do tyranids eat gas giants? seems like they should slurpie as

WH40k doesn't care for sciences.

Yeah they never stated.

>>53577798
tyranids should convert into gas giant/ice giant herbavores. the rocky planets are basically irrelevent in terms of mass. the ice giatns in particular, have everything that nids need.

there is almost zero reason for nids to invade rocky planets. they are so small.

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>>53577798
>>53577936

Considering they eat everything but the bedrock of every other world they come across I would assume so if they can use it.

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look at this. the nids could eat the gas giants and then just fuck off. earth is NOTHING.

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>>53577798
I'm pretty sure they already do, but knowing how 40k works I'd assume nids find lesser organic biomass like humans too delicious to pass up, making terrestrial worlds their priority before moving onto nearby gas giants.

Like, I don't think it's explained how the C'tan switched their diet from massive stars to puny human souls just because the latter tastes better. Maybe nids are the same?

>>53577936
Phosphates and carbonate rock

One of the planets the nids tried to eat in shield of baal was a gas giant. During the BA last ditch effort it was noted they were siphoning the planet and added another timer to the death clock.
Then necrons and BA set it on fire and flew up most of the fleet

>>53578004

Well, if you notice, earth is as big as jupiter rocky core. If the nids need metals or other heavy elements, it would be extremely more convenient to just take a rocky planet than syphoning an entire gas giant to get to the iron/cobalt/sulphur

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>>53578105
how did they set it on fire.................. thats retarded.

>>53577798
Yes, been mentioned in multiple sources.

>>53577936
They're not just after mass, they want genetic material.

On a tangentially related note; could a gas-giant be 'terraformed'?

I'm thinking of perhaps genetically-modified microbes (perhaps some sort of air-borne algae?) being released into the upper atmosphere, to convert a layer with human-survivable pressure to a composition similar to Earth's atmosphere. After this floating platforms could be placed in the terraformed layer for habitation.

Colonists could even harvest the algae for food. In 40k terms such a terraformed gas-giant could be an agriworld; farming continent-sized clouds of algae to be processed into food & exported to other systems.

Is this plausible?

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>>53578163
Stellification?
http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4a48d58c84350

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>>53578249
I'm no scientist, but I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility to make at least part of a gas giant breathable. But you're still going to need to take gravitational matters and the planet's sheer size into account. No matter what, you're not going to have as easy a time as you would terraforming a more earthy planet.

>>53577798
Well gas gaints are made mostly out of hydrogen and other useful gasses the real qeustion is how the nids would survive the exstreme pressure let alone consume the planet whole its more likely the just eat the neighbouring moons surounding them.

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>>53578053
Originally, it was just energy they consumed from mortals but not souls. The 3rd ed codex made a distinction between life force/energy and immortal souls. The Void dragon on mars was consuming sacrifices but the discarded souls were being consumed by daemons in the warp, for example.

That maybe changed over editions, so who knows now?

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>>53578316
nids have slurpie straws, anon.
they just slurpie the gas

>>53578335
Ah, that makes more sense actually.
still sucks for us puny humans, tho

>>53578163
They shot it with some kinda crazy sun harnessing power system

>>53578356
Well That Makes sense i guess. The nids maniged to consume most of baals radio active desert so the probably would not have any problems slurping a gas planet.
Still is it ever specified what the nids can eat and not? How do they maniged to eat things with no neutritional valeu like sand.

>>53578485
They consume it and use the materials for their carapaces and whatnot. Hive ships are closer to organic factories than traditional organisms

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ITT: What is gravity.

>>53577936
>>53577955
>>53578105

How?

Using Jupiter as a basis the nids will need to:

Enter a gravity well and go down.

Not die to absurd wind speeds.

Collect enough matter to counteract the amount of full expended and somehow exit the planet's gravity well.

>They would just use their space straws and suck up everything.

The sucky straws would have to cross a distance several times further then the earth's circumference if they wanted to reach the gas. The straws will also have to deal with the wind and will snap like twigs.

>>53578249
Gravity makes it a no.

>>53578249
main problems are gravity, air pressure, magnetosphere (and hence the core).

you need a rotating planet with a (at least partially molten) metallic core to produce a magnetosphere otherwise youre going to run into issues like radiation, atmospheric escape, etc. gravity/pressure is pretty obvious, you wouldnt want it much higher than 1.5G or lower than about 0.8G, but lower gravity levels are potentially viable, but will result in mutations, low bone density, etc, though it might be possible to provide a medical solution.

so you'd need more than just handwaved microbes to do the terraforming, and you'd need to ensure a similar gravity level to earth which is probably close to impossible, or at least, more trouble than its worth to an interstellar society (depending on what exact technology they have available for terraforming)

>>53578356
I once thought of a world that was almost consumed by tyranids only for the tyranid fleet to be surprised bellyful, destroyed and sent back hurling to the ground, somehow resowing it.

>>53578576
Tyranids never made sense energetically. That's nothing new.

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>>53578659
Not him, but I wanted to do some sort of pseudo skyland with a small gas giant.
After all, it already exist in 40k with vespid. It's 40k, things rarely make perfect sense.
It wouldn't be very hospitable though and depending on your altitude you could live as if you were in a (scifi) space station both if you were too high and too low.
It's mostly a lawless place and a pirate nest.

Tyranids literally fart kilometer long "bioships" across distances millions of light-years wide at post-relativistic speeds.

"But that's physically impossible" is never an argument regarding what they can and can not do.

The only reason for why Tyranids don't just eat gas giants and move on is because that would be extremely boring.

>>53579104
/thread

>>53578163
How do you ignite a gas giant? Well in the case of jupiter, it would have ignited into a star if the sun hadn't gone first and blown stellar material away from it. Throw enough energy at a gas giant and there is no reason to assume you couldn't ignite the hydrogen and helium and turn it into a star

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>>53579456
>Throw enough energy at a gas giant and there is no reason to assume you couldn't ignite the hydrogen and helium and turn it into a star

>>53578659
Actually I'm pretty sure the main problem would be composition. There's just no way to have a breathable atmosphere on a planet that's 90% hydrogen.

>>53579661
Apart from anything else as soon as you introduce oxygen things get super explody

>>53578955
There are areas of Venus' atmosphere that are close to earth normal. All you would need to add would be oxygen and water

>>53578131
The gas is also made out of metalloids, minerals and all kinds of elements you know.

>>53580128
Uh...those things don't float in hydrogen, anon.

>>53580018
That's the idea, depending on the area and altitude you may need more or less equipment. Some parts are full Skyland because fuck it, it looks cool. Meanwhile some pirate bases or refuges dive in the "deep" to hide and emerge only when needed.
Then I only need them to exploit some bullshito gas to give them a reason to be there and I'm fine.

>>53580204
It's literally called metallic hydrogen

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>WHEN THE GAME BUGS AND YOU CAN'T GG
I'M SO SORRY

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>>53580531
WRONG BOARD

>>53578725
Tyranids don't consume biomass to gain energy. They do it to make more nids and bioships. Consuming worlds is a reproductive act for them

>>53577798

40k, especially tyranids, doesn't make an immense amount of sense. You really just have to go with it.

>>53579661
yeah, its definitely a problem, however he was introducing handwaved microbes to change the composition so i didnt address it.

>>53578955
fair enough. im not familiar enough with the 40k flavour of "science" to say what kind of explanation you'd use. keep in mind that since its an open system, heavier gases will sink and lighter gases will rise, so the upper atmosphere would contain mostly helium, etc.

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>>53577798
Well, yes, but I'm not sure if any gas giant applies.

Been fluffing an inhabited gas giant by the Imperium. Its size and thus gravity isn't anywhere near Jupiter, more like Saturn and Neptun but nearer to the Star. So this wouldn't trouble for nids. It is an agri-world, because of aerial plankton. Distributed by a surface area dozens of times greater than Earth and very thick atmospheric layers, it is a LOT of biomass. Plus, the hydrocarbon, ammonia, nitrogen and phosporus are valuable materials for life (and agri-worlds), so they should be useful for nids.

Also, a gas giant may have life and thus valuable genetic material. This may include bell-shaped, mile-long beasts who digest hydrocarbons or use eletromagnetism , radio waves and even gravitational energy instead of light for energy synthesis. Read Arthur Clarke's "Medusa" to see about them. In my case, local lifeforms also use diamond in their anatomy, which gas giants may produce. One of the plot hooks is that the planetary core is a "Diamond the size of Holy Terra".

A bit unrelated, but nids should consume comets, some of the Oort Cloud and many asteroids for frozen volatiles which life depends on.

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/mining.php#id--Harvesting_Gas_Giants

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/mining.php#id--Element_Bottlenecks

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/aliens.php#id--Alien_Lebensraum--Gas_Giant_Dweller

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/286/5437/100

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-24477667

http://www.slightlywarped.com/crapfactory/awesomemysteries/giantdiamondsinspace.htm

>>53578163
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010:_Odyssey_Two#Plot_summary

>>53585689
>im not familiar enough with the 40k flavour of "science" to say what kind of explanation you'd use

Not him, but 40k's idea of science is to beat it up in an alley and leave it bleeding out. Extreme concepts win over reasonable ones and cool things win over physics. The Warp does a good job of justifying many things.

>>53580428
Which is more of a dense liquid slurry. Molten hot too btw.

>>53578249
In theory it may be possible if you were hyper advanced. But 40k doesn't even have basic terraforming technology, so no. That shit was all lost. The Imperium doesn't have it anymore and I don't think Eldar do either since they haven't done it since the maiden worlds.

The closest you get to terraforming are nids and orks. Nids due to their terraforming shit to harvest, and orks because their spores become their own ecosystem.

>>53578105
No, they didn't try to eat it. Don't lie. It was just there. Remember that Behemoth ignored the Damocles Gulf which is an area filled with space gas.

>>53578221
Cite some.

>>53578105
>One of the planets the nids tried to eat in shield of baal was a gas giant.
>Then necrons and BA set it on fire and flew up most of the fleet

They literally lifted that from an anime called Heroic Age. One of the episodes has the human fleet besieged by a swarm of space bugs blowing up Jupiter to take out the swarm's major hive ships.

>>53587032
>Reasonable answer with sources and diamonds in the sky
>Ignored
Never change /tg/.

>>53577798
No, they don't. Simply because, science. Simple science that none of the retards on this board know.

Those gas giants, hold the least amount of heavy minerals. Any minerals they do have, are past layers of gas elements condensed to the point that they are nearly solid themselves.

All the heavy minerals, combine into heavy objects. Called rocks. These rocks, make asteroids, and various sized planetoids.

That is why the tyranids invade terrestrial planets.

Bio diverse planets are even better. Living things have a higher concentration of elements required for, you know, life...

Fucking retards.

>>53582765
>especially tyranids

>implying eldar/dark eldar/necron/chaos/imperium/orks make more sense

>>53588159
>they didn't try to eat it.

why did they shower it in biomorphs and spores then?

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>>53588159
>Cite some.


>Have specialised tyranids for cherrypicking genetic materials
>hurr durr they don't care about genetics