What Would A World With Life and Vinegar Oceans Be Like?

[Bab5space]

What would an alien world with oceans of vinegar instead of saltwater be like?
Would the atmosphere be air or something else?

Since I could easily say the lifeforms living there breath air different than us.

The whole reason for this is I want to see bio-propelled rocket lifeforms. Take a tiny low mass animal, have them suck up some vinegar into a body pounch, mix in some natural body deposits of something like baking soda but with more kick and boom! Expel the exhaust from body nozzles.
Creatutes can launch into the air higher than if they just jumped.
Gravity is 1g.



would also presume both skin and bone would need to be ulra resistant against corrosion, as that is what vinegar does long term. More than water.

What can you think up?

 

[BillTre]

There are small worms (called vinegar eels, but they are really nematode worms) that live in vinegar and eat the bacteria or yeast which makes the vinegar from things like apples. This would be the strength of apple vinegar you might get in a grocery store.
These animals are used as live food for small (mostly baby) fish. I have raised them.

Structurally, they are very similar to Caenorhabditis elegans a very simple research organism. As adults they might be 1 mm long. They lay eggs which hatch out into very small worms. Their outer surface contains chitin (like insects) and they go through 3 or 4 molts as they get larger.
They are highly active and swim up in the water (vinegar) column by wiggling.
They have no problem dealing with the vinegar environment that they have evolved to handle.

I am guessing they evolved to take advantage of the vinegar-like environment of rotting fruit.

That's all real world stuff of a vinegar environment on earth.

Since vinegar is acetic acid (CH₃COOH). Acetic acid is volatile and would get mixed with other atmospheric gasses. It might smell as strong as the inside of a vinegar bottle or a bottle of glacial acetic acid (very strong), depending on conditions.

I'm guessing a vinegar ocean would be a blown up version of that. Interactions with geology might be interesting.
On a larger scale, you might be able to come up with some kind of ecology where producers of some kind are eaten by predators which in turn are eaten by an increasingly large series of predators.
It would be situations like that where a jet powered animal might evolve.

The bombardier beetle is an example of an animal that that can combine two fluids together to make a jet from the chemical reaction. It shoots it out it butt as a defense mechanism.
Squids, octopus, and nautilus make water jets by muscular contraction of water containing bladder like structure.

 

[Bab5space]

There are small worms (called vinegar eels, but they are really nematode worms) that live in vinegar and eat the bacteria or yeast which makes the vinegar from things like apples. This would be the strength of apple vinegar you might get in a grocery store.
These animals are used as live food for small (mostly baby) fish. I have raised them.

Structurally, they are very similar to Caenorhabditis elegans a very simple research organism. As adults they might be 1 mm long. They lay eggs which hatch out into very small worms. Their outer surface contains chitin (like insects) and they go through 3 or 4 molts as they get larger.
They are highly active and swim up in the water (vinegar) column by wiggling.
They have no problem dealing with the vinegar environment that they have evolved to handle.

I am guessing they evolved to take advantage of the vinegar-like environment of rotting fruit.

That's all real world stuff of a vinegar environment on earth.

Since vinegar is acetic acid (CH₃COOH). Acetic acid is volatile and would get mixed with other atmospheric gasses. It might smell as strong as the inside of a vinegar bottle or a bottle of glacial acetic acid (very strong), depending on conditions.

I'm guessing a vinegar ocean would be a blown up version of that. Interactions with geology might be interesting.
On a larger scale, you might be able to come up with some kind of ecology where producers of some kind are eaten by predators which in turn are eaten by an increasingly large series of predators.
It would be situations like that where a jet powered animal might evolve.

The bombardier beetle is an example of an animal that that can combine two fluids together to make a jet from the chemical reaction. It shoots it out it butt as a defense mechanism.
Squids, octopus, and nautilus make water jets by muscular contraction of water containing bladder like structure.

Thank you. Yes... I learned that I do not need a vinegar ocean afterall. All I need is a lifeform with abilities like the bombardier beetle... scaled up to human size and weight.

I know a chemical reaction powerful enough to lift an adult humanoid would be powerful enough to do damage with it's exhaust too. So likely the reaction chamber and nozzle must be made out of hard exoskeleton.

 

[BillTre]

The Starship Troopers movie had something like that.

 

[some bloke]

The Starship Troopers movie had something like that.

I think you're thinking of Tremors, Tremors 3 in particular has the "Assblasters" which can propel themselves with a jet of fire. Not really hard-scifi though, they would certainly burn themselves! they look quite similar to starship troopers aliens though.

 

[ZapperZ]

What would an alien world with oceans of vinegar instead of saltwater be like?

Salad dressing will be a breeze ... literally!

Zz.

 

[BillTre]

I think you're thinking of Tremors, Tremors 3 in particular has the "Assblasters" which can propel themselves with a jet of fire. Not really hard-scifi though, they would certainly burn themselves! they look quite similar to starship troopers aliens though.

Granted, this is not a unique idea, since nature already evolved the bombardier beetle, but the Starship Troopers movie, although not very good, had some great visuals and interesting bugs.
Among the bugs was one that could shoot plasma out its butt to attack starships. They were quite spectacular.

Plasma Bugs are massive Arachnids which have the ability to launch equally massive plasma bursts with such force that they can fly far beyond the orbit of the planets they are launched from, which can then deflect asteroids or slice a starship in two. They serve as not only the ground artillery and air defense roles, but also the planetary defense castes for the Bug colonies.

From here.