03-18-2016, 08:39 PM
(03-18-2016, 07:51 PM)RobinhoodtheFletchling Wrote: The thing with fire is that it does require oxygen specifically, it requires an oxidizer. Theoretically they could use something like chlorine or maybe even fluorine as an oxidizer. Maybe using some sort of process to remove chlorine from salt. Then to pump it into an airtight chamber full of flammable material and to have a crucible directly above that. One should be capable of looking up a list of oxidizers and go from there. Keep up the good work.Hmm, I didn't know that. See, now we're getting deeper into molecular chemistry than my knowledge reaches.
What I do know about oxidizers is they don't stick around for very long. They are by nature very reactive (which is why they burn), so any free oxidizers quickly react with other things to form more stable molecules. The only reason we have so much free oxygen in our atmosphere is because plants are constantly pumping it out when they respirate. That's also why astronomers look for oxygen on exoplanets--if there's a lot of free oxygen, there's something alive on the planet producing it.
Similarly, in order for there to be free chlorine or fluorine on Avalon, you'd need some sort of large-scale (most likely biological) process that constantly produces it. Oxidizers also tend to be poisonous (oxygen is a deadly poison if it gets places it shouldn't), again because they're so reactive, but at this point most Earthly life is adapted to handle oxygen, so adaptations to survive other oxidizers are well within the realm of possibility.
While you talk about extracting chlorine and fluorine, I don't know if that would be possible for a stone-age civilization--you need science and technology to extract chlorine or flourine to make a fire, but how do you get technology without fire? My general theory is that the Avali's environment placed them in sort of a catch-22 with regard to technological development, and they would have been stuck in the stone age forever had they not received technology from the malefactors to skip the intervening steps.
I suppose that, given sufficient time, they would have figured out a clever way around these problems, but only if they had large, stationary, interacting settlements where people had time to do things other than find food, and given their nomadic, predatory nature that seems unlikely. No farming=no civilization=no advanced technology.
Humans had to pass a ton of hurdles to get to where we are, and I'm inclined to speculate that those same hurdles may be almost impossible on an ice moon without outside help.