Farming Coral, Cooking with Algae: How Underwater Civilizations Might Evolve | Entropy Rising Episode 17

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What if the galaxy is teeming with life—brilliant, social, tool-using life—that will never leave its own planet?

In this episode of Entropy Rising, we explore a question that doesn’t get nearly enough attention: could underwater civilizations actually evolve, and if so, how far could they go? From coral farming to biotech tools, from fermentation to chemical cooking, we break down the ways intelligent aquatic life might innovate in an environment where fire, metallurgy, and even basic combustion are off the table.

We dive deep (literally and metaphorically) into the barriers that ocean-dwelling species would face: no access to smelting, no simple way to generate high temperatures, and limited chemistry due to water’s high heat capacity and reactivity. But it’s not all limitations. We also explore the advantages—like potential early access to air pockets, electric fields, and bioengineering—offering surprising routes for technological development that are nothing like the path humanity took.

Could social marine creatures like octopuses develop advanced societies? Could biotech replace metal tools? Would spaceflight ever be possible for them—or would the very ocean that gave them life become a permanent prison?

We also look at how super-Earths with deep oceans and stronger gravity stack the odds even further against space exploration, making the ocean surface as unreachable for them as interstellar travel is for us. And yet… maybe that’s not the end of the story.

Join us as we examine the slow, strange path that aquatic civilizations might take—and the tragic possibility that they’re out there, aware of the stars, but forever stuck beneath the waves.

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