The inactive and mostly active lava zone should look more "active"
CaptainFearless
CO, US Join Date: 2016-12-14 Member: 224941Members
CO, US Join Date: 2016-12-14 Member: 224941Members
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Maybe a few small tremors here and there like you get near the Aurora.
I've been thinking a lot how glowing lava might exist in the water without water blowing and lava cooling rapidly.
So we know that the higher the pressure, the higher the boiling point of water, but after some point no matter how high the pressure is water would boil. This temperature is called critical temperature or critical point (reference to point on pressure-temperature diagram).
So for fresh water it is 373.9 C at 216 atmospheres.
As for glowing rocks (or metal, doesn't matter) they must be of particular temperature to glow, take a look at the chart:
It seems like there is no way how water may not boil when it is in contact with such temperatures.
However, ocean is obviously not filled with fresh water.
For salt water found in oceans on Earth, the critical point is 465 c at 298 atmospheres.
Still not hot enough.
But who says that Subnautican oceans have the same elemental composition as oceans we are familiar with?
Surprisingly, I have not found any data about critical point of water with much higher NaCl percentage than that of seawater, of solution of other salts either.
What I did found that critical point of brake fluid is at 500+ C, and it has higher density than water.
I'm sure there are other kinds of liquids as well, with higher critical points.
So, what if the bottom of Subnautican oceans is not covered by water at all, but by some other liquid, that has very high critical point, and have much higher density than water?
maybe even higher than density of molten aluminum, so that blobs of molten aluminum will indeed raise from the seafloor?
We need somebody proficient with chemistry and thermodynamics here=)
Actually, I'd argue that the opposite is the case. The fluid moving lava, while cool, is a real immersion killer for me (and a major reason I spend less time in those biomes).
TenebrousNova's video shows a large eruption with active balls, but you can see how the water absorbs the energy and how a crust is already forming at the edge of the camera's field of view.
Water is very good at absorbing heat and cooling happens quickly (as can be seen in this video):
So, it is more like tiny slivers of light forming balls of rock... then it is like how lava appears on land surrounded by air.
Interesting... we do have evidence in Lost River of the formation of flows of a liquid with another density - I'd just assumed that there was some type of strange fresh-water ocean but you could be right about there being something more exotic going on...
500TH COMMENT! WOO!
I found something like that near the entrance to the Lost River in the Grand Reef.
1. Standing on the surface of a lava pool in a heat vent doesn't affect the Exosuit at all, either with damage to the vehicle or the surface viscosity. Shouldn't both extreme heat sources damage the vehicle?
2. Shouldn't the Exosuit slowly sink while on lava? I get they treat lava as 'seafloor' instead of a liquid, but to me it's slightly immersion breaking it can just 'float' and walk on lava despite that it shouldn't physically be able to.
Maybe they could add some depth to lava, and make it a liquid that reduces vehicle movement speed and quickly saps energy usage (like how the acid pits around the Lost Tree biome damages player health).