Sentient Planets

[PlutonianEmpire]

Is anyone here familiar at all with the game "Alpha Centauri", by Sid Meier? Basically, 7 factions get stranded on an earthlike, but inhospitable, planet (inhospitable due to large amounts of nitrogen in the atmosphere). As the game progresses, it is learned that the native fungus there is the dominant life form, and has a neural connectivity that spans the planet, and one of the win-game options include ascending humanity to transcendence side-by-side with the planet.

Thus begs the question: Can a planet, not just the life forms, but also the planet itself, achieve sentience?

[Malenfant]

The planet itself can't. It'd be made of rock and metal, which is not capable of sentience.

Life on a planet however could conceivably be a single organism/hivemind like the fungus in SMAC, or the ocean of Solaris (in Stanislaw Lem's story).

[hank]

The planet itself can't. It'd be made of rock and metal, which is not capable of sentience.

Tell that to Hal 9000.

- Hank

[NoXion]

While a sentient planet is highly unlikely (Even considering that computers are effectively made of metals and silicon) it's still a fascinating concept.

[Malenfant]

The planet itself can't. It'd be made of rock and metal, which is not capable of sentience.

Tell that to Hal 9000.

- Hank

1) Hal 9000 is fictional
2) Try having a conversation with a pebble sometime .

If you want to be picky, fine - rock and metal is not naturally capable of sentience.

[Scytale]

Well actually, the point of Alpha Centauri (the game) is not that the planet itself (Mars-sized planet in the green zone of Alpha Centauri A) is sentient, but the omnipresent xenofungus growing on it acts like a massive neural network. Usually, the xenofungus lies in a dormant state (called Flower Dream), but once in a while it increases its connectivity exponentially and achieves sentience. Unfortunately, in doing so it consumes all other lifeforms on the planet, and its not able to sustain itself, so it falls back to the Flower Dream, always "waking up" too late to be able to prevent its demise.

In SMAC, the UN starship Unity lands on the Planet (split into seven factions, each one with its own ideology) and the first human colonies are created. After years of struggling, technological advance and many political subplots, they find out that the planet is about to "bloom" - and utterly consume them all, so they build something called The Voice of Planet, which "injects" the sum of human knowledge into Planet's neural net. And then they all live happily ever after, achieving "Transcendence".

[PlutonianEmpire]

Well actually, the point of Alpha Centauri (the game) is not that the planet itself (Mars-sized planet in the green zone of Alpha Centauri A) is sentient, but the omnipresent xenofungus growing on it acts like a massive neural network. Usually, the xenofungus lies in a dormant state (called Flower Dream), but once in a while it increases its connectivity exponentially and achieves sentience. Unfortunately, in doing so it consumes all other lifeforms on the planet, and its not able to sustain itself, so it falls back to the Flower Dream, always "waking up" too late to be able to prevent its demise.

In SMAC, the UN starship Unity lands on the Planet (split into seven factions, each one with its own ideology) and the first human colonies are created. After years of struggling, technological advance and many political subplots, they find out that the planet is about to "bloom" - and utterly consume them all, so they build something called The Voice of Planet, which "injects" the sum of human knowledge into Planet's neural net. And then they all live happily ever after, achieving "Transcendence".

Actually, the planet (in the game) is slightly bigger than earth, not mars sized.

[eburacum45]

Naturally there are various kinds of sentient planets in Orion's Arm;
these worlds have a processor substrate genetically engineered into the crustal bacteria;
http://www.orionsarm.com/topics/BioGeoComputing.html
then there are various moonbrains, and jupiter brains;

here is a technical paper by Anders Sandberg about artificial brains the size of Jupiter
http://www.orionsarm.com/whitepapers/Brains2.pdf

and here is a little page about a virus affecting a moonbrain, which has itself been terraformed and has people living on its surface (with a Celestia image)
http://www.orionsarm.com/topics/Affines.html

[Smacklug]

SMAC is a classic strategy game, one of the best ones of all time, in fact. It has some very interesting features including terraforming and sociopolitical... stuff.