would tend to start blaming headaches and sluggishness on the CO2 in the air, perhaps justifiably. ![]() Their ecosystems were limited in the amount of carbon they could fix before the seas froze, so the organisms there became accustomed to having a few percent of CO2 in the air, at least during during most geological eras.Īn excess of carbon dioxide in the blood is called " hypercapnia", and can happen for many reasons, but having too much CO2 in the air is surely one of them. Most habitable planets formed further out - an Earth-sized planet in the orbit of Mars, or halfway. Earth life sucks up nearly every trace of carbon dioxide available to it in the atmosphere, provided somebody doesn't dig up entire geological strata of pure carbon and send it up into the air. ![]() This won't work for every world, but I imagine between excess CO2 on some worlds, excess Ozone on others (maybe a byproduct of plant respiration?), and excess humidity in general, I'll get the effect I'm looking for.Īccording to some tellings, Earth arose very near the inner limit of the " habitable zone" around the Sun. Ultimately, I've accepted Mike Serfas's answer because it's a very elegant solution and dovetails nicely Christopher James Huff's comments about CO2 being a go-to terraforming agent. Given these limitations, what are my option to make an alien atmosphere breathable, but uncomfortable?Įdit: I wish I could accept multiple answers, because all of these are great and I'll probably be referring back to this question a lot for reference. I’m also hesitant about increasing carbon dioxide levels significantly, as its pretty potent greenhouse gas. However, I want the “galactic standard” to have a high oxygen content to be conducive to larger creatures and more frequent fires, so just giving humans altitude sickness is not an option (even though it would be the easiest solution). I also want to this problem to be mutual, so aliens have similar problems breathing our atmosphere. I’m imagining a scenario in which most humans can acclimate given time, but many prefer to use supplemental breathing devices or implants, especially if they’re old or have health problems. However, because Earth’s atmosphere wasn’t terraformed but developed independently, I want the “galactic standard” to be different enough to breathable but humans but otherwise uncomfortable. This “galactic standard” is breathable by all alien species without any difficulty. In the project I’m working on, sufficiently advanced aliens terraformed a large number of planets in the distant past, giving them an atmospheric pressure and composition similar to Earth.
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