Why Weezeworts aren't magic (A look into how they could work)

[Hanro50]

I thought it might be fun to explore how the internals of a Wheezeworts might work. A little thought experiment if it where. 

Well the first thing that gives us a clue into how they might work is to look for something that "deletes heat" in real live. Looking into high school physics I recall learning about endothermic reactions. These reactions work by absorbing energy from the environment, typically heat. 

Next we'll need something the Wheezeworts might be converting this heat energy its absorbing into. Well I think I might have something, it could be converting this heat energy its absorbing into kinetic energy as evidence by by its ability to move a gas from its lower portion to its upper portion. We also can observe that the plant itself moves up and down well its cycling the gas.

What it could in theory be doing is utilizing a bunch of endothermic reactions that pull out heat energy from the gas its inhaled and then it reversing those reactions once its done exhaling the gas to produce energy it can use to keep itself alive. Instead of heat the wheezewort's produces waste energy in the form of kinetic movement which allows it to recycle the gas. 

This being said this is just a theory of how something like a Wheezeworts plant could work, I'm not saying it does work this way, heck I've not managed to think up a theory on how the thermal nullifeir might work so the rules that govern our reality don't necessarily apply to Oxygen Not Included's reality     

[avc15]

Sure, chemical energy is a thing. But there's a piece missing: a reversible reaction. The wheezewort would be actually using up some resource at its base and excreting something else as a waste product. That waste product would be very dense in chemical energy.

See solid forms of natural gas for a real world example. You transport the SNG using freight, then some sort of conveyor system and burn it on the other end. (only useful in very isolated scenarios with very long/arduous transport where a pipeline is not feasible)

Wheezeworts are still magic as long as they aren't putting the energy they shift away back into the world in SOME form. In their present state they simply don't conserve energy.

 

But I'm not suggesting the mechanics be complicated any further, we just don't really need that.

[Hanro50]

25 minutes ago, avc15 said:

Sure, chemical energy is a thing. But there's a piece missing: a reversible reaction. The wheezewort would be actually using up some resource at its base and excreting something else as a waste product. That waste product would be very dense in chemical energy.

See solid forms of natural gas for a real world example. You transport the SNG using freight, then some sort of conveyor system and burn it on the other end. (only useful in very isolated scenarios with very long/arduous transport where a pipeline is not feasible)

Wheezeworts are still magic as long as they aren't putting the energy they shift away back into the world in SOME form. In their present state they simply don't conserve energy.

 

But I'm not suggesting the mechanics be complicated any further, we just don't really need that.

Yea, I was suggesting that they convert that heat energy into kinetic energy they use to shift up and down. Thought I see your point.

Just as movement, or kinetic energy, can generate heat I was suggesting heat could generate movement,kinetic energy ,within the Wheezeworts. 

  

[The Flying Fox]

Or, maybe in the world of ONI, you can take energy and directly 'spin' it up into mass.  Meaning the wheezewort is like a tiny particle accelerator.  The matter byproduct created in this way would be in very tiny amounts that the wheezewort could just eject as it breathes.  

[Hanro50]

17 minutes ago, The Flying Fox said:

Or, maybe in the world of ONI, you can take energy and directly 'spin' it up into mass.  Meaning the wheezewort is like a tiny particle accelerator.  The matter byproduct created in this way would be in very tiny amounts that the wheezewort could just eject as it breathes.  

Yea Oxygen Not included has thermal systems and its physics are dynamic, but it lacks thermal-dynamics in a sense and thus you can create perpetual motion machines   

[Arash70]

Best cooling system:

 

Step 1: get 20-30 dupes

Step 2: feed them

Step 3: givem some oxygen

Step 4: hydrofan

 

Or just put some pumps around the base, make a thermo regulator room and return the cool oxygen to the base.

[Roboson]

I don't think you're too far off there @Hanro50. Actually its not too far off. Here's an oversimplified way of looking at it:

 

To best explain this, we have to start in the middle. There is a chamber which contains a symbiotic life form which uses an endothermic reaction to fuel a the biological process of generating energy. In all likelihood, the gas being brought in is not actually a source of food, but is simply a catalyst to improve the efficiency of the production of energy. That energy production is likely based upon a radiosynthetic process, which wouldn't be too far fetched considering our colonies are located in space. 

So, central chamber performs and endothermic reaction to create energy (sugar, atp, whatever, but likely ATP, but still whatever) which causes the chamber to contract (due to the smaller area a colder gas takes up) this tugs on the other two attached chambers and naturally opens sphincters connecting them, and allows gas to be transferred into  the entry "lung" at the bottom and out of the exit "lung" at the top.

Thus the entire process is dependent on the natural volume change of a rapidly cooled gas. By tightly connecting the various chambers, that rapid change in volume is converted to kinetic energy which opens connecting sphincters and accounts for the breathing effect, and because it's likely using radiation as an energy source (and temperature as a catalyst), it also accounts for why there is no gas consumed. Furthermore, because it requires shrinking the volume of a gas, it cannot convert gas into a liquid (because doing so would not allow the breathing process to continue properly and potentially cause suffocation). Lastly it also explains why it can cool to the point of stifling itself without it dying, as there is a natural cut off point as to where it  is too cold for the endothermic reaction to produce a great enough temperature difference to operate the shrinking chamber effect. 

Thus in summary, this theory explains: the breathing effect, the cooling temperature effect, the reason it stops breathing and becomes stifled, and how a non-photosynthetic life form survives without light or chemosynthesis. 

 

However, returning to my first line, this is an oversimplified way of looking at it. It's unlikely to be a large central chamber and set of lungs, as depicted above. Instead its much more likely it is the same set up on a much smaller scale which operates using lines of choanocytes attached to ostia to help distribute much smaller amounts of gas using the same principles discussed above. For those of you who don't have a love of the deep blue sea (or a love of underwater technobabble), I'm saying its a sponge, or at least, a plant that works like a sea sponge. Which is further supported by their description: "It removes heat from the air by respiring  through it porous outer membrane." (Furthermore its really hard to draw microscopic pores, so the big one seemed to get the point across just as well despite being slightly misleading). 

So, its a radiosynthetic sponge (which isn't too far off from the radiotrophic fungi we're familiar with). This answers the final mystery of these strange strange life forms: Why are they in the ice biome? The answer is that those biomes were once likely just partially watery biomes, but upon the evolution of these cooling terrestrial sponges the air became colder, and colder, and colder, until life started to die off, and water began to freeze. Particularly nasty sections of dead fish and plants froze into polluted ice and cleaner sections into regular ice. Giving us the ice biomes we know today.

And all that remained were the murderous endothermic radiosynthetic terrestrial sponges. 

Lastly, this theory my also explain this unusual scene we are all so familiar with: 

If my theory about weezeworts is correct, what you may be looking at is a giant respirator for the final specimen of aquatic life that was not completely killed by the Great Weezination Event, but can no longer survive in an environment which can support nothing except weezeworts. It has been saved (or perhaps returned Jurassic Park style) and is now cared for by our loving duplicants. The last, and only, of its species. 

[QuQuasar]

I think you’ve missed the particular trait that makes wheezeworts magical.

 

They’re not magical because they consume heat to create chemical energy: this is a theoretical process known as Thermosynthesis (like “Photosynthesis”, but using heat rather than light). It’s plausible enough that a fair amount of research has been done on the subject, but as far as we know Thermosynthesis has never evolved on earth. Endothermism, by the way, is the exact opposite: the conversion of chemical energy into heat. All warm-blooded organisms are endothermic by definition.

 

Wheezeworts are magical because their mechanics ignore specific heat capacity. They take in a gas and lower it by 5 degrees. This means in carbon dioxide they consume a small amount of energy, while in hydrogen they consume massive amounts of energy.

 

From the perspective of a gameplay mechanic, I actually like this: they become more useful if you put in the effort to set up a hydrogen habitat for them, and I don't think I'd like them as much if they were a source of a constant amount of cooling in any gas. But from the perspective of thermodynamics, it doesn't make sense. Hense, "magical".

 

(Edit) Since we're brainstorming on the subject, though: rather than changing the cooling mechanic, Klei could make them consume fertilizer in proportion to the amount of heat they consume. This would imply that in optimal environments (hydrogen) they consume more nutrients and energy to fuel their growth. And to justify where all that growth energy is going, allow them to reproduce on a very long timescale: once every 300 cycles or something.

[avc15]

in real-world physics motion always creates heat, not the other way around.

Within a gas-driven heat engine, for instance, the pressure gradient that creates motion comes from a heat input. You don't wind up with a net temp reduction, actually, you have quite a lot of waste heat to deal with (average temp of the system rises). I just don't think it's possible to explain the temp reduction with a vibration.

It's not just that they ignore specific heat capacities; wheezeworts also don't conserve energy. But, then, a great many things in ONI don't conserve energy. Should the ONI universe require all processes to conserve energy, though? I don't know, for me that'd be a good thing, but we don't really need many more complex game systems in ONI; it's got quite enough of those already. So that all really depends.

Kinda just saying that I think it's okay that some things are a bit fanciful in a game.

[Roboson]

Yeah I thought about thermotropic life first, but since it's never been confirmed and it wouldn't allow for them to exist in extremely cold areas, it didn't seem like a good fit. (Not much thermo energy for them to eat in the ice biome).

And since it's likely a radiation rich area, radiosynthesis just seemed to have the best explanation. 

[BT_20]

2 hours ago, avc15 said:

in real-world physics motion always creates heat, not the other way around.

Within a gas-driven heat engine, for instance, the pressure gradient that creates motion comes from a heat input. You don't wind up with a net temp reduction, actually, you have quite a lot of waste heat to deal with (average temp of the system rises). I just don't think it's possible to explain the temp reduction with a vibration.

It's not just that they ignore specific heat capacities; wheezeworts also don't conserve energy. But, then, a great many things in ONI don't conserve energy. Should the ONI universe require all processes to conserve energy, though? I don't know, for me that'd be a good thing, but we don't really need many more complex game systems in ONI; it's got quite enough of those already. So that all really depends.

Kinda just saying that I think it's okay that some things are a bit fanciful in a game.

I can agree with that for me the biggest energy conservation failure in ONI is the chloroplast to mitochondria relationship it’s non existent so the game has all sorts of matter and energy deleting and generating issues.It can’t really be fixed either because that would require the introduction of nitrogen and reworking the entire balancing of the game.

[Ketmol]

I might be wrong here but I think there is a chance they do consume atmosphere. Just so little that you need a very long play-through to notice. 

I had a base running for 2000+ cycles and a room with a liquid airlock with weezworts in hydrogen. After like 1000 cycles It started to fail and I realized the reason was low pressure in the hydrogen.  I had to pump in more of it. 

I don't know if it was a bug, somehow something leaked or if they actually did consume a small amount. But someone using de-bug should probably test it (if they haven't already.)

[Lutzkhie]

there are 3 unreleased "animals", pacu the fish, volgus which can be found in group (probably for meat harvest someday) and the shockworm yup electricity producing worm,

[QuQuasar]

21 minutes ago, Ketmol said:

I might be wrong here but I think there is a chance they do consume atmosphere. Just so little that you need a very long play-through to notice. 

I had a base running for 2000+ cycles and a room with a liquid airlock with weezworts in hydrogen. After like 1000 cycles It started to fail and I realized the reason was low pressure in the hydrogen.  I had to pump in more of it. 

I don't know if it was a bug, somehow something leaked or if they actually did consume a small amount. But someone using de-bug should probably test it (if they haven't already.)

It's a bug. Wheezeworts will consume the gas inside them when you save and load the game.