Reseeding the bio weaponed planets.

The planets of the Fourth Empire that were hit by the bioweapon are lifeless. But shouldn't the possibility of "terraforming: them after the fact exist?

They were, after all, once lifebearing worlds located in the appropriate locations in their star system's. The 5th empire could, starting at the most basic lifeform micro organisms and build up from there to more and more advanced forms. And all it would really take was tome. A long, long time, but still.

Birhat is a prime example of that.

Uh oh. I just found out in Heirs of Empire that because the bio weapon killed all living things that that means that the atmospgere would not be able to be maintained. The only reason that Birhat survided was because her zoo/enviromental habitats escaped before the atmospete completely degraded.

So just forget I said anything.

Mycall4me wrote:Uh oh. I just found out in Heirs of Empire that because the bio weapon killed all living things that that means that the atmospgere would not be able to be maintained. The only reason that Birhat survided was because her zoo/enviromental habitats escaped before the atmospete completely degraded.

So just forget I said anything.

I think terraforming is still possible for all of those worlds, but you have to start with algae and work your way up (probably millennia rather than centuries).

Agreed. Although conditions are now probably rather extreme, these remain places conducive to the survival of our kind of life. And almost certainly are _not_ conducive to life arising de novo - too much will have changed. There's probably still a great deal of dissolved oxygen in the seas, for example, as well as detectable amounts in the atmosphere. In fact, I'm not sure that 40,000 years is long enough for the O2 level to drop below ~10%, which is more than enough to support an effective ozone layer, and reseeding would be quite feasible with the empire's biotechnology.

Interestingly, there might be an issue with having enough CO2 some places, since weathering scours it out of the atmosphere pretty effectively if there's no active sources of it - but again, even without active vulcanism I don't think 40,000 years is long enough to sequester enough to make things unrecoverable.

Still and all, 40 millennia is long enough that another 40 to put things right is probably optimistic,

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:

Mycall4me wrote:Uh oh. I just found out in Heirs of Empire that because the bio weapon killed all living things that that means that the atmospgere would not be able to be maintained. The only reason that Birhat survided was because her zoo/enviromental habitats escaped before the atmospete completely degraded.

So just forget I said anything.

I think terraforming is still possible for all of those worlds, but you have to start with algae and work your way up (probably millennia rather than centuries).