Jool is a gigantic plant lifeform

[NASAFanboy]

What if Jool is a giant mass of plant biomass...that's still alive?

It's green. Yes, it'll work. Green, because plant cells have chlorophyll, which gives them their color.

Jool has a thick atmosphere, which might be composed of oxygen, allowing the plants to survive....or they might live off geothermal heat at the core.

You fall through Jool because plant biomass is not a reliable landing surface.

So, why doesn't Jool have oxygen?

Laythe, with its gravity and tidal forces, pulls away some of the oxygen from Jool, which makes up the upper atmosphere.

Upper Atmosphere of Jool: CO2, but mostly composed of Oxygen,.

Lower: Moar CO2, some O2 and Nitrogen

Jool Upper Surface: Plant leaves full of cholorophyll

Rest of Jool: Biomass

Jool Core: Dirt, full of energy and nutrients/roots

Also, it might be home to the DSK.

It could feast on the plants as a secondary food source, live off the nutrients, survive with the geothermal heat, and attack ships that go down too far

Jool. It's alive.

-Posted during a moment of insanity

Edited October 29, 2013 by NASAFanboy

[Hacktech]

Stop smoking that green stuff man..

[Umlüx]

maybe jool is a giant compressed ball of all the dead kerbals we ever killed

[fatfluffycat]

wat......

But why plants?

[allmappedout]

Cept plants use Carbon Dioxide to respire, so they would suffocate on Oxygen, which is their wasteproduct.

[Sirrobert]

You know oxygen is toxic right?

Also whatever chlorophyll equivilant life on another world has, it's colour is dependend on the emission patern of the local light source. If the local sun were purple, we might see yellow plants

[Psycix]

Very nice hypothesis, I like it!

Perhaps the kraken is what consumes the oxygen in the center.

Which is exactly what attacks you through the green mist once you get too close to it. It all makes sense.

Jool, the home of the kraken, surrounded by a layer of photosynthesising plants on which it feasts.

[Highlad]

Jool was only a gas giant till the Devs battled the great space craken. Unable to destroy it completely, they banished it to the heart of jool, hoping that the immense gravity would crush into oblivion. Little did they know that the space kraken survived and slowly grew inside jool till it consumed the planet and took its place. This is why we canot land, we are torn to pieces by the space craken. sleeping... waiting...

[SofusRud]

Jool's atmo isn't oxygen, you can't fly jets there

[boomerdog2000]

I feel like being that far from the sun and with the surface area of Jool the plant wouldn't be able to sustain itself. Funny idea though. Personally I prefer the kraken answer.

[Psycix]

That's just the top layer Sofus, they begin to work a few km under the surface.

I would show you but the kraken keeps eating my planes.

I would love to see a mod or such that periodically shows tentacles flinging about in the depths of Jool.

Edited October 29, 2013 by Psycix

[KerbMav]

The color of a gas giant does not have to be indicative of the possibility for life or not.

[NASAFanboy]

I feel like being that far from the sun and with the surface area of Jool the plant wouldn't be able to sustain itself. Funny idea though. Personally I prefer the kraken answer.

I'm saying that Jool is large enough to produce heat at its core, which the plant feeds on/the kraken relies on.

Maybe I should build a giant ship, fill it with water and fertilizer and topsoil, go to Jool with tons of gardening equipment, and see what happens.

[lajoswinkler]

I've always wondered why do we have the situation where people, who have been learning about photosynthesis from the first day of school when they were growing beans, think plants eat sunlight. How did this wrong meme happen in the first place?

Sunlight is photons. You can not build an organism out of photons. Plants just use the energy of a photon to combine CO2 and water into simple organic compounds which then they use to make carbohydrates, proteins and fats together with phosphorus and nitrogen they suck using their roots from the solution in the wet ground.

If you put a plant into 100% nitrogen or 100% oxygen atmosphere, it will die. You can expose it to sunlight every hour of every day. It will die.

[Sirrobert]

I've always wondered why do we have the situation where people, who have been learning about photosynthesis from the first day of school when they were growing beans, think plants eat sunlight. How did this wrong meme happen in the first place?

Sunlight is photons. You can not build an organism out of photons. Plants just use the energy of a photon to combine CO2 and water into simple organic compounds which then they use to make carbohydrates, proteins and fats together with phosphorus and nitrogen they suck using their roots from the solution in the wet ground.

If you put a plant into 100% nitrogen or 100% oxygen atmosphere, it will die. You can expose it to sunlight every hour of every day. It will die.

EVERYTHING we know about life will die in 100% oxygen. It's pritty lethal stuf

[John FX]

So maybe Kerbals are little seeds from Jool that grew on Kerbin in some sort of panspermia event?

[Odo]

Cept plants use Carbon Dioxide to respire, so they would suffocate on Oxygen, which is their wasteproduct.

For plants, itd be like living in a big dome of feces.

[NASAFanboy]

For plants, itd be like living in a big dome of feces.

Meh, I added something to contradict that.

Ever wonder where Laythe gets it's oxygen?

In Jool, the lower and middle atmosphere is composed of CO2, while the oxygen, being less dense, makes up a really think later at the top (And is not thickly enough condensed for engines). However, the tidal forces and gravity of Laythe has been eating away at the oxygen for years, creating its own atmosphere.

[MightyLampshade]

Reading the first post of this article made me lol at work

Meh, I added something to contradict that.

Ever wonder where Laythe gets it's oxygen?

In Jool, the lower and middle atmosphere is composed of CO2, while the oxygen, being less dense, makes up a really think later at the top (And is not thickly enough condensed for engines). However, the tidal forces and gravity of Laythe has been eating away at the oxygen for years, creating its own atmosphere.

Before I read the rest of that I was thinking you were saying that Jool is using Laythe as a toilet xD

[Sirrobert]

Cept plants use Carbon Dioxide to respire, so they would suffocate on Oxygen, which is their wasteproduct.

At night, plants burn up the glucose they made during they day. During this procces, they use oxygen.

Not as much as they produce during the day, but they still use it

[allmappedout]

At night, plants burn up the glucose they made during they day. During this procces, they use oxygen.

Not as much as they produce during the day, but they still use it

Agree that they can anaerobically respire, but that presumes that there is a way to produce glucose in the first place, which there wouldn't be in an oxygen-rich environment. Otherwise it's like trying to run a car without any fuel in it.

[lajoswinkler]

EVERYTHING we know about life will die in 100% oxygen. It's pritty lethal stuf

I was going for the "0% CO2".

Oxygen is a powerful oxidizer, but it is not true that everything will die in 100% oxygen. It's not the ratio that counts, it's the partial pressure.

You can work at lower pressures if you increase the ratio of oxygen (astronaut capsules), and you need to reduce it if you work at higher pressures (diving bells). Long term (years, decades) effects are unknown, but animals won't die and will not suffer damage because of this if they're subjected to such environment over a few days or weeks.

At night, plants burn up the glucose they made during they day. During this procces, they use oxygen.

Not as much as they produce during the day, but they still use it

They do it all the time, but light is not neccesary for it so it's sometimes called "dark process". The total net effect is less CO2 and more O2 in the system around the plant.

[Deadpangod3]

The monster lives again...

It had to be said.

[mux]

Upper Atmosphere of Jool: CO2

Lower: Moar CO2

Jool Upper Surface: Plant leaves full of cholorophyll

Rest of Jool: Biomass

Jool Core: Dirt, full of energy and nutrients/roots

Don't forget the bedrock

[Levelord]

Cept plants use Carbon Dioxide to respire, so they would suffocate on Oxygen, which is their wasteproduct.

Plants and trees actually use oxygen you know.

Hint: it's during the night when photosynthesis stops.