Return to Answer

First day on the community and I have to say you people seem like complete pricks. You not not agreeing with me doesn't mean you should intentionally twist my words in order to implicitly imply that I'm stupid.

They probably wouldn't. The way you're describing blind seems as if they have no sense of any spectrum of light at all, which would mean they also wouldn't sense infrared and wouldn't be able to tell thermal differences. Although we may say that's our sense of touch, heat is still carried by light.

Even basic vehicles would likely never be invented on such a world; a bicycle is a simple vehicle but even that would pose significant problems. A small unexpected change in terrain could easily dismount a rider, and the faster one moves that becomes more likely to happen as well as more difficult to detect with echolocation. If you want them to invent something like a car then they would likely need to reach the computer age first so they could make machines that are capable of radar telemetry, which would make them having their industrial revolution much more difficult. A train would be somewhat easier to make for them since it would rely on a track and wouldn't require echolocation. But if they're doing that then you have to take into account that they make a lot of noise and that would disrupt their primary sense, so they would likely not even use internal combustion since it's quite loud. Even machines we use which are quiet by comparison could be loud enough to disorient a species which evolved sound as their primary sense; like how you can flip on some devices and hear a high pitched ring like tinnitus, or hear the thrum of a motor as it spins. All computers use a crystal to determine their clock speed, this species wouldn't even be able to easily use piezoelectric devices because as that crystal vibrates it also creates sound due to that vibration.

If, by some miracle, they invented vehicles and propulsion systems for them that were silent or soundproofed they could hypothetically reach the space age. But their space age would probably use something like a space elevator rather than a rocket since it wouldn't be as loud (side note: space elevators also don't need to achieve escape velocity since they're not ballistic at all). After overcoming all of those nearly impossible obstacles it's easy enough to figure out how to navigate though. They would have to have devices that sense light at that point, so they could just point something like a radio telescope around until they found something interesting. NASA has released sound clips of what the different planets sound like by converting their EM signatures into audio, there's no reason they couldn't do something similar with a spectrograph since, as another person pointed out, sound and light waves are largely the same mathematically. Except with their version it would probably play the inverse of what we would see, with the tones generated representing the black lines on a spectrogram rather than us seeing a rainbow with some spots missing. They could use infrared to determine how hot an object was so they didn't fly into a sun, and then determine if any planet had the same or similar EM and spectrographic sounds as their own for determining habitability. In order to determine distance they could use the doppler effect, which they would know of since it exists in both light and sound. Determining the size/ mass of a celestial body would probably be difficult though, but you would need that for understanding another planets gravity and atmosphere so that one could safely land a craft, even a probe.

I imagine if you were sitting in a craft designed to be piloted by sound you would probably hear something like old-school 56k modem noises instead of seeing displays anywhere. Modems take sine waves, chop them up, and reshape them in order to convey information. The term modem is actually a portmanteau of modulate and demodulate, describing the process these sound waves are converted into information. Using a process similar to that, they could effectively understand their sensor readings just efficiently as a human could by reading it on a panel; perhaps even having multiple audio streams playing at once in different frequencies and they simply choose what to listen to like you might listen to a specific person in a crowded room or read from a specific point on the display.

So far as how do they discover space exists, that one seems obvious to me too (if there's sunlight on that planet). Aurora Borealis actually creates an audible sound as the suns radiation interacts with the earths magnetic field and creates a vibration. This phenomenon is something that was largely dismissed as local 'old wives tales' up until relatively recently when it was recorded and sparked study into it. But for a species that relies on sound rather than light, they would probably notice it much much earlier and might even have a religion based around it. After all, they're hearing the sun and effectively the giver of life for their planet so it's plausible it could be interpreted as the voice of god by a primitive civilization.

Edit: Didn't think I had to explain this, but I seem to be mistaken. Every living thing in our biosphere emits some spectrum of light and cannot survive without it. You can measure the EM field of a person, and the electromagnetic spectrum IS light, meaning we emit light. Birds sense EM fields and navigate using that; pit vipers have sacks within their heads which allow them to effectively have "heat vision"; plants tend to grow in the direction where sunlight is coming from. You could remove the eyes of a rattlesnake or pigeon and it would still have some sense of different light spectrums. OP specifically states that this is a world where evolution took a different path and seems to imply (at least to me) no photosensitivity of any kind.

They probably wouldn't. The way you're describing blind seems as if they have no sense of any spectrum of light at all, which would mean they also wouldn't sense infrared and wouldn't be able to tell thermal differences. Although we may say that's our sense of touch, heat is still carried by light.

Even basic vehicles would likely never be invented on such a world; a bicycle is a simple vehicle but even that would pose significant problems. A small unexpected change in terrain could easily dismount a rider, and the faster one moves that becomes more likely to happen as well as more difficult to detect with echolocation. If you want them to invent something like a car then they would likely need to reach the computer age first so they could make machines that are capable of radar telemetry, which would make them having their industrial revolution much more difficult. A train would be somewhat easier to make for them since it would rely on a track and wouldn't require echolocation. But if they're doing that then you have to take into account that they make a lot of noise and that would disrupt their primary sense, so they would likely not even use internal combustion since it's quite loud. Even machines we use which are quiet by comparison could be loud enough to disorient a species which evolved sound as their primary sense; like how you can flip on some devices and hear a high pitched ring like tinnitus, or hear the thrum of a motor as it spins. All computers use a crystal to determine their clock speed, this species wouldn't even be able to easily use piezoelectric devices because as that crystal vibrates it also creates sound due to that vibration.

If, by some miracle, they invented vehicles and propulsion systems for them that were silent or soundproofed they could hypothetically reach the space age. But their space age would probably use something like a space elevator rather than a rocket since it wouldn't be as loud (side note: space elevators also don't need to achieve escape velocity since they're not ballistic at all). After overcoming all of those nearly impossible obstacles it's easy enough to figure out how to navigate though. They would have to have devices that sense light at that point, so they could just point something like a radio telescope around until they found something interesting. NASA has released sound clips of what the different planets sound like by converting their EM signatures into audio, there's no reason they couldn't do something similar with a spectrograph since, as another person pointed out, sound and light waves are largely the same mathematically. Except with their version it would probably play the inverse of what we would see, with the tones generated representing the black lines on a spectrogram rather than us seeing a rainbow with some spots missing. They could use infrared to determine how hot an object was so they didn't fly into a sun, and then determine if any planet had the same or similar EM and spectrographic sounds as their own for determining habitability. In order to determine distance they could use the doppler effect, which they would know of since it exists in both light and sound. Determining the size/ mass of a celestial body would probably be difficult though, but you would need that for understanding another planets gravity and atmosphere so that one could safely land a craft, even a probe.

I imagine if you were sitting in a craft designed to be piloted by sound you would probably hear something like old-school 56k modem noises instead of seeing displays anywhere. Modems take sine waves, chop them up, and reshape them in order to convey information. The term modem is actually a portmanteau of modulate and demodulate, describing the process these sound waves are converted into information. Using a process similar to that, they could effectively understand their sensor readings just efficiently as a human could by reading it on a panel; perhaps even having multiple audio streams playing at once in different frequencies and they simply choose what to listen to like you might listen to a specific person in a crowded room or read from a specific point on the display.

So far as how do they discover space exists, that one seems obvious to me too (if there's sunlight on that planet). Aurora Borealis actually creates an audible sound as the suns radiation interacts with the earths magnetic field and creates a vibration. This phenomenon is something that was largely dismissed as local 'old wives tales' up until relatively recently when it was recorded and sparked study into it. But for a species that relies on sound rather than light, they would probably notice it much much earlier and might even have a religion based around it. After all, they're hearing the sun and effectively the giver of life for their planet so it's plausible it could be interpreted as the voice of god by a primitive civilization.

Edit: Didn't think I had to explain this, but I seem to be mistaken. Every living thing in our biosphere emits some spectrum of light and cannot survive without it. You can measure the EM field of a person, and the electromagnetic spectrum IS light, meaning we emit light. Birds sense EM fields and navigate using that; pit vipers have sacks within their heads which allow them to effectively have "heat vision"; plants tend to grow in the direction where sunlight is coming from. You could remove the eyes of a rattlesnake or pigeon and it would still have some sense of different light spectrums. OP specifically states that this is a world where evolution took a different path and seems to imply (at least to me) no photosensitivity of any kind.

First day on the community and I have to say you people seem like complete pricks. You not not agreeing with me doesn't mean you should intentionally twist my words in order to implicitly imply that I'm stupid.

First day on the community and I have to say you people seem like complete pricks. You not not agreeing with me doesn't mean you should intentionally twist my words in order to implicitly imply that I'm stupid.

They probably wouldn't. The way you're describing blind seems as if they have no sense of any spectrum of light at all, which would mean they also wouldn't sense infrared and wouldn't be able to tell thermal differences. Although we may say that's our sense of touch, heat is still carried by light.

Even basic vehicles would likely never be invented on such a world; a bicycle is a simple vehicle but even that would pose significant problems. A small unexpected change in terrain could easily dismount a rider, and the faster one moves that becomes more likely to happen as well as more difficult to detect with echolocation. If you want them to invent something like a car then they would likely need to reach the computer age first so they could make machines that are capable of radar telemetry, which would make them having their industrial revolution much more difficult. A train would be somewhat easier to make for them since it would rely on a track and wouldn't require echolocation. But if they're doing that then you have to take into account that they make a lot of noise and that would disrupt their primary sense, so they would likely not even use internal combustion since it's quite loud. Even machines we use which are quiet by comparison could be loud enough to disorient a species which evolved sound as their primary sense; like how you can flip on some devices and hear a high pitched ring like tinnitus, or hear the thrum of a motor as it spins. All computers use a crystal to determine their clock speed, this species wouldn't even be able to easily use piezoelectric devices because as that crystal vibrates it also creates sound due to that vibration.

If, by some miracle, they invented vehicles and propulsion systems for them that were silent or soundproofed they could hypothetically reach the space age. But their space age would probably use something like a space elevator rather than a rocket since it wouldn't be as loud (side note: space elevators also don't need to achieve escape velocity since they're not ballistic at all). After overcoming all of those nearly impossible obstacles it's easy enough to figure out how to navigate though. They would have to have devices that sense light at that point, so they could just point something like a radio telescope around until they found something interesting. NASA has released sound clips of what the different planets sound like by converting their EM signatures into audio, there's no reason they couldn't do something similar with a spectrograph since, as another person pointed out, sound and light waves are largely the same mathematically. Except with their version it would probably play the inverse of what we would see, with the tones generated representing the black lines on a spectrogram rather than us seeing a rainbow with some spots missing. They could use infrared to determine how hot an object was so they didn't fly into a sun, and then determine if any planet had the same or similar EM and spectrographic sounds as their own for determining habitability. In order to determine distance they could use the doppler effect, which they would know of since it exists in both light and sound. Determining the size/ mass of a celestial body would probably be difficult though, but you would need that for understanding another planets gravity and atmosphere so that one could safely land a craft, even a probe.

I imagine if you were sitting in a craft designed to be piloted by sound you would probably hear something like old-school 56k modem noises instead of seeing displays anywhere. Modems take sine waves, chop them up, and reshape them in order to convey information. The term modem is actually a portmanteau of modulate and demodulate, describing the process these sound waves are converted into information. Using a process similar to that, they could effectively understand their sensor readings just efficiently as a human could by reading it on a panel; perhaps even having multiple audio streams playing at once in different frequencies and they simply choose what to listen to like you might listen to a specific person in a crowded room or read from a specific point on the display.

So far as how do they discover space exists, that one seems obvious to me too (if there's sunlight on that planet). Aurora Borealis actually creates an audible sound as the suns radiation interacts with the earths magnetic field and creates a vibration. This phenomenon is something that was largely dismissed as local 'old wives tales' up until relatively recently when it was recorded and sparked study into it. But for a species that relies on sound rather than light, they would probably notice it much much earlier and might even have a religion based around it. After all, they're hearing the sun and effectively the giver of life for their planet so it's plausible it could be interpreted as the voice of god by a primitive civilization.

Edit: Didn't think I had to explain this, but I seem to be mistaken. Every living thing in our biosphere emits some spectrum of light and cannot survive without it. You can measure the EM field of a person, and the electromagnetic spectrum IS light, meaning we emit light. Birds sense EM fields and navigate using that; pit vipers have sacks within their heads which allow them to effectively have "heat vision"; plants tend to grow in the direction where sunlight is coming from. You could remove the eyes of a rattlesnake or pigeon and it would still have some sense of different light spectrums. OP specifically states that this is a world where evolution took a different path and seems to imply (at least to me) no photosensitivity of any kind.