Black'nBlue, why do Vulcans have bad night vision?

[dialee]

Please explain to this vision-challenged fan of your why Vulcans have poor night vision. A couple of authors have used this same premise in their ongoing stories and refer to your very reasonable and logical explanation. I can't find it anywhere so will you kindly do the honors again? For some reason, it bothers the heck out of me not knowing.

[TPoptarts]

Quoting BnB's post from HoT with his reasoning

Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:17 am Post subject: Question regarding Vulcan night vision

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I am finally trying my hand at my first fan fiction (please don't hold your breath, no telling when I will get it done) and I want to check something.

Is there any canon information about Vulcan night vision or lack thereof? I am only talking about canon night vision.

I have read books and fan fiction that tell it both ways. If I follow some of my favorite commercial books and allow for Vulcan to have her sister planet T'Kuht, then I would guess Vulcan's would have lousy night vision.

My reasoning is thus. T'Kuht is reported to be monstrously large and bright. Vulcan's atmosphere is thin, allowing bright star shine to get through, like the high mountains or high desert here on earth. Therefore nights on Vulcan would be almost uniformly brightly lit and Vulcan's would never have needed to develop good night vision.

OTOH, earth has a moon with one of the lowest albedos (reflectivity) in the solar system. Our atmosphere is thick, and packed full of clouds. Plus our moon goes through regular phases where is it partly or totally obscured by earth's shadow. By my reasoning earth nights would be significantly darker than Vulcan nights as a rule, so human's should have better night vision.

But that is just my reasoning and I am willing to change it if there is any canonical evidence to contradict it. But If it is just a matter of arguing with other fans I will gird myself for argument

Does anyone know of any canon information on ayn series from TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY or ENT that would contradict my assumptions?

Thanks in advance.

BnB

[dialee]

Thank you, TPoptarts.

I guess that would explain the extreme acuity in their hearing also. Like the blind, one tends to automatically develop the other senses to compensate for the lack in one area.

[Elessar]

Hold on, where do we get that Vulcan's atmosphere is thin? The fact that it's a warm planet doesn't suggest that it's a thin atmosphere via allowing large amount of light through - just the other way around. A thinner atmosphere'd planet would allow quite a bit of the sunlight to reflect back up out of the atmosphere and therefore NOT be a warm planet at all, like Mars. A thicker atmosphere traps the heat and makes it warmer. There's another factor which is the distance between Vulcan and its star. Its atmospheric density could be immaterial if Vulcan is on the extremely close end of the habitat zone for its star system.

The other thing is what about the Vulcan arc in Season 4? Archer and T'Pol were walking in the Forge at night and it was dark wasn't it? But I guess we could just argue that for certain times of the month or year, T'Kuht is set beyond the horizon. It could be argued one way or another I guess...

The only thing I stick to is that the atm being thin wouldn't make the planet warm, it'd make the planet cold, so we can't back-track Vulcan's warm climate to the deduction of a thinner atmosphere, but the opposite.

I do think it would be funny though for Vulcans to have bad night vision, cuz they have better everything else than us, we oughta get somethin on em!

[krn]

...and yet they choose to build their (ancient) homes and temples in caves. Guess they were the first race to invent the incandesent light blub before the wheel.

[evcake]

Canon says there's less oxygen, not that "the atomsphere is thinner." But I know nothing of the composition of atmospheres.
In Amok Time, the source of all this:

"Is this Vulcan chivalry?
The air's too hot and thin for Kirk.
He's not used to it."

"The air is the air.
What can be done?"

"I can compensate ...
for the atmosphere and the temperature with this.
At least it will give Kirk a fighting chance."

Triox!

[Elessar]

Ooh yeah. You're right, that just means lower oxygen density.

[blacknblue]

"The air's too hot and thin for Kirk."

How does this equal lower oxygen density? Venus has an extremely thick atmosphere. Hardly any oxygen, but plenty of atmosphere. So does Jupiter for that matter. "Thin" does not equal "low oxygen density". Thin equals low air pressure.

Canon and fanon both repeatedly state that Vulcan's atmosphere is hot and thin. Like any desert, Vulcan gets cold at night and hot during the day. Thus T'Pol's statement during the P'Jem incident that she could tolerate the cold better than Archer.

The presence of T'Khut is also at least semi-canon, as it was shown on the animated series during the episode Yesteryear, as well as being shown on the book cover of the officially sanctioned paperback series.

Added:

Note that Eridani is a THREE sun system. With one of the suns being a real whopper. Depending on where Vulcan's orbit is located, atmosphere wouldn't necessarily be the deciding factor in temperature. Mercury is not big on atmosphere either. But it is somewhat warmish, from what I hear.

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

Actually what's been canonically established about Vulcan and Vulcans doesn't make sense in the real world. Hot, thin atmosphere and high gravity doesn't go well together. If the gravity was higher than 1 g the atmosphere should be thicker. The hot climate makes more sense though. But if the gravity is higher, then the Vulcans wouldn't look like they do, lean and tall, but short and squat (I know T'Pol is short but she's certainly not "squat").

[blacknblue]

Depends on biochemistry. With denser bones they might not need as much bulk to sustain themselves. Also, with higher gravity things fall faster. Meaning they would need faster reflexes. A biped on a high gravity planet would have to be fast on their feet. Wouldn't a thin frame be better than a squat frame for agility and reaction time? I dunno. Guess it's a matter of opinion.

Atmosphere could be thin on a high gravity planet. Depends on how high the gravity is. Earth atmosphere density is partly dependent on the fact that most of our atmosphere is nitrogen. If a largeer part of Vulcan's atmosphere is something besides nitrogen, with a lower density than nitrogen, who knows?

Vulcan can't be THAT much higher than Earth, can it? Humans can live there, walk around, even run and fight without powered armor. It can't be drastically higher than Earth. Atmosphere would probably change density according to altitude faster on Vulcan than on Earth,and overall be relatively shallower. Winged craft would need wider wings and a different set of aerodynamic characteristics of course.

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

^ Well, that's all the (IMHO) contrived explanations I've read for years about it. But evolution rarely take such detours. I read a book about plausible alien worlds once (it was years ago and I've forgotten the title) and I remember it saying that high garavity worlds would have slow, squat people who might even have developed some sort of natural "body armour". And low gravity worlds would have tall, slim and graceful people.

But hey, this is Trek and there isn't much that makes sense from a scientific viewpoint (inter-species breeding, FTL drive, artificial gravity, teleportation, replicators...)

[Elessar]

Well, we're close to arguing semantics because when you say "thin air" it refers to the colloquial term used to describe the air at high altitude, which is "thin" because you're further from the Earth and obviously the air pressure's lower (like you said) because gravity is weaker, and therefore the oxygen density, since oxygen is in air, is lower, because if you decrease the pressure at a constant volume, you're going to have a lower density. Lower density is an absolute consequence of lower air pressure, they're connected.

However, the term "thin air" could have been used to describe Vulcan's oxygen-deficient atmosphere rather than necessarily implying that it has a thin atmosphere, because the term "THIN" is not used in the literal geometric descriptive sense when it's used in that phrase "thin air", it's an idiomatic use of the word.

Now, if you've got other examples of canonical evidence that it has a thin atmosphere, then that's a different story entirely. But I think that reference about Kirk having a hard time is a semantical difference in use of the term "thin".

Boy that sounded little like a Bill Clinton argument, didn't it?

[Elessar]

^ Well, that's all the (IMHO) contrived explanations I've read for years about it. But evolution rarely take such detours. I read a book about plausible alien worlds once (it was years ago and I've forgotten the title) and I remember it saying that high garavity worlds would have slow, squat people who might even have developed some sort of natural "body armour". And low gravity worlds would have tall, slim and graceful people.

But hey, this is Trek and there isn't much that makes sense from a scientific viewpoint (inter-species breeding, FTL drive, artificial gravity, teleportation, replicators...)

teleportation's oddly probably the one we're closest to!

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

teleportation's oddly probably the one we're closest to!

Feh! I don't believe that for a second. Remember the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

And don't give me that "Heisenberg compensator" crap they made up on TNG!

[Elessar]

teleportation's oddly probably the one we're closest to!

Feh! I don't believe that for a second. Remember the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

And don't give me that "Heisenberg compensator" crap they made up on TNG!

this is OT, but seriously, go look at the research they're doing with quantum entanglement, that's really what it is. It doesn't violate quantum uncertainty.