Should Vulcans be greener?

[Christopher]

Okay, help me out, show me a spectrum reading of a single lightsource that continually outputs light with high intensity in the UVB and in the red spectrum, but low in between the two. I wanna learn.

What are you talking about? What we want is for Vulcan's star to have low UV emissions (relative to Sol) to explain why its desert-dwellers don't need a lot of melanin.

The assumption you made was that they wound in fact use the real space ( get it, like real world? ;-) facts about the star.

It was not an "assumption," it was an informed conclusion based on the evidence I just provided you. Since I've already shown my work, already demonstrated the reasons why I drew that conclusion, you have no grounds for calling it an "assumption."

The convolution comes when you expect me to accept assumptions you've made based on the writers life etc and how they will be used in the show, however valid they may seem from your perspective (and I do see that)... What do we know? Vulcan's sun is red.

Which should tell anyone with a decent high school education in astronomy that it's probably weaker in ultraviolet than the Sun. Although maybe I'm giving modern American high schools too much credit.

it seems awfully close (or big?). Vulcan is hot.

Neither of which has anything to do with its UV output specifically. Again, 90% of stars are cooler and redder than Sol. But of course a planet can be closer to its star than Earth is; a planet around a red star would have to be closer to have liquid-water temperatures. So as seen from such a planet, the sun would be larger in the sky than Sol is and could be just as bright. And of course hotness is a function of how close a planet is to its star -- and how much infrared radiation the atmosphere traps with the greenhouse effect. UV output is a separate question.

 

[thewanderingjack]

[...]

Whoa... sorry I haven't slept in... some days, my head was stuck somewhere.

So, given the low UV etc... (not your informed conclusions though, let's keep those separate, for me... I want to call Vulcan's star... Christopher, after my personal hero), you are totally right, and that becomes the best explanation for why Vulcan's are light skinned despite their dessert world... but then we go back to the second eyelid issue, and are back to they should be more green, as well as then what's up with black Vulcans (here I say it's their own response to the red light for whatever reason and I'm happy with that bit)

 

[MAGolding]

Of course I am, because the world in the show is the creation of people in the real world. The fact that writer Mike Sussman chose to establish in "Home" that Vulcan was 16 light-years from Earth makes it pretty obvious that his intent was to canonize 40 Eri as Vulcan's primary. There are a few other star systems at that approximate distance, but all of them are even dimmer, UV-poorer dwarfs than 40 Eri is.

I think that I wrote somewhere that there are about 5 known systems between 16.0 and 17.0 light years from Earth and showed that 40 Eridani was the most likely one.

Besides, our goal here is to speculate about Vulcan evolution. It makes no sense to say that we should be forbidden from considering ideas not explicitly specified in canon. If the question on the table is "Why are desert-dwelling Vulcans not darker-skinned," then "because their star emits less UV than ours" is a reasonable hypothesis, and it meshes nicely with the fact that 40 Eri emits less UV than Sol. Yes, it's a conjecture, but Star Trek is fiction. Everything about it is a conjecture.

Besides, there's no reason the star couldn't still appear bright in visible light (assuming the planet was close enough) -- it just has to emit less ultraviolet light. A star's spectrum is a bell curve, brighter in some wavelengths than others. If the peak of the curve is further toward the red end of the spectrum, then less of the curve will be in the UV part of the spectrum. (To illustrate this, here's a graphic comparing the spectra of 40 Eri A and C. It's from this page about the star system.)




The point is, the less UV light the star gives off, the less protection they need. Yes, humans on Earth need more protection in some zones because our Sun gives off a lot of UV. The whole point here is that Vulcan's star gives off less UV, so there is nowhere on the planet Vulcan where the natives would be exposed to as much UV as humans get in tropical climes. Sure, if you bring a Vulcan to Earth, they'd need a lot of sunblock. (Although there's probably some simple hypospray injection that can do that in the future.) But they evolved on Vulcan, presumably, and it's their evolution that we're talking about. If their native environment did not expose them to a lot of UV, they would've had no evolutionary need to evolve dark skin to defend against it. The most intense UV they would experience anywhere on their own planet would correspond to the milder exposure levels on Earth.

thewanderingjack wrote:

... but then we go back to the second eyelid issue, and are back to they should be more green, as well as then what's up with black Vulcans (here I say it's their own response to the red light for whatever reason and I'm happy with that bit)

I think that the Vulcan inner eyelid evolved to protect against sudden intense light. Vulcans try to never look directly at their sun, just as humans try never to look directly at our sun. There might be sudden reflections of Vulcan's sun in pools of water, off snow covered mountains, etc. and the inner eyelid shuts in response to such sudden accidental flashes of intense sunlight. And apparently it happens very rarely, since Spock didn't remember incidents of temporary blindness caused by the inner eyelid happening to him a lot. Or maybe he did remember and let his friends anguish about his blindness as punishment for never having looked up the most basic facts of Vulcan physiology.

 

[ChasFink]

Spock's blood is as green as any other Vulcan's, and apparently it's mostly Vulcan in chemistry, since Sarek was able to receive a transfusion from Spock (albeit with some "human elements" filtered out).

Actually, during that operation Spock's blood did become darker and greener (and presumably more like a full Vulcanian's) after the human elements were removed. It's visible in the transparent tubes attached to that long armlike device hanging over Spock's bed, and was specifically mentioned in the script.

OP, fullblooded Vulcans should have been greener then generally shown, and darker too (show me a desert-evolved race that can pass for caucasian...

A long time ago I read an article in a fanzine that attempted to work out the science of copper-based Vulcan physiology. It speculated that instead of a darkening pigment, Vulcans were protected from the sun by a reflective opaque substance - so a Vulcan who spent a long time in the sun would get LIGHTER and yellower. Of course, this was B.T. (before Tuvok).

 

[johnnybear]

I've always wondered if Balok's look was supposed to be the original look of the full Vulcan! I mean it hardly looked anything like Mark Lenard or any other Vulcans we saw later on. Then again it did share the mouth of T'Pau!
JB

 

[F. King Daniel]

Perhaps their lips and gums should be green.

Not just their lips and gums...

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Perhaps he was artificially gestated, although there have been attempts in tie-ins to handwave some kind of biological workaround for that.)

Um, you're forgetting the birth scene from TFF...

 

[Christopher]

I've always wondered if Balok's look was supposed to be the original look of the full Vulcan!

Spock only said that "in some manner he was reminiscent of my father." That's hardly the same thing as saying "He looks exactly like a member of my species." If anything, he's more likely to be speaking of Balok's manner and personality than his physical appearance. Naturally they didn't yet know what Spock's father's species would be like when they wrote that episode -- they didn't even have a name for the "Vulcanians" until the next episode, "Mudd's Women" -- so the line was meant to be vague and open to interpretation. They were making this stuff up as they went, and leaving things open for later screenwriters to fill in as they wished.

 

[Gary7]

Greener? No. Why? Actually, it seems subtle but there's kind of a greenish yellow hue to Spock and T'Pol. I think it's a sufficient differentiation from other skin tones of the crew.

Any greener and they'd look more like Orions....

 

[johnnybear]

Spock only said that "in some manner he was reminiscent of my father." That's hardly the same thing as saying "He looks exactly like a member of my species." If anything, he's more likely to be speaking of Balok's manner and personality than his physical appearance. Naturally they didn't yet know what Spock's father's species would be like when they wrote that episode -- they didn't even have a name for the "Vulcanians" until the next episode, "Mudd's Women" -- so the line was meant to be vague and open to interpretation. They were making this stuff up as they went, and leaving things open for later screenwriters to fill in as they wished.

Agreed! But I was talking with someone a while back and he too theorized that at that time pure Vulcans may have looked similar to Balok's species if they existed. But yes, I think Spock was referring primarily to Balok's aggressive manner!
JB

 

[Christopher]

^As I said earlier in this thread, I do think the original intent was that pure "Vulcanians" would look less human, since Harry Mudd recognized Spock as a hybrid on sight. But that doesn't mean they would've looked specifically like Balok. The words "in some manner" and "reminiscent" make it clear that Spock was not describing a close or obvious resemblance. And if the Scary Balok Puppet had looked like a well-known Earth-allied species (the Federation hadn't been thought up yet), surely the other characters would've noticed the similarity and reacted to it, much as they later did with the Romulans in "Balance of Terror."

 

[FormerLurker]

What's amused me the last couple of years is the more than a little resemblance of the Balok puppet to the actor that voiced it, one Ted Cassidy.

As for Vulcan appearance and evolution, if the speculation Spock mentioned in Return to Tomorrow about Vulcans emigrating to Vulcan from somewhere else is in any way accurate, they may have come from a low UV world, and chose Vulcan as their new home because of the similarities. This of course means that if Arret is that world, it was a low UV world before the natives destroyed it.

 

[johnnybear]

All Spock said was that Sargon's theory on his race seeding the galaxy would explain his people's pre-history where as Anne Mulhall says that life on earth developed independently!
JB

 

[Spock's Barber]

All Spock said was that Sargon's theory on his race seeding the galaxy would explain his people's pre-history where as Anne Mulhall says that life on earth developed independently!
JB

It must be Hell being confined to a little sphere. No wonder Henok was so cranky.

 

[Kemaiku]

They have copper in their blood cells, but presumably myoglobin in their muscles for oxygen transfer from those, and protein based tisses that would leave redder muscles as well as the yellowishness from fat deposits, so eh, human looking skin seems fine.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

It must be Hell being confined to a little sphere. No wonder Henok was so cranky.

Maybe they had a 'cyberspace' that they could access, like how the Cylons on nuBSG could 'project'.

 

[Kor]

They have copper in their blood cells, but presumably myoglobin in their muscles for oxygen transfer from those, and protein based tisses that would leave redder muscles as well as the yellowishness from fat deposits, so eh, human looking skin seems fine.

I wonder how a copper-based analog to myoglobin might work.

Kor

 

[Longinus]

At least those areas that appear pinkish on humans should be greenish on Vulcans.
Admiral Sitak actually has such a look.

Also, Romulans often had colouring that would be more what I'd expect from green-blooded humanoids.

Also, is it just me or did they just drop the Vulcan colouring in Kelvin films? They looked pretty pinkish to me in those.

 

[Kemaiku]

I wonder how a copper-based analog to myoglobin might work.

Kor

I'm not sure, but they do seem to have one. Their respiration and food intake is the same as humans.

 

[JRTStarlight]

If anything, it's the humans who admire the Vulcans so much and would rather we were more like them that are greener. With envy.

But I'm pretty sure most Vulcans are quite environmentally aware and excellent stewards of their planet. They can't get much greener than that.